Lacan, the Phallus, and the Oedipus

so welcome to our lecture today which is going to be about the phallus the Oedipus and Lacan in general what we're going to talk about today has to do with some work that we have been doing in our guided reading group so a work on a specific article called the signification of the phallus which Lacan published in a key so we did some work we're gonna do we're gonna demonstrate that a little bit of that but then we're gonna go a bit further and yeah again feel free to participate and ask questions and and we'll see where we get to I have several ideas of where I want to take the lecture but again we could we could take it anywhere I'll represent myself briefly my name is Leon Brenner thank you yes I'm a PhD candidate and then expert on or let's say in autism theorist that's what my work revolves the theory of autism and also I love like Lacan dearly and I've been working on look on for years also I that's that's part of the reason that we're doing this lecture today yeah so let's start okay so when we think about the phallus it's a really big deal in psychoanalysis at least or anywhere I guess everybody wants to have the phallus to know what is the phallus and I think the significance of the phallus is greatly diminished in a very Freudian joke which is also a horrible joke but it's a Freudian joke about the phallus and it goes pretty much like this Anna Freud which is for its daughter and a very famous analyst to be is sitting in the living room with Freud in their apartment in Vienna that's before she became an analyst so she's very inquisitive woman and she asks Freud Freud dad can you tell me what is the phallus and four it says yes no problem obviously but in order to do that we need to step into my office they step into Freud's office it goes behind his desk unzips his pants and takes his pants off and he tells Anna this is the phallus and then Anna says and this is the punchline of the dog she said oh so the phallus is just like the penis but smaller so yeah so this is like a kind of a horrible joke but it really shows us what Floyd was aiming for when he was talking about the phallus Freud was talking about the penis right an actual part of the body and what Freud was saying that the penis is the biological marker for the psychological difference between men and women ok so we have to differentiate these two things it's not a biological marker of D let's say biological difference between men and women Freud was taking at one point one step further and was saying it is all about the psychology of sexuality and what Freud was actually saying that the phallus plays a really crucial role in what is called the castration complex which is a very big deal in the child's development and also in what for defined as the Oedipus complex what we'll get back to soon but let's do a brief introduction of that so Freud was saying like the Oedipus and you you enter to you enter the Oedipus and let's say the drama of the Oedipus has a lot to do with the phallus and it's different from boys and girls a castration is different for boys and girls let's say for boys the castration complex or constriction anxiety has to do with them exiting the Oedipus complex ok they get into the Oedipus they sort of notice that mom mommy or their sister doesn't have one they get pretty anxious of why will somebody take it from me and at the point where the castration complex is resolved the boys they get out of the Olympus complex intact hopefully okay so for boys it's about concluding vehicles for girls it starts the Oedipus because because get into ghettos after they already have lost that thing let's say mommy took it okay mommy took it from the get-go and the Oedipus starts and the whole idea is to sort of find to compensate so both sides as a compensation but then there is a different kind of compensation this is very very briefly Freud and the phallus in this whole drama so we see the phallus has a very very important role in the organization of children's sexuality from a very very early age a lot of questions about that in that sense Freud has said the very famous quote Anatomy is destiny there is something about the biological essence of sexuality which portrays or defines the psychological destiny of men and women so that's Freud and for Lacan which we're gonna mostly discuss today and not only is destiny if we take into consideration that the phallus is a signifier so Anatomy is destiny if the phallus is a signifier that's the bottom line here now there's a very very famous quote from the article the signification of the phallus where this is a paraphrase like Lacan says the phallus is a signifier explicitly and he also says that it's not a regular signifier but it's a unique signifier a signifier designating meaning effects as a whole that is a quote now laQuan also says in in direct relation to that that the only way to understand Freud's idea of the unconscious is by thinking about signifiers right so this very crucial this very crucial moment of anatomical destiny is turned into linguistics into the field of linguistics and we have to know something very crucial about that before we progress into into the Oedipus and understanding the role of the phallus in miracles so just generally speaking about signifiers let's think about language let's think about how language works and we'll sort of divide it into three stages let's say in the in our understanding of language so if any of you have read who caused the order of things he discusses that specifically there that at a certain point in history and we can relate that to religion words signifiers were considered to have a direct relationship to things not as a representative of things even just directly embodying things now I'm I usually relate that to the to the Jewish religion which you know the first creation of the universe according to the Jewish religion was a sentence was a saying it was God saying let there be light so the weight of words for the Jewish religion let's say has a metaphysical dimension a word is a manifestation and in in Jewish religion there are several ways to read the Bible let's say and if you progress and the this ladder you finally get to a level where words are actually things even letters so when we read the universe we can find the same everything that we see around us manifesting language not a representative but a real presentation a direct presentation so that would be one way to look at language as directly presenting what exists language and existence sort of are equivalent now a second a second a second way to look at it which is more familiar to us is what I would call maybe naive naive empiricism in this sense the empiricists would say words are not direct presentations of an object there's a relationship between a word and an object a relationship of representation so I have a word in my mind or a concept or a signifier and that signifier has sort of points out to the outer world and says yeah this is what I mean so a tree would actually mean a tree so it actually points to a tree alright so there was a relationship between concepts word signifies and objects but it's a relationship of representation now the final field I want to present today and this is the field that Lacombe was really working hard on in the field that's called semiotics and that's that's a form of link linguistic linguistics which sort of started showing its face in the last century and major figures in this in this field would be Peirce Charles pierce woman Jakob Shaun and Athena this also which all of these Lacan has specifically associated himself with now according to semiotics the first thing that we need to remember is that there is no relationship between concepts words and things there is no relationship there is no covalence there there isn't even a a a relationship of Reapers datian between these two according to semiotics both the word and the thing are psychological elements there in my mom in our minds okay so you see