Jack - 01/11/03 01:05:14 EST
And if you were to laugh at one of my sessions, if I were your analyst, I would end it, or I wouldn't. In either case, I would be analyzing your laugh. A laugh is a word, and nothing is more symptomatic. Nobody laughs at just anything.

lucas - 01/10/03 23:37:21 EST
all that the floating attention (analyst) recognizes is the halt in the flow of saying - the voice vacillates, the tongue slips, words repeat themselves... i.e.:
analysand: "I think my parents fixed me...I think they fixed me...they fixed me"
analyst: "your parents fixed you? this word 'fixed' has in turn an other meaning, right?"
analysand: oh yes, fixing means castration...what you do to the male cat or the dog..."
analyst: very good... see you Thursday!" JUST OUT OF CURIOSITY....HOW MUCH DOES IT COST ME TO FIND OUT THAT MY DOG IS FIXED AND THAT SOME ARE FIXATED THAT PARENTS CASTRATE THEM? BECAUSE LAST I CHECKED, EVERYTHING WAS THERE... JUST SO I HAVE MY MONEY READY FOR NEXT THURSDAY....in all good fun...

lucas - 01/10/03 23:33:10 EST
Jack you make me laugh histerically....would that be open to analysis? integritas, consonantia, claritas, quidditas....my religious background tells me

Paul - 01/10/03 22:45:54 EST
Lucy - I think yours is a great example, specially in concern with lucas' pondering over
"the analyst speaks but knows not what he speaks. The analyst reads but knows in a place other than himself...

Jack - 01/10/03 21:22:57 EST
Absolutely dazzling all of this. But one can't really free-associate online no matter how well lubricated one is . . . or adequately represent such free association. I would like to say that we need to get more analysts over here, which is to say, people who have been analyzed. But that's like saying you need to carve a hole in the ice to baptize people if you are in the Antarctic--an idea I could never get used to when I was a member of the Church of Christ. One thing is sure in Lacanian theory, which was all about training analysts: you can't be an analyst without being analyzed. But then, of course, who was first, and how did he acheive this status as the subject supposed to know that his/her/it analysands are actually the subjects supposed to know as they pass down the chute? Pardon me for concerning myself with origins--it's my religious background . . . I'm babbling; my attention is floating, but not without secondary, tertiary, quadritary, cinqitary, and .. . revision.

Lucy - 01/10/03 19:24:25 EST
all that the floating attention (analyst) recognizes is the halt in the flow of saying - the voice vacillates, the tongue slips, words repeat themselves... i.e.:
analysand: "I think my parents fixed me...I think they fixed me...they fixed me"
analyst: "your parents fixed you? this word 'fixed' has in turn an other meaning, right?"
analysand: oh yes, fixing means castration...what you do to the male cat or the dog..."
analyst: very good... see you Thursday!"

lucas - 01/10/03 06:13:58 EST
The analyst's attention floats, the analysand free associates - talks whatever crosses his mind. To the point that what he speaks is non-sense words loose their meaning... Perhaps this has absolutely nothing to do with Lacanian orthodoxy however it is something I have come to by reading Lacan. The analysand speaks but knows not what he speaks. The analyst reads but knows in a place other than himself. We are all subject to a language, an order, a structure that indeed reveals itself in speech but that we do not recognize...until "attention floats"

Lucy - 01/09/03 23:52:18 EST
The analyst's attention floats, the analysand free associates - talks whatever crosses his mind. To the point that what he speaks is non-sense words loose their meaning...
In you more than you: the speaking being knows more than what he speaks.
The analyst's silence, a semblance of a leftover, objet a, intervenes at the turn of the subject - because of what he utters, because of what he does not say.

lucas - 01/09/03 22:29:37 EST
Lucy - 01/09/03 11:30:10 EST
Bonni Brooke - what you think they think is always wrong... While interpreting what another thinks, obviously always brings in our "stuff", our reading, I do think that there are times when in fact we do achieve a "oneness" of thought/perception and therefore what we think they think is correct. Something of an epiphany if you will....which reminds me of James Joyce

Antonia - 01/09/03 17:58:24 EST
bahaa - go to the archives - I think it's 23 where a discussion over Hamlet starts - we talked about it for a while

bahaa - 01/09/03 15:21:54 EST
May you refer me the simplest keywords on Lacan .And how far is he different than some- one like Freud .That is ''A'' . ''B'' , how can we find a way out that links him with culture in general and literature in particular being ,of course, knowing the link that is claimed by critics and movements .Thanks

Jacques Lacan - 01/09/03 15:17:42 EST
You're all way off!

bahaa - 01/09/03 14:57:43 EST
Where are answers to my questions . Lacan and Shakespeare , and the applicable trend of the former ( being postmodern ) on the later's comedies .Pls refer

Lucy - 01/09/03 11:30:10 EST
Bonni Brooke - what you think they think is always wrong...

Bonni Brooke - 01/09/03 09:16:34 EST
I think I know what my dog wants. I think I know what others want. It doesn't matter how animals think at all (or plants, my car) it only matters what I think they think.

sophia - 01/09/03 07:07:41 EST
Antonia, thanks for the reference.

lucas - 01/09/03 05:38:33 EST
human speech and animal communication...I do not know that at this time in AM, I can even envision what Lacan could have possibly been thinking but I can tell you that the reason I am up is because my damned dog has whined me out of bed to feed her and let her out...sounds like she communicated pretty well and had absolutely no, I mean NO feelings of guilt about dragging me out of the sheets.

sarah - 01/08/03 17:45:34 EST
chris and john, no and no.

chris (uk) - 01/08/03 17:16:37 EST
are you being a stinker Sarah?

John - 01/08/03 15:05:48 EST
Folks, could you discuss the differences from a Lacanian perspective between Human Speech and Animal communication ? John

sarah - 01/08/03 15:02:36 EST
well now chris that's more like it!

