{"id":6349,"date":"2010-02-08T18:11:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-08T23:11:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=6349"},"modified":"2012-02-06T13:38:04","modified_gmt":"2012-02-06T18:38:04","slug":"lacans-four-4-discourses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2010\/02\/08\/lacans-four-4-discourses\/","title":{"rendered":"***** Lacan’s four 4 discourses *****"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bracher, Mark. “On the Psychological and Social Functions of Language: Lacan’s Theory of the Four Discourses” Lacanian Theory of Discourse.<\/em> New York UP: New York. 1994. Mark Bracher, Marshall W. Alcorn et al. (eds) pp. 107-128.<\/p>\n

Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psycho- analysis<\/em>. Routledge: New York, 1996.<\/p>\n

Fink, Bruce. “Master Signifier and the Four Discourses.” Key Concepts in Lacanian Psychoanalysis<\/em>. Danny Nobus (ed), Rebus Press. 1998.<\/p>\n

Lacan’s 4 discourses stress the nature of intersubjectivity<\/strong>, that speech always implies another subject. Lacan identifies four possible types of social bond, four possible articulations of the symbolic network which regulates intersubjective relations<\/strong>. These ‘four discourses’ are the discourse of the master, the discourse of the university, the discourse of the hysteric, and the discourse of the analyst. Lacan represents each of the four discourses by an algorithm: each algorithm contains the following four algebraic symbols:<\/p>\n

S1 (Master Signifier)<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The force then \u2014psychological and social\u2014 of the articulated systems of knowledge derives from the systems’ positioning the subject at certain points within them and thus establishing a certain “identity” for the subject.<\/p>\n

These positionings entail a certain sense of identity (or ego), a certain jouissance<\/span>, and a certain structuring of the unconscious. The most significant factor in these positionings is the imposition of the trait unaire<\/span>, or singular characteristic. This singular characteristic is the earliest significance through which the child experiences itself \u2014as a result of significations attributed to it by the Other (mother, father, and ultimately society as large).<\/p>\n

This constitutes the subject\u2019s primary identification, and this primary identification continues throughout the subject\u2019s existence to exercise a decisive influence on the subject\u2019s desire, thought, perception, and behaviour. But the trait unaire<\/span> established by primary identification is supplemented and extended by various secondary identifications<\/span> that serve as its avatars. It is, in fact, only through these secondary identifications that the primary identification manifests itself. And these secondary identifications<\/span>, which are certain (usually collective) values or ideals, play a crucial role in discourse. They are what Lacan calls master signifiers, S1<\/span><\/p>\n

A master signifier<\/span> is any signifier that a subject has invested his or her identity in \u2014any signifier that the subject has identified with (or against) and that thus constitutes a powerful positive or negative value. Master signifiers<\/span> are thus the factors that give the articulated system of signifiers (S2)<\/span> \u2014 that is, knowledge, belief, language \u2014purchase on a subject: they are what make a message meaningful, what make it have an impact rather than being like a foreign language that one can\u2019t understand.<\/p>\n

Master signifiers<\/span> would include words like “God”, “Satan”, “sin” “heaven”, and “hell” in religious discourse and “American”, “freedom”, “democracy” and “communism” in political discourse. [Mark Bracher, 1994. 111]<\/p>\n

S2<\/span> (Knowledge)<\/p>\n

a<\/span> (The Plus-de-Jouir)<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>The Real<\/span><\/strong>, that which is simultaneously produced and excluded by the system of knowledge and its master signifiers<\/p>\n

When the divided subject $, arises inthe intervention of S1 in S2, another factor isproduced as well: the object a.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> (The barred subject)<\/p>\n

The subject split between the identity to which it is interpellated (S1<\/sub>) and the plus-de-jouir (a),<\/em> the jouissance<\/em> that it sacrifices in assuming that identity.<\/p>\n

What distinguishes the four discourses from one another is the positions of these four symbols. There are four positions in the algorithms of the four discorses, each of which is designated by a different name. Each discourse is defined by writing the four algebraic symbols in a different position. The symbols always remain in the same order, so each discourse is simple the result of rotating the symbols a quarter turn.<\/p>\n

