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BOOK REVIEW

Jacques Lacan (1973, 1979). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, translated by Alan Sheridan, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (London: Penguin Books), pp. 290, ISBN 0-14-055217-0

INTRODUCTION

This book is based on Jacques Lacan’s seminar of 1964 at the École Normale Supérieure. It was the period when Lacan was in the process of founding his own analytic school after leaving the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1963. Lacan’s new school was known as the École Freudinenne de Paris. This book is also known as Seminar XI since it is the eleventh of the annual seminars that he began in 1953 at the Hôpital Sainte-Anne in Paris; it was made possible by the support of Claude-Lévi Strauss and Ferdinand Braudel.1 Seminar XI is the best known and the most readable of the seminars.2 It is also important because it symbolizes the first scholarly collaboration between Jacques Lacan and his editor, Jacques-Alain Miller. Even though Miller went on to edit any number of Lacanian texts, this is his first and favourite seminar. It includes a number of interactions between Lacan and Miller in a Q&A format since Miller attended these seminars and offered to put them together in the form of a book. Lacan was more than happy to accept the offer and the result is not only this seminar, but the series of seminars that were subsequently published in French and in any number of translations. Those readers who find these public seminars easier than Lacan’s writings 1 The role that Lévi-Strauss played in influencing Jacques Lacan is explained in Patrick Wilcken (2010). Claude Lévi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (London: Bloomsbury), passim. See also Anne Dunand (1996). ‘Lacan and Lévi Strauss,’ Richard Feldstein et al (1996). Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 98-108. 2 For a chronology of Jacques Lacan’s seminars, see Marcelle Marini (1992). Jacques Lacan: The French Context, translated by Anne Tomiche (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), pp. 95-138.

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should start with this lucid translation by Alan Sheridan.3 There are four parts and four important concepts that Lacan takes up for analysis here. The four parts, in addition to the four fundamental concepts comprising ‘the unconscious, repetition, the transference, and the drive’ also focus on the function of ‘the gaze’ and ‘the field of the Other.’4 Lacan, as usual, relates these terms to each other as topological constructs rather than work with tidy or reductive definitions.5 However Lacan does identify the key attributes of these concepts without necessarily collecting them together in any specific chapter. This conveys the impression that Lacan is thinking aloud rather than declaring outright what these concepts mean on the basis of his previous acquaintance with them.6

THE LACANIAN GAZE

This seminar also includes Lacan’s forays in art criticism. The main purpose of his analysis of art is to explain the conceptual differences between the function of the eye and the gaze. Lacan also analyses the roles played by the concepts of light, the line, and the picture. The best known aspect of Lacanian art criticism is his analysis of the concept of anamorphosis in Thomas Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors. So while the title of the book makes it seem that Lacan will focus on only four concepts, there is a lot more on offer in the seminar than he promises at the outset. Most readers will find Lacan’s art criticism much more difficult to follow than his analysis of the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis since it presupposes that they understand the differences between his approach and those of conventional art critics. Since working out the differences between these forms of art criticism will make this review too long, I will focus mainly on the analytic concepts that Lacan

3 See, for instance, Jacques Lacan (1966, 1992). Écrits: A Selection, translated by Alan Sheridan (London: Tavistock/Routledge). First time readers of Lacan should definitely consult Bruce Fink (2004). Lacan to the Letter: Reading Écrits Closely (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press).4 This theme is taken up later in Seminar XVII (1969-1970). See Jacques Lacan (1991, 2007). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, translated by Russell Grigg (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Co).5 For an introduction to the technical vocabulary of psychoanalysis, see Charles Rycroft (1995). A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books). 6 For a formal definition of Lacanian concepts, see Dylan Evans (1996). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge). An in-depth study of technical terms in psychoanalysis is available in Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1967, 1988). The Language of Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (London: Karnac Books).

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invokes in his title and point out that Lacan’s preoccupation with art is mainly an attempt to explain the conceptual differences between the eye and the gaze and not an end in itself. 7 This again is partly because of the influence of Jean-Paul Sartre on his work and partly because the libidinal economy that structures the analytic distinction between the eye and the gaze is important within the Lacanian order of the imaginary. The main aspect of the gaze is not so much to see in the direct sense but to see oneself seeing or see oneself seeing oneself; the gaze, to put it simply, is necessarily implicated in turns of visual reflexivity and the forms of desire that constitute it. The gaze also brings out the asymmetric dynamic of seeing while being looked at unexpectedly by the subject or the Other. These forms of asymmetry are then mapped onto the Lacanian thesis about the impossibility of the sexual relation since the unconscious emerges in the gap between the eye and the gaze; in human speech in the gap between the statement and the utterance; in the psychic apparatus in the gap between perception and consciousness; and in the structural gap between biological instincts and psychosexual drives. Furthermore, the Lacanian theory of the drives is defined as necessarily ‘partial’ making it impossible to fuse the drives into something akin to a biological model of instinct. These drives exert a constant force on the subject and are not reducible to the function of reproduction; and in so far as they are partial drives they have a centrifugal effect on the subject. Therefore the Lacanian theories of art, sexuality, and sublimation are all related to a theory of the partial drive.

