What does /lit/ think about Guattari?
His works are really difficult to read but really rewarding. I think he was better than Delueze.
Anyone have any ideas on Schizoanalysis?
Did you read Anti-Oedipus already?
I personally had a better time with Lacan (and Zizek) and Jung than that book -- don't torture yourself
>I really like him, what are your thoughts, he's better than deleuze, thoughts on schizoanalysis
> I really like earth, its better than mars, what are your thoughts on the ocean?
>>8056854
I've slugged my way through most of A-O. Still working on it from time to time. I just finished Chaosmosis, which I think is amazing.
What Lacan do you recommend? I've worked through some of Ecris. I literally can't bring myself to read Zizek. Every time I pick up one of his books I just end up thinking "Ug, this again?"
>>8056885
I've only read Ecrits -- I'd recommend finishing it.
For starting on Zizek, try "The Parallax View". He explains all of his references to Hegel and Lacan, analyzes other texts well, and shows its application to semi-current history. Don't be fooled by the memes. He also critiques Anti-Oedipus in a few areas in this book.
To answer your question on Schizoanalysis, I found that it is yet another place in Deleuze where Nietzsche's ideas on how difference is established come into play. From what I remember, the idea of Schizoanalysis comes from a splitting of ideas forward, often into unexpected and potentially rewarding ways. It's another tool to get around the mystique of creativity.
I don't really understand their bashing of psychoanalysis; Baudrillard started doing the same thing in his later work, and I'm not sure which psychoanalysis they are after besides bad people being stupid at their jobs. It's like claiming that interpretation is bad because people make mistakes when they do it.
Again, I think your resources are better spent elsewhere. Read some Nietzsche too if you haven't already.
>>8056921
Also, disclaimer: my background is in English lit, education, and linguistics. I'm talking (and reading) outside of my designated subject areas, so I might be giving faulty information.
>>8056921
I've read a bunch of Nietzsche and Hegel as well. Maybe that's why I feel like Zizek always seems a bit too familiar to me, though I am interested in seeing his critique of Anti-Oedipus. Have you read A Thousand Plateaus? It's tough to get through but also really rewarding. It basically expands what they do in A-O from the level of the socius to a more general ontology with the plane of immanence.
I like your characterization of schizoanalysis, especially in relation to creativity. I'm working on applying it to an aesthetic-political project and I've been thinking about it in much the same way.
I think they use psychoanalysis as fodder for the critique of a deeper tendency within society to recreate the same orders. Psychoanalysis is a good embodiment of this with the way that it prioritizes the past as that which unequivocally influences the present, not that it doesn't have some interesting things to offer.
>>8056929
thanks for the disclaimer, though it doesn't seem like you need to excuse yourself for "talking and reading outside of your designated subject areas". Have you read Bakhtin at all?
>>8056998
>Have you read A Thousand Plateaus?
No. I quit Deleuze after I read (and enjoyed) "Difference and Repetition" and "Nietzsche and Philosophy".
>Psychoanalysis is a good embodiment of this with the way that it prioritizes the past as that which unequivocally influences the present
Right, and such thinking undermines the meaning of potential, and potential is, according to Nietzsche, how we should conduct evaluations, rather than by product or consequences.
Should I pick up Thousand Plateaus or look into Bakhtin's work?
>>8056921
> I don't really understand their bashing of psychoanalysis; Baudrillard started doing the same thing in his later work
Any recommendations on this? Quite a few famous authors had a beef with psychoanalysis and I'd like to read more of their criticisms. Sloterdijk also criticizes psychoanalysis as a practice that creates its own patients (by claiming everyone who isn't a psychotic is still pathological because he is a neurotic for instance).
Anti-Oedipus and schizoanalysis is/are junk. Sorry, I can get really polemical on this one. It's seriously awful. Guattari was supposed to be Lacan's successor or whatever, at least according to a duo-bio I read of him an Deleuze. What a joke. HA-HA See, I can laugh about stuff too. But I didn't have to write hundreds of pages *pretending* to be psychotic to do it...
Yeah, it's (G+D&G's work) pretty creative, and you can learn a lot from it stylistically, but it won't give you any meaningful insights or intellectual tools.
If you want to criticize capitalism, you're better off with Adorno. If you want to understand schizophrenic media, you're better off with McLuhan. If you want to become self-conscious about traditions and structures, you're better off with Derrida.
Really I fail to understand the allure of Guattari and his books with Deleuze. Especially A-O I've read it like 3 times and don't "get it" at all. It may have made me into a jaded wannabe-cyborg/trans-humanist for a while, but that's about it.
his stuff with deleuze is junk. his own work is not bad but nothing that other people didnt do more seriously. i dont think he could remain objective without letting his leftiness get into his work. of course nothing like laing or stuff like that, but still one has to filter.
>>8056830
Simon:Garfunkel::Deleuze:Guattari
>>8057724
I've got trouble to understand how someone who advises to read Derrida can also say Deleuze and Guattari are, basically, non-sense (I know it's not your words, but that's somehow the feel I get). Seriously, give it another try!
I can't believe "What is philosophy" or "A thousand Plateaus" didn't ever give you any meaningful insights
>>8060187
What meaningful insights did they give you?
>>8056921
psychoanalysis sets up an external scheme in terms of which the text (or the patient) is effectively "rewritten." the probably is that it is an arbitrarily "transhistorical" scheme which has no basis in reality
>>8056998
>Maybe that's why I feel like Zizek always seems a bit too familiar to me, though I am interested in seeing his critique of Anti-Oedipus.
his "critique" of anti-oedipus basically amounts to saying it isn't really philosophy because guattari betrayed lacan. in his book "on deleuze" he dismisses the entire deleuze-guattari corpus in about a sentence and half
>>8061484
not defending zizek, but what exactly is substantial in anything d&g has written
this question has yet to be answered satisfactorily on this board. whenever it's asked there's just silence
>>8061534
the biggest achievement of anti-oedipus imo is banishing once and for all the question of "meaning" in critique, turning it instead to a question of function. i could elaborate on this if pressed.
>>8061555
I'd like to hear more.
>>8061534 >>8060190
I'm not well-versed enough to allow myself to "explain" any of these concepts, maybe someone will. So it's gonna be quite "thrown" words about what pleases me, sorry. Anyway : becoming-animal, body without organs, and the developments around the concept of event struck me regarding political philosophy.
The concept of "concept" itself as a core matter of philosophy (and all its developments) also was very interesting to me.
By the way, about this sentence :
>this question has yet to be answered satisfactorily on this board. whenever it's asked there's just silence
I wanted to reply to you about this silence, as far as I am concerned. Sadly, it's very hard to find any satisfactory "answer" on this board about anything in philosophy, it quickly gets into a fist-fight. I'm not certain it's an adapted media for discussions about philosophy.
In daily discussions (face-to-face), if such or such problematic comes, I can allow myself to speak about those things with people specialized in philosophy - even if I'm not. If I tell too much bullshit, they'll kindly let me know, but that will not be the central subject of discussion. On this board it's another matter, "anything said here can be held against you". I'm far from being specialized in philosophy ; I keep quiet. What I'm seeking in philosophy and literature are openings of horizons, not closures. Here, it's less about discussion and more about refutation, and that deeply repels me.
Plus, most of the time, there is zero problematic, what can one do about this? The best way for my mind to go blank is to have someone asking me "what do you think of this man?" (no offence to >>8056830 ). I think that's what >>8056877 was meaning. What remains? "I like it", "I dislike it", with no issue in the game (apart claw fight, that quickly gets old). Engage me with a living problematic, which require me to re-read or discover such or such text, and I'll be very much more talkative... I tried sometimes to "launch" such threads, but let's be honest : people don't come on 4chan to "work".
I believe people want to discuss authors they read ; but since these authors are difficult and it's hard to put effort in a well-asked problematic when there are so few rewards (beside trolling and bad mood), it often ends up in these very general threads which barely take off from time to time. As for myself, these are the reasons of this "silence" you're talking about.
>>8061534
> this question has yet to be answered satisfactorily on this board. whenever it's asked there's just silence
It doesn't surprise me. I once explained Lacan in several posts of wall text and it was incredibly tedious, not just because there's a lot to say in order to give a correct and coherent picture of an author's evolution, but also because it's quite a bit of work for a Mongolian Horsemarket Bulletinboard.
For now I'll just say that you shouldn't expect too much (but certainly not reject) Anti-Oedipus. It was written at a time when Guattari's status as Lacan's heir was uncertain and Guattari did not want to entirely piss off Lacan so he kept his criticism towards Freud even though it was obvious that Lacan was just a more nuanced and idealized version of the same. It was a book that, in part due to this, failed and sent Guattari into an episode of depression, if the biographer is to be believed. In retrospect, Guattari was a wacky figure - a militant and a womanizer - and it should've been clear to him that Lacan would choose his own son-in-law, Jacques-Alain Miller, over him. Also, if you check out the interviews from that period you'll see that Deleuze and Guattari didn't agree on certain key points.
Now the good part: A-O opened the way for A Thousand Plateaus and What is Philosophy?, among others, which are better books that make a far better job with much fewer compromises.
In order to appreciate the work of D&G you have to keep in mind that psychoanalysis was and still is big in France, among other places, so its criticizing is still relevant. If D&G's delirious "poetic-prose" might seem strange and pointless, you have to take into account Deleuze's "pragmatism" which aims to produce truth in a Spinozist-Nietzschean way (oddly enough, Emerson's influence on Nietzsche is obvious here): our desire is not constituted on lack, as Lacan and even the etymology of the term tells us, but rather on machines that constantly produce it. All sort of machines all over our body (and guided by the brain so to speak, but their elements are not limited to parts of the brain or cognitive information), including literary ones (that "make sense" of texts), that produce truth. This is to be taken literally: truth is not just discovered or invented (as in inventing a formula for truth-corespondence), but at some level it is produced even if we do not know how or where. That is to say, you read a book and it changes you even if the words don't really resonate with you at the time. This seems trivial until you realize D&G's point that you must make active use of these machines, take responsibility for them rather than allow them to produce on their own and possibly lead to thinking in terms of lack (which, on occasion, can even produce depression).
I'm not trying to justify their style, which can be very annoying at times, just to say that you should give their motto a chance: "not interpretation, but experimentation".
>>8061796
I remember these posts about Lacan (I hope you're proud). I've got some questions regarding what you just said, remember I'm no philosopher so feel free to tell me, if you feel I make huge misunderstandings.