Speaker \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Receiver<\/h3>\n

Agent<\/span> —–> Other
\n<\/span>Truth\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Production<\/h3>\n

Production: the enjoyment\/jouissance produced by discourse<\/p>\n

The left-hand positions<\/span> designate the factors active in the subject who is speaking or sending a message, and the right-hand positions<\/span> are occupied by the factors activated or elicited in the subject who receives the message.<\/p>\n

The top position on each side represents the overt or manifest factor<\/p>\n

The bottom position the covert, latent, implicit, or repressed factor — the factor that acts or occurs beneath the surface.<\/p>\n

More specifically, the top left position<\/span> is the place of agency or dominance<\/span>; it is occupied by the factor in a discourse that is most active and obvious. The bottom left position<\/span> is the place of (hidden) truth — that is, of the factor that supports, grounds, underwrites, and gives rise to the dominant factor, or constitutes the condition of its possibility, but is repressed by it.<\/p>\n

On the right, the side of the receiver<\/span>, the top position<\/span> is designated as that of the other,<\/strong> which is occupied by the factor in the receiving subject that is called into action by the dominant factor in the message. The activation of this factor is a prerequisite for receiving and understanding a given message or discourse. For example, if systematic knowledge is the dominant element of a discourse (occupying the top left position<\/span>), receivers, in order to understand this discourse, must (for a moment, at least) be receptive to a preconstituted knowledge, which means emptying themselves of any knowledge that might interfere with the knowledge in the discourse and becoming an amorphous, nonarticulated substance, a,<\/em><\/strong> to be articulated by the discourse. What is produced as a result of their allowing themselve to be thus interpellated by the dominant factor of a discourse is represented by the position of production<\/strong><\/span>, the bottom right<\/span>. (Bracher, 1994, 109).<\/p>\n

The Discourse of the Master<\/span><\/p>\n

S1<\/span> —> S2<\/span>
\n$\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 a<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u017di\u017eek, Slavoj\u00a0 Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle<\/em>. London: Verso, 2004.<\/p>\n

There is no reason to be dismissive of the discourse of the Master, to identify it too hastily with ‘authoritarian repression’: the Master’s gesture is the founding gesture of every social bond. Let us imagine a confused situation of social disintegration, in which the cohesive power of ideology has lost its efficiency: in such a situation, the Master would be the one who invented a new signifier, the famous ‘quilting point’, which again stablized the situation and made it readable; the University discourse, which would then elaborate the network of Knowledge which sustained this readability, would by definition presuppose and rely on the initial gesture of the Master. The Master adds no new positive content; he merely adds a signifier which suddenly turns disorder inot order — into ‘new harmony’ … Let us take as an example anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1920s: people felt disorientated, succumbing to an undeserved military defeat, an economic crisis which ate away at their life savings … and the Nazis provided a single agent which accounted for it all: the Jew, the Jewish plot. That is the magic of a Master: although there is nothing new at the level of positive content, ‘nothing is quite the same’ after he pronounces his Word (\u017d 138).<\/p>\n

The most salient feature: dominance of the master signifier S1<\/strong>. Upon reading or hearing such a discourse, one is forced, in order to understand the message, to accord full explanatory power and\/or moral authority to the proffered master signifiers and to refer all other signifiers (objects, concepts, or issues) back to these master signifiers. In doing this, the receiver of the message enacts the function of knowledge (S2). As a result of enacting this function, the receiver produces a plus-de-jouir that is, the suppressed (i.e., beneath the bar) excess of enjoyment<\/strong>, no longer to be enjoyed, for which there is no place in the system of knowledge or belief (S2) enacted by the receiver in response to the master’s S1. It is this a<\/span>, this plus-de-jouir, that carries the power of revolution, of subverting and disrupting the system of knowledge (S2) and its master signifiers (S1). (Bracher 1993, 121)<\/p>\n

