The Notes and the Blanks
The Normalia notes where taken during the experiment, on every day of the experiment. That there are missing days on the documentary page of the exposition, is part of the concept. The Phantomology project focuses on the blank spots in our experience and the void opening up during zero-processes in zero-time. The omissions represent gaps in memory and consciousness, and in the coherence of the conscious mind.
The following research questions guided the evaluation of the experiment:
- What new light could be shed on the relationship between phantoms and the experience of pain?
- What was discovered regarding phantom experiences? What conclusions were drawn about the effect of taking the drug on zero experiences?
- In retrospect, what was the overall impact of the Normalia drug?
- Was their a lasting effect; did one or more effects that were observed during the experiment persist?
Or do they? Couldn't the blank spots be interpreted as traces of censorship? Even if this were the case, they would still serve as an analogy for the gaps in the mind's past and present.
Duration, Pain, and Pain Phantoms (not Phantom Pain)
The pain was the main indicator that something was happening.
The diversity of pains marked the experiment, and their increase in number and intensity marked the passing of time and the progression of the experiment.
Had I been asked about the duration of the experiment, I would have said: 8–15 pain spans. To be more specific, I would have needed to decide how many different types of pain could be distinguished. – If it wasn't just one pain, the Normalia-pain, and it lasted 18 days – and a few more.
But not only the time of the project, its duration was pain-dominated, also its structure. The pain was the red thread that ran through the days of experimentation, binding them together in its various manifestations and activities. As Morris (1991) and my own study (Macek, 2018) found, the physical, psychological, social and cultural aspects could not be separated; it was an all-encompassing existential experience. Pain is never merely a symptom of an underlying malfunction or abnormality, but a distinct phenomenon of human life and an existential experience that every living — and therefore mortal — being confronts during their lifetime (Macek, 2018).
Back to the experiment: While the obvious cause of the pain was the side effects (and probably some regular effects) of the 'Normalia' drug, every new pain triggers memories of past painful experiences. This is where the phantoms come in.
The presence of the phantoms was a part of the deal from the beginning, as was the experience of nothingness1: the empty spaces in the text caused by brain fog, dizziness and exhaustion. The blanks accompanied the pain, becoming pain phantoms — not phantom pain – tangible entities, infused with life by the carnal truth of pain that gave substance to their shadowy outlines. Their undeniable reality made it possible to meet them, address them and interact with them.
The poetical and pictorial elements throughout the exposition bear witness to this, and the audio pieces represent the accompanying soundtrack of the unsettling experience of their effects.
1„Nothing is not a / pleasure if one is irrated, / but suddenly / it is a pleasure“ (Cage, 1961, p. 119).
Normalia and Normalization
Did Normalia normalize me?
What caused the greatest resistance during the experiment? The impairment of bodily functions, or the implicit notion of normalization that I connected with the drug from the beginning?
In Abnormal, Foucault identifies the norm as the “element” upon which “a certain exercise of power is founded and legitimized.” (Foucault, 2003, p. 50)
He demonstrates that the norm “brings with it a principle of both qualification and correction. The norm’s function is not to exclude and reject. Rather, it is always linked to a positive technique of intervention and transformation, to a sort of normative project.” (Foucault, 2003, p. 50)
The N-drug, as a psychopharmacological drug, can in fact be considered a means of exercising (psychiatric, state) power, as part of the project to transform individuals into 'normal people,' i.e. people who can be easily controlled and governed.
The norm as an ideal (Foucault, 2003) is a phantom.
Phantom Experiences
New phantoms were created during the experiment, but they were insubstantial and inflated soon after the intake of the drug had ended.
No lasting side effects became evident.
There was additional confusion, but also new insights regarding the phantom experiences in zero time:
Phantoms haunt, but that is not their intention.
Phantoms haunt and disturb those who experience them.
According to Abraham and Török (1978/1994), the phantom is formed by the unconscious, and the peculiar thing is that it has never been conscious. Furthermore, the phantom is a metapsychological fact. Its manifestation, as anxiety, is the return of the phantom in bizarre words, acts and symptoms.
The phantom's universe can be objectivized in fantastic stories, which are connected to a particular affect that Freud described as the "uncanny".
Normalia and the Uncanny
The question of the spell, of being haunted is posed in the notes of the experiment.
Phantoms haunt, but it is not their intention.
Phantoms haunt and disturb those who experience them.
The haunting phenomenon occurs when individuals perceive their presence as a threat or something uncanny, and this perception is what triggers the haunting.
In Freud’s definition, das Unheimliche (in the same named essay, published 1919) is “something which is secretly familiar […], which has undergone repression and then returned from it” (Freud, 1919/2021, p. 245). An uncanny feeling is commonly described as a disturbing experience of strangeness in something familiar. Freud discussed it in light ofheimlich, homely, its apparent opposite that, at the same, is not really the opposite but part of unheimlich, meaninghomely and at the same time secret and concealed. Therefore, ‘unheimlich’ is not just disconcerting, but also reveals something that was hidden and/or repressed.
In his second approach to explain the uncanny, Freud connects it to experiences that seem to confirm surmounted beliefs from childhood or from our cultural heritage. He calls these beliefs “primitive”, such as believing in ghosts or that thoughts have the ability to manifest physically. These beliefs “exist within us ready to seize upon any confirmation” (Freud, 1919/2021, p. 247).
The Normalia experience was unheimlich. The uncanny intruded in the form of familiar symptoms (dry eyes, a runny nose, dizziness, fatigue …) that occurred without the usual causal connections (such as a cold or sleep deprivation), in an unfamiliar context: that of a psychopharmacological agent affecting the synaptic connections in my brain in a way that even neuro-experts do not fully understand, with long-term impacts that remain unknown.
