179 Journal of Psychosocial Studies • vol 13 • no 2 • 179–191 • © Policy Press 2020 Online ISSN 1478-6737 • https://doi.org/10.1332/147867320X15894733016410 Accepted for publication 14 May 2020 • First published online 01 June 2020 article On transience and other hatreds Lita Crociani-Windland, lita.crociani-windland@uwe.ac.uk University of the West of England, UK This article originates in a free associative extended refection on what the author sees as the many faces of our relationship to transience in Western culture. It begins with the image of plastic fowers in graveyards, wild fowers pushed to verges and marginal spaces, women, migrants and transient communities. Our relation to life, death and their relation to movement and limitation are key aspects being refected on and taken up for further analysis. The result of the free associative experiment is to invite refections on the Freudian concepts of Eros and Thanatos and revisit the highly controversial question of whether these should be viewed in terms of a dualist or a monistic understanding. What is being presented here is a way of working with free associations outside the consulting room and group processes, using free associations as a refexive research tool within a psychosocial hermeneutic approach. Key words free associations • transience • movement • environment • marginalisation To cite this article: Crociani-Windland, L. (2020) On transience and other hatreds, Journal of Psychosocial Studies, vol 13, no 2, 179–191, DOI: 10.1332/147867320X15894733016410 Introduction The article opens with a series of refections based on free associations, foundational to psychoanalysis (Lothane, 2018) and more recently key to psychoanalytically informed psychosocial group processes and research methods, such as social dreaming and visual matrix (Froggett et al, 2015; Manley, 2018). Here the free associative approach is used as a heuristic device to get at what I believe to be ontological issues underlying our attitudes to manifestations of transience (and stasis). Following the free associative sections, the article proceeds to explore fuidity in terms of language, interpretation and hermeneutics and its association in mythology to Hermes, the Mercurial god of thieves as well as leader of the Muses, whose staf has been adopted as a symbol for healing. The relevance of this could be self-evident given the interpretive, hermeneutic nature of this piece, but Hermes has even more relevance given his association to mercurial fuidity and the subject matter at hand.The ambivalence in Hermes also links to the article’s refections on a longstanding controversy and ambivalence of fundamental concepts in Freudian theory, also reworked by Marcuse (1955, 1964, 1970) and more recently Kli (2018), namely the much-debated dualistic division of Eros and Thanatos in Freud’s work. My own free associative thinking experiment led me to a monistic view and a diferent understanding of Thanatos as material limitation, closer to the Unauthenticated | Downloaded 06/10/22 09:20 PM UTC