[All attempts at totalization are doomed to failure. The discourse of the master ‘masks the division of the subject’ The master (S1) is the agent who puts the slave (S2) to work; the result of this work is a surplus (a) <\/strong><\/span>that the master attempts to appropriate. Dylan Evans 45]<\/span><\/p>\n

The discourse of the Master restricts this a<\/span>, the unsymbolized cause of desire, to the receiver (the slave, the one in the position of powerlessness), who has no voice (no legitimation of his or her own subjectivity).; The speaker, or master, is oblivious to the cause of his own desire (a)<\/span>and has even repressed his own self-division ($) The essence of the position of the master is to be castrated: a certain jouissance is forbidden to him. The speaker is totally oblivious, unaware of the reason for promulgating its master signifiers.<\/p>\n

Discourses that promote mastery, discourses that valorize and attempt to enact an autonomous, self-identical ego by instituting dominance of master signifiers (S1), which order knowledge (S2) according to their own values and keep fantasy ($\u2666a) in a subordinate and repressed position.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is only by confronting this lack in its relation to the cause of desire (a)<\/span> that the impetus behind S1 can be understood and, perhaps redirected, displaced. By interrogating the something of the subject that is left out by the master signifier, it becomes possible to reclaim that which has been suppressed and repressed and thus institute a new economy of both the psychological and the social structure. If one wants to be subversive, Lacan suggests, one might do worse that to approach “the hole from which the master signifier gushes”. (Bracher 121)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

All teaching begins as a discourse of mastery with the imposition of basic concepts of a discipline i.e., master signifiers that serve to ground and explain the procedure of a body of knowledge that constitutes the discipline. Medical teaching for example, consists of acts of reverence to terms considered sacred, that is master signifiers. Philosophy is a clear instance of the discourse of the Master. Philosophical works are ultimately nothing other than attempts to promote a certain way of speaking, to promote certain master signifiers.<\/p>\n

No discourse can operate without master signifiers, rather the question is what use we put the master signifiers to. My aim is to use these (Lacanian) master signifiers as means to promote change rather than as holy words with which we might baptize or consecrate certain phenomena and thereby ascend to some state of blessedness.<\/p>\n

Lacanian master signifiers and knowledge S1 and S2 like any others, as soon as they become the dominant factor in a discourse, constellate a discourse of the Master and a discourse of the University, respectively, unless subordinated to an alternative aim, which the discourse of the Analyst provides.<\/p>\n

From Paul Verhaeghe, Does the Woman Exist?<\/em> 1997, 1999 rev. ed.<\/p>\n

He (the master) is blind to his own truth, he cannot recognise this truth, because if he did he would fall from his position and cease to be master.\u00a0 108<\/p>\n

The Discourse of the University<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For centuries, knowledge has been pursued as a defense against truth. <\/em>Jacques Lacan<\/p>\n

S2<\/span> —> a<\/span>
\nS1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 $<\/p>\n

[The dominant position is occupied by knowledge. This illustrates the fact that behind all attempts to impart an apparently ‘neutral’ knowledge to the other can always be located an attempt at mastery (master of knowledge, and domination of the other to whom this knowledge is imparted). The discourse of the university represents the hegemony of knowledge, particularly visible in modernity in the form of hegemony of science. Evans 46]<\/p>\n

We begin our academic careers as students in the position of a <\/em><\/strong>receivers of the system of knowledge S2. Subjected in this position to a dominating totalized system of knowledge\/belief (S2), we are made to produce ourselves as (alienated) subjects ($) of this system.<\/p>\n

Our position as the a<\/strong> <\/em>simply continues the position we are born into. Before we learn to speak — and even before we are born — we occupy the position of the receiver of speech, and we do so in the form of the a<\/strong><\/em> as the as yet unassimilated piece of the Real that is the object of the desires of those around us, particularly our parents, for whom children often function as the object a <\/em><\/strong>that promises to compensate for the Other’s lack and thus fill the subject’s lack as well. As we have seen, our preverbal experience of ourselves and the world, mediated as it is by the actions and demeanor of our primary caretakers, is partially determined by the system of knowledge\/belief, or language, inhabited by them, and by the position they attribute to us within that system, speaking and thinking of us, as son or daughter, delicate or hearty, future beauty queen or athlete, etc. In the second instance it means that when we begin to understand language and to speak it, we must fashion our sense of ourselves (our identity) out of the subject positions made available by the signifiers (i.e., categories) of the System S2. (Bracher 115)<\/p>\n