A quick word about psychoanalysis in France, I discovered Deleuze and Guattari around five years ago, and the charge against psychoanalysis was "funny" to read in a nowadays context. I totally agree with you about the fact psychoanalysis is still big in France, in comparison with other countries. Though you can really see there has been a change of paradigm (with the advent of behavioural and cognitive approach), and when I read the parts where Deleuze and Guattari openly charge psychoanalysis, I feel like it "strikes beside" (nowadays, and regarding the "mean" and direct charges only). They still were in a world where psyché and all its resonances, even if deconstructed, were still meaning something. Since, the ethos of "communication" has taken over, with machines but barren and sterile ones. (And for me, cognitive approach in psychology and politics falls into this communication land). Psyché remains in the way but is now totally unthinkable with nowadays tooling. It's not the expected end of human sciences, it's a worsening of it (end of the rant)
So... about those machines : how do you tune this responsibility, so to speak "speaking in one's name", and the fact of a totally exploded subject? (in the sense of an "I" which isn't relevant nowadays). I think I remember some explicit developments about this in What is philosophy? but I can't retrieve it.
Also the way you introduce it is very similar to the Lacanian "to not cede on one's desire". Where is the difference?
>>8061877
Concerning the middle paragraph, I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say as there are too many general terms, but D&G were already in the middle of this change since they operate somewhere between an internal critique of psychoanalysis (keeping some of the old notions, even if only to turn them against themselves or hijack their meaning towards something else) and an openness to other approaches (which makes them sound cognitive-behavioural at times). As for the ethos of communication, again they are somewhere in the middle because they reject debate (philosophers set up "systems", planes of immanence and consistence so that when they do "debate" they talk besides each other because the very value of debate and communication is different in each system), but at the same time admit that conscience, in a traditional sense, must be determined from the outside (to think is to be forced to think by an external, even if perceived as internal such as a feeling of despair etc., rather than to be stuck in the same thought patterns).
> So... about those machines : how do you tune this responsibility, so to speak "speaking in one's name", and the fact of a totally exploded subject? (in the sense of an "I" which isn't relevant nowadays).
I'm still working on this point since their answer (that the "I" is a sort of byproduct, operating between subjective states rather than as a primordial entity keeping everything together) isn't entirely satisfactory on its own. I suppose this is where their emphasis on experimentation comes from. To interpret already presupposes something close to a paranoiac structure (psychoanalysis is thus paranoiac in a sense since it forcefully reduced everything to the Oedipus Complex to some degree, like how a paranoid psychotic would refuse any other interpretation except his own), but experimentation, albeit carrying its own dangers, can lead to a positive change without presupposing an unchanging "I" that leads it there. At the risk of sounding pretentious, it reminds me of Nietzsche's conception of art from the point of view of the creator (the work of art as a self-perpetuating entity) and how this influenced Foucault's notion of the subject as the relation towards the relation ("you" find yourself in a relationship with something external, your relation to this relation is the subject so to speak, but it is nonetheless itself changed by the relations). This is similar to those old ancient arguments for free will: the barrel is already rolling, but the person inside it has some influence on the movement (obviously this analogy has its limits since the person is not accounted for).
> Also the way you introduce it is very similar to the Lacanian "to not cede on one's desire". Where is the difference?
I'm not sure what that phrase means exactly because I've seen it interpreted in several ways (either as taking responsibility for one's desire or as not making compromises or as not giving into desire).
>>8061999
(continued)
However, for D&G desire, albeit being a central term, is similar to Lacan's/Freud's drive rather than their concept of desire as something fundamental and structural. For D&G, desire is produced and changing (even though it perpetuates itself to some extent), rather than a static producing entity that accompanies all drives. So to be responsible for it would mean to study how it evolves rather than to just accept it as it is.
>>8062003
>>8061999
Also, just to add, I don't think D&G really appreciate the term "responsibility" despite my inability to avoid it since it implies a response (in English it even works as response - ability) and someone responding (a self, a constituted "I") which complicates things and takes them in a direction they are trying to avoid.
>>8061999
Thank you for your answer.
Bump because I can't reply to you right now, but I'll try to, later in the day.
>>8061999 >>8062003 >>8062007
Hi again. This is gonna be long and obtuse, neither are my English nor ideas clear for the moment.
First, quickly, regarding the psychoanalysis point. I wouldn't have said D&G were sounding behavioural-cognitive to me (although they indeed lived during this historic shift, which also gave birth to these approaches). So I much more agree when you're talking about an internal critique perspective of psychoanalysis. I really believe they would be disgusted if they saw what psychic approach has become.
Then, I don't understand you about a "middle way" of D&G regarding this "ethos of communication". How do you think an outside-determined conscience comes in conflict with debate rejection, and how does that would contribute to "compromise" with said ethos?
Floating around this point of "subjectivity", I've also got some trouble to get where you're locating the problem, specifically about D&G.
Don't you also feel the "I" is a by-product, on a daily basis? (By example the common feeling of being "moved" by underground more than "moving" anything from a hypothetical "I").
I think that's partly what I was meaning by an exploded subjectivity, but for me the D&G "revelation" wasn't about this point of explosion (it was rather Freud and Nietzsche's point). So I've got trouble to follow your reasoning. For me, they were more on the political sides of the thing (what you probably mean, about the fact that Oedipus isn't only Oedipus, but much more ; family being already crossed by society and politics in a very large meaning).
All in all, for me it's a very actual thing, and D&G caring about "experimentation" is very significant to me too. I come from a quite pragmatical sociology POV ; during my studies "mind", "subjectivity", "agentivity" (and so on) were often (if not only) approached as an emergent feature of interaction. Ethnography in my field tend to show how actors appear and disappear, whether they are collective, individual, amorphous, invisible or concrete, etc. Deleuze was a real opening for me on the political realm regarding of these questions (offsetting them out from simply social things, and being more than a simple power play).
>>8065063 (continued)
Then, about the desire. Sadly I didn't read enough to say anything valuable. I get they put it in perspective with politics (once again, Oedipus not only being a "simple Oedipus"), much more than Lacan did (even if, when one reads between the lines...). Though, from what I get, desire is also very moving in Lacan's work (I'm thinking of the "objet a" which never matches with anything). I know it's kind of a pun, since I'm considering the inner content of this "objet a", not its inherent stability and crucial role in the psychoanalytical theory.
Though still, when you get from Lacan to D&G, you don't lose yourself too much during the game. It's opening it to the political and gives it a plural point of view. Desire flows as multiple, changing, without pre-established shapes and even without proper people to support it. They remind us desire is shaken by everything passing by, not at the very basis of the system. Big deal! But the main point is still desire. You really feel this desire flowing through their texts (and in their very way of writing too). In other words, I don't feel there is really a crucial change just because they reject the good ol' Oedipus.
After all, when you read some psychoanalysis or speak with clinicians, you quickly get tuned to the fact that "family" doesn't exist in one's psyché. It's always protean figures of such and such person. (I'm still talking of "person", so it's still very individual and not very protean in the sense that D&G may give it. Though I think you can get the direction I'm heading to. It's already not a "simple" "Dad and Mom", it's a mix of strange and multiple things which happens sometimes to be called "Dad" or "Mom")
>>8065069 (continued and ended)
A quick last word about responsibility. Regarding the Lacan's word ("to not cede on one's desire") interpretation, for me it's the two first you gave (taking responsibility and not making compromises). I don't understand how it could be interpreted as "not giving into desire", what are you meaning here? Like exhausting/depleting desire? I doubt there's such a thing, the closest would be jouissance and it's really not the same thing.
The word "responsibility" comes with a lot of luggages, including the most controlling/disciplinary ones ("what do you reply?" as "you are summoned to reply now", or the "don't you reply" from adult to child). (There is also the most recent one : to make poor peoples "responsible" for being poor when the cause is systemic (and sadly, the word took a lot of its weight from this economic politic). It's more a "burden-ity" and a painful re-subjectivation than anything else. It's the absolute contrary of psychoanalysis' responsibility)
Though in psychoanalysis, from what I get, responsibility is a matter of assuming the charge and weight of one's desire, offering it a chance to spread out (kind of meeting the Nietzschean "will to power"). Again, the opposite would be jouissance or compromising ("subway, work, sleep", rinse & repeat ad vitam aeternam)... Desire being almost savage, taking responsibility for it doesn't mean encapsulating it. It's rather assuming this protean nature, following it. I find it to be very much catching up with D&G idea of exiting the good old "mom and dad" delirium, exiting all the super-ego trying to compromise the flowing desire.
I think responsibility also comes with other enjoyable things (much more than prison and trial). I find the word of "response" to be a very talkative one (a response ISN'T a reaction, there is a whole world of politics differentiating these two words). A response isn't essentially in one's own name (so, isn't essentially identifying in a police way). Bruno Latour talks a lot about the concept of "porte-parole" (spokesperson). I find him to be very convincing, regarding the already plural aspect of a given speech (the idea is that one never speaks in its own name).
Besides, responsibility in regards to ethics and politics is quite a big thing when you take a look to Levinas (the face speaking to me) or Derrida (political implications in acknowledgement or de-negation of one's face).
By the way, concerning this face or this Other, I don't believe these concepts "re-unify" subjectivity, despite the use of singular instead of plural. It speaks about a way of appearing that one cannot describe without "killing" it : hence the fact one cannot unify/totalize this Other. Plus, the Other is also what makes me feel "other" and alien to my so-called unified self. The singular of this word ("Other", "face") may lead to problems in regard to the protean nature of desire, but isn't it what we are expecting from politics?
how do I into cultural and literary theory
>>8065108
Maybe you could make a new thread for this question, you'd have more answers
>>8065063
>>8065069
>>8065072
> I really believe they would be disgusted if they saw what psychic approach has become.
Part of their approach is there: focus on the brain rather than the mind in a psychoanalytic "let's work through it with interpretation" sort of way, changing cognition and behavior to produce new things, approaching "problematic" - in Deleuze's sense of the word, that is to say existential, philosophical and unsolvable by empirical means - anxiety-causing themes (for those psychologists competent enough to include existential psychology into their CBT), it's just that all of this is very poorly implemented and, as a results, falls back into that objectifying gaze that Foucault was complaining about in psychiatry, including psychoanalysis.
> Then, I don't understand you about a "middle way" of D&G regarding this "ethos of communication". How do you think an outside-determined conscience comes in conflict with debate rejection, and how does that would contribute to "compromise" with said ethos?
