Bailly, Lionel. Lacan: A Beginner\u2019s Guide. Oxford: One World, 2009.<\/p>\n
Phallic Jouissance<\/strong><\/p>\n Before the infant accesses the paternal metaphor, it supposes that the mother is there entirely for its satisfaction, and it en joys this mother-object, who is the whole and highly satisfactory world to it; at the same time, it has identified the mother as the representative of Other \u2013 the Omnipotent and Omniscient \u2013 and itself with her. Its identification with her at this stage is so intense that it experiences her as the powerful part of itself. Lacan described the infant\u2019s psychological position at this point as being in \u2018la jouissance de l\u2019Autre\u2019<\/strong> (the enjoyment of the Other, Otherly enjoyment) … the Other referred to is a proto-Symbolic Other, as the child has not clearly situated it outside its dyadic relationship. Furthermore, the child\u2019s enjoyment of this other is based upon its fantasy of omnipotence as conferred by its identification with the mother \u2013 an untenable albeit attractive state. 121<\/p>\n L\u2019Autre jouissance<\/strong> is what can be observed in babies and small children; echoes of it remain in all of us. The infant is entirely sensualist and self-centred in its \u2018Otherly\u2019 enjoyment, it believes the objective world to be designed for its satisfaction, and that its will reigns supreme. However, at some point, this fantasy will be severely curtailed by the submission to the paternal metaphor and the infant\u2019s entry into the Symbolic realm, in which it learns to take a different form of enjoyment \u2013 la jouissance phallique<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n When a child begins to function well in the Symbolic realm \u2013 the realm of language, laws and all the social constructs that arise from these \u2013 it is the access to Phallic enjoyment that allows it to learn to read; to take pleasure in structured games in which there are rules (as opposed to purely physical play); to be able to include more and more elements of the real world in its imaginary games; to appreciate humour in which the joke consists in overturning rules of language or society<\/span>; and to understand puns and clever rhymes where an appreciation of the underlying rule is necessary for the thing to work. The child as this stage will become interested in learning, and will start to develop its grown-up theories of the universe. All these things are manifestation of its Phallic enjoyment. But what is the impetus for the child to enter into Phallic enjoyment? Why should its symbolic castration<\/strong> make it go down this route? The answers to these questions are at the heart of the building of the Subject and its ego, and in them one may find the status of desire in the formation of the Subject. 122<\/p>\n The absences or \u2018disobedience\u2019 to the child of the mother (who is busy pursuing her own desire) are the cause of great anxiety and rage in the child: still relatively helpless, its fantasies of omnipotence (when mother is there and attentive) are damaged by the reality of its impotence (when she is not, or refuses it what it wants). The supposition that the mother is seeking the Phallus in her absence, or obeying its dictates when she goes against the will of the child, makes it the ultimate object of desire for the child, by this sequence of unarticulated thoughts:<\/span><\/p>\n –\tIt must be a wonderful thing if she spends so much time on it \u2013 it must be desirable in itself; also, it must be a powerful thing if she must obey it, even more powerful than she is \u2013 the child\u2019s desire forms around the Phallus<\/em><\/p>\n – Maybe if I can get it, then she will want to be with me and I will not have to face her absences and I will get whatever I want \u2013 the Phallus as an attainable object and a defence against anxiety.<\/em><\/p>\n After it has formulated in the imaginary the hypothesis of the Phallus, the child may, for a period, cling to the hope that it has the Phallus (which is proven by the mother\u2019s presence), but if castration<\/strong> is successful and complete, then it relocates the Phallus in association with (hidden beneath) the Name-of-the-Father, in an act of symbolisation. Then, in accepting its barred (castrated) state ($), the child begins to seek the lost Phallus, which is now attachable to all manner of signifiers, in the exterior world (in its object relations, in the jargon of psychoanalysis). <\/strong>123<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n As we have seen, the acceptance of the paternal metaphor is a way out of the impasse of its real impotence in the face of Mother\u2019s absence or disobedience, and for two additional reasons: because the Phallus is relocated \u2018elsewhere\u2019 as a lost object, it or something of it is retrievable again; and because one may aspire, in identifying with the Name-of-the-Father, to gaining it.<\/span> Because the Name-of-the-Father is a signifier, it is infinitely replaceable with others; the Phallus is an idea of the ultimate object of desire, attached to a representation that is in the unconscious but is also replaceable.<\/p>\n What the child supposes the Phallus<\/strong> to be for its mother will depend upon her real desires: a mother who is highly sociable and constantly in company may have a child who thinks that the object of her desire is contained in the concept of \u2018sociability\u2019 or \u2018popularity\u2019; a mother who is a piano teacher and whose object of desire seems to be enshrined in the ability to play the piano may have a child who, in his quest for the Phallus, becomes a concert pianist.<\/span><\/p>\n The desire to possess the Phallus is the motor behind much of human activity, which keeps at bay the anxiety that arises out of the acceptance of one\u2019s lack of it.<\/strong> 124<\/p>\n Castration<\/strong> brings with it a new psychological need \u2013 that of possessing the Phallus, the metaphorical object of desire which will ensure the Subject\u2019s own desirability; the Phallus now serves as the new object of the libidinal drive, whose organs of expression are not only the genitalia but also the intellect. There is just as much, if not greater jouissance in the functioning of the mind than in the functioning of any other bodily part. The ability to cross the bar of metaphor, to operate in the symbolic realm \u2013 to conceptualise, to analyse, and to rationalise \u2013 are all libidinal functions, which entail enjoyment of the mere functioning of the intellect. 124 … Phallic enjoyment is every bit as powerful component of desire as that related to a bodily function; as Lacan rather pithily said: \u201cI am not fucking, I am talking to you. Well! I can have exactly the same satisfaction as if I were fucking. That\u2019s all it means.\u201d<\/p>\n The mother is not the only embodiment of the Other for the child (indeed, if she remains this way, the result is psychosis, as we have already seen).<\/p>\n The Other \u2013 the symbolised mental universe \u2013 is different for everyone: every small other has an Other<\/strong>. The child soon comes into contact with other Others \u2013 that of its father and a little later, those of its peers. With each new Other that is encountered, the desire of this Other is transmitted in language; thus, as she\/he grows up, the individual\u2019s desire becomes moulded by the desire of the many Others the Subject has identified with. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Lacan suggests that in these secondary identification, the \u2018influence\u2019 exerted by the others upon the Subject is that of a structuring (or restructuring) of desire, which passes through the medium of signifiers: \u2018It does not involve the assumption by the subject of the other\u2019s insignia, but rather the condition that the subject find the constitutive structure of his desire in the same gap opened up by the effect of signifiers in those who come to represent the Other for him, insofar as his demand is subjected to them.\u2019 The individual Subject is thus formed by the complex interplay of many different identifications, as well as other environmental factors; so too is its desire.<\/strong> 127<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bailly, Lionel. Lacan: A Beginner\u2019s Guide. Oxford: One World, 2009. Phallic Jouissance Before the infant accesses the paternal metaphor, it supposes that the mother is there entirely for its satisfaction, and it en joys this mother-object, who is the whole and highly satisfactory world to it; at the same time, it has identified the mother … Continue reading “phallic identification”<\/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":[12,21,24,72,96,118,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy","category-jouissance","category-lacan","category-objet-a","category-phallus-butler","category-symbolic","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564","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=7564"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7586,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7564\/revisions\/7586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}