The Fall of Fantasies - A Lacanian Reading of Lack

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
http://apa.sagepub.com The Fall of Fantasies: A Lacanian Reading of Lack

Mari Ruti J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2008; 56; 483 DOI: 10.1177/0003065108319687 The online version of this article can be found at: http://apa.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/56/2/483
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Mari Ruti
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THE FALL OF FANTASIES: A LACANIAN READING OF LACK

The purpose of this article is to explain to a non-Lacanian audience the broad philosophical foundations of Lacanian theory, particularly the relationship that Lacan draws between the human subjects ontological lack and his or her creative capacities. In an effort to explain Lacans distaste for psychoanalytic approaches aimed at strengthening the ego, the article outlines the manner in which Lacan connects ego-driven fantasies to the constriction of the subjects psychic world. Lacan suggests that narcissistic fantasies are misleadingly seductive because theyin occluding the internal rifts and antagonisms of the subjects beingalleviate his or her anxieties about the contingent basis of existence. However, the illusory sense of plenitude and self-presence that such fantasies provide prevents the subject from effectively discerning the truth of his or her desire, thereby holding him or her captive in socially conventional psychic paradigms. In consequence, it is only the fall of the subjects most cherished fantasies that empowers him or her to pursue a degree of subjective singularity. The article also considers the clinical implications of Lacans theory of lack, including the ways in which the analysts lack enhances the patients capacity to claim an increasingly autonomous and multidimensional mode of encountering the world.
The question of the sovereign good is one that man has asked himself since time immemorial, but the analyst knows that it is a question that is closed. Not only doesnt he have that sovereign good that is asked of him, but he also knows that there isnt any. JACQUES LACAN
t is well known that Jacques Lacan incurred the wrath of generations of ego psychologists when he asserted that they were hopelessly misguided in their efforts to enhance their patients well-being by healing their sentiments of inner lack and alienation. Lacan in fact insisted that psychoanalysts who endeavored to assuage the subjects lack by reinforcing
Assistant Professor of Critical Theory, English Department, University of Toronto. Submitted for publication June 11, 2007.
DOI: 10.1177/0003065108319687
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the egoby helping the subject feel more secure and flawlessly integrated had drastically misinterpreted the principal tenets of Freuds teachings. More specifically, Lacan suggested that every attempt to fill or cover over the subjects lack distances the subject further from the possibility of accurately reading his desire.1 Because Lacan understood the ego to be a defensive edifice that consistently resorts to misleading fantasy formations to shelter the subject from having to accept the realities of his psychic predicamentparticularly the idea that lack is a necessary foundation of identityhe believed that any concession to the egos logic would merely make the subject suffer more in the long run. Yielding to the demands of the ego, in other words, would only perpetuate the deepseated fantasies that make it difficult for the subject to come to terms with the uncanny idea that unfulfilled desire, and the resulting agitation, are immanent to human existence. The objective of psychoanalysis, for Lacan, was therefore not to overcome lack by strengthening the ego, but rather to work through, and gradually break down, the elaborate fantasies that keep the subject from effectively facing the challenges of his existential situation.2 The annoyance of Lacans adversaries was understandable. Not only did Lacan seem to attack the (intuitively quite reasonable) coviction that psychoanalysis is designed to make individuals feel better about their lives, but his basic messagethe idea that ultimately there is no cure for the subjects lacksounded unnecessarily callous, particularly to analysts who had been trained to mend injured egos and to prop up the subjects narcissistic sense of himself as a lovable entity. However, it is important to note that much of the tension between Lacan and his detractors stems from a fundamental misunderstanding regarding what he
1 To avoid the cumbersome repetition of he or she, I have chosen to alternate these pronouns by section, so that the first section of this essay uses he, the second she, the third he, etc. 2 I am aware that the term existential is not often used in Lacanian contexts. However, I have chosen to employ it in this essayalong with some other decidedly non-Lacanian terms, such as identity, psychic potentiality, and self-actualization because I believe they provide access to aspects of Lacanian theory that are rarely discussed. That is, even though Lacan himself seldom uses these terms, he is certainly interested in the concepts we usually associate with them. The specificity of Lacanian vocabulary should not obscure the fact that Lacan is frequently concerned with central questions about human existence that have preoccupied philosophers from the beginning of Western thought. At the same time, the humanistic tone of my paper should not be interpreted to represent an attempt to deny the generally antihumanist thrust of Lacanian theory.
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A LACANIAN READING OF LACK
means by lack. Rather than addressing lack as a consequence of specific childhood traumas, abusive personal histories, or unfair and oppressive social conditionsas many psychoanalytic schools doLacan is concerned with lack as the ontological underpinning of human existence. Like many phenomenological philosophers, Lacan is interested in what it means for human beings to face their radical negativity or nothingness, and to wrestle with the recognition that their lives are built on unstable ground. To express the matter in more rigorously theoretical terms, Lacan endeavors to understand the implications of the fact that human beings, by definition, fail to reconcile the concrete phenomenality of being with the abstract ideality of Being, with the aspiration to attain absolute existential fullness. It is precisely because Lacan is more interested in the psychic effects of ontological lack than he is in the tragic consequences of traumatic life histories that the suggestions that he offers to the subjects predicament tend to be incomprehensibleand may at times even seem irresponsibleto those who consider it the goal of psychoanalysis to work through forms of psychic wounding that ensue from hurtful familial or sociocultural conditions. One might say that instead of regarding psychoanalysis primarily as a therapeutic method, Lacan envisions it to be a profoundly philosophical undertaking that has the potential to revise the subjects perception of the basic orientation of his existence. By this I do not wish to suggest that Lacanian theory offers us advice on how to live our lives. Indeed, if anything, Lacan argues that there is no particular philosophy of existence that is capable of providing us the answers we are looking for. He also allows for the possibility that we may opt for injudicious or injurious life choices even after we have been properly analyzed. However, I think that Lacan would not necessarily disagree with the idea that psychoanalysis opens a space for the kind of self-reflexivity that enables us to begin to ask the right kinds of questions about what we deem important in the world, what kinds of persons we wish to become, and what the best way of going about our lives might be. For Lacan, such questions are often directed at unveiling the always peculiar workings of our desire. As I will illustrate below, the purpose of obliterating the subjects illusory convictions about his ontological security is to create an opening for the truth of his desirefor unconscious communications that break through the deceptive edifices of the ego. That is, if Lacan is so intent on tearing down the ego, it is because he believes that only by so doing is it possible to release desire from the tightly woven nexus of fantasy that depletes the subjects psychic life.
