CS, I heard something about the Jersey Islands a long time ago,
I wondered about it recently, reading about knot work.
i heard that the masonry patterns in the rock walls are traditionally 
particular to particular islands,
so that, if you were dropped onto an island (from the sky, or the future?)
you would know where you were, from the stone work patterns.
Is it true? Do you know? 
Sol 
Comment by Sol — September 4, 2007 @ 8:53 am

Sol, Jersey’s one island 12X9 miles, 14 miles from the Normandy coast with c. 90 thousand inhabitants.
Re. masonry probably true but not sure. It’s a pretty place with not so pretty politics. The politics makes developing things very difficult.
There’s a huge resistance to psychodynamic practice which is not quite ‘written in stone’, but almost. 
Comment by Chris Sands — September 4, 2007 @ 12:09 pm

Mmmm. have come across a blog called ‘Larval Subjects’. The format is certainly interesting, but does anyone know who looks after this site? 
Comment by Chris Sands — September 9, 2007 @ 2:34 pm

ps.(1)
- am looking at (or for) a question which seems to have to do with the work of art and what’s sometimes called a ’self analysis’. Have posted this on the symposium next door.
ps.(2)
- have thought this before (and even said it before), but if this site begins to look like a small labarinth (with so many forums), is there a question which has to do with labarinths and questions? If Warhol was most famous for claiming fame is subject to an economy which is increasingly flat - isn’t it, not so much a question of free speech but where to speak freely from? 
Comment by Chris Sands — September 9, 2007 @ 3:27 pm

I would love to hear your ideas and opinions about the different sites,
the messageboard as it was before I loved the most, its anonymous quality is great, but the SPAM finished it
we would have to clean it every day till it got to be three times a day and that’s too much - you are fighting against a machine
now we have the different models in here, but there could be others…
Chris says there’s too many… and he could be right, what to do? you tell me 
Comment by admin — September 14, 2007 @ 2:41 pm

Does anyone know of an online cartel? i can only find them in spanish, looking for an english speaking one 
Comment by Sarah — September 16, 2007 @ 9:57 am

Hello,
I’m a superficial fan of Slavoj Žižek, and really enjoyed all the articles and videos (as well as others!) about/from him that you have on the site!
I’m writing to post a link to one web-comic I made, featuring Slavoj Žižek, although it’s only loosely based on his appearance and character.
Maybe you won’t find it rubbish, so here it is:
https://www.unlingual.com/archive_page.php?comicID=44
bye & keep up the site!! 
Comment by hajrarara — September 17, 2007 @ 3:01 pm

hajrarara - that’s very funny , thank you… I put them up in the forum for everybody to see them - where I know how to put up images… did Slavoj see them? 
Comment by sugar — September 19, 2007 @ 1:45 am

oh no, haha!
I was wondering if this or the forum would be a better place for the link! Thanks! 
Comment by hajrarara — September 19, 2007 @ 3:23 pm

Is anyone familiar with the mis-translation of the word “trieb” in Instincts and their Vicissitudes? I know that it is supposed to refer to drive, rather than instinct, but I’m not sure if trieb was used in every place where it says “instinct” or if it is only at certain points in the text. In other words, the question is, is it possible that in some places “instinct” actually means instinct, or does “instinct” always mean trieb/drive. Thanks! 
Comment by Skip — September 20, 2007 @ 12:19 am

I was taught “instinct” means trieb/drive always, and it well relates to man’s connection to the word - if you follow Lacan for whom the baby’s cry is already a word the fact itself corresponds with “instincts” being trieb/drive as early as that . 
Comment by alice — September 20, 2007 @ 7:00 am

Sol, please look at symposium re. thoughts of cartel which just might interest you (?) 
Comment by Chris Sands — September 20, 2007 @ 10:44 am

thank cs
re drive: sometimes Freud uses Instinkt rather than Trieb, but you
won’t find them differentiated in english - nor french i believe,
there is a paper about this - I think its Betthelheim,
and there is another - Ill try to remmeber.
it is in instincts and their vicissitudes that Freud brings together
the concept and parts of the drive in an overall theory
- source pressure object aim -
and moves definitively away from the possibility that he is writing
of instinct when he writes ‘trieb’
for me this is part of his ongoing questioning of phylogeny
- however his use of the word instinkt continues after this beautiful paper- 
Comment by Sol — September 22, 2007 @ 12:33 am

Thanks Sol.
I can’t seem to find where in “Instincts and their Vicissitudes” Freud uses Trieb/Drive. Do you remember which part he uses it in?
This all got me thinking because of Lacan’s seminar “On Freud’s ‘Trieb’ and the Psychoanalyst’s Desire”. Lacan writes, “the Freudian drive - have nothing to do with instinct (none of Freud’s expressions allows for confusion here).” But in “Instincts and their Vicissitudes” Freud seems to use the word “Instinct” for both bodily needs sexual instincts. 
Comment by Skip — October 3, 2007 @ 3:54 pm

Edit: Freud seems to use the word “Instinct” for both bodily needs AND sexual instincts. 
Comment by Skip — October 3, 2007 @ 3:55 pm

Hi Skip,
Freud explains his use of the term ‘trieb’ in the beginning of this paper
as part of its development.
If you see the editor’s introduction in SE I, ’some technical terms’
you read that all english translations of ‘Trieb’ are rendered as ‘instinct’
in the SE, unless noted in the footnotes.
No use of the term is noted in the footnotes as ‘Instinkt’ and so
from this assume that Freud didnt use this term ‘instinckt’ in this paper
at all.
Strachey notes that Freud only uses ‘instinkt’ in relation to
animals, with one exception, in letter no 71, Oct 15, 1897 to Fleiss.
He does use it in the end of section VI in ‘The Unconscious’
I don’t know that you can pin its meaning down. It is
this boundary feature which is so interesting.
There are other interesting points in this
section of the intro to SE I, if you haven’t read it.
For instance the question of the sense and translation of the term ‘triebregung’
and I would add, the title of the paper in itself - 
For me it is in the nachtraglichkeit - that the urge or trauma (or
‘bodily need’) is only realised afterwards, after it has been signified psychically,
and so does not pertain singularly to psyche or body, and neither
has it singular determination or sense. 
Comment by Sol — October 4, 2007 @ 12:05 am

Sol - 
I’m actually reading this essay from a collection titled General Psychological Theory edited by Philip Rieff. So unfortunately I haven’t read that intro.
I’ll read ‘’The Unconscious'’ next to get a better idea.
‘’triebregung'’ - This is the title of an essay? What’s the English translation? 
It still leaves me bewildered why Lacan would make the distinction between the Freudian drive and instinct. If ‘’instinct'’ is the english translation of ‘’trieb'’ in ‘’Insctincts and their…'’, then we can assume that Freud clumped together bodily drives (such as hunger) and sexual drives. One of the first examples Freud gives in ‘’Instincts and their…'’ is both thirst and hunger, and then later goes on to describe sexual drive (using trieb translated as instinct for each instance). Lacan not only distinguishes Freudean drive from instinct, but then goes on to give further clarification reducing the Freudian drive to libido. This would make sense, but it doesn’t seem that libido includes thirst and hunger. 
Comment by Skip — October 4, 2007 @ 6:22 pm

seems a good point you make, it makes sense. or nonsense absenc 
Comment by lucky — October 4, 2007 @ 10:13 pm

Triebregung is a word used by Freud in this essay which is
an adjective - ‘instinctual drive’, or ‘drive impulse’ or ‘instinctual
impulse’..??
Title of ‘instincts and their vicissitudes’ is ‘Triebe und Triebschicksale’
Maybe I can read the Lacan “On Freud’s ‘Trieb’ and the Psychoanalyst’s Desire”
that you are co-reading with Freud, where is it?
If you think of the baby who first sucks to satisfy a need for
food but then suckles non nutritively, for a pleasure of some sort
or another, and with that the construction of an ideational representative,
the pleasure relating to the signifier is what places the event in the realm of the drive- 
Comment by Sol — October 5, 2007 @ 1:36 am

Sol -
Thank you.
I’m reading “On Fred’s ‘Trieb’…” from Ecrits (851)
I see how Lacan’s conversion of instinctual bodily needs to the desire of the Other takes place, but never have read in Freud where he converts instinct into an epiphenomenon like Lacan does. 
Comment by Skip — October 5, 2007 @ 11:28 am