Of course for D&G conscience isn't exclusively determined by the outside, much like it cannot be limited to speech, it's just that many of its most powerful changes are usually brought on by external events or signs. The problem is that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to give a complete account of one's "system" in a debate because it includes things that cannot be transmitted directly such as feelings. This is not to say that feelings are what matters above all, but rather that intense feelings, whether of joy or pain, cannot be estimated and calculated, they lose too much when translated to speech. So by middle way I did not mean that they have a compromise, a sort of well defined position in the middle, but rather that they view debate as having a very limited value, but they cannot reject it outright because it might nonetheless allow for signs (in a Proustian sense) to appear.
> Don't you also feel the "I" is a by-product, on a daily basis?
Of course, but the question is how and why this by-product is so rigid in some, so malleable in others and so discontinuous in those who suffer from multiple personality disorder. The point that psychoanalysis analyzes, but also sadly takes for granted or just designates as unknowable in-itself, is a certain tendency towards unity both in the sexual act and in understanding one's own behavior and body. Saying that this is a part of the will to power, we "profit" from feeling whole, still leaves many questions open on this topic, all of which have political consequences. So while rejecting Oedipus as just a way of "structuring" among others, rather than a primordial event, does put the social aspects (that it sustains the Western nuclear family from which it comes from) on the forefront, it does not change the fact that the very mechanisms that allow for it might be in a sense "universal" even if we change their use (towards a non-human sexuality and so on).
>>8065069
> Though, from what I get, desire is also very moving in Lacan's work (I'm thinking of the "objet a" which never matches with anything). I know it's kind of a pun, since I'm considering the inner content of this "objet a", not its inherent stability and crucial role in the psychoanalytical theory.
I recently attended a psychoanalytical conference where one of the presenters really insisted on this point that Lacan is not a structuralist because he allows for a becoming, a contingency within structure. This is, for me, of limited worth because many psychoanalysts insist on structure far too much and even ignore the way these structures objectify their subjects when used in such a rigid way. For instance, it is reasonable to suggest that hysterics are body-focused in their symptom because they get body-of-language effects: a patient says that he can't go on or that something he went through is unspeakable and suddenly gets paralysis of the legs or vocal cords. It is unreasonable however to assume that every acting out (every act which he does, but cannot explain) a hysteric has is "just his structure at work" and not the result of the composition of his subjectivity: discourses he "believes in", habits, bodily states, etc.
> It's already not a "simple" "Dad and Mom", it's a mix of strange and multiple things which happens sometimes to be called "Dad" or "Mom"
It's not about the nuclear family as such (a female mother, a male father and the children), but even when those involved are contingent (a father who acts as a mother, a strict aunt as the father-figure, etc.) the traditional family structure is still sustained theoretically. Not too long ago there was a book by some psychoanalysts claiming that single mothers are a cause of mental illness in their children. Maybe they cannot offer the best environment for a child to grow up in, but would you really accept the claim that the absence of a father-figure directly in the household causes psychosis, when such a father-figure can be "sighted" by the child anywhere so there's no way to be certain (a visiting relative or family friend, etc.) ?
>>8065072
I like your interpretation of desire, but psychoanalysists tend to be far more reactive here. I may be wrong since I'm not an expert in Lacan, but I think your interpretation is much closer to D&G than Lacan. Psychoanalysts tend to treat desire as destructive: they destroy the subject's happiness and well-being through jouissance, decompensation, uncontrollable drives, etc. and the only good desire is the one freed, after therapy, from all identification. I have no idea what this desire looks like since it is related to the mystical feminine jouissance. As for "to cede on your desire", in this context it means to allow jouissance. To give you a concrete example I read in an article: a man gets caught watching porn at work, the fact that started his course of action of watching porn at work was his [unconscious] desire to get caught, which caused him to engage in such unsocial behavior in the first place. He ceded to his desire not in watching porn, but in "trying" to get caught doing so (despite having no conscious idea of this, he was doing his perceived best not to get caught).
As for responsibility, I do agree that identification can be a problem for it and that it could function without it, but consider Levinas' example of an injured or in anyway endangered man coming to your doorstep and aaking for a help which you are in no way obligated to offer. We can interpret this as meeting the Other, being forever changed by his face and our response to it, but in fact that response already took place as every man is the product of his past. Of course the Other changes us in such an incident, but it changes something that's already there and the change depends on various factors. I have not read much Levinas, maybe he has an answer to this, but I do not see this event of the Other's face being as fundamental, unless by this we mean infantile events such as those described by psychoanalysis.
>>8057724
Agree, A-O is waffle. Its a sprint to see how many references to film hip film and literature (Henry James) they can cram in. I appreciate the attack on Lacan and Freud, but did anyone outside of continental Europe take psychoanalysis seriously in the 70s?
Also, their misunderstanding of schizophrenia and embryology makes my blood boil.
>>8066013
Psychoanalysis is still practiced worldwide, even if it isn't insitutionalized.
As for schizophrenia and embryology, they were used philosophically. Neither the subject nor the universe is literally an egg. Although with schizophrenia you could make the excuse that it wasn't as precisely defined as it is today. Even in today's pop culture, schizophrenia is not distinguished from multiple personality disorder or sometimes even bipolar disorders, but in such cases it just means "shit's crazy yo" so maybe that's not the best example.
bvunp
>>8065108
Freud, Marx, Nietzsche
>>8066261
"Everybody" was not doing anything in the 70's. Psychology has always been heavily divided, and psychoanalysis had long since become mostly dismissed in favor of dozens of other methods of therapy and schools of thought in research.
>>8066224
>Practiced worldwide
So is rape and scientilogy. That doesn't change that freud was always a hack, as wrong about almost everything, and every one of you /lit/iots regurgitating your complete ignorance of what the field actually looks like need to shut the fuck up.
>>8067554
The point is that psychoanalysis was taken seriously and was used in institutions in France and it still is, even if it is not dominating the field (although it certainly was a few years ago). Besides, Freud isn't a cult leader, but the father of modern psychology, even if his followers treat his texts as sacred (something D&G were already complaining about). And all of this does not change the fact that psychoanalysis has influence in philosophy so it is normal for a philosopher to attack it or use it at least. Besides, it's interesting in itself even if it is wrong. I don't disagree that some approaches should be rejected outright rather than engaged with polemically, but I don't think D&G should've rejected psychoanalysis fully. Even so, they did so to a great extent anyway.
>>806755
I was almost starting to think that the people who are dumb enough to still think psychoanalysis is a branch of psychology were not coming, sylly me. And obviously you get a dose of the good ol' if it is not science it doesn't matter, always good to get as well.
>>8067554
Your contempt doesn't hide your blatant lack of knowledge to anyone – including opponents of psychoanalysis – who even knows the slightest thing in the field (whether it be psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, social sciences or history of science). If you don't know what you're talking about, you're not required to pretend otherwise at all costs. Nobody will recognize and humiliate you on the street because you spoke on 4chan without a PhD.
If you don't like something, you can also nicely tell people why ; without necessarily insulting anybody who doesn't agree with you. Tell me how such or such thing is problematic, how it makes you think (even if AGAINST it), instead of shooting out "if you like it, you're stupid". This posture will not get you the "internet medal of truth restoration". If a topic doesn't make you think to anything but shit (it's your right, one cannot like everything), can you please keep your opinion to higher matters? Do you only come here to relieve your urge to agree and disagree? Can't you suspend your judgement for one second?
Do you really think "psychoanalysis/continental philosophy is shit" hasn't been shouted enough on this thread/board? (That also applies to "analytical is shit" for what it's worth, and all that kind of dialogue of the deaf). Did you ever see anybody, formerly disagreeing with you, suddenly changing his or her mind as a result of this brilliant argumentation? Did you ever see anybody, already agreeing with you, replying to you something more interesting than : "you're right they're all stupid, we're so much better"?
Is that what you call a pleasant discussion ; is that your joy of talking, thinking or even handling concepts? If you prefer the joy of fighting to cuddling, can't you furbish higher weapons rather than bitter and sluggish ones, for the sake of discussion? I can stand quite a bite, but it's all bark there.
I come here to TALK, even about things I disagree with. Your "crusade of truth" tone annoys the fuck out of me. People like you really keep this board in the mire.
>>8068089
I wouldn't have the patience and civility you're showing while talking to this wall, props to you
>>8056921
>I don't really understand their bashing of psychoanalysis; Baudrillard started doing the same thing in his later work, and I'm not sure which psychoanalysis they are after besides bad people being stupid at their jobs. It's like claiming that interpretation is bad because people make mistakes when they do it.
You're right, you really do not understand it. One central aspect is that the fixation on the Oedipal structure in psychoanalysis is less a necessity dictated by the importance of the Oedipal in the illness of the patience (although it is not entirely made up) and instead serves to re-entrench the Oedipal in the illness, the patient, the analytic relationship, etc. This conserves both the present state of the illness and the (socio-economic) relationship between analysand and analyst.
>>8061534
>my criticism of D&G is to claim that there's nothing to it until someone literally spoonfeeds it to me
>They unironically read Sniffy McScratchy (Žižek)
>>8069835
Zizek has plenty of interesting ideas which do not translate well to video since they get very technical (especially the Hegelian bits). I'm not saying that all his books should be taken seriously since he admitted it himself that only a few of them (about 4 or 5 iirc) are serious philosophical works (that is to say not popularizing cashgrabs), but treating him as a mere clown or living meme hides this entirely. Deleuze thought that philosophy professors are clown figures, but this did not stop him from having both influential books and popular courses and conferences.
the clown is the character in tragedy from whom the most truth is usually dispensed, anyway >>8069993 so I'm not surprised about Deleuze's figure there. got a source on that? i'd like to check it out
>>8070524
It was actually court jester, not exactly clown. I involuntarily mixed his words with those of Zizek who repeatedly said that he does not care if people see him as a clown because it nonetheless spreads a message (pic related). Court jester is a more precise term than clown since jesters played an important role for Nietzsche as well.
So here's the quote:
> It wasn’t just Deleuze’s brilliance that attracted students. Because Deleuze felt that philosophy teachers were “looked upon as court jesters,” he decided to play the part. “When he felt tired, he played the musical saw for his students.”Deleuze’s over-the-top style caused one student to yell “fag!” during class, to which Deleuze responded, “Yes, and so?”
http://www.critical-theory.com/13-deleuze-guattari-part-ii/
I realize it's from a critical-theory article, but the articles are based on the book Intersecting Lives by Francois Dosse. I've yet to read the whole thing though.