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And he believes that it is only on the ruins of the egos fantasmatic defenses that the subject can begin to rebuild his existence along lines that capture the momentum of his desire. Within this general framework, the purpose of my essay is to examine the relationship that Lacan establishes between the subjects inner lack and the creative potentialities of the psyche. More specifically, I would like to explain why Lacan regards fantasy formations as an impediment to the subjects ability to live to the fullest of his potential. In an attempt to stay accessibleand to honor the broadly philosophical ethos of this articleI will for the most part limit my comments to Lacans early work, and more particularly to a single aspect of his writingsnamely, his contention that narcissistic fantasies structure our sense of reality in limiting and lifedraining ways.3 On the one hand, such fantasies appease our anxiety about the contingent foundations of existence. On the otherand precisely to the extent that they replace the anxiety of uncertainty by a misleading sense of certaintythey curtail what we find existentially possible. Consequently, from a Lacanian viewpoint it is only the fall of our most treasured fantasiesparticularly of the idea that there is some sovereign good that is capable of shielding us from the terror of livingthat allows us to transition to a more imaginative and creatively engaged psychic economy. More specifically, the disbanding of fantasies enables us to better listen to the idiosyncratic particularity of our desire, and in so doing to begin to forge a singular identity apart from the social conventions that seek to determine the parameters of our being. In this way, it empowers us to renegotiate how we relate to the world and, therefore, indirectly, how the world responds to us; it allows us to rewrite our psychic destiny.
T H E G I F T O F C R E AT I V I T Y
One of Lacans greatest innovations was to connect the subjects constitutive negativity to languageto collective structures of signification and meaning productionin ways that provide a pioneering hypothesis of why and how lack comes to motivate the subjects behavior in the world. Lacan explains that the subjects sense of lack results from the processes of language acquisition that socialize the human infant into
3 I am currently writing a book, tentatively titled The Singularity of Being: Lacans Legacies, that addresses key components of Lacans later work, particularly his concepts of the ethical act, the sinthome, and traversing the fundamental fantasy. The present paper for the most part addresses fantasy from the early Lacanian perspective.
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cultural systems of meaningwhat Lacan calls the symbolic order (or the Other). Lacan proposes that prior to language acquisition, the child is not yet fully capable of differentiating between herself and the people and objects that surround her. She consequently possesses neither an inner life nor a social awareness. For these to emergefor the child to enter a fully human existenceshe needs to undergo a course of separation that teaches her to recognize herself as distinct from the world. Freud theorized this course of separation in terms of the oedipus complex as a mechanism that severs the childs dependence on her surroundings by forcing her to confront the painful fact that certain objectsmost notably the mother or the fatherremain erotically forbidden. Lacan in turn emphasizes that it is by internalizing the significatory codes of the sociosymbolic world that the child becomes aware of cultural interdictions and comes to regard herself as a discrete entity. In Lacanian terms, the process of internalizing the codes of language brings the childs psychic life into being, making her capable of producing meaning. The same way as the oedipus complex transforms the child from a creature ruled by primordial drives to one who enacts desire in culturally intelligible ways, language acquisition inserts the child into the world of collective rules and regulations (the world of the symbolic Other). This process is necessary not only because it teaches the child to conduct herself as a social and intersubjective entity, but also because it gives rise to more complex and advanced levels of internal organization. But it can also be coercive in the sense that it initiates the child into normativeand frequently quite unequal and repressivecollective structures, punishing all attempts to deviate from what the cultural order deems right and proper. In other words, it carries the force of prohibition, giving the child her first bitter taste of wanting what she cannot have. As a consequence, it generates lackthe relentless sense of incompleteness that characterizes human existenceas the melancholy underside of social subjectivity. Although most psychoanalytic approaches recognize the childs separation from her caretakers and the surrounding world as a pivotal moment of subject formation, they do not necessarily see lack as an inevitable corollary of this moment. For many of them, the child emerges from the process of individuation feeling wounded or insecure only if something about this process goes awryas, for instance, when the parents for one reason or another fail to fully facilitate the childs transition to social subjectivity. What makes Lacan distinctiveand what
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makes his theory disagreeable to someis that he believes the childs awareness of lack and longing to be inescapable; it is, in a sense, the price the child pays for being able to enter the social realm of meanings and values. The signifier, insofar as it carries cultural prohibition, forces the child to realize that she is not invincible, that she operates within a social world that is much more powerful than she could ever be, and that there are parts of that world that she does not have access to. In this fashion, the signifier dispels the childs primordial impression of being at one with the world, causing an irreparable inner rift or division; the very developmental course that empowers the child to materialize as a psychically autonomous entity is also what makes her feel lacking and self-alienated. That is, while language initiates an indispensable process of character formation, it also causes a kind of symbolic castration. What is lost in this processwhat drains into the void of beingis the subjects fantasy of self-sufficiency. This unfortunate event, Lacan suggests, is what the subject spends the rest of her life working through.4 Language generates lack. Lack in turn generates desire. While it is common to assume that desire is what is most natural about our lives, Lacan reveals the exact opposite, namely, that desire is a product of culturea function of the ways in which the signifiers of the social order cut into the childs biological constitution. Indeed, a great deal has been made of the fact that, in Lacanian terms, desire emerges through the mortification and subordination of the body and of its unmediated enjoyment. The signifier violatesmutilates and dismembersthe body as a thing, as a spontaneous nexus of drives that struggles for viability and fullness of being iz beyond the symbolic system into which it is inserted. As Slavoj Z ek (1992) explains: Word is murder of a thing, not only in the elementary sense of implying its absenceby naming a thing, we treat it as absent, as dead, although it is still presentbut above all in the sense of its radical dissection: the word quarters the thing . . . (p. 51).5 The signifier thus carves out the body in specific ways in order to give rise to a particular
4 Here it is important to emphasize that the blissful sense of self-sufficiency and oceanic plenitude that the subject imagines having lost is always a retroactive and purely fantasmatic construct that is designed to conceal the fact that no such primordial condition of wholeness and unmitigated enjoyment ever existed. 5 Z iz ek (1992) here paraphrases Lacan (1966a), who states: Thus the symbol manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing, and this death constitutes in the subject the eternalization of his desire (p. 104). I am in this instance using Sheridans translation rather than the more recent one by Bruce Fink because in being more lit iz eral it highlights the similarities between Lacans statement and that of Z ek.
