scholarly journals From de Clérambault's Theory of Mental Automatism to Lacan's Theory of the Psychotic Structure

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn Vanheule
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Structural Approach ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Clinical Issues ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lacanian Theory ◽  
Structural Perspective

In 1966, in a paper on those who have influenced his work, Jacques Lacan suggested that his concept of ‘paranoid knowledge’ and his structural approach to psychoanalysis were closely linked to the work of Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault. This article examines both of these points. Starting with an introduction to de Clérambault, focusing on his concept ‘mental automatism,’ the link between ‘mental automatism’ and ‘paranoid knowledge’ is discussed. Loyalty to Henri Claude and conflicts around theoretical and clinical issues seem to lie at the basis of Lacan's initial neglect of his conceptual indebtedness to de Clérambault. Second, the author discusses the presumed connection between mental automatism and Lacan's structural psychoanalytic theory, which Lacan did not elaborate. It is argued that from a structural perspective, mental automatism comes down to a rupture in the continuity of the signifying chain, which provokes the disappearance of the subject. Furthermore, Lacan's theory implies the hypothesis that manifestations of mental automatism are determined by a foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father, where questions related to existence cannot be addressed in a stable way. Lacanian theory thus retained de Clérambault's notion of a rupture in mental life that lies at the basis of psychosis, but replaced his biological framework with the dimension of the subject as produced through speech.

What Is Visible When Acting? Acting-Out, Passage à l’Acte and the Dialectics of the Gaze in Phenomenology and Psychoanalytic Theory

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66
Author(s):  
Cristian Bodea
Keyword(s):  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Real Process ◽  
Marina Abramovic ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lacanian Theory

"The paper approaches acting from a phenomenological and psychoanalytic point of view. It sheds light on the intrinsic (i.e., invisible) resorts involved when someone is playing a role – or, better yet, assumes a role. In order to make these mechanisms visible, the paper relies on the premise that acting always involves an act. Using the Lacanian theory of acts, I demonstrate that there is a real process taking place when assuming a role, namely when the subject needs to objectify himself. This process can be traced back as far as the “time” of a pre-existent gaze. The aim of the paper is to substantiate the idea that it is necessary for the gaze to enter a dialectics in order for the subject to find its objective place. For illustration, two works of art are used: the performance The Artist is Present by Marina Abramović and the movie A Woman Under the Influence by John Cassavetes. Keywords: act, desire, gaze, objectify, the Other, presence without assignable present, the Real, (in)visible."

scholarly journals Objective psychology. Academician V. Bekhterev. Issue I. St. Petersburg. 1907 year

1907 ◽  
Vol XIV (3-4) ◽  
pp. 194-196
Author(s):  
V. Osipova
Keyword(s):  
Mental Life ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Control ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Living Creature

The author begins his work with the words that the psychology that he will expound bears little resemblance to the psychology that has been the subject of study until now. In objective psychology, there should be no place for questions about subjective processes or processes of consciousness, therefore there should be no place for introspection. Self-observation is not enough even to study one's own mental life. Objective psychology has in mind to study and explain only the relationship of a living creature to the surrounding conditions that affect it in one way or another, without aiming to find out those internal or subjective experiences, which are known as conscious phenomena and which are accessible only to self-observation. All mental items should only be subject to objective registration and control.

The Sterilisation of the Insane

1911 ◽  
Vol 57 (236) ◽  
pp. 63-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Faulks
Keyword(s):  
Mental Life ◽  
Learned Societies ◽  
Open Debate ◽  
The Subject

Gentlemen,—The subject which I purpose bringing up for discussion to-day appears to be one which is well suited to debate by such a meeting as this. The various proposals are comparatively new in literature, and more so in open debate by learned societies. It is a matter which you, as mental experts, are eminently fitted to give valuable opinions upon, few other associations having any knowledge of, or interest in, the conditions of mental life and growth which are alone responsible for the origination of these proposals.

Psychoanalytic Methods and Critical Cultural Studies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atilla Hallsby
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Public Address ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Speech Identification

