What is Repression? Introduction to Lacan's Theory (Part I)

a man complains of a bad night's sleep and the feeling of being jolted awake shortly after drifting off he uses an odd term to describe this I was displaced he says hmm when asked what he associates to this word displaced he begins talking about his job he builds skyscrapers for a living and as part of this he has the factor in the movement of a building at high altitudes due to wind in his field he says this movement is referred to by the technical term displacement he talks a bit more this time about his early life and in particularly his family's migration as a result of a war in a foreign country he talks about the childhood experience of moving to another continent to begin a new life he talks about the recent migrant crisis the experience of refugees do you realize you're talking about displacement I asked in 1957 Lacan gave an interview to the French magazine lectures when we speak of repression Lacan said we imagine a pressure like a vague mysterious mass exerting all its weight against the door that we refuse to open but we said repression is inseparable from the return of the repressed something continues to function something continues to speak in the place where it was repressed people tend to think that lack on is hard hard to read hard to understand deliberately obscure will believe it skillfully evasive yet this interview and in particular these comments about repression show that's not always the case so let's look a little more at what Lacan had to say what is repression there's really three questions here because in psychoanalysis the problem of repression is really three problems one if something is repressed where is it repressed - this is the problem of locality what Freud called the topographical problem - why is it necessary to repress something in the first place this is a problem the psychodynamics what Freud called the dynamic problem and three if nothing is repressed how does it stay you've oppressed what investment is necessary to push it down pull it down or keep it down and in what quantities this void called the [Music] repression is a time that gets bandied around a lot in Psychological syllables but sometimes we don't know what we're talking about the term was used way before Freud but when he picked it up he was very careful with it oh I started off by comparing it to political repression like state censorship but then he realized things are a bit more complicated if he wanted his theory of repressions maintain his sense he had to answer these three questions lakhan's interviewer in 1957 was a woman called Madeleine shops are still alive at the time of this video she'd read a bit of forage and mused a FOID has said something new it was that in psychic life we're all ill because we conceal we hide a part of oneself we repress this is where Lacan jumped in to disagreed repression isn't the forcing up of something unpleasant that was buried in the depths and said nor is it the pushing down of something we refuse to acknowledge it's the coming into place of a substitute something continues to speak in the place where it was repressed Boyd's idea was that repression leads the creation of the substitutive formation one thought or idea is substituted for another in the example we started with we can see the word displacement as a substitute that emerges in place of thoughts around migration we don't yet know why but we don't have to for now what matters is noticing this operational work and the way we notice it is by being attentive to the exact words that someone uses to describe their own experience it might seem odd to us to describe being jolted awake as being displaced when there were many other we might think better ways to describe it but we have to respect the fact that this word is what occurred to the man rather than any other what's interesting to the psychoanalytic ear is the fact that a word like displacement has more than one meaning for the man in our example now this doesn't mean that repression is some dark mysterious or malevolent force it's a very innocuous operation that hides in plain sight for its service substitutes are not the product of repression itself they're the product of the return of the repressed in other words it's not that we repress too much but that what is inevitably repressed will inevitably come back and when it does it will take the form of a substitute that is particularly well suited for that purpose precisely because it appears so innocuous repression is such a subtle operation because it works on to speech language words words like displacement rather than on instincts dries impulses or emotions in the interview Lacan makes this point very nicely when the subject were presses this does not mean that he refuses the game consciousness of something like an instinct like for example a sexual instinct success instead here oppresses the speech where it has the role of the signifier in simple terms a signifier can be a word or a part of a word but one which is unhinged from any particular meaning any fixed representational reference and which thereby refers only to other signifies in that structure rather than to a particular meaning or significant displacement is a good example it can refer to the movement of a building the migration of refugees or in our example the reason you didn't sleep well one night you see Lacan says it's not a vague dubious thing which is repressed it's not a sort of need or a tendency that could have been articulated and then can't be articulated because it's repressed it's a discourse it's already articulated already formulated in a language it's all there [Music] what we're left with as a result of oppression is a telltale sign that substitution has taken place for example in the use of an odd phrase like I was displaced to describe being jolted awake now Kant thinks that this is what as psychoanalysts we should listen substitutes might also take the form of symptoms they may be quieter or louder for example in obsession repression works very discretely via a substitute to by displacement over onto something very small or indifferent to this voices in other cases that substitute might be written on the body as well