As for Deleuze's point, I'm not sure where you can read about it exactly, but he frequently talks about comic, humor, irony and laughter in his books.
>>8065421
>>8065444
>>8065480
Hello again,
I get a better taste of what you mean, with what you said in >>8065421 . The point where you're talking about the unity implied by psychoanalysis into sexual act or own-knowledge I don't really understand, though.
Regarding your two other posts, I'll try to be concise :
>>8065444
I couldn't really say anything about the epistemological question regarding the status of Lacan's structuralism. Once again I'm not well versed enough. Although, what you say about a "rigid way" of seeing structure I can relate very much more. This is a constant discussion in such matter, as psychoanalysis is special in its very way to proceed (theory is totally dependant on clinic, and is also a meta-perspective about it, in the sense that transference centrality doesn't allow to say "I get it", quietly sit in an university office. In other words, it's a theory of praxis). I'll try to say it in a clear way but my English is limited.
I think psychoanalysis cannot get rid of the work around psychic structures and etiology (to say it badly), as it is the categories people are "intellectually" working with. Like all categories, they're always deficient and in need of a constant discussion with the realm they tend to objectify (issue being to keep the door open to the practical field, nothing but classic epistemology until now). We're speaking about psychoanalysis, so "intellectualisms" and "intellectualisations" shouldn't bother us too much as long as transference flows. Except for the worst point of intellectualism coming from the analyst : defence. So, I perfectly agree with you that a problem occurs when such theory is used in a stick and stuck-up way ; I think that it's always a defensive attitude from the clinician, which should be interrogated.
The field is far from being united and there are a lot of bad clinicians, but also better ones. I once got a teacher who said that "psychoanalysis must reinvent itself with each patient". Of course, as a patient, my somehow normative opinion on the subject is that the clinician must keep in mind that he/she has a complex subject in front of him/her, subject he will never succeed to reduce no matter how hard he/she tries (once again in a Levinassian way : this Other will never be reducible or totalisable). That's really basic, I think there are a lot of analysts aware of this, and a lot who I wonder why they are doing this job....
>>8073143 (continued)
Then, regarding the rest of your post, you address real issues, but I'd simply like to remind you that psychoanalysis is far from being an unified field, and you prove it yourself with a very Lacanian point of view :
> Not too long ago there was a book by some psychoanalysts claiming that single mothers are a cause of mental illness in their children. Maybe they cannot offer the best environment for a child to grow up in, but would you really accept the claim that the absence of a father-figure directly in the household causes psychosis, when such a father-figure can be "sighted" by the child anywhere so there's no way to be certain (a visiting relative or family friend, etc.) ?
What is Lacan saying, if it's not this? The "father" is a role, it can be the father, but also the girlfriend of the mother, the aunt, a friend of the "mother"... which is also a role! In other words, once again, there are reactionary people everywhere... even in psychoanalysis.
Regarding what I've said about desire, I beg to differ with what you say in >>8065480 ("psychoanalysts tending to be more reactive"), because I experience it as a very actual way of addressing desire for a lot of psychoanalysts nowadays. (Once again, question of representativeness...). About the link between desire and feminine jouissance, I'd pay extra caution with those words : Lacan speaks about it with mathemes and for me it's a "do not touch" kingdom... (I'd prefer to have a good grip on the rest before trying to go on these territories).
>>8073146 (continued)
One thing I'm sure enough about Lacan's work, is that desire DOESN'T exhaust itself in jouissance. Jouissance is death of the desire, the contrary of desire, the better way to never follow it. By example, a certain "wallowing" in depression may be a kind of jouissance. I think this opposition desire/jouissance is a really central thing in Lacan's work. Desire is never met, always jumping to another location.
I think there's a misunderstanding, given the way you speak about "cede on one's desire". To cede ON one's desire" isn't "to do what desire wants", it isn't to "cede INTO one's desire". What desire wants, you'll never know (the objet a : the prime example of unknowable). So, indeed, jouissance is a way of ceding on one's desire, because it flees the desire by killing it. In the example you gave, the man doesn't cede on his desire, he embrace its path, until he get caught. (And then maybe we can talk of jouissance, but I would be extra cautious). For me, this man ceding on his desire would be more on the side of going to his job, without trying to get caught.
Though, a point is sure into all of this : if this man doesn't care about finding other paths for his desire (to say it differently, if his desire doesn't already contain something wanting to flow in other paths), psychoanalysis has zero thing to bring to him regarding this question. (And so, here is the huge depth of implication of "to not cede on one's desire" : desire is deeply amoral and politically disturbing).
Then about the desire destructivity, once again I don't think psychoanalysis has any moral judgement to give to the "value" of one's desire - if it was possible to locate it (which isn't). It isn't psychoanalysis' role. Its role is to help a "subject" to deliver a desire from archaic derivations, which keep it "under-powered" (badly said). So, regarding happiness, I don't think it's a really relevant notion in psychoanalysis, exactly because desire doesn't necessarily bring to happiness. (For what it worth in terms of philosophy. I'm somehow sceptical to the very validity of "happiness" in our contemporary experience and philosophy. To speak bluntly, I think the notion isn't very useful anymore). All in all, practically, this desire doesn't really come "freed" from all identifications in the sense that it will not identify anymore. It's rather re-newed in other shapes, and able to recirculate again.
>>8073155 (end)
Yet, psychoanalysis cares about desire, not happiness. If someone is in a masochistic organisation of desire, or wants to blow his/her head off, psychoanalysis isn't necessarily a way for telling them "to look on the bright side of life". It only comes in response to a desire to address the organisation of desire's paths. If an analysis desire isn't there - so if no desire to find other paths to desire is there - psychoanalysis grants strictly zero response. Nor does it have to judge the validity or legitimacy of one's desire to blow his/her head off. In other words : psychoanalysis only comes there to follow an already changing, mutating desire, which wants to find other paths and shapes to itself. It's more or less explicit, so more or less Deleuzian's "becomings" style, but still... it is in my opinion very much the role of psychoanalysis.
At last, about the Other and how Levinas called ethics "prime philosophy", since you put it yourself in relation with psychoanalysis, I can only concur in this way! (with the importance of the mother in psychoanalysis in prime childhood - once again, in term of role, not biologically). There is a lot in common into Levinas and psychoanalysis. Though it wasn't really where I was heading to, it was more a way of "defending" the concept of responsibility, against its more reactionary drifts.
>>8073164
>>8073155
>>8073146
>>8073143
Hi again!
Thanks for the replies, I understand what you mean about desire and jouissance and you're right, what I was describing was just one tendency within psychoanalysis, not the whole field.
> The point where you're talking about the unity implied by psychoanalysis into sexual act or own-knowledge I don't really understand, though
Again, this might be rather a tendency, but psychoanalysts insist on a tension between unity and multiplicity (discontinuity): we do not have a unitary body as such since we never perceive it entirely at a time and cannot control it in its every function and it has no physical unity since it can be damaged or healed (including with organ transplants), but the body-of-language (symbolic rather than real, but real as connections nonetheless) is structured as if such a body exists. One rather ordinary consequence of this is phantom pain when losing a limb. Our mind tends towards unity despite discontinuity (between thoughts, moods, etc.) as well. Then there's unity as the failed goal of the sexual act: we fail to achieve a sort of perfect unity and therefore the sexual act is repeated again and again (obviously that's not the only reason, but late Lacan kinda insists on such things for some reason). So psychoanalysis uses this tension as a proof that what a successful analysis must deliver to the patient is a unique desire, no longer bound by the discontinuity of identification (since our identities change as well, albeit while retaining some rigid parts).
It's not that I have any problem with this psychoanalytic point in itself, since Lacan saw the end of analysis, this lack of identification in desire, as Absolute Difference, a properly Deleuzian term and Deleuze certainly wanted to free desire from blockages of identity. But in my opinion a truly Deleuzian approach would be to embrace multiplicity rather than seek tensions in it and this "will to unity" is just one member of the multiplicity rather than its opposite (there aren't really contraries in multiplicity, that's sort of the point of it). Lack does not exist in desire, but it can be created there so to speak (again, going back to the Spinozist-Nietzschean conception of desire that lacks nothing and "simply" produces). Of course, concerning that desire without identity we cannot really reproach psychoanalysts for keeping it mysterious (and mystical) because they state again and again that it is not discursive and therefore to try and describe it would be to fall back into particulars and generals (aka speech) and, after all, psychoanalysis is a process that requires analysts and analysands in order to function, not discourses about desire.
>>8073546 (continued)
> Then about the desire destructivity, once again I don't think psychoanalysis has any moral judgement to give to the "value" of one's desire - if it was possible to locate it (which isn't).
Foucault compared psychoanalysis to christian confession. Deleuze, following Nietzsche as well, criticized psychoanalysis as something of a priestly class, pointing out that psychoanalysis goes well with Christianity and that there are plenty of priests who are also analysts. I don't mean this to sounds like Christianity is the problem, but rather that the reactive element criticized by Nietzsche (the interpretative forces that take over, but not by necessity, the phenomena of Christianity) still have power in psychoanalysis. I am willing to accept that this is just a tendency, but the theoretical side certainly makes it easy: desire is a necessity of life, but at the same time it is what separates life from the real: we desire the impossible by definition and therefore all desire is a flawed interpretation therefore desire and our drives that stem from it are corrupted by Original Sin. Again, I'm only making this connection to illustrate a point, I'm not saying that this is the only way to practice psychoanalysis. I'll tie this to the next point to show where I think D&G truly go against Lacan, despite the similarities:
> If an analysis desire isn't there - so if no desire to find other paths to desire is there - psychoanalysis grants strictly zero response. Nor does it have to judge the validity or legitimacy of one's desire to blow his/her head off.
There was a documentary made a few years ago called "The Wall or psychoanalysis put to the test on autism". Despite being a politicized and unethical work (it misrepresented psychoanalysts), it serves to prove an obvious point: psychoanalysis is limited by its method. Now, this method works very well in the apolitical setting required by such practices (not preaching to your patients what to desire and how to think), but this is the reason why Guattari was a militant psychoanalyst, he did not think that there was truly an apolitical position as such. Even Lacan gave a conservative answer to May 68: as hysterics you desire a master, you are going to get one. To be fair, revolutions tend to end that way so it's not like he was saying anything new. What I'm trying to say is that psychoanalysis should create openings for desire to flow, something which it cannot truly do unless it acknowledges desire production and that a subject is shaped by discourses. But this would be a compromise of its "apolitical" position which seems to be the reason why Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy has its limits as well, it is in many aspects still close to psychoanalysis.