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form of subjectivity and desire. It is in this sense that the subject is vulnerable to what Lacan calls the agency of the signifier. The course of individuation initiated by the signifier may be necessary for the subjects ability to orient herself in the world, but it simultaneously colonizes the presymbolic body in ways that evacuate the body of its enjoyment. Lacan hence underscores that it is only when the bodys immediate enjoyment is sacrificed to the signifier that subjectivity as a site of social energy and desire comes into being. This privileging of the passion of the signifier (Lacan 1966b, p. 578) over the passion of the body is undoubtedly problematic in light of the denigration of the bodyand particularly of femininity as what always carries the indelible trace of the bodythat has characterized Western thought at least since Plato and Aristotle.6 Yet Lacan also presents a poignant insight into the nature of subjectivity when he suggests that it is insofar as the signifier causes the subject to desire that she is compelled to turn outwardthat she is persuaded to care about the contours and unfolding of the surrounding world.7 After all, without desire, the subject would have little curiosity regarding the things, objects, and beings that inhabit and make up the world. In this sense, it is precisely the subjects persistent awareness of being less than fully realized that allows her to approach the world as a space of possibility. That is, it is only insofar as the subject experiences herself as needing something from the world that she has a conception of the world as a place that can potentially meet her yearnings and that might accordingly have something valuable to offer. In this manner, lack gives rise to a self that is open toand ravenous forthe world. Because the world is filled with marvelous objects that entice the subjects desirebecause the world, though certainly full of limitations and deprivations, is also brimming with possibilitiesthe subject is
6 It is also something that Lacan appears to rethink and retract in his later work, where he shifts his focus from the signifier to the body (from desire to the drives). Generally speaking, one could say that in his early work (the seminars of the 1950s), Lacan was primarily interested in the imaginary and the symbolic, whereas the later seminarsbeginning with Seminar VII (19591960)display an increasing focus on the real. As Lacan (19751976) announces in his seminar on the sinthome, What is important is the real. After having talked of the symbolic and the imaginary at length, I have been led to ask myself what might in this conjunction be the real (p. 107; transl. mine). For a useful delineation of the different stages of Lacans thinking, see iz Fink (1997, pp. 207217), as well as Z ek (1989, p. 133). 7 By this I do not mean that the psyche has no relationship to the outside world prior to the inception of signification, but merely that the signifier transforms this relationship into one of desire.
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compelled to reach beyond her solipsistic universe; she is given the gift of attentiveness. This turning outward is, moreover, not limited to an encounter with already existing objects, but entails the strong aspiration to bring new objects into being. Precisely because the subject can never attain a state of wholeness, she is driven to look for substitutes that might compensate for her sense of lack; she is motivated to invent objects and figures of meaning that can, momentarily at least, ease and contain the discomfort of alienation. In this paradoxical sense, rather than robbing the subject of inner richness and vitality, lack is the underpinning of everything that is potentially innovative about human life. Indeed, it is possible to envision the intricate productions and fabrications of the human psyche as vehicles through which the foundational lack of existence assumes a positive and tangible form. This in turn suggests that the subjects ability to dwell within lack without seeking to close ither ability to tarry with the negative, to express the matter in iz Z ekian/Hegelian termsis indispensable for her psychic aliveness. As a matter of fact, such tarrying with the negative could be argued to be the greatest of human achievements, for it transforms the terrors and midnights of the spirit into symbolic formations, imaginative undertakings, and sites of delicate beauty that make the world the absorbing and spellbinding place that itin its most auspicious moments, at leastcan be. The subjects repeated attempts to fill the void within her being thus give rise to a whole host of creative endeavors. Or in more Lacanian terms, because the subject can never repossess the blissful state of plenitude that she imagines having lost, because the subject cannot attain what Lacan calls the Thingthe primordial object that promises unmediated enjoymentshe is driven to look for surrogates that might compensate for her lack. As Lacan observes in The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959 1960), the Thingwhich inevitably remains obscure and unattainable can be brought to life only through a series of substitutes. If the Thing were not fundamentally veiled, Lacan explains, we wouldnt be in the kind of relationship to it that obliges us, as the whole of psychic life is obliged, to encircle it or bypass it in order to conceive it (p. 118). Precisely because the Thing is irrevocably lost, because it cannot be resurrected in any immediate form, the subject scurries from signifier to signifier to embody it obliquely. Like a potter who creates a vase around emptiness, creates it, just like the mythical creator, ex nihilo, starting with a hole (p. 121), the subject fashions a signifier, or an elaborate string or sequence of signifiers, from the void of her being.8
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Silverman (2000) analyzes this statement in World Spectators (pp. 4549).

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Lacan emphasizes that emptiness and fullnessthe void of the vase and the possibility of filling itare introduced to the world simultaneously (p. 120). In short, it is because we lack that we are prompted to create, and it is through our creative activity that we manage, in an always necessarily precarious manner, to withstand our lack. On this view, the signifier is not merely what mortifies the body, but also what empowers the subject to move to an existential space beyond mortification by granting her the gift of creativity. In this context, it is important to specify that the translation of lack into creativity is not a matter of dialectical redemption in the sense of giving the subject the ability to turn negativity into a definitive form of positivity. The subjects attempts to name her lack are transient at best, giving her access to no permanent meaning, no solid identity, no unitary narrative of self-actualization. Any fleeting state of fullness or positivity that the subject may be able to attain must always in the end dissolve back into negativity; any endeavor to erase lack only gives rise to new instances of lack. This implies that the process of filling lack must of necessity be continually renewed. It cannot be brought to an end for the simple reason that the subject can never forge an object or a representation that would once and for all seal this lack. However, far from being a hindrance to existential vitality, this intrinsic impossibilitythe fact that every attempt to redeem lack unavoidably falls short of its markis what allows us, over and again, to take up the endless process of signifying beauty. As Kaja Silverman (2000) advances, Our capacity to signify beauty has no limits. It is born of a loss which can never be adequately named, and whose consequence is, quite simply, the human imperative to engage in a ceaseless signification. It is finally this never-ending symbolization that the world wants from us (p. 146). Lacans rendering of the subjects relationship to the signifier is therefore complex in the sense that although he consistently accentuates the subjects relative helplessness vis--vis the larger systems of signification that envelop her, he at the same time suggests that it is only by virtue of her membership in the symbolic order that the subject possesses the capacity to make meaning in the first place. The symbolic, in other words, is not merely (or even primarily) a hegemonic structure that coerces the subject into its law, but alsoas I have endeavored to illustratethe
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foundation of her creative potentialities.9 Lacan in fact insists that though the subject can never master the signifierlet alone the signifiedshe enjoys a certain degree of imaginative leeway with respect to it. He describes this imaginative leeway as the subjects capacity to make use of the poetic function of language (1966b, p. 264)the fact that language by definition perpetuates the radical slipperiness, multiplicity, and polyvalence of meaning. The same way that Heidegger (1971) connects creativity to the individuals ability to dwell in the world in poetic rather than merely instrumental ways, Lacan envisions creativity in terms of the subjects capacity to take a poetic approach to the worldan approach that is content to play with meaning without attempting to arrest it in unequivocal or transparent definitions.
T H E A P P E A L O F F A N TA S I E S
It is therefore only insofar as the subject is asked time and again to reincarnate the lost Thing that he attains creative agency. However, it is very difficult for the subject to conceive of his predicament in these terms. The realization that the self is not synonymous with the world, but rather a frail and faltering creature that needs to continuously negotiate his position in the world, introduces an apprehensive state of want and restlessness. Lacan explains that because lack is devastating to admit to because the subject tends to experience it as an aching wound rather than as a humanizing principle that gives him access to creativityhe is predisposed to seek solace in fantasy formations that allow him to mask and ignore the reality of this lack. Such fantasies alleviate anxiety and fend off the threat of fragmentation because they enable the subject to consider himself as more unified and complete than he actually is; by concealing the traumatic split or tear within the subjects being, such fantasies lend an always illusory form of consistency and meaning to his existence.
