Healing the Heart by Turning to Art

Freud wrote of “cathexis” (in German, “besetzung”) to describe the attachment of erotic energy onto a viable target. We first attach with libidinal passion to the nearby people in our lives, the argument goes—parents, caretakers, peers, romantic partners. To attach is to feel connected, valued, alive. But these ties also burn us: People are unpredictable. They die; they fall in love with other people. Which is why cathexis becomes an important strategic act: We need to find secure attachments, or defenses that protect us from loss.

Freud described at least two options here—regression, in which we fixate on the earliest objects; stuck, for instance, at the oral or anal phase, or in a fetishistic fascination with shoes. Alternatively, we can go on the higher road of sublimation, in which we shift our primary erotic energy from the people who come and go onto predictable, useful habits or objects (e.g., onto spouses who are committed to us through the contract of marriage, or onto our careers, where we have some more control). Imagine the case of the obsessional artist who is essentially married to his canvas, which will never abandon him. Cathexizing energy onto something you control is one defense against abandonment.

In my early 20’s, I fell in obsessive thrall with a poet in New York and would regularly take the train to the city to watch him perform, or to perform, myself, in his poetry club. To me, he represented something—poetic success, or successful rebellion, or the poem itself. He could tell I was growing radically erotically attached, and one night as I ran down the dark street after his car, he pulled over, let me into the car, and gave me a lesson that changed my life. He wagged a finger in my direction: “Love poetry,” he said, “not people!” (The exact line is up for debate, as you’ll see in the video below.) What I essentially heard him say was, "If you keep throwing your affection at people, you will be routinely disappointed. You might go on to have partners, but remember to keep yourself firmly anchored in your art, your writing, your work, your self.”

I took the advice, and, for years, perhaps I retreated too far away from the world outside, into my art-making—the safe space of controlling the output. It’s been a long journey to rebalance the cathectic attachments, but this animated video below is my interpretation of the poet Bob Holman’s advice and Freud’s notion of cathexis.