Me and the hierarchy of different selves during lockdown

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Journal Identiﬁcation = NRP Article Identiﬁcation = 0648 Date: June 16, 2021 Time: 5:19 pm

doi:10.1684/nrp.2021.0648

REVUE DE NEUROPSYCHOLOGIE

NEUROSCIENCES COGNITIVES ET CLINIQUES

101 Point of view

Rev Neuropsychol

2020 ; 12 (S1) : 101-4

Me and the hierarchy of different selves

during lockdown ^*

Je et la hiérarchie des moi à l’épreuve du conﬁnement

Catherine Thomas-Antérion Plein Ciel, 69008 Lyon EA3082 Université Lyon 2

<c.thomas-anterion@orange.fr>

To cite this article: Thomas-Antérion C. Me and the hierarchy of different selves during lockdown. Rev Neuropsychol 2020;12(S1):101-4 doi:10.1684/nrp.2021.0648

I

n writing this article on COVID-19 from the perspective of neuropsychology and psychopathology, I carefully read what the other authors were preparing. I admired their responsiveness in wanting to learn, in their respective ﬁelds, about the virus. A week before the announcement of lockdown, the activity in the ofﬁce began to decrease.

Fragile patients and some hypochondriacs cancelled their appointments. The Minister of Solidarity and Health, Olivier Véran, announced on March 8, the easing of the conditions of teleconsultation acts to face the epidemic of coronavirus Sars-CoV-2. It is in this context that I left for Angers to see friends, driven by the feeling that for some time this would be impossible. Humans have been social animals since Aristotle. My friends had the ﬂu (or COVID-19) and were isolated. So I called a colleague and friend with whom I have shared neuropsychological interests and a friendly bond for thirty years. We dined happily, and probably somewhat carefree. That evening will remain an episodic memory of rare intensity. We evoked the theme of professional friend- ship, a most special bond, which in these times of lockdown seems obvious to many. Work nourishes us, inserts us, binds us and builds us well beyond the skills and professions that are ours. We can hear the enthusiasm of some workers still on the job, feeling both “socially useful” and “with friends”.

We have shared human experiences at the bedside, and shared experiences in joint research. Finally, our genera- tion had the chance to take part in important face-to-face meetings that allowed us to see opinion leaders up close (as much admiration as disappointment), to lead debates between us that gave rise to sensational collective projects because of these close contacts without social distancing.

∗This article is an English language translation of the following article:

Thomas-Antérion C. Je et la hiérarchie des moi à l’épreuve du conﬁ- nement. Rev Neuropsychol 2020 ; 12 (2) : 225-8. doi:10.1684/

nrp.2020.0578.

Correspondence:

C. Thomas-Antérion

Of course, there were also hours of freedom that allowed us to go outside the framework and forge deep bonds. Per- sonally, I don’t think that e-learning or tele-meetings, albeit of interest, will allow the same rooting of emotional and intellectual relationships.

While a professor emeritus was starting readings on the effects of lockdown on the animal or while a renowned epi- demiologist and neuropsychologist was wondering how to collect data concerning the resilience of old age in EPHAD, I was on my way to see again the Tapestry of the Apocalypse! I was inscribing myself in the theme in my own way. Its length of 140 m and its presentation in a surface of 850 square meters allowed moreover the social distancing. The talented guide told the history of the Tapestry ordered by Louis 1st the duke of Anjou and completed around 1380. Consider- ing its dimensions, it was meant to be exposed outside−for example by encircling the walls of a castle−for “special occasions”. Its iconography deals with the text of the Apoc- alypse of Saint John, of which we should only remember that in Greek, apocalypse meansrevelationand notcatas- tropheas in everyday language. The tapestry is divided into vignettes (some are lost) in the manner of a comic strip and in 6 tables (chapters) with an upper line and a lower line, all preceded by a large vertical piece on which a reader under a canopy announces the theme of the divine anger:

the seven seals, the dragons, etc.[1]God gets angry, which leads to a battle between good and evil leading to the vic- tory of Christ and His church in the heavenly Jerusalem. The angels receive golden vials full of God’s wrath. The punish- ment begins. The first angel pours one on the earth, which becomes so desolate that nothing grows anymore. The rivers overflow. Hideous monsters puke frogs and so on. My visit took place with the Angevins having seen the wonder hundred times but taking advantage of the flight of the tourists to come and admire the most important medieval tapestry in the world! Most of them were greatly literate and made the visitors profit from their knowledge. I lived an excep- tional moment, in the warmth of a group where I did not know anybody but in which I melted very quickly. What is

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102 Point of view

superior to human encounters around a subject that brings people together? The tapestry was woven in the climate of the Hundred’ Years War (1337-1453), at a time of relative calm. The Black Death of 1348 cut Europe off from a third of its population. The Tapestry is impregnated with collective sufferings: famine, violent deaths, epidemic. To see it again in the so peculiar climate of an announced pandemic and a world economic crisis at least as serious if not more so as the health crisis, created that day a particular empathy with the work and those who transmitted it to us and a particular emotional resonance, as is frequent in the ﬁeld of art.

