"Freud also notes that the oral stage has left its marks on language, such as referring fondly to people as “sweet,” and saying “I could eat you up with love.” [Schiller 368]

Metaphorical emotional merging of the two into one whole is also literal in the flesh of another being used to fuel a being and therefor the life-force of the devoured continues to exist in the devourer

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (John 6:53–56)

“This mode of communication seeks to inhabit and know the other from the inside, to actually have their consciousness and unconscious thoughts, fantasies, and dreams. Cannibalism is foreign to intersubjectivity in its striving to eliminate separation and the difference of the other. Philosophically this seems to coincide with the skeptic’s challenge with regard to the problem of other minds, that you cannot really know what another knows and means, unless you are inside his or her mind. Cannibalistic fantasies then seem to encompass both eating the other and having them too, as well as eating your way into the other, in order to be the other.” [Schiller 382-383]

i have just become aware that my ideas and interests are closely tied to critical thoughts on cannibalism. i am curious about how other minds work, and can become obsessed with another person if i can't figure them out. i have talked to friends who experience this and I have been the object of such obsessions before. my first time experiencing being the object of such intense desires was as a child, by my mother. my mothers obsession with me severely impacted my quality of life and mental state, as she convinced me that she could read my thoughts and knew me better than i could ever know myself, which i believed to the point of having no sense of self/identity (dissociation). these early experiences drive my work as a way of exploring myself and to open up conversations about the absurdity of existing in a body and mind. i have always had an intense fear of cannibalism, but now i am aware that this intense fear might stem from a deep curiosity and trauma related to cannibalistic fantasies. my current project is a reflection on my experience being the object of my mother's obsession and desire, while also exploring the self (mind) being an object of obsession. Schiller's paper revealed to me many parallels between my thoughts and the work of Louise Bourgeois. Bourgeois felt abandoned by being born, and my piece looks at a mother-child relationship in which the mother feels abandoned by the child leaving her flesh and consciousness.