perverts guide to jacques lacan

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Perverts Guide to Jacques Lacan

Presenter

Ted Lechman for the Greater Rochester [Bertrand] Russell Set

June 9, 2011 Writers and Books, Rochester, NY

Further References and Suggested Readings available upon request [email protected]

…. Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable. And at the same time this desire lies at the origin of every variety of animation. If being were only what it is, there wouldn’t even be room to talk about it. Being comes into existence as an exact function of this lack. Being attains a sense of self in relation to being as a function of this lack, in the experience of desire. – Lacan, Seminar II, p.223 – 224 (Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, WW Norton:1991).

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Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan:

Outline

1. Rationale 2. Structuralism 3. Lacan versus Ego Psychology 4. The Return to Freud 5. The Mirror Stage of Development 6. The RIS Matheme 7. The Divided Subject, Jouissance and petit Objet a 8. Lacans Theory of Discourse 9. The Master Discourse 10. The Uniersity or Obsessives Discourse 11. The Analysts Discourse 12. The Hysteric Discourse

Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Rationale

"as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency."

"Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire - it tells you how to desire."

Slavoj Žižek (Lacanian Psychoanalyst/ Philosopher)

"...the subject which will be of most importance politically is Mass Psychology. ... The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. ... As yet there is only one country which has succeeded in creating this politician‘s paradise.‖

Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society, 1960.

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Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Structuralism

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Michel Foucault, Jacque Lacan, Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes

Structuralism argues that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure—modeled on language—that is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas or the imagination—the "third order".

Four ideas are common to the various forms of structuralism. 1. a structure determines the position of each element of a whole. 2. every system has a structure. 3. structural laws deal with co-existence rather than change. 4. structures are the "real things" that lie beneath the surface or the

appearance of meaning.

Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Lacan versus Ego Psychology

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Ego Psychology • originated with Anna Freud‘s work on Defense Mechanisms • Popularized in the US by Heinz Hartmann • Focus on correction of Automatic thought patterns (CBT) to facilitate

adaptation • Émigré Psychoanalysts‘s ―Transference‖ of their problem of cultural

adaptation to 50‘s American society.

Lacan • Focus on ego and adaptation as central betrayal of Freudian subject

of the Unconscious. • Return to Freud‘s ―structuralism‖ of ego/id/superego from 1920‘s

―Return to the Pleasure Principle”.

Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Mirror Stage of Development

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Human infants pass through a stage in which an external image of the body (reflected in a mirror, or represented to the infant through the mother or primary caregiver) produces a psychic response that gives rise to the mental representation of an "I". The infant identifies with the image, which serves as a gestalt of the infant's emerging perceptions of selfhood, but because the image of a unified body does not correspond with the underdeveloped infant's physical vulnerability and weakness, this imago is established as an Ideal-I toward which the subject will perpetually strive throughout his or her life. For Lacan, the mirror stage establishes the ego as fundamentally dependent upon external objects, on an other. As the so-called "individual" matures and enters into social relations through language, this "other" will be elaborated within social and linguistic frameworks that will give each subject's personality (and his or her neuroses and other psychic disturbances) its particular characteristics.

Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Mirror Stage of Development

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Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Lacan‘s R-I-S Matheme

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Freudian Structure of Superego/Ego/Id relative to Conscious/Preconscious/Unconscious.

In Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of personality, the preconscious mind is part of the conscious mind and includes our memory. These memories are not conscious, but we can retrieve them to conscious awareness at any time.


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The Symbolic

Language, Law, Culture,

Science,

the necessary,

the analytic

Truth-Falsehood,

Contradiction,

Paradox, Sin,

Heresy,

Ritual Uncleanliness

The Imaginary The Ego,

Our Story/Narrative

Deceit, Simulation,

Lying, Shame,

Humiliation

The Real

That which is outside of

symbolization,

inherent inadequacies-gaps

in systems,

the contingent, the Infinite

Terror, Fear,

Uncertainty, Death

RIS are not static, separable components but modes of being and discourse (similar to pitch, yaw and roll). Each of the R-I-S has R-I-S modalities as well.


The Real, the Imaginary and the Symbolic (RIS).

I

R S

Imaginary

Symbolic Real a

PHI S(A)

J

10 Unattainable Object of Desire

Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Lacan‘s Theory of Discourse

Discourse is the Framework and the Production of all speech acts.

It defines and is defined by the social structure of the narrative.

There are Four Lacanian Discourses:

• Master-Slave Discourse (similar to Hegel, Kojeve M-S Dialectic)

• University Discourse

(aka Obsessive‘s Discourse)

• Analyst’s Discourse •

Hysteric’s Discourse

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Positions in the Discourse Structure

Agent Other

Truth Production

(social)

(narrative)

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Positions in the Discourse Structure

Conscious

Unconscious

Agent Other

Agent Other

Truth Production

Discourse Structure and Positions defines Social - Meaning

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Actors in the Discourse Structure

$ S1 S2 a

$ Divided Subject S1 Master Signifier S2 Knowledge a (Unattainable) Object of Desire ( aka Objet petit a)

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$ - The Divided Subject

The Subject is Divided by Language

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S1 -> S2

The Master Signifier and Knowledge

$ S1 S2

The Signifier represents the Subject for other Signifiers.

The S1 represents $ for S2.

Challenges to S1 represent attack upon $.

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‗a‘

The Unobtainable Object of Desire (Objet petit ‗a)

S R a

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The 4 Discourses

Master, University, Analyst and Hysteric

S1 S2

$ a

S2 a

S1 $

a $

S2 S1

$ S1

a S2

University/Obsessive Discourse

Master-Slave Discourse

Analysts Discourse

Hysterics Discourse

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The Master Discourse

S1 S2

$ a

Master-Slave Discourse

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• S1 – does not admit lack or desire

• Slave produces satisfaction of Master‘s unconscious desire

• Eventually the accumulation of knowledge, S2, on the part of the slave tips the balance in his favor – resulting in the Rule of the Knowledgeable Slave – i.e. University DIscourse


The University Discourse

S2 a

S1 $

University/Obsessive Discourse

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• Universities as places Ritualized seduction by knowledge, not as place of joint search for the truth of human condition

• University teacher/ scientist/expert/bureaucrat another form of master.

• University master‘s position is based on belief of Absolute or total knowledge, S1.

Ex: enlightened versus authoritarian father – you will go to grandma’s house and like it.


The Analysts Discourse

a $

S2 S1

Analysts Discourse

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Analysis allows obsessional to restructure their ―obsession‖ or S1 Analysand is divided/lacking subject $ who turns to Analyst through transference – as love object invested by the libido. Primary focus of analysand is to capture that which the analyst comes to represent. This is NOT the final, most desirable discourse permutation – the Hysterical discourse is – analysis needs to terminate.

Pervert‘s Guide to Jacques Lacan: Lacan‘s Theory of Discourse The Hysterics Discourse

$ S1

a S2

Hysterics Discourse

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Hysteric represents the desirable end of analysis – the questioning subject – in a state of permanent uncertainty and thus flexibility in configuring their unconscious. The hysteric seeks to understand - S2 - the expressed and unexpressed master-narratives they live under – S1 – which represents the subject themselves. The hysteric seeks to see through the veil of illusion or falsity spawned by the discourse of the Master or the University. For the Hysteric – the truth of ones subjectivity is ones Jouissance.

perverts guide to jacques lacan

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