Thanks Skip
What a paper!
There are several passages and relationships that strike me, but
pertaining to what it is we have been talking about, this one:
“The discussion at the colloquium did not permit me to go so far as to demonstrate that the concept of the drive represents the drive as a montage.
The drives are our myths, said Freud. This must not be understood as a reference to the unreal. For it is the real that the drives mythify, as myths
usually do: here it is the real which creates [fait] desire by reproducing in it the relationship between the subject and the lost object.” (Lacan, Ecrits, Fink trans. p 724)
The real that is mythified: I could read as both the body, and the trauma of the bodily
vissicitudes between satisfaction and frustration (fort/da), with the signification of castration
as the instituting of lack/desire and its concommittent trauma. 
I have been reading a little of Freud’s early book ‘On aphasia’ which many say is not psychoanalytic,
but he writes in there of the fantasy body: the use the unconscious makes of the body as material
for psychical representation.
To me, this speaks to the construction of this suggested ‘montage’ (with its clinical overtones),.
The’it’ in the last sentence above – do you think that refers to the real, or desire?
or ambiguous?
Can the real change? 
Comment by Sol — October 6, 2007 @ 9:38 pm

i place my chips on the real. 
Comment by lucky — October 6, 2007 @ 9:46 pm

“…by reproducing in it the relationship between the subject and the lost object…”
if this is the IT you are commenting about I think it should be Freud’s ES - or the subject of the unconscious 
Comment by alice — October 7, 2007 @ 7:48 am

Yes alice. I would wonder what else experiences the gravitational pull (desire, loosely) of the real 
Comment by jampa — October 8, 2007 @ 6:37 am

what a suprise he must be too.. so im not just a`stalker 
Comment by lucky — October 8, 2007 @ 9:28 am

that could be a song lucky “just a stalker, everywhere I go., people know the part I’m playing…” 
Comment by alice — October 8, 2007 @ 2:17 pm

i dont want everyone to know the part! 
Comment by lucky — October 8, 2007 @ 3:08 pm

“For it is the real that the drives mythify, as myths usually do: here it is the real which creates [fait] desire by reproducing in it the relationship between the subject and the lost object.”
To me, this reads as the Real produces desire through creating the fundamental fantasy (the myth). The Real produces in desire (it) the fantasy of the lost object. 
Comment by Skip — October 8, 2007 @ 4:14 pm

Isnt it Skip the real produces an itimation, a suspicion (in the subject of the unconscious) of reality, if the real is the utter absence of the fantasised, of myth? If the real is the true estate of ES? 
Comment by jampa — October 9, 2007 @ 3:21 am

jampa - would “objet a” be the answer to your question on what else experiences the gravitational pull (desire, loosely) of the real? 
Comment by violet — October 9, 2007 @ 7:15 am

if the real is the state of ES, as jampa seems to propose, then ES would be silent……….right? otherwise, can we conceive of the real as speaking? 
Comment by violet — October 12, 2007 @ 11:24 pm

duz that stand for id or unconcious ? es what is it 
Comment by lucky — October 13, 2007 @ 6:00 am

whats the matter u folkx incapable of answearing a simple question ? what rymes with dimple? 
Comment by lucky — October 13, 2007 @ 10:55 am

yes because i told you i definitely heard a baby say his name at 3 mos. old and never spoke again until on the later side of usual, this was clear as bell e nun cia ted. and he wasnt even a babbler . no confusion plus it was in the middle of night wha en he had woken me with usual needs and not without yowling first no doubt or alwaxze on the verge of it. so what would u say to that? i thought it was like the baby in a rumi poem that talks. uh huh that what i thot at time. 
Comment by lucky — October 13, 2007 @ 11:06 am

C.S.
Not to change the discourse but you mention the politics in Jersey. Is it ultra conservative? 
Comment by Terry1 — October 13, 2007 @ 4:13 pm

Es, lucky, is the subject of the unconscious as Freud wrote it - in German; Es = It 
Comment by alice — October 13, 2007 @ 5:11 pm

and that is didtinct from the id? 
Comment by lucky — October 13, 2007 @ 6:28 pm

das Es = the Id, like in” the Ego and the ID” is the SE translation 
Comment by alice — October 13, 2007 @ 8:04 pm

ID, from id-entification, neutral enough — you are a number = IT, neutral - there isn’t gender in the ucs 
Comment by alice — October 13, 2007 @ 9:19 pm

I think it is the real in that sentence, like Skip suggests
and for me, the real can’t speak Violet, that
is why it is real. It isnt the abscence of the
myth or fantasy that characterises it (not ‘it’),
to my mind, but the impossibility
that it should be transmitted thru speech, (might be enacted)
or directly represented
at all. but that is why I wonder if it is ever subject to change..
But the it ‘it’ es, id, uncs, it’s considerably more chatty..!
(in fact I just corrected a typo I had made - I had written your name as
‘Violent’ Violet!!) 
Comment by sol — October 14, 2007 @ 3:51 am

re. 35 - Terry I - hello again, but wondered why you went back to this, before noticing it’s the first message you see, now that Admin’s been ‘autumn cleaning’.
However, I’d say there are unfortunate processes at work where I live and these processes resist being challenged. There’s a culture of silence within groups and organisations and it’s a silence which is encouraged to maintain a status quo.
Next door, in the symposium, we’re doing some thinking about an online cartel and it seems one instance of ‘groupwork’ in a Lacanian setting. The Courtil papers are one instance of work set in the context of organisations, but there seem few (written up) examples of ‘groupwork’ in the Lacanian world. My (Uk) training, back in the mid 1990’s, had a ‘group analysis’ (Bion et al.) aspect to it and lately, I’ve begun to realise just how much I’m influenced by this approach, despite years reading Lacanian literature.
In other words, where I live and work, I would like to begin to come up with an analysis which could have some bearing on a state of affairs within organisations, but have failed to do this in any effective way, so far … despite the availability of texts by Zizek and others. 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 14, 2007 @ 9:27 am

signifier - plesure connected to one and drive/ its all very cofusing 19 
Comment by lucky — October 14, 2007 @ 9:57 am

Sol — why is jampa saying the real is the state of ES? There is indeed a connection - like with the dream in “A child is beaten” - the child saying “Father can’t you see I am burning”, but the chatty - I like that - belongs in the Father’s dream, not in the scene with the fallen candle burning the coffin and so… question is that for there to be the real we need the dream, right? 
Comment by violet — October 15, 2007 @ 1:18 am

Do you mean, Violet, where Jampa writes
‘if the real is the true estate of es?’
I don’t know, but I don’t agree that the
real ‘produces’ an (I think the word should read)
intimation…in the uncs..I don’t think
the real ‘produces’ at all, or, rather
that is part of my question about whether the real
changes. But maybe Jampa means the estate,
in that the repressed is founded in trauma.
but in relation to that paper,
i might say that for the fantasy we need
the real - we need the gap, the hole, to
give the place for the fantasy to appear/erupt
But for the real we need the dream, I guess so do,
to be able to represent nachtraglichkeit)
around the edges of the shape it might be??
What sense in that?
Jampa, what does Violet mean? (: 
Comment by sol — October 16, 2007 @ 12:52 am

Maybe in relation to that paper Violet
Id say for there to be fantasy we need the real,
/a horror of where the pronouns are placed.
But re Jampa’s ‘estate’ - I think of the
terra firma of repression - sure, foundational.
(Nice pun I hadnt noticed, Jampa)
But i dont know if the real ‘produces an intimation’
whether it ‘produces’ anything at all, even change.
and the real can be, without the neurotic dream.
To talk about the real though, Id agree, needs the dream
and more, the elaboration of the dream, as in the
exclaiming phrase - Father cant you see..? 
Comment by Sol — October 16, 2007 @ 1:06 am

Violet, found your ref. confusing. The question might be, having attached the symbolic to the unconscious, how do we link the real to the id?
If Lacan is right about Joyce, could we say that the author’s text supplementing the N de P finds a way to talk the id? 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 16, 2007 @ 1:44 am

ps. ’supplementing the missing N de P’ might be better of putting it 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 16, 2007 @ 1:46 am

Gosh, just can’t say it.
It should be -
’supplementing the missing N de P’ might be better WAY of putting it 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 16, 2007 @ 3:17 am

