{"id":13593,"date":"2018-08-08T16:36:52","date_gmt":"2018-08-08T20:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=13593"},"modified":"2018-08-08T18:42:17","modified_gmt":"2018-08-08T22:42:17","slug":"13593","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2018\/08\/08\/13593\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Questions ALENKA ZUPAN\u010cI\u010c"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alenka’s Answers<\/a><\/p>\n

I \u2013 As a philosopher, what is it that interests you in psychoanalysis, and why?<\/i><\/p>\n

Psychoanalysis is not simply a therapeutic practice.\u00a0\u00a0It is \u2013 perhaps above all \u2013 a stunning\u00a0conceptual invention <\/i>that made this new practice possible.\u00a0\u00a0In this sense, psychoanalysis is also something that \u201chappened\u201d to philosophy and that philosophy cannot remain indifferent to, as if nothing happened there.\u00a0\u00a0But this implies of course that \u2013 as Lacan put it somewhere –\u00a0\u00a0\u201cpsychoanalysis is not psychology\u201d<\/strong>.\u00a0\u00a0For me this means that psychoanalysis is not a regional science of human being, but concerns, and has something to say about, the very constitution of subjectivity, also in its profound philosophical sense.\u00a0\u00a0Lacan\u2019s \u201creturn to Freud\u201d involved an extremely serious engagement with philosophy, the whole history of philosophy, as a means of showing and conceptualizing what is so new, or different about Freud.\u00a0\u00a0Psychoanalysis is not simply a move \u201cbeyond\u201d philosophy; in many ways, philosophy itself has always been a move beyond (previous) philosophy\u2026<\/p>\n

But to answer your question more directly: my main interest in psychoanalysis relates to the way in which it allowed us to rethink and maintain the notion of the subject at the very moment when contemporary philosophy was ready do discard this concept as belonging to its metaphysical past.\u00a0\u00a0Instead of joining this adage, Lacan revolutionized the notion of the subject in \u2013 also \u2013 philosophically most interesting way.\u00a0\u00a0Subject is not simply an autonomous, free agent, but it is also not simply a mere effect of the structure as fully consistent in itself.\u00a0It is rather an effect of the gap in this structure, of its inherent inconsistency or incompleteness.\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0And this has important philosophical, ontological, as well as political consequences.\u00a0\u00a0For example, it is my strong conviction that there can be no (philosophical) materialism without the concept of the subject.\u00a0\u00a0This is also related to what is probably Lacan\u2019s most genuine and important conceptual invention, namely that of the \u201cobject small\u00a0a<\/i>\u201d: a singular kind of object, which is not the opposite of the subject, but rather the \u201cextimate\u201d kernel of the subject herself, something in the subject more than subject, something that the subject cannot recognize herself in\u2026.\u00a0\u00a0These concepts are absolutely relevant for philosophy.<\/p>\n

II \u2013 What is the most significant contribution that philosophy has made to psychoanalysis, at least from your personal approach to psychoanalysis?<\/i><\/p>\n

When Lacan brought philosophical discussion into the very heart of his psychoanalytic Seminar, a new and most interested space of thinking opened up, which was neither simply \u201cclinical\u201d nor \u201cphilosophical\u201d in the traditional sense.\u00a0\u00a0It went strongly against the established ways in both fields, and it also met with strong resistance in both fields.\u00a0\u00a0The resistance on the side of psychoanalytic establishment was probably even stronger.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, many young philosophers at that time thought there was something very interesting going on in Lacan\u2019s Seminar; they perceived it as a possible site of a genuine conceptual revolution.\u00a0This perception\/reception in itself already constituted a very important contribution that (contemporary) philosophy made to psychoanalysis.\u00a0\u00a0Of course, Lacan himself did go through a serious philosophical formation that allowed to formulate the gist of Freud\u2019s discovery in a philosophically interesting way, that is to say in a way that opened psychoanalysis up to something else than simply a destiny of being a \u201clocal (human) science\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0In other words, and to put it very bluntly, philosophy contributed a possibly universal scope to psychoanalytic theory, as well as the ability to perceive its ontological relevance.\u00a0\u00a0Psychoanalysis is not a new ontology, but it is also not without relation to ontology and ontological interrogations.\u00a0\u00a0And this gets completely lost when it is reduced merely to its therapeutic dimension.\u00a0\u00a0And I think this also applies to the very clinical configuration: the question of the end and ends of psychoanalysis as therapy is not itself a therapeutic question, but involves decisions that are both of ethical and political order, and that philosophy also allows to interrogate.\u00a0\u00a0Not to see these implications means that psychoanalysts become \u201corthopedists of the unconscious\u201d, as Lacan puts it in one of his witty formulations.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Important to stress here, however, is that philosophy is not a kind of necessary\u00a0supplement <\/i>to psychoanalysis.\u00a0\u00a0Ethics of psychoanalysis is not a philosophical question to be added to the clinical\u00a0savoir faire<\/i>, it is the intrinsical philosophical question of the clinics itself.\u00a0And so are many others.<\/p>\n

