Each year, in the first days of January, we decide to make “good resolutions”, which we promise to keep and which, moreover, we do not always keep … But, this year, everything is upset by the pandemic, which is starting again. Decryption with the psychoanalyst Claude Halmos.
franceinfo: In such a period, does making “good resolutions” still make sense? And, if so, which ones?
Claude Halmos: We usually take “good resolutions”, with the idea that a new year could also allow us to put something new in our life. A new one that we imagine according to an ideal of ourselves (to be more this, less that …) that we would like to achieve.
And of course, the business often fails – which can be depressing; first of all because it involves restrictive discipline. And above all because it does not always emanate from a real desire, and from values which are really ours but, without our realizing it, from what Freudian theory calls our “superego”. That is to say, the little inner policeman who continues to want to impose on us the supposedly good principles that we were once taught. But the pandemic can, perhaps, allow us to operate differently.
That is to say, how to operate?
First of all, it can allow us to make resolutions this year, not based on an ideal to be achieved, but on reality. That is to say, to turn them into tools that we would forge ourselves, to help us resist what this virus is causing us to experience.
Formulated in not very elegant, but meaningful terms, the good resolution for this year could be: “I will do everything not to let my head be eaten by this virus”. This means: I will become aware of the way in which it affects me psychologically, in order to be able to defend myself better.
For example against the anguish of all the changes that it imposes, in the daily life, or that of the total uncertainty as to the future, in which it puts us all. And then the good resolutions, this year, instead of being only personal, could also have a collective dimension.
How ?
Faced with external difficulties, epidemics or catastrophes, one cannot resist alone; you have to become one with the others. That is to say, to rely on his family, his friends, his colleagues, his neighbors. And it also reassures children a lot to feel, around them, more solid adults, because they support each other. So the good resolution this year could be to help each other; in its close circle, of course, but also beyond.
Coluche said: men are all equal to each other, but some are more equal than others. This means that in addition to psychological suffering, for many, material difficulties are added which are insurmountable without help.
So, good resolution: we help them, and we give them hope. Which is a good way, moreover, of giving back to ourselves. Happy New Year everyone !