Does the Other of the Lacan oriented analyst not exist?Abstracts
The structure of the unconscious and the circuit of) drive both indicate that the symbolic and imaginary dimensions merge in the direction of a real referent - that, even in the best formalizations, keeps its singularity - and, at the end of an analysis, may allow the emergence of the “analyst’s desire”. For their optimal understanding, I used the reports of the Pass device, from the World Association of Psychoanalysis regarding the appearance of the “analyst’s desire” in the end of their treatments. I pointed out that, quite contradictorily, today’s “singularities” follow a standard. The “analyst’s desire” is confused with the “desire to put oneself on display and become a celebrity”. This is the conclusion that led me to the ask: which is the post-modern Lacan oriented analyst’s Other?
Keywords Unconscious; drive; Lacanian oriented analyst’s Other; post-modernity
A estrutura do inconsciente e o circuito da pulsão nos indicam que as dimensões do simbólico e do imaginário convergem em direção a um referente real - que, por melhor formalizado que seja, é sempre singular - e, ao final de uma análise, pode dar lugar à emergência do “desejo do analista”. Para apreendê-los, recorri aos relatórios do dispositivo do passe da Associação Mundial de Psicanálise e dos testemunhos de analistas sobre o advento do “desejo do analista” ao final de suas análises. Destaquei que, contraditoriamente, as “singularidades” hoje seguem um padrão. O “desejo do analista” confunde-se com o “desejo de exibir-se e de se tornar uma celebridade”. Essa conclusão me conduziu a interrogar: Qual é o Outro do analista lacaniano na pós-modernidade?
Palavras-chave: Inconsciente; pulsão; Outro do analista de orientação lacaniana; pós-modernidade
La structure de l’inconscient et le circuit de la pulsion indiquent que les dimensions symbolique et imaginaire convergent vers un référent réel - qui, aussi bien formalisé qu’il soit, est toujours singulier - et peuvent donner lieu, à la fin d’une analyse, à l’émergence du “désir de l’analyste”. Pour les appréhender, j’ai me suis servie des rapports du dispositif de passe de l’Association mondiale de psychanalyse et des témoignages d’analystes sur l’avènement du “désir de l’analyste” à la fin de leurs analyses. J’ai souligné que, par contre, les “singularités” suivent aujourd’hui un schéma. Le “désir de l’analyste” est confondu avec le “désir de se montrer et de devenir une célébrité”. Cette conclusion m’a conduit à me poser la question suivante : quel est l’Autre de l’analyste lacanien dans la post-modernité?
Mots-clés: Inconscient; pulsion; Autre de l’analyste d’orientation lacanienne; post-modernité
La estructura del inconsciente y el circuito pulsional indican que las dimensiones simbólica e imaginaria convergen hacia un referente real - que, por muy formalizado que esté, siempre es singular - y, al final de un análisis, puede dar lugar a la aparición del “deseo del analista”. Para aprehenderlos, recurrí a los informes del dispositivo de pases de la Asociación Mundial de Psicoanálisis y a los testimonios de analistas sobre el advenimiento del “deseo del analista” al final de sus análisis. Subrayé que, contradictoriamente, las “singularidades” actuales siguen un padrón. El “deseo del analista” se confunde con el “deseo de presumir y convertirse en una celebridad”. Esta conclusión me llevó a preguntarme: ¿Cuál es el Otro del analista lacaniano en la posmodernidad?
Palabras clave Inconsciente; pulsión; Otro del analista de orientación lacaniana; posmodernidad
The real’s dimension is an essential clinical and conceptual tool, for research and teaching, as well as for the transmission of what cannot be taught, the psychoanalyst’s skill. Psychoanalysis requires, as much as any other science, that the specific real to which it is related be formalized, meaning the effects of helplessness, castration, sexuality and death in the psychical constitution. The real is the reason for the psychical division that inaugurates the unconscious dimension. The material aspect of the real, however, is not reduced to linguistic, topological, logical and mathematical constructions. The structure of the unconscious and the circuit of the drive indicate that the dimensions of symbolic and imaginary merge in the direction of a real referent - that, even in the best formalizations, keeps its singularity - and, at the end of an analysis, may allow the emergence of the “analyst’s desire”. Lacan first conceptualized an analysis as a process at the service of disidentification with the phallus and the assumption of castration. According to Miller (1997-98/2001, pp. 51-56), only in the “October 1967 Proposition” - in which Lacan instituted the device of verification of the end of analysis to regulate the passage from analysand to analyst - does he formulate a mechanism distinct from identification: the fall of object a, which is equivalent to a disillusionment with the knowledge once supposed to the Other. The advent of the analyst is an effect of the disjunction between ($) and (object a).