how we're stepping back from metaphysics we're stepping back from the existence of things we're now in the field of languages as what creates reality right and accordingly there is no link between a word and an object and what we do have is a link between what this so called a sound image and what we could say is meaning or or let's say concept here okay so a sound image would be just a let's say a chunk of phonemes or sounds and this would have a relationship to concepts there's a famous drawing signified and signifier and sort of like there's a relationship there the idea is that signifiers and signal the signifier and the signified they have let's say arbitrary relationship the fact that I use the word mutton and in English it means the right the meat of helping hear of a sheep right but in French it's the meat of a shepherd if I'm not mistaken it also means a sheep so this same sound image yeah does not have a necessary relationship with the concepts or the meaning that is manifest when we use it it's arbitrary and it changes right there is a weak link between the two now something very interesting about this assume is the fact they claim that meaning in general is not a signifier we end a signified let's say not like let's say the word cat and and the concept cat meaning is engendered by relationships between signifiers and more than that it's a differential relationship between signifiers so it's not it's not that I have this concept cat or this word cat and then there's this concept cat in my mind or something like that it is many many signifiers let's say fur let's say clean or annoying etc etc which interact in some sense and eventually create meaning so through the different differential relationship between signifiers we have meaning for us so if this is a signifier and the signified now we need to understand that the phallus is a signifier right now that's very important to understand because if we think that the phallus is signified then we need to look for it somewhere right it would have a meaning but then Lacan said it is a signifier but no not only just a regular signifier but an empty signifier so this means it's a signifier with no signified so how is this possible and this is a bit strange right when we think about the father's at such such a deliberated concept everybody's talking about it let's say in psychoanalysis at least and like I was saying that's an empty signifier right so how do how do we understand the signifier that has no meaning but on the other other hand Lacan explicitly says it begs designates meaning effects in general so it has no meaning but it sort of says you know if we simplify it says there is meaning going on here somewhere right so it's not a specific meaning it's not cat let's say it is among these things among the field of signifier meaning happens now an interesting example to to sort of wrap our minds around this is to think about the chain of signifiers they think about this chain like we're thinking about the signifiers like there is a first signifier then some more signifiers etc etc that's the chain of signifiers and when they interact we we sort of have meaning right when when different signifiers interact they create meaning to create the signified right now the question is what happens with with the first signifier so when we have a thousand signifiers we can create many many signified there are many meanings but what happens when we only have the first any ideas just off the top of your head like how would the first signifier behave what would be its meaning yeah so the only actually excellent answer like terrific and so the only thing that the first signifier can signify is its relationship to the rest of the chain right so there's no meaning that can be engendered other than the fact that through this relationship through this initial relationship to the chain of signifiers meaning is constituted we can start speaking or the world can start to manifest because you know the world if our conscious reality is signified yeah this means hello reality like like hello world right so that's how it happens according to this this way we look at signifiers again it's important to remember that a lot of concepts in in the laconian teaching are much more intricate than we think they are for instance the first signifier that has a completely different signifier and the laconian scheme iets go s1 and it's different than the phallus we won't say it's the phallus right but we do need to think of the phallus as an empty signifier not in the sense that it doesn't exist it exists as a signifier but it is in it's empty because the only thing that it can designate is here we go that's the rest of the chain yeah right so that's it that's a terrific question again because you're taking us to the field of math and Lacan is doing that exactly because this question is a so is it zero and a great question to ask ourselves is where do what does counting start right do we start counting by zero that we start with one do we start with two three is already too much right but when this actual counting starts I don't think there's a definite answer here it's true right yeah well if we have time we'll even connect that to what Lacan calls actuation to feminine and masculine desire right it's sort of the answer to this question it gets different answers when we look at it from a feminine or masculine perspectives according to psychoanalysis and we're talking about sexual is something different but let's just talk about set theory if we talk about a certain version of set theory how do we count how do we count according to set theory there's a thing that's called an empty set right and an empty set can be counted or not so an empty set is empty and when I write it like this I don't even count it I don't count it as one empty set but if I include it in a set then I count it as one so this is number one when I count an empty set for the first time when I include an empty set in an in a set right this is sort of a transition so where where does counting start from including the empty set in a set or from the empty set itself how do I come to I count the set with the empty set and another empty set that would be two right so this guy which I don't know like in our in our reading group somebody's remarked that it it really resembles this letter fee which represent this the fallacy in that cone this guy this empty guy this guy that if we don't count it if we don't count it in the series actually it's completely empty yeah so this guy is very important it appears in all the numbers when I count from 1 to million it will always appear there but it will not appear as a set it will appear right here as the beginning let's say as the first signify which is always there so the phallus is always there that's that's obvious right well it's always there in our construction of reality and that's that's that's the big deal about about the phallus according to to Lacan that it is the first signifier it is like the signal it's a signifier that if we have the chain of signifiers and let's say the signified which is always sliding beneath it it's because because the relationship between the signifier and the signified are not constant they're not rooted in nature you know like like some people would believe that a word is it's given by God it's necessarily related to the objects in the world it's not an accident that a tree is called a tree yeah there are a lot of games in Hebrew you can play with words and and the numbers they they're they're worth and you can add them up there's some interesting games you can do with that but here in in semiotics would say no there is no concrete relationship between the signifying the signified and the phallus is that nail that's sort of like it nails the signified of the signified it makes sure that we won't go crazy you know that we won't lose the meaning of the world so it's very important all right we'll come back to the phallus as a nail in a second okay cuz I think