This discursive structure and hence the totalizing and tyrannical effect of the S2 are not limited however to our infancy or to education. Bureaucracy is perhaps the purest form of the discourse of the University; it is nothing but knowledge — i.e., pure impersonal system: The System, and nothing else. No provision is made for individual subjects and their desires and idiosyncrasies. Individuals are to act, think and desire onlytin ways that function to enact reproduce, or extend The System. Bureaucracy thus functions to educate, in the root sense of that term: it forms particular types of subjects. (Bracher 1993, 55) (1994, 115)<\/p>\n

The kind of knowledge involved in the university discourse amounts to mere rationalization, in the most pejorative Freudian sense of the the term. We can imagine it, not as the kind of thought that tries to come to grips with the Real, <\/strong><\/span>to maintain the difficulties posed by apparent logical and\/or physical contradictions, but rather as a kind of encyclopaedic endeavour to exhaust a field. Working in the service of the master signifier, more or less any kind of argument will do, as long as it takes on the guise of reason and rationality (Fink 34).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Discourse of the Hysteric<\/span><\/strong> (from Bruce Fink)<\/span><\/p>\n

$<\/span> —> S1<\/span>
\na\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 S2<\/p>\n

In the hysteric’s discourse the split subject occupies the dominant position and addresses S1 calling it into question. Whereas the university discourse takes its cue from the master signifier, glossing over it with some sort of trumped-up system, the hysteric goes at the master and demands that he or she show his or her stuff,<\/span> prove his or her mettle by producing something serious by way of knowledge.<\/p>\n

The hysteric’s discourse is the exact opposite of the university discourse, all the positions reversed. The hysteric maintains the primacy of subjective division, the contradiction between conscious and unconscious, and thus the conflictual, or self-contradictory nature of desire itself.<\/p>\n

In the lower right-hand corner, we find knowledge S2. This position is also the one where Lacan situates jouissance, the enjoyment produced by a discourse, and he thus suggests here that an hysteric gets off on knowledge. Knowledge is perhaps eroticized to a greater extent in the hysteric’s discourse than elsewhere. In the master’s discourse, knowledge is prized only insofar as it can produce something else, only so long as it can be put to work for the master; yet knowledge itself remains inaccessible to the master. In the university discourse, knowledge is not so much an end in itself as that which justifies the academic’s very existence and activity. Hysteria thus provides a unique configuration with respect to knowledge, and I believe this is why Lacan finally identifies the discourse of science with that of hysteria (Fink 37).<\/p>\n

The hysteric pushes the master \u201dincarnated in a partner, teacher, or whomever\u201d to the point where he or she can find the master’s knowledge lacking<\/span>. Either the master does not have an explanation for everything, or his or her reasoning does not hold water. In addressing the master, the hysteric demands that he or she produce knowledge and then goes on to disprove his or her theories. Historically speaking, hysterics have been a true motor force behind the medical, psychiatric, and psychoanalytic elaboration of theories concerning hysteria. Hysterics led Freud to develop psychoanalytic theory and practice, all the while proving to him in his consulting room the inadequacy of his knowledge and know-how.<\/p>\n

Hysterics, like good scientists, do not set out to desperately explain everything with the knowledge they already have \u201dthat is the job of the systematizer or even the encyclopedaedist\u201d nor do they take for granted that all the solutions will be someday forthcoming. … In the hysteric’s discourse, object (a)<\/strong><\/em> the Real<\/strong> <\/span>appears in the position of truth. That means that the truth of the hysteric’s discourse, its hidden motor force, is the Real<\/strong><\/span>. Physics too, when carried out in a truly scientific spirit, is ordained and commanded by the real, that is to say by that which does not work, by that which does not fit<\/strong>. It does not set out to carefully cover over paradoxes and contradictions, in an attempt to prove that the theory is nowhere lacking\u201d that it works in every instance\u201d but rather to take such paradoxes and contradictions as far as they can go<\/strong> (Fink 37).<\/span><\/p>\n