V \u2013 Nietzsche and Freud.\u00a0\u00a0Freud admitted having never really read Nietzsche, because he feared discovering that Nietzsche had already said everything essential that Freud himself thought he had said.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0How do you view the relation between Freud and Nietzsche?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Here I have a bit more complex theory of this relationship. There is, on the one hand, what owe can call a whole series of superficial resemblances.\u00a0\u00a0Nietzsche prized himself with his psychological insights about \u201cmen\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0These insights doubtlessly exist, and are proliferating, but they cannot be taken separately from Nietzsche\u2019s (new) ontology.\u00a0\u00a0To ask psychological questions and interrogate psychological motivations behind supposedly neutral philosophical claims is there to introduce a new series of philosophical claims and perspectives.\u00a0\u00a0Nietzsche is a philosopher from head to toes, and his notion of genealogy gave rise to some vital currents of contemporary philosophy \u2013 suffices to mention Foucault.\u00a0\u00a0But genealogy is not exactly psychoanalysis.\u00a0\u00a0And here, where resemblance seems to be the most obvious, the two are perhaps the furthest away.\u00a0\u00a0I think Freud sensed this, and was reluctant to go for the (too) obvious, he sensed that there was perhaps a slightly different kind of \u201crevolution\u201d at stake in these two projects.\u00a0\u00a0And there was.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Nietzsche comes close to psychoanalysis and its project often there where he is not practicing any kind of direct \u201cpsychology\u201d or genealogy: for example with his singular notion of temporality (eternal return not as cyclical time, but as repetition of a fundamental interruption, or of a \u201ctimeless moment\u201d) and of the kind of theory of the subject implied in this configuration, if we think it through\u2026<\/p>\n

VI \u2013 From its start, psychoanalysis\u2014including Fenichel, Bernfeld, Reich, Fromm, and others\u2014developed a Freudian-Marxist current among both analysts and philosophers, which still flourishes today.\u00a0How should we view today the relation amongst Marx, Marxists, and psychoanalysis?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

This is a very interesting and complex question.\u00a0\u00a0Freudo-Marxism (or \u201csexo-leftism\u201d, as Lacan used to call it) basically saw Marxism and psychoanalysis as supplementing (or complementing) each other, with psychoanalysis explaining, and eventually taking care of, the psychological causes of the perpetuation of power, exploitation and subordination.\u00a0\u00a0Its basic scheme is that oppression causes repression (in the sense of\u00a0Vedr\u00e4ngung<\/i>), which then causes further (social) oppression, and that one of the culturally, or socially, most acute site of oppression is sexuality.\u00a0\u00a0If we liberate it (also institutionally), we can interrupt this causality and bring about a more general social liberation.\u00a0\u00a0I\u2019m simplifying, but that\u2019s the basic presupposition nevertheless.\u00a0\u00a0Yet what Freud already saw, and Lacan made explicit, is that there is something wrong with this presupposition, so far as it maintains that all the \u201ctrouble with sex\u201d come from the outside it and are the result of oppression (regulation) imposed\u00a0on <\/i>sexuality.\u00a0\u00a0Instead, they claimed that there was something in sex which was inherently problematic, disrupting it from within, preventing a full or non-problematic satisfaction.\u00a0\u00a0The project of Freudian psychoanalysis is not sexual liberation, as leading to a waster social liberation.\u00a0\u00a0The unconscious is also not simply about all the things we repress (and why), but about how a certain dimension of repression is built in and comes with the symbolic order as such.\u00a0\u00a0This is why in psychoanalysis liberation does not simply mean liberation from oppression, but also the ability to handle and confront the points of structural impasse, which are also the main sources of oppression and further repression.\u00a0\u00a0In other words, if sex is repressed and regulated in many ways, it is not because it brings in a threat of some possibly unbridled enjoyment, but because it brings in and perpetuates a structural impasse\u2026<\/p>\n