LACAN, PICASSO & SPINOZA

Seminar XI begins with Lacan’s ‘excommunication’ from the mainline analytic movement and the analogy that he invokes to Baruch Spinoza’s excommunication from his synagogue. The main reason for Lacan’s excommunication was related to his experiments with the variable session in lieu of the analytic hour. Lacan argued that the fixed duration of the analytic hour would make it impossible to ‘hystericize’ the patient; a variable model of the analytic session was much more likely to ‘precipitate’ the disclosures of the unconscious.8 This approach however 7 For a Lacanian theory of art, see Stuart Schneiderman (1988). ‘Art According to Lacan,’ Newsletter of the Freudian Field, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring, pp. 17-26.8 An exposition of the Lacanian technique of the variable session is available in Bruce Fink (2007). ‘Scanding (The Variable Length-Session),’ Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York and London: W. W. Norton), pp. 47-73. See, for instance, Jacques Lacan (1953). The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, translated by Anthony Wilden (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p. 80.

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met with a lot of resistance and led to Lacan’s excommunication from the analytic mainstream; that is why Lacan founded his own school of psychoanalysis in Paris in 1964. This seminar makes a case for why he went his own way and what the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis should mean to those who want to incorporate the insights of structural linguistics, structural anthropology, and his triadic model of the real, the imaginary, and the symbolic within Freudian meta-psychology. Lacan not only explains why he thinks these analytic innovations are important, but also differentiates between two forms of scientific research. Unlike conventional science which ‘seeks’ the truth, he belongs to the category of those who ‘find’ the truth. This is a distinction that he borrows from the painter Pablo Picasso who was also a finder by temperament. Lacan was fond of citing Blaise Pascal who was fond of the Christian dictum that you would not seek me (in the world) unless you had already found me (in your heart). In other words, we seek the Lord only when we have already found the faith necessary to do so. There is, in other words, a transferential dimension in such an approach to faith, prayer, and belief that can generate insights in terms of a patient’s pre-transference to the analyst and in delineating the problem of the choice of an analyst. This relates to the question of why patients demand an analysis from a particular analyst and the forms of the clinical transference that accompany such a demand. Likewise, the quest for truth in analysis is mediated by the desire of the analyst. There is no space outside the transference, Lacan argues, from which the analyst can view the patient’s neurosis. That is why the desire of the patient, the desire of the analyst, and the state of the transference go a long way in determining the state of the analysis and its therapeutic outcomes.9 Desire however is not to be situated in this formulation at the level of the subject, but at the level of the Socratic objet a. That is because the origin of psychoanalysis demonstrates that something in Freud’s own desire for psychoanalysis remains unanalysed by those who came in his wake; this un-analysed element constitutes, according to Lacan, ‘the original sin of analysis.’

THE UNCONSCIOUS & REPETITION

The main task that Lacan sets himself is to differentiate between the Freudian unconscious and those that preceded it. Furthermore, he attempts to situate his model of the unconscious (that is structured like a

9 See, for instance, Colette Soler (2002). ‘Symptoms of Transference,’ analysis, No. 11, pp. 60-73. A comprehensive analysis of the Lacanian clinic is available in Bruce Fink (1999). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press).

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language) within Freudian meta-psychology.10 The main attributes of the unconscious include the function of the gap, the feeling of failure, the sense of impediment, and the structure of splits in the psyche. The unconscious, Lacan emphasizes, is not be understood with an alternate model of ontology; it is instead to be conceived as ‘pre-ontological.’ In other words, it does not lend itself to a direct ontological description. Another important aspect of the unconscious is its pulsative function; this means that the moment it is detected, it closes up. That is the one of the main reasons that Lacan describes it as pre-ontological. It is not uncommon amongst Lacanian commentators to invoke the uncertainty principle while describing the unconscious. The process of observing the unconscious affects either what it discloses when it is open or its propensity to close up in the presence of an observer. Not only is the function of the unconscious related to repression, but the discovery of the unconscious as a meta-psychological construct itself is subject to periodic repression in the history of psychoanalysis. That is why the unconscious is the most important concept in psychoanalysis; it has to be repeatedly re-discovered by clinicians and theorists. Both the concepts of repression and repetition are related to the unconscious. The former is the prototype of the unconscious; the latter, i.e. repetition, relates to that which has not been adequately worked through in the psyche. It is related to the unconscious because that aspect of the unconscious which cannot be remembered and worked through in the clinic is subject to repetition in the patient’s life. It is customary to relate the analytic situation and the forms of jouissance that relate to the symptom in the context of repetition. The patient can get out of the patterns of repetition only if he is able to relate to the talking cure in its entirety. That is, the patient’s trauma will have to be put into words. To summarize: Lacan situates the unconscious at the level of the ethical plane since it does not lend itself to an ontological description.11 This is why most philosophical critiques do not do justice to the concept of the unconscious. They presuppose that an ontological description is possible; which, as Lacan points out, reifies the unconscious and makes it into a static entity. In other words, ontological descriptions assume that the unconscious is a place rather than a function because of our fondness for spatial metaphors; this is not a theoretical temptation that Lacan himself is immune to in this seminar. The