In order to apprehend how the end of analysis has been verified throughout history, I resorted to the comparison between the reports of the pass device of the World Association of Psychoanalysis (AMP) and the testimonies of analysts on the advent of the “analyst’s desire” at the end of their analyzes in 1994 and in the period between 2010-2011. According to the report by Matet & Wachsberger (1994) an analysis ends after crossing the fantasy and the advent of identification with the male or female symptom. I highlighted that according to Jacques Alain Miller (2014) in today’s passes it is about making the singularity of the sinthome come about. The “singularities”, according to Miller, contradictorily, today follow a pattern.
The “analyst’s desire” is confused with the “desire to put oneself on display and become a celebrity”. This is the conclusion that led me to the ask: which is the post-modern Lacan oriented psychoanalyst’s Other? If it is no longer the symbolic Other represented by the fatherly function, then does the Other not exist? Would this non existing Other be before or after castration and sexuation? If it is not a grand Other, is it a small other? Why does Miller (2010a) understand the end of the analysis as the emergence of an actor’s desire, as quoted below?
There is, ultimately, a small tendency for the jury of the pass to be like that of an audition or a casting, insofar as it does not only take into account pass 1, but also pass 3, in the interest of the School, of the School One, of the Freudian field, in the best interest of psychoanalysis ... This factor, it is necessary to say, is a little embarrassing because, as a result, there is also a retroaction of pass 3 over pass 1. There is an obligation to have the desire to speak, the desire to work. I would even say that it would be necessary for an analysis to lead to the desire to show off, that is to say that the pass has something of the actor’s desire. (Miller, 2010a, p. 194)
Is making oneself recognizable as an actor, the same as making oneself recognizable as a semblant of the object cause of desire? After all, the analyst’s desire or the discourse of the analyst is to become a semblant of the object cause of desire that is specific to each subject of analysis or putting the object a in the place of the agent of a speech. Are actors capable of doing the same work? Who is the Other of the analyst-actor?
It is the maternal Other, that rejoices of the phallically valuated exhibitionism of the son? Is it the similar, its image in the mirror, the narcissistic dimension? Is it the real dimension of the fragmented body? I argue that no dimension of the subject, once he has constituted himself either as a neurotic or as a psychotic, can be without the Other. I take the real dimension of affect - what we usually call enjoyment (jouissance) in Lacanian theory - as the best way to deal with the modalities of belief or disbelief in the Other.
In my latest articles, I have questioned the so called last teaching of Lacan. I’m particularly interested in the consequences of the idea that the real is no longer considered as a dimension structured by the symbolic. When the real is no longer perceived as a residue of the field of speech and language, it presents itself as an entity topologically separated from imaginary and symbolic. When real, imaginary and symbolic are considered separately, the body becomes irreducible to language. The real becomes lawless and meaningless. In my recent scientific production, I have manifested my interest in the symptoms, speeches and social ties, because they are a result of the infraction to the rule that gives no meaning to the real. Some of these articles question the foundations of Miller’s understanding of Lacan, when he emphasizes the separation between symbolic and real. Others demonstrate that, from the perspective of the clinical approach of the subject and the social bond, this disjunction does not make sense. The main argument in favor of my criticism to the disjunction thesis is the revelation in the Pass device - according to Miller (2014) - of a desire to “become famous”. A very ordinary goal in current days, unable to distinguish analysts from non analysts. Miller (2014) explains that each subject’s singularity reveals itself in the end of the treatment of many analysts, according to a narcissistic standard. From my point of view, it is clear that analysts, in the end of a long crossing of their fantasies, share our current social belief in the supreme value of celebrity.
I have resumed, in different articles, the idea that Lacan’s thesis according to which all symptoms, discourses and social ties are equivalent structures with each other implies taking them as forms of connection between the real and the symbolic that give rise to the imaginary of the fantasy. In Lacan’s second teaching, the affection of anguish is the only one that does not deceive. It is the index of the presence of the real. Anxiety, enjoyment and fantasy are equivalent as structures, because they have the same object. The particular relation to the object becomes the best way to approach the relation to the Other in the symptoms, discourses and social ties. The structure of the fantasy makes it possible to define what the subject fantasizes to be, as an object, for the Other. Devouring or devoured object? Vomiting or vomited object? Excreting or excreted object? Object that looks or that is looked at? Speaking object or object that is spoken of? The object’s position is presented through the affect that manifests it. Affect as a real dimension of the relationship to the Other is the index of the object position that the subject occupies in the fantasy. Shedding light to it helps to better understand what is at stake in different discursive, symptomatic fictions and also in social ties. The fantasy harbors a “vote”, a wish, often quite naive.
