We have alluded more than once to the operation called the paternal metaphor, which, needless to say, takes place behind the subject’s back, as the subject only suffers its effects. The effects are double: on the one hand she represents the phallus for her mother, and on the other, since she merely represents it, she isn’t the phallus. Thus she is at the same moment both crowned her majesty the baby, and demoted. You may ask, wherein lies this symbolic castration?
In fact, the subject is demoted by symbolic castration from the very beginning, a demotion that assigns her the task of assuming a particular kind of lack, which manifests itself on the imaginary level as an insufficiency that marks her mirror image. At the same time desire has only two faces; with one face it is the law and with the other it is transgression. Here you may say that the subject lies in this lack itself,1 she is this lack, the phallus, which Lacan symbolizes by -φ.
The phallus (or -φ) is an unconscious signifier, but the fact of naming it won’t capture its workings as an unconscious signifier. In fact even the pregenital objects function in our experience as phallic objects, which is why we talk of the phallic breast and the phallic feces. Here we may measure how far we are from any biological conception of the object, or in other words how far we are from the conception, according to which development consists in the integration of the so-called partial objects, which are destined to be synthesized into what’s called the formation of the total object, that is, the genital object. This latter conception is plainly contrary to what Freud frequently repeats, that desire finds its satisfaction in the field of hallucination, which amounts to saying that desire goes against the construction of reality.
Lacan approached the question of the object of desire, named the obj. a, from several points of view. We may begin with the remark that language contains what is called a shifter, that is, a first-person pronoun, which denotes the speaker. In English it’s the pronoun I. There is always, however, something that escapes this denotation, which is precisely the thing that I am as the author or agent of the denotation. In other words, when the subject appears in the phrase as the subject of the enunciated, she disappears as subject of the enunciation. This distinction between the two was introduced by Jacobson, although Lacan gives it a much more far-reaching significance than it’s given by grammarians. Disappearance as the subject of the enunciation whenever she appears in the pronoun I is what Lacan calls the fading or aphanisis of the subject, a word he took from Jones, although Jones used it to describe a kind of dread he conceived as being a dread of the disappearance of desire.
This “disappearance” of the subject, however, is not a simple return to nothingness. It rather means that the subject is in lack of herself. We may allude here to the common expression, “I don’t even know myself.” And here comes the obj. a, inasmuch as it gives some form to this lack, which nonetheless doesn’t mean that the obj. a is an object one wants to get or to have. It’s rather what Freud calls an essentially lost object and the subject is more likely to experience anxiety over the prospect of having this object, that is, anxiety over losing this loss, or of lacking this lack, because this would amount to her disappearance as desire, which is, according to Spinoza, the essence of man. In other words, the obj. a is rather the cause of desire, that is, the cause and the signifier of desire, that is, it functions from behind, and not as an object, so to speak, “in front,” such as any common object, even though we may search for it in the field of common objects.
In other words we may say that the obj. a is the subject’s lost name, her name as the subject of the enunciation. That’s why Lacan goes so far as to say that whenever there is an I in a statement, there is the obj. a on the level of enunciation. It is the name of the subject of the enunciation, as articulated in the unconscious, and as could never be articulated in the conscious.
For example, take the oral object, which is an object the subject first considered to be part of her own body, but from which she’s been mutilated or severed, and which may thus subsist as such, as the cause of her desire beyond all that is expressed in her articulated demands. And the same thing applies to the anal object. Lacan doesn’t deny the notion of stages or phases but he considers these phases not as moments in biological maturation, but as corresponding to the level of apprehension the subject has of the Other. On the oral level the mother, insofar as she is the first to take the place of the Other, is the person to whom the demand is addressed. In the anal phase, the demand emanates from the Other and is addressed to the subject who, so to speak, answers, by giving part of herself.
These two phases concern detachable objects. But if we go to the third one, the so-called phallic phase, which is where the child becomes aware of her mother’s desire as such, as sexual desire, we notice that there is no lack of the phallus, at least not concerning the boy, who is by definition, if one may say so, phallophore. But this is precisely the level at which the law comes into play, because there can be no desire, once again as the essence of man, except insofar as there is lack. This applies to sexual desire. And that’s why the name of the father must intervene here in such a way as to produce that particular form of lack, which we have specified as symbolic castration.
