Читать книгу The Truth About Freud's Technique - Michael Guy Thompson - Страница 18

One of Freud’s most valuable insights was the discovery that falling in love frequently occasions a peculiarly pathological reaction. The phenomenon of falling in love with one’s analyst, though initially perceived as a hindrance to the progress of therapy, soon became an essential and anticipated aspect of the treatment. Freud mused over the mystery of love in a variety of contexts and the question of its nature has become a cornerstone of analytic theory in general. My present concern, however, is more limited. I would like to examine Freud’s efforts to differentiate between “transference-love” on the one hand and real, “genuine” love on the other. Nowhere does Freud explore this distinction more poignandy—and ambiguously—than in “Observations on Transference-Love” (1958d). I will explore the practical import of this paper later when I review its contribution to psychoanalytic technique (see chapter 19), but for now I would simply like to examine those aspects of the paper that pertain to Freud’s conception of reality.

Freud’s objective in this paper was to advise analysts how to handle expressions of erotic yearnings manifested by their patients. While arguing that erotic demands should never, under any circumstances, be returned, Freud sympathizes with the unique difficulty analysts face if they hope to avoid alienating their patients in the process. Freud believed analysts “must recognize that the patient’s falling in love is induced by the analytic situation and is not to be attributed to the charms of his [her] own person” (160–61). Naturally, a person falling in love with her doctor (Freud typically uses a female patient as the prototypical example) may become the object of a scandal in the eyes of her relatives and friends. Yet, Freud insists that one’s patients should never be admonished against these feelings; nor should they be enticed to concoct them:

It has come to my knowledge that some doctors who practise analysis frequently prepare their patients for the emergence of the erotic transference or even urge them to “go ahead and fall in love with the doctor so that the treatment may make progress.” I can hardly imagine a more senseless proceeding. In doing so, an analyst robs the phenomenon of the element of spontaneity which is so convincing and lays up obstacles for himself in the future which are hard to overcome. (161–62)

Freud characterizes this phenomenon as one in which the patient “suddenly loses all understanding of the treatment and all interest in it, and will not speak or hear about anything but her love, which she demands to have returned” (162). Under this “spell of love,” the patient typically loses or denies her symptoms and “declares that she is well” (162). On encountering this behavior, some analysts may be tempted to assume that they’ve achieved a miraculous cure and that her being in love is tangible proof of the treatment’s success. On the contrary Freud suggests that, faced with this development, “one keeps in mind the suspicion that anything that interferes with the continuation of the treatment may be an expression of resistance” (162). The reason for this degree of caution is due to Freud’s efforts to distinguish between expressions of affection, on the one hand, and signs of resistance, on the other. He explains that an affectionate transference (i.e., a positive transference) is a welcome development because it motivates the patient to cooperate with the analysis. But passionate expressions of erotic attraction are something else again. At the time this paper was written, Freud had not distinguished between erotic and positive transferences, though virtually all that he subsequently had to say on this subject is contained in this discussion on transference. For one thing the emergence of an erotic (transference) reaction has a distinctively troublesome air about it because it jeopardizes the progress of the work that has been accomplished. Previous signs of comprehension and cooperation disappear:

Now all this is swept away. She has become quite without insight and seems to be swallowed up in her love. Moreover, this change quite regularly occurs precisely at a point of time when one is having to try to bring her to admit or remember some particularly distressing and heavily repressed piece of her life-history. (162)

Freud’s painstaking distinction between “love” and resistance now comes to the fore. “If one looks into the situation more closely one recognizes the influence of motives which further complicate things—of which some are connected with being in love and others are particular expressions of resistance” (163). However, the emergence of erotism itself isn’t synonymous with resistance, per se. Expressions of erotism in analysis merely strive to achieve the same purpose they might on any other occasion: to transform the object of such feelings into a willing partner. The part resistance plays, however, is far more subtle, even devious. Freud warns that any effort on the analyst’s part to satisfy these longings will probably only arouse his patient’s aggression. In fact, “the patient’s condition is such that, until her repressions are removed, she is incapable of getting real satisfaction” (165; emphasis added). In other words, the patient’s erotic feelings, once manifest, tend to engender a resistance to the analysis that, in turn, acts as an agent provocateur by seizing on this love and exaggerating its passion. The consequence is a deepening of the repression against the patient’s capacity for genuine love.

