Provision, Musing, and Early Experience
Consentiousness, Early Provision, and Absence
I was thinking along the lines that Consentiousness is similar or somewhat correlates with early environmental provision. The idea is that early environments provide good enough stability and constancy, which leads, in Winnicott’s terms, to “good enough parenting.” This allows an infant to develop internal continuity in a way that develops or fosters physical health.
Andre Green often talks in terms of the negative, which focuses on parental availability during childhood. When a child has an absent parent, it creates a “blank object” (deuil blanc / blank mourning), which consumes available mental space related to facets of the parent’s absences. I believe this concept of absences, when discussed, is similar to, or at least the same as, early environmental provision. Thus, the existence of such provision and the lack thereof have similar implications.
Returning to Christopher Bollas, besides early environmental provision, there are other concepts such as the mother as a transformational object and the “unthought known.” If one were to draw a diagram, I believe it would look like this:
Although Christopher Bollas never explicitly talks about attachment, early environmental provision and the general concept of provision are aligned with, or prototypical of, attachment. The idea is that the mothering figure can be adequately provisioned and provide, thus leading to the filling of this blank mourning.
Provisioning for Oneself: The Role of Musing
How does one provision for themselves? It depends, since every person is different. Thus, when discussing “provisioning,” it implies a personalized space that is able to present consistent and persistent internal and external objective/environmental statuses. So, how can one provision for oneself? I think the key lies in musing.
Musing, in this context, means an absorbed state, evoking and representing the “great outside,” which in turn develops an internal object. I would argue that musing is a dopaminergic act. Provision, rather than being a static object, seems to function through attachment processes, which require a cornerstone for changes to secure attachment.
Changes, The dynamics of musing
I think it is an instrumental task to move one’s own ego. But why doesn’t one move first? Perhaps it’s because of the availability (or lack thereof) within a given space.
The requirement of change: is it really a change?
Why does musing rehabilitate such mourning? I might suggest sibling rivalry, which involves the decathexis of an affordance as if it were second nature. Does it really affect the analysand by decathecting an already internalized object? I think there’s a theme of hunger, or at least ignored starvation. I believe sibling rivalry is not without cause; it somewhat entails “nutritional envy.” Musing doesn’t just happen; it can be forcefully replaced by absences or even an extractive incapacitation.
Odyssey
Is this a naive view, or even a borderline pre-Oedipal one, since it tells of a preoccupation with acceptance from both parental figures? I don’t believe so. However, I do think it depends. I should understand that it does contain a misdirected hope. What I don’t understand is whether this is due to duplicative rather than generative processes, leading to the unwitting status of the first child, “killing” any personalization or even de-individuating inkling. But that should not cost the firstborn a core virtue derived from a bundle of promise—an aborted fantasy derived from either the mother or the child itself. I think every such “abortion” (of fantasy/potential) is laborious and life-shattering. Whose dream it is depends on whether the child’s position at birth is Oedipal or pre-Oedipal.
Back to musing: should every loss and grief be accommodated, or is the grief merely wasted, akin to shallow water that remains characteristic? (I don’t fully understand this metaphor myself, as you noted). The point is that progress can be stunted, delayed, and outright counter-intuitive against the flow of progress as we know it. And yet, progress still happens. During quiet times, the subject amasses recollections of the past. And what, or how, can this be brought forward as part of the self, cast into the continuous future?
The role of Chaperone
Musing means to adore, savor, or take inspiration from the external world to mend and recollect mental objects which were stolen or destroyed. It is somewhat similar to the Openness facet of the Big Five personality traits: to adore aesthetics, to recall proponents of the self which have been cast away or buried—not to revive a dead body, but to revisit what it all means to “be,” rather than passively grieving. A tombstone is for the dead, but the visitor is still alive.
Something is missing from my analysis: aesthetic experience shouldn’t just be about reviving something. Perhaps it is the quality of silence that allows proper time to process and satisfy a monumental catharsis, rather than an immediate jump from a problem to an aesthetic experience as a quick fix.
Again, The role of a chaperone is the provision of experiences..