Prosonal Opinion

2024-11-14 Lacan's Psychoanalysis

Lacan

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The best proof of identifying with a person is to do the same thing as him.

Signifier, Signified

Signifiers refer to the images and sounds that constitute language symbols, and are the process of expressing some concepts and various objects.

Signifieds refer to various concepts and various objects.

The Big Other: Linguistic Structure

The Big Other is the social and cultural order composed of language. Once we enter society through language, on the one hand we become the subject recognized by social, and on the other hand we lose our direct grasp of the Real.

This is what Lacan calls the separation of the signifier and the signified. The Real Signified can never be obtained through the Signifier. We can only keep slipping from one Signifier to the next, never getting close to the Signified.

The human spiritual world is immersed in the language environment. Our words, deeds, and thoughts are all affected and dominated by the language environment and interact with it. The structure of the human subconscious also has a language-like structure, and the reason why the subconscious has this language-like structure is precisely the result of the human spiritual world being immersed in the language environment.

The Big Other is the "delusion of being watched" mentioned by Freud, which refers to the voice in your heart that constantly suppresses your determination to do something when you want to do something. This voice first originated from the voice of "parents", the "prohibition" generated by their voices, and then this voice was taken over by social discourse. This results in the Subject being unable to enjoy his own desires and face what he wants.

The Subject has been structured by language, and he doesn’t know what his unconscious desires are.

At the same time, fantasy is also the way in which Subject organize himself. If there is no fantasy, the Subject must still face the Real, and according to the Lacanian system, this will be a traumatic experience, because the Real is a "big desert" or "void".

As the Big Other, the symbolic system itself has flaws, manifested in the fact that it can never satisfy the Subject. And it can only make the Subject circles around an empty core forever. The Big Other cannot even express desires clearly, so the Subject is confused about what the Big Other wants, and then constructs various fantasies and engages in an obsessive-compulsive way.

It shows that there is surplus in language expression.

The symbolization of real things is always a lossy process. Therefore, in the symbolic order, the Subject can never know and satisfy his own desires, and can never find the "ultimate answer".

Since the Subject's thought and expression need to go through the symbolic order, the Subject is prone to the illusion that the symbolic order is an innate existence.

The presence of the Big Other declares the destruction of the illusion of the Subject's self-sufficiency and omnipotence, and also causes the object of desire to be illusory.

The Petit Other: Mirror

The Petit Other refers to the other in the imagination.

Subjectivity is established through the illusion constructed in the mirror, and subjectivity is established through the gaze of the other.

Object a

Object a is something we are always pursuing but can never really achieve. It is the scar left by the original loss. We can never return to the original experience itself.

Object a is regarded as the cause of desire, and it is the essence of desire that it can never be achieved.

Object a is something that is permanently lost to the Subject. So the desired object always serves as a substitute for Object a. The Subject moves from the self-sufficient state of omnipotent fantasy into the language dimension, and Object a is left behind, which is a product of castration.

Therefore, human essentially becomes the subject of desire, and he will continue to "find that piece". The Subject of desire is a splited Subject, which marks the impossibility of satisfying the Subject's desires.

In terms of the Imaginary, Object a is the phallic signifier of the Subject trying to bridge the gap with his mother; in terms of the Real, it is a remnant that escaped from the symbolization of language; in terms of the Symbolic, it is a signifier of desire, a signifier without a signified.

Human's desire is different from animals' desire; it is not a real, empirical, established desire directed toward an object.

It is a desire directed toward the desire of another person. In other words, desire is not the desire for something or someone, but the desire for the desire of another.

Object a is the object that drives the desire to operate, especially those partial objects that define the drive. The drive does not go directly to the object a, but revolves around it.

Object a cannot be symbolized, it is lack itself, an "void".

Theory of Consciousness Structure (Three Realms Theory)

The Real is the ineffable ultimate limit of Subject's' experience.

The Symbolic, the product of the subject's vain attempt to resist the Real .

The Imaginary, a world constructed through others.

Stage of Consciousness Development

The Subject is born with original trauma, a form of separation anxiety that can never be satisfied. The subject will realize this during his growth process.

The very act of "birth" is traumatic. The former is a state of mother and child community, while the latter is a state of mother and child separation but "no consciousness".

In the Mirror Stage, the baby learns his own image in the "mirror". When he passes through this Mirror stage, he has his ego, although this ego is actually just him in the eyes of his mother.

The emergence of this stage means the beginning of the separation of the baby from the mother, and the baby gradually develops its own subjectivity.

After entering the second stage of the Oedipus Complex, the child realizes the existence of his father.

According to Lacan, the existence of the father symbolizes law and order, and is also a family and social system. This symbol or this kind of legal system is the father's discourse. The process of child identifying and acquiring this set of discourse is the process of the spiritual world being immersed in the language environment, and it is also the process of being shaped by the cultural environment.

In this process, the child gradually symbolize the illusory image of their father through language, family rules, real interactions with their father, etc., and reflect it into his own spiritual world, gradually forming a real image of his father in his spiritual world. And the image of the father also transitions from the Imaginary through the Symbolic into the Real of the child.

The ego is actually a fiction created by the Mother's gaze, and this fiction and illusion is firmly rooted in the baby's body from then on.