One of the main points in Lacan’s seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, is the distinction between “wish” in the sense of a pious wish (it brings nothing, it’s not meant to be realized) and “desire.” A wish is a fantasy and a fantasy is a lie, in that in fantasy I am what I am not or I am not what I am. For example, I am not Hirsch-Hyacinth, a poor lottery vendor and pedicurist, I’m really Salomon Rothschild, the richest man in the world. I allude here to the famous story told by Heinrich Heine, about some poor fellow called Hirsch-Hyacinth (the double H is probably an indication of some self-irony) that Freud cites in his book, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.2 Hirsch-Hyacinth was talking about the great familiarity with which his excellency Salomon Rothschild had received him. But when he was about to say “familiarity,” he accidentally said, “famillionarity.” The lapsus brought his lie to light, and this coming to light amounted to an involuntary confrontation with truth. You may say the truth was the message of the lapsus, which we receive by laughing.
The same thing applies to the dream of the father who was dead without knowing it. In this dream Freud only noticed the oedipal fantasy of rivalry with the father, which according to him constituted the latent content of the dream. But the coming to the fore of this rivalry a very short time after his father’s death was to all appearances a regression, meaning a mechanism of defense. And in this conjunction, the defense was against what may be perceived, through his father’s death, as their common destiny. So, there is something more here than just the oedipal fantasy, something Lacan calls the “message of the dream.” And this is why interpretation is a delicate matter. To tell the subject his fantasy is really a hopeless operation. But neither can you tell him that his dream was a regression, a defense, or a flight from death. If you do that, you are treating his fear of death as if it were like running a red light; why not write him a ticket? As a matter of fact, during the period of his father’s painful illness, the analysand had consciously had this wish. His father had suffered so greatly that he had really wished for his father to die, to deliver his father from pain. Lacan suggested that one way to approach the sharp edge of this dream, meaning its message, would be to remind the analysand of the wish he’d once expressed, adding of course that it had been for the relief of his father. I mean you may acknowledge such a wish, as it was felt by the analysand himself during his father’s suffering, and this would at least be a first approach to what was at stake.
The difference between the wish and the message implied by the coming to light of the fantasy, in the signification of the fantasy, is precisely what the subject is meant to cross, according to Freud’s dictum, “Wo es war, soll Ich werden.” And it is this distance, between the point where the subject is in his fantasy and the truth, that makes us talk about what is called the l’heure de la vérité (hour of truth); that’s the hour at which the subject assumes her true condition as lack. The whole business of psychoanalysis may be considered as a realization of Freud’s dictum.
Here we touch what Lacan says in his seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, namely that where the subject gives up her desire we can be sure there is some guilt. Jones says, in his description of the boy’s Oedipus complex, that when a boy finds himself in a situation where he must choose between the object and the phallus, he will choose the object, that is, the mother, and renounce the phallus. But contrary to Jones, Lacan affirms that the subject chooses to keep going in the way to be the phallus, in other words, that he chooses the phallus and he lets the object go, the way a hunter may prefer his rifle to his prey. Here lies the significance of giving up desire and here you may be sure there is guilt. The general opinion, that guilt is linked to getting the object, is belied by a fact anyone can notice, which is that letting go of the object doesn’t bring any relief from guilt. According to Lacan, it’s precisely this turning away from the object that is, if not the guilt itself, the sign of guilt.
It is in this same seminar that Lacan introduces the notion of la Chose, as an equivalent to the German das Ding, that is, the Thing. From this one may define the Thing as being the point where the Other’s word (in the sense of speech but also in the sense of “giving one’s word”) has no guarantee. What guarantees one word is just another one, there is no way of going out of it, no way of getting out of language, and in this sense there is no metalanguage. Consequently the Thing is the very point where the Other’s desire is revealed, as a complete mystery. That’s the point we already referred to as the point of trauma, the point in front of which the subject feels completely helpless. According to Lacan the Freudian notion of Hilflosigkeit has no other meaning than helplessness in front of the enigma of the Other’s desire, the mother’s in the first place. One may consequently say that the Thing is beyond all representation, a fact Lacan expresses by saying that on the level of representation the Thing is no-thing. However, it is from this point of das Ding, the Thing, that the whole motion of representations is initiated. It is from the Thing that is, so to speak, behind us, that the movement of representations is launched in which the subject pursues her good according to the pleasure principle. And we have already seen that it is also at this point that the paternal metaphor replaces the enigma of the Other’s (the mother’s in the first place) lack, by a lack that, if it can’t be said, can be signified as castration.
It is worth noting that castration, as considered here, is the effect of the name of the father, inasmuch as it works as a name through which an order of law is substituted for what would have otherwise been an order, if one may call it that, of unbridled desire. This means that castration must first be considered an effect of the signifier. The function of the real father comes later on, although this doesn’t imply any diminution of its importance. According to Freud, the father function was simply natural. But Lacan considered the function to be fundamentally normative; the father’s role is to support or, so to speak, give voice to prohibitions that alone may enable the subject to find her way to the realm of desire.
