Psychoanalyst Bernard-Elie Torgemen describes the path that led him to use magic in his daily practice. Magic? It short-circuits our rationality, helping a new thought process emerge when dealing with trauma, the unspeakable or the world’s dryness. It is posited on the certitude that we are linked to life by the chain of our ancestors and descendants. We are not floating in a vacuum.
The book opens with the tale of a founding, almost initiatory experience, when, at the age of 20, Bernard-Elie Torgemen went to England with a group of children with muscular dystrophy. This essentially internal voyage was the starting point of a metamorphosis. The magic that he had rejected for so long, suddenly reappeared in his life, leaving a permanent mark on his psychoanalytic practice.
Magic is like a lighting that facilitates, intensifies and contributes to the circulation of emotions. It opens the door to forgotten senses. It gives its rightful place back to the animal dimension of our being: instinct. We have all received it, as part of our biological and trans-generational inheritance. But, we don’t use it, or not any more. Yet it has been present in each of us since childhood. Magic breaks open closed mindsets and leaves room for other ways of seeing and reading the world. This unbiased opening to the other allows the unexpected to occur, makes another way of speaking possible. And it allows us to become aware of the power of trans-generational ties in a way that can finally free us from our ghosts…