But the unheimliche quality of the Normalia experience is also connected to Freud’s second theory on the uncanny. The estrangement of the self during drug intake evokes notions of the emergence of a doppelgänger (one of the phenomena explicitly named by Freud as being uncanny), caused by Normalia – a second self that resembled myself, but was me plus object N, i. e. the drug and what it did to my (neuronal, cognitive, emotional, digestive, physiological, circulatory –) system.
Otto Rank (1914/1925) conducted thorough research into the concept of the double (doppelgänger), demonstrating its links to reflections in mirrors, shadows, the belief in an eternal soul, and the fear of death. In his view, the original function of the double is an insurance against the destruction of the ego, it primarily stands for the denial of the power of death.
Conceiving of the experiment’s outcome as the production of an uncanny experience, I find new aspects of evaluation: By showing me this side of myself, it directs the attention to the uncanny nature of traumatic events in my past.
What is the effect of the uncanny? Once you look beyond its fearful nature, it can evoke a sense of revelation. Something that once was heimlich (private) has now been uncovered, providing an opportunity to address it openly. If you get beyond its fearful nature, it can be the effect (and affect) of revelation, because something has been uncovered that was heimlich (private), something has surfaced that was hidden, providing the opportunity to now deal with it openly.
During the Normalia-experience, I knew that the dreams and sensations that occurred could be tracked back to the intake of the drug; but at the same time the content of the experiences undoubtedly was based on my (life-)story, on my psychophysical identity. What I experienced felt strange yet familiar, resembling pain experiences I had in the past, thoughts I had thought or could have thought, and sensations in regard to my body that recognized my body, but at the same time noticed a shift, creating a gap between what was known as my body – my familiar body, and the (new, strange) body under the influence of N.
Witnessing my psychophysical identity fall apart was definitely uncanny and probably the final cause of the experiment being terminated prematurely.
The double, produced by the interaction between my organism and Normalia, was both too similar to me and too different from what I could still conceive of as 'myself'.
Stopping with Normalia meant that I also killed the double.
Two days after stopping the N-intake, as a final act of the experiment, I performed a funeral ceremony for the 'me + N', including the reading of a short poem.
The Normalia Phantom and the Real
The norm as an ideal (Foucault, 2003) is a phantom. The real is only to be found in the various grades of deviation from the norm.
What is real?
Lacanian explanations start with localizing it “outside of language and inassimilable to symbolisation” (Evans, 1996, p. 159). The real is presented as what cannot be captured by words or images, what is beyond the realm of the symbolic.
But the phantoms in my mind are real. They are real as soon as I address them, refer to them, write about them.
Psychoanalysis derives its efficacy from the impact language has on the real: “Language enters the real and creates structure in it” (Lacan, 1964/2011). Accordingly, language alters the way the real is expressed by changing the way it is experienced through its structure.
This is why I had to bury the N-double (or N-phantom) symbolically – to actually and unmistakably put an end to the experiment. But I was aware that its death reunited me with my own mortality. Letting go of the double as a precaution against the extinction of the ego (Rank, 1914/25) also meant embracing the undeniable truth of death, acknowledging that sooner or later this final meeting will take place.
Escaping Normalia, I went back to normal, my normal, good old melancholy, good old poetry writing, sketching and all.
I will take good care of the phantoms. I promise.
THE END OF N-SELF
A synapse falters
Ions fall silent
Serotonin drops.
Ceasefire at the synapses
Her outline fades
In a dopamine haze.
A short blackout
As she collapses
Into a synaptic gap
The ticking fades away.
No chorus.
Discussion, Implications
From a methodological perspective, two points require discussion. Firstly, regarding the duration of the experiment: a comparison of the introduction and the notes makes it clear that the experiment was terminated prematurely.
Secondly, the question of the impact of the impairment of the scientific mind behind the experiment must be considered: The mind that was supposed to keep meticulous records of all proceedings happened to be inside the drug-taking head of the test subject.
1. The termination can be viewed as part of the project. The factors that led to it have been made transparent via the documentary notes, and the decision to discontinue is justifiable, given the increasing deterioration of the over-all condition of the test subject.
Moreover, abortion as the severing of a line of progression refers to the theme of zero duration. The discontinuity creates a blank, a void between the past and the designated future, thus enacting the zero event.
2. The issue of the setting, arising from the researcher and the research subject falling in one, was evident from the outset. The rationale behind the decision is explained in the introduction, which also references the history of this experimental design approach, showing that n=1 self-experiments have a place in the history and present of science and research.
In this context, the possibility of perspectivism1 is worth mentioning, or switching between different perspectives within the same mind. This involves viewing things from a distance as well as from a different angle. It allows the imagination to come into play, leading to the fictional logic of the experiment, giving rise to the legitimate question:
Was the entire experiment fictitious? Was it all made up, with an invented drug and an invented impact on an invented researcher-subject-entity?
This would also have been a valid option: a speculative design or thought experiment. There are profound examples of this in the history of science, and even great discoveries have been based on hypothetical settings. (Albert Einstein' s Gedankenexperimente, such as the “elevator” experiment and the “chasing light” experiment, are prime examples of this.)
But the experiment was real, the drug and its impact were real. The fictional aspect came in as soon as the writing started, as words were found and arranged to describe what was going on. Expressing the real, missing the real, structuring, constructing the real experiences according to their logic.
In the end, a story was told, and as with all stories, it is – and remains – open to different, and even contradictory, interpretations.