When I was bored
Padmanabha Vyasamoorthy
Suryanarayana Ambadipudi
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krishna Rao Khanapur
Rajaram Krishnamurthy
Boredom: lack or rejection?
One possible polarity is that between lack and rejection.
In the first case – lack — boredom expresses the confused, irritated and discontented perception, in large part unclear and contradictory, of a lack of some essential function in human relations (Svendsen 2004). An example is the boredom of a person involved in a group or institution characterized by an excess of self-satisfaction, conformism or superficiality, and consequently boredom experiences result as a sign of the absence of vivacity and personal richness in the communication between the members of the institution .
In the other case – rejection – boredom expresses an active impulse of subtle aggression, which tends to annul the dynamic contribution offered by reality and in general by others, asserting instead destructive, grandiose and hostile narcissism . In this case boredom may be the consequence of a denial of the affectivity of the other, as occurs in certain perversions or chronic psychoses, in which the need to keep the acute, dramatic aspect of the psychosis under control drives the psychotic to drastically repress all dynamic aspects of the relationship for the sake of tranquility and stability: Order replaces life and all its fluctuations . In both cases – lack and rejection – the space-time for genuineness is saturated, as well as a possible contact with otherness, the objects felt are like something known, they are always the same over the time and they will never change. In the first example it was “conformism or superficiality”, in the second “the full repression of all dynamics aspects of relationship”.
To find our way through the labyrinthine accumulation of data, I would like to propose a specific conceptual core, which, as I said before, in no way exhausts our subject, nor does it begin to cover all the possible meanings. Instead, it aims to serve as a point of reference around which other possible meanings can be arranged, either by analogy or by contrast.
I propose to define boredom as the subjective experience of a partial or total lack of authenticity in relationships; hence boredom expresses a confused, unclear emotion that we are not in the presence of something which comes from within, but of something affected, far removed or conformist. Objects of perception, experienced as obvious and predictable, lose their aura of novelty and become enmeshed in a network of pre-established symbols which conceal their potential for change, vitality and discovery. The object is perceived with anger since it is experienced as lack lustre, dull, and all too familiar.
Within the vast world of boredom, I have tried to identify a specific way of being bored, which is typical of people who are partially or completely trapped in a contradictory relationship with another person or with a group or institution in which the appreciation of some parts corresponds to the non-acknowledgment – through denial or confusion – of other dead or deadened parts of the other person, group or institution. The result is a veil of hypocrisy that in a sense shrouds the relationships with dust and envelops them in an aura of boredom. This boredom arises when the hunger for authenticity so characteristic of human beings remains unsatisfied. This phenomenon cannot be explained exclusively by idealization but is related instead to a primary, essential acknowledgment of the irreducible core of otherness, which is the underpinning of both our pains and our pleasures. As Greenson pointed out years ago, emptiness is an overload of dead or deadened objects whose presence inhibits the affective and libidinal drive towards the outer world: “The emptiness in boredom is due to the repression of forbidden instinctual aims and objects along with inhibition in imagination” . Thus, this too-full emptiness is replaced by another kind of emptiness – one associated with negation as suggested by Sigmund Freud (1925) but which still leaves room for openness and development.
The second point concerns the uncanny. A careful analysis of these micro-depersonalizing moments can serve as a valuable tool and irreplaceable guide to break out of pre-established frameworks, to venture into as yet unknown areas of oneself and of the other. Similarly within love relationships and institutionalized relationships in general, the pursuit of strangeness can be a corrective element against the danger of deadening, numbness and monotony that threatens the life of the institution so profoundly.
A third operational consequence concerns what I propose as an appreciation of boredom – of course not narcissistic boredom or destructive boredom or omnipotent, grandiose boredom, but rather the boredom of those who are exasperated by the lack of a more intense and real human contact. In this sense, I would almost like to invite us all to get bored a bit more often. (EUROPEAN PSYCHOLOGY ASSOCIATION]
KR IRS 291025
Surendra Varma
Suryanarayana Ambadipudi
chepuri shankarrao
Markendeya Yeddanapudi
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