The emerging resistance acts against whatever feelings of love that are aroused, and takes their place while masquerading as genuine love in order to resist the psychical changes that were beginning to occur. This is why, if the analyst commits the error of responding to the patient’s entreaties, “in the further course of the love-relationship she would bring out all the inhibitions and pathological reactions of her erotic life, without there being any possibility of correcting them” (166). But if the initial expression of love for the analyst—the “affectionate” transference—is a welcome, and crucial, development for the work of analysis, why shouldn’t these feelings be encouraged rather than “analyzed”? In fact, Freud warns the analyst against inadvertently hurting the patient’s feelings by behaving in a rejecting manner: “To urge the patient to suppress, renounce or sublimate her instincts the moment she has admitted her erotic transference would be not an analytic way of dealing with them, but a senseless one. . . . The patient will feel only humiliation, and she will not fail to take her revenge for it” (164).

Some patients become so overwhelmed by their emotions and the frustrations they engender that they opt to quit if the analyst doesn’t comply. Freud describes them as “children of nature who refuse to accept the psychical in place of the material, who, in the poet’s words, are accessible only to the “logic of soup, with dumplings for arguments.’ With such people one has the choice between returning their love or else bringing down upon oneself the full enmity of a woman scorned” (166–67). The only possible response, according to Freud, is to resign oneself to accept their limitations, and wish them good luck.

Obviously, a love that is so demanding and intolerant of frustration must be distinguished from one that is “less violent,” which can accept the analyst’s neutrality and is capable of assuming an analytic attitude. The “analytic attitude”—in fact, a form of love—entails compliance with the analyst’s efforts at “uncovering the patient’s infantile object-choice and the phantasies woven round if” (167). Freud conceived of the analytic attitude as one that was consistent with the kind of love he characterized as genuine. “Genuine love, we say, would make her docile and intensify her readiness to solve the problems of her case, simply because the man she was in love with expected it of her. In such a case she would gladly choose the road to completion of her treatment, in order to acquire value in the doctor’s eyes and to prepare herself for real life” (167). Indeed, is genuine love even possible within the scope of psychoanalysis? Is it possible, in other words, for a patient to experience genuine feelings of love for her analyst in the course of therapy from the vantage of her analytic attitude—or is this genuineness only possible after her analysis is over, once she is “cured”? Freud believed that evidence of genuine love actually precedes resistances that only subsequently undermine it. In other words, our capacity for love is manifested in our adherence to the analytic attitude, demonstrating a capacity for cooperation that is already inherent in each patient’s personality. That is why one’s capacity for genuine love needs to be harnessed to a willingness to collaborate with one’s analyst by acknowledging—and striving to overcome—resistances that arise.

Not everyone, however, is capable of genuine love. Sometimes the analyst encounters a patient who is dominated by a form of resistance that only pretends to love, already poisoned by the forces of repression. According to Freud, “she is showing a stubborn and rebellious spirit, she has thrown up all interest in her treatment, and clearly feels no respect for the doctor’s well-founded convictions. She is thus bringing out a resistance under the guise of being in love with him” (167). Having drawn this elaborate distinction between transference-love (compromised by resistances), on the one hand, and genuine love (which tolerates the analysis of those resistances), on the other, Freud questions whether so-called transference-love isn’t actually real when compared to ordinary, everyday love. “Can we truly say that the state of being in love which becomes manifest in analytic treatment is not a real one?” (168). What, precisely, does Freud mean by the term real in this context? Does it refer to a love whose achievement is the culmination of a successful analysis? Or is he describing, as he seems to have been implying, a love that is sincerely felt, the kind of love that any “analyzable” person is capable of at the beginning of analysis?

For those who always assumed transference-love, by definition, isn’t “real” because, after all, it’s the consequence of unabated infantile longings, Freud’s question must come as a shock—even bewildering. Furthermore, what place could real love enjoy in psychoanalytic treatment? Isn’t the basis of transference rooted in phantasy? In response to this entirely unexpected, and frequently overlooked, question, Freud says something that in hindsight is truly amazing: “The part played by resistance in transference-love is unquestionable and very considerable. Nevertheless the resistance did not, after all create this love; it finds it ready to hand, makes use of it and aggravates its manifestations” (168; emphasis added). To make sure we understand what Freud has in mind, he goes on: “Nor is the genuineness of the phenomenon disproved by the resistance. . . . It is true that it repeats infantile reactions. But this is the essential character of every state of being in love. There is no such state which does not reproduce infantile prototypes” (168; emphasis added).