Within communication studies, critical and cultural scholars will likely encounter psychoanalytic methods by way of rhetoric scholarship, which has made plentiful and recurring use of Freudian and Lacanian concepts. A survey of psychoanalytic methods “before” and “after” the linguistic turn is offered—juxtaposing key concepts with rhetorical scholarship that employs psychoanalytic terms of art. Psychoanalytic theory is foundationally the study of the unconscious. Before the linguistic turn, the Freudian theory of the unconscious informed Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification developed in A Rhetoric of Motives and numerous Jungian analyses of cinematic texts. In the linguistic turn’s aftermath, the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan contributed understandings of speech, identification, and rhetoric that transformed Freud’s original formulations and productively supplemented Burke’s. These contributions, captured in Lacan’s four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, registers of the unconscious, and The “Seminar on ‘The Purloined Letter,’” illustrate a variety of ways that critical and cultural scholars have enlisted psychoanalysis to describe instances of public address, social movements, political and legal discourse, and cinema/film. The unique feature of Lacan’s approach is that the unconscious is structured like a language, which means that the unconscious is received as a speech act. Moreover, contrary to the view that the subject uses the signifier, Lacan maintains that the signifier exercises an organizing role over the subject and its desire. Conceived within the history, theory, and practice of rhetoric, psychoanalytic theory offers conceptually rich insights tethered to the concepts of the unconscious, the signifier, and the drive (among others) that are enabling to the aims of critical and cultural studies.

The Thing Never Speaks for Itself: Lacan and the Pedagogical Politics of Clarity

2000 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas Sadao Aoki
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Good Teaching ◽  
Complex Materials ◽  
Plain Language ◽  
Exclusionary Practices ◽  
Good Writing ◽  
Institutional Demand

In this article, Douglas Sadao Aoki argues that teaching conceived as the translation of complex materials into plain language is actually a refusal to teach. He challenges the commonsensical conviction that good teaching, like good writing, makes its meaning clear and accessible — a thing that speaks for itself. The authority of that conviction, he shows, has elevated the desire for clarity into an institutional demand. Yet, like many other commonsensical convictions and institutional demands, teaching framed by clarity is suspect in its politics and radical in its limitations. Aoki uses the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, which reveals the suspect exclusionary practices of those pedagogical politics, to show that the love of clear writing turns out to be a hatred of language, a hatred that motivates a refusal to teach. Aoki suggests that the crucial recognition that neither teaching nor language ever speaks for itself is what gives us the chance to refuse the refusal to teach.

scholarly journals Breaking the Mirror: Alain Badiou’s Reading of Jacques Lacan

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Ndiaye Berankova
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Sexual Relationship ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The One ◽  
Logical Impossibility

In this article, I focus on Alain Badiou’s idiosyncratic interpretation of Jacques Lacan and highlight his conceptual points of divergence with the psychoanalyst. I elaborate on Badiou’s distinction between philosophy, antiphilosophy, and sophistry as well as the notions of sense, ab-sense, and non-sense that he proposed in the book There’s No Such Thing as a Sexual Relationship: Two Lessons on Lacan as well as in his seminar on Lacan. Unlike Lacan, who affirmed that philosophy is subject to the fantasy of the One, Badiou claimed that the One exists merely as a result of an operation of counting. In this manner, he contested Lacan’s conviction that philosophy forecloses the real. I argue that Badiou’s main point of divergence with Lacan is centred on the notion of the subject and on the localization of the void in relation to the subject. I also touch upon philosophy’s relation to the symbolic, namely its ability to raise powerlessness to logical impossibility.

scholarly journals The Uncanny in the Themes of Evil, Transgression and the Double in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter"

LETRAS ◽  
2006 ◽  
pp. 33-47
Author(s):  
Esteban Barboza Núñez
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Psychoanalytic Theory ◽  
Main Character ◽  
The Uncanny ◽  
Siglo Xix ◽  
Human Component

El propósito de este artículo consiste en explorar los mecanismos y representaciones de lo siniestro en "La hija de Rappacci" de Nathaniel Hawthome como expresión del mal dentro de los límites del género gótico del siglo XIX; como expresión del tema del doble en tres personajes humanos y en uno no humano que aparecen en el cuento; y como expresión de trasgresión en el personaje principal, Giovanni Guasconte. El concepto de lo siniestro que se usará será el de la teoría psicoanalítica, siguiendo especialmente los aportes de Sigmund Freud y Jacques Lacan. The purpose of this artide is to explore the mechanisms and representations of the uncanny in Nathaniel Hawthome's "Rappaccini's Daughter" as an expression of evil within nineteenth century Gothic boundaries; as an expression of the theme of the double in three human characters and in one non-human component of Rappaccini's garden; and as an expression of transgression in Giovanni Guasconte, the main character. The concept of the uncanny to be used will be that of psychoanalytic theory, especially reliant on the contributions on the topic by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan.

scholarly journals ACTIVITY OF A SUBJECT OF THE DAILY LIFE UNDER THE CONDITIONS OF A VITAL THREAT IN THE PROBLEM FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY

2021 ◽  
pp. 221-229
Author(s):  
Ольга Валерьевна Никитина
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Integrative Approach ◽  
Mental Life ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Vital Activity ◽  
Psychological Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Individual Style

