Six Moments in Lacan

Communication and identification in psychology and psychoanalysis

Derek Hook

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315452593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

Many first-time readers of Jacques Lacan come to his work via psychology, a discipline that Lacan was notoriously antagonistic toward. Six Moments in Lacan takes up the dual challenge of introducing Lacanian psychoanalysis to an audience interested in psychology, while also stressing the fundamental differences between the two disciplines. Punctuated by lively examples, Six Moments in Lacan demonstrates the distinctive value of Lacanian concepts in approaching afresh topics such as communication, identity, otherness and inter-subjectivity.

Avoiding the jargon and wilful obscurity that so often accompanies expositions of Lacan's psychoanalytic theories, this book puts Lacanian ideas to work in practical and illuminating ways. A handful of concepts, draw from distinct moments in Lacan's teaching, are contextualized and explained, and applied to the task of exploring the 'psychological' and unconscious dimensions of everyday life. Notions such as the 'big Other', 'full' versus 'empty' speech, logical time, 'imaginary' and 'symbolic' identification, and the idea of 'the master signifier' are brought to life via popular cultural references. Revitalizing several Freudian and Lacanian concepts for everyday use, Six Moments in Lacan asks – and answers – a series of compelling questions:

• Why is it that each instance of speech implies a listener?

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• Why is the notion of subjectivity inadequate when it comes to the 'trans-subjective' nature of language?

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• Is it possible to elaborate a 'non-psychological' theory of identification?

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• Why is a Lacanian approach to 'the subject' so at odds with models proposed by psychology?

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Six Moments in Lacan provides an accessible and highly engaging introduction to Lacan and Lacanian psychoanalysis, aimed at early practitioners and students in psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and those studying upper undergraduate and postgraduate level psychology.

1
IN THE FIELD OF THE OTHER

Towards a Lacanian theory of communication

Lacan, it is often noted, was something of an intellectual magpie, a thinker who was interested, as Élisabeth Roudinesco (2014) emphasizes, in everything. One of the disciplinary areas that influenced Lacan’s early work was communications theory. Analytical terms derived from this field (notions of entropy, cybernetics, etc.) punctuate his work of the early 1950s, particularly Seminar II. What then, does a Lacanian theory of communication – or indeed, of non-communication – look like? I noted in the introduction of this book that the notion of communication is of crucial importance in both psychoanalysis and psychology. It is hence via a Lacanian conceptualization of communication that we can begin addressing our general theme of the relation between Lacanian theory and the psychological.

The central contention of this chapter, broadly stated, is that Lacanian psychoanalysis provides a unique means of distinguishing two fundamental registers of communication. The first of these occurs along what Lacan dubs the ‘imaginary axis’. This is the domain of inter-subjectivity that serves the ego and functions to support and consolidate the images subjects use to substantiate themselves. The second register – far more disturbing and unpredictable – occurs along the symbolic axis. It links the subject to a trans-subjective order of truth, it provides them with a set of socio-symbolic co-ordinates, and it ties them into a variety of roles and social contracts. Importantly, it entails the radical alterity of what Lacan refers to as ‘the Other’.

There is a specific analytical device that Lacanian theory offers in respect of the conceptualization of communication. Drawing on the inspiration of earlier diagrammatic portrayals of the communicative process (such as that of Shannon and Weaver, 1949), Lacan devised a rudimentary schema with which he hoped to differentiate the noise of everyday imaginary (or ‘empty’) speech from the disruptive potential of a form of symbolic (or ‘full’) speech. The latter was, in Lacan’s view, capable of delivering truth and – as one would hope of the psychoanalytical process – effecting change in its speakers. One of my objectives here is to provide an outline of the device in question, namely Lacan’s ‘L-Schema’, a conceptual map that allows us to isolate the key elements underlying imaginary as opposed to symbolic modes of exchange.¹

The symbolic third

Where to begin then with a Lacanian theorization of communication? Perhaps with an elementary assertion: any dialogue, any form of inter-subjectivity, needs to be grounded in something other than the standpoints of its individual participants. Any dialogue, that is to say, presupposes a third party. This much is evident in the case of two people from different cultural backgrounds who meet for the first time and are able to converse, simply by virtue of sharing the same language. Such a common feature – a quite literal lingua franca – cannot originate in or belong to either person; it must be ‘Other’, heterogeneous to both.

