Lacan and Psychoanalysis: A Conversation between Andrew Stein and James Luchte, Part 2

Part 2: Conversation on Andrew Stein’s ‘Of the Difference between Freud-Lacan and Jung’

Andrew Stein

The goal then to overcome or heal an original break between subject and object, “I” and “Thou”, partial objects and an identification with a imago of the whole mother etc is the opposite of the goal set forth in psychoanalysis. It is a complete reverse (inversion) of the Freudian and Lacanian attitude (towards intersubjectivity and the cure). There the focus is neither on an original wholeness that has been lost (via alienation) or that is achieved in the first years via the integration of the child’s partial objects but on an original and impossible lack right from the beginning when the subject emerges via language in the (field of) the Other’s desire. Psychoanalysis as Freud and Lacan conceived it is not a return to an original or ideal Mitsein or a Tikkun. Rather, the subject of the unconscious has to separate itself and its own desire from the desire of the Other which at first defines its limits and subjugates it, because a subject is born in language and because it depends on the desires of a (mostly unknowable) Other.

Thus, Jung who views the aim of analysis not as being ‘separation’ but what he call ‘individuation’ (which is not individuation at all but the integration of the unconscious archetypes, a union of sexual (anima and animus) opposites), is in a long tradition that reduces the gap (of difference and desire) which psychoanalysis opens to either an original philosophic or religious ‘intersubjectivity’. This is a ‘secret’ knot binding such apparently dissimilar psychologies as Jung’s and Sartre’s to the same imaginary (ideal ego); for existential psychoanalysis, which will emerge at approximately the same moment as Jungian psychology, also postulates ‘the identity of the doctor-patient relation and an originary being-for-others, an originary Mit-sein, an originary intersubjectivity.’ (Warren Montag, ‘Althusser and His Contemporaries’, Philosophy’s Perpetual War, Duke University Press, 2013)

Andrew Stein

September 25, 2014

James Luchte

James Luchte: Is an identification with the imago of the mother not just the Oedipus Complex fulfilled?

Andrew Stein: No, the Oedipal complex is what allows a gap or space to open between an identification with the Mother; this gap is originally via a prohibition– a no, you must not desire this, etc. Psychosis happens when the Name of the Father (and the Oedipal complex) is foreclosed by the subject.

James Luchte: Sorry, that is what I meant by fulfilled – that the father is rejected and it is the mother which determines identification. Fulfilled in the sense that the desire for the mother is not prohibited.

To read the rest of the conversation, please visit Lacan and Psychoanalysis: A Conversation Between Andre Stein and James Luchte (Scroll to Part 2)

Lacan and Psychoanalysis: A Conversation between Andrew Stein and James Luchte

James Luchte

Andrew Stein

The following piece is a conversation between psychoanalyst Andrew Stein and philosopher James Luchte on Lacan and psychoanalysis that took place on 22 May 2014.

The conversation was prompted by an invitation by James Luchte to Andrew Stein to comment on his article, ‘Fatal Repetition: Badiou and the Age of the Poets, with an Appendix: A Psychoanalysis of Alain Badiou.’

To read the conversation, please visit Lacan and Psychoanalysis: A Conversation between Andrew Stein and James Luchte

Appendix: A Psychoanalysis of Alain Badiou

This piece is an ‘Appendix: A Psychoanalysis of Alain Badiou’ to my essay ‘Fatal Repetition: Badiou and the Age of the Poets‘, but though it still remains linked to the essay, I believe that it deserves attention on its own as an exploration into the phenomenon of Alain Badiou and as an invitation to a discussion about Alain Badiou, his relation to Lacan, Surrealism, and Poststructuralism.

Appendix: A Psychoanalysis of Alain Badiou

This current deconstruction of Badiou should be taken, along with the myriad other implications of its criticisms of Badiou, in a political sense as a critique of the credibility of his approach to Marx with respect to the derivative and rather conservative advocacy in his philosophy.  In the press, from which he originally emerged as a host of a television programme, he takes often radical and I would argue worthwhile stands.  But, then, there is his philosophy and the particular psychoanalytic obsession that underlies his thought.  This would seem fair game as he has overtly confessed his discipleship to Lacan.  But, what is this psycho-analytic image that underlies his thought, in the sense in which Wittgenstein felt lay below Heidegger?  

To read the rest of the Appendix, please visit  Appendix: ‘A Psychoanalysis of Alain Badiou’