The terms "self-esteem" and "resilience" have become the twin pillars of neoliberal subjectivity, a conceptual machinery designed to produce docile subjects before market voracity. Self-esteem, far from being a tool for genuine self-valuation, functions as a relentless superego imperative: "you must love yourself enough to remain productive." It's the perfect internalization of market logic at the very core of our relationship with ourselves. Resilience completes this perverse operation. It doesn't celebrate the human capacity to resist and transform adverse conditions, but rather rewards silent submission to any form of systemic violence. The message is clear: your value lies in your capacity to endure, to bend without breaking, to absorb blow after blow without ever questioning who delivers them. It's the perfect depoliticization of suffering, now converted into an opportunity to demonstrate your "strength." This conceptual pair operates as the perfect device of contemporary capitalism: while self-esteem demands you constantly meet market demands, resilience congratulates you for enduring its consequences without rebellion. It's no coincidence that this discourse deliberately confuses submissive optimism with the true enthusiasm that arises from collective struggle and transformation.

Language offers us an array of words to name that which constitutes us: hiatus, gap, void, hollow. It's no coincidence that there are so many ways to signal absence. Each of these words illuminates a different aspect of that fundamental lack that runs through us, as if language itself were trying to circle, again and again, this central truth of our condition: we are beings marked by incompleteness. The gap is not an accident in our structure, a defect that we must correct. It is the very space where the possibility of desire, movement, and change emerges. In the distance between what we are and what we believe ourselves to be, in the separation between the saying and what is said, in the interval between one moment and another, opens the field where subjectivity can unfold. The pause is not an interruption of meaning, but its condition of possibility. These words, in their apparent negativity, reveal something fundamental: lack is not the enemy to be conquered, but the vital space that allows us to exist as desiring subjects. The hollow in our being is not there to be filled, but to be inhabited. It is in this constitutive void where our most radical potential resides, our capacity to become something more than what we already are.

Modern illusion sells us knowledge as an individual possession, something we can accumulate and store in the confines of our mind, like treasures kept in a private vault. Or it promises us collective knowledge, a sum of shared information that would float above subjectivities. Both fantasies miss the true nature of knowledge that psychoanalysis reveals to us. The knowledge that matters, that truly touches something of truth, emerges precisely in that intermediate space where the subject meets the Other. It's neither mine nor yours, neither inside nor outside: it dwells in that 'between' produced in the analytic encounter. It's a knowledge that is enjoyed in the very act of its emergence, in that fleeting moment where something of truth is spoken without having been thought. This is why true analytic knowledge cannot be written in manuals or transmitted as information. It's a knowledge produced in the encounter, enjoyed in the very instant of its appearance, and belonging to that intersubjective space where the unconscious makes its fleeting appearances. It's not knowledge that one has, but knowledge that occurs in the between.

There exists a popular fantasy that imagines the unconscious as a dark basement where we keep our most unconfessable secrets, a kind of mysterious trunk that the analyst must force open to extract its hidden contents. This picturesque vision of analytic work couldn't be further from the truth. The unconscious isn't buried in the depths of a psychic well waiting to be excavated; it's alive, active, operating in every word we pronounce, in every act we perform. This unconscious knowledge that runs through us doesn't need to be discovered but heard. It's already speaking in our slips, in our dreams, in our symptoms. It doesn't require special extraction techniques or forced interpretations. What it needs is a space where it can be said, where speech can unfold freely, without the constant censorship of our rational explanations. The task of analysis is not to illuminate dark zones but to allow what is already there to emerge, insisting on being heard. It's not a work of archaeological excavation but of attentive listening to that knowledge that already inhabits us and manifests itself in the folds of discourse, in the silences between words, in those truths we speak without knowing we're speaking them.

The fantasy of achieving total, definitive knowledge that will finally complete us is perhaps the last illusion that analysis must strip away. There is no mythical moment when all the pieces will fit together, when we will finally understand everything and the division that inhabits us will be sutured. Analysis does not progress toward a final synthesis, but toward the recognition of a more unsettling truth: the division between subject and knowledge is insurmountable. This fracture is not an accident in our constitution, a defect that could be corrected with enough analysis or understanding. It is the very condition of our subjectivity, the price we pay for being speaking beings. The language that constitutes us as subjects is the same that introduces this irreparable division. There is no return to a mythical completeness, because such completeness never existed. What analysis offers us is not a happy ending where everything makes sense, but the possibility of a different relationship with this constitutive division. Learning to inhabit it not as a flaw to overcome, but as the very space where our truth can unfold. Incompleteness is not the failure of analysis, but its truest horizon.

There exists a fundamental fiction that sustains the analytic process: the illusion that the analyst knows, that they possess the answers the analysand seeks. It's a mirage that installs itself from the first consultation, when the analysand arrives seeking someone who can decipher their distress, who can read the enigma of their symptoms. The analyst neither denies this supposition nor confirms it. They simply allow it to operate. This "subject supposed to know" is not a malicious deception, but a necessary artifice for analytic work to unfold. It is the pivot around which transference revolves, the motor that drives analysis. The analysand speaks, associates, remembers, moved by this belief that there is an Other who can understand what escapes them. The paradox is that this knowledge supposed to be in the analyst is, in reality, the unconscious knowledge of the analysand themselves, who has yet to recognize it as their own. The analyst merely lends their presence, their silence, their listening, so that this truth can emerge. At the end of analysis, this mirage must fall so that the subject can recognize that the knowledge was always within them.