If there isn’t any kind of love that doesn’t derive from “infantile prototypes”—genuine, real, or transferential—then what distinguishes the real from the transferential? Throughout this paper, Freud contrasts the two in respect to their aims. Genuine love presumably aims at a “real” object, whereas transference-love aims at “the patient’s infantile object-choice and the phantasies woven around if” (167). What’as more, Freud adds, “It is precisely from this infantile determination that it receives its compulsive character, verging as it does on the pathological” (168). In other words, the relationship between love and infantilism doesn’t define the pathological, but merely “verges” on it. What, then, distinguishes “transference-love”? “Transference-love has perhaps a degree less of freedom than the love which appears in ordinary life and is called normal; it displays its dependence on the infantile pattern more clearly and is less adaptable and capable of modification” (168). Recall that it is love’s aim that characterizes the difference between the infantile and the normal, rather than the specific emotions that we customarily attribute to our experience of love. But if love is in its essence rooted in the infantile, how does it become “normal”? Does it find an object that approximates the infantile wish? Or does it abandon the infantile wish altogether? Even Freud seems at wit’s end when he exclaims, “By what other signs can the genuineness of a love be recognized? By its efficacy, its serviceability in achieving the aim of love? In this respect transference-love seems to be second to none; one has the impression that one could obtain anything from it” (168).

Even the attributes of resourcefulness and determination prove irrelevant when attempting to determine the nature of normal love. If the degree of passion fails to persuade us of its genuine nature, then by what criteria might we hope to distinguish the genuine from the pathological?

Let us sum up, therefore. We have no right to dispute that the state of being in love which makes its appearance in the course of analytic treatment has the character of a “genuine” love. If it seems so lacking in normality, this is sufficiently explained by the fact that being in love in ordinary life, outside analysis, is also more similar to abnormal than to normal mental phenomena. Nevertheless, transference-love is characterized by certain features which ensure it a special position. In the first place, it is provoked by the analytic situation; secondly, it is gready intensified by the resistance, which dominates the situation; and thirdly, it is lacking to a high degree in a regard for reality, is less sensible, less concerned about consequences and more blind in its valuation of the loved person than we are prepared to admit in the case of normal love. We should not forget, however, that these departures from the norm constitute precisely what is essential about being in love. (168–69; emphasis added)

Let’s look at these three criteria more closely. To suggest that transference-love is provoked by the analytic situation is true enough, but hardly exclusive. Any situation in which one person, placed in a position of authority, brings to bear all his attentiveness and sympathetic concern about the other person’s trials and woes of living—including sexual and romantic grievances—will inevitably provoke a “transference reaction,” an affectionate appreciation. Traditionally, aunts and uncles assumed this function in families. Furthermore, perhaps most importanly, resistance to analysis—or, generally speaking, resistance to revealing oneself to the person whom one idealizes—frequently evokes the kind of hostile reactions Freud attributes to the effects of repression. Yet, if resistance to analysis—a resistance that makes use of the transference-love reaction—obtains a regression to infantile love, a love that lends the transference its compulsive character, then how can this regressive-pathological element be reconciled with the statement that love in general—the genuine included—is no different? Finally, what does Freud mean by “lacking in regard for reality” when he adds that this very quality constitutes love in its essence? Earlier Freud said that being in love (with one’s analyst) is initially genuine, but subsequently arouses resistance. On the other hand, a presumably “healthy” patient—one who is truly devoted to her analyst—would willingly succumb to the treatment and “prepare herself for real life,” the very thing that her analyst wants from her. How does one manage to achieve this degree of compliance? Freud tries to resolve these ambiguities with the conclusion that “she [the patient] has to learn from him [the analyst] to overcome the pleasure principle, to give up satisfaction which lies at hand but is socially not acceptable, in favor of a distant one, which is perhaps altogether uncertain” (170). Thus her capacity for love should lead the patient to conclude she needs to make a sacrifice, momentarily forego her pleasure and obey the “reality principle” for which she will be rewarded—later.