Chris (uk) - 01/08/03 14:58:53 EST
A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm has been blowing from paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress. (Walter Benjamin, Illuminations)

slichanoo - 01/08/03 09:05:22 EST
"Let us put it like this: A spiritual -- that is, significant -- phenomenon is Œsignificant‚ precisely because it exceeds its own limits, serves as expression and symbol of something spiritually wider and more universal, and entire world of feelings and thoughts, embodied within it with greater or less felicity--that is the measure of its significance." -- Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
"Art is born and takes hold wherever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual." --Andrei Tarkovsky

Antonia - 01/08/03 06:45:17 EST
sophia - Lacan uses the metaphor of lips kissing themselves in The Four Fundamental Concepts, p 179. Actually dealing with partial drive he says the theory is present in Freud - the ideal model of auto-erotism being a single mouth kissing itself.

lucas - 01/08/03 06:06:39 EST
Jack, you are an "interesting character". I share your belief that all these people are sooooo smart.I'd like to have 1/2 their genius and I say this with great admiration...but isn't that a great thing to be able to read what they write and perhaps gain some "enlightment". And to quote from quite simpler texts: "There are Idols which we call Idols of the Market. For Men associate by Discourse, and a false and improper Imposition of Words strangely possesses the Understanding, for Words absolutely force the Understanding, and put all Things into Confusion".

sophia - 01/08/03 04:11:21 EST
Sorry just to jump in on y'all's conversation, but I was wondering if someone could tell me where Lacan uses the metaphor of lips kissing themselves, I think, to elucidate drive. thanks.

Jack - 01/08/03 00:16:23 EST
old "law of the heart" _resentement_. will there ever be an end to it? Sorry, sorry, and sorry again.

Jack - 01/08/03 00:03:49 EST
Gosh, you people are so smart. I wish I could post to this list when I wasn't several sheets against the wind, but I can't (hic).

chris (uk) - 01/07/03 17:21:13 EST
On another occasion in his Seminar, Saphouan equates what therapy tries to do with the 'liberation of desire'. However, according to Lacan, not everybody experiences desire and some people confuse metaphor and delusion.

chris (uk) - 01/07/03 14:08:14 EST
slichanoo, I was referring to the gaze of the art object or if you like, the gaze embodied in a 'painting', as Sarah mentions Holbeins painting (of seminar X1). My point has to do with the gaze as scopic drive, but as well, the gaze as object a. Hence the indifference of the scopic drive, but also the gaze as object a. Combining the two, results in scopic drive, but also a moment when love condescends jouissance to desire (if only I could remember the exact quote!). From my point of view, a discussion has little to do with aesethics, but much to do with post Benjamin, post Lacan, contempory art, in this instance. Contempory art involves praxis like therapy. Perhaps, Sarah could say more more about perceived negativity ? In my meconnaissance, I keep returning to Moustapha Saphouan's Lacanian subject ... either in the position of 'being the phallus' and 'having the object a'.

sarah - 01/07/03 10:52:37 EST
Slichanoo: thank you for some hope!
I must confess my implication in this present 'negative' response to analysis: of course analysis can be both the best and worst thing the 'I' has ever seen simultaneously: the truth is I often feel inspired and satisfied and then sometimes 'entirely hystericized'! My previous message emerged from doubt as to whether the 'hysterisized hysteric' can withstand analysis, or moreover, him/herself. There is a certain discourse in this Website, perhaps an intellectual trajectory that is very interesting indeed, and yet the horrified subject of analysis is excluded. The point at which all academic aesthesis is impotent and insulting - if we are to follow the aesthetic enquiry to encapsulate something of the truth analysis the image of 'the ambassadors' (Holbein) immediately comes to mind. Obviously this needs no further elaboration. We see in this image the textures of beauty, virility, signed with horror, doubt, and impotence. The difference being that we can pacify or master the aesthetic horror with language, discursive analysis and description; and yet in analysis, the picture, the loss is always fleeting inaccessible unmanageable. It is never 'the thing' and this also inspires "ca continue"

slichanoo - 01/07/03 06:04:53 EST
to sara: I'm sorry to hear of what you wrote lastly, or your shared experience. Offering hope I would say: a true Lacanian analyst will have, and does have, his/her patients walking away each and every time very much inspired to continue ("ca continue"), and satisfied with giving the payment. If in America, maybe they imitate to odd extremes and distort the proper attitude, which may be improperly perceived as "french arrogance" or "snobbisme." Neither could be further from the truth of... Lacanian orthodoxy... My first post a number of days ago referred to the OUverture of Sem One and the Zen master whoose aim, as in Buddhism, is to alleviate suffering with compassion (and a big stick!).

slichanoo - 01/07/03 05:58:51 EST
Chris of the UK: In the interesting context of the imagined scenario, when you speak of "indifference of jouissance" in 1/6 message it is related to one of your other queations concerning the status of the transference, i.e. the analyst's participation. Since it seems like true effort, it would be worthwhile to understand what non-indifference and indifference to jouissance would be in your scenario. Also a basic element would be helpful to clarify: what is jouissance and to whose, if anyone's, are you referring? Serge LeClaire is the author of "Psychanalyser," which in french is the infinitive and secondarily, a substantive noun. One is taken into sessions where a dream vision is analysed as a tableau, much in the same way Pasolini constructs a common language of semiotics and cinematography in empirismo eretico, not far from the hierarchical structures found in R. Jacobson.

lucas - 01/07/03 05:53:25 EST
with Lacan it is about structures....then reasonably we should ask what position does the art object take in the structure? Perhaps, we need to go to "The Purloined Letter" for this. Could it be that the art object=the letter?

Antonia - 01/06/03 17:48:30 EST
with Lacan it is about structures. thus when we say, i.e: art does not exist, it needn't be that art will replace woman... I don't think so. It takes the place in the structure meaning that what exists are works-of-art: each one, each work of art is the thing in itself. threof all theory of Art can't be but theory of the works of art... The same with the analyst, where the functioning occupies the certain place in the structure.

chris (uk) - 01/06/03 16:43:03 EST
When I referred to Terry1's supposition that the art object can in a particular instance take the place of the analyst, it was reference to a conversation concerning the art object and the viewer, the scenario was much the same as one in the Four Fundamentals Seminar. Lacan was talking about art. (not art in therapy).
But what I imagined, included an analysand/ artist's decision to take a painting to a session, which implied the gaze of the art object as object a (as in seminar X1). And 'laying down the gaze', surely implies two possibilities, at least! The gaze of the art object as indifference of jouissance and the moment when love turns jouissance towards desire. Consequently, the art object looks beyond the gaze to object a ... and for a moment ... 'object a is the void presupposed by a demand' (Alenka Zupancic 2000.18) ... or to include the analyst, presupposed by two demands ...

