Lacan

Question 1

Mirror Phase (from 1938) - Lacan

Answer 1

1. Infant sees image of itself – actual or another child. Child identifies with this EXTERNAL.
2. Child is captivated in the image.
3. Register is the Imaginary.
4. Ego is constituted by an alienating identification. (Answers Freuds 1914 question about cause of ego formation (from paper on Narcisism)
5. Paranoia ¬– reveals the truth of the structure of human knowledge as external, imposed, boundary between self and the world dissolves.

Question 2

Falsifying Ego

Answer 2

1. Hypnotised person told no furniture in the room will rationalise their movements to avoid furniture
2. Freud and Lacan see this as basic characteristic of the ego

Question 3

Symbolic Register

Answer 3

1. Born into a world of language that is imposed on us – even given our name
2. Structures our thoughts and identity
3. Thus language is an alienating force.

Question 4

Priority of the Signifier - Lacan

Answer 4

1. Meaning of words are not transparent – carry other hidden associations,
2. Language is a structure, speech is an act (Speech and Language, 1953)
3. The act of speech places the actor within the symbolic order
4. Symptoms revealed by exposing hidden associations and resolved by finding the repressed aspects of language -

Question 5

Ego Ideal/Ideal Ego - Lacan

Answer 5

1. Identification with the ideal frees oneself from the sole identification with the image – therefore a symbolic as well as imaginary dimension to identification
2. Ideal ego – the image you assume – I drive a fast car to be like a racing driver
3. Ego ideal – the place I want in the symbolic order; who am I trying to impress by driving fast
4. Me - what do I want to mean to them, to myself

Question 6

The Imaginary, Symbolic and the Real

Answer 6

1. Imaginary – that within the specular region
2. Symbolic – most of that is around us has meaning/significance.
3. The real is that which is not symbolised, beyond language
4. What we call “reality” is the imaginary and the symbolic

Question 7

Ego and Subject

Answer 7

1. Freud – dream is a wish fulfilment but for who? The wish had been censored, repressed by the person
2. Lacan – ego and the subject are separate. Ego is imaginary, subject is symbolic. The latter will repress the wish if it does not fit within the desired place in the symbolic order??

Question 8

Oedipus Complex in Lacan

Answer 8

1. Mother has a desire – this is the Phallus
2. Child tries to be that object of desire, seduce the mother with games etc - but cannot be
   a. Tries to be the phallus for the mother at the imaginary stage
   b. Progress is for the phallus to become symbolic, symbolise that which is missing - desire
   c. This is “the name of the father” – a name because it is symbolic; not necessarily the literal father
   d. It separates child from mother allowing progression to the next stage unless development is arrested.
   e. Can move beyond oedipal stage by transforming the imaginary acts of seduction into the symbolic acts of wider society (like gift exchange in Levi Strauss)
   f. The “name of the father” conveys to the child that there is a symbolic order beyond the child’s imaginary relationship with the mother, and role is to take place within that order and so must renounce the impossibility of being the phallus for the mother
   g. Neurotics have not made this transition
   h. Psychosis – name of the father is foreclosed, i.e. rejected not repressed – therefore no signifier and so no signified; therefore a delusion is an attempt to create a signified in its absence, to create meaning and sense where one has none. Hence paranoia, ideas of filiation,
3. (Me: mistaken view of desire and its impossibility – latter is grounded in impermanence together with impotence to achieve universal, fixed meaning)
4. Sexist? – man wants to have a phallus, woman to be a phallus – i.e. to be a signifier of that which is lost
5. Link to death wish, desire/wants

Question 9

Desire/Wishes – Lacan

Answer 9

1. Need/demand is eclipsed by desire
2. I demand water in an act of speech, but beneath this is a desire to be loved – show me you love me by giving me water
3. Needs/demands may be fulfilled, but that which is desired is out of reach (real?)
4. Desire is the maternal phallus, therefore the penis plus concept of a lack
5. Role of analysis is to tease out what is desired (unconscious) by analysis of demands (conscious)
6. Revealed by slips of tongue, redundancy in language (focus on redundancy rather than message),

Question 10

Desire/Wishes – Me on Lacan

Answer 10

1. Desire is for a sense of fulfilment and for a permanence in this feeling
2. Fulfillment comes from meaning – taking one’s place in the symbolic order, being seen and understood as one sees one’s ideal self, being loved for this by self and others
3. Needs/wants may be a subsititute for this, but also are temporal, embedded at a point in time, hence insecure – we desire permanence
4. Hence a death wish – this really is a desire for stasis on one’s own terms
5. Link to Buddhist concept of clinging and suffering
6. Link to the Bhagavad Gita – fulfilment in one’s actions not outcomes

Question 11

Diagram of Desire - list of terms

Answer 11

1. I(A) – the identifications we make, drawn in part from the phantasy
2. s(A) – those significations that are established for the child
3. A is the otherness of language and its symbols
4. m is “moi!, the ego i(a) is the image of the other
5. d is desire – that which is not understood, hence not signified other than by the phallus
6. designates the drive, imposed by parents (not biological but demands)
7. S(A) (barred A) indicates there is a signifier for the impossibility of signifying that which cannot be signified
8. S◊D - Phantasy –

Question 12

S◊D - Phantasy (barred S)

Answer 12

1. language is alien to us and so cannot signify our identity,
2. thus we substitute some part of the body as a reminder of our passage into the symbolic, our acceptance of language that means we cannot adequately signify ourselves.
3. This is the phantasy that gives us some stability, a place in the symbolic order. Lacan calls it “absolute signification”.
4. Antigone – follows desire to bury brother while Creon gives rational reasons to show why not; these are rejected – ethical question: am I true to my desire (me: identity, values, phantasy)

Question 13

Transference for Lacan

Answer 13

1. Alienation from knowledge - A dream for example reveals knowledge that seems alien to us – assume the analyst is the knowing subject
2. Separation from the symbolic – we see language will not convey our desire or identity, so we embrace more the phantasy object and so separate from the symbolic chain

Question 14

Jouissance (1970s)

Answer 14

1. Too much excitation, stimulation or too little
2. Experienced mostly as unbearable suffering, but by the unconscious drives as satisfaction
3. Thus we repeat actions that cause us to suffer
4. In the paranoid, it is identified as the “other”
5. Education, parenting etc regulates jouissance, gives order and meaning to actions, reduces excitation
6. Remains in edges of the body (sex) and in symptoms
7. Sexuation – women accept the lack that is created by the castration complex and use it as a source of jouissance, to try to incorporate that which is beyond the symbolic order into their lives; men embrace the symbolic order, though fantasise about the tyrant who is beyond it (from Freud’s mythic origin of society from Totem and Taboo).
8. Lalangue – a signifier unlinked to others, a one, an amalgam of libido and signifiers that produces jouissance (Me:like S(A), the mystical, sublime, that connection with the real that can be felt at times but not named?)