But why should delaying satisfaction make the patient’s love any more real than the genuineness already felt towards the analyst? Is realistic love identical to the genuine, aim-inhibited kind that epitomizes the analytic attitude, or are they different kinds of love entirely? Why can’t the analyst return the patient’s love if, after all, it’s genuine? Is the patient’s love real, but the object of her love “unrealistic”; or is the patient’s love only “imagined” in the first place? What happens at completion of analysis when, healthy and cured, the patient’s conflicts no longer jeopardize the genuineness of her feelings and the achievement of her aims? Why can’t she be rewarded with the prize for which she so earnestly struggled? Because, “After all the difficulties have been successfully overcome, she will often confess to having had an anticipatory phantasy at the time when she entered the treatment, to the effect that if she behaved well she would be rewarded at the end by the doctor’s affection” (169). Often enough, patients fail to resolve their “transference” at termination. And often enough, analysts fall in love with their patients. Occasionally, some even marry them subsequent to treatment. Of course, this is never accepted by their peers. Why not? Freud explains that

for the doctor, ethical motives unite with the technical ones to restrain him from giving the patient his love. The aim he has to keep in view is that this woman, whose capacity for love is impaired by infantile fixations, should gain free command over a function which is of such inestimable importance to her; that she should not, however, dissipate it in the treatment, but keep it ready for the time when, after her treatment, the demands of real life make themselves felt. (169)

This is only one of the many contexts in which Freud equates technical issues with ethical ones. Psychoanalysis comes into being where the two intersect. This is why the analyst

must not stage the scene of a dog-race in which the prize was to be a garland of sausages but which some humorist spoilt by throwing a single sausage on to the track. The result was, of course, that the dogs threw themselves upon it and forgot all about the race and about the garland that was luring them to victory in the far distance. I do not mean to say that it is always easy for the doctor to keep within the limits prescribed by ethics and technique. Those who are still youngish and not yet bound by strong ties may in particular find it a hard task (169; emphasis added)

It isn’t always so easy to say whose ethics Freud is emphasizing: those of the patient or the doctor? Surely both carry equal weight. In fact, the question of ethics plays a major function in Freud’s estimation of what reality is comprised of. Let’s return to his comments about the opposition between the pleasure principle and ethical behavior: “She has to learn from him [the analyst] to overcome the pleasure principle, to give up a satisfaction which lies to hand but is socially not acceptable, in favor of a more distant one, which is perhaps altogether uncertain, but which is both psychologically and socially unimpeachable” (170).

In other words, if patients ever hope to overcome their infantile yearnings and obtain real satisfaction subsequent to the termination of analysis, they have to renounce whatever remains of their love for the analyst and do the right thing: conform to “socially acceptable” conduct. In this particular context, Freud equates real (“realistic”) love with what is socially and ethically “unimpeachable.” The analysis is a microcosm of society; it helps us come to terms with—by accepting—society’s rules. Freud believed it was critical to distinguish between genuine feelings of love (dominated by the pleasure principle) on the one hand, and attaining real love (the “garland of sausages”) by submitting to what is practicable, on the other. It is perhaps ironic that Freud was so concerned with ethics and propriety when he devoted most of his life to rebelling against the beliefs of the society to which he belonged. In practice, Freud bent the rules whenever he was compelled to by individual judgment and tact. But we would be mistaken if we equated Freud’s concern for behaving realistically (and ethically) with capitulating to the arbitrary customs of one’s neighbors.

Being true to one’s feelings—and to one’s principles—requires sacrifice. It doesn’t always obtain gratification. What is true isn’t necessarily reducible to what is real. It may be true that I love somebody, but unrealistic to expect my love can be returned in the way that I want it to be. What is “socially acceptable” merely determines what is attainable. The purpose of analysis is to realize what is possible. It’s easy to love one’s analyst and certainly convenient, but although this love, so immediate and ready to hand, may be accessible, is it realistic? If the so-called infantile origins of all love, essentially narcissistic, can be conquered, sooner or later it is necessary to succumb to disappointment. The wish to be loved by one’s analyst must inevitably go unrewarded, not because the feelings that prompt these longings aren’t genuine, but because their satisfaction is simply a denial of reality, of the limitations their situation engenders. Yet, how is the patient’s emancipation—so elusive and painful—finally achieved? If Freud’s comments suggest anything, it’s that we have to work for our freedom; and this work is of a special kind. Even if the love felt for one’s analyst is genuine, it isn’t enough. To be viable, love requires more than genuineness—it entails suffering. Real love needs to recognize and accept life’s laws and limitations. This is what it means to be ethical. It isn’t a question of doing what is “good,” but of doing what is right: whatever fits the occasion.

