Brief and selective notes on: Lacan J.
(1993) Ecrits. A Selection. Trans Alan
Sheridan.London: Routledge
Dave Harris
[ I read
Deleuze and Guattari before I read any Lacan, and
so this highly selective set of notes relates to
issues with Lacan as identified by D&G. I am
only a casual reader of Lacan and my intention was
solely to find out exactly what the problems were
with two basic arguments that offend D&G:
- that the unconscious is
'structured like a language', in particular
that the 'subject is a signifier for other
signifiers';
- that language use
necessarily exposes us to a patriarchal and
hierarchical social order.
I have read Schreber's memoirs, his account of a
very well-developed paranoid delusion,variously
described as schizophrenia or dementia praecox. I
have not taken notes, of course. I have also read
Zizek's
defence of Lacan against D&G,which,
apart from anything else, indicates, as usual,
that citing a few extracts can never be decisive
in any dispute about what the hell Lacan means --
or D&G for that matter.
Here is what I have found so far]
The mirror stage as formative of the function
of the I is revealed in psychoanalytic
experience, (1949)
[Classic French elite academic discourse with
largely implicit references to his own earlier
work and the work of others, and the free use of
words in other languages some of them Freudian
terms. This is obviously a limited understanding
of the marvellous literary flourishes. NB male
pronouns throughout as in the original]
[This short piece seems to contain all the
features that D and G find objectionable. There is
the insistence that desire is driven by a lack of
conformity between the ego and exterior
surroundings including others, and the subjective
distortions, alienation and aggression that this
produces, and this of course is challenged
especially in Anti-Oedipus with the notion of
desire as something machinic rather than
structured into the very development of the ego.
There is also a clear intention to see psychic
phenomena as linguistic. There is, however, some
social criticism of narrow utilitarian societies,
and pessimism about any possibility of reforming
or ameliorating them]
This work helps oppose any notion that the key to
human personality is the cogito. Children can
observe their own images in mirrors, an
'expression of situational apperception' (1), and
a necessary stage in the development of
intelligence. Children, unlike chimpanzees, go on
to develop gestures which indicate a relation
between the movements in the image and the
environment, and 'between this virtual complex and
the reality it reduplicates'. The infant is
fascinated by his image. The stage occurs between
six and 18 months, even before children can walk.
There is an underlying 'libidinal dynamism' and an
implicit 'ontological structure of the human
world', which can be informed by an understanding
of paranoiac knowledge. The mirror stage is an
identification which transforms the subject:
analytic theory describes it as the effects of the
imago [the image as in Bergson,
which reflects both subjective perceptions and
aspects of the reality being imaged?]. The stage
actually shows an emerging 'symbolic matrix' which
includes the formation of the I, at an early
stage, before 'it is objectified in the dialectic
of identification with the other, and before
language restores to it, in the universal, its
function as subject'.
This ideal I also generates secondary
identifications, including those affected by
normalized libidinal energy, but the main point is
that this establishes the agency of the ego before
any social determination. It is a fictional
construction, something never reduced for
individuals, related only to the actual subject
coming into being, 'asymptotically' [a dictionary
definition offers: A curve and a
line that get closer but do not intersect are
examples of a curve and a line that are asymptotic
to each other]. The I therefore remains
discordant with personal reality [hence the
original tension that dominates the personality].
The subject sees the full form of his body as an
exterior gestalt, of which he is a constituent
part. It is something larger than him and it
contrasts with those 'turbulent movements' that
are felt as animating forces. In this way, a sense
of permanence is symbolized for the mental
activity of the I, but at the same time, an
'alienating destination'. It is still connected
with a notion of the body as statue, haunted by
phantoms or automata that seem to actually
dominate the making of the external world and his
place in it. In this way, the mirror image is 'the
threshold of the visible world' (3). The mirrored
image also appears in hallucinations and dreams,
or in phenomena such as doubling, which are found
in all 'psychical realities'.
Supporting evidence for the effects of an exterior
gestalt on the interior of organisms can be found
when female pigeons develop sexual maturity when
they see another member of the species, or their
own image in a mirror. Locusts also change to the
gregarious form when they are presented with
similar images. This may have implications for our
notion of what counts as beauty — 'both formative
and erogenic'. However, mimicry also helps with
'heteromorphic identification' as in the
significance of space and territory [references to
an obscure debate about different ethological
accounts here].
Paranoiac knowledge also shows a social dialectic
which explains why human knowledge is more
autonomous than animal knowledge in terms of 'the
field of force of desire', but still determined by
a notion of a limited notion of reality [as in
surrealist arguments].
The mirror stage also indicates 'an organic
insufficiency in [human notions of] natural
reality' (4), although there is a tendency for 'a
primordial Discord' to spill out, shown in a
certain uneasiness and lack of motor coordination
in the neonatal. There is other evidence to for
the 'real specific prematurity of birth in man',
as agreed by embryologists [in the course of this,
we learn that the cortex can be seen as 'the
intra-organic mirror'].
The need for postnatal development is experienced
as a notion of time and its dialectic which is
decisive in the understanding of ourselves as
individuals in history. In the mirror stage, we
move from insufficiency to anticipation. The
stages of spatial identification lead to a
succession of fantasies, moving from a fragmented
body image to a more total form, and finally to
'the assumption of the armour of an alienating
identity'. Together this succession of 'the ego's
verifications' structure the entire mental
development.
We still experience a fragmented body in dreams
featuring 'aggressive disintegration', disjointed
limbs, separated organs, just as in a Bosch
painting. We also find the fragmented body in the
notions of phantasms about fragility, including
schizoid and hysterical symptoms. By contrast, the
I itself appears in dreams as a fortress or
stadium, a secure area within a contested one, the
latter symbolizing the id. We also find lots of
metaphors in waking life about fortifications,
which can be associated with obsessional neurosis
and its 'inversion, isolation, reduplication,
cancellation and displacement' (5). These
subjective data help us see that experience can be
understood as 'partaking of the nature of a
linguistic technique', but we still need some
grasp of objective data to provide 'guiding grid
for a method of symbolic reduction'.
We can see in the defences of the ego, 'a genetic
order', as argued by Anna Freud [order in the
sense of a sequence apparently where hysterical
repression is more archaic than obsessional
inversion, which features isolation, and less
developed than paranoid alienation where the
individual I is deflected onto a social I]. In
this way, we can see a dialectic between the I and
'socially elaborated situations'.
The end of the mirror stage is a moment where all
of human knowledge is mediated 'through the desire
of the other'; where objects are made abstractly
equivalent 'by the cooperation of others'. The
main function of the I then becomes regulating
dangerous instinctual thrusts. This function finds
itself normalized by cultural developments. We see
this with the regulation of the sexual object by
the Oedipus complex.
There may be an original 'libidinal investment
'(6) in our activities [so earlier theorists have
argued] in the form of 'primary narcissism', but
this notion also reveals 'semantic latencies'. We
can see this in the opposition between this
original individual libido and sexual libido.
Sexual libido was initially explained in terms of
destructive instincts, but what the opposition
really shows is a conflict between narcissistic
libido and the 'alienating function of the I'.
This also shows in [a necessary?] aggressivity in
relation to the other, present even in acts of
charity. These initial explanations prefigure the
'existential negativity' found in contemporary
accounts of being and nothingness [presumably
Sartrians?].
However, that philosophy, together with so-called
existential psychoanalysis, sees negativity
without realizing that the ego does not have a
self-sufficient consciousness, that its supposed
autonomy is an 'illusion', that these dimensions
are misrecognised. Existential psychoanalysis
operates in the current context, where societies
are dominated by utilitarian functions, and where
individuals' anxiety is increased by this limited
but prevalent social bond [Lacan calls this a
'concentrational' social bond, which a note on p.7
helpfully explains alludes to the experiences of
life in a concentration camp.] As a result, the
explanations given of various 'subjective
impasses' by existential psychology are
paradoxical: freedom is most authentic in prison,
people experience increasing demands for
commitments, but also an increasing impotence to
grasp or understand situations, voyeuristic or
sadistic idealizations of sex, the culmination of
a personality in suicide, the notion of the other
that can only be satisfied by 'Hegelian murder'
[total abolition of the other in the name of
transcendence?].
