불안과 면역

Anxiety and Immunity

Sigmund Freud's theory of anxiety, particularly of "neurotic anxiety," as an elusive affect related to the indeterminacy of object suggests the creativity of anxiety through which the ego imagines the object of fear or "realistic anxiety." As a response to the impossible threat to the unity of the ego, neurotic anxiety serves as a unique symptom of the human being that discloses the imaginary structure of the ego. Yann Martel's Life of Pi(2001) provides an effective parable of creative anxiety, in which the protagonist imagines a Bengal tiger as a companion and foe, a virtual threat that keeps him alive. The imagined, life-preserving object of fear, as manifested also in Freud's case study of Little Hans who fears being bitten by a horse, indicates the reality principle governing the dynamics of anxiety. The ways in which the anxious subject preconceives the object of fear, evades it, and contains it as a way to maintain its subjectivity construct the defensive mechanism of anxiety, which shares a common ground with that of the immune system. Immunity can be acquired through the antigen-antibody reaction, in which antibodies register pathogens, exterminates them, and incorporates their trace as the part of a body. Roberto Esposito's definition of immunity as the simultaneous protection and negation of life not only reveals the paradoxical nature of immunization, which requires an element of heterogeneity in order to maintain the homogeneity of life, but also sheds light on the dialectical dynamics of anxiety hinged on a threat to subjectivity. Following the reality principle, anxiety and the immune system contradictorily perform the inclusion and exclusion, respectively, of a fear-object and an antigen, which function as pharmakon, as both remedy and poison, that maintains the homeostasis of the ego and life.