The Times of Orpha

This chapter looks at the ‘Orpha’ fragment of the psyche and enquires into the meaning of Orphic psychic functioning. The ‘Orpha fragment’ – an idea articulated by Sándor Ferenczi in his late work, especially in his Clinical Diary – refers to a form of splitting where the psyche is forced to devise new ways to care for itself, by radically fragmenting itself into a part that cares and a part to be cared for. This kind of splitting also creates a distancing, a possibility of floating above the scene, of watching over an unfolding that takes place ‘below’ the point of perspective. Raluca Soreanu interprets ‘Orpha’ as a fourth agency of the psyche. This offers a revision to Freudian metapsychology: Orpha can be considered alongside the id, ego and superego. It is a psychic system, not just a mechanism of defence. The splitting processes related to the formation of Orpha are forms of narcissistic splitting. Soreanu explores the ideas of getting beside oneself, traumatic progression, autotomy, neo-formations, teleplastia, the wise baby, and reconstruction. All these represent a constellation of Orphic terms, which Soreanu unpacks by drawing on clinical vignettes and literary fragments that evoke Orphic psychic atmospheres.