As a practice with roots in the field of medicine, there is something in psychoanalysis that cannot be taught, the art of reading and interpreting symptoms, discourses and social ties. Extracting the structure of the fantasy and emptying the self-erotic enjoyment that inhabits it is a mission that involves an irreducible risk: the act of an analyst. This is not teachable, but it can be transmitted through our practice and, for this reason, there is no analyst who is not the good or bad consequence of his own analysis. Ultimately, a good theoretical university education is not enough to ensure the correct understanding of our field of research. The extraction of what is most real - through the analytical process of each candidate to become an analyst - teaches how to recognize the contingency of the experience of excess, of the drive, of what cannot be represented by the signifier, of the irreducible to object a, as something impossible to reduce to the dimension of the concept or of the scientific experience.
My research project about the real in science and psychoanalytic practice consisted, for this reason, in questioning the real dimension of the most essential tool for psychoanalytic practice, which is the appearance of the analyst. The analytical device makes it possible, either as a traumatic effect or as a therapeutic effect. The analyst appears as an effect of the analytical discourse reduced to “the analyst’s desire”. Lacan went so far as to say that psychoanalysis is a symptom of civilization. However, Lacan, (1975-76/2005, p. 135) rectified later. It is not psychoanalysis that is a sinthome, but the analyst himself. If it had been a sinthome, my studies on the spread of psychoanalysis (Coelho dos Santos, 2001) would have been sufficient to teach about its real role in the constitution of the subject in contemporary times. The new, unclassifiable symptoms could be reduced to new pathologies. But if Lacan ((1975-76/2005, p. 135) declares that the analyst is a sinthome, it is because he embodies at the same time the traumatic real in psychoanalytic practice, but also what allows it to be treated. During this period, I brought to my university research regarding the knowledge deposited by the analysts who tried to theorize about their analytical process. I tried to articulate this discussion about the real in science and in the psychoanalyst’s practice to the experience extracted from the impasses and fantasistical solutions in the relationship of each analyst to the real. I dealt with this issue in different dimensions of the clinic: pure psychoanalysis, applied psychoanalysis and the psychoanalytic approach of the speeches and social ties. I present below some conclusions drawn on this path of investigation, integrating them to the developments that I have been studying in my new project.
Becoming an analyst in the 21st century
I tried to verify Miller´s (2010a) hypothesis, through the study of testimonies at the end of analysis, that what is most real in each candidate to become a psychoanalyst, today, is the taste for narcissistic exhibition, for the spectacularization of subjectivity and for the elevation of their self to the dignity of an admired celebrity. This perspective clearly demonstrates that it is in alignment with the Other and the real of each era, that the axis of subjective constitution takes place over time. I will summarize the conclusions published in a recent article (Coelho dos Santos, 2014).
I begin with a question about the symptom structure in postmodernity. I remember that, according to Miller (2014), the experience of the end of analysis coincides with the rise of a narcissistic desire, the actor’s desire. Why the prevalence of narcissism or the taste for one’s own image? Are we living in a time when the non-Borromean structure prevails, in other words, when the body, the word and the image are not linked by the prevalence of the Name of the Father as a collective symptom? According to Pierre Skriabine (2009, pp. 18-23), the subjectivities that link the registers of the symbolic (signifiers/superego), the imaginary (image/I) and the real (body/drive) are Borromean, duplicating the symbolic register, using the father as a metaphor for reality. The Name of the Father is a collective symptom that favors the subjectivation of the drive, the image and the field of speech and language. Non-Borromean subjectivities are those that exclude the Name of the Father. They need to invent, based on their remnants of jouissance and imaginary signifiers (elementary phenomena, phenomena of the body and disturbances of the image), a unique way of linking the three registers.
The symbolic no longer occupies a place of primacy and each one deals according to their particular preference with the imaginary, symbolic and real dimensions? Like in James Joyce’s case, is the dimension that ties the all the records together, the Ego? In our days most of us are supplying the lack of the Name of the Father, making up, making his own name exist? I play the devil’s advocate. And, quite the contrary, liberated from the Name of the Father as a collective symptom, liberated from the universal symbolic law, do we fall under the tyranny of the normactivity of identity groups or peer committees? I think that this path makes us members of one tribe among others. Wouldn’t there be a tendency nowadays to insert, ourselves in groups that share a common mode of enjoyment? Standpoints and identity policies that apply exclusively to specific groups, have replaced the Name-of-the-father for all. It is possible to believe that we give up the collective symptom, the universal way of regulating enjoyment and become captive to the ethics committees, the peer commissions that define what is commendable and what should be rejected. Instead of symbolic law applying to every free and equal man, instead of scientific thought with universal value, we guide ourselves by politically correct protocols with their explicit rules and their alleged transparency.