it's a it's an interesting it's an interesting metaphor now in order to understand the phallus in Lacombe really diverts the discussion in the article of the signification of the phallus to this to this sort of conceptualization we need to sort of think of the first moments of language which is the same as saying the first moments of existence and in in this in this and this domain we're talking about what Lacan designates in the words me need demand and desire which is something we've always also done some work in our in our group so let's think about it it's sort of a story it's a it's a metaphorical story that we're gonna tell right now about the first moments of a baby in the world a human baby not a fish baby or a cow baby because it's completely different from them when a baby is born and let's say any human born into this world has what we can define as instinctual needs or needs these are needs which are crucial for the survival of the organism right for instance food right sleep I don't know well we'll get to love in a second right I would agree in some sense but let's keep that and be more organismic level that's the level of the body but it's sort of a mythical body you know because when we talk about the body the body has arms legs it's high it's short these are already signifiers you see this is these are already signifiers which color the body when I talk about the body in this sense I'm sort of mythically talking about the body is this some of excitations or whatever that is I can't really wrap my mind around it without resorting to language right but you sort of like this primordial mass of what scientists call cells which is also also language as well so it's something even previous that's very mythical it's it's I don't know nobody knows so there's this body and it has needs let's say and a baby unfortunately is born in the world when it's not ready to specify someone needs it's kind of a silly silly like a pack of meat baby doesn't do a lot if a baby's hungry if somebody won't feed the baby that's not gonna really help her out it's gonna die right so the only way that a baby can pacify its needs is by making an appeal to the caretaker right how does a baby appeal to the caretaker it screams cries right or another in another sense it uses language so a cry would already be a signifier right it signifies something right so we can say that we add here another dimension so if this is the dimension of need this is where language comes in and takes the need and sort of tells us something about the need to the caretaker yeah Lacan calls this a demand so a demand is an articulated need or is an attempt to articulate a need it's when language sort of interferes in the very very nice and terrific way that neh let's say nature just works language interferes it's crucial without this interference there will not be any life yeah but when it interferes something gets a little screwed up but anyways the baby uses a demand in order to say something about this need so it cries and it means I'm hungry okay or it cries again it means I don't know I won't change I need a change of a diaper etc etc so again I'm talking about this point where I need intersects with the demand where demand articulates a needs that has to be satisfied but what la Lacan argues is that when a baby cries it doesn't only cry in order to pacify a need so there's something more than this in a demand and this has to do with the presence and absence of the caretaker right so like you said demand is not only demand to pacify in need it's also a demand for love now love would be here this this would be the place where we would define as that demand for love because it has nothing to do with need it's not a biological bodily let's say Mead it's something that happens the moment that language enters into our domain when language enters it tells us something about the need but it also expresses something else you can see that babies sometimes cry and they don't really need food they just need their daddy or mommy to come in to do right and that would sort of make them stop crying because they've expressed the demand for love and not the man to satisfy and eat okay we're here I'm repeating these concepts but they just represent the same thing that we're drawing here okay so on one side there is where a demand is more than a need and on the other side there's where need is more than a demand any ideas when a need is more what does this mean we delivered it that some to some extent you know in a group something in my need for let's say nourishment is not completely captured by language right something from this very instinctual need gains no designation in language language is unable to deal with it right there's some part of it there's something about this very internal thing when I try to express it I lose it simple a simple example you ask me Who am I you know I tell you okay I'm Leon that's not doesn't really grab every grasp everything which is a mean let's say at least according to my fantasies right so I'm saying oh I'm this guy that's making a lecture right here right now but still that's not my essence let's say my substance let's say I can keep on talking but it will never be it right there's something that's always missed out language is not perfect that's something that's really hard to comprehend we feel that language will will create order in the world some language we can explain anything and I mean also scientific language also physics let's say but language in its essence has a blind spot there's a very interesting mathematician named good which theorized that and math said every formal system every coherent former system always has a blind spot and it's it's it's a fact of language also here something from the dimension of need is not grasped by language I am left with something that my cry does not express now this is a very interesting metaphysical figure right because that's everything we can describe everything we can say something about is here in language right and you ask me okay what is not in language what is that thing that was never in language I can't really tell you anything that I will say will miss out that's the whole idea right it's exactly the point where language misses out inherently right so for it has an interesting solution to that or just a notion about that this part this part of a need is what is primally repressed okay this is this is a very interesting concept there is a repression you probably heard about repression it's it's a it's a make that Freud has specifically attributed to neuroses it's a way it's a way where I can live in a world which is bearable without me it constantly having to deal with unbearable things might when very simplistically we could say when an idea or and an effect which corresponds to this idea sort of doesn't really fit with my ego like with what would be pleasurable to me I repress it it goes to the unconscious it stays there right that's repression primal repression is something else primal repression is a constitutive mechanism repression is something that happens always all the time but primal repression starts the story it's the first negation now there's a an interesting way to look at it and in order to sort of grasp it we need to differentiate between two concepts one is a lack and the other is a loss a loss is let's say I had this I had this marker and I lost it so a loss necessarily entails the existence of an object which precedes its disappearance or negation let's say if we call it very simplistically so that would be a loss an object was there and now it's gone we can say repression is sort of like this kind of a loss yeah we lose something from consciousness but primal repression has nothing to do with loss it has to do with luck lack is let's say avoid which we can assume was always there there was no object before it's a lack that was perpetually lacking forever okay primal repression is the first in statement of lack so it is a lack it is known that something