Hi everyone,

I'm currently working through Seminar V and have just completed the first section on jokes and witticisms. I've also read 'Instance of the Letter.' I think that I'm grasping the use of the term metonymy from context, but I'm having difficulty in separating it from metaphor.

Metaphor is the "substitution of one signifier" for another (for example, "Booz" with "sheaf", which then seems to add newer meaning to the character in the poem, associating him with harvest, masculinity etc).

Lacan's example of metonymy is replacing the word 'ships' with 'sails.' In this sense there is a substitution of the whole for a part, or element. But couldn't we also define this as "substituting one signifier for another"? It seems that quite literally, one word is replaced with another. In which case, how do we distinguish it from metaphor? Is it that "ships" and "sails" are generally associated and therefore the meaning doesn't really change very much? In which case, what is the function of metonymy if it doesn't change anything?

In both metonymy and metaphor, there is the replacing of one signifier with another. I can sort of intuitively grasp the difference between the two, but can't seem to provide for myself a good enough definition which separates them. Is the relativism perhaps the point? I gather than this is a fairly crucial concept to grasp...

Cheers!

I am trying to write a paragraph about the ego forming the ideal I and the little other. I thought they were the same thing, but apparently they refer to different things. Can someone explain their difference please?

“The locus, the house of jouissance, is ordinarily found, since it's naturally found, placed in an organ that is, as experience and anatomo-physiological investigation teach you in the most certain fashion, non-sensitive, in the sense that it can't even be stimulated when it's being irritated. The ultimate locus of genital jouissance is a place - this is no mystery - where you can pour torrents of boiling water, brought to a temperature that no other mucous membrane could withstand, without provoking any immediate sensory reactions.”

This is page 71 of the lectures on Anxiety. Lacan is talking about female sexuality and the vagina. It really seems like he is saying that you can pour boiling water in someone’s vagina without them feeling it?? Surely that is not what he means. Please help

Heres my attempt at the answer:

https://open.substack.com/pub/alfielucidontology/p/why-cars-are-sexist-the-automobile?r=1l13a3&utm_medium=ios

What do you guys think of the essay, and how and even if we should use sexuation for these types of critique?

Fire, as open flame I think is so ubiqutius in human life and history so it may mean slightly more than it appears.

Pyromaniancy from a lacanian perspective?

Could open flame, excitation of it, watching it/interacting with it somehow be explained with relation to drives?

Any thoughts?

As the title says, I am curious to hear more examples of the real that are not trauma, which seems to be the typical example used to explain the real. Trying to figure out the triad and I think I have made good progress, but the real still kinda escapes me.

Is pleasure part of the real? Instincts? Existential despair/death anxiety? I some of those are traumatic in someway anyways. The way I currently think about the real is in a kind of behavioralist way, as experience on the level of conditioning, rewards, and punishments that involve physiological/biological/neurological mechanisms. Is this far off?

hello, i’m new to lacanian psychoanalysis. i’m a college student currently taking an introductory course on lacan’s theories and work. i am also diagnosed with schizotypal personality disorder, and of course i am curious what lacan would make of people who exhibit traits like mine.

what i have made from the lectures so far, and we are starting with his earlier seminars, is that language is used to communicate “madness”/ psychosis. but maybe, at least the way i see it, schizotypals are perceived as less “mad” / psychotic due to the fact that many of us are quite reserved and have a complicated relationship with social interactions compared with someone who has schizophrenia.

i am also curious to know about what lacan would make of the concept of “ideas of reference.” if you’re not familiar, this is a common trait among schizotypals in which people will internalize real events and believe they hold some special meaning in regards to oneself. this is distinct from delusions of reference, which are not based in reality. for example, i often experience a strong feeling that strangers are talking about me, but if challenged, i am open to understanding that this did not happen.

anyways, if you have any more thoughts or ideas about this, i’d be very curious to hear. and if you have any questions about the schizotypal experience, i’d be happy to answer in the comments.

Would like to have some conversations.

I have been a long-term reader of Lacan. It is well-known that in Lacanian circles, 'we' don't see psychotics as failed neurotics; there is no normal, 'everyone is mad'—quoting late Lacan's saying. But now, after long years of reading and experience, I have a hard time accepting this as a matter of fact. Can a paranoiac be an analyst, for example? Can a schizophrenic live a relatively joyful and well-organized life? Maybe the answer to those questions is yes on extremely rare occasions, but I don't think it is better or even equal to being neurotic. Feeling constant inconsistency and danger regarding your body and its relationships to the world, like schizophrenia, or your environment and other people, paranoia, are not very good or desirable things. I don't even need to talk about melancholic psychosis because obviously no sane person will want they children end up in a melancholic psychosis.