Instead of a universal and timeless theory of subjective constitution as promoted by Freud and also Lacan in his first teaching, psychoanalysis needs, perhaps, today, to bow down to the evidence of the emergence of a subjectivity guided by the narcissism as a paradigm. Are we all narcissists? If this is true, who could vouch for it? A peer committee? How can we ensure that a peer committee is not recognizing only what it has promoted as the norm of its tribe and disregarding technical quality? There is a risk that nominations based on politically correct statements will replace the merit criteria. The new appointments often fulfill the sole purpose of meeting the pressing need that the most diverse tribes have to correct historical inequalities and develop affirmative actions.
Psychoanalytic institutions, for example, need to define who is considered an analyst and who is considered an analysand. Freud did not believe that it was possible to pass from one state to another in an irrevocable and absolute character. Lacan, without abandoning completely the Freudian paradigm of the primacy of the symbolic, made a bet that it was possible to cross the symbolic/imaginary frame of the fantasy and deal either with the emptiness of the real’s nonsensical aspect or with the object a’s ability to condense each one ‘s enjoyment (jouissance) of. At the end of an analysis, there would be an analyst whenever an analysand could recognize that his defense against the real, his fantasy, obeys a logic related to sexuation. Today - according to the new reports on the Pass device - it seems that it takes one more step to finish an analysis.
As I had already announced above, thanks to the methodology of studying AMP reports on the pass device, I compared the 1994 report with the 2010-2011 report. It´s possible to believe that the Pass Committee proposes that it was necessary to take a step further, recognizing that the real is not just what is framed by the fantasy. The Other is not only incomplete, it is inconsistent. The real is not just about the enjoyment (jouissance) of an object covered by the fantasy. The real is also impossible to bear. A new approach to the end of the analysis emerges in the 2010-2011 Pass Commission report. It concludes that each one’s relationship to the real cannot completely dispense with the defense against it. This limit is not crossed. The Pass testimonies would highlight that today’s analysts make crossings in their treatments, but they are not expected to cross the fundamental fantasy. Passers are unable to reduce the unendurable real by the complete emptying of meaning. They remain fixated on an irreducible, untreatable rest, their non-eliminable defense against a real. “A real” that presents itself as “the impossible to endure”. I recall a definition by Miller:
The Pass of the speaking being is not to testify about the crossing of the fantasy, it is the clarification of the relationship with enjoyment, of how the subject changed his relationship with what does not change, his way of enjoying, and how he elaborated the variations of truth, their path of lies. It is the testimony of a failure, much more than of a success, perhaps, in obtaining a satisfaction, of which it is necessary to say that it, is not demonstrated. (Miller, 2010b, p. 132)
Lacan aspired, perhaps, to that the analyst’s desire would be equivalent to the scientist’s desire. In this way, the real in psychoanalytic practice would be equivalent to the real in science. Miller (2011): “For this reason, Lacan said: at this level this can be scientific. It is the fact that this subject is capable of a speech that has been cleared of enjoyment, at least of the fantasy, being able, therefore, to testify about the knowledge extracted from his fantasy” (p. 130). Still according to Miller (2010b), practice would not have demonstrated this equivalence between the analyst’s desire and the scientist’s desire. The 1994 AMP report seems to demonstrate the almost scientific universality of the crossing of the fantasy paradigm, even if it does not possess the same consistency for men and for women. The 2010-2011 report, in contrast, emphasizes the value of the remainder of enjoyment (jouissance) that does not dissolve. This rest is a sort of monument/commemoration, a sinthome/footstool, as an each one’s irreducible defense. The appointment of the analyst by the Pass dislocates the sinthome/footstool from the condition of fantasistical addiction to be crossed and elevates it to the dimension of a narcissistic / sublimatory virtue. Which demonstrates that according to the lacanian last teaching, psychoanalysis is not just an ethics of desire, as it also implies a political responsibility for enjoyment (jouissance).
