The Lacanian Subject by Bruce Fink - Literature review Example

The Lacanian by Bruce Fink Bruce Fink, a of psychology has retraced the ivity of Jacques-Marie-Émile Lacan, one of the leading French psychoanalysts of the 1960’s and 1970’s in his book “The Lacanian Subject”: Between Language and Jouissance. Contrary to the idea of most of the post-structuralists of the time who saw Lacan’s theory as a ‘death of the subject’, Fink asserted otherwise. Subjectivity was the core concept of Lacanian psychoanalysis, according to the author. Fink examined the principal ideas that formulated Lacan’s theory of subjectivity. From a thorough reading of the book, we find that the author emphasized on the chief notions which governed the central theme of Lacan’s subjectivity. The author has put forward a comprehensive analysis of the unconscious, language, alienation and separation, jouissance, the other’s desire, distinction between the sexes and the ethics of psychoanalysis as explored by Lacan. One of the rare Americans to have taken training in the Lacans school in Paris, Fink presented the theory of Lacanian subjectivity extremely well in his book “The Lacanian Subject.” Fink re-introduced the subject of Lacan’s subjectivity for the readers. He gradually moves into the details of how Lacan forms the idea of subject and finally resulting in psychosis. Here the author has dealt with Lacan’s clinical theories (Fink, 79). The author begins Lacan’s theory of subjectivity with an elaborative analysis of the structure of the language and its relation to the other. This he maintains was the core chief idea of Lacan’s theory of subjectivity. Lacan who was referred to as a structuralist in the 1970’s and 1980’s did not deal with the problematic of subjectivity. But in later years, the concept of subjectivity became the main idea of his works and seminars. The author affirms that Lacan’s idea of the subject was based on the relation of one signifier with another signifier. He begins with the significance of the concept of ‘otherness’ which is completely alienated from the unspecified object. The author delves into what Lacan described as the slip of the tongue to describe the phenomenon of otherness and its alienation from language. Here the author talks of a patient who utters schnob instead of job. This example is given to show that language or discourse is not related to a single or particular aspect only. A slip of the tongue signifies that, more than two discourses can be used at the same time by the speaker. Here the author talks of two types of discourses, one that is intentional and the other that is unintentional. The intentional discourse refers to the words, the speaker wanted to say, whereas the unintentional discourse would be the disjointed word. Two different kinds of discourses refer to two different kinds of talk. Here the author speaks of the ego talk and the other kind of talk. Ego talk is the words we express consciously. Juxtaposed with the ego talk, Lacan puts forward the importance of the other kind of talk. Lacan’s theory of psychoanalysis stems from this other kind of talk. By this Lacan meant, as Fink maintains that the unintentional words that are uttered incoherently flow from the other place or agency. This other place is completely different from the ego. Here we find Lacan echoing the idea of unconscious as presented by Freud. The other place or agency or state had been unequivocally described by Freud as the unconscious (Sigmund Freud, "The Structure of the Unconscious", 1961). Lacan described this unconscious as the other type of discourse. This other type of discourse is alien to the conscious mind or the ego, which every human being is aware of. The other type of discourse which in Lacan’s words is the ‘unconscious’, is foreign to the ego. A child is born into a discourse. His parents speak about the as a new member of the family. The words they utter form that other linguistic discourse which Lacan spoke of in great detail. This collection of words and expressions remain in the mould the unconscious of the child. (Fink, 3-11) As Fink noted, both Lacan and Freud were united in the fact that they both spoke of representatives which were in other words were signifiers in linguistics. The author further noted that the unconscious was organized and integrated just like language to Lacan. To substantiate his statement, the French psychoanalyst maintained that the elements that make up the unconscious share the same relationship just as the elements that represent the conscious linguistic discourse. The author has explained in details later in the book, Lacan’s idea of otherness as against language, demand, desire and jouissance. The author has substantiated much on the ‘creative function of the word as upheld by Lacan. Fink adds that Lacan made a distinction between the symbolic and the real significance of the word. To this idea further, Lacan mentioned that, letters which add to the sophistication of language are actually disruptive in nature. The letter in a word destroys the real that existed before the language. Lacan also mentioned that existence was the result of language. Existence