The Discourse of the Analyst<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

a<\/span> —> $<\/span>
\nS2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 S1<\/p>\n

The discourse of the analyst is produced by a quarter turn of the discourse of the hysteric (in the same way as Freud developed psychoanalysis by giving an interpretive turn to the discourse of his hysterical patients.) The position of the agent, which is the position occupied by the analyst in the treatment, is occupied by objet petite a<\/span> this illustrates the fact that the analyst must, in the course of treatment, become the cause of the analysand’s desire<\/span>. The fact that this discourse is the inverse of the discourse of the master emphasises that, for Lacan, psychoanalysis is an essentially subversive practice which undermines all attempts at domination and mastery.<\/p>\n

The analyst plays the part of pure desirousness (pure desiring subject), and interrogates the subject in his or her division, precisely at those points where the split between conscious and unconscious shows through: slips of the tongue, bungled and unintended acts, slurred speech, dreams, etc. In this way, the analyst sets the patient to work, to associate, and the product of that laborious association is a new master signifier<\/span>. The patient in a sense ‘coughs up’ a master signifier that has not yet been brought into relation with any other signifier.<\/span><\/p>\n

As it appears concretely in the analytic situation, a master signifier presents itself as a dead end, a stopping point, a term, word, or phrase that puts an end to association, that grinds the patient’s discourse to a halt. It could be a proper name (the patient’s or the analyst’s), a reference to the death of a loved one, the name of a disease (AIDS, cancer, psoriasis, blindness), or a variety of other things. The task of analysis is to bring such master signifiers into relation with other signifiers, that is, to dialecticize the master signifiers it produces.<\/span> That involves reliance upon the master’s discourse … recourse to the fundamental structure of signification: a link must be established between each master signifier and a binary signifier such that subjectification takes place<\/span>. The symptom itself may present itself a s a master signifier; in fact, as anlysis proceeds and as more and more aspects of a person’s are taken as symptoms, each symptomatic activity or pain may present itself in the analytic work as a word or phrase that simply is, that seems to signify nothing to the subject. Lacan refers to S1 in the analyst’s discourse as la betise<\/em> <\/span>(stupidity or ‘funny business’), a reference back to the case of Little Hans who refers to his whole horse phobia as la betise<\/em>. It is a piece of nonsense produced by the analytic process itself.<\/p>\n

S2<\/strong> appears in analytic discourse in the place of truth (lower left-hand position). S2<\/strong> represents knowledge here, but obviously not the kind of knowledge that occupies the dominant position in the university discourse. The knowledge in question here is unconscious knowledge, that knowledge that is caught up in the signifying chain and has yet to be subjectified<\/strong>. <\/span>Where that knowledge was, the subject must come to be.<\/span> <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now according to Lacan, while the analyst adopts the analytic discourse, the analysand is inevitably, in the course of analysis, hystericized. The analysand, regardless of his or her clinical structure — whether phobic, perverse, or obsessive compulsive — is backed into the hysteric’s discourse<\/span>. Why is that? Because the analyst puts the subject as divided, as self-contradictory, on the firing line, so to speak. The analyst does not question the obsessive neurotic’s theories about Dostoevsky’s poetics, for example, attempting to show the neurotic where his or her intellectual views are inconsistent. Such an obsessive may attempt to speak during his or her analytic sessions from the position of S2<\/strong>, in the university (academic) discourse, but to engage the analysand at that level allows the analysand to maintain that particular stance. Instead, the analyst, ignoring, we can imagine, the whole of a half-hour long critique of Bakhtin’s veiws on Dostoevsky’s dialogic style, may focus on the slightest slip of the tongue or ambiguity in the analysand’s speech — the analysand’s use, for example, of the graphic metaphor ‘near misses’ to describe her bad timing in the publishing of her article on Bakhtin, when the analyst knows that this analysand had fled her country of origin shortly after rejecting an unexpected an unwanted marriage proposal (‘near Mrs.’).<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus the analyst, by pointing to the fact that the analysand is not master of his or her own discourse, instates the analysand as divided between conscious speaking subject and some other (subject) speaking at the same time through the same mouthpiece, as agent of a discourse wherein the S1s produced in the course of analysis are interrogated and made to yield their links with S2 (as in the hysteric’s discourse). Clearly the motor force of the process is object (a)<\/strong>— the analyst operating as pure desirousness.<\/p>\n