Violet, do you mean because it can’t be said the real
might be talked around in the neurotic dream?
I agree with Jampa, in my understanding
of what he wrote about the real being the estate of the uncs
(good pun J. I hadnt noticed it before)
the terra firma of repression
but I dont think the real ‘produces an intimation’
or produces anything at all, which is why I ask about
whether the real can change..
but in relation to that paper Violet, I would say
more that for there to be fantasy there must be the real
(the horror of the position of the pronoun) 
Comment by Sol — October 16, 2007 @ 3:19 am

In the course of what is spoken or not, a real surely comes back at us or looks back at us when we least expect it.
With a dream we’d assume there’s some sleep, but we are often spectators, impotent, close up to the moment which stops us in our tracks.
What is it that we want in our dreams? To be dreaming, to be sleeping, to know there’s some way back?
If we sometimes see the worst in our dreams, can we say there’s a real in there, which tells us, perhaps, we’re never real-ly sleeping? 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 17, 2007 @ 4:16 am

Sol, I don’t think the elements in the dream as spoken by the dreamer account for the real… but when we say the unconscious speaks more truthfully in slips of the tongue, errors and so,
that in that we have the subject… what kind of a bearing has the subject of the unconscious vis-a-vis the real? objet a? 
Comment by violet — October 17, 2007 @ 4:52 am

Violet, if the subject is seen as an effect of the signifier and the signifier is symbolic, there is also surely a sense that the symbolic contains the real.
With a nightmare we sometimes seem to deduce the effect of the signifier, but surely also effect of the real? 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 17, 2007 @ 5:46 pm

Didn’t notice my pun either Sol! Thank you for recording that i’m so clever/stupid!
Lacan speaks somewhere of ‘the omniscient uncs’, which talks to me of the es-state of Buddhas and God, and elsewhere of the dreamer approaching the real only to wake in fright and… continue dreaming, the waking dream.
Going back to the passage which prompted this discussion, both Skip and i seem to have missed ‘reproducing’, as in mimick, or echo, preferring to talk about a production.
‘It is the real that the drives mythify’, that is, symbolize or figure (and thus necessarily obscure), while the real itself(if i have any idea) is the bare absence of any of that. Is Lacan saying there is an apperception of the real intrinsic to the drives,(somehow hijacked by the symbolic into mythologizing)? Is the real the lure which drives them, the drives, as objet a does the subject? 
Comment by jampa — October 17, 2007 @ 11:43 pm

Sol & jampa — “I agree with … the real being the estate of the uncs… but I dont think the real ‘produces an intimation’ or produces anything at all, which is why I ask about whether the real can change..”
estate as in the field of the unconscious?
Isn’t the real what does for so many extremes, like the beauty and the Beast, like the worst of horror like the utmost beautiful?
That is, the real produces intense feeling if we want to ask ourselves from where all this connoting of the horror and the beauty come… but the real doesn’t change… yes it produces change, I would say… 
Comment by violet — October 18, 2007 @ 4:16 pm

Oh! that was very strange
I wrote and it wasnt posting
so I wrote again
and it didnt post
and then, again, each time
changing what I wanted to say a little ?? 
Comment by Sol — October 19, 2007 @ 2:52 am

Sorry about that Sol, from time to time the system fails to recognize the guests which have already been approved… all in all it is a pity that we have to put all these barriers to deal with the spam… but what can we do 
Comment by admin — October 19, 2007 @ 4:21 am

CS - >>…having attached the symbolic to the unconscious, how do we link the real to the id?<<
with “a child is burning” Freud gives us a hint, and also Lacan with the dream of the person knocking at the door… right? 
Comment by violet — October 21, 2007 @ 3:25 am

whats the dream of the person knocking at the door about? what boo?k 
Comment by lucky — October 21, 2007 @ 1:42 pm

Yes, yes Violet.
Lucky, both dreams have to do with coincidence. With the dream of the child burning, the dreamer is forced out of an awful, but extraordinary dream to deal with a situation which is dreamt but real. There will be much, much better ways of putting this, but the second dream, I think, is a much simpler coinciding of dream and reality. 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 21, 2007 @ 2:34 pm

lucky - the dream of the person knocking at the door is from 1964 - Seminar XI - in Tyche and Automaton
Lacan was woken up from a short sleep by something knocking at his door before being awake… those knocks had already formed a dream which were something else in the dream… 
Comment by alice — October 21, 2007 @ 5:44 pm

pat, pat violet! What are these appeas-itudes? A discourse which refuses to intersect with meaning insists on a dance with qua qua qua (sound like lucky),
Who hasn’t had Lacan’s dream? an alarm which insinuates itself as a bell?
Hells bells, how much imagination to recognize the cry of the burning child as same? But i would ask which is which, the imaginary, given, i contend for Lacan, the real is not the burning child but that which survives the image of it, i.e., nothing but the image of it,
imagination doesn’t exist and the symbolic facilitates communication therewitnin 
Comment by jampa — October 22, 2007 @ 7:35 am

do u havre to b so cryptic about bells and alarms we don all get it… 
Comment by lucky — October 22, 2007 @ 10:30 am

(Jampa) - the dream is interpreted and one interpretation includes what Lacan calls ‘the gaze’. It involves ‘a wake’ and a dream forced on the mortified dreamer. In reality, the dreamer is mortified. Here we catch a glimpse of the dream, but also the effect of the gaze. In Sem XI, Lacan compares ‘looking’ and the gaze. When the subject is ‘looking’ the gaze disappears, but the gaze stops us in our tracks. A subjectivity fades, there’s a ’subversion of the subject’. 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 22, 2007 @ 12:45 pm

jampa - I don’t completly understand what you say I do with the discourse that refuses to intersect with meaning…
still about the dream, I know how with Lacan imagination - what is inside - does not exist (the dream before you tell it and so)
and I like the idea of that which survives the image of it… tell me more….
also about the communication between the symbolic and the real 
Comment by violet — October 23, 2007 @ 2:01 am

Do i have to be so cryptic, sez you lucky? (ol’ son, who’s got nothin to do, cept roll around heaven all day) My compliments and jealousies.
Chris, mortified as in made dead or made mortal, aware of mortality? How the gaze and the dream? As in ‘eyes so as not to see’?
Violet: twasnt your discourse but Chris’s, which he’s addressed… resolutely. Can’t be clearer bout the real, bit scared of what its become in Lacanian (not Lacan’s) hands. Trying to tease out
Sol: “southern volcanic highlands” Mt Gambier? Commuting to Adelaide? Quite a hike! Pls gimme a call if you’re over in Melb. 0407512739. Don’t think i’ve said here- GO CATS!! 
Comment by jampa — October 23, 2007 @ 3:40 am

Hi Josefina,
Can I reach you directly?
XX, E. 
Comment by Eric Wolf — October 23, 2007 @ 7:03 am

see what i mean’hont think ive said here- Go Cats!! what a` load of caps 
Comment by lucky — October 23, 2007 @ 8:20 am

what is the meaning of Go Cats!? 
Comment by alice — October 23, 2007 @ 2:20 pm

Go Cats - An Email Address of Distinction — never seen this alice? 
Comment by violet — October 23, 2007 @ 8:04 pm

jampa - just because it happened to all and everyone of us it doesn’t mean Lacan didn’t tell the story and presented it as a way of the real
now about Freud’s dream,
>>>the real is not the burning child but that which survives the image of it, i.e., nothing but the image of it<<
the phrase is beautiful and very seductive, but what is the materia of whatever it is that survives the image? Very Lacanian en plus, a left over, the objet a, the memory that doesn’t remember? 
Comment by violet — October 24, 2007 @ 12:43 am

‘beautiful and seductive’. There was some talk here recently of the drives aiming towards the Real, including Eros i’d wager. Dear violet,
‘nothing but the image of it’ should be ‘nothing AND the image (of it)’. In my understanding there are two Reals, the image, constructed from the material, the data, a chimera, eg the couple, the image of which transmuted as a W for the Wolfman, and then there’s the material which is not just unknowable, but in essence non-existent. Substantial existence is a myth. Yet W’s function, cars get us from a to b, but its the imputed w or car that gets an imputed us anywhere. Lacan knew this and hints at it everywhere. In my early acquaintance with Lacan i asked a (brilliant) friend why Lacan wrote so inscrutably and he said, maybe quoting, “coz he doesn’t wanna be understood by idiots”. Of the Real, this is always true 
Comment by jampa — October 25, 2007 @ 3:27 am

