Müßiggang

Über Not und Lust und die inkommensurable Windstille der Seele

Abstract

The German words Muße and Müßiggang, translated only very roughly by the English terms »leisure« and »idleness«, resist translation into the standard terminological framework of psychoanalysis as well. This lack of fit, the essay argues, opens a different space of refl ection, one in which the seemingly straightforward opposition of work and relaxation, work- and leisure-time-activities, is put in question. Working between philosophy and psychoanalysis, the essay seeks not only to rethink leisure in terms of what Nietzsche calls a »becalmed wind of the soul« but to ask what happens to Freud and the direction his writing takes when he has too much time (»Überschuss an Muße«) on his hands. Concluding the essay asks what takes place in those fleeting and fragile moments between the analytic session and quotidian existence. How might such moments give place to an altogether different notion of analytic work?