In the span of just twenty years, it´s possible to demonstrate by the reports, that the end of analysis is not evaluated with the same criteria. In 1994, the phallic measure, the Freudian rock of castration, is the norm. Men and women needed to resize their relationship with the symptom/castration to cope with the inexistence of sexual intercourse and the inconsistency of the Other. In the 21st century, the pass cartels report presented by Catherine Matet-Lazarus (2012) gathers the opinions of some of the members involved in this experience. Marie-Hélène Brousse raises the following hypothesis: is the Pass resistant or heterogeneous to the whole process of universalization, whether it is linked to the application of criteria, to the continuity of traditions or to the administrative procedure. Today’s Pass is related to the non-analyzable. She recalls that there was a time when psychoanalytic theory was applied through a protocol. If the passer did not share his childhood neurosis, then it was psychosis and, if it was psychosis, he could not be named. She clarifies that the role of the cartel nomination today is precisely about what cannot be named. What escapes the significant chain and has not been metaphorized or sublimated by the Name of the Father.
I am not very satisfied with these explanations. I wonder: aren’t reactive formations at stake in character traits exactly what is left of the autoerotic drives that haven’t been completely sublimated by the metaphorical effect of the Name of the Father? What can you do with them? Betting on a true mutation of sublimation-type enjoyment through analysis? Can it be done without the paternal metaphor? Or, invert them in the opposite of what they are worth, make narcissistic enjoyment (jouissance) a new source of sublimatory virtue and place them on a pedestal? Instead of a scientific and universal standard of modern subjectivity, we find in postmodernity, at the end of the analysis, a new standard, the uniqueness of each one as an object of art.
The second choice seems to me to have prevailed. The subjectivity constituted by the universal concept of the citizen of the unconscious gave way to the individual as a contemporary phenomenon of the culture of narcissism. At the heart of this discussion lies an essential difference in the definition of what is sublimation. For Freud, there is an essential difference between sublimation and idealization. The first one involves a new destination for the object libido, since the drive is directed towards a different purpose and removed from sexual satisfaction. The idealization consists of the overevaluation, the exaltation of the object without any change in its nature that justifies this treatment. For Lacan (1959-60/1988, pp. 140-141), sublimation elevates the object to the dignity of the Thing (das Ding). Perhaps because Lacan in his seminar about The Psychoanalysis Ethics does not distinguish between sublimation and idealization.
A new version of the Pass and the theory of the real in the psychoanalyst’s practice
As will be seen below, the current doctrine of the Pass is not exactly the one that Lacan proposed. According to the report by Matet-Lazarus (2012), Patricia Bosquin-Caroz declared that the current doctrine of the Pass is no longer measured by the crossing of the fantasy, a lightning-type pass from which a new being would emerge. Lacan (2001) qualified this gain to be “singular and strong” (p. 273). In the psychoanalyst’s understanding, this is a somewhat idealized definition, as it is not the same singular in Lacan’s Pass and in the contemporary sinthome/footstool pass. Still according to Caroz, this singular strength obtained by crossing the plane of identifications is distinct from the singularity obtained by identifying the sinthome. The sinthome is a mode of singular enjoyment isolated at the end of the route. Even though the crossings, franchises, revelations still happen during the analysis and signaling their symbolic progress, they converge to a real that does not change, that is repeated, that cannot be overcome or reabsorbed through sense. It is about reduction and not crossing. The passer witnesses a fixation of enjoyment (jouissance), solitude of the subject as a body event, a conjunction of the signifier “One” (S1) and the body.
According to Matet-Lazarus (2012), Bernard Seynhaeve observed that it is from a precise point, a point of certainty, that the hinge of the passage to become an analyst presents itself to him: the fall of the Other’s guarantee. This is the point where the subject loses his compass. It may be a dream, a body phenomenon, the combination of the two or the analyst’s interpretation. I don’t think it’s something that can be explained to anyone. It is highly subjective. Also Serge Cottet, according to this same report, finds it difficult to find a common point between the experiences reported by the named passers. At least, he says that we can affirm that, according to this last version of the pass, “the dimension of the impossible and the incurable stands out from any normative or ideal triumphalism” (Cottet as cited in Matet-Lazarus, 2012, p. 9). But is this just a common rhetoric or does the discovery of the Other’s inconsistency have the power to deflate the demand for analysis? Is the advent of the analyst’s desire an effect of the trauma caused by the fall of the assumption of knowledge made to the Other? Is the analyst’s desire a sinthome of the Other that does not exist?