None of these propositions apply in actual
experience. Instead, the ego should not be seen as
a matter of perception and consciousness or as
organized by some 'reality principle', itself the
result of a 'scientific [positivist?] prejudice'.
We should start instead with misrecognition [I
have translated meconnaissance despite the
translator's warnings] found throughout the
structures of the ego. That appears in denial [Verneinung],
but there are other latent effects [to be exposed
by reflection on 'the level of fatality, which is
where the id manifests itself', (7)].
We can now grasp the inertia of some formations of
the I. We can also understand the 'most general
formula for madness' and 'the most extensive
definition of neurosis': it will all be explained
by the 'captation of the subject by the situation'
[captation seems to mean at its simplest a
reaching after, an attempt at capture]. General
madness extends to life outside the asylum. We can
understand the sufferings of neurotics and
psychotics as a general set of 'passions of the
soul', and when we examine the ways in which
psychoanalysis seems to threaten communities, we
can see the 'deadening of the passions in
society'. Psychoanalysis, as a kind of modern
anthropology, operating at the 'junction of nature
and culture' can explain that 'imaginary servitude
that love must always undo again' [Lacan describes
this servitude as a 'knot'].
We can't rely on altruism, philanthropy, idealism,
reform or pedagogy because they are underpinned by
aggressivity. However, there is no guarantee that
we can bring people to see the other in their full
otherness, although psychoanalytic practice may
bring people to 'that point where the real journey
begins'.
The signification of the phallus (1958)
[Intended, as with the others, to rebuke existing
theories and open up new possibilities]
The 'unconscious castration complex' (281)
produces a characteristic knot. It produces
certain symptoms found in 'neuroses perversions
and psychoses', and it also develops the
development of the subject. The subject is
installed in an unconscious position which is
necessary to identify with 'the ideal type of his
sex', and to respond appropriately to
[hetero?]sexual relations, and even to raise kids
adequately.
It seems paradoxical at first that men should
adopt characteristic manly attributes only after a
threat of castration. Freud suggested this would
produce an essential disturbance of sexuality,
with irreducible effects on the masculine
unconscious and penis envy in women. There are no
biological explanations. The very necessity of the
Oedipus myth shows this. Nor is there some shared
historical amnesia. So how did the link between
the murder of the father and the 'pact of the
primordial law' emerge, and why was castration the
punishment for incest?
The answer lies in examining the relation of the
subject to the phallus. We are not talking about
anatomical features here [but we might be later?]
, hence we can extend the notion to women. There
are four issues: (a) little girls also see
themselves as temporarily castrated, deprived of
the phallus, initially by their mother and then by
their father in a form of transference; (b) the
mother also possesses the phallus; (c) the
significance of castration appears fully in
symptoms only if it is seen as originating in the
castration of the mother; (d) genital maturation
seems to produce the phallic stage, associated
with 'imaginary dominance of the phallic', and
'masturbatory jouissance', but also the
localization of jouissance in the female clitoris
functioning as a phallus. Genitality does not
extend in the phallic stage to the idea of the
vagina and genital penetration.
Ignorance [of genital penetration?] looks like
classic misrecognition [my speech recognition
software cannot spell méconnaissance] and
it may be false [meaning that it is not recognized
as proper sexuality? Possibly that it is explained
in a false way?]. This is why the phallic stage
has been described as arising from
[straightforward] repression [and not from the
alienation of language?] with its functions
seen as the symptoms. These have been variously
seen as phobia, perversion or both. Sometimes the
object of a phobia can be transmuted into a
fetish. However, these accounts do not take
account of current fashions for describing object
relations. The notion of part object 'has never
been subjected to criticism' (283) [Lacan ascribes
this concept to the work of Karl Abraham]. The
discussion now seems to have been abandoned, but
at least it referred to Freudian doctrine, unlike
the current 'degradation of psychoanalysis
consequent on its American transplantation'.
There are three diverse accounts. Ernest Jones in
his account introduces the notion of aphanisis
[defined in a note as the disappearance of sexual
desire]. He does identify the problem of the
relation between castration and desire, but does
not see that this might help us develop some
insight [maybe — a contorted sentence with lots of
conditionals and double negatives]. His attempt to
use a letter written by Freud in justification is
'particularly amusing'. He appears to make a case
for re-establishing an equality of natural rights
between men and women, concluding with a biblical
quotation that God created them equal. He tries to
see the phallus as a classic part object,
something inside the mother's body, but fails to
see that this view originates in infantile
fantasies during an early Oedipal formulation.
What produce the paradox for Freud? He failed to
articulate it adequately, so it is not surprising
that followers lost their way. Lacan's own
commentary arose from his own interest in using
the notion of the signifier, opposed to the
signified as in modern linguistics to grasp
analytic phenomena. Linguistic notions like this
postdate Freud, but he has anticipated their
formula. Freud's discovery helps us grasp the full
implications of the opposition between signifier
and signified: the signifier 'is an active
function in determining certain effects' and the
signifiable 'appears submitting to its mark' by
becoming the signified 'through that passion' [The
essay on the meaning
of the phallus, cited below says that this
also explains the incessant 'sliding' of the
signified under the signifier].
We have to refer back to Freud designating the
unconscious as 'that other scene' which has
effects. We can discover these by looking at that
'chain of materially unstable elements that
constitutes language'. Effects are determined by
the 'double play of combination and substitution
in the signifier' as in metonymy and metaphor,
'the two aspects that generate the signified'.
These effects determine the 'institution of the
subject'. We can derive a topology to replace the
simple description of the structure of the
symptom.
It [does he mean that it which is also called the
id?] speaks in the Other. The Other is a locus
evoked by speech involving any relation allowing
intervention by the Other. That it can speak shows
that the subject 'finds its signifying place'
before any signified is actually specified. This
shows us that the subject is constituted with a
definite 'splitting'.
We see the function of the phallus here. The
phallus is not a fantasy, not an imaginary effect,
not just an object of any kind. It 'accentuates
the reality' of any relation. It is never just the
biological organ that it symbolises. Freud's a
reference to an ancient simulacrum [the royal
sceptre or other phallic objects?] is not trivial.
The phallus is a signifier. It leads us to the
interest subjective dimensions. It is intended to
'designate as a whole the effects of the
signified' conditioned by its presence as a
signifier. This presents produces effects.
When man speaks, his needs 'are subjected to
demand, they return to him alienated' (286).
Speech involves turning needs into 'signifying
form as such' and this can be emitted from the
locus of the Other. This is a primal form of
repression of needs, but it also gives rise to
something that appears in man as desire. We know
from analytic experience that desire is
'paradoxical, deviant, erratic, eccentric, even
scandalous' compared to need. Under pressure from
moralists, sometimes psychoanalysis tries to
reduce desire to need.
A proper analysis would start with the notion of
demand, which is always connected to frustration.
It is not just a demand for satisfactions. 'It is
demand of the presence or of an absence', seen in
the primordial relation to the mother. It
constitutes the Other as something privileged in
satisfying needs, something that can deprive needs
of their satisfaction. This privilege does not
extend to the Other being able to give love.
Instead, demand can see any particular thing as
proof [or denial] of love, and the satisfaction
for needs as a crushing of the demand for love [a
way of placating demands for love?] [apparently
there are illustrations in accounts of child
rearing]. This places particular satisfactions
beyond demand, although they still preserve traces
of the unconditional demand for love. Desire
offers a less absolute substitute for this
unconditional demand, permitting particular needs
to be satisfied without having to meet any
absolute proofs of love. Desire works by
subtracting the appetite for satisfaction from the
demand for love, by splitting them.
Sexual relations take place in this 'closed field
of desire' (287). We find the same enigma in
sexual relations, a double signification, both a
demand for needs to be satisfied as a proof of
love from the Other, but also a cause of desire,
for both subject and Other. This is what lies
behind all the distortions appearing in
psychoanalysis. It is disguised in sexual conduct
by displacing it onto genital activity and
developing an notion of tenderness which is an
orientation to the Other. This is
well-intentioned, but 'fraudulent nonetheless',
despite being supported by various moralizing
activities by French analysts.
