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CLINICAL NOTES

ON THE LACANIAN SUBJECT

Brue Fink (1995). ‘The Lacanian Subject,’ The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 33-48.

The term ‘subject’ can be found everywhere in the work of Jacques Lacan – that however does not make the term any easier to define than any of the other terms in his lexicon.

Bruce Fink attempts to identify at least a few of the attributes of this term in order to put it to use in the Lacanian clinic.

These clinical notes will identify the main points and then summarize the arguments that Fink comes up with in his discussion of the Lacanian subject.

Since Lacan was fond of saying that the meaning of his terms should be understood topologically – i.e. in relation to each other, it is a good idea to invoke a semantic field in order to situate what he means by the term ‘subject.’

This is all the more important because most of his contemporaries in the structuralist approach to the human sciences in the French academy were trying to do without this term.

The terms that can be included in the semantic field to make sense of the subject would include ego, unconscious, individual, patient, and object.

The first thing to note then is that the subject doesn’t stand alone; instead it is to be conceived of as forging a relationship with the symbolic Other to

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which it is subject in the sense of being subjected to something bigger or superior. It can also be understood as a ‘position adopted with respect to the Other as language or law.’

The main difference between the ego and the subject is that the ego is located in the order of the imaginary whereas the subject is situated in the order of the symbolic.

In addition to language and the law, the subject is also affected by the desire of the Other and the jouissance of the Other.

The analytic process is an attempt to explore the different ways in which the Lacanian subject is affected by that which emerges in the locus of the Other.

The encounter with the desire of the Other is difficult for the subject to metabolize; there is therefore a need to invoke a ‘fantasy’ to mediate the approach to the desire of the Other.

This fantasy makes the room available for the subject to ‘subjectify’ (i.e. domesticate) the desire of the Other and make it his own.

This is important for the subject – otherwise it will lead to the generation of symptoms due to the affects induced in the subject by the desire or the jouissance of the Other.

These then are some of the main attributes of the subject.

When Bruce Fink compares the term ‘subject’ with those in the semantic field that I have invoked above, he comes to the following conclusions.

The subject must not be conflated with the term ‘individual’ that is invoked in analytic philosophy or with terms like ‘patient’ or ‘client’ used in medicine and psychotherapy.

The main assumption in the use of the terms listed above is that the most important feature of individuals, patients, and clients is that they are characterized by the mental attribute of ‘consciousness.’

Lacan however uses the term ‘subject’ to refer to the function of the unconscious rather than consciousness per se.

Furthermore, the subject is not a collection of images of the self as is the case with the ego of consciousness.

The subject is not the response to the mirror phase in which the child assumes an image or ideals as his own; it is rather that which resists the assumption of this image or ideals in its entirety.

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Lacan depicts the ego as having not only a propensity to libidinal fixation, but as that which takes images, ideals, and descriptions in the ‘literal’ sense without realizing that the meaning of a word is specific to a context.

That is why the subject must not be conflated with the ego of the statement rather than with that which disrupts its structure. This is because Jacques Lacan identifies the subject with the pulsative function of the unconscious.

The appearance of the subject is accompanied by its immediate disappearance.

There is something ‘fleeting’ about the subject. It emerges, as Fink puts it, as a ‘breach in discourse.’ It is akin to something that ‘surges forth’ in discourse.

These metaphors then are variations of what Sigmund Freud referred to as the ‘upward drive’ of the unconscious during the act of free-association or when the subject is asleep.

This upward drive of the unconscious makes use of the residues of the day, connects them to a childhood wish, and thereby constructs a dream that makes it possible for the subject to sleep.

Or, to put it simply, the subject is not to be conflated with the ‘chain of signification,’ but with that which emerges in the ‘breach’ or the gap within the chain of signification.

As Finks explains: ‘there is nothing substantial about this subject; it has no being, no substratum or permanence in time, in short nothing that we are accustomed to look for when speaking of subjects.’

The Lacanian subject then is not a substantive entity, but the split within which we might want to posit such an entity; in Bruce Fink’s conclusion, ‘the subject is nothing but this very split.’

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SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN