Practices of the act: considerations on the identifications in self-inflicted violence instances

Abstract:

This article intends to situate the subject’s logical structure point where there is a failure in the identification process of certain clinical cases that exhibit what we denominated “practices of the act”, i.e. some types of self-inflicted violence, scarification, mistreatment of the narcissistic image by ways of martyrizing, among other interventions on the body. To that aim, we return to the definitions of the three identifications such as Lacan develops them along his teachings, specifically in the seminars The Identification and L’insu que sait de l’une-bevue s’aile ‘a mourre, but interpolating a discussion that he establishes around a topology of the vacuole in the seminar D’un Autre à l’autre. We’ll try to demonstrate that these practices arise from a failure in the process of extraction of the object that fundaments the structure, generating effects on the subject’s position in face of the other.

Keywords: identifications; acts; self-inflicted violence; self-injuries