Here we see more clearly the difference between Levi-Strauss and Lacan concerning the question of the prohibition of incest. We have already seen that, according to Levi-Strauss, exchange is the reason for the prohibition of incest. According to him, given the dyadic structure of human relations that makes it impossible to ensure pacification between the semblebles or between the egos, society can’t be viable without proceeding to exchange. Herein lies the necessity of the laws of marriage, that is, of the exchange of women among the human groups, of which the prohibition of the mother is only one aspect according to Levi-Strauss. In fact, this conception doesn’t explain incest par excellence, incest between mother and son. And indeed, why not suppose that a mother could initiate her son into sexual life? This is a common enough obsessional fantasy, and why couldn’t one of her functions be to initiate him before he enters into marriage? There is absolutely nothing in Levi-Strauss’s theory that prohibits such incest.
According to Lacan, however, the demands are first addressed to the mother, and the mother is the one who gives all the objects of the demand. In Kleinian terms she is the “universal container,” and in this sense she is the Supreme Good. Enjoying her would mean the end of the entire world of the demand. Thus the prohibition of the mother–son incest3 is precisely the condition without which there can be no subsistence for the subject as a subject of demand, that is, as a subject of the signifier. You must have something more to demand. In brief, as Lacan says, the Supreme Good does not exist because the Supreme Good (that’s the mother) is prohibited. And, according to Lacan, here lies the foundation of moral law, as reversed by Freud. Lacan goes so far as to say that all the talk about beyond good and evil is only a way of dodging the real issue. You can’t go beyond evil; you can only fall into it. There is only going beyond good.
It was in his next seminar on Transference that Lacan put into the forefront his thesis that the desire of the analyst constitutes the axis of analysis. We have already seen how the notion of countertransference merely served as an alibi for analysts’ failures. This led some analysts like Macalpine to consider transference as an artifact of the analytic situation itself, and as such akin to suggestion and subjugation. Lacan is far from such a point of view. His view is that psychoanalysis puts into question, and more seriously than ever before, what is called authentic love (Eine echte Liebe). To Lacan transference is the proof of the narcissistic character of all love. But besides this consideration, Lacan had another reason for his conception that the desire of the analyst is the axis at the center of analysis or of the psychoanalytic experience. Indeed, one of the axioms of his doctrine, if one may call it that, is that desire is the desire of the analyst. For Lacan the analyst is not the Other but is one who occupies the place of the Other, and from this it follows that the very presence of the analysand in the psychoanalytic situation amounts to a question relating to the analyst’s desire, since it is only through this question addressed to the Other, or to the one who occupies the place of the Other, that the subject can have access to her own desire.
In fact, the analyst knows that there is no object that can afford the answer to this question. In other words, desire can’t be said to be a desire of this or of that. But desire may be signified, and it is signified, as a lack, so the only thing the analyst can give to such a question is her silence. That is, she limits her own desire to the function of preserving the void wherein resounds the question, Che vuoi? What do you want me to be? Thus having no answer that offers an object to her question (an object that would be, as one may say, only a hallucination of the cause), the analysand will have to bring in the signifiers of her own desire, as reconstructed in her relations with those who first occupied the place of the Other for her, mainly the parents. So, why does transference love come into this process?
Here I would like to make the preliminary remark that transference doesn’t necessarily mean the analysand falls openly in love with her analyst. It may as often be the case that there is a repressed love, that is, a love that resists avowal: it may be signified in the return of the repressed, but never said. And an analyst must have an unbelievable measure of narcissism to claim it, that is, to say she is the beloved of her patient, so if she does say it, she most often presents it as if it were a repetition. Moreover, once in the psychoanalytic situation, the analysand may rescue her narcissism by falling in love with some other object, a phenomenon called “lateral transference.” But we miss the point if we don’t see that lateral transference is transference.
To return to the thesis advanced in his seminar on transference, since Lacan was not yet in possession of his theory of the subject supposed to know as the foundation of transference, the answer he gave is that to love somebody is the best way to mislead her or to deceive her about her own lack. One may say that the natural place of a human being is in being loved, and one way to be sure you’re in this place of being loved is to fall in love yourself, because by falling in love, one at least ensures one’s right to be loved, or one’s rights to the place of the beloved. That’s why Lacan says love is a metaphor, meaning that it is an operation through which the beloved becomes the lover, wherein lies the miracle of love as exemplified by Achilles for Patrocles and by the example of Alcestis, because it is in the nature of giving love to imply the affirmation of being loved. The affirmation is intrinsic even when it isn’t real; that’s why Lacan says love is always reciprocal. Other analysts have said that all love is a demand for love, which again amounts to an affirmation of the narcissistic nature of this phenomenon.