FBC - 01/06/03 11:31:00 EST
I was speaking with someone I love today after a petty estrangement. In the process of our talk we touched on the following. One central point of Lacanian theory seems to be that there is nothing resembling a "fanal synthesis", that is, a point beyond which there will "only be good". Somewhere in Sem. 7 he says that "doing things for the good, even the good of the other doesn't protect us from all kinds of catastrophes, particularly, it does not protect us from neurosis or the symptoms of neurosis." I take from these and other points that neurosis is a disorder which occurs as the result of the realization that there are some things which can never be fully reconciled. The disorder is something which, if it could be overcome, a final reconcilation could be had. Of course the disorder itslef is that it is something a cure for which is impossible. If this is a correct understanding than it seems to follow that everyone is, to some extent, a neurotic, meaning that we all use some form of deferral to keep the impossibility of an authentically unalienated state at arms length. Further, that the alternitive to this is psychosis which I understand as the belief that one is in possession of the TRUTH (the one represented by the S barred A in Sem. 7). To believe that one is in possession of this object is potentially grounds for committing any manner of atrocity in the name of that object. Ergo, if one is not neurotic they are psychotic for there are few if any of us who can bare the full wieght of Sisyphus's stone.
I am perhaps one of those academic asthetes (although I hope not) and so I don't have any more knowledge of the clinical aspects of the above terms than does the avarage dilitant, but I think that a reasonably honest assessment of one's life experience as well as history or current events (geopolitical) bare out my understanding. I wonder if any of you, who might be practicing psychoanalysts (ones supposed to know) can tell me if I have a reasonably clear understanding of the implications of Lacanian theory in this respect. Thanks

sarah - 01/06/03 09:39:07 EST
No there is nothing pretty about the analyst or psychoanalysis: the lacanian analyst is the worst thing the 'I' has ever seen and he/she exists only in so far as the analysand gives him a gaze and a desire: for some 'I's analysis is unsuitable which can only be realized at the end of the treatment - the point of no return: (i) wish somebody would hold my hand!

lucas - 01/06/03 08:55:39 EST
lacanian orthodoxy...isn't it knowledge that has always been "put in place of the truth"?

slichanoo - 01/06/03 08:41:15 EST
with the internalization of the analyst's syncopated emphasis at critical moments of the in- session discourse,auto-analysis by means of self-referential introspection may be the "mode of being" in which the artwork "replaces" the analyst, but as was earlier stated, this would entail implementation of heuristic device and diverge from lacanian orthodoxy. in france, one does not so easily "go beyond" ...

slichanoo - 01/06/03 08:33:30 EST
what happens to the transference when the 2 look at an art object? this was another aspect of chris' question. The erection of a particular transferential relationship is based on the organization of the analysand's demand, which precedes the intial encounter, the maintenance of the transference wavers in cycles of cathexis -- each absorbed by the technique of a formed analyst -- according to the object-relations discernable in the anamnese, on one hand, and on the other, the concurrent manifestation of id. Looking at an object of art will not "poof" of smoke and flash disrupt the transference, the transference may be better understood as a "mode of being" (binswanger's work is helpful in this respect, as Heidegger is a common referent to both clinicians (lacan, bins.) "Psychanalyser" is a french title which deals, from the beginning, with dream/painting interpretation and may be consulted, along with the recommended review of Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" (with specific reference to "the shadow of the object." An interesting idea behind the sardine can episode was that "i never see what I want to see" or "you never see me where I am". The way artwork/analyst is spoken of here, it resembles Sartre's dictum concerning the "gaze of the other determines my existence/identity" rather than Lacan, as someone mentioned it having been idiosyncratic americana. I cannot help but agree. vive la france......

lucas - 01/06/03 06:02:32 EST
< WOW...whoever you are sounds like you had a pretty shitty day...perhaps I could hold your hand after all...at least symbolically. Although I agree with you in certain respects. My point in writing what I wrote was to remember that analysis is not just about academic aesthetism and that<<" the subject is only placed by the symptom....something that falls together as a suppleance. We are looked at by whatever occupies our field of perception. But that doesn't mean that we are seen---cognized by it in it a consciousness of the I see myself seeing myself variety" .....in other words to move away from academics and aestethics and simply put to say that the question asked by the patient is to be seen as in cognized and that the symptom is simply that request. I agree that there is nothing pretty about it all...but one always hopes...

Jack - 01/06/03 00:09:37 EST
Sorry, that was my rant. but how does one go beyond a tradition that one has not even caught up with yet? Us Americans are in such a hurry to get beyond. That old Romantic empricist urge is such an ugly thing (he says rushing impetuously forward . . .

- 01/05/03 23:31:54 EST
the analyst is not an art object. The analyst is shit. The end of the analysis, the dropping of the object, the traversal of the fantasy, the identification with the symptom or sinthome, is the realization of that. Ain't nothing pretty about it at all. Unfortunately, since most folks in this country who are interested in Lacanian analysis in this country are academic aesthetes, as opposed to analysts, we have a great deal of difficulty getting that through our heads.
Of course I'm merely speculating. And Lucas, I'd love to hold your hand, but I don't think that is going to work in this forum. bye bye. But the Sheridan translation is wrong.