10 For a comprehensive analysis of meta-psychology, see Sigmund Freud (1991). On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis translated by James Strachey and edited by Angela Richards (London: Penguin Books).11 See also Jacques Lacan (1986, 1992). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, 1959-1960: The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, translated by Dennis Porter, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (London: Tavistock/Routledge).

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topographical dimension of the unconscious does not subsume the unconscious as such; it only makes it more convenient to talk about it through the invocation of spatial metaphors. We must therefore differentiate between what the unconscious is and how we talk about it. This is all the more important because almost everything that the patient says on the couch through acts of free-association is related to the state of his unconscious. 12

THE SUBJECT & THE OTHER

The topological relationship between the subject and the Other is emphasized by Lacan in his theory of the unconscious through Schema L and the graphs of desire because it is the Other that speaks through the subject. The effect created by this topology in analysis is that the subject feels that he is spoken rather than speaking in the conscious sense; that is because the subject always winds up saying more or less than he consciously prepared to say. This inability on the part of the subject to control exactly what he wants to say, how much he wants to say, and when he wants to say, whatever he winds up saying in the analytic situation, is related to what Lacan terms the plus-de-jouis. It also represents the libidinal function of speech since the talking cure is a form of sublimation.13 The importance of this libidinal aspect of speech in neurotic states cannot be over-emphasized since the jouissance of speech is either ‘too little’ or ‘too much’ and not just enough on any given occasion. The goal of analysis is not to interpret in copious amounts since that will not be therapeutic for the patient or subject to psychic resistance, but to interrupt the structure of the symptom through clinical interventions known as ‘punctuation.’14

CONCLUSION

An important aspect of Lacanian punctuation is to differentiate between three important stages of the analysis; these stages are referred to as ‘the moment of seeing,’ ‘the stage of understanding,’ and ‘the moment to conclude’ the analysis. In other words, unlike Freud, Lacan defines the

12 See, for instance, Richard Boothby (2001). Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology After Lacan (New York and London: Routledge), passim.

13 See Mary Ann Doane (1991). ‘Sublimation and the Psychoanalysis of the Aesthetic,’ Jacques Lacan: Critical Evaluations in Cultural Theory, Vol. IV, Culture, edited by Slavoj Žižek (London: Routledge), pp. 127-146.14 For an account of punctuation as a clinical technique, see Bruce Fink (2007). ‘Punctuating,’ Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners (New York and London: W. W. Norton), pp. 36-46.

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trajectory of analysis as ‘terminable.’ The technical requirement is to ensure that the analysis does not end too soon or too late in the life of the patient. The need for an optimal duration to complete the analysis is a function of the difference between ‘chronological time’ and ‘logical time.’ The success of the treatment is related to the function of logical time and not how many years of effort went into it (i.e. chronological time). The technique of punctuation in the Lacanian clinic then is related to a model of temporality and progress in the act of interpretation;15 and, as Lacan puts it, as early as 1953, ‘the suspension of a session cannot not be experienced by the subject as punctuation in his progress’ towards a cure. 16 And, finally, Lacan emphasizes the importance of the ‘subject supposed to know’ as the motor force of the transference; it is the fantasy of the knowledge contained in the Other that prompts the efforts of the patient in the analysis. The fantasy may even go to the extent of getting the patient to believe that the analyst can read his mind though that is not what Lacan meant by the locus of the subject presumed to know. These fantasies are analogous to the relationship between Socrates and his disciples in transferentially mediated dialogues where what is at stake is not only what Socrates knows or does not know in the empirical sense, but how that assumption of knowledge contained in the symbolic Other affects the process of self-discovery on the part of the disciples; hence the Lacanian preoccupation in the analytic situation on the topological relationship between the subject and the Other and the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis that are needed to make sense of this relationship.

SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN

15 See the three papers on temporality in psychoanalysis in the special issue on ‘Lacan on Logical Time,’ in the Newsletter of the Freudian Field, Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1988, pp. 4-45. See also Colette Soler (1996). ‘Time and Interpretation,’ Richard Feldstein et al (1996). Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 61-66.16 Jacques Lacan (1953). The Language of the Self: The Function of Language in Psychoanalysis, translated by Anthony Wilden (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), p. 78.