Man can never be whole or have a total
personality. He is doomed to constant displacement
and condensation when exercising his functions.
This shows he is 'a subject to the signifier'. The
phallus is the privileged signifier joining 'the
role of the logos... with the advent of desire'.
This signifier is 'the most tangible element in
the real of sexual copulation, and also the most
symbolic', literally equivalent to the logical
copula. It's turigidity also 'is the image of the
vital flow as it is transmitted in generation'.
However, it can only act behind a veil, as
something latent just as anything signifiable does
when it becomes a signifier. This is shown by what
follows when it is unveiled, as in paintings in
Pompeii, or when it disappears accompanied by
shame. It acts to 'strike the signified' in a
'signifying concatenation'
The establishment of the subject by the signifier
is complementary, and lies behind the splitting of
the subject and its completion in an intervention
by a signifier. Thus the subject organizes his
life by striking [in the sense above?] everything
he signifies in a drive to be loved for himself.
And what is found in primary repression [as
above?] can be signified just as the phallus marks
the signified, '(by virtue of which [which
demonstrates?] the unconscious is language)'
(288). Overall, the discussion of human
development is so lengthy that's we can only use
'the phallus as an algorithm', and 'rely on the
echoes of the experience that we share'.
The phallus as a signifier means that it is
located in the Other and that's where subjects can
access it. However, it appears 'veiled' as 'ratio
an indication of proportion? [reason for?
Rationalisation of?] of the Others desire' [note
that when Lacan introduces the term ratio, just
above, he refers to a musical term, the '"mean and
extreme ratio" of harmonic division']. This
implies that the Other must also be recognised as
a subject, also split by the act of signifying. We
can find some support for these views in work on
'psychological genesis'. Klein notes that the
child sees that the mother contains the phallus,
for example.
The main point is that development is ordered by
'the dialectic of the demand for love and the test
of desire' (289). [according to the author of the
Meaning of the Phallus: 'To the extent that signifiers are
able to articulate this thrust {the drive to
express needs in signifiers} , the result is a
series of demands. To the extent that they cannot,
the dynamic movement remains operative but is now
subject to a continual displacement whose pattern
is unconsciously structured, and it is in this
form that it goes by the name of "desire." Sex is
important because it is the primary location for
this] The signifier of desire must not be alien to
the demand for love. Thus we see that if the
desire of the mother is seen as signified by the
phallus, 'the child wishes to be the phallus in
order to satisfy that desire'. In other words,
relating to the desire of the other involves the
subject being content to try to offer anything
that may correspond to the phallus, whether or not
the child actually has a phallus — 'the demand for
love... requires that he be the phallus' whatever
the reality [difficult stuff here].
This initial attempt at a satisfying relation can
be seen as a 'test of the desire of the Other'.
The subject learns not only that he may not have a
real phallus, but that the mother does not have
it. This moment is crucial for the development of
any subsequent symptoms like phobia or
consequences like penis envy attached to the
castration complex. This is where desire is
connected with threat or nostalgia, because it is
focused on the phallic signifier. At this stage
the father also introduces 'the law' and the way
in which has since done can affect the development
of symptoms or consequences.
The function of the phallus also shows us
'structures that will govern the relations between
the sexes' [so this is the controversial bit where
conventional relations between the sexes are
justified as being somehow natural or an
inevitable part of the normal development of the
personality]. The relations turn around either
being or having and when referred to the phallus
as signifier, this can produce two opposed effects
— 'giving reality to the subject' on the one hand
[the signifying dimensions of the relation], and
on the other hand 'derealising' [not grasping or
avoiding or managing their reality?] the actual
relations which are to be signified.
A notion of 'seeming' replaces the notion of
having. This protects those that have [the phallus
or the penis? There are several confusions of the
two?], and will 'mask its lack in the other' [note
we are shifting to small 'o's]. This projects all
the 'ideal or typical manifestations [value
judgments here] of the behaviour of each sex,
including the act of copulation itself, into the
comedy'. The demand for sexual satisfaction 'is
always a demand for love', with desire reducing to
demand.
This seems paradoxical but it explains why
sometimes women 'will reject an essential part of
femininity, namely, all her [natural? biological?
conventional?] attributes in the masquerade' (290)
in order to be a phallus, a 'signifier of the
desire of the Other'. In order to be desired as
well as loved she has to be something 'which she
is not'. She will find the signifier of her own
desire in the body of a male partner, from whom
she demands love. The actual organ which has a
signifying function 'takes on the value of a
fetish' [only heterosexual coupling is acceptable
in the demands of love?]. The actual experience of
love for women deprives her of the signifying
power of possession of the phallus [maybe] because
her desire converges on the male phallus/penis.
That also explains why the lack of satisfaction in
women, 'frigidity', is 'relatively
well-tolerated', and why they feel less of a need
to repress desire [very puzzling, and of course,
politically highly dubious — women do not need to
repress their own desires, because of their
attachment to heterosexual coupling which implies
that men can manage it? Or that they are more
interested in the demands of love and less concern
to locate that in satisfying heterosexual
conduct?].
For men, however the connection between demand and
desire, as Freud noted, lead to 'a specific
depreciation... of love'. Men find satisfaction of
the demand for love in heterosexual relations. For
men, the signifier of the phallus suggests that
the relation between desire and the demand for
love in women is constituted by his activity
[again assumes a confusion between phallus and
penis?]. However, the male desire for the
phallus will transfer this to other women who
offer other signifying possibilities 'either as a
virgin as a prostitute' [very weird and apologetic
stuff]. There is therefore 'a centrifugal tendency
of the genital drive in love life', but this is
not all good for men — impotence is more difficult
to bear, and the repression of desire becomes more
important [if men are to be monogamous?]. This is
not to argue that infidelity is 'proper to' the
male function [it is the emphasis on function
which we might use to defend Lacan against a
simple support for patriarchy?]. Women can also
experience 'the same redoubling', although the
partners of unfaithful women find it difficult to
become the 'Other of Love as such', especially if
they also see themselves as a substitute,
especially if 'he is deprived of what he gives'
[that is, rendered as some object of love, not
just as someone seeking to satisfy his desires? I
can't help thinking that this only makes sense
given the underpinning cultural understandings of
the French educated petit bourgeoisie towards
adultery]
Male homosexuality is a matter of desire. Female
homosexuality 'as observation shows' arises from a
disappointment that only reinforces the demand for
love. There is a need for further examination of
this difference, especially as refusals of demands
are sometimes resolved by 'a return to the
function of the mask' as a form of identification.
Femininity finds refuge in this mask. The
repression inherent in the 'phallic mark of
desire' can make human virility 'itself seem
feminine'.
We can also examine another characteristic only
hinted at in Freud. He says there is only one
libido, and that is masculine in nature. The most
profound thing about the phallic signifier, as the
ancients realized is that it is embodied [in
phallic symbols?] [and at this point we end
with two infuriating Greek words!! —they might be
'phallos' {phallic pillars} and 'hermai'
{representations of Hermes, messenger of the Gods
so associated with language, as an erect penis.
Thanks to the anonymous author(s) of The
Meaning of the Phallus a very thorough
discussion of this essay and others in Lacan,
collected in No
Subject: an encyclopedia of Lacanian
psychoanlysis ]. So -- modern
societies also embody the phallus in actual
penises, models of them, phallic symbols
and the like? Lacan himself is not equating the
two but suggesting that ordinary folk still do
so?
The
function and field of speech and
language in psychoanalysis
[A massive piece of work,which I have
{eventually} read in a separate publication here,
and which includes substantial explanatory notes]
[Then I shifted to a second-hand copy of Lacan, J.