A week later, we had to resolve to close the practice for at least eight weeks.

The experience of time

The experience of lockdown is an experience that involves memory. Alone in our room, we revisit memories of past trips or parties with loved ones we are no longer able to see. We project ourselves into the memory of future trips, future parties and future visits. We have an intimate experience of what time is and we verify the intuitions of William James[2]who, as a perfect physiologist, considered that we were capable of evaluating the passage of time (like a ﬂow- ing river) through the feeling of heartbeats or the rhythm of the syllables, words or sentences heard, for short dura- tions. It follows−no pun intended−that the perception of longer time is largely subjective and linked to the way we ﬁll time beyond a few seconds with thoughts, actions and the depth of the mental journey in our memory. The experience of time during lockdown is therefore not only related to the loss of habitual activities but to our occupations and the variety of these, hence the recommendations to follow a rhythmic and varied schedule. The question is not only that of the duration (one intense day in Angers versus 8 weeks of lockdown) but of what we “did” in a narrowed space. James emphasizes the different subjective perception of time depending on age, boredom or, on the contrary, very dense days. “In general, a time full of varied and interesting experiences seems short, but in retrospect it seems long. On the other hand, an empty expanse of time with no experience seems long to pass, but in retrospect seems short”.

Lockdown and introspection:

the discovery of the I

We are isolated and our relationships at work and with others: colleagues, friends, family, neighbors are different.

We take full advantage of this “free time” to do unusual things according to what is possible: we read, tinker, pre- pare classes, watch movies, or we go around in circles and languish. We experience boredom or time that we don’t see running. Some experience fear (health, emotional,

economic). Sleep disorders or aggressiveness are exacer- bated. And yet, even if by bravado, we imagine that after

“it will be different from before”, deep down inside, we perceive that we are in the present and are experiencing the crisis as we are, according to our personality, our history and our identity. We experiment with the experience of introspection proper to stopping, the discovery of theI, and perceive its stability, whatever happens. Again, we ﬁnd some clues in James[2]: “If in the sentence ‘I am the same as I was yesterday’ we take I in a broad sense, it is clear that in many ways I am no longer the same. The concrete self that I am is quite different from the concrete self that I used to be: the latter was hungry and wandering, the former is satiated and rests [...] However, from other points of view I am the same; and nothing prevents us from thinking that these points of view are the most important. Neither my name, nor my profession, nor my relations with the world have changed; my face, my faculties, my stock of memo- ries are practically today what they were then. Moreover, there is continuity between my present self and my former self: from one to the other there have only been gradual changes that have never affected the whole self or all of a sudden.”

The hierarchy of the selves

William James, in chapter 12 ofThe Principles of Psy- chology [2], writes a text mixing concepts of physiology, philosophy, psychology and sociology in the context of his time, but that can enlighten our contemporary social cogni- tion. He distinguishes between the “self” and the “I” that is conscious of the “self”. He defines the “self” in a very broad sense, in his own words: first of all the integral elements of the “self”, then the feelings and emotions that they give rise to (the consciousness of the value of the “I”), and finally the reactions that they provoke (love, research and defense of the “self”). There are three integral elements: the material self, the social self and the spiritual self.

The body is the central element of the material self to which James adds our family and loved ones, “a home of our own to live in and beautify”, our clothes and our wealth that can lead us to greed and coldness. Our body is the ﬁrst element to be abused by lockdown. Surveys have shown that 40% of those conﬁned no longer do their daily hygiene...

and no longer dress in daytime clothes. Shrinks called to the rescue on the airwaves, have recalled the importance of get- ting up early in the morning, respecting rituals and rhythms and especially not to “let go”, which is easier for some than for others, but can be worked at in order to maintain the well-being of the material self. The closure of hairdressing salons concerns this area. It has induced shaving one’s head, asking one’s spouse to replace the hairdresser, or remaining disheveled. A more serious concern is the need of the loved ones and one’s close relations. The distress of elderly people who no longer have the visit of their children and vice versa has been well measured, and we have witnessed the

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103 Point of view

bewildered and joyful discovery by nonagenarians of their son on the screen of a tablet.

The social self is defined as the consideration that the individual receives in his environment. “If no one turns around when we enter, doesn’t answer when we speak, doesn’t pay attention to what we do, if everyone we meet acts with us as if we didn’t exist, we would soon fall prey to a kind of rage and despair of impotence, for which the worst physical tortures would be a relief.” Just as material excess of self can lead to rampant selfishness, social excess of self leads to the worst kind of deceit, to which James opposes honor: “Thus a private man may abandon a city afflicted with cholera: a priest or a doctor will regard such aban- donment as incompatible with his honor”. We have heard workers testify, as they gradually returned to their jobs, that

“it felt good” to be reunited with their colleagues. In these times of isolation, there were many calls to friends, including those who we haven’t heard from for a long time. We increased the rate of calls to older people or those who were isolated. We had a lot of fun on the social networks!