In Reinventing the Soul (Ruti 2006), I argue against the temptation to equate the Lacanian symbolic with what Foucault means by hegemonic power. Although the symbolic can be (and often is) harnessed for regulatory ends, it is not synonymous with disciplinary power. By this I of course do not wish to discount that fact that there are specific signifierssignifiers that carry the unequal effects of powerthat wound particular subjects, that cut up subjects in devastating ways. What is important, in this context, is to ask who in our culture tends to be denigrated by signifiers and who has access to their creative potential.
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Lacan hypothesizes that the origin of such narcissistic fantasies of plenitude and psychic salvation resides in what he labels the mirror stage. Lacan posits that during the preverbal, imaginary phase the child, in perceiving his image in a mirror (or perhaps in the adoring eyes of some caretaker), mistakes the apparent coherence of the image for himself; unable to distinguish between himself (as a physical, psychological, or ontological entity) and his image, the child is mesmerized by, and comes to identify with, the deceptive flawlessness of this image. This is Lacans version of the ancient myth of Narcissus, who, upon catching his reflection in a pool of water, becomes so hopelessly enamored of his own loveliness that he is incapable of tearing himself away from his image. In the myth, the fact that Narcissus confuses the image in the pool with himself leads to his demise. Likewise, Lacan implies that the love that the adult subject feels for his romanticized imagean image that serves as a tantalizing token of the wholeness that the subject so ardently covetssignifies a certain kind of psychic death: the death of the creative potentialities that could be cultivated through an acceptance of lack as the basis of existence. Fantasieseven in their narcissistic formare of course not a purely negative phenomenon. From time to time, we all need mirrorsmoments when others complete, recognize, or witness us in idealizing, indulgent, and loving ways. This is the case particularly for those who have been narcissistically wounded. As Lewis Kirshner (2004) observes, for individuals whose early lives were characterized by deficiencies of basic care and recognition, and who in consequence find it arduous to sustain a viable subject position, compassionate mirroring may be essential for undoing a skewed perception of worthlessness. In such instances, mirroring is a benign form of empathy that responds to the subjects legitimate demand for recognition and narcissistic repair.10 One might in fact argue that in cases that involve the forceful robbing of the subjects sense of self-esteem, it may be necessary to reconstitute the ego before embarking upon a critique of its ontological status. That is, Lacans adamant resistance to the narcissistic tendencies of the ego may make it difficult to appreciate situations where the ego has been so profoundly injured by abusive or oppressive interpersonal relationships that its capacity for narcissistic fantasies has been destroyed. Although Lacan is correct in being suspicious of the egos capacity to deceive the subject into thinking that
For excellent discussions of narcissistic injury, see Lynne Layton (1999) and Kelly Oliver (2001, 2004).
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he is more coherent or powerful than he actually is, his theory is less immediately useful when it comes to cases where the subject is led to believe in his own absolute insignificance. This explains why Lacanian theory is not always particularly relevant when it comes to understanding and treating the aftereffects of traumatic life histories.11 Perhaps even more fundamentally, it is possible to argue that there is no reality that is not always already a form of fantasy: that fantasy is all we have. In other words, the very distinction between reality and fantasy is in many ways an artificial one, reminiscent of an Enlightenment worldviewone that believed in the power of the rational mind to tell fact from fictionthat has been seriously undermined in recent decades by postmodern theorizing. That is, the belief that we could ever relate to the world objectively, as it really is, has itself been discredited as a fantasy that occludes the recognition that the ways we perceive and interpret the world always necessarily reflect the value systems within which we operate. In effect, while the Enlightenment worldview distinguished between reality and our more or less successful efforts to represent it, contemporary theorists recognizeas Nietzsche already didthat our very attempts to represent reality invariably shape the form of this reality. By this I do not mean to say that there exists no reality independent of human representations, but merely that we do not possess any immediate or unmediated access to that reality; since we understand the world around us only through the conceptual frameworks, labels, and systems of thought that we
11 I think it important to acknowledge that Lacanian theory is not always immediately applicable to instances of psychic abjection that are circumstantial rather than ontological. The notion of learning to live with ones lack or insecurity takes on a wholly different valence when that lack or insecurity emerges from past abuse, intersubjective victimization, or social oppression. Indeed, recognizing the difference between ontological and circumstantial forms of lack is valuable because it helps clarify the distinction between deconstructive forms of psychoanalysissuch as Lacanian analysison the one hand and more restorative approaches on the other. The latter tend to work with circumstantial forms of lack, whereas the former often focus on lack as an ontological state. This means that while restorative approaches tend to rely on processes of self-narrativization that empower the subject to resist being named by wounding external forces, and that allow him over time to rewrite his traumatic past along more affirmative lines, deconstructive approaches aspire to take apart the subjects narratives so as to expose their fantasmatic and illusory status. That is, while restorative approaches seek to capitalize on the power of narratives to facilitate a constructive reclaiming of the subjects history, deconstructive theories tend to question the very legitimacy of his narratives. (My use of the term deconstructive here should not be interpreted to mean that I equate Lacanian theory with that of Derrida, but merely that I think that Lacans approach to narrativization is deconstructive in the broad sense of the term.)
