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CLINICAL NOTES SERIES

BRUCE FINK ON DESIRE

Bruce Fink (1996). ‘The Subject and the Other’s Desire,’ Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud, edited by Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus (Albany: State University of New York Press), The Paris Seminars in English, pp. 76-97, SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture.

INTRODUCTION

The patient in the Lacanian clinic is situated between the ‘desire of the subject’ and the ‘desire of the Other.’ The ‘subject’ and the ‘Other’ are not specific individuals in Lacanian schemas; they constitute instead the empty loci of Lacanian topology. In other words, a series of individuals can take the locus of the Other in the subject’s life. Furthermore, the term ‘subject’ should not be conflated with the individual, the ego, or the legal notion of a person. The ‘subject’ is, quite simply, that which speaks.1 It is conceived to be, ironically, in Lacanian analysis shaped like an ‘object.’ Or, to put it more simply, the subject is that which finds itself spoken by the discourse of the symbolic Other (which is the Lacanian formula for the unconscious). This follows from the fact that the speaking subject usually finds himself saying a ‘lot more’ or a ‘lot less’ than he consciously intends to in any interpersonal encounter. That is why the speaking subject is not in full control of what he says though he can prepare his comments carefully. Nonetheless, he has to exercise a lot of self-control to not depart from the script of prepared comments. This feeling that there is a lot more

1 For an elaboration of this theme, see Bruce Fink (1995). ‘The Lacanian Subject,’ in The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp. 33-79. See also Bruce Fink (2014). ‘Lacan on Personality from the 1930s to the 1950s,’ Against Understanding: Cases and Commentary in a Lacanian Key (London and New York: Routledge), Vol. 2, pp. 92-104.

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or lot less that needs to be said or should have been said on any given occasion constitutes the Lacanian model of communication as that which is animated by a form of plus-de-jouis (‘surplus enjoyment’). This means that the forms of enjoyment which constitute speech in analysis; or even in everyday life, are more or less than that which is objectively needed on any given occasion. What analysts do then is to explore this positive or negative excess to find a point of entry into the unconscious; these forms of excess then are what is at stake in a psychoanalytic model of stability.

REGULATING INTEREST RATES

Regulating the desire of the subject then alternates between forms of ‘libidinisation’ and ‘de-libidinisation’ through the intervention of the psychoanalyst. The former is required when the subject experiences too little enjoyment; and the latter when the subject enjoys too much. This does not mean that enjoyment can be objectively measured. It is more a question of actual or perceived capacity to contain complex affects ranging from the positive to the negative. The central banker’s equivalent of this in monetary policy is known as ‘counter-cyclical policy.’ The regulation of interest rates by central bankers is akin to the regulation of desire in patients by psychoanalysts. In other words, there is an important relationship between questions of ‘symbolic economy’ in monetary policy and those of ‘libidinal economy’ in psychoanalysis.2 Lowering interest rates is a form of ‘libidinisation’ because it will increase levels of economic activity in the economy. Increasing interest rates is a form of ‘de-libidinisation’ because it will decrease the levels of economic activity and cool down the economy when there is a danger of over-heating. If central bankers do not tweak interest rates using a countercyclical approach; it will, needless to say, overheat the economy. This is tantamount to a form of destabilization of the macro-economy that monetary policy must prevent; that is why central banks were invented. That is also why the increased levels of interaction that I argue for, in these and other clinical notes in this series, between financial analysts and psychoanalysts will help us to build a ‘psychoanalytically informed approach’ to questions of stability and stabilization at individual, institutional, and macroeconomic levels without falling prey to the ‘fallacy of composition’ in macroeconomic analysis. The fallacy of composition occurs in economic theory when micro-economic phenomena are treated as though they were macro-economic aggregates and vice-versa during economic analysis. That is why stabilizing systemically important individuals will not guarantee the stability of the banking or the financial system. The stability 2 See R. W. Hafer (2005). ‘Counter Cyclical Policy,’ The Federal Reserve System: An Encyclopaedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), pp. 69-70.