All the forms of the fall in the assumption of knowledge made to the Other appear in most of the testimonies, showing the correlation of the analyst’s desire with loneliness. In the report by Matet Lazarus (2012), Miquel Bassols highlights a thread that crosses the diversity of testimonies of the pass with regard to the analyst’s desire, a thread that ties the symptomatic remains to the transference remains at the end of the analysis. It is in the articulation of these two dimensions of the rest that the fate of the analyst’s desire in our contemporary world seems to play out. It seems that the destination of symptomatic remains, when they are reduced to the most singular sinthome, depends on the destination that this subject reserves to transferential remains at the end of his analysis. This takes place within a conception of transference as impossible to logically reduce to zero. Unlike other conceptions that make this reduction the correlate of an identification of the subject with ideal images, Bassols declares that, on the contrary, that it is in the consolidation of the transference that the subject’s effectiveness to his sinthome and his singularity is played out. Enigmatic phrase that is clarified as follows: “The appointments of AE (School Analysts) were guided, among other conditions, by this connection between the clinical dimension of the sinthome and the political dimension of the transference” (Bassols as cited in Matet-Lazarus, 2012, p. 12). What explains that the nominations are decided according to the subject’s desire to engage in the destiny of the psychoanalytic institution that “names him/her for” the exercise of a function. The difference between identification and naming is important to elucidate the dimension of social normactivity of the pass device.
According to the report, Patricia Caroz considers that the reduction that would make it possible to circumscribe irreducible enjoyment (jouissance) leaves the question open: how does the end of analysis for the analysand manifest itself? The mode of enjoyment (jouissance) indicates an invariable, something that never changes and is identically repeating itself. This invariant enjoyment (jouissance) can be reduced, isolated, but it does not cross towards a new being. It is the same way of enjoyment (jouissance), from which we expect new satisfaction. By isolating his mode of enjoyment, the subject may eventually name his sinthome.
Finally, it is possible to believe that it is worth highlighting the difference between identification to the sinthome and naming the sinthome. Éric Laurent highlights that symbolic repetition should not be conceived simply as identification, but as naming. After going through a certain number of identifications, it becomes possible to give a new name, which Lacan designates as a sinthome and which implies a name and a value of enjoyment (jouissance). He sums it up like this: “I am the one who is the product of my analysis and the names I got there” (Laurent as cited in Matet-Lazarus, 2012, p. 18). From the contingent encounter with enjoyment (jouissance), each subject keeps his particular way of using the common language to say something different from what he is supposed to say. The subject comes to speak of his fantasy using the words of the tribe, but he homophonizes them, mistaking them in a very particular way. By equipping the mother tongue with its own way of making its pain of existence and its faulty encounter with enjoyment (jouissance) heard, the subject defines a proper name / common name, in an effort of naming, of equivocation of the language to reach the object of his desire, the symptom-partner to which he addresses the drive.
In conclusion, the pass commission is interested in nomination as a subversion of the language by mistake and not the final word. The report concludes - this struck me as an interesting thought - quoting Miller.
Once the question of the Other is reduced, it is about going beyond the pass, the question of the One that resonates with the next, and it is, in the end, the closest thing to a criterion that we are in the beyond the pass, it is that the subject there knows that he speaks to himself, he knows that he has reduced the delusion by which he thought to communicate with the Other of the truth. (Miller, 2011 as cited in Matet Lazarus, 2012)
This is certainly what I am not convinced of at all. This supposed beyond the Other of truth requires a sophisticated bureau of psychoanalysts to be recognized. It is much more likely to suppose that this beyond the Other can be reduced to the Other of the psychoanalytic institution, our peers. It is with them that an analyst shares his beliefs, it is through them that he expects to be named school analyst and recognized as such.
The Pass device: the real and social normactivity
I am going to question this insistence - which we observed in the 2010-2011 report and which is completely absent from the 1994 report - in highlighting that each subjectivity is absolutely unique and different from any other. I tend to think that this singularizing approach is in itself a “normative” choice. Or, better said, it is the paradox of the norm in the contemporary world: all submitted to the imperative of being different. The new responses to the real in the 21st century still depend in some way on the homogenizing logic “every man is born free and equal”. The downgrade of the symbolic law to the contractual rule is born, paradoxically, together with the egalitarian imperative and its homogenizing and disciplinary practices. They live with speeches that produce as effect individuals who claim, politically, in the name of the right to life, the “right to be treated as an exception”. Whether in the subject’s clinic or in the clinic of civilization, it is the symptoms, discourses and social bonds that prevail. There is nothing there, it seems to me, beyond the Other of truth. The new taste for singularity would seem to lead to a supposed erasure of the collective dimension of the Other. I believe that the drive to singularity is not proof of the Other’s lack of guarantee, quite the contrary, it is one of its effects. What else do individuals who assume to be absolutely singular believe in? Is it an inconsistent, traumatic, capricious, deconstructed, errant and lawless Other?
For this reason, I was led to privilege, in my approach, the affects that denounce the relationship of the speaking beings to the Other. Affects are what is the most real. Whether to love it, to hate it, or to ignore it, the existence of the symbolic Other is for each one a real dimension at stake in the social bond. How is the Other of our postmodernity? My interest is now focused on the passionate and credulous adherence (pathos) that most individuals dedicate to some ideology, system or political party and even to their psychoanalytic institution. For they are proof of the Other’s consistency.
