Written by Sotiris Manolopoulos, Psychiatrist – Psychoanalyst
Giorgos Bithymitris: Main Researcher, Institute of Social Studies – National Centre of Social Studies
Psychoanalysis, since the time of Freud, has maintained a relationship of estrangement with sociology. Like visitors to a foreign land, they come briefly, do not linger, and do not impose themselves as burdens or suitor-parasites in an unfamiliar palace. In this spirit, I will make a brief visit to the thoughts of the sociologist at work. How does he think? What does he feel? How does he understand?
In the second chapter of his book Lavrio Analyzed, researcher Giorgos Bithymitris proposes the method of Alcinous: “How the understanding and interpretation of stories told to me by the residents of this city helps in a partial, yet scientifically honest search for the truth regarding the conditions that facilitate resonant relationships in a spatiotemporal framework with postmodern characteristics.” This raises an intriguing question: What are the conditions and possibilities that enable people to form resonant relationships? Conversely, what leads to relationships of alienation, where individuals feel like they are living someone else’s life?
Based on his experiences in Lavrio and his prior ethnographic and psychosocial research, Giorgos Bithymitris undertook a sociological study shaped directly by the field — the place of his research — without a predefined theoretical framework. He writes: "The researcher does not enter the field tabula rasa, indifferent to theoretical concepts or to the literature review." In his study, he interweaves life stories (first-person narratives) with third-person perspectives, encompassing communities of practice, institutions, and broader structures. Additionally, he draws on an extensive bibliography, informed by psychoanalytic insights.
There is something in Lavrio that compels its people toward experiential writing — an act of extracting meaning from the rock of reality itself. Giorgos Bithymitris captures this sentiment poetically:
“Brought from elsewhere, I happened to experience in this city more intensely the swinging of the pendulum between the feeling that the life I lead is not my own, and the feeling that I am finally finding myself in what I do. Therefore, here, in this place of shipwreck and of a new departure, of a yesterday that is solid as a mineral, and of a tomorrow that is light as the sea breeze, here, in this blazing heat, in this passage, I choose to see how people succeed and how they fail to find the familiar within the unfamiliar, so as to embrace, to hold, to taste the former and to endure the latter. Perhaps in order to ultimately learn to do it myself.”
The researcher analyzes, explores, and narrates his own self, while simultaneously analyzing, exploring, and narrating his field. In ancient Greek, the word "history" also means "research." History is not written by those who live the events but by those who narrate them. To convince someone of a fact, one tells a story.
Asking the researcher why he feels so passionately about this city is like asking someone why they are in love with a woman. He cannot convince you by listing her qualities — such as her beauty, assertiveness, or devotion. Instead, he convinces you through a story. He tells you how they met, and he conveys what this woman means to him through a narrative that draws you in and persuades you.
Austen (1817) recognizes that persuasion is an integral part of the stories that bring humans together. Many movements and shifts across space and time occur before all the favourable characters converge in the same space and time. The stories we tell, allow us to coexist in the same city. Paraphrasing McEwan (2001), we might say that stories make the city as familiar as a sister and as foreign as a lover.
Bithymitris ultimately selected 50 adults, specifying that they must not only reside in the city but also have lived there for at least three years. These individuals were given the opportunity to share their stories by writing their autobiographies. However, the Self is profoundly divided, prompting the researcher to turn to psychoanalysis, which delves into the unconscious, to aid in understanding and interpreting their narratives.
The journey of the Self begins with the infant’s body and its contact with external reality, mediated through parents and family. Social reality exists externally, but the infant's development fundamentally starts with the formation of its Self as a cohesive unit. The mother of a newborn regresses to her own infancy, reconnecting with her early Self to identify with and understand her baby’s needs. She introduces the objects of the world at a pace suited to the infant's readiness, gradually guiding him into reality.
By holding the infant and allowing subjective time to unfold, the mother fosters a legitimate illusion — primary narcissism, self-love, and the deep-seated belief that life is worth living. This foundation enables the child to grow with the conviction that they deserve to live well and without guilt.
The infant’s Self is vulnerable, experiencing profound anxieties of annihilation. To protect itself, it becomes divided, simultaneously recognizing and denying reality. Bithymitris draws upon these early divisions of the Self with sensitivity and insight to explore the intersections between the social and the psychological.
Through dichotomies, walls are constructed – walls upon which individuals precariously balance or fall, slipping into the chasms of division and becoming lost to history. Those who lose the cultural frameworks that provide meaning and coherence live a life they cannot comprehend – a life where nothing truly happens. From that point onward, their traces fade, disappearing into obscurity.