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of systemically important individuals is necessary, as Mark Carney recognizes, but it is not sufficient. What actually guarantees stability in the macro-economy are institutional safeguards provided by central banks and regulatory agencies to prevent the negative fallout that might ensue if an important stakeholder has a bad day at work; or acts-out, through the automatic activation of regulatory safeguards like circuit breakers in stock exchanges.3 Central bankers and financial regulators are more likely to stabilize the economy if they are armed with a theory of the subject like psychoanalysis since it will prevent them from succumbing to the fallacy of composition while making their interventions. It will help them to recognize the ontological differences between stability at the levels of the individual, the institution, and the macro-economy as a whole. This, briefly put, is the sum of my intellectual exchanges, for instance, with eminent central bankers like Ben Bernanke, Mark Carney, and Janet Yellen. That is also why questions of ‘mental health,’ in the context of stability policies, have moved to the forefront of Mark Carney’s consciousness in an unprecedented way at the Bank of England.4

‘REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY’ AS AN ANALYTIC INTERVENTION

Here, again, the term ‘enjoyment’ is not to be conflated with sexual ‘pleasure.’ Enjoyment is the translation of the French term ‘jouissance’ which means ‘pleasure in pain’ or ‘pain in pleasure.’5 Jouissance is that which is ‘beyond’ the homeostatic principle which regulates the functioning of the psyche; that is why any form of excessive affect is experienced as traumatic by the subject.6 De-libidinisation is a Lacanian 3 The analytic theory of acting out is explained in Charles Rycroft (1968, 1995). ‘Acting Out,’ A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books), pp. 1-2; and Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973, 1988). ‘Acting Out,’ The Language of Psychoanalysis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel Lagache (London: Karnac Books), pp. 4-6. See also Robert J. Shiller (2012). ‘Policy Makers in Charge of Stabilizing the Economy,’ Finance and the Good Society (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press), pp. 111-118. For essays on the forms of regulation that will be appropriate in the financial system, see Stephanie Griffith-Jones et al (2010). Time for a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008 Financial Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press).4 See, for instance, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. and Stuart F. Spicker (1978). Mental Health: Philosophical Perspectives (Dordecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company).5 See Dylan Evans (1996, 1997). ‘Jouissance,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 91-92.6 See Sigmund Freud (1920, 1991). ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle,’ On Metapsychology: The Theory of Psychoanalysis, translated by James Strachey, edited by Angela Richards (London: Penguin Books), Vol.11, pp. 269-338.

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intervention that can help a patient or larger social entities work through the fear of success or the fear of happiness by invoking ‘reverse psychology.’7 This removes the burden of excessive affects from the locus of the patient, or the speaking subject, and lets him get on with his life.8 The speech of the patient is however not innocuous. It is animated either by the desire of the speaking subject or by the desire of the Other. An important goal of Lacanian topology then is to articulate the main differences between the ‘desire of the subject’ and the ‘desire of the Other’ within a model of analytic subjectivity.9 The initial Lacanian formulation was that desire is ‘always’ the desire of the Other. This however does not mean that the subject has no desire of his own. The whole point of analysis is to figure out when the subject is propelled by the desire of the Other; and when he is acting on his own desire. The Lacanian formulation which states that ‘desire is always desire of the Other’ means that in the ultimate analysis desire always comes from others; the world which pre-exists us, our parents, friends, and loved ones, who serve as libidinal prototypes in the unconscious. That however does not mean that the subject cannot domesticate the desire of the Other as his own. An important ethical imperative in Lacanian analysis is that this is precisely what is expected through the process of ‘subjectification’ or ‘working-through’ in analysis.10 When the subject works-through, he accepts as his own the aspirations, desires, and thoughts which stem from the locus of the Other. He admits to his analyst that he lets himself be affected by the locus of the symbolic Other.

ALIENATION AND SEPARATION

7 A lucid account of the basic scope of psychology is available in Gillian Butler and Freda McManus (1998, 2006). Psychology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press).8 For essays on the history of happiness, see Stuart McCready (2001). The Discovery of Happiness (London: MQ Publications Ltd), passim. 9 For a history of this theme, see Donald E. Hall (2004). Subjectivity (New York and London: Routledge), the New Critical Idiom Series. 10 See, for instance, Ellie Ragland (1995). ‘Lacan and the Ethics of Desire,’ Essays on the Pleasures of Death: From Freud to Lacan (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 144-181; Bruce Fink (1997, 1999). ‘Desire and Psychoanalytic Technique,’ A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), pp. 1-71. See also Jean-Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973, 1988). ‘Working-Through,’ translated by Donald-Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel Lagache (London: Karnac Books), pp. 488-489.