Communication, as such, always entails a third point of reference, a ‘third place in discourse’, which is external to both speaker and listener. This ‘third place’ typically functions implicitly, discretely, even though it often feels as if there really are only two perspectives involved in any dialogical interchange. Then again, when meaning breaks down or when conflict emerges, the importance of this third becomes apparent. The role of such an external authority – take for example a code of ethics or a set of institutional procedures – provides a means of settling disagreements. It is via a symbolic, which is to say an extra-subjective, point of appeal that a means of adjudicating such conflicts becomes possible.

Should we wish to diagrammatize this principle of a third, we might opt to superimpose a vertical upon a horizontal axis (see Figure 1.1). The horizontal axis represents the one-to-one exchange of inter-subjective dialogue. The vertical axis – which both stands outside of and anchors this line of exchange – stands for the symbolic axis of human exchange. It includes reference to an external third, and it is to be contrasted with the imaginary axis of such inter-subjective dialogues occurring between an ego and its others. The Lacanian name for this third, which functions as an amassed collection of social conventions and laws, indeed, as an embodiment of authority and/or truth, is the Other (capital ‘O’ so as to distinguish it from those others who function as effective alter egos).²

Here it helps to reinforce the elementary distinction, insisted upon by Lacan in Seminar III, between the other as inter-subjective counterpart and the symbolic Other. The former concerns those who count as reflections of my own ego and who might function as my own mirror image. It is in respect of such others that I will experience both aggressive rivalries and idealized relations of narcissistic love. Such imaginary others are ego-equivalents with whom inter-subjective relations are possible. The big Other by contrast, the third place, stands beyond the realm of imaginary identifications; it exists outside of the frame of such games of mirrored wholeness and antagonism. Lacan offers the following distinction:

There is the other as imaginary. It’s here in the imaginary relation with the other that traditional Selbst-Bewusstein or self-consciousness is instituted . . . There is also the Other who speaks from my place, apparently this Other who is within me. This is an Other of a totally different nature from my other, my counterpart.

(1993, p. 241)

‘Can I get a witness?’

The Other operates not only as a locus of intelligibility but as a principle of appeal. It signifies the prospect – indeed, the apparent inescapability – of symbolic mediation (hence, diagrammatically, the diagonal lines linking each communicator to the Other). The Other, furthermore, plays a role in affirming subjective experience, making it a ‘confirmed reality’. We can take up this idea in reference to what might seem a rather prosaic example. What is the first thing we do upon receiving ‘big news’? If – presuming for the time being that it is good news – we receive it in a private capacity, surely our first impulse is to share it with some Other? While there is an obvious interpersonal element here – wanting to share happy news with those one cares about – there is also a broader form of symbolic registration at work. It is as if in ‘logging’ the news it is confirmed, made official. In the case of bad news, of course, the opposite may hold: we may try and withhold the news from others – indeed from the Other – waiting for the appropriate time to share it, if sharing it all.³

FIGURE 1.1 Symbolic and imaginary axes of communicative activity

Consider the “record-breaking” performances of athletes that cannot be recognized as such because they occurred within training as opposed to under formal conditions of competition. One or two witnesses or other participants in the training session will not count. A verifying authority needs to be present, an Other that amounts to more than any singular form of subjectivity. The very notion of a record, inasmuch as it presumes not just a type of witnessing, but a form of verification and historical documentation, implies precisely this notion of an authorizing Other.

Some years ago at a picnic I watched two children they went around the garden, gathering a variety of natural specimens (flowers, oddly shaped stones, dead bugs, etc.), which they then brought to show their father. The given ‘find’ would only count as such once it had been recognized by him. What was in question was more than just a naming operation, or the settling of a dispute (although it was to some degree this also: the children’s deliberations over what they had found were only settled once their father supplied the appropriate signifier). It involved also a validation of sorts, and not only of what had been found, but of the children themselves.

This is, of course, a continual parental task, the marking of the achievements of one’s children (‘Well done!’, ‘Good job!’ ‘You did it, you clever thing!’), and it gives us a clue to the oft-repeated request made by children: ‘Look at me mommy!’ I initially found the related parental remark ‘Look at you!’ somewhat puzzling. The social function of the remark – that of exclaiming upon, underlining an achievement of the child’s – seemed clear enough. Yet there was an obvious redundancy involved: in making such a comment one is obviously already involved in doing the looking – why then the need again to issue the imperative to look? Why indeed, unless of course the request to look is directed at someone else, to a point of recognition existing beyond that of the perspectives of the child and parent alike?