(I'll continue this idea in the next post)
>>8073571 (end)
> In other words : psychoanalysis only comes there to follow an already changing, mutating desire, which wants to find other paths and shapes to itself. It's more or less explicit, so more or less Deleuzian's "becomings" style, but still... it is in my opinion very much the role of psychoanalysis.
I can certainly respect the psychoanalytic position, but the thing is that, as I mentioned, psychologists who practice CBT also include elements from other disciplines such as existential psychology (obviously CBT is already a synthesis since cognitive therapy and behavioral therapy developed separately, even if not entirely separately) while psychoanalysts, due to their method probably, are forced to stick to their own approach to a great extent. I know using the word "preach" to refer to introducing elements into the patient's discursive machine seems to undermine my own point, but I just mean it as making the patient understand his own desiring machines rather than giving him any sort of agenda to follow. But it does require theorizing with the patient under VERY specific circumstances: not any patient can listen at any given moment, but it does not mean that they should be reduced to their symptom even if that's all they are during decompensating episodes (such as psychotic delirium).
Maybe my views are still biased due to that reactive conception of desire, but it seems to me that while psychoanalysis is very useful in following the flows of desire, it cannot direct it as such unless it goes through the Oedipus Complex (to show the patient that his desire comes from there) and if that fails then it is lost. At least that was what D&G were criticizing and it's hard not to accept their point I must admit.
>>8073584 (P.S)
Hopefully the fact that I had to go through Christianity and politics to make a point about the psychoanalytic clinic won't make it too complicated. It's more a matter of analogy than of accusations.
whho is guitary
>>8073913
girl the loser's friend
>>8073588
No problem, I got it. I'll try to reply to you tonight.
>>8058729
Del is the better songwriter and Gut better singer?
>>8074939
Ok, no rush. Luckly /lit/ is slow enough to keep the thread going for days.
>>8073546
>>8073571
>>8073584
Hello again,
After all, the board is not that slow, the thread already was on the last pages!
About what you said in >>8073546 , sadly I'm not familiar enough with the writings to really reply. In my poor remembrance, it seemed to me that Absolute Difference was intimately linked to "intervalation", so a kind of openness. I guess it will be time for me to open the Lacan's Seminars with a little more of attention...
However, when you tell me that lack doesn't exist in desire, where are you talking from? From a Deleuzian location, or from a Lacanian one? It seems to me that it can be discussed for Deleuze, but for Lacan desire and lack are very much coinciding!
Concerning the analogies between Christianity and psychoanalysis ( >>8073571 ), I must admit I've got difficulties to get the point you're heading to. Sorry, the "I got it" in >>8074939 was misleading ; I was meaning I understood that it was not an accusation... Anyway, if you want to explain it longer, feel free to do so. Also, which "real" are you talking about? (I'm thinking about the fact that Lacan's concept of "real" is far from being what is most of the time believed as "real"...)
Though, you're establishing a relation between your paragraph about Christianity, and the de-politicisation of psychoanalysis. Are you referring (in an "underground way") to the social control role that is devoted to the confession to the priest? (in other words, what D&G can sometimes imply more subtly than me, that psychoanalysis turns one's desire into something acceptable, principle of reality becoming a cog of society economy of desire?).
Then, about the movie you're talking about, honestly I don't recall a lot about it for the reasons you gave (speeches were so cut-off, it was like reading random half-pages from ten different books and trying to get a synthesis). Regarding the obsolescence of psychoanalysis regarding autism, there are a lot of things to throw out but in my opinion also a lot to keep. I wouldn't say that quickly that it has nothing to say - and notably for political reasons (to name only one, that preoccupies me : the right to be "autistic", not obligatory obliged to "function" in society. That's something hard to think in a society where everybody has to have an utility). (Then, regarding the "too cold mother" Bettelheim thing, that's quite a myth which isn't considered worthy by nowadays psychoanalysts)
Then, to follow what you're saying, I pretty much agree with Guattari's position : psychoanalysis cannot be apolitical, and shouldn't try.
>>8077867 (continued)
Lacan's position, I think, was indeed on another level, but I wouldn't say as conservative that it seems to be (his response pretty much accentuate the fact that politics aren't "only" what they seem to be). Even if both Guattari and Lacan were speaking, after all, about "great politics" (relation between desire and collective), maybe they're not exactly talking about the same thing. As you're saying, considering political outcomes of revolution, it's always "treason" and that's perfectly normal and known. For me Lacan's word was simply about the travesty that desire can take when draped in "great" ideals. Guattari was talking about another form of politics, very much more "immanent". I believe he was already living in La Borde clinic since 1964, and it was something. That was a very practical way of living politically : we're not really talking about ideals there, it was not to "win a revolution" or ultimately change the world. It was very much in act. (I'm not saying there wasn't any utopian horizon, but still, it was only a tool for very actual becomings, no care given to its realisation - or better : with the knowledge that the utopian horizon is only a motor and a criterion of collective deliberation, not an objective to actually reach).
That's very much what I find problematic in CBT : in my opinion, they are so rarely practicable as tools for becomings' multiplicity. Their conceptualization of the subject is, for me, a non-conceptualization of the subject. Regarding its multiplicity, "subject" is a problematic term, though it still assumes its weight of "politicity". (I would even say "subject" is political before anything else. I think we somehow agree on this point, but it would need much more justifications). More, subject is already divided in psychoanalysis conceptualization : the self-evidence of the subject is already questioned, and so are power relations it embodies.
>>8077869 (continued)
Then, when we look at concrete application of CBT, subject doesn't exist and isn't needed - nor is its political life. I have the feeling that you mean CBT can sometimes open - at last - this old and obsolete subject to other kinds of becomings. I pretty much believe it sadly forbids the very notion of becoming in its actual applications. The reason is, for me, that it simply negates any political life. Politics simply doesn't exist in CBT, relations between desires and collectives aren't a problem : "first, desires don't exist ; second : it's just a question of regulation/management" (of course, that's only my translation of what I perceive from CBT). What happens? Once again, it falls into what Rancière calls "police" : regulation between these desires doesn't fall from the sky, it's a matter of power ; but this matter is negated and cannot be addressed through a "scientific objectivity". (If you don't know about Rancière, he opposites "police" and "politics". "Politics" happens when power isn't evident : "police" (process of regulation, well-normed inter-relations, managing) are disputed by political life (process of emancipation)). No need to say that this de-politicisation is a very political act, a hidden one, and an act of power. You could see this "effect" precisely in what psychoanalysis may sometimes be accused of : making nice peoples, who quickly come back to their little lives and works. ("This kid moves too much : ADHD. We will learn him/her to manage his/her attention")
>>8077870 (end)
By the way, I realize my post quickly turned into what seems to be a rant against CBT, but my point was to reply to you concerning what I think to be the political potentials of these. I shall precise it wasn't for the only sake of spitting on CBT (and I hope this doesn't sound to much like a denial). CBT are a part of my studies' objects, and that's also the reason I was interested in their political sides. My opinion on the point is that this de-politicized core contributes to harden the repression of such a thinking (the political one) in practical situation, and tend to close the ear regarding adjacent events (in other words : negating them, with all that it implies - including not letting them to emerge)
Plus : I'm only talking about theory, and well-applied theory. Though, we both know that there's a gap between theory and practice. So, that doesn't prevent CB therapists to also be good clinicians! (Precisely because we're still political and ethical animals, even when theory doesn't predict it)
(Exactly like knowing the whole psychoanalysis' theory isn't necessary, nor enough, to be a good clinician. And maybe it's my response about the consideration of Oedipus in therapy : once again, one may try to stick everything on theory with sad defensive effects ; but transference may also be effective no matter what the analyst may think. That's maybe also a (psychoanalytic) way of considering a successful CBT therapy : no matter what we intellectualize, transference happens with good clinicians - issue being, once again, to succeed in a good theorisation of the clinic...).
>>8073571
I'm not the guy you are discussing with but this post in particular caught my attention, especially these two quotes:
>desire is a necessity of life, but at the same time it is what separates life from the real: we desire the impossible by definition and therefore all desire is a flawed interpretation therefore desire and our drives that stem from it are corrupted by Original Sin.
There are couple of words here that I'm not quite sure of the meaning you are attributing to them and this can cause some problems, first desire being what separates life from the real, what do you mean by separating life from the real? Second that desire is a flawed interpretation therefore desire and our drives that stem from it are corrupted by Original Sin, again what do you mean by desire is a flawed interpretation? Interpretation of what? Reality? That by desiring something which does not exist desire is a mistake? Well, it seems rather weird to take it this way, Lacan has a text La méprise du sujet supposé savoir, where he talks about reality as a méprise, in that it is a "mistake" (really bad translation of méprise, but oh well) but not in the sense that the subject grabs the wrong one, but in the sense that there is not something to be grabbed, this being the real, so why would it be "flawed" if there is no other option? If it is the only possible way? And last, in your analogy what is the original sin to psychoanalysis?
The other quote is:
>psychoanalysis should create openings for desire to flow, something which it cannot truly do unless it acknowledges desire production and that a subject is shaped by discourses.
I don't really get what you are trying to say here, psychoanalysis does acknowledge desire production (I'm not sure what you mean by this actually, but taking this at face value for a moment) and that a subject is shaped by discourse, what it does not acknowledge is that it should do something, that there is an objective from the start to any pacient, simply because how can you sustain these two positions at the same time? How can you say that a subject is shaped by discourse, so you can only have as basis to treatment what he speaks and then at the same time have as a position from the start that you should create openings for desire? If you take this position then it does not matter what he speaks as you already know what to do, the consequence to me is that now you become a priest, now you say what is good or bad, now instead of directing treatment/cure as Lacan proposes you are directing the patient and again as Lacan says "I intend to show how the inability to authentically sustain a praxis results,
as is common in the history of mankind, in the exercise of power." If you start treatment with the answer and objective that you want to reach imposed to the patient it simply is an exercise of power.