We live in an era obsessed with eliminating anxiety. The wellness industry promises to free us from all discomfort, fill every void, suture every crack in our existence. As if anxiety were a manufacturing error that could be corrected with the right technique, the correct pill, the precise mantra. A promise as seductive as it is impossible. Psychoanalysis doesn't join this chorus of serenity sellers. It tells us something more uncomfortable: anxiety is the price we pay for recognizing the lack that constitutes us. It's not a defect to be corrected, but the signal that we are close to a fundamental truth about our condition. It's the trembling we feel when imaginary certainties crack and we glimpse the void that dwells at the center of our being. What analysis proposes is not to eliminate this anxiety, but to transform our relationship with it. To learn to inhabit it not as a catastrophe that must be avoided, but as a compass pointing toward our most intimate truth. Anxiety thus becomes not something to overcome, but an inevitable companion on the path toward a more authentic existence.

The mental health market is saturated with promises of inner peace and social harmony. They sell techniques to "manage" anxiety, "overcome" depression, "adapt" to the demands of modern life. It's the contemporary fantasy of an existence without conflicts, where every disturbance can be neutralized with the right manual. A sweet lie that keeps the social machinery running. Psychoanalysis proposes something radically different: it doesn't come to pacify us or turn us into model citizens, but to confront us with the very core of our distress. It doesn't seek to silence symptoms or domesticate our drives, but to understand what truth these signs of our internal struggle are shouting. It's a journey to the roots of conflict, not to resolve it, but to inhabit it more authentically. The analytic proposal is uncomfortable precisely because it renounces easy solutions. It doesn't offer peace, but understanding; it doesn't promise adaptation, but truth. It goes beyond "feeling better" to question why we need to feel better in the first place. It's an invitation to confront that inner battle that no mindfulness technique will ever resolve.

There is a particular kind of ignorance that keeps us safe, that allows us to function under the illusion that everything is in its place. It's the not-knowing that lets us sleep peacefully, that allows us to keep our certainties and defenses intact. But psychoanalysis is not interested in preserving this artificial peace. On the contrary, it comes to disturb it, to shake the foundations of our comfortable explanations about who we are. What analysis offers is not reassuring knowledge that can be packaged in self-help manuals. It is a knowledge that destabilizes, that confronts us with the truths we prefer to keep buried. It promises neither harmony nor balance, but rather a turbulent encounter with our own desire, that stranger who dwells within us and whom we never fully know. This uncomfortable knowledge comes at a price: the loss of our most cherished illusions about ourselves. But it is precisely in this loss where the possibility of a more authentic encounter with who we are resides. Psychoanalysis invites us on this disturbing journey, not to find definitive answers, but to learn to inhabit our own questions.

In a culture that idolizes a distorted version of strength, where being strong means denying the need for others and maintaining a facade of perpetual invulnerability, psychoanalysis proposes a radically different perspective. It invites us to recognize that true strength lies not in the denial of our vulnerabilities, but in the courage to accept and explore them. This view challenges the dominant narrative that equates emotional hardness with strength of character. Constant competition and lack of compassion, far from being signs of power, reveal a deeply defensive fragility. The subject who cannot recognize their dependence on others, who cannot admit moments of weakness or need, finds themselves trapped in a prison of false self-sufficiency. This denial not only consumes an enormous amount of psychic energy but also prevents the possibility of authentic connections and meaningful relationships. The psychoanalytic process offers a space where we can discover that our vulnerability, far from being a weakness to be eliminated, is the very foundation of our humanity and the basis of our capacity to connect with others. True strength emerges when we can hold the tension between our need for independence and our inevitable requirement of others, when we can be both strong and vulnerable, autonomous and dependent.

In our contemporary landscape, we find ourselves surrounded by self-appointed emotional judges, ever-ready to pass sentence on the validity of our feelings. These ubiquitous arbiters of affect dispense their verdicts freely: "Don't be so sensitive," "You're overreacting," "Just get over it." Through their dismissive pronouncements, they create a culture where authentic emotional expression becomes increasingly difficult, where certain feelings are deemed illegitimate before they can even be fully experienced. The psychoanalytic stance offers a radical alternative to this culture of emotional policing. In the analytic space, feelings aren't subjected to judgment or measured against some arbitrary standard of appropriateness. Instead, each emotion, no matter how seemingly irrational or socially unacceptable, is welcomed as a meaningful communication from the psyche. The analyst's role isn't to validate or invalidate, but to help unfold the complex meanings embedded within each emotional experience. This embrace of the full spectrum of human emotion opens up possibilities for genuine understanding and transformation. When feelings are no longer treated as defendants in a courtroom but as messengers carrying crucial information about our inner world, they can begin to reveal their deeper significance. The analyst's interpretative work doesn't aim to judge these emotional communications but to decode them, helping the analysand discover the hidden truths their feelings have been trying to convey all along.

In a marketplace flooded with self-help gurus and happiness merchants, each claiming to possess the definitive formula for human fulfillment, psychoanalysis stands as a radical counterpoint. Rather than offering pre-packaged certainties or universal prescriptions for well-being, it invites us into the uncomfortable but liberating territory of doubt. Here, in the analytic space, we learn that questioning our assumed truths might be more valuable than accumulating new ones. The practice of systematic suspicion that psychoanalysis proposes isn't mere skepticism, but a pathway to authenticity. By questioning the narratives we've inherited about who we should be, what we should want, and how we should live, we begin to create space for something more genuine to emerge. Each doubt becomes a crack in the edifice of imposed certainties, allowing glimpses of our own truth to shine through. This journey through uncertainty requires courage, as it means abandoning the comfort of ready-made answers and enduring the anxiety of not knowing. Yet it is precisely in this space of questioning, in the gap between what we were told to be and what we might become, that our authentic self can finally find its voice. The truth that emerges through this process may be less absolute than what the certainty sellers offer, but it has one crucial advantage: it is genuinely our own.