Terry1 - 01/05/03 16:35:46 EST
The voice of authority. slichamoo has not refuted the 29/11 'supposition' he has reinterpreted it. Slichanoo operates in the best Lacanian tradition but does not go beyond it?

slichanoo - 01/05/03 14:47:53 EST
the scopic drive of the 2 s-s-t-k is not the position of the analyst in a seance, the desire of the analyst is not at the level of scopic drive in the seance. The confusion between gaze and objet a (as painting) was the grounds of responses a1 and a2 lastly. The 29.11. supposition is a heuristic tool of another order, helpful in aesthetics,and "self-help" through introspective techniques, but not recognizant of the analyst's position as elaborated by Lacan, and certainly not in Sem 11.

chris(uk) - 01/05/03 13:40:37 EST
slichanoo, but your statement: the 'subject-supposed-to-know IS the gazing subject', as well, equates the analyst's position with the scopic drive. Don't we need to differentiate desire and the scopic drive in this instance, when the analyst's desire is part of the therapeutic process and the analyst's jouissance can be part of the analyst's analysis?
My deliberations were in fact an attempt to re-interpret Terry1 's supposition (29.11.02) that the art object takes the place of the analyst

slichanoo - 01/05/03 12:12:48 EST
IN DIALOGUE WITH CHRIS (UK) Q1)If the transference is caused by a subject-supposed-to-know, what happens to the transference when therapist and client look at a painting produced by the client? A1)THE SUBJECT-SUPPOSED-TO-KNOW is the <, and the gaze is objet a, not the "phenomenal object OF the gaze", i.e the painting.
Q2)Could the gaze of the art object, as objet a, constitute what both therapist and client desire but can't know. A2) same as above, however, one might add this: the perception of the art object (not at all "objet a" itself) would be constituted by the desire of both, in so far as these TWO subjects-supposed-to-know organize the gaze (objet a). The object relations would be discernable in a discourse, in which the analytical work reveals what is "supposed-to-be-known" to the subject. I would recommend a reading of Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia", paying particular attention to the "shadow of the object" 2/3 of the way through the text. As for 3) There's 'laying down the gaze' but wanting to steal Baltimore gleaming too ...
the effect was received as intended...elaboration would reveal, in its turn, some indication of "objet a", 1) as an element of discourse here, specifically, as well as 2) a self-referring disclosure upon which to elaborate the "gaze" as desire. Ultimately, the goal of analysis is to bring the subject to a stage of knowing what was once supposed and as Seminar One's beginning reminds us, to relieve suffering in "this world."

chris (uk) - 01/05/03 07:37:24 EST
If the transference is caused by a subject-supposed-to-know, what happens to the transference when therapist and client look at a painting produced by the client? Could the gaze of the art object, as objet a, constitute what both therapist and client desire but can't know. There's 'laying down the gaze' but wanting to steal Baltimore gleaming too ...

lucas - 01/05/03 05:12:45 EST
There he stood, ranting and raving his psychotic talk that made no sense to nobody. They said:" He is becoming more and more hostile and we fear that he will hit somebody." They would try to control his ranting and raving and yet he would do more. I stood in front of him and listened to the ranting and raving quietly. I said: " Can you do me a favor?". He stopped ranting and raving for just one second with a look of surprise in his eyes. I said: "Can you give me your hand?". He gave me his hand and continued to rant and rave his psychotic talk that made no sense to nobody. I said: "I hear you. I hear your anger and I can hold it". He stopped ranting and raving his psychotic talk for the day.

jack - 01/05/03 01:16:22 EST
Of course the can--the possible--never takes place. But the real always returns to the same place. Go figure.

Jack - 01/05/03 00:48:58 EST
Tiresias, it should be remembered, was no less than the sardine can blind.

Jack - 01/05/03 00:46:37 EST
But in fact, you are in the picture. The "you are not in the picture" is a famous mistranslation, on the part of Sheridan, of "you are in the picture." But the subject, the real subject, is placeless. The subject is only placed by the symptom, a knot having no being, but functioning as a place holder--something that falls together, as a _suppleance_. We are looked at by whatever occupies our field of perception. But that doesn't mean we are seen--cognized by it in it a consciousness of the "I see myself seeing myself variety". There is a split between the eye and the look (_regard_). We are in the picture, but that isn't all we are. Analysis functions by acquainting us with something in excess of our self representations, that allows us to be in the picture, but not of it. The freedom it effects, under the best circumstances, comes from our experiencing ourself as the sardine can--not like petit jean as its slave.

Antonia - 01/04/03 18:18:28 EST
Chris (uk) - in the chapters on art in Seminar XI Lacan tells the story of the fishermen and the sardine tin. Here's perfume's version - in her introduction for lacanian Ink 13.
Lacan was on vacation at a little port in Brittany. Every day he would go sailing on a very tiny boat with a family of fishermen - and this implied a certain danger. One day, as they were waiting to pull in the nets, one of the men reacted to a small can floating on the surface of the waves, glittering in the sun, by saying: You see that can? Do you see it? Well, it doesn't see you! The claim disquieted Lacan because he could account for the angle from which it was untrue. I quote: It was looking at me at the level of the point of light, the point at which everything that looks at me is located...
Lacan's remark is not about sensorial perception. Actually it marks the irruption of articulation in the visual field, as it accounts for the "here" and "there," for the "this" and the "that" - for the "I" & and the "It."
It looks - in the depths of your eye the picture is painted, but you're not in the picture.
You see - means you've stopped looking. What you see is not light but lucent form, the rays of light caught in a network of meanings...like flotsam is caught in the nets of the fishermen, like Baltimore is caught in the window pane.

chris (uk) - 01/04/03 13:40:02 EST
ps. ... ... am writing a paper at the moment which makes use of an idea 'lifted' some weeks ago from this room, but fear my lifting includes a touch of meconnaissance. What I hope to locate, is equating the art object with the position of the analyst (and objet a) in Lacan or post Lacanian texts. At the time, I assumed this association had to do with an arguement in the Four Fundamentals concerning the gaze and laying down the gaze ... ...???

- 01/04/03 10:57:36 EST
thanks terry1: that is what i had suspected. i feel i should gather as much information as possible as if it were something i decided to do i would be leaving my country/analyst/etc

chris (uk) - 01/04/03 09:42:35 EST
thanks Terry 1, have heard good reports of RK and of Lacanian therapists in general, but what you say only compounds what I didn't dare believe. Will certainly look into this soon. So, RK. can be reached via London Circle?

Terry1 - 01/04/03 09:24:42 EST
Ref. CFAR. Info@educationsolutions.co.uk. CFAR has a strong academic traditon with Prof. Bernard Burgoine and Darian Leader I would recommend it you as it is a community that asks nothing from any of its supporters. I've found it to be a community that puts the the pursuit of truth at its core. My own experience of it is one of a community of friends and gentle people with the highest ideals and aims.
You might also want to look at the 'London Circle' with Richard Klien a more practical approach I'm told. Klien is a cigarette smoking medical doctor who became the President of the ECF and who owes me a drink.

lucas - 01/04/03 07:44:11 EST
would be nice if we could train on the internet...pefect medium. Can interrupt the session into the ether...that would be the Ethernet.LOL

chris (uk) - 01/04/03 05:10:19 EST
As an artist and clinician, my ongoing question concerns the accessibility of training. I would like to start thinking about a Lacanian training but live a long way from London and the possibility of three or four sessions a week for a year prior to the start of training. How does this stipulation match Lacan's logical time and broader still, how is the traditional analysis format suited to how we live now.
I'd imagine the Cfar site is not long set up, because it seems a little inaccessible, or not as accessible as Lacanian Ink's site. Hence I address my questions here.