>>8078356
>>8073571
Funnilly enough looking up to that quote I also found this one shortly after "The first principle of this treatment, the one that is spelled out to him [psychoanalyst] before all else, and which he finds throughout his training, so much so that he becomes utterly imbued with it, is that he must not direct the patient. The direction of conscience, in the sense of the moral guidance a faithful Catholic might find in it, is radically excluded here."
>>8078356
>>8078367
Hello, I'm the other guy, so not the one you're replying to (does this become confusing?)
I somehow feel quite "responsible" about the second quote you're talking about :
>"psychoanalysis should create openings for desire" ;
since this quote was - amongst other things - also a "retake" of the way I was talking in. (But not only a retake, since it was tangibly already evoking things for this other person).
I just wanted to say that I find your point to be very much relevant, even if that kind of ruins everything I can have said... (I was talking from my own analysant perspective : what I think I'm wanting from an analysis, "to re-open paths for desire". Yet, as you opportunely recall it, what I think I want and what "it" wants are two different things. And I'd be extra-disappointed to find an analyst who is gullible towards what I say I want, that would be taking me literally at face value, "au pied de la lettre")
All in all, your response keeps a nice "openness" (yet again, excuse me but I don't find other words!) to what one may call "the occurrence of the event", and I think it was very much what all these posts were about.
>>8073571
>>8079412
Ooops, that is the problem of trying to come in late to the discussion, my bad. But I will use the point you make on this post to say another thing about the first point I talked about. One key disction I feel needs to be made is the difference between desire and demand, I didn't see it being acknowledge and now re-reading the post >>8073571 when he brings the famous Lacan quote about may 68 he quotes as if Lacan "said as hysterics you desire a master and you will get it" when actually the quote is "As hysterics, you demand a new master. You will get it!". So it is not desire, it is a demand, this goes into your post because as you pointed out that the "opening for desire" is something you want than this also could be taken as demand not as desire, obviously one can't say that this is truly a demand and so on, but I think you can understand the point overall.
>>8077867
>>8077869
>>8077870
>>8077871
Hi again! Alright, since there are now three of us (which is great) I'll try to be more precise in the posts I'm replying to.
>>8077867
> However, when you tell me that lack doesn't exist in desire, where are you talking from?
Deleuze. Maybe the case can be made for it in a Lacanian context (D&G pretty much tried to do so with A-O, but later moved further away from that), but I don't think any orthodox Lacanian would.
> Also, which "real" are you talking about?
(similar to >>8078356 's questions)
I'm well aware that Lacan makes the distinction between real and reality. In my attempt to simplify the statement I only cause more confusion. The point was that desire works on two different registers: how you consciously formulate your desire (empirical, partial objects) and what you actually desire (the lack due to the original loss). The two cannot ever intersect truly since the "object" initially lost is unknowable, therefore desire can only present itself as failure and compensation. All desiring beings are thus symptomatic, nothing in the multitude of worldy objects can cure, only satisfy for a while in the best of cases and they can hope for the true death of desire which would be a heavenly object of some sort. I'm not gonna go in a pseudo-teological explanation of Originial Sin, I'll just say that in certain interpretations, quite common in fact, it is found (as the sin that's spread from parent to child throughout humanity) within all drives and desires. This does not mean that all human actions are sinful obviously, just that the risk is always there because the drive as such, at its core, is fallen, impure and must be restrained. Consider St. Augustine's idea that erections are God's way of showing Adam that he isn't even in control of his own body.
I realize that this example is not the only possible interpretation of Lacanian psychoanalysis, much like it isn't the only interpretation of Christianity. All I'm trying to say is that such analogies are far too common because the multiple ways it uses lack (original loss, missing the sexual rapport, the discrepancy between Signifier and Signified) allows for reactive forces to take hold in an attempt to police, temper and normalize. From this to creating "objective", "amoral" stances on sexuality there's a very short leap: you cannot desire what you already have, you only desire what you lack therefore heterosexuality should be the norm while insufficient castration leads to all sorts of different, deviant positions within neurosis (bisexuality, homosexuality, etc.).
If you haven't encountered such movements within psychoanalysis, I'm glad for you since they create immense resistances for anyone who feels this to be judgmental. Sadly I've noticed them far too often, even in psychoanalysts who have nothing to do with religion.
>>8079997
I'm guy number two.
>All desiring beings are thus symptomatic, nothing in the multitude of worldy objects can cure, only satisfy for a while in the best of cases and they can hope for the true death of desire which would be a heavenly object of some sort.
I don't think you realize how much psychoanalysis goes in the opposite direction with this premise, the thing you FEAR the most is that there is an actual object which can cease desire, angst arrive from the lack of lack, if you could fulfill this "primal" lack, if you could find object a, then there is nothing else, besides angst, the subject of language is barred because entering the realm of language essentially causes the thing of the real to not be able to be captured by symbolic or imaginary orders, biggest example of this is the phallus, essentially signifier of the lack of signifier of the sexual difference, because the sexual difference is a thing of the real, the imaginary phallus represents the lack of images that represent the sexual difference and the symbolic phallus the lack of signifier of sexual difference.
My question was as to what is the original sin in psychoanalysis? Entering language? But that is an option, you could look to autists as someone who chose to not enter the symbolic order, so how can a choice made by each individual be taken as an original sin always there from the start?
>From this to creating "objective", "amoral" stances on sexuality there's a very short leap you cannot desire what you already have, you only desire what you lack therefore heterosexuality should be the norm while insufficient castration leads to all sorts of different, deviant positions within neurosis (bisexuality, homosexuality, etc.).
To psychoanalysis this has nothing to do with "the sexual", the sexual, sexual difference in the end, has nothing to do with biology, with gender, because I as said earlier it does exist on an imaginary or symbolic order, you only reach the sexual difference on the end of analysis, this is precisely the difference that separated Jung and Freud, Jung believed in the possibility of knowing, possibility of reaching the knowledge about sexual, while Freud didn't. While I agree this is a difficult topic to talk about, since it can't be put into words, I think Lacan does a great job to take things even further away from this logic you talk about.
>This does not mean that all human actions are sinful obviously, just that the risk is always there because the drive as such, at its core, is fallen, impure and must be restrained.
Drive, to me, is a very difficult concept, while I could see why you would say that it must be restrained in a social setting, I don't really follow when you say that at it's core it is fallen and impure, at its core there is death drive, to Freud there is only death drive.
>>8079997 (continued)
>>8078356
> How can you say that a subject is shaped by discourse, so you can only have as basis to treatment what he speaks and then at the same time have as a position from the start that you should create openings for desire?
Good question since I hadn't realized how contradictory this must sound. Discourse here means something precise, namely making the patient aware of his desiring machines by seeing where his desire gets stuck and introducing new elements, including discursive ones, in order to create new flows of desire. Like I said, this sounds absolutely naive when you consider decompensating episodes or even severe stages (such as infantile regression) in patients, but then again psychoanalysis is already limited in what it can do when it comes to such things. It has nothing to do with giving the patient answers, but rather making him responsible for his thoughts and desire production (obviously our thoughts and desires are a "given", we do not produce them of our own volition, but rather they are produced in the unconscious).
As for desire production, it's something like this concerning D&G: desire works by forming (producing) assemblages of various kinds based (but not dependent) on empirical experiences. These productions anticipate our experience, they precede it, they are given to us in it, but we still have to observe them and in this sense be responsible for them. This view of desire has made many associate D&G's notion of desire more with drive than with Lacanian desire, but that's sort of the point of it, it's an alternative model so to speak. It's a far more difficult concept than perhaps D&G are willing to admit since there are plenty of questions to be raised about the actual formation, but it's something I'm still working on and I don't want to mislead.
>>8056830
Epistemologically speaking, what is "/lit/" but an abstraction, a structural perspective of a mere board on 4chan? And thus what can it be said to "think", as if it were all one organism? A hive or a mob cannot think, it is only action.
And so Guattari; someone named the infant at birth Guattari or it inherited that name, and yet is not "Guattari" really nameless and everchanging? Is he really a single self, or a fluid and changing succession of different "selves", even different "selves" at the same moment ... for instance, one part of "Guattari" wants to go to the bathroom, another to continue eating the croissant. So what?
"His" "works" ... who is "he"? What is ownership? Can "he" really be said to be, as pointed out, a single self who can "possess" or lay claim to what "his" "past" "self" "has" "done" "before" "already"?
And what really even IS a "work"? A meaningless abstraction, a distraction from the true nature of this world which is merely passivity, void; we speak of his works, someone's works, humanity's collective work to bring about a different world ... but humanity does not act but is acted through, is placed as the passive agent referential in the situationist situation, is acted through by circumstances, heredity, breeding, etc. And so on and so forth.
Future historians trying to account for the institutionalised fraud that goes under the name of ‘Theory’ will surely accord a central place to the influence of the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He is one of the fattest spiders at the heart of the web of muddled not-quite-thinkable-thoughts and evidence-free assertions of limitless scope which practitioners of theorrhoea have woven into their version of the humanities. Much of the dogma central to contemporary Theory came from him: that the signifier dominates over the signified; that the world of words creates the world of things; that the ‘I’ is a fiction based upon an Oedipalised negotiation of the transition from mirror to symbolic stages; and so on.
The English translation of this biography by one of his disciples is therefore an event of the first importance. It is a harrowing read, but no one who inflicts on students Lacanian readings of literature, of feminism, of the self, of child development, of society, or of life, should be spared the experience.
Lacan was born in 1901 into a wealthy middle-class family and trained as a doctor. He was attracted first to neurology but soon abandoned this because the patients’ troubles were too ‘routine’, as his biographer (who clearly sympathises with his inhumanity) explains. If Elizabeth Roudinesco’s account is accurate, he must have made a hash of his first case presentation to the Société Neurologique: his patient, she says, supposedly had ‘pseudobulbar disorders of the spinal cord’—a neurological impossibility. (The innocence with which Roudinesco reports all kinds of clinical cock-ups makes this book a particularly disturbing read for a medic.) Abandoning neurology was obviously a wise career move. Unfortunately, though he lacked all the qualities necessary to make a half-way decent doctor (e.g., kindness, common sense, humility, clinical acumen and solid knowledge), Lacan did not abandon medicine altogether, only its scientific basis.
>>8080147
Like I said, it's just one interpretation of psychoanalysis that I encountered, not my own creation so I cannot develop a complete logic of how it works without inventing it myself.
> My question was as to what is the original sin in psychoanalysis? Entering language? But that is an option, you could look to autists as someone who chose to not enter the symbolic order, so how can a choice made by each individual be taken as an original sin always there from the start?