Проблема активности является одной из ключевых проблем человекознания, уделяется внимание теоретическим аспектам изучения активности в отечественной психологической науке, обозначены подходы к активности субъекта жизнедеятельности. Анализируется вклад психологов Пермской психологической школы в развитие представлений об активности. Исследование активности человека осуществляется во взаимосвязи с проблематикой интегральной индивидуальности и индивидуального стиля. Представителями Пермской психологической школы проведены теоретико-эмпирические исследования разных видов и стилей активности человека в условиях повседневной деятельности и в экстремальных условиях жизни: учебной, волевой, коммуника тивной, религиозной, информационно-манипулятивной, смыслообразующей, профессиональной. Научным продуктом сложившегося направления исследований в психологии активности Б. А. Вяткин называет представление о существовании в социальном мире Homo activus – человека активного. Обозначена актуальность изучения активности субъекта жизнедеятельности в условиях пандемии коронавируса (COVID-19), т. е. ситуации витальной угрозы. Данный цивилизационный феномен и обусловленная им эпидемиологическая обстановка внесли глобальные коррективы во все сферы жизнедеятельности человека, что обусловило необходимость адаптации к трансформирующимся условиям среды и пролонгированной ситуации неопределенности. Психологи отмечают не только негативные аспекты в сложившейся ситуации, но и позитивные, которые связывают с необходимостью активации всей психической жизни для преодоления пандемокризиса. В Пермской психологической школе для изучения активности субъекта жизнедеятельности в условиях витальной угрозы созданы теоретические предпосылки в виде концепции интегральной индивидуальности (В. С. Мерлин), теории метаиндивидуального мира (Л. Я. Дорфман), концептуальной динамической модели активности субъекта жизнедеятельности (А. А. Волочков), интегративного подхода к изучению коммуникативной активности (С. А. Васюра), разработан соответствующий диагностический инструментарий. The article notes that the problem of activity is one of the key problems of human knowledge, attention is paid to the theoretical aspects of the study of activity in domestic psychological science, approaches to the activity of a subject of vital activity are outlined. The contribution of psychologists of the Perm psychological school to the development of ideas about activity is analyzed. The study of activity is carried out in conjunction with the problems of integral individuality and individual style. Representatives of the Perm psychological school carried out theoretical and empirical studies of various types and styles of human activity in the conditions of daily activity and in extreme conditions of life: educational, volitional, communicative, religious, information-manipulative, meaningforming, professional. The scientific product of the current direction of research in the psychology of activity B. A. Vyatkin calls the idea of the existence in the social world of Homo activus – an active person. The article outlines the relevance of studying the activity of the subject of vital activity in the conditions of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), i.e., a situation accompanied by a vital threat, is indicated. This civilizational phenomenon and the resulting epidemiological situation have made global adjustments to all spheres of human life, which necessitated adaptation to the transforming environmental conditions and prolonged situation of uncertainty. Psychologists note not only negative aspects in the current situation, but also positive ones, which are associated with the need to activate all mental life to overcome the pandemocrisis. In the Perm psychological school for the study of the activity of the subject of vital activity in conditions of a vital threat, theoretical prerequisites have been created in the form of the concept of integral individuality (V.S. Merlin), the theory of the meta-individual world (L. Ya. Dorfman), a conceptual dynamic model of the activity of the subject of vital activity (A. A. Volochkov), an integrative approach to the study of communicative activity (S. A. Vasyura), a corresponding diagnostic toolkit has been developed.

scholarly journals Mystical experience in the men of the cave: a Lacanian reading of al-Kahf

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 456-462
Author(s):  
Tayebeh Barati ◽  
Pyeaam Abbasi
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Lacan ◽  
Mystical Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Symbolic Order ◽  
The Real ◽  
Holy Quran ◽  
The Holy Quran ◽  
The Subject

In his contribution to psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan introduces three orders according to which every psychoanalytic phenomenon can be described. These three orders are the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. The imaginary is the order in which the subject thinks of everything as his/her own. For the subject there is no distinction between the other and the subject itself. In the symbolic order the subject comes to realise that there is a gap between him/her and the other. S/he, then, starts to feel a lack which for the rest of his/her life the subject tries to fill in. The real is considered as the most important order in which the subject tears away from the symbolic and tries to experience, once again, the unity it had in the imaginary order. It is in this phase that the subject experiences what is known as jouissance or the 'pleasure in pain'. The present study tries to look at the eighteenth chapter of the Holy Quran, al-Kahf (The Cave), in the light of psychoanalysis studies and Lacan's theories in order to analyse the mystical experience that the Men of the Cave go through to reach their final jouissance. 

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