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The main burden of Bruce Fink’s intervention in these seminars, then, is to help us to differentiate between the ‘desire of the subject’ and the ‘desire of the Other’ by invoking three important Lacanian mechanisms in contention: they are ‘alienation, separation, and traversing the fantasy’ at the end of the analysis.11 The first of these mechanisms is a consequence of the fact that the subject’s ego is constituted in the mirror stage. The main emphasis here is on the fact that the formative dimension of the ego is the consequence of the identification with an image in the mirror; this is the most important source of alienation in Lacanian theory. This moment of alienation cannot be wished away. It is not contingent but essential to the Lacanian theory of subjectivity. In addition to the imaginary form of alienation there is also the symbolic form. This is a consequence of the fact that the Lacanian subject arises through immersion in language. The subject is therefore structured by the attributes of both the imaginary and the symbolic which constitute, as it were, its ‘conditions of possibility.’ The Lacanian approach to alienation then is structural. It is not a consequence of being raised in a particular type of society. In other words, we cannot in the Lacanian model conceive of a theory of the subject without invoking the structural effects of alienation as well. Separation involves coming to terms with the fact that the birth of the subject is an enactment of the desire of his or her parents. In the moment of separation, the patient tries to subjectify why he should have come into the world at all. This is tantamount to asking in the oedipal matrix whose desire, if any, he should pursue as his own. This is another way of saying, for Lacan, that all desire is mediated by the parental Other. Irrespective of which parent takes the locus of importance, mediation is an inescapable part of the subject’s existence. Alienation and separation then are the psychic mechanisms whereby the subject seeks to work-through the desire of the Other. Alienation is the attempt to find out what that desire is. Separation is the attempt to come to terms with that desire whatever its contents might be. The logical form of alienation is ‘either/or’ while that of separation is ‘neither/nor.’ The Lacanian concepts of desire and lack are implicated in the theory of separation. So, for instance, the analytic theory of anxiety can be understood either as premature separation from the mother in Freud; or as the seeming impossibility of being separated from the mother in Lacan. Both of these situations can engender anxiety in the neurotic subject. This follows, needless to say, from the analytic definition of the neurotic subject as somebody who cannot individuate in the oedipal matrix like the normative subject can. 11 See Dylan Evans (1996, 1997). ‘End of Analysis,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 53-55. The main point here is that the end of analysis is not about approaching the last analytic session in a chronological series, but about ‘traversing the fantasy’ that Evans describes in his lexical entry on the end of analysis.

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THE END OF ANALYSIS

The final phase of the analytic trajectory is known as ‘traversing the phantasy.’ This involves the realization that the unconscious cannot be made fully conscious. The attempt to do so in analysis is neither necessary nor even desirable. In this phase, the subject assumes existential responsibility for his contingent traumas and unconscious phantasies. The process of doing so, within the analytic trajectory, is known as ‘subjectification.’ It is related to the retroactive model of causation that constitutes the analytic approach to trauma. What this means is that traumas become traumatic only later in time and not when they occur. So the subject of analysis has a choice in how he chooses to think about events that affect his sense of well-being. This moment of choice constitutes the existential approach that is favoured by the patient. It is possible to differentiate between hysteria, obsessional neurosis, and the phobias on the basis of how the patient reacts to the core trauma that is being worked-through in analysis. So, irrespective of the forms of psychoneurosis in contention, the patient has to work-through the mechanisms of alienation, separation, and then traverse the phantasy that constitutes the end of his analysis. An important question that characterizes the end of analysis, for Lacan, is whether the patient is expected to identify with the analyst. Lacanian analysts do not insist that patients should identify with them because identification can become yet another source of alienation for the patient. In ego psychology, however, it is acceptable to bolster the weak ego of the patient by letting him identify with the strong ego of the analyst. The importance of this decision relates to the fact that Lacanian analysis, unlike ego psychology, is not a form of adaptation to a pre-existing social order. Lacanians therefore find it ideologically unacceptable to end the analysis through forms of adaptation, identification, or even by promising unrealistic levels of happiness to the patient. This follows from the Lacanian contention that the existence of the unconscious makes the attainment of happiness much more problematic than is commonly realized.12 Furthermore, the transference cannot be worked-through in its entirety. What is actually possible then is to displace the patient’s transference from a particular analyst to the discourse of psychoanalysis.

SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN

12 See Jacques Lacan (1986, 1992). ‘The Demand for Happiness and the Promise of Analysis,’ The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques-Lacan, 1959-1960, translated by Dennis Porter, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (London: Tavistock/Routledge), pp. 291-301.