Verhaeghe, Paul. Does the Woman Exist?: From Freud’s Hysteric to Lacan’s Feminine. New York: Other Press, 2009.
The paradoxical result of this Freudian approach, focusing on the individual, even on the individual symptoms of one individual patient, is that Freud is the only one who
succeeded in making a general theory of the human psyche. … Indeed, the core of Freudian theory is based on classical myths and stories, with the Oedipus tragedy and the story of Narcissus being the most famous examples.
In the last volume of the Standard Edition, we find ten pages filled with references to works of art and literature. Freud goes even further with his solution: where he did not find a suitable myth, he invented one himself, and that is of course the story of Totem und Taboo, the myth of the primal father. This Freudian approach resulted in a major breakthrough, a new paradigm. … an important disadvantage has to do with the content of myths and the possibility that this content will be psychologized, which means that it becomes a substantial reality. That is what happened with Jungian and post-Jungian theory. Although we won’t go any further into that, one Lacanian quotation suffices to announce the danger of such an approach…. “If you authenticate the Imaginary, you will fill the waiting-room of madness”.
It is in light of this that we have to consider Lacanian theory as constituting a major breakthrough. Whereas Freud made the step from the individual patient to the underlying myths, Lacan will make the step from these myths to the formal structures which govern those myths. The most important Lacanian structure in this respect is, of course, the theory on the four discourses, and that is my main topic today.
The advantages of these formal structures are obvious. First of all, there is an enormous gain in level of abstraction. Just as in algebra, you can represent anything with those “petites lettres”, the small letters, the a and the S and the A, and the relationships between them. It is precisely this level of abstraction which enables us to fit every particular subject into the main frame. Secondly, these formal structures are so stripped of flesh and bones that they diminish the possibility of psychologizing.
For example, if one compares the Freudian primal father with the Lacanian Master signifier S1, the difference is very clear: with the first one, everybody sees before them an ageing silverback gorilla, running riot among his females. It is very difficult to imagine this ape when writing S1… and it is precisely this that opens up the possibility of other interpretations of this very important function. … 98
Thirdly, the core of the system concerns jouisssance, albeit in a very strange way — each discourse is a specific method of avoiding jouisssance, of erecting a protection against it and of keeping desire intact.