Oh and GO CATS is the cry of my Aussie football team who won the Grand Final after 44 years. Talkin to Sol, but yes, i suppose, ‘what aload of… luck’ 
Comment by jampa — October 25, 2007 @ 3:37 am

so of the image that transmutes into a letter W, is the reference - what got transmuted - the image of what happened - lost? does it get lost in trasmutation/ 
Comment by alice — October 29, 2007 @ 1:05 am

Does anyone know what sort of me Lacan was?
Was he a “Look at me” or “Don’t look at me”
“I am it” or “I am not it” and “I have it” or “I don’t have it”
What sort of Real me was he then
Any body any ideas? 
Comment by Mucan — October 29, 2007 @ 9:15 am

Mucan, if this a question at all for you, it’s what you make of the question. Why not start with the work? 
Comment by Chris Sands — October 29, 2007 @ 1:49 pm

Jampa — of the Wolfman and the transmuted image W, as “w or car that gets an imputed us anywhere”… is the w functioning as the cause of the desire - the objet a, and so? 
Comment by violet — October 30, 2007 @ 3:25 am

Alice: intimations then intimacy. don’t think it gets lost, guess i invoked the wolfman to allude to the Real being conflated with the symbolic which is the locus of while not the intention of myth, tho not my immediate point. However, in clinical terms, an analyst is surely concerned to reconcile the subject with A real of the naterial. In order to ‘find himself in the symbolic’, rather than an image. ‘Intimations of immortality’ Wordsworth. The product of not a sperstition but intimacy with the Real, 
Comment by jampa — October 30, 2007 @ 4:16 am

that is ‘not a superstition of’ 
Comment by jampa — October 30, 2007 @ 4:18 am

Sometimes wish didn’t take heat to some of this lemon juice but i’m grateful to to be able to put it ‘out there’, then wonder what’s sense and what’s pure ‘cats’. Thank you 
Comment by jampa — October 30, 2007 @ 8:14 pm

thats offensive, i f you bring them up of course theyll confuse you 
Comment by lucky — October 30, 2007 @ 8:45 pm

Necessarily, until they don’t 
Comment by jampa — October 30, 2007 @ 11:12 pm

I’ve heard a story about Lacan’s dream of half a chicken. This is the one where he tells his students that he’s dreamed of half a chicken and they run off speculating about what the half that’s missing is. He then says ‘Nobody’s asked me about the half that was there.’
Does anybody know if this is a real story and if so where I can get hold of an account of it? Preferably online.
thanks, Francis 
Comment by Francis — October 31, 2007 @ 5:23 am

Hey luckster, Did Lacan leave you in his will? Packin a thesis of your own or just a sniper’s rifle? 
Comment by jampa — October 31, 2007 @ 6:28 am

a thesis is out of the question. well did he? one of the ingots,, 
Comment by lucky — October 31, 2007 @ 9:03 am

So u shoot with solid gold? Frankly thought it was mud. But i’ll get forensic on the evidence 
Comment by jampa — October 31, 2007 @ 9:21 am

i might be able to spare that 
Comment by lucky — October 31, 2007 @ 12:00 pm

before you GO CATS together…? 
Comment by violet — October 31, 2007 @ 2:29 pm

Sure dear Violet, there’s room on the bandwagon. Wondrin Francis if the absent half is the manifest one? Objet a is always under our noses. Nice moustache but 
Comment by jampa — October 31, 2007 @ 9:51 pm

Francis — there is a funny chicken story, I already talked about in here, to illustrate the key role of the Other’s knowledge: a man who believes himself to be a grain of seed is taken to a mental institution where the doctors do their best to convince him that he is not a seed but a man. When he is cured (convinced that he is not a grain of seed but a man) and is allowed to leave the hospital , he immediately comes back trembling. There is a chicken outside the door and he is afraid that it will eat him. “My dear fellow,” says his doctor, “you know very well that you are not a grain of seed but a man.” “Of course I know that,” replies the patient, “but does the chicken know it?”
Comments Zizek “Therein resides the true stake of psychoanalysis tratement: it is not enough to convince the patient about the the unconscious truth of this symptoms, the unconscious itself must be brought to assume the truth.” 
Comment by violet — October 31, 2007 @ 11:54 pm

Here’s the first question starting a virtual conversation which aims to touch on the topic for the next Congress -21 - 25 April 2008 • Buenos Aires • 
1. In “La Troisième”, we find Lacan saying: “[…] Then in the world there is nothing outside  objet a, the shit or the gaze, the voice or the nipple, that cleaves  the subject and disguises it as a remainder, this one remainder that ex-sists  the body. In order to do its times, to be its semblance, it is necessary to have conditions “. Then, he continues: “[…] It is specially difficult, more difficult for a woman than for a man, contrary to what is usually said. That on occasions a woman is objet a for a man does not mean at all that being it appeals to her.” * This quotation leads us to think of two articulations, the first:  the relation of objet a and semblance; and the second: woman as objet a. We would like to know your opinion about this quotation. “… to be semblance, it is necessary to have conditions […].” 
Comment by violet — November 1, 2007 @ 3:38 am

re. necessary conditions
I was able to go to a NLS seminar in London last saturday, where PG Gueguen referred to Lacan’s reference to what he called a ‘lathouse’. I think it comes from seminar XV11.
PGG talked about minimum conditions for psychoanalysis and why live sessions constitute that minimum condition. I think JA Miller makes this case (in a text called ‘the portable … ?), whereas Bruce Fink argues the case for an expediency and occasional ‘phone sessions’ in his recent book addressing clinical concerns.
A ‘lathouse’ can be reference to (desireable) objects, things manufactured (by science) to make our lives more efficient etc.
There’s mention of the ‘lathouse’ idea in Pierre Skriabine paper ‘Some Moral Failings Called Depressions’
‘Genevieve Morel reminds us of the term coined by Lacan in L’Envers de la psychanalyse - the word lathouse, to name those objects produced by modern science and the universal power of its formulas: those universal ready made objects - the same for everyone - lodge themselves at the place of the object a for the subject; they constitute a contemporary category, that of the object “ready-to-enjoy” (pret-a-jouir) … ‘ 
Comment by Chris Sands — November 1, 2007 @ 5:22 am

ps. the above also has to do with separating ‘instinct’ and drive’, which we’ve been talking about, but re. ‘necessary conditions’, we might ask, necessary coinditions for what?
You know I like to promote the symposium here, but regarding the lathouse - contemporary art may take a different position. After all, the question of where and how art is shown predates ‘mobile phone analysis’ and the tectonics of the net. A musuem is often compared to a church and psychoanalysis often adheres to the unshakeable desire of the analyst … ? 
Comment by Chris Sands — November 1, 2007 @ 5:53 am

mighty fascinating, this question of the necessary conditions, or as i misunderstand it, the aetiology of objet a for the other assumed to know, his/her desire, or what drives the Knower and thus configures my desire? Given that, as i say, the missing half chicken is dreamt, like the ‘present’ half, or the only absent thing is ‘adequation to the Real’. 
Comment by jampa — November 1, 2007 @ 7:49 pm

jampa - of “adequation to the Real” are we supposed to think it as, adequation to objet a - the analyst - the absent thing - a missing half chicken… ? 
Comment by violet — November 2, 2007 @ 1:27 pm

Hallo everybody!
I am writing an essay about “birth of the prison”. Famous French filosopher Michel Foucault wrote about that in his book “Discipline and Punish”. Now I am trying to find differences between Foucault and Lacan, especcially in the terms of transgression and limit. I would be very grateful, if someone can help me. Thank you! 
Comment by Alma — November 4, 2007 @ 11:59 am

Chris I see you were in London. Are you going to the CFAR conference in December on ‘ Why Shipman Did It’ 
Comment by Terry1 — November 4, 2007 @ 6:05 pm

Terry 1 - hello again, would hope to get to further NLS events when possible, but probably not for this conference. Were you at ULU? 
Comment by Chris Sands — November 4, 2007 @ 6:46 pm

No did not attend Chris still very,very busy 
Comment by Terry1 — November 5, 2007 @ 4:44 am

I was very touched that Slavoj had read my book Ecology without Nature (Harvard 2007). I sent him a copy before he gave the talk in Athens. If you are interested, you should check it out, as he repeats the substance of the argument from chapter 1. Go to
https://www.amazon.com/Ecology-without-Nature-Rethinking-Environmental/dp/0674024346/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194982804&sr=1-1
Yours sincerely,
Timothy Morton 
Comment by Timothy Morton — November 13, 2007 @ 3:46 pm

