{"id":10824,"date":"2013-04-13T15:21:36","date_gmt":"2013-04-13T20:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=10824"},"modified":"2014-09-06T06:58:49","modified_gmt":"2014-09-06T10:58:49","slug":"verhaeghe-pre-ontological","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2013\/04\/13\/verhaeghe-pre-ontological\/","title":{"rendered":"Verhaeghe pre-ontological cocktail"},"content":{"rendered":"

Verhaeghe, Paul. “Causation and Destitution of a Pre-ontological Non-entity: On the Lacanian Subject.” Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis.<\/em> Ed. Dany Nobus. 1999. 164-189<\/p>\n

The important thing about the divided subject is that it has no essence, no ontological substance, but, on the contrary, comes down to a pre-ontological, indeterminate non-being which can only give rise to an identity, an ego, in retrospect. Difficult as this may seem, it is rather easy to grasp.<\/p>\n

Just think of what we will call ‘the cocktail experience<\/span><\/strong>.’ You are invited for a drink with a group of people you do not know. You have to introduce yourself, and so you have to produce signifiers. This production of signifiers will never be satisfactory. Furthermore, the more signifiers produced, the more contradictions, gaps and difficulties will become clear.<\/p>\n

Therefore, the ‘Experienced Cocktail Consumer\u2019, will stick to the proverbial ‘That’s me!’ and produce a stock introduction.<\/p>\n

From a Lacanian point of view, it would be wrong to assume that the difficulty lies in finding the correct signifiers to present oneself. On the contrary, one is produced by the uttered signifiers, which are coming from the field of the Other, albeit in a divided way. It would also be a mistake to assume that the subject is identical to the produced signifier(s).<\/p>\n

The identification with a number of signifiers, coming from the Other, presents us with the ego<\/strong>. The subject, on the contrary, is never realised as such; it joins the pre-ontological status of the unconscious, the unborn, non-realised etc.<\/p>\n

In this sense, the Lacanian subject is exactly the opposite of the Cartesian one. In the formula ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’ Descartes concludes from his thinking that he has a being, whereas for Lacan, each time (conscious) thinking arises its being disappears under the signifier.<\/p>\n

This explains two basic characteristics of the Lacanian subject: it is always at an indeterminate place and it is essentially divided:
\n
\nAlienation consists in this vel, which - if you do not object to the word condemned, I will use it - condemns the subject to appearing only in that division which, it seems to me, I have just articulated sufficiently by saying that, if it appears on one side as meaning, produced by the signifier, it appears on the other as aphanisis.74<\/code><\/p>\n

Again, Lacan distances himself from any idea of substantiality.<\/p>\n

The subject is not an unconscious intention that will interrupt the normal conscious discourse.<\/p>\n

The interruption or division does not take place between a real or authentic part and a false, external one, but the split defines the subject as such. The subject is split from its real being and forever tossed between eventually contradicting signifiers coming from the Other.<\/p>\n

This rather pessimistic view confronts us with the issue of therapeutic and psychoanalytic possibilities.<\/p>\n

Paradoxical as this may seem, Lacan’s point of view is more optimistic than the Freudian one. Freud’s theory is by and large deterministic, whereas Lacan leaves an element of choice, albeit a ‘forced’ choice.<\/p>\n

It is this element that brings us to the second operation, separation, and to the theme of our final investigation: the goal of psychoanalytic treatment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Verhaeghe, Paul. “Causation and Destitution of a Pre-ontological Non-entity: On the Lacanian Subject.” Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Ed. Dany Nobus. 1999. 164-189 The important thing about the divided subject is that it has no essence, no ontological substance, but, on the contrary, comes down to a pre-ontological, indeterminate non-being which can only give rise … Continue reading “Verhaeghe pre-ontological cocktail”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,15,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sub-destitute","category-subjectivity","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10824"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13116,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10824\/revisions\/13116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}