was there because again I we we cannot express what was here there's no way that this gained existence in psychic reality the psychic reality has to go through language existence reality you know we're talking about semiotics here the things the objects let's say they're not there in the world per se that they're the signified which is engendered by a play of signifiers so it's all it's all happening here so this thing so what Freud says that we have to necessarily assume that this happened yeah net we have to necessarily assume that something in the realm of need was not captured by language right and we necessarily assume that it was never there in the first in the first in the first place from the perspective of language so the only thing we can assume is that here there is a lock for it says it's a primal repression this seems this is sort of like an active mechanism right and we can say this is the first action or act that the subject takes according to psychoanalysis I'll give an example and I'll go back to Freud because because this is a good question for Lacan gives the example of the robber which comes to a person with a gun in and he says your money or your life and this is a choice let's say you can choose your money or your life but if we look at it closer we see that it's not really a choice between two things it's not that I can choose either money or life because if I choose money I use money and life so it's sort of like a very strange logical disjunction because usually a disjunction means either A or B or the two of them etc but this is this stunt disjunction that says oh your money or your life you can only choose life but when you choose life it is necessarily in danger in gendered with a lock now when we think about this money it is cannot be thought as something that we had at some point and we lost the moment where life comes into existence is engendered it is engendered with a loss we can call it money what we can always also call it the primarily repressed we can also call it the primal lost object so this would be a primary repressed sum of excitation like like we said like this this body is like a sum of excitation some of it some of it never got into language and the first moment was sort of like negated and all we have in language is sort of a like a Lac that's all we have there yeah now Freud Willett relates primary question to the division between the conscious and the unconscious if we go back to Freud because he says if we pression functions by pushing an idea to the unconscious we have to necessarily assume that such a division is created at some point he says we cannot just assume that there is a division and then repression functions we have to create this division primary oppression is what creates this division according to Freud yeah but we digress a bit but just to clarify this idea um now in order to sort of get this like lost object here what was primarily repressed because this thing sort of haunts us okay in a second I'll demonstrate we can look at it as like what what Buddha says about desire and we're getting to desire in a second Buddha says that it doesn't matter what you do if you desire something you can either get it and then desire will sort of grow for another thing or you can desire something and never get it second option is suffering right you desire and you never get what you want or what you desire the first option is also suffering because you kept perpetually desire forever forever never truly ending this sort of progression we can say that the primary repressed object is exactly that thing which never stops bothering us right there's never a way to fill that lack because there was never money in the first place there was nothing there in the first place so we can ever get it doesn't matter what how much we try and we never get that first thing okay any question until now okay right life or happiness then wouldn't be robbed right robbed of your happiness yeah it's true it's quite confusing yeah so life or happiness you saying maybe a check interesting yeah yeah [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the baby moving his body according to [Music] [Music] this [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he wants to [Music] [Music] okay yeah I think I get I think I got what you're saying and you're right this this is a story and obviously it's much more intricate than that so let's let's let's clarify some things yeah when we think about language and when I'm saying language at all people think about words or concepts like even the concept of I don't know milk or the concept of love let's say these are already these are sort of linguistic elements but when I'm talking about language in this sense I'm not talking specifically about words it can be anything well it could be anything which has a signified right which anything which signifies something so when I say that when when Lacan says that the baby cries it's true the cry is sort of like a demonstration right but even in the womb before even being born and even before even starting to let's say suck the milk like babies do in the womb the baby is already exposed to language right languages whatever the the mother speaks or what it hears from the outside or the way that these internal stimulations in his body its body his or her body interacts and at this moment there is already an appeal to language now when I when we say language in this sense we don't mean languages like the actual cry for the mother I'm I'm crying I want milk but like you said these movements there's already an articulation of the body there's a way to say okay I I this this movement interacts with this sensation there's already a an act of lip of representation right being done in in very let's say on a very low level right without the use of concepts now when we say that the baby appeals to the mother we also say that the baby appeals to the other so in essence we're saying that the these interaction these movements are never done in sort of like a secluded world where only the baby exists but they're done using let's say signs which are sort of adopted with the assumption that they mean something right Dada their assumption that they means something for someone yeah there's something that these movements actually make sense okay and and we'll be talking about a very very very low level right well afterwards this complexified afterwards the baby let's say it makes a cry and then the mothers tells him oh you're tired oh oh you want me to come right she sort of tells him what is this right she gives him words or descriptions to sort of say what is this part which is more than the neat what is this part in your let's say your interaction with the world or these feelings that you relate if we'll be climbing in for a second or you relate to D to the bad mother to the bad press or the good press these are very like these are pre oedipal like sort of concept so the mother tells us okay so this means that that's a higher level of acquisition of language right but when we talk about this we talk about the very very very first moments of subjectivity in the world this this can happen in the womb right so already like an assumption that something means that these these minut let's say ways that the baby controls the environment or its body means something for someone right that that is the assumption when we use signs we necessarily assume that they mean something for someone [Music] interesting yeah yeah something is uncomfortable let's carry on with that and we'll do something is uncomfortable that is the point so let's say there's a and we're getting to this in one second like in one second when we get to do like lakhan's interpretation of the Oedipus but let's say there's a mythical state this state where the baby is one there's no division all the needs are necessarily pacified immediately like in let's say this very weird state in the womb which is totally hypothetical because even in the womb there's we need