{"id":7926,"date":"2011-05-12T09:09:23","date_gmt":"2011-05-12T14:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/?p=7926"},"modified":"2011-05-12T16:09:58","modified_gmt":"2011-05-12T21:09:58","slug":"7926","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/2011\/05\/12\/7926\/","title":{"rendered":"psychopedagogy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cho, Daniel. Psychopedagogy.<\/em> London: Ashgate, 2009.<\/p>\n

The force that keeps the unconscious from being heard is the imaginary relation that the analysand constructs between their ego and the analyst\u2019s. To state it differently, the analysand enters into a mirror-relation with the analyst\u2019s ego. The analysand identifies with the analyst by grasping onto the ways they are similar. In a way, the analysand is saying to the analysts, \u201cYou are like me!\u201d The analysand will even go so far as to be alienated by the analyst\u2019s ego: \u201cAfter all,\u201d as the analysand seems to say, \u201cthe analyst is the trained professional, the expert.\u201d By regarding the analyst as a mirror-image of one\u2019s self results in attempts to master that image, the analyst. Returning for a moment to Dora \u2013 all of her resistance stems from her desire for mastery over Freud, which means the ego is at the bottom of the conflict. Dora is trying to maintain the integrity of her ego by mastering the image qua Freud.<\/p>\n

For the unconscious to be heard, the ego must be muted.<\/span> But one does not mute the ego by debasing, insulting, or shaming it; for indeed the ego will simply redouble itself against such efforts at traumatisation. Rather one disarms the ego by breaking the imaginary identification that alienates the analysand`s subjectivity in the analyst`s, that is, by causing separation. For this reason, Lacan says that the analyst must be \u2018not a living mirror, but an empty mirror\u2019 (SII 246). The analyst must be a mirror that reflects an empty image, that is, an image with which the patient cannot identify. The analyst does so by functioning as object a<\/span>, that obscure object which sullies a perfect picture. And the analyst functions this way by speaking on behalf of the unconscious \u2013 the true subject of psychoanalysis. 42<\/p>\n

Thus the lesson of the Ratman: we always possess more knowledge than we should like to admit \u2013 sometimes more than we ourselves are consciously aware. Learning therefore does not always mean acquiring absolutely new knowledge; it sometimes requires relearning the traumatic knowledge we do \u201cnot-want-to-know\u201d but possess all the same.<\/span> 81<\/p>\n

Class consciousness is thus the knowledge of the mode of production contained, or as Lukacs has it, \u201cimputed,\u201d to a particular structural class position within the total system, its thrust is that it places knowledge on the side of the system itself. It no longer much matters what individuals actually think or know about the system. The system functions regardless; and by functioning, the system literally \u201cthinks\u201d the appropriate thoughts for the individuals. For example, the individual worker need not imagine extracting living labor power from the body in order to sell it as a commodity on the market in order for capitalism to function. This knowledge \u2013 that is, of classes and their particular functions \u2013 is possessed by the system of capital production itself, and as it operates, the system literally thinks about the extraction, sale, and consumption of labor power so that the individual does not have to<\/span>. In other words, while empirical individuals may not care about the economy or politics, the economy and politics care about empirical individuals. Class consciousness, in other words, on Lukacs\u2019s account, exists on a similar formal level as does the psychoanalytic unconscious<\/span>. 84<\/p>\n

But as suggestive and provocative Lukacs\u2019s unadulterated Marxian variation on consciousness may be, even he does not take into account the various resistances, in the psychoanalytic sense of the word, individuals will produce in order not to know the traumatic knowledge yielded by certain standpoints. We must therefore follow through with the
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as Lukacs correlates class consciousness to the system itself, effectively rubbing out the individual\u2019s relevance, so Lacan and psychoanalysis also correlate the unconscious to a kind of nonindividual subject: \u201cif there is an image which could represent for us the Freudian notion of the unconscious, it is indeed that of the acephalic subject<\/span>, of a subject who no longer has an ego, who doesn\u2019t belong to the ego\u201d (S II: 167).<\/span><\/p>\n

Lacan describes his notion of the subject as acephalic (that is, headless) because its thought is no longer tided to the consciousness of the ego but is now taken over by the unconscious itself. Because of its ties to the ego, consciousness is considered by Lacan as an obstacle or resistance to the knowledge of the unconscious. In dividing thought and being between the unconscious and the subject, Lacan introduces a fundamental division into his variation on the subject, that is to say, the Lacanian subject is a split-subject <\/span>, which he conveys in his nomenclature: $. 87<\/p>\n

Lukacs, similarly, introduces a split into the subject of the proletariat with class consciousness, as we saw, on the side of the system itself, separated from the individual\u2019s being. In both Lukacs and Lacan, the acephalic subject<\/span> becomes the image to which we must hold on.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The overcoming of the ego leaves a clearing in which the subject of the unconscious can emerge. This is why, for Lacan, the subject can only be described negatively. Only when conscious thought or positive identity (i.e., I am a man, I am a teacher, I am able-bodied, etc.) \u2013 in short, the ego \u2013 is subtracted from individuals, that is, only when they are transformed into the negativity that is the Lacanian subject, can they learn the unconscious.<\/span> 87<\/p>\n

If class consciousness corresponds to the unconscious in that they are both forms of repressed knowledge, then trauma would be the sign of class consciousness\u2019s emergence<\/span>. Therefore the criticism that Marx issues his political economist contemporaries on the basis of their not having learned the miserable truth of capitalist accumulation is a bit off the mark. For Marx grants them too much benefit of the doubt. More correct would have been to make the psychoanalytic critique, namely, that the bourgeois political economists knew this truth quite well but nonetheless did \u201cnot want to know\u201d about it. They felt the trauma of capitalism and attempted to rationalize it away. 88<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cho, Daniel. Psychopedagogy. London: Ashgate, 2009. The force that keeps the unconscious from being heard is the imaginary relation that the analysand constructs between their ego and the analyst\u2019s. To state it differently, the analysand enters into a mirror-relation with the analyst\u2019s ego. The analysand identifies with the analyst by grasping onto the ways they … Continue reading “psychopedagogy”<\/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":[111,12,39,99,24,40,144,72,90,15,118,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desire","category-fantasy","category-ideology","category-interpellation","category-lacan","category-lack","category-marx","category-objet-a","category-resistance","category-subjectivity","category-symbolic","category-the-real"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7926","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=7926"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7936,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7926\/revisions\/7936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.terada.ca\/discourse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}