A PLUPERFECT ERRAND:

Abstract

In the unconscioustransmission of destructive aggression from one generation to the next, anuncanny happening takes place. The present and the past become contemporaneous.The self that embodies an other’s intentionality as though one were an objectbecomes the self-same subject that returns to oneself. This return to oneselfis a topographical regression where a present state of mind and a pasthappening converge. What happens nowshall have already happened. The return to oneself is also a structuraladaptation since the infusion of the mandated project of an anterior other isdriven by a change of function that acquires a secondary autonomy. Now thehitherto mandated project shall have become fixed, predictable and operates asif it were one’s own. Repetition of endless returns begins to occur. The ideaof a pluperfect errand illuminates how ananterior other’s secret is unconsciously stored and deferred. The secret isensconced in the subject’s mental representation of the inside mother. Thatsecret is cloistered in a psychic retreat; a claustrum, a compartment withinthe mental representation of the inside mother where one may seek protectionand yet could potentially be endangered. The film can represent the pluperfecterrand. It is the work of psychoanalysis that must reconfigure the errandwithin the analytic setting and design an exit from the claustrum. Filmrepresentation and the work of psychoanalysis may now be complementary projectsthat respectively depict and overturn the received toxic mandate.