When I first saw the Kennedy assassination filmed by Zapruder, I thought that Jacqueline was trying to jump out of the limousine after the fatal shot. An understandable reaction of panic in someone who sees bullets impact on the one next to them. Later, White’s interview made me see better what the images showed. She did not jump out of the vehicle, but instead tried to retrieve a piece of her husband’s brain mass. Vain effort from the medical point of view, but not from the perspective of desire. I remembered the myth of the torn body of Osiris, whose fragments his wife Isis tries to recover with tireless tenacity. There are people in the world who rejoice in destruction. There are others who try to rejoin the fragments with anxiety or patience. The seekers of the lost pieces contradict a culture that idolizes disconnection. They are like lovers who resist goodbye. Psychoanalysts should not forget this subversive character of what Freud called “Eros, the life drive”.

Translated by Florencia F.C. Shanahan