- 01/03/03 22:49:11 EST
hi terry1: is the CFAR training program set up only for those who want to work clinically or is it also open to those working in other areas (writers/Arts etc)? I have been recently told that CFAR is interrested only in those who want to work clinically..

lucas - 01/02/03 20:54:06 EST
FBC ...thanks for "getting it"

Paul - 01/02/03 20:27:43 EST
I saw CFAR has a website at https://www.cfar.org.uk/

Terry1 - 01/02/03 19:48:55 EST
You could but what is your query?

perfume - 01/02/03 17:53:57 EST
about the lacan.com chatroom: it works with Internet Explorer and Netscape 7.0
I should have written the details on the page... they are there now.

- 01/02/03 16:39:24 EST
hi terry1: i was asking about CFAR...could i possibly email you?

FBC - 01/02/03 11:35:14 EST
Lucas, yes the Real is and should give us pause. It is good to remember that there is something we need, are obligated, to do even if we don't know what.

Gus Seo - 01/02/03 05:38:34 EST
Greetings!! Can anyone please tell me if and where I can get hold of an English translation of "Suture (Elements of the Logic of the Signifier)" besides in SCREEN (for the issue that has the essay is out of print)?

lucas - 01/01/03 23:10:52 EST
Carlos rufino is a child beaten to death by his mother...and a reminder that id/ego/superego are constructs but as Kierkegaard said what I must find is not what I need to know but what I need to do. So I am just suggesting that we take a pause from our philosophical musings and deal with the REAL as in REALITY!!

Lucy - 01/01/03 16:57:36 EST
and now who is Carlos Rufino?

Bonni Brooke - 01/01/03 12:33:28 EST
God bless Carlos Rufino, and his mother all the more.

lucas - 01/01/03 12:13:11 EST
From New Year's Eve Newspaper...
Dangling from a Christmas tree in a Brooklyn apartment, a note in the scribble of a 4-year-old says:"Dear Santa Claus, I want you to bring a lot of presents for me and my sister".
The simple wish list was left by Carlos Rufino-whose lifeless body was found near the tree two days after Christmas.
As Carlos'mother was being arraigned yesterday on charges she beat him to death, a shrine to the boy was set up on E.Fourth St. in Kensington.
Valera, 22, beat her son after he vomited in front of guests during a late Christmas Eve dinner. "She pulled him from his chair and hit him. She then took him to his bedroom and hit him with her sandal." An autopsy found Carlos' ribs were broken, his small intestine was lacerated and his bowels had ruptured.
After the beating, Carlos was sick for the next two days- sleeping, throwing up and drinking only strawberry milk.
His mother called 911 when he stopped breathing. He was declared dead on arrival at Maimonides Medical Center.

lucas - 12/31/02 20:13:05 EST
FBC that was wonderful!!! Truthfully working with patients is in many ways like working with literature and I'm just assuming that is what you are doing. But I think you read much of what I read in Lacan. I just don't express it so well.

FBC - 12/31/02 10:46:00 EST
I wonder sometimes how the fact that I am not a clinician influences my reading of Lacan.

I think, in a way, that the id IS the master of the universe, but one unseen. The particular and piculiar, as Cris points out is important here. I'm not sure which is which here but one seems the universal, as a kind of Platonic idea, the other is the "copy". The id is something which is everywhere, (in all humans [only?]), the ego is the mark of the individual. We misconstruct the ego, mistakinging it for the real, authentic individual (the id?) because it is the result of the id (where the id was, there I must be [here I see less in the sense of a moral commant and more in the sense of a causal necesity e.g. where there is smoke, there is fire). Again it is a form of idolatry, God is unknowable but obviously REAL (in the sense of the Lacanian real), this unknowableness is intolerable so we put a face on it, call it a particular thing, pray to it, love it, fight for it, justify our deeds with reference to it, we can't live without the mask. It is the same with ego and id, the id is not available directly for analysis but only through its traces in ego, the face we present. The incongruity between what we present and our behavior (what we say and do) is what the work of analysis explores. In other words, if the id seems to be somewhere other than where the ego presents it this is a dislocation which which must be resolved.

Sorry for going on and on, perhaps I don't understand any of this but this is what it seems to me. Thanks

chris (uk) - 12/31/02 02:51:02 EST
I want just to say: Oh, stop it Lucy! But Sid constitutes one side or quarter of a fundamental fantasy ...

Lucy - 12/30/02 23:30:54 EST
chris (uk) - I cannot figure out Sid (what does the S stand for?)

lucas - 12/30/02 22:03:36 EST
FBC I do agree with much of what you say. I am not saying necessarily that the ID is Master of the Universe, I am saying that I think that we misrecognize the ego as ourselves....but then again who knows as I believe Lacan said, he would prefer the student who remains an imbecile...in a lot I bring in my real work with psychotic patients and what I see is two discourses on two levels. One to which I respond through rational thought and yet another is when I let go and respond to what I hear as a poem...it is then I think that I am really hearing...because I understand that language instinctively/symbolically.

chris (uk) - 12/30/02 16:57:43 EST
when the particular is peculiar
it could be id
when the peculiar is particular
it could be Sid

chris (uk) - 12/30/02 16:37:24 EST
in footnote14 p95 of seminar xx
the Greek root of the word
id-iot
means particular or peculiar

FBC - 12/30/02 14:58:45 EST
Yes the id reveals itself in being but not in the way that a table reveals itself as being in a room. The id, I think, is supposed somewhat in the way the the old cosmological argument for the existence of God assumed an intelegence behind the world by reference to the apparent intelegent "design" of things. We don't know anything about the id, the ego is, I think, the trail mistaken for the animal. I mean to say that the mistake is structurally necessary, a part of what the ego is. If we don't believe that our ego is properly what we are, we have no real idea what we are. I take this to be what Lacan points to in his handling of "misconstruction". It seems that the only construction is misconstruction, the id escapes.