(2006) Ecrits. The First Complete Edition in
English. Trans B Fink. London: W Norton and
Co Ltd. The volume also has a useful classified
index of the concepts, necessary because of
Lacan's habit of joining together various concepts
in different actual sections. I've added a few
additional notes from these entries]
The first section is a Seminar on "The Purloined
Letter". It is typically forbidding and
inaccessible. I don't know how to summarize it in
any detail, so I can only offer a quick prosaic
summary of the main themes as they struck me at
the time.
First of all you have to read Poe's story about
the purloined letter. To be brief, it is a story
that the Queen of France has received a letter
with some embarrassing and compromising
information in it. She is reading it when she is
visited by a Minister. He sees that there is
something about the letter and decides to steal
it, quite openly, replacing it with another letter
face down. The Queen knows that he has stolen the
letter but is afraid to say anything because she
would have to disclose the contents of the letter
to the King. We never know what is actually in the
letter. The Queen asks the Prefect of Police to
reacquire the letter. He is a typical thorough
policeman and organizes a very systematic and
detailed search of the minister's apartment,
looking into books and probing furniture, and even
searches the minister himself on some pretext.
There is a suggestion that the Minister himself
actually collaborates, arranging for his apartment
to be vacant for a few nights. He finds nothing
and takes the case to a private detective. The
detective tells him to come back in a few days,
produces the letter and claims the reward. What he
has done is to visit the Minister and look around
the apartment, having decided that the letter will
be hidden in full sight. He finds it, thinly
disguised, and on open display, retrieves it, and
leaves a duplicate. On the duplicate he writes a
Latin tag that refers to identical twins thinking
alike.
En route, we have some learned discussions about
the rival merits of poetry and systematic
scientific applications, and we learn about the
French game of odd and even, which looks rather
like the Cornish game of spoof — you have to guess
whether your opponent is holding in his hand an
odd or even number of coins. The trick is to
estimate the cunning of your opponent. If you
guess wrong first time, you have to decide if the
opponent is simple enough just to alternate next
time, or cunning enough to decide to stick with
the same choice, thinking that you will be stupid
enough to assume that he is stupid enough just to
alternate.
Lacan subjects this story to detailed analysis,
drawing attention to all sorts of refinements of
the plot, and commenting on the difference between
the translated and original texts. The whole aim
is to show that the structure of the story tells
us something about the relations that lie at the
heart of subjectivity. There seem to be two main
points:
First, if we consider the letter as the subject,
it is clear that when this subject interacts with
all the other participants it completely changes
their lives and constitutes their own
subjectivity. The minister who has stolen the
letter becomes obsessed with it, falls under its
spell, lets it dominate his entire purpose, and,
if he decides to go public before discovering the
letter in his possession is a fake, will be
ruined. The letter also confirms central trends in
the subjective identities of the Prefect and the
detective. It is in the interaction between
subjects that we find the construction of
subjectivity. The actual signifiers that are
exchanged -- piece of paper, actions or words
--mean nothing (except at the level of the
Imaginary) until they are connected to the
Symbolic level. Once this happens, the full
resources of the Symbolic are deployed -- the
assumptions about character, the merits of poetry
and science, allusions from Latin tags.
Second, an astonishing and largely
incomprehensible supplement to the seminar talks
about the statistical possibilities of three coins
showing patterns of heads or tails. I cannot
follow the mathematical reasoning here, but it is
apparent that these patterns follow laws of
probability, sometimes with counter-intuitive
results. Lacan seems to want to argue that this is
an example of a mathematical structure
underpinning what looks like freely chosen
behaviour, or simple attempts to manipulate
chance. It seems simpler if you accept his view
that binary choices dominate 'free choice', which
he argues arises from the basic binary between
Fort and Da in the mirror stage. This
pattern would explain sequences far beyond the two
governed by cunning in the odd/even game -- that
sort of reasoning only helps you guess the early
stages (which is why if you are playing spoof you
must insist on carrying on past the first 2 or 3
rounds before paying out). If this is
anywhere near, what he's arguing is that there is
a mathematical structure as well as the classic
linguistic structure we are used to: I suppose
those two are compatible if we think of the
mathematical structure as representing all the
possible combinations of phonemes, and the
cultural one as restricting the possibilities.
It it is classic academic discourse with all sorts
of cultural allusions and assumptions as well as
assuming we are all familiar with Poe and
Baudelaire's translation. As examples, try these
little beauties:
… When [Dupin --
the detective] recalls without deigning to say
any more about it that "'ambitus'
[doesn't imply] 'ambition,' 'religio'
'religion,' ' homines honesti' a set of
honourable men," who among you would not take
pleasure in remembering… what these words mean
to assiduous readers of Cicero and Lucretius?
(14).
And we generally deem
unworthy the method of such premature
publications [lost letters] , as the one by
which the Knight of Eon put several of his
correspondence in a rather pitiful position
(19).
The Subversion of the
Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the
Freudian Unconscious (1960)
[Particularly helpful in my quest to find out why
Lacan is so keen on structuralist notions of
language. I have much vulgarized this elegant
text, and even replaced Greek terms with their
cliched equivalents]
The structure of psychoanalysis as a praxis is
what is important ['not immaterial']. It is some
philosophical relevance for Hegel's schema in The
Phenomenology… This will help us see how the
subject is related to knowledge, and how the
ambiguities are evident in modern science and its
applications.
The scientist himself is obviously a subject
coming into an already constituted world, who must
know what he is doing but does not know what might
be the effects of science — here, he's at the same
level as nonscientists. Some 'entirely didactic
references' (672) to Hegel might be helpful, at
least in correcting the mistakes made in
psychoanalytic theory if not practice. In
Anglo-American psychoanalysis, different practices
in those societies have had effects — 'notorious
deviations in analytic praxis' [the domination of
liberal, utilitarian, positivist conceptions?]
It is clear that we cannot 'condition' science by
empiricism. It is also clear that so-called
scientific psychology has actually developed.
However, when we examine what Freud meant by the
subject, this will raise serious problems with
such an 'academic framework'. The main flawed
assumption is the unity of the subject, supported
by an interest in a certain notion of
consciousness and by attempts to develop an
organic basis for psychology.
One problem is that there are clearly varied
states of consciousness including religiously
enthusiastic or hallucinogenic ones, and these are
difficult to tie to [positivist] theory,
despite seeming to be natural. Hegelian approaches
also tend to ignore these states, especially in
terms of how they might be seemed to generate
knowledge or insight into the working of the mind
[via an '"epistemogenic" or "noophoric"'
'ascesis', of course!, 673]. So does Freudian
practice, but in Freud's case, that was because
they did not cast any light on the workings of the
conscious — that's why 'Freud prefers the
hysteric's discourse to hypnoid states'.
It is difficult to convince these theorists of the
need to really interrogate the unconscious, and to
see in it a logic, an interrogation or development
of an argument. Grasping that will lead to an
understanding of the human subject. Psychoanalysis
has always warned against an early intervention of
the analyst's voice. There can be no support for
the view that Freudian practice will lead to an
understanding of 'some archetypal or in any sense
ineffable experience' (674). [A dig at Jung -- but
also applicable to modern exponents like the
posthumanists, or what Lacan has called the
proponents of subjectless 'affect']
What was Freud's Copernican step? As with
Copernicus, it is not just that one privileged
centre should be replaced by another. [There is a
sub- theme here that the triumph of Darwinian
evolution has mistakenly done just that]. Other
more insightful approaches tend to be rejected
[one problem with Darwinism is that humans still
believe themselves to be 'the best among the
creatures'. This is an example of an 'idiotic
notion stemming from the religious tradition' as
is naive heliocentrism]. We need closer ties
between knowledge and truth [rather than a regime
of 'double truth' — pass. It might mean something
to do with science being more interested in
internal validity than truth?]. Psychoanalysis
offered a seismic upheaval ['a new seism']
comparable to the birth of science.
Hegel might be able to give us an ideal solution
involving the idea of a truth constantly being
reabsorbed, truth which is self-sufficient but
which is limited by the particular stage of the
'realisation of knowledge'. Knowledge has to press
on with resolving its ignorance. Again we have a
tension between the imaginary and the symbolic in
his terms. A convergent dialectic proceeds until
it is able to finally join the symbolic with a
fully grasped real. This is equivalent to 'a
subject finalised in his self-identity', which in
turn implies that the existing subject is capable
of such attainment, 'already perfect(ed) here'. It
is the 'wholly conscious self' coming to being
that lies beneath the process.
