Lacan Notes/

http://www.iep.utm.edu/lacweb/
1. Biographical and General Introduction
a. Biography
-started doing analysis on the outbreak of war
-he was banned from the commities he joined for his unorthodox ways
-he was Freudian
b. Intellectual Biography
-lacan had many seminars in which he expounded upon his techniques and
methods and ideas and eventually was translated by many of his flowers
c. Theoretical Project
-lacan attemted to relink all of freuds thoughts
-lacans work is characgterized by modern philosophy
2. Lacans Philosophical Anthropology
a. The Mirror Stage
-lacans article, The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I set parameters for a new
doctrine and said that the human identity is decentered
-he centered his work on infants at first they are not able to recognize themselves
in the mirror meaning that they are dependedt on others for survival while later
they become happy when they do recognize themselves this is when the unified
and separate individual forms
-indivisual cannot be held in an organix or natural way
-the I is formed from the Other from ground up
-the ego is the base of the objectto where si it the subjective unity modelled on
other individuals and obkkects that ourself (I) is able to confront with in the world
-the ego has an underlying form of aggression
b. Desire is the Desire of the Other
- ^ lacan kept this the basis of his philosophy
-desire is the desire of the Other
-hman beings need to learn how and what to desire
-we begin to desire as humans through others
-we begin to desire when we see others desire (i.e. fashion) and then when the
Other stops desiring the object the object loses its quality that makes us like it
-things that we completely rely on such as biological needs whom we are
subordinate to are also inseparable from recognition and love from others (i.e. a
hungry child will refuse to eat food if it is offered with less than love)
-game theory =formulizing situations and events where the decisions can both
affect and be affected by the decisions of others
-Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of
feelings from one person to another. So basically an unconscious redirection or
reproduction of emotions
-deeper conscious wishes are expressed or manifested in the form of a dream
c. Oedipal Complex, Castration, Name of the Father, and
the Big Other
- in the opedial complex that lacan talks about (the phlus) he mentions that the
child in western sociseties stem their desires from their mother
-the child tries to mirrow the mothers desires so that it can be the love-object that
is fully satisfying for its mother
-then the father internvenes and always wins
d. The Law and Symbolic Identification
- when the child realizes it cannot be the fully loving object for its mother it fors an
ideal ego and forms the symbolic identitfication of the ego odeal
-his is precisely identification with and within something that cannot be seen,
touched, devoured, or mastered: namely, the words, norms and directives of its
given cultural collective.
-symbolic identification is the normatively circumscribed wat of ogamizing a
social-intersubjective space
e. Summary
-human bengs tend to become more decentered and become inmixed with the
imparitices of the natural language of society
-when the big other denied its desire, the new desire is characterized by a fatal
attraction to that prohibition death drive
3. Lacans Philosophy of Language
a. Language and Law
-only when the child is castrated it is fullt capable of beimg a language speaker
-;eartning language is learning a set of rules and laws
-words are more os objects and accepting their unconditional authority
b. Psychoanalysis as Interpretation
-from the mother toungue that we have learned is how we being to perceive
everything else
- we are caught in between the meaing formation of others and the expression of
subjectivity that flows through it
-the unconscious names all of the bodily manifestation, identification, etc
-the unconscious is like a language without grammar
-any symptom should be read as a metaphor
-within a syptom can be a repressed desire (this desire is expressed indirectly)
-desire is structured as a metonymy ((for example, a car) by naming one part of it
(for example: a set of wheels).
-since castration denies the first true love object, the other love objects that we
later seek are partially resemble the lost object
-the natural language thus has many applications that give a direct vent to desires
that the subject cannot confess
-multivalent resources of the natural language into which the subject has been
inducted (what he calls the battery of the signifier)
-words can be easily manipulated in which some grammar is folded to tell a joke
which happens through his unconscious desire which gives an indirect expressi0n
-a sentence begins with a base meaning but b4 the sentence ends the signifier is
uncertain
-when it finished it is quilted
-before this it is called a floating signifier
-a symptom in the case before the sentence is finished is the floating signifier
whose meaning is unclear to the analysand and the analyst
c. The Curative Efficacy of the Talking Cure
- in a symptom, an unconcius desire manifests itself
-when in a session, the unconcsiou desire comes out to the analyst and si
recognizednit and that makes the symptom disappear
-sheer recognition and engaging in dialect with others is what human desire is
always caught up in
-through language is a way the repressed desires try to find a vent
-whe we speak, the true meaning of what we say will alwwas be registered in some
Other
-The big Other is the place, tribunal, collective or single person which we
presuppose will register the truth of what we say, whenever we speak
-lacan says speech defines the meaning we get from the Other
-the Other can interpret this symptom when it is formed with an eye to this
interpretation
- this symptom is an appeal to the analyst to deliver the hidden messafe
-it formation is the appeal to the Other and implies the big Other as complete
-the subject speaks to the other and at the end the signifiers he offers are quieted
and return to him in an inverted form
-when the unquilted signifiers find a voice of manifestation in their unconcisou it
becomes part of their symbolic universe where he is able to understand the
world and makes up his identity
-an interpretation re-aligns th ewya you see the apst
-then this leads to the master signifier which is the signifiers that the identity is
more bound to like austalianm democrat
-master signifier identitification is multilayered saying that these signifiers are in
different orders of the rest of the other signifier.e the communist example
-to resignify the master signifier, he had to unconsciously odress the other in his
smptoms