This does of course not exhaust the question of the relation between Marx and Freud, which certainly exists and is most interesting.\u00a0\u00a0For example, and as Louis Althusser argued in his powerful essay \u201cOn Marx and Freud,\u201d one of the things Marxism and psychoanalysis have in common is that they are both conflictual sciences.\u00a0\u00a0They are both situated\u00a0within the conflict <\/i>that they theorize; they are themselves part of the very reality that they recognize as conflictual and antagonistic.\u00a0\u00a0In such a case the criterion of scientific objectivity is not a supposed neutrality, which is nothing other than a dissimulation (and hence the perpetuation) of the given antagonism, or of the point of real exploitation.\u00a0\u00a0In any social conflict, a \u201cneutral\u201d position is always and necessarily the position of the ruling class: it seems \u201cneutral\u201d because it has achieved the status of the dominant ideology, which always strikes us as self-evident.\u00a0\u00a0The criterion of objectivity in such a case is thus not neutrality, but the capacity of theory to occupy a singular, specific point of view within the situation.\u00a0\u00a0In this sense, the objectivity is linked here to the very capacity of being \u201cpartial\u201d or \u201cpartisan.\u201d As Althusser puts it: when dealing with a conflictual reality (which is the case for both Marxism and psychoanalysis) one cannot see everything from everywhere (on ne peut pas tout voir de partout<\/i>); some positions dissimulate this conflict, and some reveal it.\u00a0\u00a0One can thus discover the essence of this conflictual reality only by occupying certain positions, and not others, in this very conflict.\u00a0\u00a0Now my claim would be that that sex, or\u00a0the sexual<\/i>, is precisely such a \u201cposition,\u201d or point of view, in psychoanalysis.\u00a0\u00a0This is very different from saying that psychoanalysis takes sex to be the ultimate reality or truth of everything; no, sex is a privileged entry to the contradictions (antagonisms) which it forces us to see, to think, and to engage with.<\/p>\n

VII \u2013 Do you believe that psychoanalysis can be a useful tool for interpreting political and social phenomena and customs today? And especially for interpreting gender issues and sexual orientations debate? And if yes, in what way?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Yes, psychoanalysis can intervene in these debates in a productive way.\u00a0\u00a0Not at all so as to preach the traditional family ways and values, but also not so as to promote sexual orientation as a simple question of choice within liberal system of values.\u00a0\u00a0To say to people that they are \u201cfree to choose\u201d their sexuality and create their sexual identity is a very dubious line.\u00a0\u00a0For one thing is to question the pre-allocated symbolic roles and their cultural meanings and enforcement, and something else is to refuse to see the problematic core of sexuality as such.\u00a0\u00a0In other words: normative heterosexual sexuality is itself problematic and struggling with an impasse, which is precisely why it can feel so threatened by, say homosexuality. There is no sexuality that is simply non-problematic.\u00a0\u00a0Which is why the idea of \u201cliberation of sexuality\u201d is nowadays often replaced by the idea of \u201cliberation from sexuality\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Social discrimination and persecution (which certainly exist) of some forms of sexual orientation need to be understood against the background of the problematic character of sexuality as such.\u00a0\u00a0The ideology of the free market of sexual orientations covers up and perpetuates antagonisms involved in sexuality, and allows for their further exploitation.\u00a0\u00a0Sex is a matter of \u201cchoice\u201d on a very different level \u2013 say on the level that Kant would call the \u201ctranscendental choice of character\u201d, or that Lacan (after Freud) called the \u201cchoice of neurosis\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0It is not a choice that we make as (autonomous) subjects, but the choice through which we\u00a0become <\/i>subjects, as fundamentally subjects of this \u201cchoice\u201d, of this particular answer to the structural impasse.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