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impose on this world, there is no way to know what this world might be like outside of our endeavors to comprehend it. The fact that our understanding of the worldnot to mention our sense of ourselvescan be posited to be a fantasmatic construct does not mean that we do not experience it as real. In other words, the idea that something is constructed should not be confused with the idea that it possesses no power over us or that it somehow lacks psychic resonance, for to the degree that fantasmatic constructs over time come to take on the force of reality for us, they function as a means of world-constitution that actualize the world for us. Talking about the molding of subjectivity in particular, Anne Anlin Cheng (2001) observes that fantasy is not an activity undertaken by an already fully formed subject, but rather (in part at least) what allows the subject to engage in the process of fashioning his identity in the first place. This is to say that fantasy can be an essential vehicle for the crafting of the kind of identity that feels viable and worthwhile. In Chengs words, fantasy is a medium of self-narrativization that constitutes the subjects sense of integrity and hence his/her potential for agency. Fantasy, in this sense, is not the opposite of reality, but rather what brings reality into being; it is what authenticates realness, what makes reality real (p. 120). If fantasies are how we constitute not only the world, but also our own sense of self, they can hardly be considered exclusively an error of judgment, or a defect of being, that needs to be eliminated. Indeed, the realization that what we take for reality is always a form of fantasy calls into question our very desire to find a foothold beyond or outside fantasy. Such a quest might in fact be argued to be indicative of precisely the kind of search for secure epistemological foundations that Lacan actively shuns. On this view, the idea that we could be freed from the mystifications of fantasy is itself a drastic type of mystification. What is more, it could be argued to be a mystification that keeps us from appreciating the various ways in which fantasies can enhance our existence by injecting splashes of passion or enchantment into our otherwise humdrum lives; it prevents us from discerning that fantasies are not only delusions that derail us from the concrete realities of our lives, but also, potentially at least, a means of disclosing previously unknown realms of meaning. An imaginative approach to the worldone that actively engages the fantasmatic nature of reality rather than concealing or suppressing it may well reveal dimensions of the world that under normal circumstances remain hidden or marginalized; it may bring neglected aspects of
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the world into focus for us. As a matter of fact, insofar as fantasies are always linked to our (conscious or unconscious) wishes and longings, they render the world more desirable to us, with the consequence that we scrutinize it more carefully, with a heightened degree of attentiveness to details and attributes that we might otherwise overlook. As Stephen Mitchell (2003) explains, taking fantasy seriously engenders a more complex understanding of things, others, and ourselves, as offering many facets and considerable ambiguity, coming alive always, necessarily, partially through acts of imagination (p. 107). That is, when ordinary reality is perceived as a construction rather than as an objective fact, fantasy can no longer be thought of as what contaminates reality, but should instead be regarded as a process of bringing the world alive for us in a particularly vibrant fashion. According to this vision, reality is a fantasy that we elaborate on an increasingly intricate level during our entire lifetime.
T H R O U G H T H E LO O K I N G - G L A S S
When it comes to fantasy formations, it is therefore essential to distinguish between (1) unconscious fantasies that curb our existential options and (2) imaginative and creative fantasies that allow us to observe the world from novel angles. Lacans assault on narcissistic fantasies is directed at the former, whereas his commentary on the poetic potentialities of language could be argued to relate to the latter. I will return to the poetic aspects of language at the end of this essay. For now, it is worth repeating that the main reason Lacan resists narcissistic fantasies is that they tend to organize our psychic reality in ways that disguise all clefts, ruptures, and antagonisms within that reality. They make our identities appear both reliable and immediately readable to us. As a result, they all too easily lead us to believe that we can come to know ourselves in a definitive fashion, thereby preventing us from perceiving that knowing one version of ourselves may well function as a defense against other, perhaps less reassuring, versions. In the Lacanian scenario, narcissistic fantasies deepen our confusion about the nature of our existence by imposing a false coherence where we should discern a complex and ever evolving pattern of open-ended possibility. As Eric Santner (2001) explains, they deform our lives by freezing our being into a schema, a distinctive torsion or spin that colors/distorts the shape of our universe, how the world is disclosed to us, and it is precisely this torsion that sustains our sense of the consistency of the world 496
and our place in it (pp. 3940). Fantasies, in other words, restrict our movement in the world, holding us captive to the idea that the basic structure of our lives is determined in advance rather than constituted in the process of living. In this manner, they keep us from our own aliveness. I have proposed that lack gives rise to ever renewed feats of symbolization. The fantasmatic attempt to deny lack, in contrast, prevents the subject from riding the signifier in agile and innovative ways, for it limits meaning production to those forms that accord with the worldview promoted by the subjects foundational fantasies. In this fashion, fantasies prevent the subject from recognizing that it is only when she comes to accept the absolute alteritythe radical and at times terrifying alienness of her being that she is able to truly participate in the unpredictable rhythm of the world (that she is able to begin to weave the threads of her life into a psychically supple tapestry). That is, the subject who affirms lack understandsin however inchoate a mannerthat lack is not merely a daunting or sterile void, but the precondition of her capacity for imaginative living, including her ability to ask constructive questions about her life. Such questions do not give the subject access to the ultimate meaning of her existence, yet it may well be the simple act of asking themwhat Jonathan Lear (2004) describes as the subjects living engagement (p. 84) with themthat allows her to grow in psychic depth and density. Indeed, one could argue that it is precisely the fact that there are no fixed or definitive answers to such questionsthat the subject is invited to enter into a continuous and ever renewed process of grappling with themthat most intensely shapes her as an individual. One could even say that the act of passing through the looking-glass of narcissistic fantasiesof dismantling life-arresting existential mirages is one way to understand what it means to rewrite ones fate. Lear (2004) points out that unconscious fantasies that organize the subjects life in obstinately repetitive ways are so damaging in part because they present a confining set of life possibilities as though they were the only possibilities that the subject possesses (p. 205). Lear specifies that a person driven by such a repetition compulsion treats her particular version of the world as the only conceivable world in the sense that she cannot even begin to imagine how she could ever change things for the better (pp. 4849). She is in fact more than a little intimidated by alternative possibilities. According to this account, any purported field of possibilities is always a somewhat restricting fantasy of what is possible in human
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life (Lear 2000, p. 161). It is as if our psychic lives were the sum total of our bad habits in the sense that what we unconsciously assume to be the boundaries of our lives ends up curtailing the range of our existential options for the simple reason that it consistently directs us to certain situations, behaviors, and interpersonal relations while steering us away from others. Or, to express the matter in more Lacanian terms, it dictates how we seek and obtain pleasure in the world, thereby determining the very shape of our enjoyment. This is a perfect manifestation of what Roberto Harari (2002) calls a destiny compulsion (p. 120). If fantasies perpetuate obstinate unconscious patterns of behavior, the aim of Lacanian analysisand perhaps of psychoanalysis more generally speakingis to loosen the grip of such fantasies in order to create space for alternative life plots and directions, and in so doing to expand the subjects repertoire of existential options. Analysis deliberately creates fissures in the individuals dearest and most trenchantly reenacted fantasies so as to provide an opening for a more imaginatively lithe sense of lifes potentialities. The subject who is used to operating in the world according to a predetermined set of possibilitieswhose relationship to the world consistently displays patterns of being punished, suffocated, persecuted, or disenchanted, for instanceis gradually persuaded to revise the parameters of what she finds conceivable so that fresh kinds of thoughts, actions, and modes of relating become plausible. Lear (2004) describes this process of existential expansion as one of opening up the possibility for new possibilities (p. 112). Santner (2005) in turn posits that breaking the spell of fantasiesintervening in the hypnotic commandments that generate eccentric yet strangely binding libidinal impassesmeans to step fully into the cadence of life (what he evocatively calls the midst of life) and in this manner to enter into a more animated and multidimensional psychic economy (p. 51). That is, the process of releasing psychic energies that are bound up in the unyielding encasing of fantasies converts these energies into more life, thereby making them available to more elastic psychic enactments (p. 40). From a specifically Lacanian perspective, learning to live without the kinds of fantasies that protect us from our lack entails an epistemological leap to a vastly different existential attitude. In particular, Lacan invites us to acknowledge that regardless of all the busy and clamorous activity that we habitually undertake in order to suppress or ignore our lack, deep down we know that there will always be moments when it breaks out into the open with the piercing clarity and sadness of a foghorn. No matter 498
how many layers of fantasy we wrap around this hollow in our hearts, it reverberates through us like a muted but persistent echo that carries the uncanny messages of what most terrifies us about ourselves. For Lacan, our existential assignment is to heed that echo, to withstand moments when nothing fills the void, and to work through the realization that neither we nor the worldnor any of the objects of this worldcan ever live up to the perfection of our fantasies. Our task, in other words, is to learn to endure the sharp points of existence without being irrevocably devastated.