Yet, when Freud says that genuine love—if his patient were capable of it—would lead her to become docile and submissive, that she would strive to perform the analytic work in order to please him, is this entirely convincing? If she were docile, would she cease to experience erotic longings, or simply accept them? Is normality determined by the conscious control over one’s impulses, or the freedom from these impulses themselves? If hysteria, in particular, is epitomized by a demand for love that can be insatiable, is the demand itself pathological or simply one’s refusal to recognize it? What is it about erotic strivings, after all, that can be said to be “neurotic” when we know that the repression of those strivings is the cause of neurosis?

In his 1914 paper “On Narcissism” Freud proposed that all children set before themselves an ideal of themselves that, in turn, becomes the object of their erotic yearnings. “This ideal ego is now the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego” (1957c, 94). Because every child is reluctant to give up earlier sources of satisfaction, Freud argued that “when, as he [she] grows up, he is disturbed by the admonitions of others and by the awakening of his own critical judgement, so that he can no longer retain that perfection, he seeks to recover it in the new form of an ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal” (94). Yet, a positive, or aggrandized, ego ideal cannot compensate for the absence of real sources of gratification—in the form of genuine love—from others. Freud concluded that “idealization is a process that concerns the object; by it that object, without any alteration in its nature, is aggrandized and exalted in the subject’s mind” (94). In other words, other people compensate for the individual’s own sense of personal frustration and dissatisfaction. The qualities one wishes for oneself—qualities that might, in turn, be exalted by others—are projected onto someone else.

It isn’t difficult to appreciate how children, who rely on the comfort of idealizing phantasies to cope with the pain of their inherently frustrating emancipation, would resort to the same tendency when they grow older: to idealize other people as a way of procuring love, in phantasy. All analysts are an object for such idealization by their patients. In fact, the more we repress our desires, the more likely we will idealize others as a compensation. “Being loved” becomes a substitute for one’s impoverished capacity to love. This is why the tendency to idealize others is an essential component of “falling in love.” Idealizing is a magical transformation of one’s world. It has the power to circumvent repressions by elevating the sexual object into a benefactor. “Since, with the object type (or attachment type), being in love occurs in virtue of the fulfillment of infantile conditions for loving, we may say that whatever fulfills that condition is idealized” (101). In other words, “What possesses the excellence which the ego lacks for making it an ideal, is loved” (101).

Neurotics, who feel unloved and, in turn, are afraid to love, are in an impossible situation. They blame others for their impoverishment, yet long for them to relieve it. The analyst, the object of their “transferences,” becomes the ideal for this confused devotion. They hope the analyst can save them from their agony of isolation, to be their companion. The cure they envision is one that isn’t, however, the culmination of ceaseless effort, but rather a salvation at the instigation of a higher power. “This is a cure by love, which he [the neurotic] generally prefers to cure by analysis. Indeed, he cannot believe in any other mechanism of cure; he usually brings expectations of this sort with him to the treatment and directs them towards the person of the physician” (101). Inevitably, the patient’s own resistances to loving, a consequence of earlier repressions, renders his plan impossible. “Falling in love,” occasioning both erotic and idealized components, contains an unconscious plea for the other person—the analyst—to shower the patient with a love he is actually incapable of accepting. Freud conceived of idealization not only as a manifestation of erotism, but as a substitute for erotism too. In his book on group psychology, published seven years later (1921), Freud returned to the problem of determining the nature of love and whether or not it could possibly possess a realistic component. In this study he was specifically concerned with distinguishing between erotic love and its aim-inhibited derivative, affection. Now idealization is conceived as a “de-eroticizing” of one’s sexual inclinations, due to the repression that follows the Oedipus complex. If individuals subsequently fail to overcome their earlier adherence to the incest taboo in adolescence, their experience of erotism and their capacity for aim-inhibited (de-eroticized) affection may remain split off from each other and reappear in the form of a neurosis: the inability to feel both affection and sexual attraction for the same person.