Terry1 - 12/30/02 13:35:00 EST
What do you want to know about CFAR?

wynship - 12/30/02 11:12:13 EST
Thanks, perfume. Truth be told, I tried to stay away but I found that life just wasn't complete without your smarmy remarks.

lucas - 12/30/02 08:26:42 EST
The id reveals itself in being. the ego is a "fiction" in that we "delude" ourselves that our words, actions,our being in the world is somewhat governed by a rationality that we do not "own"

Bonni - 12/29/02 23:28:32 EST
The id, I think, only reveals itself in the impression it leaves in speech. I don't know where it is. I suspect that saying something constitutes an attempt to find it, forensics, physical evidence.

perfume - 12/29/02 19:50:47 EST
A Very Very Happy New Year to all in the messageboard and may each one's wishes for 2003 come true!

- 12/29/02 17:53:23 EST
hello, i was wondering if there is anybody here fanmiliar with the CFAR training program,??

silence - 12/29/02 15:01:20 EST
dude, TOTALLY. What a looser!!

dude - 12/29/02 14:51:17 EST
dude, i totally know what you mean... this wynship guy is, like, so stupid....

silence - 12/29/02 14:47:51 EST
whoa man...that silence is soooo deeeeep....sooo telling....whoa.....

wynship - 12/28/02 22:49:44 EST
So I'm here in San Francisco, wanting to read through Seminar I. I'm looking for people who'd like to join me and meet in person to discuss it. If interested, email me at wynship@hotmail.com

moosh - 12/28/02 13:59:58 EST
how lovely

Antonia - 12/28/02 13:12:19 EST
that is a very beautiful poem -- thank you lucas

lucas - 12/28/02 11:06:08 EST
9=18
You walk in with an air of triumph in your eyes
While I walk away from wanting to beat desire instantly on the floor
As reason and shame kill the sheer pleasure of association forbidden by Law
Fear of the Other disallowing selfishness
Sacrificing whole to hole.
outsider - 12/27/02 15:08:40 EST
So where is the id in what Joe/Lucy say?

- 12/27/02 10:18:25 EST
Joe says:
"I THINK I WANT YOU CASTRATE ME TONIGHT"
Lucy says:
"You think? Make up your mind Joe before asking for such a thing"
Bonni says:
Our minds make us up, "where the id was, there I MUST be."

perfume - 12/24/02 23:50:55 EST
Thank you Terry1 for your nice wishes and for the wonderful role you play with attuning us all in here! A Very Happy Christmas to you and to all the writers in the messageboard who keep the room live with their wit and with their intelligence.

Terry1 - 12/24/02 19:33:55 EST
A HAPPY Christmas to PERFUME and a big thanks for all your efforts in keeping the room functioning. And GOODWILL to everybody else.

Lucy - 12/23/02 14:40:24 EST
Chris (uk) - Are we supposed to highlight these things in here? Let's go to your text with the special look - 10 lines, INTERPRETATION comes up 5 times.

chris (uk) - 12/22/02 11:56:19 EST
Lucy, what you ask suggests the subject of interpretation, but in this instance what I said may or may not be interesting, only! Sometimes, what's said on a chatroom is difficult to read, but reading something and commenting surely mustn't be confused with interpretation in a clinical setting and the business of Freudian or Lacanian slips.
What I had in mind, was a way of including Joe's message which left 'interpretation' open, like Joe's message. But I guess you got bored with reference to Cage. However, what passes as chatroom 'interpretation' could lead to some comment.
Another topic related to chatroom interpretation, might be a whole problematic of 'dissemination' in the field of therapy. 'Dis-semination' exists within a context and becomes even more likely when we have some idea who we are writing to.

Lucy - 12/21/02 21:47:18 EST
chris (uk) - do spelling mistakes stand for a slip of the tongue?

chris (uk) - 12/20/02 04:50:02 EST
Lucy, interesting spelling 'tyred'.
So, is tired the symptom and is 'tyred' the sinthome?

Lucy - 12/20/02 02:38:14 EST
Sorry, I was tyred of quoting: John Cage is an empty signifier. I don't know about Joe.
The Lacanian chatroom... oh well, it seems that perfume can't getting it going.

chris (uk) - 12/19/02 17:08:23 EST
Do John Cage, Joe and a Lacanian chatroom posit empty signifiers?

outsider - 12/17/02 22:54:16 EST
Joe, what are you writing?
˜ I think I want you, castrate me tonight (you forgot the comma)
˜ I think I want you TO castrate me tonight (you forgot TO)

Lucy - 12/17/02 19:03:57 EST
You think? Make up your mind Joe before asking for such a thing

JOE - 12/16/02 18:42:12 EST
I THINK I WANT YOU CASTRATE ME TONIGHT

FBC - 12/16/02 16:01:26 EST
Chris says:
"Then, what is the artist 'being the phallus' or 'having the objet a' prior to his or her disappearance from a particular discourse?"

I think the artist is the phallus before the art object is created, she becomes the object a for the art consumer by disappearing from the discourst which the work of art enters. No one has the object a but it seems that the art consumer would naturally think that the artist does.

perfume - 12/15/02 13:18:13 EST
you are so welcome, Terry1

Terry1 - 12/14/02 18:39:35 EST
Perfume.....I've just seen the Zizek video streaming.....on the site forgot how good it was. Thankyou for setting it up.

chris (uk) - 12/13/02 18:35:42 EST
Paul, as you say, John Cage is not playing for others anymore, but what I was playing with was Lacan's idea in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, recently mentioned by Perfume, where the work of art and viewer are equated with analyst and analysand. And if John Cage is somehow playing for himself, then eventually his music can be equated with the position of the analyst (perhaps, eternally or interminably)

Paul - 12/13/02 13:45:41 EST
Chris (uk) - why that music would be in the position of an analyst offering an interminable analysis?

chris (uk) - 12/13/02 07:08:49 EST
when a musician plays for himself in a rather prolonged late period in his (or her) career, is music in the position of an analyst offering an interminable analysis?

