The encounter: the distinct does not separate but recreate

The narrator is very specific in relating that "when he had stepped out of the boat", "immediately" the man went to meet Jesus. Both interlocutors looked for this encounter. Jesus had trespassed into the forbidden, the inaccessible, the blasphemous and with this movement he generated a movement on the other. From the beginning there was a will on both sides. We know that no one had been able to restrain this man. He did not even have control over himself. Nevertheless, the presence of Jesus invited him to the encounter, to the dialogue..

Here the problem of an encounter of two distinct lives is raised. Translating this to our time, the daily life of abandoned children challenges and stirs up guilt in those who approach them with sensitivity because ones own daily life is privileged in comparison. The starting point of a true encounter, in spite of the differences, is that each one knows who he or she is or is not, and knows what he or she has or has not. That is to say, each one assumes the responsibility for their own daily life in order to be able to establish what they can and desire to do together. In this way a specific kind of life can be defined, along with its space and limits.

In this account, Jesus creates this space of encounter by balancing the drawing near with the moving away. He manifests his capacity to meet with and to separate from, so much so that the "demoniac" has difficulties in maintaining his emotional space. He demonstrates a succession of symbiotic relationships: he runs to meet Jesus (v.2), he bows down before him (v.6), he begs not to be sent, if we take as part of his false identity "my name is Legion" (v.10), he begs Jesus to let him be with him (v.18). Jesus helps the man construct a new life, reintegrating him to his home, his family and his community. Jesus breaks the symbiosis by insisting that he not follow him but to go home and

attract the man into his daily life but permits him to re-create his own life.

9. The "Demoniac": Victimization and Resistance

Within the narration of the encounter, the text introduces a description of the characteristics of the "demoniac" (vs. 3-5). He had an "unclean" spirit in which he identified himself as Legion, he lived among the tombs, he couldn't be restrained from breaking all shackles and chains, he harmed himself, he was active both night and day and shouted to himself in solitary places.

In the social categories of our day the man was "crazy". In the social categories of Jesus' time, he was a "demoniac". In both contexts his behavior was not usual, expected or "normal". In the times of Jesus, depending on the kind of sickness and social status, the family was the one who generally took charge. Some of the less violent ones appeared in public but many were totally uncared for and abandoned to the mockery of soclety.29 The same thing is true in our time, although the attention to some "abnormal persons" has been institutionalized - in psychiatric wards or jails. This phenomenon has been repeated throughout history In highly repressive societies. The same thing occurs within repressive families.

The author of the text allows a symbolic glimpse to this situation by calling the false-self of the man by the Latin term "legion" (v. 9) which refers to a division of Roman soldiers. At the same time, other military elements such as the use of "herd" when referring to the swine (v. 12), which is a term used for the conscripted military, and the words "send" or "dismissed" and "rushed" or "charged" in Greek are also military terms. They are all veiled indications of the strong Roman repression that

28 Paul W. Hollenbach: "Jesus, Demoniacs, and Public Authorities: A Socio-Historlcal Study", The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLIX/4, 1981.

Nevertheless, these elements do not only reflect the Imperial domination as a cause of madness. The actions of the "demoniac" and those of Jesus are projections or displacements of the true impulses that were moving the characters in this story. Let's suppose for a moment that the author is not telling a story but rather a dream he had. His unconscious is where all the desires and drives that cannot be expressed are, and are therefore repressed. These are then re-elaborated into a new discourse full of condensations and displacements. We can also surmise that the one having the dream gatliers up the collective consciousness of his community or his people. This content (the account of the dream or the narration of a happening) would then be unveiled in its latent content (that which the repression did not allow to be communicated).

Within this above scheme, we can state that the author of Mark, a witness to a history of terror and liquidation by the Roman Empire, condenses in the false-self "Legion" the Romans, not only because the term reminds us of the military but because these are "invaders" of the identity of the "demoniac". The action of transferring the unclean spirit into the swine displaces the Roman invader identity into the unclean swine. The author projects his original drive (the repudiation of imperial domination that can't be expressed) into the rush of the swine down the steep bank into the sea: death to the invaders and oppressors.

Until now, we have tried to recuperate the sense of the text hidden behind symbolic words, in order to understand why the man in this account had come to such a level of self destruction. In truth, the subject who was being analyzed up until this moment was the author as a representative of an oppressed community, that looked to express itself through this account. What interests us now is to discover the protagonists themselves in their socio-

A person reaches such levels of madness as that described in this text through a prolonged process of detachment from reality. This process occurs when faced with a threatening situation. The self of the personas with the purpose of developing and maintaining their identity and autonomy and so as to be able to feel secure when faced with threats, detaches themselves from their own selves and detaches themselves from the relationships of others. They convert themselves into the object with whom they relate. In other words, they take back all the affective bonds that have been given to those outside themselves and turn them towards their own interior where they will only meet with themselves. The relationship with others is delegated to a false- self that distorts reality until it reaches a level of total loss of contact with it. Therefore, an empty interior is created and there is a sense of loss of contact with even their own body. (It is spoken of as a non incarnated self.) It is total isolation; a severe form developed to defend oneself and to protect oneself. In an attempt to experience real and live feelings, the person may try to provoke intense pain upon their bodies, as could be the case with the Gerasene "demoniac".32

The process suffered by the "demoniac" reflects how he identifies interjectively with his tormentor, that Is to say that he internalizes the identity of the aggressor into his false-self and turns upon himself all the aggression that he can't express in another way. He lives a tremendous restlessness pursuing through the tombs and mountains those aggressors that he has incorporated into himself. His madness then, is an expression of resistance. By not tolerating domination nor oppression, he takes It into himself, drawing it into his own identity so that from there he can protest against it. It is the only possible way he can

i^Understand as "I" the sense of self-hood that the person has, that gives an identity before oneself and others.

32 The description of this Involutive process of the self has been taken, In shortened from, from Ronald D. Laing, El yo dividido, Fondo de Cultura Econômica, México, 1964.

members of the community adopt an identity of a pseudo-self as an answer to repression.

The protest of this man as he confronts the violent environment in which he lives is comparable to the conduct of many street children. They opt to identify themselves interjectively with their violators (family and society). They punish their interjected violators by destroying themselves with drugs or alcohol. Alternatively, they re-project this adopted identity on to other persons and make them their victims assaulting or abusing them as4hey were abused. In both cases a circle of violence is established. At the same time, their conduct attracts more violence against them, so that they are repressed again for not adjusting to social norms as happened in the case of the Gerasene who was shackled and chained.

10. lhe_CQmmunitv_Faces the Excluded: A Challenge to Change