However, the actual history of science shows the
importance of various detours which are far from
consistent with immanentism. Nor do scientific
theories themselves fit neatly into thesis and
antithesis. The search for truth must be
independent of consciousness here as in elsewhere.
Perhaps science is currently warming towards
psychoanalysis for this theoretical reason? [Or
proceeding as if there were no knowing subject,
possibly] We might see this with psychology and
its links with psychoanalysis, but reinvigoration
is not likely in that case.
Hegelianism understandings at least support Freud
in his attempts to develop a truthful science as
well as a praxis which shows how truth is
repressed. We see this in the connection between
the unhappy consciousness in Hegel, and the
discontents of civilisation in Freud: both refer
to 'the suspension of knowing' (676) In Freud, it
particularly refers to 'the skewed relation that
separates the subject from sex'. Certainly, Freud
owes nothing to the forces that inspire modern
psychology ['judicial astrology']. Nor is it a
matter of phenomenology. Indeed, 'consciousness is
a characteristic that is...obsolete to us': the
unconscious is not just the negation of
consciousness, nor is it affect, a 'protopathic
subject... a function without a functionary'.
Instead, 'the unconscious becomes a chain of
signifiers that repeats and insists somewhere (on
another stage or a different scene, as [Freud]
wrote) interfering in the cuts offered it by
actual discourse and the cogitation it informs.'
The signifier is the key, as in modern
linguistics, associated with Saussure and
Jakobson, and early Russian formalists.
Linguistics is not available to Freud, but what he
calls the primary process, governing the
unconscious, corresponds to functions identified
by linguistics — 'metaphor and metonymy — in other
words, the effects of the substitution and
combination of signifiers in the synchronic and
diachronic dimensions respectively' (677) [I must
say I had always taken the key aspect of a metonym
as the way in which it condenses qualities into a
part, but this clearly must operate in the
diachronic dimension in discourse?].
What notion of the subject ensues? The linguistic
definition of I as signifier suggests only a
'shifter or indicative', where grammatical subject
of the statement designates the subject — the
enunciating subject. However this 'does not
signify him'. There may be no signifier of the
enunciating subject in a statement, and there may
be other signifiers that do not refer just to
enunciation but more to the 'first person
singular', or its plural versions. In French, the
enunciating subject might appear in the signifier
'ne', an expletive [apparently it can be used to
indicate 'not but'and thus to mean a particular I,
or a particular person being criticised — obscure
example with lots of subjunctive verbs, the
difference between 'they could not but come to
vilify me' and 'they come to vilify me'. Maybe in
the second version we lose the specifics of the
case?].
The issue is to work out who is speaking in
psychoanalysis, how the unconscious can present
itself as a subject, in cases where the actual
patient 'doesn't know what he is saying'. This
emerges crucially in the space between two
subjects and what is said there. The Freudian
subject shows 'occultation by an ever purer
signifier' (678). We know this from slips of the
tongue or jokes, or even more elusive forms of
elision. It is been ignored by existential
psychology though ['the hunt for Dasein'].
Discourse can be seen as offering a series of cuts
[meaning interventions?], especially one that puts
a bar between signifier and signified. Here there
might be some sort of preconscious subject at
work. We might think it worth interrupting this
discourse, but psychoanalysis is already an
interruption, 'a break in a false discourse',
empty speech. The signifying chain 'verifies the
structure of the subject as a discontinuity in the
real', hence psychoanalysis's interest in 'making
holes in meaning' to energise its own discourse.
We see this in the famous statement by Freud:
'Where it was, shall I be', [apparently 'a famous
declaration by Freud about the relation between
the unconscious and the conscious', according to
an {unlinkable} Encyclopaedia of Lacanian
Psychoanalysis]. In French translation, we
get a sense of 'where it was just now, where it
was for a short while', implying that 'I can...
come into being by disappearing from my
statement...'. This is 'an enunciation that
denounces itself, a statement that renounces
itself… an opportunity that self-destructs',
leaving an idea of what must be beyond human
being.
In a dream analyzed by Freud, we find a dead
father returning as a ghost. The image has pathos
because the father did not know he was dead. This
resembles the subject's relation to the signifier
— we have an enunciation which casts the status of
the subject into doubt. Perhaps none of us exist
except in so far as no one else tells us the truth
of which we are unaware. In the dream, the patient
preferred to die rather than tell the truth to his
father, showing himself to be a proper subject,
moving from 'where it was (to be)' (679). The
subject comes on the scene as 'being of nonbeing',
always risking his sense of himself being
abolished by knowledge, [real nasty form of
alienation this] and situated in a discourse 'in
which it is death that sustains existence' [a
massive generalization indeed]. Hegel admitted
that his scheme ending in absolute knowledge
risked madness. The Freudian example above checks
that by exposing the inner 'vanity' of claiming
knowledge in discourse.
At the root of the question is a difference
between the dialectics of desire in the subject
and in knowledge. In Hegel, desire is what keeps
subject building on antiquated knowledge. This is
the cunning of reason [where subjects think they
act from specific personal impulses but serve the
more general purposes]. If this desire to know
gets 'bound up' with the Others desire, we can get
'the mobility out of which revolutions arise'.
Freud has biologistic arguments, but a full grasp
of the death instinct is crucial to understand
them, despite the current rejection by others. We
should understand it as 'the metaphor of the
return to the inanimate' (680). It refers to a
margin beyond life that we recognise from our
language use [something external and post-dating
us?]. At this margin, both parts of and the whole
body take up a 'signifying position'. [the body
puts itself on the agenda as it were, makes us
fully aware of its constraints?] External objects
can become 'the prototype of the body's
signifierness', rather than being understood as
partial identifications. Freud's concept Trieb
should be understood as a drive, or even a drift,
and urge or pulsion, but not an instinct. We can
understand the form of knowledge normally thought
of as instinct as 'a kind of [experiential]
knowledge' which can never be fully articulated,
but this is not what Freud is interested in. His
analysis is based on a discourse which is unknown
to the subject. The unconscious has very little
indeed to do with physiology.
Scientific psychology has contributed nothing to
psychoanalysis, even in its study of sexuality.
Psychoanalysis concerns both 'the reality of the
body and of its imaginary mental schema'.
Psychological development traces at best the ways
in which 'fragmented integrations' emerge. It is
better understood as 'a heraldry of the body'.
There are implications for the privileged position
of the phallus — never just a part object.
Criticising scientific psychology is the reason
for drawing upon Hegel's work, not a full
attachment to the Hegelian dialectic. There is no
'logicizing reduction'in desire, no way to reduce
desire to demand or need. Desire is articulated,
but not as a psychological discourse [he hints
that it might be better understood in an ethical
one] (681).
We can discuss these arguments by looking at a
topology, graph [diagram in the usual sense, but
maybe with deleuzian hints as well] that he has
worked on. There are different levels to analytic
experience. We can see how desire is linked to a
subject who is articulated by the signifier.
The signifying chain runs from S to S'. The other
vector runs oddly from right to left [I'm going to
use words like barred or split subject {of which
more below} and Delta -- the sign,apparently
for the 'primitive subject of intention'
[according to the Nidia
Reading Group piece, the {infantile?}
subject acting on needs]. When they intersect,
there is a '"button tie"' [apparently as in
quilting] . One of the things this shows is how
'the signifier stops the otherwise indefinite
sliding of signification' [because it bumps into
something that is of unconscious importance?
Because it encounters otherness that helps it
confirm and complete as below? First one then the
other? ]. These intersections are commonly buried
underneath empty or pre-text. As a sentence
develops, it crosses this other vector twice,
finally closing the signification, but also
showing a moment of anticipation which can have a
retroactive effect. There is also a synchronic
structure of metaphor, emerging with infants at
the very moment at which they can disconnect the
thing from its most obvious characteristics [the
example is the playful statement that the dog goes
meow, the cat goes woof woof]. Here the sign
becomes a signifier, and reality gives way to 'the
sophistics of signification' (682). [I think this
means that there is more flexibility than would be
provided by simple mathematical combinations of
the points, as in the 'topology of a four corners
game']. Similarly, there is a need for 'multiple
objectifications of the same thing' to be
verified.