the baby experiences discomfort right but let's say there is a mythical state proceeding primal repression proceeding the appeal to the other proceeding the use of language where everything just functions right this is like heaven I don't know Nirvana but at the first moment that happens already in the womb that the baby feels a certain discomfort in excitation which does not fall into place this has to mean something this is already a division this is already me and something alien if in the first moments it's only me at this moment there is me and the other right something is there which excites me and doesn't really sit with this let's say mythical complete and whole image of myself warlike state right in this form first moment is already a split right okay okay so we'll we'll deliver that later yeah yes well definitely we would say that the demand for love is unconditional because there's no way to actually pacify it but the baby learns from its history what is that and we see that we demand different things from the people that we love and we can say that at this point in the in the baby's life he sort of learns some things about this what is what is this love that I seek right so yeah he gains the mother says oh so you want me to cuddle you may be right absolutely absolutely yeah right right right this is this is like the place and language which we sort of preserve for whatever whatever belong to mother and I wanted more than this dudes needs that she pacified for me right this is the place we preserve in language for that but guys again if we stay on the level of the demand for love we get to a very pathological form of love right people that demand the law the love of their partners really demand it give it to me and how can we actually give that what is this love that we seek we seek that place in the other which is capable of loving or desiring so we desire that we demand that we demand that place in you that gives love how can we pacify that maybe we can send flowers to our loved one this is my love but that's not enough right the man for love is not pacified with that so you move in together this is my love but that's not a lot so we'd say like a relationship that's sort of based on a demand for love and doesn't go to the level of fantasy which I'll draw right here in a second is kind of a hard a hard relationship it's it's hard we all went through it right some of us even got out of it or or progressed or how Hegel says we use that al-habib sublimation right so I'm gonna draw another another circle right here which is some of you might be surprised so this circle we would I would define as the place of desire right now it desires is in out hey bloom in two senses according to lagoon in from both sides both from the side of the man and from both from the side of meat so a desire what we would also situate here the object of desire is engendered with these two qualities of these two let's say subtracted aspects of our encounter with language from the side of the Amanar and for love desire would gain its unconditional character also there is nothing specific which can make the desire sort of stop forever right the let's say and it's only a hypothetical it's it's a hypothetical saying and you hear that sometimes when you read GJ kids he says the worst thing that can happen to a person is to find the object of its desire of his or her desire right it's a catastrophe it's impossible the only let's say subject that has the object of design in their pocket would be a psychotic according to Lacombe so when jiseok says that he says yeah it's it's destructive because it means you're psychotic yeah which sometimes is a problem yeah but for neurotics the object of desire is never in our pockets and we constantly complain oh my god I just can't find rest doesn't matter how much I try doesn't matter how many women or men I date it doesn't stop right so desire gain gains this unconditional character of the demand for love so there's nothing specific which desire can point to and on the other hand it gains from whatever is primarily repressed this lost object which constantly haunts us because it was forever lost perpetually lost lacking like we said it gains it's let's say incessant character the fact that what I would hear it's in such insatiable right there is no way to make it stop so desire gains these characteristics and manifests right here as the third circle in our diagram and in this sense we have three lakhs represented in this diagram right we have the lost object whatever was primarily repressed that's a lack right we have the lack in language whatever language cannot articulate in the dimension of need right that's a lack right here and then we have a third lack which is the place or the site of the object of desire it is sort of the demarcation of the object of desire that's how we use desire we lean on it there's a place at least there is a place to desire to desire safely even right so let's say a better relationship would sort of lean towards here we always demand love but then maybe we should work together on on a shared fantasy right that that would be a good a good relationship I think now back to the phallus because we've been blabbering about just a second back back to the phallus and then and then we'll and then we'll have some more question the phallus is exactly the thing that nails these three together okay so it is let's say it is that aspect in language right which is right here it nails them all together it's like a nail I'd even venture to sort of like draw this right here you know why not you know the phallus is the nail that nails all these three together and I'll give you like a metaphor that are sort of like thought about so I felt the phallus would be a non-existing nail which fixes an empty picture frame to a wall that is not there okay so we're talking about relaxed right so in this sense reality our psychic reality existence is an empty picture frame which is fixed with a non-existing male to a wall that is not their imaginative sort of like yeah the phallus is that nail it sticks out that's a very thing very important thing to remember it sticks out thus holding the structure together okay okay so let's do a small break for a question we'll continue yes right I would I would say and we'll see this right now the phallus is there as Lac in all these senses this one this one is a yeah yeah right but then the phallus is not nothing well it has to be something or or actually it would be a bit better to say it is not nothing yeah [Music] we have a simple answer for that it's a signifier it's a unique signifier here that would be where language sort of misses out on so this this would not be where signifiers sort of exists right the question is how to draw these circles it's a terrific question and this is the what what Lacan refers to as the viremia knot yeah I sort of used it here Lacan doesn't use it here yeah I sort of used it here sort of like to play with your imagination it's it's an interesting use but I mean in a second will you draw it again but I mean what stands here it's a great question and sometimes it's the object a object patita ah which which can be translated as the object cause of desire the object of desire so it's it's a very interesting question eventually in seminar 23 we don't have a nail holding them in we have this sort of what Lacan defines as a symptom symptom it's not a symptom it's an inventive it's it's terrifically fascinating and I think we'll talk we briefly talked about it in the last five minutes of this lecture okay just by implication even okay yeah let's do a couple of quick questions yes well that's a great question keep it keep it for keep it for later okay it's a it's a very common question I've heard it a million times okay what is will answer it don't worry but keep it for later okay yeah or yeah somebody yeah now right mm-hmm the nail the picture frame no didn't L is the phallus picture frame would be a psychic reality which is a frame