PROLOGUE
I would first of all like to thank Mr. Christopher Burger, jewellery designer in Colmar, who suggested that I reflect on the theme of the unutterable from a psychoanalytical perspective.
From which angle should we deal with this question of the unutterable?
As a question consubstantial with the human condition, I can see two options:
1) From the standpoint of the human species;
2) From that of the individual; with these two viewpoints converging in any case, since above and beyond our individual specific characteristics, we all share a base originating in our evolution as a species, an evolution which is not biological (and thus cerebral) but obviously psychological (different from cerebral).
THE UNUTTERABLE AND THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN SPECIES1
At the dawn of time, our ancestors who were still very close to the great apes and facing dangerous living conditions, probably experienced perfectly well-grounded fears.
As evolution progressed, the enormous human cognitive potential was actualized through technological development (formal intelligence) as well as through language, imagination and feelings, giving shape to an inner life (the psychological world) and to civilisation.
In taking this considerable jump from nature towards culture, human beings earned a certain amount of freedom over the constraints of the wild environment, but had to pay the price of a neurotic alienation: that of experiencing fears with regard to their inner world, perceived as a fearful unknown.
These fears are of course unfounded, since they stem from the imagination and are unrelated to any real danger. By intuitively perceiving across all cultures that an inner world subject to irrepressible and mysterious forces influenced his life by acting on his mind and his body, mankind thus developed fears cut off from reality, which one could then appropriately call anxieties. These anxieties drove him, in order to try to get rid of them, to project his inner