We can examine in more detail the two points of
intersection:
From what I can see, other symbols are used to
illustrate other possible problems to solve, using
the underlying structure. So, according to Ross
: I(O) = ego ideal; s(O) = signification of the
other (should be O-type other surely?); e=ego,
i(o) = specular image; O=the Other. [I now think
the difference is that the diagrams are offered in
at least two version -- those I found
on the Web, are the ones from Seminar
VI: Desire and its Interpretion I am
reading them in Ecrits which is later. I
hope the terms might just reflect different levels
of translation? -- in Ecrits
we have m not e and i(a) not i(o) -- so English
versus French versions of ego/moi and
other/autre?]
The point on the right [the first one in this
back-to-front scheme], O, provides us with 'the
treasure trove of signifiers'. These signifiers
need not relate to codes or things at all, but
work only because they are organized as binaries,
in opposition to each other. At the second
point,s(O), signification of the Other, signification
is finished [objectified?]; so one junction is a
locus or place and the other a moment in a
process, a 'punctuation'. Both depend on the
signifier, necessary or required, developed from
'the hole in the real', the one that reveals
concealment, and the other that attempts to
re-categorize. The subject submits to the
signifier [and this is shown by the arrow between
left and right points]. ['Voice' is
specified as a particular outcome of this
process?]. This is however virtually a circular
process because an established assertion is
initially unable to focus on anything to gain
certainty. Instead it seems to offer an
anticipation of being able to compose a signifier
[which may be a-signifying in deleuzian terms?]
The subject makes an assertion but one which
cannot be closed off and made certain: it cannot
avoid a certain 'anticipation in the composition
of the signifier'(683)[ not least because all
sorts of signifying chains are implied?] . The
closure is provided by the confirmation of the
Other in completing the signification? This is a
circular process because an established
assertion is initially unable to focus on
anything to gain certainty. Instead it seems to
offer an anticipation of being able to compose a
signifier [which may be a-signifying as yet in
deleuzian terms?]. Completing the process
requires 'the signifying battery installed in A
[or O in this diagram]' (683) the symbolic Other
[technically the symbolic locus of the Other].
In this way, the Other can appear as a pure
subject [e in the above, m in my version] as in
modern game theory. [?] It helps the real
subject calculate combinations, without taking
into account any 'so-called subjective (… that
is psychological)' factors. However, there is
still a distance between the real subject and
the signifying circle, a lack, since the subject
thinks of himself only as something that has
been subtracted from the circle.[ Something
located on a line between the signified Other
and the ego ideal? Which is the same as the
ideal Other?]
The Other is the 'site of the pure
subject of the signifier', and has a dominant
position even before that is consolidated by
social relations, because the Other provides a
code within which acceptable speech is possible.
This is simply ignored in the 'platitude of modern
information theory' [with its separation of S and
R] because to use a code already implies that we
have received that from the Other, 'even the
message he himself sends'. Messages like this
constitute the subject. In psychosis, this sort of
communication with the Other takes a pure form.
The Other also guarantees the truth. Speech itself
is so deceptive that sincerity is not separable
from simulation ['the feint']. Animals can change
direction as a lure when hunted, but this is
different from human activity: 'an animal does not
feign feigning' [it cannot play at the second
level, where true tracks are to be taken as false]
nor can animals deliberately efface their tracks,
because to do so would imply that they are able to
subjectively interact with signifiers. For speech
to become true speech, it requires 'the locus of
the Other, the Other as witness' (684), something
clearly located elsewhere. This is the real
guarantee of truth, not its simple correspondence
with reality, and the origin of fictional truths.
Our first words 'decree, legislate, authorise, and
are an oracle'. They convey authority on a real
other. This is the process at work in the
formation of the ego ideal, and also the first
form of alienation in this first identification.
We see this with graph II. Note that the barred
subject is now the origin of something and not a
product. What the graph also depicts is 'a
retroversion effect'. The subject becomes
something after [coming to recognise himself
in?]stages or events, although this can be
anticipated in the future perfect tense [he will
have been something].
This is also an important kind of misrecognition,
one which is essential to knowing oneself. We see
this in the mirror stage, where an anticipated
image which we see in the mirror comes to meet us.
The anticipated image is all that we can be sure
of. As with the mirror stage, we have to reject
the notion of the 'supposedly "autonomous ego"',
and the attempts to bolster it in a psychology
devoted to adjusting people to American life.
The altered image of the body becomes 'the
paradigms of all the forms of resemblance' (685).
It also involves us in narcissism, because we
project this image onto the world of objects. This
is also the basis for aggression.
The ideal ego [I(O)] becomes fixed. This fixity
takes place in a situation of mastery and rivalry,
but this is disguised in ordinary consciousness,
where the indisputable existence of our ego is not
seen as emerging from a process, but as something
transcendent, unary. This also makes it inevitably
relativized, in a form of permanent
misrecognition, or imaginary process
The same process can be seen in the connections
between specular image and constitution of the ego
[in the additional vectors added to graph I --
i(o) to e in this version]. The vector here is
'one way but doubly articulated', as a short
circuit from below, the longer loop between the
barred subject and the ideal object, and from
above [from s(O) to O]. [Note that O and the
barred subject are still the sources.] What all
this means is that the ego is not just constituted
as the speaking I of discourse but also as 'a
metonymy of its signification' when it engages in
more concrete relations with objects and others.
[so these concrete relations also take the form of
linguistic activity]. What people like Descartes
have not grasped is that the signifier plays a
crucial role, but that this is less visible than
the apparently transparent activities of the I in
action.[what does the I think with exactly?]
Lacan thinks there is an inherent aggressiveness
in these relations between self and other object,
that the relation between things that resemble
each other is by no means balanced or in
equilibrium, as in the [universal? inevitable?]
relationship between master and slave: we can also
find ruses of reason. In Hegel, this is a myth of
slavery leading to freedom. What energizes this
struggle for dominance is [really] 'a
struggle of pure prestige' (686). Life itself may
be at stake [always for Lacan?]. The struggles
also energize 'specular capture'. We need also to
consider death, which would obviously cancel any
advantages of slavery and must be regulated.
Therefore a symbolic pact both precedes and
perpetuates violence, dominating the imaginary
elements. This argument raises yet a further
problem, though because death can both be brought
by life and can itself bring life.
Hegel can be criticized for omitting any notion of
a social bond that would keep the whole system
going. What makes the dialectic symptomatic and
'indicative of repression' is the theme of the
cunning of reason [which introduces some social
dynamism again?]. The surrender of autonomy
['giving up jouissance'] will eventually lead to
freedom, and this is the lure of slavery, both
politically and psychologically. The slave can
always split work and freedom [in his own practice
as well?]. This cunning of reason is also found in
an individual myth 'characteristic of obsessives,
obsessive structures being known to be common
among the intelligentsia' [with a baffling bit
about professorial bad faith, which is limited in
its reassurances by not guaranteeing jouissance,
although there are some consolations in waiting
for the death of Masters].
It is possible to externalize the whole game by
adopting the locus of the Other [adopting research
mode about oneself?] And this results in 'a
"self-consciousness" for which death is but a
joke' (687) [We also learn that most professors
cope with ritualism, an 'educative banality': we
seem to be learning rather a lot about French
professors here]. The message seems to be that
Freudian desire is behind everything. Professional
psychology professors also are mostly concerned
with 'obtaining a respectable position' and thus
must reject a 'ludicrous' proposition that the
unconscious has 'roots in language'. However, the
mechanism by which needs turn into sometimes
discordant demands still requires 'the defiles of
the signifier'.