This point always gives me a headache, especially because psychoanalysts talk about it as a sort of limit of psychoanalysis that nonetheless must be acknowledged . The subject as Lacan understands it, as far as I know, is formed by entering language. How can we speak of a choice when there is no subject formed yet to make a choice? What does a pre-linguistic choice look like, a pure will?
He chose to be a psychoanalyst where, instead of elucidating diagnoses, he could impose them. He fastened on Marguerite Pantaine, a tragically deluded woman who had attempted to kill a well-known actress. For a year, he and Marguerite were, according to Roudinesco, ‘inseparable’. (She had no choice, being in detention.) The elaborate story he concocted about her became the basis of an entire theory of the sick soul and formed his doctoral thesis. In the great tradition of psychoanalysis, ‘he listened’, Roudinesco says, ‘to no truths other than those which confirmed his own hypotheses’. More precisely, the truth was that which confirmed his hypothesis: into her case, ‘he projected not only his own theories on madness in women but also his own fantasies and family obsessions’. For this soul-rape Lacan was awarded his doctorate and his reputation was made. To the end of her days, Marguerite remained bitterly resentful of the use he had made of her. With good reason: Lacan’s crackpot theories, partly expropriated from Salvador Dali, probably prolonged her incarceration. To add insult to injury, he ‘borrowed’ all her writings and photographs and refused to give any of them back.
Lacan published few further cases of his own. Instead, he recycled some of Freud’s well-known cases, in pursuit of his avowed aim of restoring the truth of Freud’s ideas which he believed had been traduced by Freudians. Unfettered by data, he was free to soar and to promulgate those large, untestable and obscure ideas—they were too difficult even for Melanie Klein to understand—that made him into an international superstar and which were cherished by his followers and are foundational for theorrhoeists. His doctrines—a magpie muddle of often unacknowledged expropriations from writers whose disciplines were alien to him, cast in borrowed jargon and opaque neologisms—were Rorschach ink-blots into which anything could be read. Lacan’s ideas were insulated against critical evaluation by his writing style, in which, according to Roudinesco, ‘a dialectic between presence and absence alternated with a logic of space and motion’.
The most powerful support for his doctrines, however, was the aura which surrounded him. Lacan was a handsome dandy and, like many physically attractive psychopaths, he was able to command unconditional love. He exploited this to the limit in support of his boundless appetite for wealth, fame and sex. He kept his disciples, who ‘worshipped him like a god and treated his teachings like a holy writ’, in constant fear of excommunication: the absence of Lacan was an ontological catastrophe equal to the absence of God. Anyone who fell under the spell of the Master laid aside their critical sense. He justified his intellectual terrorism on the grounds that he was surrounded by enemies whom he had to fight. One lot of enemies he conspicuously did not fight were the occupying German forces during the second world war. Although he remained in France, he so ordered his affairs as to be entirely safe and entirely comfortable. He felt, according to an admirer, Jean Bernier, that ‘the events that history forced him to confront should have no effect on his way of life, as befits a superior mind’. As a doctor he had many privileges and he made full use of them.
The major battles of his life were therefore in peace-time, most notably with the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) from which he was eventually expelled in 1963. Lacan portrayed this break as the result of an ideological conflict between the old school and the progressive, true Freudians represented by himself. Actually it was about his greed. He needed to maximise his throughput of patients in order to finance his lavish lifestyle. (He died a multi-millionaire.) He started to shorten his sessions, without a pro rata reduction of fee, to as little as ten minutes. Unfortunately, Freudian theory fixes the minimum length of a session at 50 minutes. Lacan was therefore repeatedly cautioned by the IPA. According to Roudinesco, he gave several lectures to the Société Psychanalytique de Paris arguing that shorter sessions produced a beneficial sense of frustration and separation in the patient, ‘turning the transference relationship into a dialectic’ and ‘reactivating unconscious desire’. Additionally, he lied to the IPA about the duration of his sessions. Despite this belt-and-braces approach, he was rumbled and out he went.
Faced with loss of income, he established his own French School of Psychoanalysis, over which he had absolute power. Its work, Roudinesco says, ‘concentrated on desire, transference and love, and all of these came to be focused on the person of Lacan himself’. Now he could make his sessions as short, and as expensive, as he liked. Even when they had contracted to a minute or two, he would often see his tailor, his pedicurist and his barber while conducting his analyses. In the final years, the process of shortening reached its natural conclusion in the ‘non-session’, in which ‘the patient was not allowed either to speak or not to speak’ as Lacan ‘had no time to waste on silence’. With the help of non-sessions he averaged 80 patients a day in the penultimate year of his life. Non-sessions were perhaps an improvement on sessions, in which, disinhibited through dementia, he would indulge his bad temper, raging at patients and occasionally punching them or pulling their hair.
The calamitous consequences of his style of doctoring were entirely predictable: his clients committed suicide at a rate that would have alarmed a man armed with less robust self-confidence. He claimed that it was due to the severity of the cases he took on but it may also have had something to do with the way he would start and stop analysis at whim and would sometimes cast aside, at very short notice, people who had been under his ‘care’ for years. The brilliant ethnologist Lucien Sebag killed himself at 32 after having been discharged abruptly from treatment—because Lacan wanted to sleep with Sebag’s teenage daughter. Not that Dr Lacan was always so constrained by such exquisite moral scruples. He frequently chose his mistresses from his training analysts (who were additionally vulnerable because they relied on him for the pass necessary for them to practise as Lacanian analysts) and also from his ordinary analysands. In his defence, Roudinesco points out that Lacan never pursued the physical side of things in his consulting rooms. One suspects that, given the design of the analysts’s couch, this was dictated by mechanical rather than ethical constraints.
On the principle of credo ut intelligam his disciples still believed him even when, in his last few years, he was manifestly suffering from multi-infarct dementia. He became obsessed by a particular mathematical figure called a Borromean knot, in which he saw the key to the unconscious, to sexuality and to the ontological situation of mankind. His quasi-mathematical, pseudological fantasies—the culmination of the cargo cult science of his school—propounded in interminable seminars, were agonised over by his congregation who suffered appallingly from their inability to make sense of them. They felt unworthy of the Master. Even his episodes of aphasia, due to ministrokes, were taken to be ‘interpretations’, in the technical sense of conveying ‘the latent meaning of what the analysand has said and done’. When, towards the end, he became deaf and his responses were even more disconnected from what was said to him, this occasioned protracted arguments among his followers over the meaning of his words and deeds. Even when, in his last year, Lacan’s mind was entirely vacant, he was still brought to meetings ‘to legitimise what was being done in his name’ and ‘suggestible people heard him speak through his silence’.
When he died in 1981, total war broke out among his disciples. Within a decade, there were 34 associations claiming to be the sole representative of the true spirit of Jacques Lacan and the sole heirs to his intellectual estate. Even now, 15 years after his death, this extraordinary charlatan can still command the adoration of the vulnerable and the gullible. Roudinesco, for all that she dishes enough dirt to hang Lacan ten times over, seems to forgive him everything for his ‘genius’ as a clinician and thinker. Nor does she question any of his fundamental ideas, though in the course of a 500-page book she disdains either to expound them in any coherent way or to offer any evidence for them: she is too busy with splits, schisms and influences. It is apparently enough proof of their truth that Lacan asserted the doctrines associated with his name.
His lunatic legacy also lives on in places remote from those in which he damaged his patients, colleagues, mistresses, wives, children, publishers, editors, and opponents—in departments of literature whose inmates are even now trying to, or pretending to, make sense of his utterly unfounded, gnomic teachings and inflicting them on baffled students. Aleister Crowley, the 20th-century thinker whom Lacan most resembles, has not been so fortunate in his afterlife.
Lacanians may argue that the great edifice of the Écrits is not undermined by revelations about his life. The Master’s thoughts should be judged on their own merits. However, in the absence of any logical basis or empirical evidence, the authority of the thought has derived almost completely from the authority of the man. The discovery that Lacan was the shrink from hell is not, therefore, irrelevant. Roudinesco’s biography is consequently an act of liberation on behalf of those students, forced by uncritical teachers who do not know Stork from butter, to try to understand and make sense of his nonsense. This act of liberation is all the more compelling for being the work of a disciple and thus in part involuntary.
fin
>>8080277
Source of all this bullshit?
>>8080254
>>8080260
>>8080266
>>8080272
>>8080276
>>8080277
Lacan could be the most evil person on Earth, or even eat babies, I wouldn't care.
For the first time since long on this board, nobody was giving a damn about ad hominem. The discussion was getting nice and interesting, and you come back with this dwelling on "how Lacan is evil and his work is gibberish".
Does this opinion hasn't been shouted enough here? Can't you let people nicely discuss, for one single time?
>>8079997
Guy number one here (so the one you were talking with since a few days, since the other person said he was guy number two...)
Thanks for the explanations. I don't have a lot to say regarding your two paragraphs, as "guy number two" more or less expressed what I would have wanted to.
>>8080255
>This point always gives me a headache, especially because psychoanalysts talk about it as a sort of limit of psychoanalysis that nonetheless must be acknowledged . The subject as Lacan understands it, as far as I know, is formed by entering language. How can we speak of a choice when there is no subject formed yet to make a choice? What does a pre-linguistic choice look like, a pure will?
Good luck with the headache about autism in psychoanalysis! Plus, it's a very moving and evolving point in nowadays' psychoanalysis. It's fascinating, but honestly I wouldn't too much "think" about it without a clinical experience. (And to be even more honest, I really believe there's something in general psychoanalysis which couldn't be approached without a clinical living of it. You take a great risk of only "philosophically manipulate concepts" without this embodiment, a risk to stay in the "sky of the ideas"!)
Then, I very much get where you're heading to with :
>All I'm trying to say is that such analogies are far too common because the multiple ways it uses lack (original loss, missing the sexual rapport, the discrepancy between Signifier and Signified) allows for reactive forces to take hold in an attempt to police, temper and normalize. From this to creating "objective", "amoral" stances on sexuality there's a very short leap: you cannot desire what you already have, you only desire what you lack therefore heterosexuality should be the norm while insufficient castration leads to all sorts of different, deviant positions within neurosis (bisexuality, homosexuality, etc.).
>If you haven't encountered such movements within psychoanalysis, I'm glad for you since they create immense resistances for anyone who feels this to be judgmental. Sadly I've noticed them far too often, even in psychoanalysts who have nothing to do with religion.
