⌬ Lecture №16 | Lacan, Part I: Imaginary, Symbolic, & Semblants

01/23/22 • 46 min

In this podcast lecture, I will discuss some (but definitely not all) of the concepts that make up the much broader field of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

I've struggled to prepare for these lectures. I've struggled a lot. I've spent many years working to understand Lacan's ideas and his ideas' effects on psychoanalysis.

I encountered Lacan when I was a doctoral student. He was a massive challenge, most people found him too difficult, but I stuck with it. And I've been at it for years now. For me, Lacan is not new and novel. Thinking as a Lacanian has become natural and normal for me.

So, what I'm going to try to do in this podcast lecture is remember that for most of you, Lacan is someone you don't know anything or don't know much about. You're in that new and novel phase that I was in back when I first encountered Lacan as a graduate student.

I hope that I'll be able to talk about these concepts in a way that will (1) get you more interested in them and (2) help you get started if you decide to explore this stuff more. It's going to be hard, but I'll try my best.

Let's get started.

Iterative work...

To start with, I want to draw your attention to some of the ways Lacan's work is similar to Freud's work.

One of the ways that Lacan and Freud are similar is that they both produced many content.
Both Freud and Lacan's ideas change over time; their work is iterative...
And they were both clinical theorists.
This is a fact --the fact that they were clinicians– is important because for both Freud and Lacan, the work they were doing in the clinic, the work they did with patients, with analysands, was the thing that drove the theoretical work they produced and refined over time.

Phases & Moments

Lacan's work can be divided into phases. One of the ways that many (not all) people who study Lacan break up his work is into an early stage that focuses on the imaginary, a middle stage that focuses on the symbolic, and a late period that is focused on the real, within those phases, there are moments.

During these phases, Lacan would publish papers, give talks, and conduct a seminar (which we can think of as a class or series of lectures). A specific paper, talk, or a series of lectures in his seminar, would be a moment within one of these more extensive phases.

The First Two Phases & The Big Ideas within Those Phases

The Imaginary Period: Work from the early phase focuses on how human beings, particularly infants who don't yet talk, form an unconscious and an ego and how they start to "make sense" of what is happening inside and outside of their bodies.

One of the ways that I think about this period is that it is interested in forming a coherent identity.

The Symbolic Period: In this work's middle or symbolic phase, Lacan focuses on how language (as a symbolic system) and communication/miscommunication affect the human subject. In this phase, Lacan shows how people use language, or a system of signification, to produce what we could call thoughts or complex ways of understanding or "making sense" of their experiences. This phase would interest people who want to understand how thinking about, talking about, or writing about what we have experienced helps us to "process" those experiences. Or, to put it differently, how talking can help to do things like

De-escalate situations
Attempt to work through complex trauma
Or, if you're someone who is into neuroscience stuff, how talking about what has happened to you effects the way the brain is "weird." (i.e., the impact of speech on the body)

I tend to think of this period of Lacan's thought as helping to explain how we learn, internalize, and then make use of different systems like

Language (how to express one's self and understand how others express themselves)
Laws/rules (written laws/rules... "No Trespassing!")
Social/behavioral norms (i.e., unwritten rules of society, culture, or family)

This is the phase where people have a pretty well-formed identity, and now they want to make sure that identity behaves in the correct way.

Anyone really interested in getting all A's is someone with a very symbolic concern.

Both the Imaginary & Symbolic Periods: Both of these periods tend to focus on how people create meaning, or how they make sense of things that happen inside of our bodies and outside of our bodies, and how these experiences impact or effect our bodies.

Sometimes we can see people combining imaginary identity stuff with symbolic stuff to create what Lacanians often call a semblant (sometimes a semblance). Semblants are powerful cr...

In this podcast lecture, I will discuss some (but definitely not all) of the concepts that make up the much broader field of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

I've struggled to prepare for these lectures. I've struggled a lot. I've spent many years working to understand Lacan's ideas and his ideas' effects on psychoanalysis.

Let's get started.

Iterative work...

To start with, I want to draw your attention to some of the ways Lacan's work is similar to Freud's work.

One of the ways that Lacan and Freud are similar is that they both produced many content.
Both Freud and Lacan's ideas change over time; their work is iterative...
And they were both clinical theorists.
This is a fact --the fact that they were clinicians– is important because for both Freud and Lacan, the work they were doing in the clinic, the work they did with patients, with analysands, was the thing that drove the theoretical work they produced and refined over time.

Phases & Moments

The First Two Phases & The Big Ideas within Those Phases

One of the ways that I think about this period is that it is interested in forming a coherent identity.