The consensus-establishing function of the big Other is also of interest here. We might refer back to our example of two people in dialogue: if inter-subjectivity were merely a matter of two conversing subjectivities trying to make sense of one another, then conflicts would be intractable. Two opposed perspectives, each unable to make recourse to anything other than their own frame of reference, would surely result in irresolvable conflicts. This is the terrain of Lacan’s imaginary register.⁴ This domain is as much characterized by the ego’s self-love as by its limitless potential for rivalry and aggression. Given that in such circumstances there is no principle of external mediation, and that only one side can ultimately win, we are left with what amounts to a Hegelian ‘struggle to the death’. We might take the example here of legal conflicts, or, more particularly, the apparent intractability of divorce disputes and custody battles. Things get hopelessly muddied in such a rivalry of competing egos; there are two conflicting versions of events, each of which is anchored into its own self-interested subjective reality. The only thing that can be ascertained with objective certainty here is the principle of the relevant law.

Third-party appeals

One way of understanding the alterity of the big Other, that is, the fact that it cannot be fixed at the level of inter-subjectivity, is simply to stress that this Other encapsulates the entirety of the symbolic domain. This is the Other as the ‘treasury of the signifier’, as the sum total of signifying elements, expressions and utterances within a given language or cultural milieu. We can enlarge upon this, insisting that the symbolic Other is akin to the amassed roles, rules and unwritten obligations that define a given societal situation. The Other can thus be viewed as an alienating system, an always-already-existing collectivity of signifiers that the subject needs to accommodate themselves to. It is the ever-shifting constellation of norms and social values with which there can be no automatic or harmonious fit.

The distance of this Lacanian coneptualization from everyday conceptions of psychological subjectivity, from notions of the self, is pronounced. We are here confronted with a kind of supra-agency – be it that of language, the entire accumulated mass of ‘the social’ – which speaks through, or over us, which appears to determine the subject. In the tussle between psychological subjectivity and the role of determining structure, the Lacanian notion of the Other is on the side of structure. Ed Pluth underlines this when he insists that ‘Lacan’s attention to the symbolic register forces us to account for the subject’s origin in terms of signifiers that have a place that is external to or beyond the child . . . [an origin] “in” the Other functioning as a “transcendental locus” ’ (forthcoming).

Picture two sporting teams engaged in a competition. This situation provides us with an effective sketch of the narcissistic ego-logic of the imaginary register. Despite the likeness, the equivalence between players – each team member has an opposing number on the other side - both teams want to defeat their opponent. Platitudes aside, there is no concession from either side that the opposing team might be as deserving of recognition or that the question of who wins is a matter of indifference to them.

Now although things sometimes get out of hand in such contests – scuffles between players, aggressive exchanges, etc. – such bad-tempered interchanges are, as a rule, brought to an end by the intervention of a referee. Unlawful confrontations of this sort are cut short; calls for verification from the Other quickly take precedence. Protestations of unfairness, appeals for a decision (‘Penalty!’, ‘Off-side!’), are thus addressed to the figure who oversees the game.⁵ What must be noted here is that this Other – who embodies the rules of the game, who is the point of appeal for the players – cannot be assimilated into the ‘horizontal’ level of the one-to-one interactions of the competing players. Simply put: the Other remains necessarily beyond the level of dyadic inter-subjectivity. A referee would not be able to adjudicate, to make crucial judgements (‘Goal!’, ‘No goal!’), to provide a type of symbolic registration, if this were not the case.

In terms of the symbolic axis of communication then, to reiterate the point made above, we are concerned with something more than merely taking another’s perspective, which, after all, would not remove us from the level of imaginary inter-subjectivity. We cannot, for example, imagine a referee, who in order to make a crucial decision, adopts an empathic posture, and puts him or herself in the subjective position of one of the players . . .

So, what is often taken as an ideal of communicative efficacy (or indeed, as a rudimentary ethical gesture) – the attempt to ‘see something from the other’s point of view’ – is not necessarily a goal of effective communicative change. It is likewise, from a Lacanian perspective at least, decidedly not an ethical ideal. That is to say: there is no easy stepping outside of ego-subjectivity within the perspective of the ego itself; there is no imaginary assumption of ‘how the other sees it’ that succeeds in bracketing one’s own ego. This paradox should be emphasized: the attempt to ‘put myself in the shoes of another’ occurs via one’s own ego, so the very gesture of empathic inter-subjectivity really only reaffirms my ego (i.e. the logic here is that of how I think they see it).

A maxim of Lacanian clinical practice comes to the fore here: it is only via the Other, by means of the symbolic enunciations that patients make, that...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: six moments in the history of a ‘non-relation’
• 1 In the field of the Other
• 2 Nixon’s ‘full’ speech
• 3 The prisoner’s dilemma and the trans-subjective
• 4 Love, artificiality and (mass) identification
• 5 The marked subject
• 6 On the subject of psychology
• References
• Index