for the object of desire right that is only where the object of desire can appear think about the picture think about going to a museum like think about looking at the picture something is there in the frame it's it is framed and it again gets its place and then we have the wall right the wall would mean yeah right we would say the wall is sort of the limit our limitations the whatever the picture cannot cannot say anything about that so let's say or at least in classical art that's where contemporary art goes beyond but let's say the picture tells us something about the picture beyond this the wall it's sort of like it is where it is hanged there's nowhere else to hang it right that's sort of its limits the capacity of of our reality there's something in reality which is you know it doesn't matter how much we fantasize or use language in inventive ways this is a limit there's a limit death is a limit right so the wall would be death maybe yeah maybe continue yeah okay so now we ventured to seminar 4 which is called the object relations which I think it's one of the only seminars that doesn't have like a full English translation even other underground one but it has some sex translated if you're interested and in this seminar Lacan takes whatever he wrote in the signification of the phallus and if I'm not mistaken that was a year before and in the seminar he sort of progresses it to his interpretation of the Oedipus complex so what we have this progression between need demand and desire is incorporated to Freud's Oedipus complex so let's do it what Lacan does is it takes the ternary domain of the Oedipus complex and you remember who the stars are there right it's obviously the mother the child and the father and he adds the phallus as a fourth term so now it's not three it's four and even more interestingly its manifests in all of these domains as a representative or a signifier of lack here it would be a real lack here it would be an imaginary and a symbolic now for those of you are not familiar with these terms these are terms which are widely used by I come from a certain stage we call them the registers right these are the three registers real symbolic and imaginary but I won't go deeply into their the this theory but let's say according to Lacan there are three so it Oedipus complex is a story so let's start telling this story okay the story begins with what we described earlier as the mythical three oedipal stage right what we described as a a stage where there's no division in the world and in the in existence there's only one Ness it's it's kind of hard to grasp because any word has already entails a division like any thought any concept already entails the division but let's hypothesize about this like amazing stage where there's no division the child is immediately satisfied always anything that sort of surges up in terms of bodily excitement is immediately pacified and directly pacified so there's no need to actually address even the universe everything just just works out there is we say there's a constant presence of the mother and again I'm saying mother and I'm not implying that that all caretakers are mother but again in the oedipal terms we would say there are two actors playing as caretakers and Freud cause the mother and father of course we can talk about a father and father in gender terms etc etc but let's let's keep it in classical Freudian terms so there's a constant presence and connection to the mother so this this state the mythical hyper in state of the oneness of unity is purely hypothetical we just have to assume that this state existed before because there is a state of division after so we sort of assume logically that if there is a mechanism or a procedure which creates a division this is hello let there be light we assume that before that was sort of like no division okay it's just a logical assumption now the first moment the Oedipus complex begins let's say is initiated is the moment where the real phallus shows its face face I don't know if it has a face but if it shows it so this is the beginning of the Oedipus so before that we're talking about create a pole sort of like you know it's kind of hard to even deliberate that but we sort of assume that state and then the mythical state is okay No right this unity is not united anymore something is cut out something is carved out dividing the child in the mother so we can say that if the let's say unit unit state of unity is like a perfect sphere perfect circle everything is there right in this stage we have sort of something which is cut out and divides the child from the mother again where do we start start counting in one or two this is this is the same same idea so we start with the child and the mother and this is actually a state where the mother just doesn't answer all the needs of the child immediately yeah it already happens in the womb like there's some things which happen in the body which are just not very pleasant and they're not pacified immediately so in that stage there's already a division so already a distancing right we can say that this is the moment where the child is hungry and the mother doesn't come again we're using this example which is kind of problematic but maybe it's it will help us to to grasp it the child is hungry the mother is not there so what is introduced here is the absence of the mother right if in the mythical stage there is a constant presence of the mother in this stage absence is introduced the absence of the mother on the dimension of need now when the child has needs and it's not pacified in the sense it is frustrated this is what Lacan defines as primordial frustration promoter frustration relates to D let's say even the body of the mother let's say the mother has this body which is there sometimes and sometimes not and it marks the body of the mother with a lack now we define this slack as a real lack it's a lack which is engendered in the real now think about crime or repression for a second we talked about that just ten minutes ago we said it is a lack which was never included in language it was never there in the first place that would be a description of this kind of a lack right it's not a lack that we can sort of fill out in the sense that we aren't you it is a lack that was constituted as lack so here we can mark the phallus of our market as a fee and I'm sort of like relating it to the mother so on this stage the lack is attributed to the mother itself something is lacking there in the body of the mother now if we read Freud we go back to Freud this has to do with droids argument that the phallus initially lacks on the body of the mother now I'm not talking implicitly I'm just talking explicitly the mother just doesn't have the penis according to Freud and that's very very anxiety-provoking for the child for the let's say male child at least in that sense and what Lacan is saying is that when we're talking about the real lack of the phallus we can relate it to Freud's theory in that in that sense but again here and you remember our discussion about need and this is the first luck the lack in this on the side of need what is primarily repressed okay so we have this real phallus first appearance after this stage I'm gonna just write in so the imaginary phallus is introduced and this is the phallus introduced as an imaginary luck meaning in the sense of the image let's say something which is sort of like a like a Gestalt functions yeah it is not sentence it is not a a word it is sort of something which is just grasped and comprehended as an image at this stage the baby attempts to make sense of this lack why is mother lacking why is she not here what does she have that is so interesting for her that she is not with me what is that thing again this is the question what is the phallus right so the the child is asking what is lacking on the side of mother and what does mother desire beyond the child so these are the questions leds which represent the appearance of the imaginary phallus