Would recommend message board readers to CFAR conference 2-6pm Cost £45 in London on the 1st of December, Room 421, Birkbeck College, Malet Street London WC1 ‘Why Shipman Did It’ 
Comment by Terry1 — November 13, 2007 @ 7:01 pm

From JA Miller at the Congress in Rome… “If the analyst might be assimilated to object a, it is as the object cause of an analysis and as far as he has lifted the misrecognition of object a, that is to say here the misrecognition of his act…” 
Comment by violet — November 18, 2007 @ 4:22 pm

The sentence seems to have to do with what might be meant by ‘the desire of the analyst’, but somewhere else JAM says something about there being no assumption that the Other exists, in any way, at the start of therapy. Hence, perhaps, ‘if the analyst might be …’. 
Comment by Chris Sands — November 19, 2007 @ 8:36 am

I think messageboard and symposium are stuck with no messages in a week but, at the same time, I’ve come across ‘the separation of demand and love’ in Massimo Recalcati’s most recent text in LacInk. Perhaps, we feel the effect of Christmas ever sooner or a pausing has to do with the proximity of the objects a in the Lacanian world (comment 100)?
There are times when (my) work feels overwhelming and forced into endless reports and propositions, there are times when I don’t know where to begin. I do some work as an art therapist. This training and work is ‘regulated’ in the Uk and British trained art therapists sometimes see this profession’s grounding coinciding with the emergence of ‘group analysis’ and a particularly British approach to psychoanalysis after WW2 (Klein, Bion).
If I started out this way as a therapist, I eventually reached what seemed an impasse in my practice and theory and around this time started reading Lacan and Lacanian literature.
If I’m now concerned with a praxis which includes working as a therapist and as an artist, it seems I contend with what might be meant by the desire of the therapist, but also, the desire of the artist, with one ’supplementing’ the other.
If I now begin to look at what is sometimes called the Joycean symptom, I come across not so much the subject of the unconscious (Freudian symptom), but a fragile ego. And, if the symptom of an everyday ‘fragile ego’ finds a ’suppleance’ in retail therapy (or in Agamden’s ‘fashion’ and ‘pornography’), it seems therapy and art must develop an analysis which involves a real before a polemic. With Sem. X the promity of a real causes anxiety and in this instance, my ‘gushing’ is also my moment of pausing. 
Comment by Chris Sands — November 26, 2007 @ 6:20 am

(dear admin)
ps. last sentence should read ‘the proximity of a real …’ 
Comment by Chris Sands — November 26, 2007 @ 6:23 am

CS - we are being very busy with the conferences in NYC, but today is the last one… this last one with Zizek 
Comment by violet — November 28, 2007 @ 3:56 pm

I’ll forgive you if there are some recordings … 
Comment by Chris Sands — November 28, 2007 @ 7:17 pm

yes CS, there are records, just that they take a while before I can have them on a CD 
Comment by violet — November 30, 2007 @ 4:04 am

Have just looked at Russell Grigg’s ‘The Concept of Semblant in Lacan’s Teaching’ - new on ‘Blog’.
If the ‘names of the father’ seminar was the seminar that never was and with late Lacan, ‘names’ are treated as semblants, silence here resonates (it seems) with an earlier silence.
With much attention now given to the objet a in the Lacanian world, don’t we now arrive at the site of previous conflict? I wonder about a normalization of later Lacan, with sinthome turning towards symptom. If a sinthome (retroactively) involves the work of a sinthome, symptoms include a supplementing of the cause of desire, but isn’t the notion the objet a as semblant problematic here? Perhaps, we need to look again at the idea of the readymade. The silence surrounding the readymade in contemporary art must now include the noise of propositions and an opening of an art world in a wake of unfortunate semblants. Where do we see this going on? 
Comment by Chris Sands — December 9, 2007 @ 6:43 am

There’s usually a bit of a lull around Christmas, but a message from the London Society is hard to ignore. It encloses a translation of ‘three Questions to Jacques-Alain MILLER’
(from La Lettre en ligne de l’ECF issue 43) and the text seems more than a timely ‘call to action’. JAM responds, in part, to the emergence of cognitive behavioural therapy in France, which is something not new in the Uk.
Looking at Lorenzo Chiesa’s ‘Subjectivity and Otherness’, I found my way straight away to a part which echoes a thread in Massimo Recalcati’s, LacInk text, ‘Triggering Determinants in Anorexia’. These passages (below) have to do with desire and what (perhaps) separates demands apparently ‘put on health services’ from Lacanian demand.
Referring to Lacan in Sem V. - Chiesa’s text reads: … desire is ‘the margin, the result of the subtraction … of the neccessity (exigence) of need from (par rapport a) the demand for love’ (p.151). A few pages later (p.153), LC quotes Lacan: ‘Desire presents itself as that which, in the demand for love, rebels against any sort of reduction to need, since naturally the demand for love doesn’t satisfy anything but itself, which is to say (pure) desire as an absolute condition’.
Referring to anorexia, Recalcati talks of dissociating ‘desire from demand so as to differentiate the Other of love from the Other of caring’. 
Comment by Chris Sands — December 23, 2007 @ 7:03 pm

A Merry Christmas to Chris Sands, jampa, Sol, lucky, violet, Terry 1, Rupert, alice, paul, sugar, zurra, and the many names who come and go in the messageboard, symposium and forum crowd….! and a Very Happy New Year 2008 — may your wishes come true! from perfume 
Comment by perfume — December 25, 2007 @ 6:13 am

A happy Christmas to you too Josefina 
Comment by Chris Sands — December 25, 2007 @ 8:26 am

Happy New Tear to Josephina and all. The best website on the net. 
Comment by Terry1 — December 28, 2007 @ 7:05 pm

The best website on the net. Happy New Tear to Josephina and all. 
Comment by Terry1 — December 28, 2007 @ 7:07 pm

Excuse me. Im from Colombia. Can Somebody say me the history behind the picture (cover) of the book!? im interesting on zizek ´s theory, but that photo is really…how say it?…attractive!…thanX for your help! and happy new year! 
Comment by david — January 1, 2008 @ 3:13 pm

and congratulations for this marvellous page! 
Comment by david — January 1, 2008 @ 3:14 pm

of the history behind the cover of Lacanian Ink, if that’s what you mean with the book, there isn’t much of a history. Adam Helms is a young artist that has been doing these masked faces for a while, and he doesn’t want to talk of his work — he won’t even accept to be interviewed. Of his personal life what transcends is that the father was a minister to Reagan…
sort of naughty one, in that he denied help to the sick with AIDS - he proclaimed AIDS was a punishment against homosexuality. 
Comment by jessica — January 1, 2008 @ 5:10 pm

if I was the son of that father I wouldn’t like it either - to be interviewed I mean 
Comment by alice — January 2, 2008 @ 5:46 am

the two of you gossiping aloud, this are not things you say overtly, rather you whisper them — 
Comment by paul — January 3, 2008 @ 2:44 am

that’s funny, how do you whisper in a messageboard? 
Comment by paul — January 3, 2008 @ 2:45 am

I thought these conversations only went on in the Kleinian world! 
Comment by Chris Sands — January 3, 2008 @ 4:07 am

like in Melanie Klein….? CS tell us more 
Comment by violet — January 3, 2008 @ 7:14 am

the thought was, the Kleinian world and what is called ‘projective identification’, may have to do with what can be made into an ‘ideal ego’ (or an ‘ego ideal’) or not (usually not), in a Lacanian sense, so beginning with Lacan’s mirror, imaginary identifications …
So if there is an insistence on ‘the imaginary’ among Kleinians … gossip rules!
The analytic world is mostly Kleinian on this side of the Atlantic - and I’m being mean so soon after Christmas … 
Comment by Chris Sands — January 3, 2008 @ 6:00 pm

We owe something to Melanie Klein, and this is her discovery with regard to the breast of desire… 
Comment by violet — January 4, 2008 @ 3:58 am