Paul - 12/12/02 22:14:50 EST
jouissance is of the One.
John Cage takes music beyond noise...plays for others - his audience but encounters the noise of jouissance - JC is not playing for others anymore - only for himself

Lucy - 12/11/02 20:56:36 EST
Godwards child - already with Freud the lost object is not the Holy Graal anymore.

Katja - 12/11/02 20:40:50 EST
pleeese!

Godwards child - 12/11/02 20:16:52 EST

Lacan was a semi-genius, utterly genial indeed, but, a lack of mystic in his theory was very hard to bear

chris (uk) - 12/11/02 17:31:43 EST
John Cage takes music beyond noise, but encounters the noise of (eternity's) jouissance when he does this too often!

test - 12/11/02 15:53:27 EST
ineresting...

Cathy - 12/11/02 08:13:54 EST
Perfume, being a Lacanian, will not answer your demand. Desire is never sated, but continues endlessly. By taunting her with her own non-existence, you speak the Lacanian truth... when you call her empty, ....the one "supposed to know" is empty, does not exist, but she has certainly come up here.

Paul - 12/11/02 06:47:49 EST
Hmmm. silence = emptiness.

katja - 12/11/02 03:47:02 EST
can somebody please help me with schema R and its relation to psychosis - i'm lost -

John Cage - 12/10/02 22:52:32 EST
When I was young and still writing an unstructured music, albeit methodical and not improvised, one of my teachers, Adolph Weiss, used to complain that no sooner had I started a piece than I brought it to an end. I introduced silence. I was a ground, so to speak, in which emptiness could grow.

Lucy - 12/10/02 13:54:41 EST
chris (UK) - Why to John Cage?

chris (uk) - 12/10/02 02:11:51 EST
Silence is attributed to John Cage and Perfume ...

Paul - 12/09/02 11:20:24 EST
Silence, a word?

Antonia - 12/08/02 15:38:49 EST
chris (uk) - silence is perfume's favorite word, since she is the reader...

chris (uk) - 12/08/02 07:52:38 EST
a silence pervades and suggests 'there's no Perfume', no Other?

Doris Lamote - 12/05/02 09:33:12 EST
Look at the site of the movies based on psychoanalysis and the sexual life:
www.transatlanticfilms.be with citations of Jacques Lacan, Georg Luckacs and Lucien Israel.

chris (uk) - 12/04/02 18:20:26 EST
I think marketing of contempory art has become global (whatever this really means), since the early nineties ... but still think Moustapha Saphouan's already mentioned comment is relevant to this conversation. That is: the subject is either in the position of 'being the phallus' or 'having the objet a'.
Then, what is the artist 'being the phallus' or 'having the objet a' prior to his or her disappearance from a particular discourse?

Antonia - 12/04/02 02:36:12 EST
good question Lucy. In any case I don't remember seeing a Lacanian psychoanalyst handling you a card that says psychoanalyst...

Lucy - 12/04/02 02:33:29 EST
So there is no handling of a card that says psychoanalyst?

Antonia - 12/04/02 02:30:58 EST
chris (uk) - as to the artist being no-thing, if this is what Lacan calls non-existence, the notion works better in Europe where the word artist is used as an adjective - specially in French. It comes from an other --- "You are an artist". Actually it is a compliment. Instead in America you have that artists handle you a card with their name written on it, underneath their profession: artist.

chris (uk) - 12/02/02 16:54:18 EST
The only notion I have of Lacanian art has to do with art seen in the context of psychoanalysis. Artists read Lacan, but 'Lacanian art' implies some kind of possessing or art somehow illustrating psychoanalysis. Hence my problem with Dali's painting somehow 'illustrating' the impossibility of the drives.
However, I'm familiar with the Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis and the important idea equating the art object and the analyst. But when I spoke about Dali, I had in mind what happens prior to an artist's version of subjective destitution, I was thinking of a time before the artist is 'no-thing'. But I don't think Dali ever arrived at what Terry 1 calls 'no-thing'.

Terry1 - 12/01/02 18:51:48 EST
CFAR put on a 'show' of Lacanain artists featuring a 'Love laboratory'
For them it's not a notion. Ireally think Perfume should come in here. I just love art and paintings but Perfume is a practioner I believe.

chris (uk) - 12/01/02 05:24:58 EST
any notion of 'Lacanian art' must also have to do with Narcissus too (Terry 1): reference is to Surrealism, but not to 'Freudian art', although Lacan influences contempory art as Freud influenced Surrealism. Dali's fellow 'surrealists' weren't too keen on him either (eventually)!

Lucy - 12/01/02 02:54:21 EST
I like it about Narcissus lady - Echo. She lives in the mountains, in the caves, and can only talk to her lover with his own words. -I love you- says Narcisus; she answers, I love you, I love you...

Terry1 - 11/30/02 19:39:34 EST
Narcissus lived in the mirror.

Antonia - 11/30/02 19:10:02 EST
Narcissus peers into the waters, the waters mirror his image. Now he falls in love with his image, so much so that he falls into the water. Thereof grows the narcissus that gives him his name. I say the comparison with Dali is too far fetched

chris (uk) - 11/30/02 05:46:39 EST
but then, Dali as Narcissus peering into liquid paintings after falling in love with his dreams ...

perfume - 11/30/02 00:05:56 EST
I see your point Terry1. The viewer establishes the discourse we have in analysis. So in this sense there isn't the work-of-art as there isn't the analyst, as there isn't the woman.
The experience characterizes the subject, its object and the desire.
Art goes beyond the symbolic. Yet it uses the structure of language, and this allows for the articulation of truth. Here a hole corresponds with what is empty - with what cannot be spoken - still it can be shown, represented.

Terry1 - 11/29/02 19:28:08 EST
Chris.....in Lacanian art the artist is no-thing and the observer is everything. Tha painting takes the part pf the analyst.

Perfume can comment on this I think?

chris (uk) - 11/29/02 19:25:17 EST
yes, but an experience 'on a couch' may be some way from the praxis of painting and art talking. An artist ponders an addressee or public 'who are supposed to know'.

Terry - 11/29/02 18:17:19 EST
Lacan analysed Dali and was Picasso'a doctor. He must think his patient had something to say?