X \u2013 Do you find it important that psychoanalysis today confronts itself with biological knowledge (evolutionary sciences, neuroscience), and with science in general?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

Yes, of course, psychoanalysis cannot ignore this.\u00a0\u00a0Lacan interrogated the relationship between psychoanalysis and science all the time, he even claimed that the subject of the unconscious is the subject of modern (Galilean) science.\u00a0\u00a0In the same way it is not enough today to try to \u201ckeep up\u201d with recent developments in sciences, one also needs to keep interrogating this relationship.\u00a0\u00a0Which is why pointing out the similarities (or else dissimilarities) is not enough.\u00a0\u00a0Neuroscience is based on a whole set of presuppositions that it rarely questions, or which it doesn\u2019t want to know anything about.\u00a0\u00a0This does not prevent it from achieving amazing results, or making big advances, as we say.\u00a0\u00a0Psychoanalysis is sometimes seen (by psychoanalysts) as the guardian of our essential humanity which is more and more disappearing in the purely scientific approach to human beings. That is, it is seen as the guardian and keeper of that which escapes calculations, brain scans and scientific formulas.\u00a0\u00a0This is a rather traditional fear that science will erase or dispel the mystery that makes us interesting as humans.\u00a0\u00a0I think one has to reverse the perspective here: the problem is not simply that of the disappearing of opacity, but rather its massive creation somewhere else.\u00a0\u00a0There is certainly no lack of obscurantism around, starting with obscurantism that many scientists advocate and practice in their \u201cfree\u201d time, as if to compensate for their work-related rationality.\u00a0\u00a0The unconscious is far from disappearing, it is produced on a massive scale, although it takes some new forms.\u00a0\u00a0Psychoanalysis \u2013 at least in the way I understand and appreciate it –\u00a0\u00a0doesn\u2019t claim that\u00a0besides <\/i>reason and rationality we also possess other dimensions which need to be taken into account.\u00a0\u00a0Its fundamental and most revolutionary claim was that the reason itself is structured around an \u201cirrational\u201d core; that there is something \u201cirrational\u201d at the very heart of reason \u2013 which doesn\u2019t make it any less reason.<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0The thesis about the unconscious concerns our very rationality, and not something else besides, or on top of it.\u00a0There are some scientific theories which resonate with this, or point in a similar direction, but there is also a lot of rather na\u00efve scientism going on, supplementing itself with various forms of mysticism.<\/p>\n

To drop just one crazy idea: we are indeed nothing more than what a brain scan reveals, but rather something\u00a0less<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0Brain scans are supposed to make sense and to be (at least potentially) entirely mapable onto our individuality.\u00a0\u00a0But what if they aren\u2019t? What makes us subjects (of the unconscious) is perhaps not something which doesn\u2019t show on the brain scan, but rather something that shows only on the brain scan and cannot be mapped onto anything else\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alenka’s Answers I \u2013 As a philosopher, what is it that interests you in psychoanalysis, and why? Psychoanalysis is not simply a therapeutic practice.\u00a0\u00a0It is \u2013 perhaps above all \u2013 a stunning\u00a0conceptual invention that made this new practice possible.\u00a0\u00a0In this sense, psychoanalysis is also something that \u201chappened\u201d to philosophy and that philosophy cannot remain indifferent … Continue reading “12 Questions ALENKA ZUPAN\u010cI\u010c”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dia-mat","category-lacan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13593","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=13593"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13614,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13593\/revisions\/13614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}