THE ESCAPE FROM PSYCHOANALYSIS

 

 Central to the discussion in Cultural Collapse is the argument that the escape from psychoanalysis is also the escape from the prohibition on desire instigated by the father (1). The essential helplessness of the human infant, combined with the precocity of its sexuality, makes for a deeply humiliating experience as formative of the first months of post-natal existence (2). The substance of psychoanalytic theory is not just the discovery and description of the unconscious, but also those instinctual vicissitudes which make conflict, ambivalence, and unhappiness the bedrock of human existence. And paradoxically, it is just this impossibility of fulfilling desire that is essential for human activity. Desire requires a lack or an obstacle in order to be created. Complete fulfilment of desire is death. The gulf between desire and satisfaction is the transitional space, described by Winnicott, as the location of cultural experience. That space contains a promise. It contains a hope for the future emanating from the ego ideal, because it contains an interdict from the father. He is the barrier that will keep us forever alienated from total pleasure, and will place us within reality and the law.

What is the nature of this promise, or this hope? It implies the sublimation of desire at the behest of the father, in accordance with the reality principle. We must leave the exciting, terrifying, incestuous fusion with the mother of infancy, and situate ourselves within the world of the father. We must leave the privileged dyadic relationship, which is a perfect unity and a perfect satisfaction, and allow the entry of a third term - namely the Symbolic dimension, which is an acceptance of Otherness, of differentiation, of separation, which constitutes the birth of desire.

  1. 'Father' here is not necessarily the actual father, but what Lacan refers to as 'the paternal metaphor', or 'the name of the father', or 'the no of the father' - Le nom du pere/non du pere. This is the 'symbolic father' that institutes the cutting of the symbiotic relationship with the mother. It is this function that sets limits, sets boundaries, and establishes subjectivity.
  2. The memory traces of these formative humiliations and the affect associated with them, remain mostly unconscious. They can however return and form the basis of hysterical symptoms, of masochistic suffering, of extreme anxiety states and panic attacks, of psychosomatic symptoms, and indeed psychosis

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