"Television": Lacan on the unconscious.

In light of how we view this video, I'd like to point out that , no great insight here but Lacan is dead. So, obviously, we are not directing our criticism towards him as a living man, long deceased; such criticism would be futile. But neither are we criticising his ideas as in a vaccum. If it were just the ideas, why all the vitriol, symptomatic of rivaly and competitiveness between living people? Because, it might be said, of the damage these ideas have caused, or perhaps because they are absolutely impossible to understand? But in both cases, of course, its not the ideas themselves which cause damage or confuse - it is what health workers, educators and the like do with them. It's our response to their interpretation and implementation which kick-starts our reaction, their processing in the Symbolic by others with whom we compete, and not simply the content of his work.

And there's another side to our reaction. What sort of associations are typically made with Lacan? If, as Noam Chomsky once said after meeting him, he really was a charlatan, then how do we feel about psychoanalysis in general. If it lacks value, perhaps it's only in its lack of curatve efficacy. And maybe Lacan is a case of, too much talk, not enough action, or something like that. But, without over-egging it, by making cures the be-all-and-end-all of psychoanalysis, don't we provide a kind of cold comfort to the afflicted. If a cure isnt already known, but the model is right, then the specialist can say they are at least working towards a result. And, as always, in the background of this kind of wait-and-see mentality is the sense that, whatever the underlying causes of suffering, its at the social level that change has to occur. You might say that this kind of reaction has its feet firmly planted in the Real.

I doubt anyone would say that Lacan is easy to get into. His declarations are often vague, and he is easily seen as pretentious, as putting on a kind of show. Implicit in such a view is that the speech of the professional should be as clear as possible, with little or no affectation, treating its subject in as linear a way as possible out of a concern for those in need of help. Lacan emerges here as detached, arrogant and exploitative. But this is not the man - it is the product of a value system, a question of ethics. That straw man, visible in this video, exists only in the Imaginary.

* Our issues are with the work of those who seek to advance or detract from the status of Lacan's work today. This places our reaction in the sphere of the symbolic.

* The belief that psychoanalysis exists solely to remove symptoms and transform behaviour into a socially acceptable form, underlies a dismissal on the basis of clinical outcome. This belief structures criticism in the field of the Real.

*The Lacan that is rejected for his obscurantism and theatrics exists in the sphere of the Imaginary insofar as it is a byproduct of the assumption that work of this kind should be dry and detached in form.

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[fielsjd]

@carlpope

I bet Hitler could have walked into a Nazi headquarters and have walked out with his wife unharmed.

[SonytoBratsoni]

@MyMeatYearns4Andrea Why do you ,so insistently, keep claiming that it is crap ? Have you viewed the lectures on Lacan from Yale university , have you read the several articles from the scholarly Cambridge companion to Lacan ?

If you are in possession of some arguments I would love to hear them.

[originalsessions]

For Lacan, the idea of “gaze”, or perception, was seen in the skewed image of the skull in Holbein’s painting, entitled The Ambassadors. Like the skull, “truth” is seemingly skewed based on the way we come to perceive images and ideas through our cultural experiences. Just as the skull (“truth”) goes unseen, only subjective images (i.e., the ambassadors) can come into our sight. Only when this subjectivity is skewed can the truth (i.e., the skull) be seen clearly.

[originalsessions]

Lacan’s triptych of psychoanalysis consists of (1) the symbolic order (which consists of unconscious linguistic signs and cultural symbols), (2) the imaginary order (i.e., the process of identification or cultural interpretation of signs and symbols) and (3) the real. For Lacan, in using subconscious symbolic signs, we identify and live within an imaginary realm, losing sight of reality. In other words, we subconsciously use cultural signs to falsely interpret what we think to be true.

[picofarad2]

@TheEponymus yes there are. more so for freud. on the one hand most of his primary texts have been available in english for some time. Of 21 or more of Lacan's seminars only a handful are available in english, and it was only in the last few years that a complete edition was translated. lacan has been more influential in the u.s. in fields like film theory than psychoanalysis here, unfortunately. also, lacan presupposes familiarity with hegel, heidegger, and existing psychoanaltic theory, etc.

[TheEponymus]

just want to know one thing : is there american people that can understand Lacan/Freud theory ?

Ok no prb with Europe and South America.But it seems that there is a problem in US. Can you confirm it?

[rtlz1985]

3) Yes, but when his theories are used we have to look to how and why they are being used in other fields. And what those people are trying to say. Because when you have someone with a similar mindset, like positivism or "metaphisicism", you can use that to theorize about a subject , like the use Jungian theory of Synchronicity , Collective unconscious and Archetypes to study social phenomena. So it may be useful but to people that are also into a metaphysical interpretation of reality.

[rtlz1985]

2) When i used swallow *my mistake sorry" i meant Shallow as you corrected me, and thank you for that. But it's because it does ignore the previous knowledge on anthropology, biology and any other science that focus in the human existence, like the evolution of behavior. And because it's metaphysical line of thinking that tries to fit the human in a theory even if need to distort the reality.

[rtlz1985]

@SonytoBratsoni 2) I will try to correct myself about my contradiction. I called it giberish due the fact most things said by Lacan makes only sense inside his own theory and not in the reality. But this is a problem with the psychoanalisis itself with so many metaphysical concepts wich mostly functions in the ocidental societies ( such as edipus ) and the creation of the phantasm that is the inconscient.

[SonytoBratsoni]

@rtlz1985 1) I envisage that you're correctly assessing psychoanalysis's failure to evolve . Personally , l do deem it has a flavor of fictionalist utility . 2) We disagree concerning lacan's comments , not to mention you're contradicting yourself by claiming it is gibberish ( meaning non-sense) and later claiming it's shallow and metaphysical . 3) Some of the things being said by him ,can and are used effectively in film theory , sociology and literary theory.He has yet to run out of insight.

[rtlz1985]

Well the study of human tough, mind and perception is made by several other people that have nothing to do with psychoanalises. The theoretical failure that psychoanalises have become, due the choice of staing in the sphere of the metaphysical only, do not imples that the study of human behavior or "mind" have failed. Maybe if the pyschoanalises had evolved taking an aproach less based on a system of dogmatic concepts becoming so static that sounds like giberrish.