and what the baby attempts to do is sort of to fill this lack fill it in but on this level it is filled up with what Lacan defines as a sequence of images okay you have to think about like a certain stage where we don't really can't really explain what's going on but there are there's sort of like these image images which are internalized and related to the lack of the side of the father now these images have to do on the one side with different objects that the baby associates with the mother's desire beyond him right whatever the baby sort of associates to the mother's desire what she wants beyond him in the world that's on once on the other side it is all also related to anxiety provoking images which have to do with the father's prohibition again we're talking about the Oedipus complex and according to the Freudian terminology this lack is engendered initially by the father's prohibition something the father says no it creates a cut right something in the relationship between the child and the mother cannot exist and Freud talks about the prohibition of incest right that is the thing that father just does not approve of in the sense the imaginary phallus materializes in the psyche or in psychic reality by a sequence of images which on the one side represents the desirable objects which draw a mother away from the baby and on the other side represents his let's say his aggressive identification or aggressive tendency towards the father as the one that created this gap in the first place right so in this sense this stage is the very classical audible at oedipal stage right where the child wants the mother but hates the father wants to kill him this is classical Oedipus complex right this is where the child is situated in this in this stage and the general question is how can I be this for her in the sense of replacing father or in the sense of just finding whatever she wants beyond me and being that I want to be her object I want to be the object of the mothers of my mother's desire so this would be the quest or the imaginary quests at this sense at this point sorry it is not equally true but yes there a relation the question the question is what is it and and how can I be it is asked but then the Oedipus complex gets a different resolution so we'll talk about that a bit in the last couple of minutes okay but definitely it's not there's no it's not equal there is a difference there is a sexual difference and it's also manifests here but due to lack of time we won't really delve into that but right here I'm sort of relating the phallus to the child why because the child constantly wants to be in its place to be in its place as what the mother desire or whatever the father is giving her so he wants to be your object he wants to be the phallus so this would be what we called an imaginary identification with the phallus the child concocts this series of images these sequence of images and he tries to take its place that is me yeah I'm a good boy that's why you should love me right but unfortunately there is an impasse there is an impasse because doesn't matter how much the child tries to narcissistically identify with the image of the phallus sort of make it itself it can never really feel fill in this real gap and this is in several senses first because we said that this gap is on fulfill about that's just a logical sense second we say that in the Oedipus incest is prohibited there is no way to go beyond that right and if we want to look at it on the even more real sense the child's let's say real phallus let's say does still that not solve this problem of this initial initiative gap so the child is sort of like okay again this is only a story no child is sort of like okay so I want mom and I want that but then my imaginary identification with both these objects which I sort of related them doesn't work no it's not like that but we're talking about a structure so at this point in impasse arises imaginary identification does not provide a substitute for whatever was initially lost and a child turns into the final let's say define a representation of the Oedipus in what we would define as the symbolic phallus you can notice that at this stage of lakhan's teaching the symbology is very important it's sort of like this is the way to solve the Oedipus we go there so if you can't beat them join them right that's what goes on on this stage and the child says ok no I will not identify with the phallus as an object by the way people a lot a lot of people are still do it today they just don't give up they're still looking to identify with the image of the phallus of having it or being it right really really looking hard to do that but let's say the baby that's that's sort of going to overcome the Oedipus complex right he says no I'm not gonna identify with the phallus as an object I will identify with the father as the bearer of the phallus you see the difference I'll draw it here so I'm adding this third circle again and now I'm putting the phallus on the side of the father so I'm not identifying with this object that I think that I imagine is situated there and the place of the real Lac I identify with the position from which this phallus is situated ok in the sense of asking ourselves questions [Music] Who am I or like Who am I I will say this would be my imaginary identification my imaginary idea of myself I am this person I like doing that and I enjoy these kind of people but then when we look at symbolic identification we're not looking at what I think I am we're sort of asking from where do I imagine I am observed when I say that I am like that right so it's not the objects it's from where the object is engendered and as we said the only place for the object of desire to be engendered is in language is in fantasy is an articulated fantasy now the position of the father is the bear of the phallus or the for the phallus bearing father right is it's an authoritative position what we accept is an authority think about this in oedipal terms we accept the authority of the prohibition of the father this is in Freudian and oedipal terms in laconia terms we're talking about the authority of the law in a couple of senses in the same sense as we can we can sort of think about the other some of them like like language we're talking about the authority of language in the mediation of our enjoyment right that's one the other is in society and culture we sort of accept the way the world is compiled according to our social norms we accept the prohibition of incest that would be a good a good example because the prohibition of incest is not strictly a linguistic law right so the child accepts the authority of the father I thus get rid of this unbearable anxiety that had turned them to constantly try to identify with the image of the father's and gains access to several things which are very they're great first of all he gains access to symbolic reality to reality which is mediated through language he gains access to mediated enjoyment it's not this excitation unbearable excitation it is sort of framed yeah we can gain satisfaction through language right and he gains access to de dimension of desire which lies beyond Amanda needs beyond the demand for love this is what Lacan relates to the name of the Father if you've heard of this this is sort of what is accepted or inscribed in psychic reality in order to gain access to these dimensions here in the same drawing the same diagram that we've seen just a second ago again this is the Boromir not of this sorry this would be the symbolic the real and the imaginary this time we're defining it according to the dimension of lack the phallus represents so mother would be that where the real lack is situated the child will try to put himself in the place of the imaginary luck and the father would introduce the lack in the symbolic the place of the object of desire right okay very briefly we'll go over what is called situation and what it has to do with the phallus because if you read the