The same might be said for biologistic accounts
that insist that subsequent dependence and stress
arise from the initial inability to move as an
infant: this dependence is still 'maintained by
universe of language'. Needs are diversified and
operationalized through language and thus become
subject to desire. That that has led to mistaken
adverse moral and theological commentary about
desire, even Sartre's position that desire is only
a 'useless passion'. Instead, desire should be
seen as having the 'most natural function'
[presumably sexual]. It is affected by the
'accidents of the subject's history', especially
contingent trauma, but there are also 'structural
elements' operating despite these accidents. They
can have an 'inharmonious, unexpected, and
recalcitrant impact', and we see this in the
flawed personal sexuality encountered by Freud.
The real point of the Oedipus myth in Freud was
not to explain sexual rivalry, but to ask an
important question — 'What is a Father?' (688).
Freud actually insisted that he meant '"the dead
Father"', and this is what Lacan revives with his
concept of the '"Name–of–the–Father"'. In actual
societies, even 'among certain primitive peoples'
it's never been possible to actually pin down
patriarchal authority. Perhaps we will have to
wait until widespread artificial insemination,
especially of 'women who are at odds with
phallicism'. The 'Oedipal show' certainly does
depend on the society which has a sense of the
tragic. [Typical asides!]
We can start with the Other 'as the locus of the
signifier'. There can be no other signifier [like
God?] There can be no metalanguage of the Other.
All laws are in effect justified on this basis.
The Father is the original representative of the
Law. Why should this be, when a more promising
Other is obviously the Mother? It is because our
own desires take shape through the Other's desire,
[not our own for our mothers?] despite an
initial problem of generating subjective needs.
[entirely subjective before the discovery of the
Other via the mirror stage?].It would depend on
the relation between desire, demand, and need.
When demand separates from need, desire 'begins to
take shape' (689). Demand can become unconditional
only if it is related to the Other. Demand is
necessary because needs by themselves have 'no
universal satisfaction (this is called
"anxiety")'. The Other can, however, satisfy needs
through 'whimsy'. This is what makes the Other
look omnipotent, but it also introduces 'the
necessity that the Other be bridled by the Law'.
However, desire appears to be independent of the
Law, indeed as the source of the Law. This happens
because desire reverses the usual unconditional
demand for love, which subjects us to the Other
and becomes an 'absolute condition', detached from
any normal social situation. This helps reduce the
anxiety in a way that need cannot do. The effect
was noted in psychoanalytic work on the
transitional object. However, such an object is
only an emblem, and causes desire only in
accordance with 'the structure of fantasy' [or,
indeed, of phantasy?]. When humans lack knowledge
of their desire, it is not so much what they
demand, but more of from where desire originates.
This suggests that the unconscious is '(the)
discourse about [of] the Other', and in French
there is a stronger notion that 'of' implies
'objective determination'. But there is also
subjective determination for grammarians, meaning
that 'it is qua Other that man desires' (690),
extending the scope of human passion. [Only in
modern societies with subjects positively expected
to be individualist and autonomous?]
The Other is able to pose a question [as well as
giving authoritative answers]. — "Che vuoi?,"
"What do you want?," [So why put it in Italian in
the first place you knob — no doubt an allusion to
an Italian writer]. Guided by psychoanalysis,
subjects can come to see path of a desire,
initially in the form '"What does he [the
psychoanalyst] want from me?"Thus we come to graph
three. [Note that the diamond-shaped is a Fregeian
symbol meaning multiple combinations, 'designed to
allow for 101 different readings' (691)]. This
extra circuit explains the dilemma and
misrecognition that a subject faces when he
considers 'the question of his essence'. He might
not be aware of this misrecognition, say when he
develops a desire for what he does not actually
want. It is common to attribute such desires to an
ego that operates with intermittent desires. The
same device also 'protects himself from his
desire' (691).
[ d
indicates desire, the lozenge is a symbol
indicating multiple
relations,apparently, in Frege's algebra].
This case shows that, often,
self-consciousness is discovered only via 'another
channel' this can include a structure of fantasy
towards objects produced by 'a fading or eclipse
of the subject', like the splitting that is
experienced because of subordination to the
signifier. The multiple connections between barred
subject and other is what results. That term [top
of graph 3] serves as an 'algorithm', an 'atom' of
the signifying system is not to be read as a
metalanguage, nor as something transcendent,
despite informing all the analogous relations
depicted elsewhere. Instead, we should see the
other connections as 'indices of an absolute
signification', which [apparently] will serve to
cover even examples of fantasy [without literal or
real objects or others?].
We see how desire adjusts to fantasy, the same way
as the ego does with the body image, although the
graph also illustrates different routes [one is
apparently the inversion of the other]. Fantasy is
'really the "stuff of the I that is primally
repressed, because it can be indicated only in the
fading of enunciation' [pass -- because
conventional enunciation cannot grasp it? Because
of censorship?].
Nevertheless we are now in a position to see how
the signifying chain takes part in the unconscious
and in primal repression, so that it can take on
the appearance of something subjective. We need to
do this to explain cases where subjects cannot
just be seen as things that utter statements,
especially in cases where subjects do not even
know they are speaking [in the classic
psychoanalytic encounter]. This is why we needed
the notion of a drive, 'pinpointing' the 'organic,
oral, anal, and so on' elements that also explains
such speech [but not in an adequate way?].
We are back to French terms [dunno why I just
didn't just scan the diags in the book!] in
this version of the complete graph, below, which
adds a layer to the top of the graph with a
cluster on the right to include Demand and its
multiple relations with the barred Subject and the
interaction of that node with the cluster on the
left with S and the barred Other [signifier of
lack in the Other, it seems] The drive is
equivalent to [absolute human] demand without the
subject, but it's necessary to include demand in
order to distinguish the 'grammatical artifice'
which separates out from the organic functions of
the drive, and this would explain certain
reversals of articulation between sources and
objects discussed by Freud.
The emergence of distinct erogenous zones in
drives is the result of another cut [development,
further extension], based on some sort of analogy
with anatomical margins or borders like the lips
or the anus. This extends to erogenous objects
like the faeces or the phallus '(as an imaginary
object)' [the original boundary is the 'penile
groove']. Lacan also wants to include 'the
phoneme, the gaze, the voice… And the nothing)'
(693). What links these objects is that they 'have
no specular image' therefore no otherness, and it
is this that makes them the very key to apparently
self conscious subjectivity which claims the same.
Again we see the phenomena in the claim that we
can designate ourself as full subjects in a
statement. [Very baffling here with an example
that doesn't help about a writers block connected
to the fantasy of producing a turd. Maybe it is
that we think that the products of erogenous
drives are uniquely subjective, perhaps because
they are so private and secretive?]. These objects
cannot be grasped in mirrors, but they are
specular images nevertheless, just ones that seem
to be produced by mysterious significant forces.
The term on the top left, signifier of a lack in
the Other, produces a kind of closing of
signification, but from unconscious enunciation.
[Because something has been subtracted from the
limitless signifiers in the Other?] Nevertheless,
it is the Other that still gives value to this
sort of signification, [as in the bit earlier
where the Other is asking those important
questions]. The whole top section extends such
significance to the interactions in the lower
chain, 'in other words, in terms of the drive'.We
can do no better in grasping this role, because
'there is no Other of the Other'. At least this
helps psychoanalysts, who try to answer the
question of what the Other wants from me, because
there is no ultimate truth they have to maintain.
The dead Father in the Freudian myth is situated
in zone S of the barred Other, clearly a signifier
of a lack in the Other. Usually, myths produce
various rites, including psychoanalysis — which is
not the Oedipal rite. This zone articulates
something, is a signifier — and 'a signifier is
what represents the subject to another signifier'
(694). [It is possible here that 'signifier'
refers to a source of signification rather than to
a concrete element of a sign?]. All the other
signifiers also represent the subject to this
latter signifier [I am not at all sure why — only
if the Other is being used in the construction of
a consistent subject?]. There must be a signifier
to which the subject is represented, or they
represent nothing. [A further example of the
necessary confirmatory role of the Other?].
The 'battery of signifiers'is complete in itself,
requiring its representative function to be
depicted by a line drawn from the circle.