L A C K I N T H E A N A LY T I C S PA C E
We may now be in a better position to understand (even if we do not fully endorse) Lacans critique of ego psychology. If Lacan scorns the attempts of ego psychologists to shore up the subjects ego, it is because he believes that they have gotten things entirely backward: instead of helping the subject accept lack as constitutive of subjectivity, they intensify his existential confusionnot to mention desperationby playing into and reinforcing his narcissistic fantasies. Lacan deems this approach to be deeply flawed in that it hastens to prematurely close the void within the subjects being instead of fostering the imaginative possibilities that arise from this void; it promises the end of alienation, rather than teaching the subject to resourcefully live with this alienation; and it dilutes the subjects power to mobilize the signifier in ways that would add creative vitality to his existence. Such a tactic, Lacan suggests, is always to some extent dishonest in that it tends to leave the subject worse off than before. The solution that ego psychology offers to the subjects sense of lack is, for Lacan, therefore merely the highest manifestation of the problem: it thwarts, rather than advances, the subjects capacity for creative living. Lacan may have aimed his indignation at ego psychology for largely idiosyncratic reasonssuch as his vehement dislike of what he saw as a specifically American tendency to turn psychoanalysis into a tool of social conformitybut his commentary on the dangers of ignoring lack remains highly relevant to contemporary debates about the purpose of clinical practice. Mitchell Wilson (2006) has recently noted that Anglo-American clinicians are not, generally speaking, used to thinking about lack in the Lacanian sense, with the result that they are likely to overlook its generative potential. More specifically, Anglo-American clinical practice tends to be biased toward presence and plenitude (the filling of lack) in the sense that analysts are temptedand sometimes even feel compelledto make
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sense of their patients dilemmas by providing accurate, meaningful, and seamless interpretations. Wilson points out that it is not at all clear that such affirmative giving of meaning to the patient always serves a curative function, for it runs the risk of signaling to the patient that interpretive closure is more important than his capacity to dynamically inhabit a space of existential uncertainty and incompleteness. Orto frame that matter in terms that resonate with my discussion of fantasyit holds the patient captive in comforting fantasy formations that radically constrict and distort the possibilities of his life. Wilson moreover stresses that the analysts attempt to meet the patients lack with a reassuring display of presence and plenitude obscures the ways in which the process of analysis is often moved forward by the analysts lackby his various mistakes, misrecognitions, and misinterpretations. It occludes the fact that missing the patient (p. 401)getting the patient wrongis not only an unavoidable dimension of analysis, but is essential to its successful unfolding. Wilson is careful to specify that he is discussing lack in the Lacanian (ontological) sense rather than in the sense of early childhood trauma and deprivationthat he is interested in the positive and facilitative effects of lack (p. 412). As I have said, confusing the Lacanian notion of lack with childhood trauma is what makes it so difficult for many non-Lacanians to envision lack as anything but a deficit or a form of dispossession. And indeed, some of the commentators on Wilsons article read his privileging of lack over presence and plenitude as an indication that he regards analytic interpretation as necessarily unfulfilling (Goldberg 2006, p. 431), advocates the futility of interpretation (Litowitz 2006, p. 444), and makes a pathology of the analysts wish to understand the patient (Reed 2006, p. 448). In short, these commentators accuse Wilson of denigrating the practice of interpretation, and of advancing an analytic ethos whereby the analyst forgoes his responsibility to the patient byas Litowitz puts itdoing as little as possible (p. 440). That is, Wilsons commentators seem to assume that an emphasis on lack leads automatically to an impoverishment of the analytic space (so that there is no more interpretation, no insight, and no support, but merely the callousness of an analyst who no longer cares). Yet, from a Lacanian perspectivethe perspective I have endeavored to elucidateit is immediately obvious that Wilsons point is exactly the opposite, namely, that the recognition of lack, including the lack of the analyst, opens up a wealth of interpretive and existential possibilities. A careful reading of Wilsons essay reveals that far from advocating the analysts interpretive indifference or complacency, he is interested in 500
the preconditions of the kind of analytic (interpretive) space that is conducive to the patients autonomy and ability to claim his own voice. In other words, Wilson is not arguing against the value of interpretation, but merely calling our attention to the kind of interpretations that are so quick to provide meaning that they foreclose the patients capacity to fully enter into an open-ended process of meaning production; such interpretations run the risk of stifling or suffocating the patient by making it impossible for him to actively engage the creative potentialities of the signifier. In contrast, the analyst who foregrounds his own lackwho allows this lack to become visible and accessible through the mistakes that he makes exhibits an attitude of deep generosity in the sense that he invites the patient to become a co-creator (an equal collaborator in the production) of meaning. Paradoxically enough, the analysts mistakes, by revealing that his interpretations are not the only possible ones, serve as the foundation of a certain kind of interpretive plenitude by providing an opening for the patients attempts to name his own world.12 Wilsons commentators are correct in positing that his notion of lack is too diffuse in that it includes everything from the subjects ontological lacklack in the Lacanian sense that I have outlinedto the analysts mistakes in missing the patient. Yet Wilsons intuition about the connection between ontological lack and missing the patient is quite subtle, for he implies that insofar as missing the patient showcases the analyst as a fallible and less-than-perfect (i.e., lacking) subject, it familiarizes the patient with the idea that lack is a universal condition of human existence that can be tolerated and worked with (rather than a shameful personal failing that must be fantasmatically occluded).13 After all, if the analyst who, as Lacan speculated, functions for the patient as the subject who is
12 Kirshner (2006) expresses this quite eloquently: Once we accept this state of affairs, the nature of analytic work changes in major ways. No longer are we present to interpret the historical or psychic truth of the patients suffering, and no longer are we authorized to act as observers of psychic processes that will eventually reveal their secrets to us. Instead we are peculiar participants and guardians of a space in which a reconfiguration or a new set of articulations of self with Other can take shape (p. 427). 13 Here it is relevant to recall Lacans insistence (1966b) that there is no Other of the Otherno final arbitrator of the Others discourse (p. 688). By this statement, Lacan wishes to emphasize that the Other is haunted by lack and inconsistency as much as the subject isthat the Others reliability is ultimately as illusory as the subjects own. That is, in the same way that there is a lack in the subject that keeps him from being identical with himself, there is a lack in the Other that prevents it from ever becoming a closed totality that could convincingly legitimate the ideology that it espouses. Insofar as Lacanian analysis places the analyst in the position of the Other, Lacans statements about the lack in the Other are directly relevant to Wilsons argument about the analysts lack.