Returning to the Freudian formulation that “helplessness is the source of all moral reasons” (Freud, 1950[1895]/1996b, p. 370), I am particularly interested in the fundamentals of “love for the father” and the feeling of recognition of the symbolic debt to him. Conservative individuals thus tend to have such a perception of the real foundation of the social bond. They are not free of suspicion, of course, of a certain conformist pathos. Voluntary servitude, masochism, pathological subjection, inhabit those who sacrifice their desire to remain fantasistically in the position of object loved by the Other. At the other pole, we find individuals marked by “hate for the father” and by the feeling of parricidal rebellion towards an Other that is perceived as fundamentally bad and unjust. Revolutionary pathos, a term we find in Hannah Arendt (2016), seems to have been coined to describe this attitude. In particular, we are interested in the symptoms, speeches and social ties, that inherited of the revolutionary movements of May 1968 and who contributed a lot to produce this new form of social consensus called the “politically correct discourse”. The Other’s indifference, apathy and demotion to an empty dimension of value -which we find in individuals who present themselves as indifferent, apathetic, unbelieving and without expectations in relation to the Other - also deserves consideration in the sense of assessing whether indifference can be - as Freud (1915/1996a) proposed - only a version of hatred. To ignore him, to suppose no knowledge, no power or pleasure to the Other, is to demean him, discredit him, destroy him or, simply, hate him.
The status of truth, in its relations with reality, was then the other issue that besieged me at the end of this research. In his last teaching, Jacques Lacan insists on the thesis, extensively worked out throughout Jacques Alain Miller’s courses, that the truth is not the real. The truth, as Lacan repeated so often, has a fictional structure. I was led to question the disjunction between the truth and the real, questioning whether there was a pathos, an irreducible dimension of the real within the field of truth for each subject. Unlike Miller, I argue that the truth is not just a fiction. The truth harbors in its plot the belief in someone (the Other) who guarantees the success of the fulfillment of a desire for the enjoyment (jouissance) of the body to be produced. It is a response to helplessness, the sole source of all moral motives. The truth is necessarily linked to the real dimension of the Other. It is from the Other that the speaking being expects, does not expect or even despairs, for something that ensures satisfaction. True fictions, on the other hand, are not radically singular and do not stray from inventions of parental, traditional or cultural symbolic heredity.
I intend to move forward, developing the thesis that affects (love, hate, indifference) denounce - beyond the construction of fantasies and symptoms - the neighborhood with the real dimension of the collective Other in the social bond. Our contemporary truths, fictions and fantasies are not singular inventions that owe nothing to the collective Other. The belief in a singularity detached from the collective Other is still a belief. They often behave (at least among those who believe that the Other does not exist) as vehement denials and outright lies about the symbolic debt to the Other. Loved, hated or ignored, the Other - as I see it - exists for everyone and is always believed in. The conflict of versions about what the Other is, the symbolic, the foundation of the social bond, may have led us to think that the Other does not exist and that the real is lawless.
The motivation that propels me to continue this investigation is the profound perplexity that crosses Brazil and much of the contemporary world, in the face of the reconfigurations of traditional differences between rich and poor, men and women, adults and children, workers and owners of the means of production, teachers and students, parents and children, authority and subjection. Crossed by the hegemony of “politically correct discourse”, we saw the constitutive identifications of subjects emptied into the Western Christian symbolic order. Society and culture have moved - at least since the movements of May 1968 - towards more flexible identifications, guided by the perception that social ties would be organized from an oppositional hierarchical logic. The perception prevailed that the entire hierarchy breeds oppressors and oppressed, dominators and dominated. More recently, however, we have observed the manifestation of strong conservative tendencies by a significant majority so far, apparently, silent. Conservatively oriented politicians have found surprising receptivity, at least in the eyes of the most educated, left-most, most globalized and most attuned to the dominant opinion in the enlightened media. The election of Donald Trump in the USA, Brexit in England, the success of Marine Le Pen in France, the phenomenon of the rise of Bolsonaro’s popularity in Brazil are just some examples of the growth of a conservative trend or, as we say, right-wing.
This conservative reconfiguration of the social scene reinforced my opposition to the psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller’s thesis (2018) that, in contemporary times, “The Other does not exist”. The evidence in favor that a large segment of the population in Brazil and elsewhere in the world still believes in the Western tradition, in the family, in the Christian religion, in traditional values and have not adhered to cultural pluralism or the dominant “politically correct” ideology, led me to rethink the importance of affects (love, hate, indifference) for the Other, as a dimension of the real at stake in the social bond.