Regarding moments when the unity of the narrative Self is destabilized, Bithymitris writes: “We cannot, of course, pretend that the unconscious material that will bring to light the conflicts and divisions of the subject is accessible to us researchers. What we can do is recognize the above disturbing condition as a shadow that falls upon the biographical stories we analyze so that we can see the social itself…”
On the one hand, the individual is alienated — divided — and yet inherently open to the possibility of active adaptation to cultural experiences. These cultural experiences serve as opportunities for regression and for processing one’s lived experiences, offering a chance to reframe and reconcile the divisions within the self.
There is a split at the very foundations of human existence and community — an antithetical defense, where what we recognize, we simultaneously deny (Freud, 1940). In this dichotomy, the psychic economy operates with a deficit: a deficit of identity. We function, but we do not think, for thought requires a subject. We balance but do not commit to stability. We do not live within reality, in time and in relationships; instead, we penetrate historical times. We fail to unite and separate the internal from external reality. We conform. In this dichotomy, denial and recognition of reality occur simultaneously.
In contrast, in transitional phenomena and myths, opposites coexist. Loss is neither denied nor concealed through compromises. We must find a researcher-writer both within ourselves and outside ourselves, to whom we can narrate our story — and who, in turn, responds by connecting the pieces, preserving the continuity of the narrative. We must become mythical, writing our personal myth.
Bithymitris writes: “We should distance ourselves from the model of the researcher who claims to present the unmediated truth of every voice recorded in their research.” He goes on to say: “It would be more accurate to say that in every voice, in every bio-story, distortions of the truth emerge, which, if examined carefully, can tell us something productive about individuals' relationships with the world and themselves.”
We encounter reality as we create it, that is, we dress it with meaning, making it bearable and suitable to take within us, to assimilate. The truth is to our psyche what food is to our body. However, the truth can become traumatic and destructive if we take it in raw, unmediated. Every meaning with which we dress reality is a "lie." Yet, it is not a distortion of the truth — it is a story.
Drawing on Homer's Odyssey, the author suggests that we should see the role of the scientist, as well as the very process of research, like a kind of Alcinous. Just as Alcinous hosted Odysseus and his story, biographical-narrative research provides the space and time necessary to resolve the subject's narrative. This process allows and encourages a visit to the place where the continuity of the Self, its identity, may have been lost.
Hartog (2003) explains: In the scene where the bard Demodocus recounts the deeds of Odysseus — still unknown to his Phaeacians hosts — the wandering Odysseus encounters, at the symposium, his own self as he was in Troy.
According to Arendt (1972), this encounter marks the beginning, from a poetic perspective, of history. It represents the narrativization of the event. What were hitherto mere events are transformed into emotional experiences. In hindsight, we give meaning to these experiences and transform them into stories. In this exemplary scene, Arendt explains that for both history and poetry, the "reconciliation with reality, the catharsis — which according to Aristotle was the essence of tragedy, and according to Hegel the ultimate goal of history — was produced thanks to the tears of remembrance." As soon as the bard begins to sing, history begins; he speaks of the deeds of people from another time, the past.
Catharsis in poetry is not a purification; it is the result of the work of mourning. It is when the fog of depression, which covers losses as a defense to shield us from realizing them, is lifted. Reality becomes clear, it brightens, and we see things clearly. Our psychic life is revived. We do not rejoice because we remember something pleasant; we rejoice because we remember. Time and oblivion do not heal pain and death — memories heal them.
People tell stories to have a place for themselves, to be alongside others. Stories create the space, the passage. Autobiography is therapeutic. The researcher and the subject of the biography are psychosocial beings, two strangers who come together with their own biases, fears, desires, and shadows, which they use to create the object of their encounter. They meet in moments of recognition. They influence one another, giving each other their stories and identities. Once one has read Homer, they view the stranger differently.
Mutual recognition — understanding one another — is a fundamental need of the ego. The state (scene) of "being together" creates the moment of recognition. In Ithaca, a series of recognition experiences were lived; experiences that gave the stranger his story and identity.
References
AUSTEN, J. (1817). Persuasion. New York, Vintage Classics, 2007.
ARENDT, H. (1972). La crise de la culture, Paris: Gallimard.
FREUD, S. (1940). Splitting of the ego in the process of defence, SE 23.
HARTOG,, F. (2014 [2003]). Καθεστώτα ιστορικότητας. Παροντισμός και εμπειρίες χρόνου, μτφρ. Δ. Κουσουρής, Αθήνα: Αλεξάνδρεια.
ΜΠΊΘΥΜΗΤΡΗΣ, Γ. (2024). Λαύριο Αναλυόμενο. Αλλοιώσεις και αναιρέσεις σε μια νεωτερική πόλη. Επίμετρο: Τζένη Λιαλιούτη. Αθήνα: Εκδόσεις Τόπος
McEWAN. (2024 [2001]. Εξιλέωση. Αθήνα: Πατάκης.
WINNOCOTT, D.W. (1960). The Theory of the Parent-Infant Relationship. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 41:585-595.