does not become a human life unless it is symbolized or expressed in words. There is nothing called the real as it comes before language. Lacan refers to this real by a separate term, which he called ex-sists. The symbolic is found to act upon the real, reducing it and wiping it out completely. Lacan here spoke of trauma, which was directly related to the real and the symbolic. A real exists before the symbolic which constitutes of elements that form the second real. The words we mumble, a product of the unconscious, eradicate the differences between the symbolic and the real. In the second part of his book, the author essays the idea of Lacan on subjectivity. As Lacan proclaimed in seminar XXIII, that the subject is only assumed. It became an indispensable idea for Lacan to formulate his theory of psychoanalysis in later years. The idea often echoes Freud’s notion of the second stage of fantasy. This stage according to Freud is never real. It was never a part of the conscious mind. It results from analytic thinking. In Lacan’s terms, the subject was not an individual or the conscious being. The author strictly maintains that the Lacanian Subject was also not the subject of the statement. Apparently the grammatical subject of a statement with the use of ‘I’ will refer to the sender or the subject of his message, which in other words was integrally linked to the ego. The ego dominates the subject of the sentence. The Lacanian subject, asserted the author “appeared nowhere in what is said”. (Fink, 38). Fink has described the Freudian Subject to draw a connection with the Lacanian subject. As we express incoherent or mumbled words, a kind of foreign influence sets in. Freud has shown that these interferences were actually connected with the unconscious. This influence is spoken of as an agency or accorded the idea of a being. This unintentional causation is given the character of being and was the Freudian subject. Freud has never talked about the category of subjectivity. The author in his analysis of the Lacanian subject and in trying to draw a parallel between Freud and Lacan, has uniquely devised the concept of Freudian subject. The characteristic of subjectivity to the ‘unconscious’ of Freud as a disruption to the linguistic discourse is quite different from Lacan’s subject, asserts the author. The Lacanian subject is a product of two movements. (Homer, 74). The first process is that of alienation and the second is that of separation. Lacan, however, never points out at the specific juncture, when the subject comes into being. There is no such specific point, when the subject appears. The characteristic of permanence is never attributed to the Lacanian subject as there is no particular point when the subject appears as a complete whole. The subject arrives through a fleeting process of ‘alienation and separation’. The concept of alienation and separation was reiterated by Lacan as the subject and the other’s desire. According to Lacan’s concept of alienation, the child surrenders to the ‘other’. As a result, the child becomes the subject of language. But it depends upon the child to choose to submit to language. The child then expresses his wants through the medium of language. The next step is separation which in other words is the ‘other’s desire. The child, as Lacan mentioned came to this world out of the other’s desire, such as pleasure, revenge or power of his parents. Their wants work on the child and is the main attribute for making the child the subject of the language. In this case, we see, as the author mentions that the subject is the outcome of the other’s desire. The author further affirmed echoing Lacan, that the subject can never appear in a perfect situation, where thought and being overlapped. This was contrary to the idea of Descartes, who believed that thinking and being coincided. This was the ‘Cartesian subject, which Lacan dismissed as the false being. To Lacan, the subject remained detached from the being. Lacan categorically stated as the author put forward is that, there can be no subjectification without metaphors; the subject is formed by the metaphor. The effect of the metaphor is the effect of the subject. Metaphor is therefore, directly linked with subjective analysis. The Lacanian Subject by Bruce Fink makes for a good read for a student of psychology and psychoanalysis. The author has in exceptional terms shows how Lacan moves away from structuralism and develops the subject as the other of linguistic discourse, its relation with the symbolic order and how it emerges from the Other’s desire. Works Cited 1. Homer, Sean. “Jacques Lacan”. Routledge, 2005. 2. Fink, Bruce. “The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance.” Princeton University Press, 1996. 3. Fink, Bruce. “A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique.” Harvard University Press, 1999. 4. Sigmund Freud, "The Structure of the Unconscious". Copyright renewed 1961 by W. J. H. Sprott; reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Co., Inc. Retrieved from http://members.tripod.com/anupamm/freudst.html on December 17, 2008. . 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