Yes, I agree, but imagine an environment (on this side of the Atlantic) dominated by CBT. and Klein in analytic circles. On the one hand, I’ve watched a profession (art therapy in Uk.) cave in to a desire to be ‘compliant’ in a world of evidence based practice, while on the other hand, Kleinian emphasis on the imaginary and group work lends itself to a development within healthcare which is also ‘normative’. Living where I do (and reading Lacan), I’ve developed a way of working (if that’s what it is) which is not entirely driven by the concerns of the ego (and I’m still thinking about Klein), but there’s irony too when rampant consumerism depends on what amounts to the imaginary and an idealization of a good enough ego.
I am so grateful to an analysis which can go beyond all this, but there’s irony too. I’ve been reading Lorenzo Chiesa’s ‘Subjectivity and Otherness’ and towards the end (p.190) this author comments: ‘… how do sinthomes communicate with each other if there is no common phantasmatic background at the level of the individual naming of the Real? Is it not the case that a hypothetical society of fully sinthomatic beings of language - as opposed to phallic beings of language - would inevitably cause a fragmentation of the Symbolic into many Symbolics, and ultimately its complete demise?’
Artists sometimes say that they make work for other artists and I suppose this all starts with reference to images in the most most recent LacInk. - but here I’d apply my own version of EBP. If the art world can be important as a place where sinthomes talk to each other, where in a ‘collaboration art world culture’ do we see an opening of something ‘artists have always know about’? E-flux recently announced a ‘participation biennale’ in Montreal 2009 …
Will do my best to reformulate this perhaps as a question in the a+L symposium. 
Comment by Chris Sands — January 4, 2008 @ 5:48 am

Very best wishes to all in ‘08. Thank you Chris for Chiesa’s quote ( and your commentary). Is the rest of the book as good? For myself, and perhaps others, a bit at sea with this, am i right to understand the sinthome as schizophrenic discourse? 
Comment by jampa — January 8, 2008 @ 7:50 am

does anyone know which are the key references/texts for lacan in baldwin’s work?? much obliged.. 
Comment by al — January 9, 2008 @ 6:42 am

happy new year Jampa.
One of Lacan’s seminars is called Le Sinthome, not yet translated into English.
I think Lacan makes reference to James Joyce. If Joyce’s work (as a writer) somehow supplements a foreclosed ‘Nom de Pere’ (and I think this might be what Lacan is saying in this seminar), the writing constitutes Joyce’s sinthome. The writing or the sinthome prevent a triggered psychosis, when the writer’s clinical structure suggests this is a possibility. If the sinthome is linked to Joyce and Joyce’s clinical structure in the first place, what might be meant by this term seems particularly relevant to psychosis.
The title of a seminar planned for July in Paris is ‘Normal Psychosis’, which (I think) was a phrase originally used by JA Miller to describe the effects of a more general foreclosure. So, we’ve a clinical structure called psychosis, a ‘normal psychosis, but then also perhaps the neurotic’s sinthome - when there is no Other or Big Other. 
Comment by Chris Sands — January 9, 2008 @ 5:41 pm

ps. that’s a slip, should have written ‘ordinary psychosis’ above 
Comment by Chris Sands — January 10, 2008 @ 6:19 am

re. an ‘ordinary psychosis’, then possibly about a ‘generalized psychosis’, (in ‘Psychoanalysis in Close Touch with the Social’) JA Miller writes:
‘It is already perceptible in the clinic of ordinary psychosis, psychosis without an onset, where the effects of foreclosure are not spectacular, as delusions and hallucinations are, but are translated by more discreet signs, sometimes insignificant elementary phenomena, successive disconnections with family and everything that surrounds it, social relations and the world.’
‘We are at a time when the Other no longer exists. At the “social zenith”, the object a has replaced it. Insertion is accomplished less through identification than through consummation. The dream is less of liberation than of satisfaction. And social reality turns out to be dominated by the manque-è-jouir (want-of-jouissance). Which gives rise to the vogue of addictions, which is not simply a vogue limited to practices: everything becomes addiction in social behavior, everything takes on an addictive style. We must recognize
in the addictions, as in the frenetic consummation of the plus-de-jouir (surplus-jouissance) that technology multiplies and puts on the market more and more rapidly, a desperate effort to remunerate a deficit of satisfaction that is structural.’
(for ‘Psychoanalysis in Close Touch with the Social’ see ’site map’ and JAM’s writings at this site) 
Comment by Chris Sands — January 11, 2008 @ 5:54 am

Hello! I hope great times for all the members here, for all who think and love to do philosophy. I wonder if there is any one who wouldn’t mind giving me Prof. Slavoj Zizek’s e-mail address or any other thing to help me contact him, or at least that of a student of him. I’d be very grateful! Thanks in advance! 
Comment by Majid Sufiani — January 26, 2008 @ 3:40 am

Hello again! Isn’t there anyone yo help me? 
Comment by majid Sufiani — January 29, 2008 @ 1:28 pm

There could be a privacy issue here. People generally advertise their contact details if they want to be contacted in this way. 
Comment by Chris Sands — January 29, 2008 @ 5:26 pm

Of course there is a privacy issue here… Zizek is certainly one that won’t advertise his contact details because he doesn’t want to be contacted in this way 
Comment by violet — January 30, 2008 @ 6:54 pm

I have just seen some evidence for support of Lacan through a conventional grammatical analysis of classical Arab Text and the Koran. Are there any grammarians there? The thesis that there is a history in the classical Arab text suggests that in early examples of classical Arab text there are no ‘dots’( I don’t know the grammatical term for this in Arab textual analysis) in the text. Additions were made to the way the scripts were written. Dots in the Arabic classical scripts were added later and this led to triglossia and diglossia in a struggle to interpret the Islamic Holy Book, the Koran. So the notion that these scripts are the unadulterated word of God cannot be sustained academically. Is there a Muslim reader that can clarify this? 
Comment by Terry1 — February 1, 2008 @ 7:08 pm

Thank you for your kind considerations; I could actually guess it. Maye I have further informations about this message-board, what is going on here and what can be done here? can we have some serious discussions on lacanian issues here? by the way do you know any journal or something welcoming new thoughts and articles? Thank you in advance!! 
Comment by Majid Sufiani — February 2, 2008 @ 3:12 am

Hello Terry! Religion is one of my interests too. I wonder if you’d mind giving me furhter references dealing with the issue. Thank you in advance!!! 
Comment by Majid Sufiani — February 2, 2008 @ 3:21 am

Hello Majid! I read your mail. thank you for that! but remember If you tell all the truth, it depends on an exception which is withheld; but if you tell “non-all truth” it doesn’t mean that you kept some part of it hidden! but it means that there is nothing you didn’t tell. I am looking foreward to hearing again from you! bye!!! 
Comment by Hadi Hemati — February 2, 2008 @ 3:27 am

Terry1 - by dots you mean period, colon, semicolon… ? 
Comment by violet — February 2, 2008 @ 6:51 pm

Violet
Yes but I don’t think these are the grammatical terms in Arabic
وَأَذَانٌ مِّنَ اللّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ إِلَى النَّاسِ يَوْمَ الْحَجِّ الأَكْبَرِ أَنَّ اللّهَ بَرِيءٌ مِّنَ الْمُشْرِكِينَ وَرَسُولُهُ فَإِن تُبْتُمْ فَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ وَإِن تَوَلَّيْتُمْ فَاعْلَمُواْ أَنَّكُمْ غَيْرُ مُعْجِزِي اللّهِ وَبَشِّرِ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ For instance the dots and points do not appear in early Arab scripts. They are just continuous lines without what we call punctuation. 
Comment by Terry1 — February 2, 2008 @ 7:20 pm

Hello, dear Terryl! Actually I couldn’t grasp your point. Would you mind explaining it a bit more? What exactly is the Lacanian bearing to the matter? And also I couldn’t get why diglossia occurs if there would be no punctuations at first! Tell us more if you don’t mind! 
Comment by Majid Sufiani — February 3, 2008 @ 4:43 am

Hello dear Chris! I viewed your profile and I got interested in your works. I am also interested in Psychoanalysis and have begun a systematic study on this field. I would be grateful if I could receive some guidelines from you. I know you are too busy to deal with these matters but that would be a great opportunity for me. Thank you! 
Comment by Hadi Hemati — February 3, 2008 @ 4:50 am

hello Hadi, well a little flattery works with me, thanks. Re. psychoanalysis, take a look at what’s on offer via the opening page. Lacan.com is full of extraordinary articles and there are archives with info. to keep anyone interested in this field going for a while. There are many hereabouts who can answer good questions better than I can and, as you know, psychoanalysis is primarily experiential. Questions tend to generate enthusiasm on the messageboard (and in the ‘art and Lacan symposium’), but they tend to arise from articles and the journal itself. Take a look at the writings of JA Miller, Alain Badiou, Gerard Wajcman, Josefina Ayerza and Zizek. If you are especially interested in the relationship of art and analysis, I’d recommend Gerard Wajcman. 
Comment by Chris Sands — February 3, 2008 @ 7:11 am