The Subject's narcissism is already a misrecognition of the other's love. The object of desire is no longer the direct object that the Subject wants, nor is it related to the subject itself, but something mediated by the other. The Subject often thinks he is loving himself, but he is actually loving the love of others.

The Subject will develop defense mechanisms in order to defend his illusion of ego.

The defense mechanism should be flexible and changeable, and the Subject may choose different defense methods according to the situation. Once the defense mechanism becomes rigid, it will trigger the Subject's mental symptoms.

Theory of Desire

Needs is innate.

Demands are the needs structured by language.

The demands expressed in language and the needs that the Subject himself hopes to obtain are not completely equivalent. The missing part is called desire. That is, needs that cannot be expressed in words. Desire is the remainder or derivative that arises when a need is expressed as a demand.

Desire is the Subject's unfulfilled desire for something that is ontologically lost.

Desire is the inexhaustible inner drive that the Subject, in the aspect of castration, hears the decisive sound of losing something, and turns there in order to regain what is missing.

Desire is the absence of the signifier, and desire is the metonym of lack, which shows that desire itself cannot always be fully represented. No matter what the Subject desires, all he gets is a concrete object that satisfies his needs. He can only keep "wanting", sliding from one signifier to another, but each signifier is metonymically related implicitly to the eternal lack.

Therefore, desires can never truly be satisfied. Desire is driven by void, and its only realization is its own reproduction: to be the eternal desire.

Libido is not a mysterious, biological reality, but a desire relation between the Subject and the external world through language. This so-called external world itself is a constructed, subjective, lagging product.

"There is never such a thing as sexual relations." Sexual desire is nothing but a product of symbol and imagination.

Lacan quotes La Rochefoucault's famous saying "Some people never fall in love if they have never heard of love." This proves that love is actually "obtained from symbols" and "obtained from others".

Desire is the desire of the Big Other.

Personality Structure Theory

Every other is a mirror, and we can all construct an ego from this mirror.

The Subject will have a main personality, which often comes from the person who has the greatest influence on him. For example, some people are most influenced by his mother. But at the same time, in addition to being influenced by his mother, he must also be influenced by others. Therefore, the mental structure of most people is that the main personality is at the center, and then surrounding the main personality, there are many fragmented, various and strange little egos, each of which represents a self-identity.

Sexualization Order

Masculinity and femininity are not biological definitions, but two sexualized subject positions, distinguished by the types of jouissance available to the Subject.

Phallic jouissance, the jouissance of possession, is what defines the masculine structure.

In Lacan's formula of sexualization, all men are castrated except for one man, and this man is symbolic. The male community is sustained by a symbolic, perfect and uncastrated male. Men are always perceived as a whole because they are all castrated by the law of phallus.

Not all women are castrated, so women are not bound by the law of phallus. Women may or may not obey the law of phallus.

Men can only have jouissance through phallic jouissance.

The jouissance of the female structure is a more abstract jouissance, an indescribable jouissance that does not involve possession.

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Sex is ultimately a product of language structure, and the distinction between biological males and females is also a product of language structure, which is to consolidate the hegemony of heterosexuality.

Imaginary phallus is the object of desire for the mother.

Symbolic phallus is the signifier of desire for the Big Other.

The phallus is a present, and the vagina is an absent. So phallus always means the presence of something, something that can fill some lack, something that is complete.

Psychoanalysis is not phallocentric.

Trauma and Gaze

Trauma works through the symbolization of the trauma itself (retrospectively constructed through the linguistic structure of the Big Other), which gives meaning to the traumatic event through the gaze of others, who is often related to the Subject's desire.

Pleasure Principle

The pleasure principle prevents the Subject from pursuing Object a because being near Object a would cause the Subject pain. Only the death drive is allowed to violate the pleasure principle.

The pleasure principle makes the Subject feel happy by reducing the Subject's psychological energy.

Psychological energy means that when you focus on an external object, your psychological energy will increase; when you focus less or finish processing something, your psychological energy will decrease.

Being in the internal world all the time prevents the pleasure principle from functioning.

About Love

Falling in love is because the Subject and the other party have subject similarities, allowing the Subject to find "himself".

Accept presents as life’s surprises.

About Prohibition

Human beings are born with a pursuit of divinity and do not want to be bound by prohibitions.

The mechanism of exhibitionism is to challenge the Big Other, let the Big Other show up, and imagine himself as the Big Other staring at himself.

About Death

You have to "mourn", otherwise you won't be able to get over the death of your loved one.

Masochism

Feel the power of destruction and life merging during the pain. Sexual desire is a desire for life.

Abour Dream

The retelling of dreams is also achieved through the mechanism of self-censorship.

Three Subject Structures

Neurosis

"most people", represses castration.

Perversion

disavows castration, attempt to make himself the Big Other to define symbolic systems, and wants to return to the binary hedonic relation with his mother.

Psychosis

not entering the symbolic order.

About Lovelorn

Intimacy can create the "illusion of symbiosis". Falling out of love causes the Subject's lack of "symbiosis experience".

Ways to get over the pain of love breakup:

1. Focus on the good things happened before falling out of love.
2. "Go to the next one".

Fetishism, Hermaphroditism

The fetishist disavows the fact that his mother does not have phallus and tries to imagine that his mother has phallus.