Chris (uk) - 11/29/02 14:06:09 EST
Isn't pursuing Dali a little acephalous? I take it Lacan knew Dali, as he knew many figures associated with surrealism, but Dali's work is slick and illustrative ... lots of repetition of formula ...

Antonia - 11/29/02 11:42:16 EST
Oh, I want to find that Dali painting! I tryed in the internet but there's so many Dali paintings listed...

Terry1 - 11/28/02 16:02:34 EST
Paul . No!! isaw Biche Benvonuto hold it up and talk about it in London some years ago. I've never been able to locate the painting?

Paul - 11/28/02 01:15:54 EST
Terry1 -
I do not know the painting, and would love to know of it. Was it published in one of Lacan's seminars - books?

chris (uk) - 11/27/02 17:31:39 EST
What bothers me about this notion of the drive as acephalous which is both image and metaphor is the divide of head and body. As images go I wonder about a neck connecting head and body ... and what about art processes which anticipate the moment where two registers meet? Eva Hesse and Rachel Whitehead (for example) might do this in different ways. How are Hesse's pieces earthed and where are Whitehead's positives??? ... Jouissance measures an eternity, but eternity comes up against the real of the body and a neck between head and body ...

Terry1 - 11/27/02 16:34:10 EST
Paul do you know the painting Lacan uses to demonstrate the impossibility of the drives. It is a painting by Dali with a feather coming out of a tap and stroking the navel of a beautiful woman. Do you know what it's called?

Skytte (DK) - 11/27/02 10:19:10 EST
Hi again! I've just read Salecl text on Sirens as mentioned by Chris (UK). I now see two different versions of the voice-object; 1) the non-articulated, the one 'stuck in the throat' as in Munchs painting, "the Scream". This seems prior to the body, or as searching for one. And 2) the voice which has left the body or transgresses it. I think Salecl exampel was the opera singer reaching the higest note and the voice 'takes over'. How are these related?

Paul - 11/26/02 18:00:50 EST
Lacan discerns the fundamental structure of drive in that it is acephalous - the best metaphor is a pair of lips kissing themselves.

Katja - 11/26/02 16:06:46 EST
'Digestion consistes in the organism relating itself to the outer world' (Zusatz) in the act of overcoming lack, by identifying with the other, by consuming the other, the individual organism retrieves the certainty of enrihed self affirmation. 'the organism must posit what is external as subjective, appropriate it, and identify it with itself: and this is assimilation' the division and separation of the organism from its outer world is overcome in the process of nutrition and digestion

Lucy - 11/26/02 04:01:11 EST
his hunger is satisfied, but not his oral drive...< now the grown up man bites his nails. Rupert - 11/26/02 01:26:10 EST "Do women often hear men's voices inside their heads?" To what extent woman's dicourse is structured by man (the Father?) Besides, drives, as well as sexuality, are one, only that they manifest differently, and sometimes blurring the barrier of age. Antonia - 11/25/02 20:02:16 EST Chris (UK) - with drive, sexuality (erotization) relies on the inversion-into-self of the movement directed at an external goal - the movement itself becomes the goal. Thus with the oral drive, its goal maybe to eliminate hunger, but its aim is the satisfaction provided by the act of eating (sucking, swallowing) itself. Two satisfactions entirely separated. When breast-fed the child's hunger is satisfied, but not his oral drive. When on the contrary the child rhytmically sucks the comforter, the only satisfaction he gets is that of the drive. A grown up, when in a hospital is fed intravenously, his hunger is satisfied, but not his oral drive... Chris (uk) - 11/24/02 14:12:59 EST thanks Antonia, what you say is very well put. But what I had in mind had to do with differentiating drives which are associated with adult sexuality and those which concern children's sexuality. Associating Voice as a product of the drive and 'mothers voices' referred to in your description of psychosis, I was thinking that Voice is sometimes tied to gender. One instance could be Renata Salecl's sirens in her paper The Silence of the Feminine Jouissance (Cogito and the Unconscious Duke Univ. Press). I think this is reference to what might be called the Other jouissance ... and perhaps anOther voice ... Lucy - 11/24/02 13:08:14 EST Otto Weininger said "die lava ist der Dreck der Erde" - lava is the shit of the earth Antonia - 11/24/02 05:14:20 EST Chris (uk) poo is a "grown up drive" only because you call it poo. Indeed the small child who gives his poo as a present is giving the immediate equivalent of his Inner Self - Freud's famous parallel of excrement as the earliest form of gift. For Lacan a feature that discerns humans from animals is that with humans the disposal of shit becomes a problem: not because it has a bad smell but because it came out from our innermost selves. We are ashamed of shit because, in it, we expose/externalize our innermost intimacy. Animals don't have a problem with it because they don't have an "interior" like humans do. Also small kids don't have a problem, till they do. chris (uk) - 11/22/02 14:25:52 EST Antonia, you say this because voice and gaze are seen as products of grown up drives, unlike breast and poo. But, surely the voice of the mOther effects most infants. As well, I recall your description of psychosis, when you wrote: 'The paternal metaphor being foreclosed the psychotic remains tied to the mother's voices.' Although, I am conflating voice as a product of the drive and mother's voices in the context of psychosis, doesn't 'hearing voices' imply a female voice in the context that you use it, in your description of psychosis Antonia - 11/22/02 01:55:22 EST Voice is not tied to a specific gender... to read more about about partial objects go to Seminar 11 - The Four Fundamentals Concepts of Psychoanalysis Skytte - 11/21/02 17:16:23 EST If voice is an objet a, how can it be tied to a specific gender? Is the voice object not what is prior to the differentation of male and female? Perhaps I'm just a bit confused. Anywhere I can go to read more about this? Antonia - 11/21/02 16:44:55 EST not when it comes to the voice of the analyst Joe - 11/21/02 16:00:49 EST But the female voice is qualatitively different to a man that the male voice is to a woman Antonia - 11/20/02 16:58:45 EST 'voice' is an objet a. Joe - 11/20/02 15:36:56 EST He mentions somewhere that the female voice is like God to a man Skytte - 11/20/02 15:18:19 EST Is there any point at asking 'what is voice'? I know Lacan added it along with the gaze as partial objects. How is one to talk about this object voice? We also find the voice on his graph of desire at then end of the line which runs from the signifier on the left. Is there anywhere he elaborates on the voice?