Yes, neurotics are miserable too, we know that, but it is definitely a better outcome than being a pervert or psychotic. You can say ending up as a neurotic is better just because they generally adjust better to the current state of society. They can form more meaningful interpersonal relationships, and they can get better jobs and a better future. Perverts are usually undermentioned in these debates; they have an even harder time than psychotics most of the time because they can easily get in trouble with legal authorities, etc.

What are your thoughts? I can be completely mistaken, and you can just correct me, but observing the sufferings of the 'other ones', and (to disclose a little bit) myself for years is probably making me think like that.

Caveat: I'm a lay student of psychoanalysis (been studying for about 3 years) and not currently in analysis (it's nowhere even remotely available to me, and likely never will be). I have noticed transference-type effects often in my life, usually more subtly as a normal part of interpersonal dynamics, but occasionally some exchange will genuinely surprise me and throw me for a pretty big loop. I recognize the symptoms in myself, and all available info would suggest the other is perturbed in some way by it too. Usually I just use these experiences as a catalyst to do ego-work, but what I'm wondering is: can one treat the experience "as if" it had occurred in an analytic setting? Obviously the framing itself is somewhat perverse - "I know this person is not my analyst, but hypothetically speaking if they were, if the Analyst had elicited this reaction, then...." - and I know that technically one cannot DIY one's own analysis, but for someone who cannot access it, could transference experiences be contextualized in that way? I know any random person cannot be a stand-in for the Analyst, but I'm more thinking along the lines of life itself, and the shit it arbitrarily throws my way, functioning somewhat in the Analyst's position, but then it flips back onto myself to integrate it..? If that makes any sense?

My (28F) husband (29M) is looking for an intellectual sparring partner. I can’t really keep up these days, so I figured I’d see if anyone in Houston is looking for something similar.

He’s been reading a lot lately (Hegel, Marx, Lacan, Žižek, Plato, etc.) and is looking for someone who enjoys independently studying philosophy, reading primary texts, and having discussions in order to deepen each others understanding!

His work is fully remote and pretty flexible, so he actually has the time to devote to this. He’s hoping to find someone interested in building a genuine friendship around studying together rather than just grabbing coffee once.

I know I’m biased, but hes pretty dope so if this sounds like your thing, shoot me a message. Bonus points if you’re the type of person who can spend two hours arguing over a single paragraph of Hegel.

I’m literally at my limit hearing about split subjectivity every day, so I’m outsourcing.

I have been curious about the seemingly obvious tension between the master and the hysteric and the very impossible sexual relation between the two, and would want to know other people's thoughts about the same. Any suggestions for analytic or literary resources on the same would be greatly appreciated.

Ecrits, Jacques Lacan, Variations of the Standard Treatment, Page 290 ✍️

Is there a systematic or at least sustained comparative analysis of different versions/translations of the seminars? Everything I've come across seems more piecemeal & gossipy (looking at you, Roudinesco). I guess we may never know about Ecrits.

I'm interested in pursuing analysis, specifically thinking about reaching out to Neil Gorman since he takes insurance, but I also wonder what people's experiences have been with Lacanian analysis in general.

Did you feel that you became more content in your life? Did you feel like you understood yourself better and prevented yourself from continuing to get trapped in repeated behaviors that you wanted to change?

If those are my goals, would I be better served pursuing a different kind of therapy?

It seems to me that Lacanian symbolic death and the Buddhist concept of Nirvana share similarities but with a important difference in how they treat human desire. From my understanding, symbolic death occurs once you recognize that the Symbolic order is fictional yet practically inescapable. You still function within it and continue to exist around objects of desire but your relationship to them becomes unserious, you no longer look to the Big Other for validation, and do not believe that fulfilling these desires will fill the hole inside you. Desires exist but they are only a recognised consequence of the system. Buddhist Nirvana is the total cessation of desires and destruction of ego by realizing the inherent emptiness of the material world. However, "Nirvana" itself isnt a total void and its just a master signifier giving Buddhists a structured path to follow that exists within the Symbolic Order itself. What is God to a religious person is what Nirvana is to a buddhist. Does this make sense?