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supposed to know, who is supposed to hold the secret of the patients happinessreveals that he in fact does not always know, it becomes very difficult for the patient to entertain the fantasy of omnipotent and invincible subjectivity.14 This suggests that insofar as the analyst is able to reveal himself as fallible without at the same time losing his ability to be a competent analyst, the patient gradually internalizes one of the most valuable lessons of Lacanian analysis, namely, that lack does not necessarily undermine ones claim on subjectivity and aliveness; the analysts capacity to de-idealize himself, as it were, gives the patient the permission to embrace the notion that leading a reasonable life does not presuppose seamless psychic integration. This is an important step in facilitating the patients ability to puncture the narcissistic fantasies that are designed to shield him from his lack. To press the matter a step further, one could argue that to the extent that the analyst is able to gracefully handle moments when he misses the patientto the extent that he manages to weave his mistakes into the evolving texture of the analytic fabriche gestures to the patient that making a mistake is a potentially valuable opening to fresh insights and possibilities. By using his mistakes to access new, perhaps previously overlooked, interpretive directions, the analyst conveys the idea that mistakesand by extension, lack (as a kind of ontological mistake) are something to be actively and productively grappled with rather than an existential disaster to be fled from or brushed aside. This is a specifically Lacanian way to understand what it means, within the analytic context, to activate the possibility for new possibilities. And it is for this reason that, to borrow from Wilson, the analysts acting interpretively (p. 399) is ultimately far more important than the contentthe accuracy or inaccuracyof his interpretations.
THE SINGULARITY OF BEING
At bottom, what is at stake here is the patients capacity to assert what is singular about her being. Fink (1997) has underscored that one of the aspirations of Lacanian analysis is to facilitate the subjects departure
In this context, it is worth emphasizing that Lacan is adamant that it is not the analysts job to provide answers to the patients existential questions or to pretend to have such answers. Insofar as the analyst plays the part of the big Other, the point of analysis is, precisely, to dispel the patients fantasy that the Other knows.
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from ideals and configurations of thought that have been inculcated within her psyche by the various authority figures that surround her from birth; the goal of Lacanian analysis is to allow the subject to think and act without being overly dependent on the views and opinions of others (pp. 3338). In this context, the analysts missing the patientnot to mention her capacity to create an analytic space within which the patient can become an active co-creator of meaningenhances the patients ability to assume responsibility for her own beliefs, passions, and unique perspective.15 As Wilson accentuates, the analysts missing the patient allows the patient to take up his or her own place, to articulate in increasingly clear ways a position in his or her own individual voice (p. 401). A more explicitly Lacanian way of expressing the matter is to say that analysis invites the subject to take responsibility for the particularity of her desire. That is, the subject is asked to distinguish between the truth of her desire and the desire of the big Other (including the desire of the analyst as one powerful incarnation of the Other). Lacan in fact suggests that when the subject is estranged from her desirewhen she allows herself to be overrun by the desire of the Otherher existence feels empty, apathetic, and devoid of meaning; when in the throes of such life-deadening conformity, the subject goes through the motions of life in a defensive manner, sacrificing the integrity of her desire for the convenience of an easily classifiable social identity.16 Against this backdrop, the purpose of liberating oneself from fantasies of plenitude and full self-presence is to access the unique frequency of ones desire. Such fantasies obscure this frequency to the extent that they mask the lack within the subjects being that gives rise to desire in the first place. As a result, when these fantasies dissolve, the insistent
It could of course be argued that the subjects beliefs, passions, and perspective are never her own, but rather are socioculturally determined. Yet I would say that even if it is the case that subjectivity can never be divorced from larger symbolic systems, the subject retains the capacity to actively negotiate her position within such systems. One might describe such subjectivity as socially informed (as opposed to socially complacent). 16 Lacan (1966b) characterizes the predicament of such a subject as follows: He will make an effective contribution to the collective undertaking in his daily work and will be able to occupy his leisure time with all the pleasures of a profuse culture whichproviding everything from detective novels to historical memoirs and from educational lectures to the orthopedics of group relationswill give him the wherewithal to forget his own existence and death, as well as to misrecognize the particular meaning of his life in false communication (p. 282).
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pulse of desire becomes more audible, more determinedly solicitous of the subjects response. This implies that the subject who manages to work through her fantasies is, hypothetically at least, better able to distinguish between the voice of the Otherwhatever masquerades as her desire and the actuality of that desire. Such a subject is able to enter into the ongoing process of fashioning a singular identity in accordance with the complexity of her desire. This is where the notion of poetic language becomes relevant, for, as we have seen, it is the signifier that carries our desire. Indeed, it is only as subjects of signification that we are capable of desire in the first place. In this context, it is important to repeat that even though Lacan regards language as something that all too easily deprives us of singularity (of the specificity of our desire) by subjecting us to sociodiscursive hegemonies, he admits that the signifier does not always coincide with the symbolic orderthat the signifier does not invariably speak or support the discourse of the Other.17 In effect, when commenting on the strangely inspired writing practice of James Joyce, Lacan explicitly asserts that language challenges normative structures of signification as much as it reinforces them, and that to some extent one has the capacity to invent the language one uses; one has the power to activate the poetic function of language. As Lacan (19751976) observes, This assumes or implies that one chooses to speak the language that one effectively speaks. . . . One creates a language insofar as one at every instant gives it a sense, one gives it a little nudge, without which language would not be alive (p. 133; transl. mine). Lacan therefore concedes that although language functions as an impersonal structure into which we are introduced at birth, we are nevertheless capable of giving it a little (poetic) nudge that transforms it into something uniquely oursthat conveys something about the truth of our desire. That is, the fact that each of us has the powerhowever limited to push aside congealed forms of meaning gives us a measure of creative freedom. In other words, even though being compelled to participate in a common symbolic system on one level deprives us of personal distinctiveness, on another level it offers us the possibility of carving out a singular place within that order; we can particularize or personalize the
Here one should recall the distinction that Lacan makes in The Function and Field of Speech (1966b) between empty or false speech that fails to carry the subjects desire, and full or true speech that manages to convey the specificity of this desire.