De-escalate situations
Attempt to work through complex trauma
Or, if you're someone who is into neuroscience stuff, how talking about what has happened to you effects the way the brain is "weird." (i.e., the impact of speech on the body)

I tend to think of this period of Lacan's thought as helping to explain how we learn, internalize, and then make use of different systems like

Language (how to express one's self and understand how others express themselves)
Laws/rules (written laws/rules... "No Trespassing!")
Social/behavioral norms (i.e., unwritten rules of society, culture, or family)

This is the phase where people have a pretty well-formed identity, and now they want to make sure that identity behaves in the correct way.

Anyone really interested in getting all A's is someone with a very symbolic concern.

Sometimes we can see people combining imaginary identity stuff with symbolic stuff to create what Lacanians often call a semblant (sometimes a semblance). Semblants are powerful cr...

Previous Episode

⌬ Lecture №14 | Object Relations: Winnicott [OPTIONAL!]

Hi,

Welcome to the fourth in a series of podcast lectures, which will focus on the work of Donald Winnicott. This lecture follows lectures on the work of Melanie Klein and Ronald Fairbairn, and I'll be referring back to concepts I talked about in those prior lectures. So, while it is not essential to have listened to those prior lectures, I think this lecture will make more sense (the maximal amount os sense) if you have.

Having said that: I want to make something clear right away. I really like Winnicott. He is my favorite in-Lacanian psychoanalyst.

Here are a few of the many reasons I think Winnicott, and his work, is so cool.

He is funny: The footnote about a revolver in a paper on technique.
The story about "inner cows"
He says wonderfully beautiful poetic things.
"For my patients, who have paid to teach me."
"It is a joy to be hidden and a disaster not to be found."
He was not afraid to be an emotional man.
He was sad for what I think are the right reasons.
He would speak in ways that were understandable.

Hopefully, this has piqued your interest in the work of this wonderful thinker. Let's get started...

Winnicott was a pediatrician

Winnicott was a pediatrician before he became a psychoanalyst. So he knew a lot about how parents (in particular mothers and infants interacted). Some things Winnicott noticed:

When a baby is born it is 100% dependent on the mother to survive.
Even though the mother and infant are separate bodies, for a time they are still linked by a powerful mental and emotional bond that is not like any other bond.
He believed that if this bond was supported by others (fathers, other family members, society, etc.) the result would be the development of a healthy person.
He also believed that this bond could not last, that at a certain point the mother and baby would need to separate more. (The baby needed to stop depending on the mother's capacities and start the process of developing its own capacities --such as soothing, eating, talking, etc.) Winnicott knew this would be difficult for both mother and baby, and, again believed the mother and baby needed to be supported throughout this separation process.

In many ways, Winnicott (and Klein who supervised Winnicott) brought the figure of the mother into psychoanalysis, which had been very preoccupied with the figure of the father. (See the Oedipus complex.)

Next we will do an overview and summary a few of Winnicott's concepts of:

The infant's fantasy of omnipotence experienced as if it were real
The good-enough mother (i.e., the good-enough parent, or good-enough clinician, teacher, friend, etc.))

Fantasy of omnipotence

By making her breast (or bottle) available at the right moment, the mother (or mother substitute) enables the infant to believe that she (or he) has ‘created their own world out of their own need’. The baby then experiences an ‘illusion’:

The infant needed to experience this fantasy as real so that it could feel safe, secure, and not be flooded with adrenalin and cortisol as it developed. However, after a certain point this fantasy needed to be left behind.

Failure & the good-enough mother

Winnicott discusses what he calls environmental failure at various stages of the child’s (emotional) development. At the earliest stage of infancy, when the child is in a state of ‘absolute dependence’ on the mother, such failure can have very serious effects on later development.Winnicott recognised that ‘the ordinary devoted mother’ was not perfect and would, therefore, inevitably make mistakes in the care of her infant. What she would then do, however, was to make repairs and readjustments in her interaction with the infant.

The not good-enough mother (or social worker) can't tolerate negative spontaneous behaviors

He describes the situation of ‘not good-enough mothering’ as one in which the mother (consciously or unconsciously) is unable to respond adequately to her infant’s spontaneous behaviour (true self), but tends to impose her own wishes and desires (e.g. for an ‘ideal’ child). This may lead the infant to an adaptation on the basis of ‘compliance’ (false self) and later, in adulthood, to the loss of a sense of personal autonomy and integrity.

Moving away from parent/child relationships for a moment – This still happens a lot in many clinical relationships! The effect is the patient creates a "character" they play to please the clinician. (The same way a child plays the part of the sort of child they think their parent wants them to be.)

True self & False self

However, a degree of false self co-exists with the true self in everybody. Like all defences, a sense of falseness canbe protective of the true self, but it may also become pathologicall...