It is helplessness that impels men to believe in the father, in God or in representatives who embody the great Other. The populism of charismatic leaders like former brazilian president Lula da Silva, Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen and, more recently, Jair Bolsonaro are irrefutable proof of the permanence and indestructibility of the desire for a strong, consistent, powerful Other. We can approach in the same way, the irreducible belief that individuals on the left manifest in a strong, protective, powerful welfare state, capable of ensuring the satisfaction of all citizens’ needs. I hope to start this investigation, addressing the modalities of permanence, conservation and renewal of the belief in the Other in contemporary times.
In another recent article (Coelho dos Santos, 2016b), I was able to finalize the research on the Real in science and psychoanalytic practice by raising the questions that guide this new investigation. The manifestations of psychoanalysts on social networks, during the political events of our recent history, impelled me to formulate a reflection on psychoanalytic thinking about the social bond in the light of the following question: is it left-wing or right-wing? I defend the thesis that psychoanalysis is a science, a practice, an ethics and not an ideology or a discourse. By refusing to define it as an ideology or a discourse, I also refute the possibility that it could be conservative or revolutionary. If it were revolutionary, how could we recognize this vocation? At the very least, it would be expected that its revolutionary calling would manifest itself more vividly in the analysts who completed their treatments. There should be, therefore, a revolutionary pathos inherent in the analyst’s relation to the real. And, the analysts who completed their analysis should be able to testify from this pathos. Nothing is less evident than that.
My hypothesis (Coelho dos Santos, 2012) is that psychoanalysis participates in two conceptions of the real, whose foundation, however, is unique: the real is impossible. The knowledge that we extract from our practice can be formalized in accordance with the requirements of scientific knowledge. However, there will always be, in each analytical experience, the encounter with an irreducible singularity, the “body” that each one enjoys and the particular Other that constituted it. To what extent can the spirit, the taste, the revolutionary appeal be analyzed as the expression of the relationship that a “body” establishes with reality as impossible? Would the phenomenon of rebellion be an inverted response to the real of helplessness? Instead of the affect of “love for the Other-father”, would we have a resentful attitude of refusing this fiction? Could the concept of revolution come to occupy a place in our field? Are the death drives, the real, the trauma, the anguish, the violence, the femininity, for example, concepts that would allow pointing to a potentially revolutionary disposition that would inhabit the most intimate sphere of each one?
I note, although on a preliminary basis, that the testimonies at the end of the analysis in the Freudian Field did not show that the crossing of the fantasy or the reiteration of the sinthome as the rest of an analysis, demonstrated that there is a revolutionary pathos at the end of the analytical process. On the contrary, many testimonies at the end of the analysis show the deflation of rebellion, revolt, the complaining attitude and the feeling of victimization towards the Other. Voluntary, conformist servitude and subjection to unquestionable authority also decline. Idealization or guilt in the face of an overvalued Other, suffer the same deflation. This allows us to deduce, preliminarily, that a completed analysis is neither conservative nor revolutionary in its effects.
References
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Coelho dos Santos, T. (2012). O lugar certo onde colocar o desejo do analista na era dos direitos. Revista aSEPHallus de Orientação Lacaniana, 7(14), 14-26. Recuperado de http://www.isepol.com/asephallus/numero_14/artigo_01.html
» http://www.isepol.com/asephallus/numero_14/artigo_01.html - Coelho dos Santos, T (2014). Do supereu sujeitado à lei simbólica à normatividade social dos corpos falantes. In T. Coelho dos Santos, J. Santiago, A. Martello (Orgs.), Os corpos falantes e a normatividade do supersocial (Vol.1, pp. 27-63). Cia. de Freud.
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Coelho dos Santos, T. (2016b). A psicanálise é politicamente revolucionária ou conservadora? Revista aSEPHallus de Orientação Lacaniana, 12(23), 4-22. Recuperado de http://www.isepol.com/asephallus/numero_23/pdf/2-a_psicanalise_e_politicamente_revolucionaria_ou_conservadora.pdf
» http://www.isepol.com/asephallus/numero_23/pdf/2-a_psicanalise_e_politicamente_revolucionaria_ou_conservadora.pdf - Freud, S. (1996a). Os instintos e suas vicissitudes. In Edição Standard Brasileira das Obras Psicológicas Completas de Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, pp. 123-144). Imago. (Trabalho original publicado em 1915).
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Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
09 Oct 2023 -
Date of issue
2023
History
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Received
27 Feb 2022 -
Reviewed
22 Feb 2023 -
Accepted
17 May 2023