What does it mean concretely for the analyst to occupy the position of object (a) <\/strong>for an analysand, the position of cause of the analysand’s desire? <\/span> Many analysands tend, at an early stage of analysis, to thrust responsibility for slips and slurs onto the analyst. As one patient said to her therapist, ‘You’re the one who always sees dark and dirty things in everything I say!’ At the outset, analysands often see no more in a slip than a simple problem regarding the control of the tongue muscles or a slight inattention. The analyst is the one who attributes some Other meaning to it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As time goes on, however, analysands themselves begin to attribute meaning to such slips, and the analyst, rather than standing in for the unconscious, for that strange Other discourse, is viewed by the analysand as its cause: ‘I had a dream last night because I knew I was coming in to see you this morning.’ In such a statement, very often heard in analysis, the analyst is case in the role of the cause of the analysand’s dream: ‘I wouldn’t have had such a dream were it not for you.’ ‘The dream was for you.’ You were in my dream last night.’ Unconscious formations, such as dreams, fantasies, and slips, are produced for the analyst, to be recounted to the analyst, to tell the analyst something. <\/span>The analyst, in that sense, is behind, is the reason for their production, is, in a word, their cause.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When the analyst is viewed as an other like the analysand, the analyst can be considered an imaginary object or other for the analysand. When the analyst is viewed as a judge or parent, the analyst can be considered a sort of symbolic object or Other for the analysand. When the analyst is viewed as the cause of the analysand’s unconscious formations, the analyst can be considered a ‘real’ object, object (a)<\/strong> for the analysand.<\/p>\n

Once the analyst has manoeuvred in such a way that he or she is placed in the position of cause by the analysand (cause of the analysand’s dreams and of the wishes they fulfil — in short, cause of the analysand’s desire), certain manifestation of the analysand’s transference love or ‘positive transference,’ typically associated with the early stages of analysis, may well subside, giving way to something far less ‘positive’ in coloration. The analysand may begin to express his or her sense that the analyst is ‘under my skin,’ like an irritant. Analysands who seemed to be comfortable or at ease during their sessions at the outset (by no means the majority however) may well display or express discomfort, tension, and even signs that they are rebelling against the new configuration, the new role the analyst is taking on in their lives and fantasies. The analyst is becoming too important, is showing up in their daydreams, in their masturbation fantasies, in their relationships with the significant other and so on.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lacan considers this to be the ARCHIMEDEAN POINT OF ANALYSIS<\/span>, that is the very point at which the analyst can apply the lever that can move the symptom.<\/p>\n

The analyst in the position of cause <\/em><\/strong>of desire for the analysand is, according to Lacan, THE MOTOR FORCE OF ANALYSIS; in other words, it is the position the analyst must occupy in order for tranference to lead to something other than identification with the analyst as the endpoint of an analysis (identification with the analyst being considered the goal of analysis by certain psychoanalysts).<\/p>\n