We didn’t do this just to stay in the limelight−I’ll say this for those who are not used to these types of relationships− but essentially to experience the feeling of existing and to animate the social self, a feeling that can only be given by a physical or virtual group. Virtual −as we have fully understood−does not mean that the group does not exist, but only that it is constituted within the framework of a physical distancing and that it does not replace meeting and embracing. As an example, we take the Getty Museum game we played with a few friends, each one alone in his or her own corner before “pooling”. We had to choose a painting and reproduce it with the means at hand. I must admit that Balthus’ daughter, bored like a bored woman in her armchair, seemed to me to be in tune with the moment.

To James, “the awareness of our activity is the most cen- tral part of our spiritual self”. We can see how this dimension of the self can be abused when action is at a standstill.

We then perceive anguish and its share of harmful conse- quences. But again, we underline the setting up of all kinds of occupations. The sales of ﬂour and eggs exploded. Fam- ilies invested in collective occupations in the kitchen! The neighbors made group aperitifs from balcony to balcony.

Individuals were motivated to lend a helping hand to people more deprived than themselves and to be in action. We have to celebrate the inventive and creative genius at work, and give a big thumbs up to the Italian engineers that helped save lives by hijacking famous diving masks into makeshift respirators! Altruism and practicality have renewed the spiritual self. For others −and there is no hierarchy of values between these paths−this time allowed the exploration of the non-action, notably through poetry and meditation.

The stream of consciousness

In our forced withdrawal, we experienced psycho- logical facts described by James, including the stream of

consciousness. Relying on our perception of the world, our thinking associates what it grasps. “We oppose at any moment and about all this to that, here to there, now to then, simply because we have become accustomed to fragment- ing experience, space and time and to emphasizing what interests us. But we do more than just give relief to things, unifying or separating them. We practice the art of actually ignoring most of those in front of us”.The author then takes the example of a trip to Europe and writes these words: “Take four travelers on a tour of Europe: one will bring back only picturesque impressions: costumes and colors, parks, sites, works of architecture, paintings and statues. For another, all this will be as if it does not exist; but as a good statistician, he will return with statements of distances, prices, numbers of inhabitants, locks of doors and windows, and other documents of this utilitarian kind. A third will speak of the abundance of theaters, restaurants, meeting rooms, and will be silent on the rest. While the fourth, immersed in his meditations, will have retained from his journey only the names of a few cities he passed through. In short, from the same mass of objects presented to all, each one will have extracted those that ﬁt his personal mood to compose his personal experience”.Thus, everything depends on how we break up our reality and which parts we retain as useful for our thinking. By taking into account that everyone conﬁnes himself in a space that is his own, alone or accompanied, by teleworking or by having stopped all activity, everyone can continue to “travel in his living room” as he did in Europe in the past. There are countless cartoons or jokes about travel- ling within home. Some of them will focus on an “inventory”

leading to tidying up and decoration work. Some will devote themselves 100% to current events and count everything and nothing, based on “reliable” results or not. Others will experiment with online tutorials, visit museums, go to the opera, listen to fables by La Fontaine and admire the dancers of the Opera ballet, dancing each one at home and all together.

Finally, some will take advantage of this time to learn how to meditate or pursue their interests in this ﬁeld, like Matthieu Ricard a french Buddhist monk who, live from his site in Nepal, calls for a different kind of visit to an enclosed space. And still others, for and by the occasion, alone or with the support of a therapist, have experienced how to change their cognitive behavior and reveal other parts of themselves.

Conclusion

Except, of course, the stresses of reality, such as the economic constraints or the anguish of the illness of relatives, the lockdown which the Larousse dictionary[3]deﬁnes as

“locking someone in a place and keeping him within narrow limits”, has created a space-time conducive to introspection.

It may have been painful, difﬁcult, may have led to a ﬁght against oneself or to a unique experience of knowledge.

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104 Point of view

Let’s bet that the encounter with oneself will break certain codes of the hierarchy of selves, whenIwill ﬁnd the other and the others with enthusiasm.

Conﬂict of interest None.

References

1.Delwasse L. La tenture de l’apocalypse d’Angers. France : éditions du Patrimoine, 2007.

2.James W. Textbook of Psychology (1892). Whiteﬁsh : Kessinger Pub- lishing, 2010.

3.Larousse. Le Petit Larousse. Paris : Larousse, 2020.

Me and the hierarchy of different selves during lockdown

101

Point of view

Rev Neuropsychol

Me and the hierarchy of different selves

during lockdown *

Je et la hiérarchie des moi à l’épreuve du conﬁnement

I

102

Point of view

The experience of time

Lockdown and introspection:

the discovery of the I

The hierarchy of the selves

103

Point of view

The stream of consciousness

Conclusion

104

Point of view

during lockdown ^*