What Is the #Zurvan_Object?
We are probably familiar with Otto Rank’s account of the trauma of birth and the importance he attributed to it. Birth is a profoundly terrifying and anxiety-laden experience for the human being, occurring at the very beginning of their entry into the world.
At the moment when the mother’s embrace or milk soothes the infant’s internal and external anxieties, the infant attains a state of relief. This experience provides the infant with their first satisfaction, leaves a profound impression on the psyche, and may become inscribed as a proto-concept of pleasure.
According to the pleasure principle, pleasure acquires its meaning in relation to the reduction of tension. In accordance with what has been proposed here, our first experience of tension occurs after birth. We therefore cannot, as Otto Rank did, assume the existence of a pleasurable memory of intrauterine life accompanied by a wish to return to it. At this point, To Be-Analysis must move to some extent away from Rank.
The difference in question concerns Temporal Precedence.
In Rank’s theory, the past is the first temporal mode to take shape, and the present is experienced after birth. In To Be-Analysis, however, the first temporal mode experienced by the infant is the present. Since the intrauterine period does not include an awareness of one’s own being, it cannot be experienced as such and therefore cannot be registered as the past.
In general terms, the Zurvan Object may be defined as a time-oriented structure that gives form to formless time following the trauma of birth and the experience of separation. It makes temporal experience tolerable and traceable for the subject.
Its functions include creating continuity, containing anxiety, and enabling movement back and forth among the temporal states we call the present, past, and future.
To Be-Analysis