‘Negative transference’ is by no means the essential sign indicating that the analysand has come to situate the analyst as cause of desire; it is but one possible manifestation of the latter. Nevertheless, the attempt by therapists of many ilks to avoid or immediately neutralize any emergence of negative transference … means that aggression and anger are turned into feelings which are inappropriate for the analysand to project onto the therapist … Patients thereby learn not to express them in therapy … thereby defusing the intensity of the feeling and possible therapeutic uses of the projection. Anger and aggression are thus never worked out with the therapist, but rather examined ‘rationally.’ … It is only by making psychical conflicts — such as aggression against one’s parent or hatred of a family member — present <\/strong>in the relationship with the analyst that the patient can work them through. To work them through means not that they are intellectually viewed and processed,’ but rather that the internal libidinal conflict which is holding a symptomatic relationship to someone in place must be allowed to repeat itself in the relationship with the analyst and play itself out. If verbalization (putting things into words) is the only technique allowed the analysand, a true separation from the analyst and from analysis never occurs. Projection must be allowed to go so far as to bring out all the essential aspects of a conflict-ridden relationship, all the relevant recollections and dynamics, and the full strength of the positive\/negative affect. It should be recalled that one of the earliest lessons of Freud and Breuer’s Studies on Hysteria<\/em> was that verbalizing traumatic events without reliving the accompanying affect left the symptom intact.<\/p>\n

Transference, viewed as the transference of affect <\/strong>(evoked in the past by people and events) in the here and now of the analytic setting, means that the analysand must be able to project onto the analyst a whole series of emotions felt in relation to significant figures from his or her past and present. <\/span> If the analyst is concerned with ‘being himself’ or being herself’ or with being the ‘good father’ or ‘good mother’ he or she is likely to try ot immediately distance him or herself from the role in which the analysand is casting him or her, by saying something like, ‘I am not your father’ or ‘You are projecting.’ The message conveyed by such a statement is, ‘Don’t confuse me with him’ or ‘It is not appropriate to project.’ But the analyst would do better to neither encourage or discourage the case of mistaken identity that arises through the transfer of feeling, and to let the projection of different personas occur as it will<\/span> — unless, of course, it goes so far as to jeopardize the very continuation of the therapy.<\/p>\n

Rather than interpreting the fact<\/em> of transference, rather than pointing out to the analysand that he or she is projecting or transferring something onto the analyst, the analyst should direct attention to the content<\/strong><\/em> (the ideational and affective content) of the projection, attempting to get the analysand to put it<\/em><\/strong> into words. Not to dissipate it or prohibit it, not to make the analysand feel guilty about it, but to speak it. Here the analyst works — often more by asking questions than by interpreting — to re-establish the connections between the content (thought and feeling) and the persons, situation, and relationships that initially gave rise to it.<\/p>\n

Just as one should interpret not the fact of transference but rather its content, one should avoid interpreting ‘resistance,’ transference being but one manifestation of resistance. Resistance, rather than being nothing more than an ego defense, is in Lacan’s view, structural, arising because the real resists symbolization; when the analysand’s experience resists being put into words, he or she grabs onto, digs into, or takes it out on the only other person present: the analyst. Transference is thus a direct product of resistance, of the resistance the real (e.g. trauma) erects against its symbolization, against being spoken<\/span>. … Of course the analysand resists — that is a given, a structural necessity. Interpretation must aim at the traumatic event or experience that is resisting verbalization, not the mere fact of resistance (Fink 43-45).<\/p>\n

Fink, Bruce. “Master Signifier and the Four Discourses.” Key Concepts in Lacanian Psychoanalysis<\/em>. Danny Nobus (ed), Rebus Press. 1998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bracher, Mark. “On the Psychological and Social Functions of Language: Lacan’s Theory of the Four Discourses” Lacanian Theory of Discourse. New York UP: New York. 1994. Mark Bracher, Marshall W. Alcorn et al. (eds) pp. 107-128. Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psycho- analysis. Routledge: New York, 1996. Fink, Bruce. “Master Signifier and the … Continue reading “***** Lacan’s four 4 discourses *****”<\/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":[124,83,24,72,15,118,20],"tags":[109],"class_list":["post-6349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-discourses","category-agency","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-subjectivity","category-symbolic","category-zizek","tag-whoa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6349","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=6349"}],"version-history":[{"count":40,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6349\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6726,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6349\/revisions\/6726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}