However, love, being a lack rather than filling lack, brings out the question of the cause of the lack. That’s the question of what is the object that the Other contains, which I don’t know and which is that for which I love her or for which she is loved. And here comes the object of desire as described before, that is, as an intrinsically or essentially lost object, which the Other possesses no more than the subject herself, love being the means to mislead the Other concerning this lack, through a “making believe” that she contains it. So there’s no wonder Lacan spotted the obj. a in that mysterious object described as the agalma, of which Alcibiades was so proud to have been the only one to glimpse in the idealized or incomparable Socrates.
It should again be noted that, considered in itself and not in its disguise, the obj. a is a part of one’s own body, from which the subject was severed or mutilated, and which thus functions as a lack and as a pointer of lack. Considered from this angle, one may say it is the root of identity and, as we have already said, the lost name of the subject of enunciation. But we can now also see how much it would be the root of the uncanny were it ever to appear in the field of perception. Here is the very basis of anxiety, as exemplified by Freud’s article on the uncanny,4 where the hero was under the obligation of completing the puppet with his own eyes, and where eyes were presented as objects for collection, or even for marketing. That’s why Lacan says in his seminar on anxiety that the obj. a is an object whose sole subjective structure is this effect.
Question: What about the obj. a as “the nothing”?
Nothing amounts to the refusal of the object in order to hold onto castration. That’s why you can say in anorexia, the subject eats nothing, nothing here being the very form of oral desire, nothing being the first oral object. The nothing is the guardian of desire, it means refusing the object in order to keep one’s desire.
Question: Why is desire ethical?
According to the received theory, libidinal development or maturation is linear. It goes from the oral phase through the anal phase to the phallic, or more precisely to the phallo-narcissistic phase. Here the boy at least is confronted with the threat of castration, the agent of which is the imaginary father. And it is under the pressure of this threat that the boy renounces his mother and accedes or gets access to the so-called genital object. But according to Lacan, castration, as an effect of substitution, is already there; the gap (beance) of castration is at the very center. And it is inasmuch as this gap is assumed by the subject, whether a girl or a boy, that she or he receives access to a desire in conformance with her or his sex. And, it is only inasmuch as the subject refuses this gap, that is, inasmuch as she refuses castration as a symbolic debt, that she regresses to the anal phase, or to the oral phase, and that’s why these objects always function in our experience as phallic objects. Once again we talk about the phallic feces or the phallic breast. It is this very fact of desire being a function of law, not to say that it is law, that gives desire its ethical status. Inasmuch as she refuses the lack, she can’t escape castration as a debt. Once again, all this is implied in Freud’s dictum, mentioned in our preceding developments.
Question: I didn’t really grasp the question of das Ding. Lacan refers to the counterpart divided into two parts and the relation of das Ding to the counterpart?
If by counterpart you mean what Freud called Nebenmensch, the idea has a simple meaning. There is some person who accomplished what Freud calls the specific actions for the child. The child is helpless, and unable to effectuate or accomplish certain necessary actions so that she can gain the objects of her needs, for example food. So someone does it for her. The person who performs the actions may be, so to speak, divided into two parts; one part that is liable to change, such as with gestures and facial expressions, and another part that remains the same, such as the face in itself, a “part” that Freud calls the nucleus, which is recognized without being understood. A gesture may convey a meaning, but a face is either recognized or it’s not.
But Lacan gave this notion a widely different meaning. He took it to mean that in my relation to the Nebenmensch or to put it in French, the prochain, that is, my neighbor, as in “love thy neighbor as thyself,” the Other, there’s some part that can never be assimilated, that cannot be articulated, that cannot be brought into transparency, that is, the point of the Other’s desire as enigma.5 That’s the point of the Thing. Lacan gives an example of someone very dear to you putting you in an embarrassing situation. You are so embarrassed you have no other recourse than to utter the word, “You!” He describes it as a you of incantation, of name taming, by which I mean a taming that tames nothing. Lacan says this you is le mot de la Chose, a phrase that can have no translation in English, because the word mot in the French language is opposed to parole, an opposition that doesn’t exist in English.
Question: At the supreme moment of love, the only way to answer is by saying You?
No, at the supreme moment of embarrassment. There are some moments of embarrassment in front of the Other, the Other being man for a woman and woman for a man, when you have no other recourse except “Tu,” in the two meanings of the word in French, that is, as second-person pronoun, and as kept in silence.