[Mystifyingly, and lying no doubt in Frege], 'This
can be symbolised by the inheritance of a (-1) in
the set of signifiers'. [Is this the same as the
empty signifier in Barthes?] Apparently, this is
in operation whenever a proper name is pronounced.
[After some mysterious algebra], the subject
misses something by thinking that he is
'exhaustively accounted for by his cogito — he is
missing what is unthinkable about him'. [Really
difficult here. A bit of set theory saying that a
set cannot be known by any element it
contains? — it seems to have something to do
with subjects lacking proper names, possibly
except when others award them?]. As a result, the
[normal, or subject of the statement] subject
cannot know where he comes from: he does not even
know he is alive [referring back to the example of
subjects not knowing they are dead until someone
tells them]. How can he prove it to himself? What
am I?
We can at least prove to the Other that he exists,
taking parallels with arguments about the
existence of God, which were replaced only by the
practice of loving him rather than logically
demonstrating his presence. The only solution
seems to involve Jouissance. Without such
Jouissance, the universe would be in vain. This
jouissance is accessible to me, I am responsible
for it, but it is usually forbidden to me. This
forbidding is not just a result of social
repression, and nor can we blame some divine
Other, which leaves only the I to blame (695), for
example in the notion of original sin, which gets
us back to the Oedipal myth again.
By contrast, there is the castration complex,
which serves as a 'mainspring' of subversion.
Again Freud was the first to note this. It has
rarely been properly explored in psychoanalysis,
however, and has been replaced by a more
Philistine general psychology. What it actually
does is to constitute a gap in the subject, which
is usually avoided in conventional thought. In
this gap, 'logic is disconcerted' because the
imaginary produces a disjunction in the symbolic.
We should use this process to try to create an
analytic method 'from a sort of calculus'.
[Then a diversion into rejecting religious
interpretations of the signifier of lack in the
Other. Lévi-Strauss must also be rejected for
seeing this residual religiosity as a zero symbol:
it is the lack of this zero symbol that is more
important. There is an obscure justification for
using a particular symbol, the square root of -1,
also written as i]
Jouissance is forbidden to however speaks,
prohibited by the Law. If it were lawful, we would
get subjects obeying the lawful definition, which
would not be jouissance. The Law bars the subject
in order to bar access to jouissance. This takes
the form of developing lawful and limiting
pleasure, at least as far as not tolerating
incest. This was not just Freud following
tradition, because it helps solve a problem with
the castration complex.
Jouissance is symbolized by the phallus, and it is
that that makes it potentially infinite.
Prohibition must appear as a mark which requires a
sacrifice. The phallus, 'the image of the penis'
becomes negative as a specular image and that
helps it represent the potentials and prohibitions
of jouissance. This is an additional imaginary
function, not the symbolism of sacrifice.
Freud saw this imaginary function as producing a
narcissistic stance towards objects. So the
specular image shows the 'transfusion' of bodily
libido towards objects [hence a bit I missed out
above that the phallus gives body to jouissance].
However some parts of libido is preserved from
immersion in objects, becoming autoeroticism [then
a weird bit about the form it takes as 'a "pointy
extremity"' which helps develop the fantasy of it
'falling off'. This also provides a separation
from the specular image and is a 'prototype' for
later conceptions of objects].
This is how the erectile organ symbolizes the
place of jouissance, not as itself, not 'even as
an image', but as something missing from the
desired image. This is what he means by the symbol
the square root of -1, as important in
signification, and this is how jouissance itself
becomes a missing signifier (-1).
The real point seems to be to explain the
reduction of the prohibition of jouissance to
[prohibition of] autoeroticism. This is not just
'philosophical ascesis'. Nor was Freud advocating
bodily regulation [of masturbation?]. This
analysis does help explain the 'original character
of the guilt generated by such practices' (697).
Guilt arises from an awareness that jouissance
generated by the proper use of the organ still has
a remainder, and it is an example of the power of
the signifier to prohibit objects. It is not just
a matter of puritanical education or purifying
traumas such as circumcision.
The image of the phallic can be imaginary but
become symbolic. Although it is based on something
negative, and although it fills in some absent
aspects, it does take on a positive aspect as
well, 'the symbolic phallus that cannot be
negativized' , the very signifier of jouissance.
It is that that explains the differences of female
sexuality, and the greater tendency of males
toward perversion.
Perversion arises when a particular object
dominates fantasy, even more than routine
sexuality [which is what jouissance seems to be
implying here and above]. Object become
substitutes for the barred Other. This produces
the peculiarity that 'the subject here makes
himself the instrument of the Other's jouissance'.
[Then some difficult stuff about neurosis.] The
gist of it is that's 'the Other's lack' is
identified with 'the Other's demand' (698), so the
others demand becomes an object for fantasy. The
stress on demand explains the prevalence of
frustration [of demand?] as a disguise for
anxiety. Anxiety is really induced by the desire
of the Other. This is easy to spot if the phobic
object is sufficient to cover the whole of the
desire of the Other. Other neuroses, however make
it more difficult to recognize this link. Analysts
have to suggest that there is a connection between
fantasy and the desire of the Other. This provides
two kinds of neurosis. First obsessives attempt to
completely negate the desire of the Other, by
developing a fantasy in which the subject cannot
vanish completely. Second, hysterics sustained
desire in their fantasies by attaching it to a
lack of satisfaction. [Could be completely wrong].
The 'image of the ideal Father is a neurotic's
fantasy'. We wish that the ideal Mother would tone
down her desires [she is the real Other of
demand]. But the Father is supposed to turn a
blind eye to desires in order to fulfill his true
function — 'fundamentally to unite (and not to
oppose) a desire to the Law'. This is not always
clear [!]. The neurotic wishes for the dead Father
to become the master of desire.
This has implications for transference and the
neutrality of the analyst. Neutrality is more
suitable in the case of hysteria, as long as
neutrality does not frighten off the patient
altogether, and as long as the patient is not
suspicious of the role of the analyst's desire in
neutrality. This offers an insight into the
analyst's desire and how he must necessarily
appear imperfect and not masterly. This is as
important as the deliberate insistence on
ignorance of each subject to comes for analysis,
'an ever renewed ignorance [the prat has the term
'nescience' before] so that no one is
considered a typical case' (699).
In fantasy, perverts can imagine they are the
Other. Neurotics can imagine they are a pervert in
order to control the Other [!]. This explains
elements of perversion in neurosis. Both perverts
and neurotics use desire [indirectly, attributing
it to the Other?] as 'a defence against going
beyond the limit in jouissance'.
Fantasies can also contain 'the imaginary function
of castration' although in a hidden and complex
form. [Then a completely idiotic and obscure
allusion to the relation between Alcibiades and
Socrates].In the case of women, [which evidently
has something to do with the allusion], the very
absence of the penis makes her 'the phallus, the
object of desire' [with a weird bit about how you
can show the power of this absence by having women
wear dildoes which will produce an arousing effect
on men]. [Back to Alcibiades and Socrates, at
greater length]. Apparently it all ends in an
argument that the neurotic undergoes imaginary
castration but this only sustains a strong ego: it
follows that strengthening this ego in
conventional psychology is completely misleading].
[After more obscure reasoning], castration is what
regulates desire. We see this in fantasies where
the barred subject and actual objects are joined
together, in a way which becomes almost
transcendental, guaranteeing the jouissance of the
Other. This fantasy chain is then understood as
the Other's Law [pass].
To come to terms with the Other requires us
experiencing both the demand and the will of the
Other. Then we have to realize ourselves as
objects, or otherwise 'satisfy the will to
castrate inscribed in the Other' (700). [Lacan
claims to identify these themes in Greek tragedy
or Christian despair]. This involves an initial
refusal of [simple] jouissance in order to get to
this more complex form [which might even include
subordination to the Law?].
In an end note, Lacan says he added the stuff
about Copernicus later on, as with the further
consideration of castration. He wants to reply to
a colleague who accused him of being a-human, and
finds amusement in a Marxist critic possibly
denouncing him as destined for hell. There are a
couple of other in jokes as well, page 701.
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