Hello, dear Terryl! Actually I couldn’t grasp your point. Would you mind explaining it a bit more? What exactly is the Lacanian bearing to the matter? And also I couldn’t get why diglossia occurs if there would be no punctuations at first! Tell us more if you don’t mind! 
Comment by Majid Sufiani — February 3, 2008 @ 4:43 am 
Majid…………If it is claimed the Koran is the actual word of God which commands absolute submission, as Islamic scholars say, then there should be NO confusion about its meaning as a ‘code’ for life. The problem is almost 90% of the world’s Muslims do not speak or read Arabic. So the meaning of the Koran has to be interpreted for 90% of the world’s Muslims. Lacan can account for the variation in MEANING that is evident in the ‘reading’ of the Koran. The problem with the Koran is HOW do you READ the text ( from right to left of course ) and give it meaning. The following, a holy injuction from the Koran :
وَأَذَانٌ مِّنَ اللّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ إِلَى النَّاسِ يَوْمَ الْحَجِّ الأَكْبَرِ أَنَّ اللّهَ بَرِيءٌ مِّنَ الْمُشْرِكِينَ وَرَسُولُهُ فَإِن تُبْتُمْ فَهُوَ خَيْرٌ لَّكُمْ وَإِن تَوَلَّيْتُمْ فَاعْلَمُواْ أَنَّكُمْ غَيْرُ مُعْجِزِي اللّهِ وَبَشِّرِ الَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ 
Means nothing to a person who reads this through the lense of CLASSICAL Arab textual analysis. Because this was a completley different system which had no,what western scholars would call, puctuation. The early Arab text is just PURE script with no puctuating commas, dots and inflections. 
Comment by Terry1 — February 3, 2008 @ 6:20 pm

Hi Terry! Thanks for reply. I got your point. Not just can Lacan’s ideas be a proof against the validity of Kor’an’ claimed sacracy, so can lots of other philosophers’; to cite some example: Quine’s ideas concerning translation (interpretation); through translation nothing can remain pristine, so even if Kor’an was Gods words, it loses its credity as soon as the prophet tries to understand it or interprets it to the followers. Another examples can be found among ideas of Derrida, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, . . .! God couldn’t have been able to use any language; if He did, He would lose his “totality”. Do let me know your idea! Thank you! 
Comment by Majid Sufiani — February 6, 2008 @ 5:30 am

so Lacan’s ideas of interpretation (translation)
as the enigma, or the citation,
to gamble on the loss of (total) certainty
of what is said, or who is saying it
and maybe the idea of the short session comes here too
- the one who didn’t turn up for his session
had the PURE script with no dots! chattering to the wind 
Comment by Sol — February 6, 2008 @ 7:06 am

Hi all, just reading over the messageboard - re
message 125, Jampa, at the start of Le Sinthome
Lacan says
“…l’élangues, by which I suppose he aims to indicate something like elation;
that elation said to be constitutive of whatever sinthome we in psychiatry give the name mania,
which is certainly what Joyce’s last work, Finnegans Wake, resembles - ”
127: CS I have an english translation of this paper if you’d like me to send you a copy.
90: Violet, your comment and questions about the semblance, objet a and woman as..
not unrelated to the sinthome perhaps - if it can be seen as equivalent to Freud’s
formulation of actual neurosis - I could think of the unconscious as a necessary
condition for the (divided) subject to be a remainder (the body an other to it)
and to do its times (repeat) and inform metonomy (of desire) it is necessary that
the time of the unconscious is operating - no time. So then, instead of the conscious
cause (a) -> effect (remaiander), we can see (and Bergson in Time and Free will elaborates this
beautifully) effect (remainder - uncs subject) -> cause (a).
The object (which may be (of) the body) is constituted by the a, but only after/before..
The woman, as objet a, does not exist
objet a then, as (ssometimes the woman) does neither exist..
which is perhaps why i find both questions so vexed.
Have you any more ideas on your questions..? 
Comment by Sol — February 6, 2008 @ 7:22 pm

Hello dear Sol! I am a graduate student of English Literature and Language. I live in Iran. I’ve been studying Lacanian Psychoanalysis for some time. I have read some of Zizek’s books, and some other books on Lacan including Evans’s “Dictionary”, and … As I was reviewing the message-board I got interested in your diction and style of writing and also absorbed by you good command of lacanian matters. May I know you more? i’d be very happy! Thanks in advance!! 
Comment by Majid — February 7, 2008 @ 1:11 pm

Sol, the paper would be appreciated, but where do we take the epiphany notion?
I think there are problems here despite the value of a symptom that’s real rather than symbolic (sinthome). Everywhere there are epiphany’s with desire (in therapy) stripped bare by evaluation, with a marketing of desire (in the art world) and with shopping, but I don’t think we should confuse epiphany’s with mania. If Lacan lends Freud’s unconscious structure, it seems an accomodation of desire leads in the direction of a society fixated by management. And if it’s safe to play we can play, only Joyce contends with the British Empire and a first world war. If the situation is now worse in some ways following a second world war, epiphany’s everywhere are ordinary epiphany’s.
Sol, if you send me that paper, I’ll send you a report on a conference on ‘Depression’ organised by the Paris university (Paris VII), written up by Adrian Price, sent to me today by ‘the London Society of NLS. It makes very interesting reading. Presently, there seems a tremendous urgency (in the Lacanian world) to attend to a politics of contemporary discontents and it’s an urgency conveyed by new technologies.
Majid, if the above makes any sense in the west, I wonder what sense it would make to someone living in Iran. Lacanian psychoanalysis is always complex, but starts out being quite structured, before seemingly losing some of its certainties. What your take on Lacan? 
Comment by Chris Sands — February 7, 2008 @ 7:35 pm

ps. Sol, could the gap between making sense and nonsense constitute an epiphany? 
Comment by Chris Sands — February 7, 2008 @ 7:47 pm

Hi CS,
I don’t think it’s implied that the sinthome is simply mania,
but that mania might be a sinthome.
But what is an epiphany?
Is it real? Has it to do with truth?
Is it an open testimony to the unconscious?
Surely epiphanies sometimes punctuate mania.
Hi Majid, I am not so familiar with Lacan, but happy
to talk. Who are your favorate authors? 
Comment by Sol — February 7, 2008 @ 7:56 pm

Sol, With a triggered psychosis there may be delusional processes and the stories that unfold may seem made up of ‘confabulations’, only confabulations return with the construction of what Lacan called a ‘delusional metaphor’. If this metaphor is a vital part of someone’s world, it may seem ’sinthom-atic’ looking back, but isn’t the sinthome seen as an alternative to delusional processes? I think it’s most often associated with a untriggered psychosis. Massimo Recalcati’s ‘Empty Subject’ in LacInk 26 addresses so called ‘untriggered processes’ and the sinthome.
see https://www.lacan.com/frameXXVI4.htm 
Comment by Chris Sands — February 8, 2008 @ 5:54 am

(afterthought re. sinthome)
I’m becoming aware of a new politics of resistance in France as analysts and others make a stand against CBT and an evaluation culture. I think JAM once suggested psychoanalysis had become a victim of its success - with desire part of daily life (in a very insidious way). In this sense, pure and applied psychoanalysis now seem ‘quilting points’ with CBT keen to replace desire in clinical practice by questionnaires and the trimmings of science. If there is no naming of desire, don’t we slip into what JAM calls a generalized psychosis, where the sinthome itself becomes an all-important assumption? The sinthome makes an appearance retroactively it seems and long after a writer’s death, we talk of a writer ‘making his name’ (in the instance of Joyce). We now seem comfortable with a very retrospective naming, but JA Miller and others want to press the naming of a symptom (CBT, evaluation cultures), before it’s too late! Is CBT. culturally, socially and politically a symptom or sinthome? 
Comment by Chris Sands — February 8, 2008 @ 6:45 am