signification of the phallus you would see that Lacan defines the the function of the fallacies as the nothing as tying something together he says it sits on the side of this symptom and this is what we have here sort of like how the symptom manifests and on the other side is situation the way we come into the world as a masculine or feminine subjects now to your question why call it phallus why call it feminine why call it masculine right Lacan is a Freudian right so he's relying on unfried in teaching he says to his students at some point you might call yourself laconian z-- but I am afraid in right so when the context takes these models and concepts from Freud the Oedipus complex he has a choice he can sort of like change the terminology and like draw this just say real imaginary and symbolic and say hey this is my theory right but then it would be kind of like um you know just stealing something from another person and sort of saying oh this is a new theory by itself right but what Lacan is doing is relying on the Freudian models and keeping whatever Freud has provided in these models but giving them a further interpretation so again the phallus is not the penis here it is a signifier and it means a variety of things right it's sort of like relies on Freud and opens it up in the same sense situation it talks about sexual difference but not talks about sexual difference in the sense of sex meaning I don't know whatever the biological meaning of that is or in the sense of ghent gender how I define myself as a man woman not even in the sense of object preference so you could like boys you could like girls you could like nor boys nor girls it doesn't matter we're still talking about - about a sexual difference between two types of subjects and are called feminine masculine because it's all based on what we're talking about right now what the oedipal complex and the way the boy or the girl is situated there what the question which question is asked in that story right so the question of situation I said is not sex not gender not object preference it is how desire is structured how this subjective desire is is structured and just briefly very briefly briefly stating it is structured in two ways it could be and both of them are a question regarding the phallus the first would be a question of having what does daddy have that he gives mommy and then I sort of miss out on something like what does he have that makes mommy give him what I want so much this is a question of having and I think like the best way to sort of like simplistically things think about these social psychological concept is going to the most obscene representations in Hollywood right or or or other realms but to think about men for instance and their quest for power or for beautiful cars great suits etc it's sort of that doing that by doing that they have something they sort of say I have something they sort of say I have a the phallus that's one way to do it and we could say that's we can say that the way dad's did it right it's adopting the authority of the law in order to find a substitute so for boys the substitute for this lack of the phallus would be having something well it doesn't have to be cause but it can be having something so we would say that if you're a man or a woman or whatever way you articulate yourself in sense of gender if your desire is a desire that functions in this direction and direction of having something if whatever makes you wake up in the morning is the question how can I have this thing which I originally lack and sort of try to fill in then we would say you're you you would be categorized or articulated as a masculine subject I don't know which one of you is masculine I cannot know by looking at you yeah it's a question of desire it sort of directs the analysis we would we would sort of directly analysis in different ways for men and women in this sense now the question for the feminine subject would be not a question of having but a question of being which is a more metaphysical question I think and the question is what is mommy or what mommy is that makes daddy give her what was originally taken for me if we're talking about the girl originally castrated from the get-go so what does mom what is mommy what is mom and this is a different question and again if if we go to Hollywood again and we we go to what what is this magical woman that is the phallus and you know it's not not necessarily a woman with a lot of money or big cars or a lot of power just a woman in the red dress or a woman not wearing even anything it's sort of like it's it's a mystery yeah it's not something that you can have it is something that is inherently interior to you which makes you into it right the body would be a different question so again seminar 20 is a great place to look for answers for that but we can say that masculine desire has one way to function right having something in relation to somebody that has the object so we need to have something in order to get the object from somebody that is that is internalizes it feminine desire according to Lacan has to two dimensions but it's not limited to masculine desire it can be masculine fed feminine subject can enjoy can desire in a masculine way of course they have access to it like all humans that's why Freud says that the only Libby dough is masculine libido right everybody has access to that but according to laocoön the woman is not all limited by that there is another form of desire which we could just briefly say is is let's say much harder to gain it's utterly inventive right it's an utterly inventive form of desire meaning it is utterly singular so we can say very simplistically that a feminine subject would have two trajectories the ready-made one like men which would be quickly like being a man powerful having cars having suits etc or on the other side can be being a mother right that would be like ready-made solutions right or the very singular and utterly inventive one yeah in seminar 23 Lacan gives the example of James Joyce which he claims uses language in an utterly inventive way so it doesn't use language like regular writers do he invents a new way of enjoyment so Lacan would say that feminine subjects are open to that as well notice that Joyce was probably a man yeah but still we say that his enjoyment his desire was functioning in this way so this was a general brief brief sweep through several perspectives on the phallus that we did today we sort of jump between several seminars I would just conclude if we go back to the joke about Freud that we started with so when we there's another joke or just a comical conception of the phallus that the phallus is an organ that can be raised by the mere by new thought right so that makes him very special but on the other hand one has no real control over it so there is sort of like a contradiction in this in this figure itself now st. Augustus he claims that this is punishment for the let's say the audacity of man and his attempt to master the world and I think what we've sort of underlined today that we can relax a little bit about that and just understand that this contradiction on this whole thing which is the phallus is Meir grammar according to Allah , okay and that's what we've tried to represent today and thank you I think we're done for today and you can stay for questions thanks [Applause]

Channel: Stillpoint Spaces Berlin

Views: 16,796

Rating: 4.9530334 out of 5

Keywords: Jacques Lacan, Subjectivity, Oedipus complex, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy

Id: 1cKaLM403Yg

Length: 93min 13sec (5593 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/smokybakeon]

Leon Brenner begins with a discussion on semiotics, segues briefly onto set theory, after which he goes on to explain the psychosexual development of the child and the Oedipal triangle.

Very clear and concise. Excellent lecture. I'm only an hour in, but this is really good shit. The YouTube algorithm has been sending some mad gems my way.