they don't always have to be as dramatic as the kind of hysterical convulsions and paralysis that Freud had witnessed in shaco's clinic in the late nineteenth century often the harbinger of the beginning of the end of a romantic relationship comes when one of the partners contracts a sudden cold or develops a mysterious food intolerance the passes just after the break-up these substitutes symptoms arise because they serve to keep the two people apart standing in for what cannot yet be said speaking where spoken words in listen as Freud budet symptoms like these have joined in the conversation Larkin goes on in psychoanalysis repression is not the repression of a thing it's a repression of a truth what happens then asks when we want to oppress a truth the whole history of tyranny is there to get the answer it's expressed elsewhere in another register in a syphon clandestine language the repressed truth will persist just transposed to another language in psychoanalysis the surface is not the superficial what's repressed is in a sense right there on the surface we just have to be able to see how the substitute is formed in our example the man was well aware of what displacement meant in his job and well aware of what it meant in relation to being the son of a refugee family he just didn't connect the two he didn't realize that in talking about displacement he was talking about displacement we see repression at work when we don't make these connections often the emotion gets split off from the idea the thought gets separated from the feeling we might be angry towards our boss but really we're angry at a partner or parent so the boss here is just the substitute feelings will always make themselves felt it's the link between ideas rather than the anger itself that gets repressed there's really no such thing as a repressed emotion as Freud says the repressed finds expression elsewhere though just like under oppressive regimes this might be who codes conventions a private meaning or inflection that's intended to be understood a certain way if I write a message in black ink is false in blue ink it's true the content is not repressed but how will a censor know what to redact if they'll and key it's not the message itself that's hidden or encrypted but the key to understanding it in the same way the message remains after service available for everyone to read within the form of a substitute this is why Lacan says that the repressed and the return of the request should be treated as the same thing it is as Lacan says expressed elsewhere in a ciphered clandestine language but who is the censor here not a government agency not state censorship we ourselves many psychological theories fall into this trap is called the homunculus problem the tendency to explain human actions in a way that implies a little man or woman inside our head telling us what to do censoring us critiquing us motivating us or whatever if we take ourselves or part of ourselves as censors that is if we believe we repress a truth about ourselves well good news we just have to liberate ourselves from this repression and then we'll be able to speak freely think clearly have more fulfilling States be less self-limiting and get back in touch with reality no says that Kong again and this is where things get interesting from in psychoanalysis as we've described here regression seems to apply that there's something outside themselves that we are spoken as much as we speak Lacan thought that if we're not aware that the words we use being more than we mean in using them the word displacement in our example and if this tells us something about the nature of repression in unconscious then we can no longer be sure who it is that speaking it speaks that man says truth has not fallen into the abyss when that con says that has been turned into unconscious here he is emphasizing the unconscious as radically other to our consciousness importantly this doesn't mean that we're limited or constrained in what we can say we can still talk about everything we want to talk about but we're not the marshal of our own words when they do what we stay may convey a meaning which is intimate to us which speaks about us and us person but of which we're totally unaware in this sense the repressed doesn't come from deep down inside us it comes home at Silas is a kind of external intimacy or ecstasy as Lacan would later call it this these entering of ourselves is why lack context is better to ask from where does it speak rather than who is speaking he gets this from Freud lakhan's lifelong claim is that he's just bringing out of voids texts the implication that was inherent to it since Freud the center of man is not where we thought it was one has to go on from there do you know Freud's formula there where it was I must be Lacan asks is interviewer Freud isn't talking about the it and ego back on suggests because if he were he would have said the it and the ego Lacan reads void the way Freud reads dreams symptoms of slips literally so avoid us talking about the it which speaks if you're psychologically minded you'll probably be wondering what kind of psychology this implies for human beings if you're philosophically minded you live already notice this has big implications for how we think of subjectivity and ontology this is what Freud really discovered not the caricatured idea that repression means we don't want to acknowledge something about ourselves and so we push it down into the depths of our psyche neither that we're the victims of societal repression that we just have to overcome in order to live more fulfilling lives for its discovery was much more radical it shows us the difficulty of thinking in terms of inside and outside surface the death repressed and the return of the oppressed when we think of human psychology how did quite get to this Merton hit subscribe and in the next video we'll explore the story of repression from Freud to that calm for more visit Lacan online.com [Music]

Channel: LacanOnline

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Keywords: psychoanalysis, lacan, lacanian psychoanalysis, repression, psychology, freud

Id: 8loM0ZeaMw8

Length: 15min 47sec (947 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019