The Hollow Hour: On Doing, Being, and the Fear of Nothing

“I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole.”
— Carl Jung
“I do things just to do them—because inside, I feel nothing. I consume therapy sessions just to be doing something. Otherwise, I don’t see the point in life or being.”

This quiet confession, shared in a recent analytic hour, was not unusual in its theme—but striking in its clarity. Beneath it lies a pervasive psychological dilemma: the compulsion to act, to stay in motion, to fill time, in order to avoid a confrontation with an inner void. For many patients, doing becomes a substitute for being—not in the productive or creative sense, but in the existential.

Doing as Defense
In psychoanalytic terms, this pattern may be understood as a manic defense, as described by Melanie Klein (1940), where the individual turns to activity to ward off depressive anxiety and psychic fragmentation. Doing becomes a defense against the threat of psychological collapse—a way to avoid painful internal states that have not yet been symbolized or processed.

Winnicott’s (1960) concept of the false self deepens this understanding. The false self arises when an individual adapts excessively to the demands of the environment, performing life rather than living it. In the case of the patient cited above, the “doing” becomes a kind of armor: an endless rehearsal of life activities to cover over the absence of an authentic, integrated self. Even therapy is enlisted in this effort—sessions consumed not as a space for transformation, but as a temporary structure to prevent a collapse into nothingness.

The Therapy Session as an Object
Erich Fromm (1976) distinguished between having and being—between life as accumulation and life as presence. In this patient’s experience, the analytic hour has become something to have, rather than a space to be. It is not uncommon for patients to unconsciously instrumentalize therapy in this way, especially when they have not known a holding environment in early life.

Wilfred Bion’s (1962) model of containment helps us understand how a therapist must “digest” the patient’s raw, unprocessed emotional experience (beta-elements) and return them in a form that can be thought about (alpha-elements). In this case, the patient’s compulsive engagement with therapy might be a plea for such containment—but enacted behaviorally, rather than verbalized directly.

The Fear of Non-Being
Existential thought sheds further light here. Rollo May (1950) described anxiety as the „dizziness of freedom“—the fear encountered when one stands face-to-face with the responsibility of existence. The patient’s sense that “there is no point in being” reflects this existential vacuum. Sartre’s (1943) Being and Nothingness reminds us that the self is never a finished product; rather, it is always in flux, defined by choices in the face of the void.

To avoid this confrontation, one may overinvest in doing—as if constant motion could serve as proof of existence. But such activity is not connected to desire; it is mechanical, compulsive, and joyless.

Making Contact with the Void
The psychoanalytic task is not to immediately fill the void, nor to rush toward meaning. Rather, it is to sit with the emptiness, to bear it, and eventually to transform it. Bion’s notion of negative capability—drawn from Keats—describes the therapist’s capacity to remain in uncertainty without rushing to interpret or resolve. This stance invites the patient to begin relating to emptiness not as annihilation, but as space—potential, not pathology.

Gradually, the defensive doing can give way to a different kind of presence. What begins as compulsion may become choice. Stillness, once terrifying, may start to feel bearable. This is the quiet revolution that psychoanalysis can make possible.

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
— Mary Oliver
Perhaps the answer begins not in doing more, but in learning to stay with what already is.

References
Bion, W. R. (1962). Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann.
Fromm, E. (1976). To Have or to Be? New York: Harper & Row.
Klein, M. (1940). “Mourning and Its Relation to Manic-Depressive States.” International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 21, 125–153.
May, R. (1950). The Meaning of Anxiety. New York: Ronald Press.
Sartre, J.-P. (1943). Being and Nothingness. (Trans. Hazel Barnes, 1956). New York: Philosophical Library.
Winnicott, D. W. (1960). “Ego Distortion in Terms of True and False Self.” In The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth Press.