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discourse we are asked to inhabit.18 This is one way to comprehend what it might mean to insist on the possibility of agencyon the fact that we are not merely subservient to hegemonic social structures, but can and do have an impact on these structures; it clarifies why we manage from time to time to rearticulate and reorganize social reality. Because the cultural order produces socially intelligible subjects by assimilating them into its disciplinary machinery, there of necessity exists a constant tension between our (largely fantasmatic) conception of ourselves as individuals who possess at least the potential for exceptionality and our recognition that we are always already dominated by a social order that bars us from exceptionalitythat in fact sells its own normative definition of what it means to be exceptional, thereby eradicating any genuine possibility for exceptionality. No wonder, then, that we tend to find narcissistic fantasies more appealing than the reality principle, for such fantasies provide us, precisely, with an inflated sense of our exceptionality. However, as I have emphasized, the illusion of uniqueness that such fantasies offer is in many ways the very antithesis of creative agency, for it merely reflects what is most stubborn and mechanical about our unconscious ways of relating to the world. In contrast, the signifierthe always peculiar ways in which we take up cultural meaningprovides an authentic opening for the emergence of psychic distinctiveness. On this view, it is not only how we dieor face the prospect of our mortality, as phenomenologists like to saybut also how we inhabit language that singularizes us, that gives our identities an idiosyncratic resonance. Our singularityour capacity to name our desireis therefore in many ways a function of the various creative ways in which we manage to breathe life into the signifier.19 This is precisely whyas Wilson
18 One could say that ordinary languagelanguage that conforms to the hegemonic ideologies and practices of the symbolic Othertends to distance us from our singularity by propelling us toward social generality. This is because it does not contain enough elements that are able to resist such generality. Poetic (inventive, artistic) usages of language, in contrast, by definition steer us away from generality and toward singularity because their very purpose is to challengeor at the very least to offer alternatives tohabitual conventions of meaning production. To the degree that poetic language aspires to alter our usual perception of how language functions, it automatically creates an opportunity for new forms of meaning, and consequently, potentially at least, for singular sorts of subjective enactments. 19 Z iz ek and Santner have both linked subjective singularity to those aspects of the self that manage to defy social classificationthat do not lend themselves to symbolic translation or domestication. Their compelling arguments are unfortunately beyond the scope of this paper.
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emphasizesit is so important for the analyst to forge an interpretive space in which the patient can begin to actively claim the signifier. The patient who is able to assert a degree of interpretive authoritywho is, as it were, able to hold her own vis--vis the analyst as a representative of the big Otherover time grows less afraid of the Others judgments; she becomes increasingly capable of independent deliberation and action. By this I do not mean to imply that the relationship between analyst and patient is inherently antagonistic. Rather, I am merely suggesting that an analysis that does not offer the patient access to the innovative (poetic) aspects of language will render invisible the patients desire, thereby failing to cultivate her singularity. Lacanian analysis could be argued to be a practice of negotiating the inevitable tension between being a generic subject (being subjected to the symbolic order) and being a singular creature (having a unique identity that somehow surpasses the parameters of that order). We are of course always both at once, but it is only as singular creatures that we feel fully engaged in our lives. What I have tried to demonstrate is that, in Lacanian terms, the more we are able to liberate ourselves from the spell of fantasiesincluding the fantasy of the omnipotent analyst (Other) who is able to fill our lackthe better our chances for singularity. The act of accepting our lack20and of developing a measure of self-reflexivity with regard to the meanings of the Other empowers us to move from unconscious repetition of inert existential patterns to a more active and life-enriching (poetic) connection with the world. Strangely enough, although the Other does not possess answers to our life-defining questions, the significatory resources that it makes available to us enable us to devise the kinds of answers that we canalways tentatively and provisionallylive with. This is precisely why the task of the Lacanian analyst is not to offer definitive answers to the patients questions, but merely to provide an analytic space where it becomes possible for the patient to arrive at singular kinds of answers. One could in
20 Z iz ek (1992) argues forcefully that the lack to be assumed by the subject is not her own, but rather that of the Other. As he postulates, one can only wonder at the fact that even some Lacanians reduce psychoanalysis to a kind of heroic assumption of a necessary, constitutive sacrifice. . . . Lacan is as far as possible from such an ethic of heroic sacrifice: the lack to be assumed by the subject is not its own but that of the Other, which is something incomparably more unbearable (p. 58). I would maintain, however, that in the end these two scenarios amount to the same thing: accepting the fact that the Other is lacking implies coming to terms with the fact that the Other does not possess the answers to ones existential predicamentthat the Other cannot fill ones lack.
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fact say that the process of becoming a singular subject, from a distinctively Lacanian point of view, is first and foremost a matter of knowing that even though the question of the sovereign good is from the outset closed, questions that sustain us as creatures of becoming and psychic potentialityquestions pertaining to desire, creativity, and the passion of self-actualization, for exampleare ones that can be closed only by our own (non)actions.
REFERENCES
CHENG, A.A. (2001). The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief. Oxford: Oxford University Press. FINK, B. (1997). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. GOLDBERG, A. (2006). A lament about lack: Commentary on Wilson. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:429433. HARARI, R. (2002). How James Joyce Made His Name: A Reading of the Final Lacan, transl. L. Thurston. New York: Other Press. HEIDEGGER, M. (1971). Poetry, Language, Thought, transl. A. Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row. KIRSHNER, L.A. (2004). Having a Life: Self-Pathology after Lacan. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press. (2006). The concept of the negative in psychoanalysis: Commentary on Wilson. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:423428. LACAN, J. (19591960). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, ed. J.-A. Miller, transl. D. Porter. New York: Norton, 1992. (1966a). crits: A Selection, transl. A. Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977. (1966b). crits: The First Complete Edition in English, transl. B. Fink. New York: Norton, 2006. (19751976), Le Sminaire de Jacques Lacan: Livre XXIII. Le Sinthome, ed. J.-A. Miller. Paris: ditions du Seuil, 2005. LAYTON, L. (1999). Whos That Girl? Whos That Boy? Clinical Practice Meets Postmodern Gender Theory. Northvale, NJ: Aronson. LEAR, J. (2000). Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (2004). Therapeutic Action: An Earnest Plea for Irony. New York: Other Press.
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LITOWITZ, B.E. (2006). Where does nothing come from? Commentary on Wilson. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:435446. MITCHELL, S. (2003). Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance over Time. New York: Norton. OLIVER, K. (2001). Witnessing: Beyond Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (2004). The Colonization of Psychic Space: A Psychoanalytic Social Theory of Oppression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. REED, G.S. (2006). The readers lack: Commentary on Wilson. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:447456. RUTI, M. (2006). Reinventing the Soul: Posthumanist Theory and Psychic Life. New York: Other Press. SANTNER, E.L. (2001). On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life: Reflections on Freud and Rosenzweig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (2005). Miracles happen: Benjamin, Rosenzweig, Freud, and the matter of the neighbor. In The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political iz Theology, by S. Z ek, E. Santner, & K. Reinhard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 76133. SILVERMAN, K. (2000). World Spectators. Stanford: Stanford University Press. WILSON, M. (2006). Nothing could be further from the truth: The role of lack in the analytic process. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 54:397422. iz Z ek, S. (1989). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. (1992). Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. New York: Routledge.
Department of English University of Toronto 170 St. George Street Toronto, Ontario M5R 2M8 CANADA E-mail: mari.ruti@utoronto.ca
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