I've got a feeling it was where you were wandering around since quite a time!
>>8080276
Filled with ressentiment
>>8080831 (continued and end)
I must admit there is a part of people in psychoanalysis who are indeed taking this path. All I can say is that it is lamentable. It even sometimes comes from people whose work's quality wouldn't let you think this from them. For me that's a leading astray of the texts, to make them compatible with their "peculiar" opinion about the collective organisation. Guy number two began to speak about it in >>8080147 . I think an attentive reading (even since Freud's works) doesn't allow these kinds of stupid partisanship. (I'm not saying it forbids smarter ones...)
Even more, that's a non-questioning of their own reasons to take part in the so-called "public debate" : who do they really want to "save", from what, and where are they talking from? As you notice it, they come with an expertise-discourse to assure a scientific legitimacy of such or such way to rule the society. Even without reading Lacan a lot, you can already see there's a problem to hold this position inside the very field of psychoanalysis. You evoked discourse of the master sooner in the discussion.
That's this attitude I was denouncing in the role often attributed to cognitive-behavioral therapy (in >>8077869 and >>8077870 ), a managing role, ruler's helper.
(Note once again that I'm denouncing a very particular political role of psychoanalysis or CBT, not the fact that they have to be politicized. It's their oblivion of their political role, or their inscription in ruler's straight line of power (so an effect of de-politicization), that I condemn. You can also see the difference with what Guattari did. Guattari doesn't care about a phantasmed future of social chaos or heaven. He's pretty much in an emancipating way)
All in all, the point where I want to get to. It isn't because theory could be misread than we should feel obligated to "barricade" it. The notion of lack in psychoanalysis is an essential one, and obviously it introduces discontinuity and difference. But as long as we are not Bouddha (or dead), it's gonna be hard to think in a continued way, since discourse and thinking only come FROM this difference...
Hence, it's totally normal that people invests what Freud called "narcissism of small differences", whenever they find such or such discourse that let them tries it in... But you seem to offer to delete small differences, why could we not simply highlight the idiocy of this narcissism in politics, when it's really too obvious to be even funny anymore?
>>8080831
Guy number two again.
>And to be even more honest, I really believe there's something in general psychoanalysis which couldn't be approached without a clinical living of it.
As someone who studies psychoanalysis, but also works with it (somewhat) and also am going through my own analysis, this is a point which can't be highlighted enough in my opinion, and a point which people far too often ignore, psychoanalysis is a praxis. All the concepts we are discussing, all those points from Freud and Lacan were built in a clinical context which, again, are far too often ignored, I know that in USA at least psychoanalysis is not taken seriously as a clinical practice but I really think this is something which causes a lot of problems when people then take it as purely a philosophical approach.
>But you seem to offer to delete small differences, why could we not simply highlight the idiocy of this narcissism in politics, when it's really too obvious to be even funny anymore?
Agree again with you again, and in my experience the people with whom I'm currently working with and graduating with seem to take this approach as well, where we respect the fact that people make different readings of the theory but at the same time we do take a firm stance on some topics, as Lacan himself did on his time where he often critized other psychoanalystis on a miriad of topics, if you ever read The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power on the Écrits you will see a prime example of this.
>>8080880
#1 here
You really got my point about the purely philosophical approach, I was indeed talking about the centrality of praxis in psychoanalysis.
Paradoxically, I'm not practising it (except my own "work" of analysis), I only know a person who does and vividly tells me about it. (By the way thanks for the kind reading advise, I'll open the Écrits. Here comes the amateur's own betrayal : I didn't read the whole Écrits)
This aspect (praxis' importance) struck me because I was doing my studies with a lot of philosophers (which I'm not). They knew about Lacan quite well, and never ceased to amaze me regarding their fluently in concepts' knowledge and manipulation. Though, from time to time, I could pinpoint they were entirely missing the point, or lacking (no pun intended) something on the matter, and each time that was because it was lacking of flesh. Lacan was mainly a toolbox for them, so it was not that dramatic. I for myself cannot hide to be an ignorant on the very large spectrum of literature, so everybody was happy. But still, for someone genuinely interested in these questions as our other pal ( >>8080255 ) may be, I cannot help but think there's no way to "escape" the core that clinic constitutes.
#3 here (my first post was: >>8061796 ), not that identity is a priority on 4chan, but it might facilitate communication in this thread at least.
>>8080880
> All the concepts we are discussing, all those points from Freud and Lacan were built in a clinical context which, again, are far too often ignored, I know that in USA at least psychoanalysis is not taken seriously as a clinical practice but I really think this is something which causes a lot of problems when people then take it as purely a philosophical approach.
It seems to me that an appeal to praxis isn't very helpful since it is, unless I misunderstood the point, the equivalent of saying "it just works!". Nobody who has even the least of experience with clinical practice of any kind (not limited to psychoanalysis) doubts that certain phenomena take place (such as transference, reducing anxiety through the talking cure, etc. ). The thing is that there is a difficulty in going from the phenomena as such to their interpretation. So even a wrong approach can produce good results. It doesn't always, but then again neither psychoanalysis nor any other practice claims 100% success (all cases successfully ended, whatever this end of analysis might mean).
So I'm not saying that getting creative in a vane, pretentious way and abusing psychoanalytical concepts for philosophical reasons is acceptable, just that we should take seriously those who warn us of the risks of retroactive interpretation: you can explain anything in someone's past just by creating concepts. The solution of course is not to try and rather anticipate their future (some psychoanalysts claim that they can do this to some extent, for example feeling the signs of a latent psychosis), but rather to provoke a change in the subject, which can be done in a number of ways, some better than others. My point is that these changes, when they occur, require interpretation themselves (how they happened) and therefore there's no easy direct way to link them to a psychoanalytic approach by necessity. Unless of course you have a better explanation of course, maybe I'm missing something.
>>8082099
#2 here.
My point wansn't an appeal to praxis, but poiting out that all these concepts came from clinical experience and were always targeted towards clinical practice, so when you lose sight of this you can perhaps think that it is possible to simply apply the concepts at face value to everyone on any situtation, absurd example being something like going out and saying to everyone they want to fuck their mother and kill their father, that is no the point of the oedipus complex, as I said earlier you can't begin the process of analysis by having this things as truth about the patient or if you do then it just goes to an exercise of power because you will be exerting the concepts on to them.
This is why when you go and start hearing someone there is only thing to be done: nothing. You do nothing. You seat and hear they talk. There are sessions that I honestly don't say a word, except for "See you next week, bye.". Because the first moment is always listening, you need transferce, a strong enough transference where you can then come and make a "cut" on the discourse, point something out or simply end a session 10 minutes in because the pacient just said the most important thing possible and there is no point on continuing right now, all this things are not on a theorical book, Lacan never wrote about when you can do X or Y, because he talks about "authentically sustain[ing] a praxis".
>retroactive interpretation: you can explain anything in someone's past just by creating concepts.
Yea you can, the thing is in a clinical setting this kind of attempt don't seem to hold up, and then you either force them and you go back to an exercise of power or you simply let it go, it already happened to me, both as analyst and as analysand, as analyst when I tried to interpret something the pacient said and she simply said "no, I don't think it is the way you say it is" and as analysand same situation.
It seems you have met a lot of poor psychoanalysts who just take the theory and slam it on any pacient without context, time, transference or anything.
>>8082350
#3 here
Thanks a lot for being patient with me, I think I finally understood what you meant with concepts built in a clinical context, but I think we're talking about different things concerning where interpretation takes place. I was not saying that the analyst's job is to produce an interpretation for the analysand since, as far as I know, Freud already saw that this was easily rejected and had no positive effect on patients. Rather, I meant that psychoanalytic theory does not present itself as merely a pragmatic approach to directing the cure, but inevitably as a theory standing on its own (and thus of philosophical concern), because this theoretical dimension is needed to explain why the cure works and how it should work (in a very general sense of course, I'm not suggesting that there's some precise recipe to it) to those trained as analysts.
So you're right that maybe I hang out with the wrong analysts, but they do seem to care about theory because they sometimes disagree about diagnostics, even on classic cases. This may seem again like something outside of the clinic, but I'd assume that even though the diagnostic is a theoretical concern, it is taken into consideration during the analysis session.
>>8082396
#2 here.
No problem man.
> I meant that psychoanalytic theory does not present itself as merely a pragmatic approach to directing the cure
I wouldn't be so sure hahah, I don't know, I really do feel it does, first you have to define cure obviously but skipping this for a moment, I thought of an analogy and perhaps this sounds better in my head than it actually is, but oh well, what you are suggesting to me sounds like taking fraction theory and then removing the numbers and saying theory should stand on its own. Yes, it can stand on its own but what is the point? You can "prove" that a/b means that b divides a, and so on, but you can never reach what is actually the important thing about fraction theory, the application of it in mathematics as a whole, you can't point that fractions opened the possibility to numbers between 1 and 2 because you took the "practical" part, the number, off the equation, quite literally.
Even worse with psychoanalysis is that if you take the practical side I don't think the theory actually holds up all that well, simply because the theory is talking about things which can't be put into words, things like phallus, unconcious, sexual difference, this is why Lacan goes so hard on the mathemes later on, trying to formalize these things, in a certain way on another language, so yes the theory does try to explain things but in the end it is a matter of experience, experience of the unconcious.
>>8082533
#1 again
You spoke about The Direction of the Treatment in >>8080880 ; just wanted to say that I'm reading it since yesterday, and that's funny how it is relevant for what we were talking about all along (priest and analyst, analyst's desire regarding patient, ethics, even "discourse of the master" etc.). I'm quite struggling with the vocabulary from time to time, but I find my groove. >>8082396 , you would probably be pleased.
By the way, in the case of this thread fading away, thank you both for this discussion, and for the time you put into it (since I know it's rarely rewarding on this board). It was nice talking with you!
>>8084707
#2 here.
Glad you liked it. And the feeling is mutual, it really is rare to find this kind of discussion here.
>>8084707
>>8085539
#3 here. Thanks as well, this conversation truly helped me. Maybe in the future I'll be able to speak with a greater conceptual precision, for the time being I still have a long way to go since I'm taking a detour through Deleuze and Guattari. While I feel that their concepts have more of a direct impact on how I feel and behave, maybe I'll come to realize in the end that, as one of my professors told me, the two models (D&G's and Lacan's) aren't as incompatible as they are sometimes made out to be.
