ABSTRACT
This chapter treats Derrida’s claim that perception does not exist or that what is called perception is not primordial, and describes this claim as an attempt to cheat time, one that he tries to justify by his introduction of the trace, a concept that results from his critical engagement with Husserl’s phenomenology. The chapter also offers an alternative to the ‘approximative semantic analysis’ of différance given by Jacques Derrida by way of observing that the dif of différance is, etymologically speaking, simply a variation of the dis of dissociation. This suggests that dissociation is the core psychological truth of deconstruction. In furthering this claim, this chapter explores the work of Jungian analyst Donald Kalsched and his reading of Dante’s Divine Comedy, in which the figure of Dis who rules over hell is portrayed as ‘the dark Lord of Dissociation’: a set of divisive psychological defenses that prevents a person from feeling that they are fully ‘in life.’ These defenses reflect the ‘love made hungry’ typical of the schizoid personality as described by Guntrip, Fairbairn, Laing, and others.