Freud finally concluded that the more repressed one’s erotic longings, the more likely the tendency to idealize others. “If the sensual impulsions are more or less effectively repressed or set aside, the illusion is produced that the object has come to be sensually loved on account of its spiritual merits, whereas on the contrary these merits may really only have been lent to it by its sensual charm. The tendency which falsifies judgement in this respect is that of idealization” (1955b, 112). But how can we reconcile the apparent contradiction that repressed sexuality supposedly leads to an increase in noneroticized idealization, on the one hand, and the contrary idea that repression should result in increased eroticized idealization, on the other? Some patients in analysis experience a powerful erotic attraction for their analysts, whereas others manifest nonsexualized, “spiritualized” feelings of adoration. Often, many patients experience both, alternately or simultaneously. The tendency to split off the two—erotic attraction and, as Freud would say, aim-inhibited affection—is a common neurotic symptom. But Freud was intrigued by those patients who idealized their analysts without any apparent interest in or experience of manifest erotic feelings. Many patients complain that their lovers are only interested in sex. They denigrate the sexual act and narrowly define love in terms of a spiritual or mystical, nonphysical relationship. This is, perhaps, idealization par excellence: to love someone and to long for this love to be returned in the form of an intangible, mysterious “power,” unreachable, yet compelling. The repressions can be so severe that love is consequently experienced as the absence of—and freedom from—erotic demands. These two forms of idealization are not mutually exclusive. One, however, can be emphasized over the other and become a favored “compromise formation.”

Freud was still struggling to define the nature of love, its realistic and imaginary tendencies, in his paper on group psychology when he said: “Even in its caprices the usage of language remains true to some kind of reality. Thus it gives the name of ‘love’ to a great many kinds of emotional relationship which we too group together theoretically as love; but then again it feels a doubt as whether this love is real, true, actual love, and so hints at a whole scale of possibilities within the range of the phenomena of love” (1955b, 111). At bottom, the neurotic’s inability to love, inhibited by unconscious fears, leads to two alternative solutions: the tendency to idealize the other person so as to be loved, passively; or alternately, to simply repress one’s libidinal interest in others, capitulating to the anxieties that are inevitably aroused. Both of these responses become manifest in what Freud called “transference-love.”

Freud never arrived at an unambiguous definition of real love; perhaps because even real love, according to Freud, verged on the pathological. The distinction—if there is one—emerges somewhere along the difficult transition from the so-called pleasure to reality principles. No doubt Freud was a master at recognizing the deceptions in everyday protestations of love, of the neurotic’s inability to love. What is love, if its “realness” isn’t a determining factor? Freud’s attempt to distinguish between genuine love (a love sincere in its affect and heartfelt) and real love (one that is capable of sacrifice and that is practical) says something about his views on the nature of truth and reality. The unconscious harbors truths. These truths are contained in fantastic and unrealistic wishes. Freud realized that these truths, by their nature, are concealed. The task of psychoanalysis is to disclose them. But for what purpose and to what end? What’s the point of revealing secrets if they have no practical import, if they don’t eventually gratify? Freud believed that neurotics, by harboring disturbing truths, become alienated from reality. We can see from the way he conceived of real love that Freud viewed reality, essentially, as our encounter with others. The so-called harsh and exasperating aspects of reality are due to the way that relationships arouse erotic yearnings whose object, amidst all the inherent frustrations, is another human being.

Real love, like life itself, is interpersonal. It can’t be reduced to a feeling, however powerful and insistent that emotion may be. Transference-love, so frequently decried as merely a feeling, is more than that because, as Freud says, in terms of its efficacy it is unrivaled by any other. Whatever else we may think of it, it is a kind of love after all. Otherwise, why call it love in the first place, hyphenated or not? In his efforts to dismande love’s complexes by distinguishing the “real” from the suspect, Freud finally resigned himself to the conclusion that transference-love is only a little less real than it seems. And this conclusion tells us something about real love too, because its so-called normality even calls our notions about “normal” and “sick” into question. It isn’t so easy to tell them apart. The same can be said for reality. “Psychical” reality, “transference-love,” “neurotic” anxiety: When we try to measure them against the real thing, they befuddle as much as enlighten. Perhaps what is real isn’t so categorical. Like existence itself, we determine its efficacy by degrees. It’s more or less what it seems.