José Cueli: Franciscus migrants

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The process of preverbal communication, in which an injured individual searches for lost possessions, is often similar to that of growth. Preverbal communication is established through motor and perceptual development. In the face of loss, it is inferred by the lack of an external object that stimulates the relationship. This condition creates fixations that impede development.

The effort to discharge the impulse released through motor pathways will follow an internal change, such as emotional expression—screaming, crying, etc.—muscle innervations. It cannot, by itself, provide relief from tension, which will require an external object to channel it. Communication does not become egocentric. The phenomena of internal processes. Although the discharges occur as a result of external stimuli, they are not responses to them, but rather indicators of movement.

In this sense, the connection between perception and motor action that Freud masterfully describes in the Marvelous Block is interesting, where he clarifies the active content of the function of perception. Although the organism is subject to an intense flood of stimuli from the external world, these are passively experienced. The structuring of an apparatus to counteract excessively intense stimuli leads to a transformation of the passive attitude into an active one. Perceptions are produced rhythmically by the undeniable influence of the pulsations of motor relations, which can be considered a first attempt at control of the external world. This is the basis for the differentiation and origin of the systems of perception and memory and, probably, of a more differentiated consciousness. To this, we should add that language appears excluded from the relationship between time and consciousness, which includes perception as the creation of an interrelationship of meanings that makes the origin of the representation of time more understandable. This entire process, fractured by traumatic neurosis, requires reintegration through the therapeutic process.

I believe that in psychoanalytic psychotherapies, there are elements that can be partially processed, depending on the intensity of the losses and the previous personality of the sufferer. Intense destructive stimulation, to be rectified, requires a group to help process it and balance the therapist. The psychocommunity therapeutic process—with which I worked during the 1985 earthquakes—represents the possibility of organizing, with the therapeutic group, the most painful aspects. In an individual situation, it would be practically impossible to process due to the therapists' inability to assimilate the overwhelming pain. Franciscus devoted part—or all—of his attention to migrants, without a place in the world, including undocumented Mexicans.