Hi Chris! well in Iran Psychoanalysis, in general, has not attained its proper position in academic studies. we have psychology but there is no formal course under Psychoanalysis. of course there are a lot people studying psychoanalysis by themselves, and also in literary studies they discuss some subjects speially dealing with Freudin and Jungian psychoanalysis.but lacanian psyhoanalysis is quite a new field trying to open up a space for itself into the highly conventional atmosphere of the universities. as I said earlier I am a literature graduate, english literature, and it’s almost been two years now that I am engaged in Lacan and Zizek. of course the above discussion doesn’t mean much here in Iran. they do not look at the world, events, and man in general from that angle, the ambiance being “radically” traditional. hope to continue our converse!
Hi Sol! at the moment I am involved in Zizek and he has actually mesmerised me. But there are lots of other authors who are my favorites in philosophy, psychoanalysis and Literature. looking foreward to hearing from you again. I appreciate your attention. 
Comment by majid — February 8, 2008 @ 1:51 pm

Hello dear Chris! I got really excited when I heard from you. that was a great help! I am really interested in indulging myself in the philosophical discussions which may be held on this board. the concept of discussion for me is not merely the core of diologic interaction of multiple voices or modes of discourse that animates a series of its particular forms of appearence but it persists in the very irreducible tension between these different forms of appearence or modes of discourse. Discussion- as a transcendental signified of these multiple levels of modes of discourse- always involves an aporia- an insuperable deadlock of incompatible meanings which are undesidable in that we lack any ground for choosing among them. so the very persistance of these discussions in the very polysemism can be the ultimate goal for me. Thanks! 
Comment by Hadi — February 9, 2008 @ 2:12 am

“By desiring that which another desires, I can make the other recognise my right to possess that object, and thus make the other recognise my superiority over him (Kojeve, 1947:40).
Any comment on this? 
Comment by Majid — February 10, 2008 @ 12:46 pm

Hello everybody! How far is Zizek Hegelian? 
Comment by Majid — February 10, 2008 @ 12:48 pm

Zizek is Hegelian, yes… very much so 
Comment by violet — February 10, 2008 @ 4:54 pm

Of your Kojeve line, it is indeed smart. Still I think desire is too precious to think you want to waste it over winning somebody else… than yourself 
Comment by violet — February 10, 2008 @ 4:57 pm

Zizek is PURE Lacanian 
Comment by Terry 1 — February 10, 2008 @ 6:00 pm

PURE Lacanian Zizek learned a lot of Hegel, and he went further than Kojeve let me tell you, further in the sense that Zizek’s Hegel doesn’t stop with studying Kojeve 
Comment by paul — February 10, 2008 @ 7:31 pm

Still Zizek is PURE Lacanian 
Comment by violet — February 12, 2008 @ 5:54 am

Hi Violet!! What is so precious about desire?! 
Hi Terry!! PURE!!!??? 
Comment by Majid — February 12, 2008 @ 10:54 am

it is difficult to give way to your desire… and this is what makes it so precious, I guess 
Comment by violet — February 12, 2008 @ 12:18 pm

Hi Violet! it’s believed that when there is desire “the other” has already confirmed its place in you symbolic System of deferential identities so I can’t get how you can think of it the other way around! Lacan said: “The subject desires from the point of view of an[-]other”. 
Comment by Majid — February 13, 2008 @ 3:57 am

Hi!I came across this while reviewing Lacan: 
“What is important in the analysis of a hysteric is not to find out the object of hir desire but to discover the place from which she desires”. 
Any comment? 
Comment by Majid — February 13, 2008 @ 12:37 pm

ps. …her desire… 
Comment by Majid — February 13, 2008 @ 12:38 pm

the big O - the place of extreme alterity - in schema L -
a place, not a person - to some say Fate, or Death.. 
Comment by Sol — February 13, 2008 @ 8:56 pm

it’s a cover but it makes sense in the way that the creep creeps in your loud conscience also called widow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lML2N4xB9GU&feature=related 
Comment by Kirt — February 14, 2008 @ 2:26 am

Majid, can you tell more of the hysteric and the place “from where she desires”? 
Comment by alice — February 14, 2008 @ 8:05 pm

the hysteric desires from a Master/Other who she wants to “maîtrisé” dominate. And this is how she got calledr “la maîtresse du Maître.” 
Comment by paul — February 14, 2008 @ 9:19 pm

Hi Alice! Generally speaking Lacan believes that “desire of man is the desire of the other”. It means that the object of your desire is that of an[]other’s . In other words you desire an object not for that object’s positive content or quality but becaouse it’s been being desired by the other (the first one occupying this “position” being the Mother). This has ofcourse a recourse to Hegel’s Master/Slave dielectics in which the Slave occupies the position of the Master’s object of desire in order to be desired by the Master. Now this is much more clearer in the case of hysteric which adopts another person’s position, that person being desired by The Other. The hysteric identifies with the object of the other’s desire thus desiring from that point of view not of heerself’s (Dora’s case). Lacan goes on to tell us that what’s important in the analysis of the hysteric is not to find out the object of her desire but the place, the position from which she desires and with which she identifies. 
Comment by Majid — February 15, 2008 @ 11:16 am

she sometimes says ‘fate makes me suffer’
‘I am late by great co incidence’
‘I must fix my father up because he is so ineffectual’
desire being forced into this other place, of fate, co incidence
or the impo(r)tance of the father
but which is at the start her own 
Comment by Sol — February 17, 2008 @ 12:25 am

rep.172: Hi dear Sol! I couldn’t exactly understand how you associate “Desire” with “Projection”! may you elaborate your comment? And also how can you explain “desire was “at the start her own”"? From a Lacanian point of view there’s no ownership of anything in the sybolic realm. The subject is always already split in its “own”! 
Comment by Majid — February 17, 2008 @ 6:21 am

hello dear Majid. the slave occupies the position of the master’s object of desire .could you pls clarify the diffrence beetween “the position of The object of desire” and “The object of desire”? Isn’t it that of a twist? isn’t the object of desire its own place?are they two diffrent primordial positive entities or the diffrence is between one and itself? 
Comment by hadi — February 17, 2008 @ 6:44 am

Hi Majid,
As i understand schema L the subject is defined by
the movement across the points of the es or it, one’s
objects, o, ego, o’, and the big Other, O.
The O is a place and distinct to the subject,
but a place ‘to whom I am more
attached than to myself’ (’72) and in my examples spoken of in the session
-to speak of the alterity of the place
of one’s desire - ‘Fate wants me to suffer’, ‘my body betrays me’
- the desire of the Other - one’s desire
might be ignorance, important to work, but I disagree that it is projection.
I take your point that ‘own’ might be the wrong word.
I mean to say that It is of her, and It is operating in these references
to the big O.
Not of the ego, just one of the changing objects,
but of the speaker, in the spoken. 
Comment by Sol — February 17, 2008 @ 9:13 am

surely the question becomes one of transference,
the mistress asking where the slave will position
himself in relation to this big Other/ 
Comment by Sol — February 17, 2008 @ 9:32 am

Hi dear Sol! I think I got your point. Yeah you are right; not the ego but the speaker in the spoken; the divided subject of the enunciation and the statement at the same time. One of the main attempts of Lacan was to decentre the “ego” and replace it with the “subject” as the focus of psychoanalytic treatment quite on the contrary to the Ego-Psychologists. Thank you; you made me review the Schema L. 
Comment by Majid — February 19, 2008 @ 1:02 pm

Majid - Isn’t it the subject that is decentred” 
Comment by alice — February 20, 2008 @ 1:04 am

we are trying to put the forum to work, and we keep failing… sorry for that… tomorrow could be the day 
Comment by admin — February 22, 2008 @ 1:55 am

Yeah Alice, the Subject which is alienated from itself or decentred. It is double-split: first in the mirror stage and then when casterated by the enterence of the Father. 
Comment by Majid — February 22, 2008 @ 10:23 am

Alice, I am sorry! Was your comment on the message 177? If so it was the “Ego” which was decentred by Lacan not the subject. The ego-psychologists put emphasis on the centrality of “Ego” and the end of analysis in their eyes was to enforce the role of “Ego” in conforming to the reality principle. On the contrary Lacan believed the it’s the “Ego” who bars the way of Subject and deters its full expression. Hope to continue our talk! 
Comment by Majid — February 22, 2008 @ 10:32 am