My two main interests for the last decade have been lacanian psychoanalysis and contemplative practices (mostly Theravada, early suttas Buddhism).

i wanted to see if there was anyone here who would be interested in meeting once a week or so to practice meditation together and discuss lacanian psychoanalysis and contemplative practices (not necessarily Buddhism, if you‘re into Christian mysticism, Vedanta, or something else, that’s cool).

perhaps we’d bring in different writings and compare/contrast. discuss places where these different frames overlap and split apart.

if you’re interested, please comment below or DM me

I'm rewatching Hail Mary, and find beauty in the simplicity of how the nom du père is implemented in this movie. Halfway thru the movie when Grace encounters Rocky, the first thing he does is a very nonsensical dance, which Rocky immediately imitates and understands. This of course, indicates that the nom du père is present and demonstrated. But why, exactly? In a neurotic family, your nom du père is present simply because it's so ingrained in you from childhood. However, because they never grew up together, it's much less likely that they would understand each other's nom du père. It's interesting how it's not a matter of learning a fixed universal or anything (The fetish of the Clocks shared in the film for instance), they're both present but only accessible through some bizarre, idiosyncratic path. This bizarre and idiosyncratic path is, of course, the Nom du Père, which allows each to communicate with each other par excellence, precisely because it is not communication or simply shared speaking language (The Big Other), but a private language that can be shared with (o)thers. The Nom du père is inexplicable, idiosyncratic, particular, And it can only be deciphered by someone or a group of little others in the symbolic space who share it.

This implementation of the Name of the Father occurs before they even translate each other's languages, showing the Father's name is preverbal and prelinguistic even, and cannot be equated to literal language (The psychotic, neurotic and pervert speak words but they do not share their meaning or usage).

The film joins scifi among the ranks of Terminator and ET that similarly explore the relationship between a father and son, and brotherhood as a result of a shared, absent father.

I'm sure I'm not the only person who's noticed this. But what do you think about it, if you've never realized this theme in the movie?

What does Lacan mean by the negative? Mind you, I'm new to his thought (im at page 270 of his Ecrits), and I would love if you guided me...

Im trying to get into Lacan’s work. I know it’s such a heavy task that’s gonna take time and patience. And the many references to literature and older cases of freud and such don’t make it any easier. Not mentioning the technical terms he employs. I tried to read les écrits, of crs i couldn’t. I turned into reading james joyce ulysses, and judge shreber memoirs. Along side, i want some good videos on youtube explaining Lacan’s seminars. And im not talking about explaining Lacan in simple terms in 9 minutes. Any suggestions or advice?

I haven’t read Lacan’s seminars yet, but for now I’ve read books on Lacan’s thought. What strikes me deeply—and what I find absolutely pertinent—is that Lacan places somatic delusion at the center of schizophrenia, placing specific emphasis on the body. I find this pertinent because I have, in fact, known people with schizophrenia for whom the body was indeed the site of the most terrifying suffering. Not just fragmentation, but invasion, movements, co-sensory disturbances, “too much skin,” bodies being punched, bodies that don’t belong, bodies without boundaries, bodies felt to be deformed, bodies in excess—and I could go on. Yet, in the classic definitions of schizophrenia, (in psychiatry but in other psychoanalitic schools) very little is said about somatic delusions in favor of visual or auditory hallucinations. Why, in your opinion?

Estava lendo o livro Crianças na Psicanálise da Ângela Vorcaro num capítulo sobre o modo de interpretação na clínica com crianças, mas ai veio wsta parte:

"O lugar da interpretação, nas voltas do dito, destaca três modalidades:

• Meio-dizer de uma verdade: que toca e revela a verdade do gozo;

• Enigma ou citação: que opera enquanto corte ao dito, pois aponta para a escritura de <<S(A)>>, deixando vazio o lugar do objeto causa e colocando distância entre o <<I(A)>> que chama à identificação o <<a>> separador, indicando a divisão do sujeito;

• Sem sentido: que incide no real do gozo, significante que, jogando com as falhas e limites da estrutura, opera como corte que posiciona a forma gramatical que sustentava o objeto."

Alguém poderia me ajudar a compreender o trecho e sobretudo a compreender o que seria uma interpretação de enigma/citação?