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Review of ‘Familial Complexes in Individual Formation by Jaques Lacan’

accompanied by commentary and disciplinary revisioning

By Arsh K.SPublished 3 years ago 98 min read
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Preface

The situation of myself, primarily as an interviewer at PAWS has led me to write to and exchange correspondence with a variety of professionals involved with design, theatre to the culinary arts. Often the selection of which of the interviews would make it to the magazine was a bone of contention between the management and me. For reasons best known to others, the management has chosen to conceal the circulation figures, as well as not heeded my request to include a letters to the editor section. In the absence of any mechanism of feedback, to discern the reception of our articles, and to perhaps make a space of exchange regarding the process and criteria, not merely of the selection of articles, but also their form – which to my eyes need not be relegated to interviews alone, I seek to continue my prior study of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory.

There has been an update in my circumstances. I no longer am working for PAWS. I was asked to leave because of a sketch of the office situation which I drew and posted on instagram attracting the ire of the management. In any case, since I have already made notes and provided brief introductory commentary to about three forth of Lacan’s first text - I intend to complete my project. 16th February, 2021

I must state that in this review, which is effectively a summary which holds on to all essentials as I see them, I have relied heavily on Cormac Gallagher’s translation. The year of his translation was not mentioned in the text I was using. He was with the School of Psychotherapy in St. Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin.

My summary, whose advantages include, apart from its brevity, an attempt to read back into these beginnings, later developments which have sought to re-augment the doctrine in ways that its proponents deem progressive. This is accompanied by my commentary which serves as an elaboration on points which draw from grounds a reader may not be familiar with, along with elucidations on some contemporary connections.

Also, I would like to clarify that my point of focus has been on doctrinal and clinical procedure, at the price of diminishing or under-representing the text’s literary or humanistic qualities. You will note, that the form in which this review presents itself, is a chapter by chapter summary, along with the additions I mention above.

- The Institution of the Family

Family Complexes in Individual formation was first published in French in 1938. Lacan’s lens from the outset appears predominantly functional. He thinks of the family through its role in biological reproduction and in creating a condition favorable for raising the young.

- The Cultural Structure of the Family

He notes that the human race is characterized by a singularly peculiar development of social relations. These are sustained by our capacity for mental communication and an economy of instinct. These instincts, as in their essence are susceptible to inversion and conversion, given the differentials they take advantage of and their consequent satisfaction, or perhaps sublimation. These facilitate an infinite variety of adaptive modes of behavior. Their conservation and development is contingent on their communication – this makes it a collective work. Culture hence arises introducing its unique plane into social and psychic life.

We can already see here, the first of Lacan’s exegeses – the key themes which are to preoccupy him; the place of the father, and fatherhood in terms of the ‘spiritual’ debt that its establishment may owe. He notes that in this field cultural agencies do appear to supersede natural ones, facilitating cases such as adoption.

It is this cultural agency drawn upon by the father which is used to exercise a constraint placed on the child, a constraint to which youth owes the basis of its moral foundation.

An early ambition which appears in this text is to inquire whether the field of psychology or ‘concrete’ psychology as Lacan puts it – is able to adequately grasp this cultural structure which is a feature of the family. To this he states that psychology does appreciate the hierarchical structure of the family and the place and advantage of a restriction placed on the child – however it overlooks enabling conditions such as “the organizational modes of this familial authority, the laws of its transmission, the concepts of progeny and of parenthood which are linked with it, the laws of inheritance and succession which combine with it, and finally its intimate links with the laws of marriage—these are entangled with psychological relationships and thus obscure them.” – He asserts that the interpretation of these phenomena should be clarified by drawing on comparative data in ethnography, history, law, and social statistics. This ‘when marshaled by a sociological method reveals the human family as an institution.’ He calls on psychological analysis to abandon ‘its philosophizing’ in thinking the family either as a biological phenomena or a theoretical element of society, acknowledging that these readings have their source in certain , or should I say singular manifestations of the family. He also sees that they are based on real convergence between heterogeneous causes.

Of interest to me in Lacan’s depiction of the psychological heredity is that it does not try and reduce it to a kind of physicalism. While acknowledging biological underpinnings he sees the family as an institution responsible for the production of a physic link between generations, whose causality is mental.

Lacan presents a critique of trying to examine the isolated family, stating that such an isolated and elementary institution does not exist and no one has seen it. In its conjugal contraction, a principle guiding its evolution can be seen in the idea of the ancient family. This does appear to me to be a hermeneutic spiritualization, to use Lacan’s own terms, and in drawing from his advice in reading the institution from a lens that takes into account its social situation – I would state that placing such an institution within the frame of its production may reveal the tangibility of its actual moorings. This is not to say that an account of its beliefs, cultural or otherwise would not represent for us a presentation of its values. A reader may notice that the implication here is towards a polarity of sexual principle in forms of culture, a topic which the study we are examining ends with.

Chapter 1: The Complex: A concrete factor in the Psychology of the family

Lacan does appear to partially concede this when he states that the human family ought to be placed within the order of its social relations. He also asserts that the study underway would objectify complexes and not instincts, underlining the earlier point.

The definition of the complex itself is not clear to me. It does appear however to be a description of a mode of identifying and appropriating a social phenomena or resource which is utilized by the family (or practice in question).

The object in question, the subject of objectification (which has been the issue of much debate among later critics) I read as threefold; this ranges from the signifier itself, the material bearer of the culture which Lacan exalts, money – the concretization of bonds of labour in relations of employment which characterizes civilization, and what in psychoanalytic practice has been designated as the object petit a; the object cause of desire.

The complex itself, in keeping with what may be described as Lacan’s ontology - realizes itself in the act or attempt of representing an object; in relation to a perceived lack in a social situation. The relation of complex to instinct seems to be a question which presents itself to Lacan. He advocates, against Freud, not an essentialization of the instinct as the root of complex; not because it is not true, but because such a reading ignores the sociality which constitutes the education of the instinct; a position I would advocate. And one I am sure, any scholarly reader would find much familiar with in the work of Foucault.

- The Freudian Complex and the Imago

The complex is also discernible in the form in which it presents itself as psychic effects which are not guided by consciousness – parapraxes, dreams, symptoms, etc. Lacan further notes, that the singularity with which these appearances manifest in an individual in terms of their distinctness and contingency - force him to admit a paradoxical entity; an unconscious representation denoted the imago. The Latinized word for the image here seems to depict something like the guiding principle of the ego, which however is not bound by the structural relations of the id and superego.

There is certainly a sense of triumph and accomplishment when Lacan adds that “Complexes and imago have revolutionized psychology and, especially, the psychology of the family, which has shown itself to be the chosen terrain of the most stable and typical complexes. From having been a simple subject of moralizing commentary the family has thus become the object of concrete analysis.”

- The Weaning Complex

In the process of weaning which is a natural occurrence in all human families, Lacan identifies a pathological trait. Perhaps in interacting with the cultural sphere this pathology appears, for in a child weaning stops with the completion of suckling and this is instinctual. He also describes this as a psychic trauma which can lead to the expression of anorexia nervosa, oral addictions and gastric neuroses.

Irrespective of whether it is traumatic, pathological or not – weaning leaves a trace in the human (baby’s) psyche of the biological relationship it interrupts ie, between mouth and breast. The crisis experienced in the absence of suckling is duplicated in the psyche - perhaps the first major trauma that may be depicted in the process of the development of a child. ‘A vital tension is resolved into a mental intention. By this intention weaning is either accepted or refused.’ The intention described is characterized to be elementary since the ego which produces it is underdeveloped, and it seems to be an intention without an abject as, I conjecture here, the concept of an object as distinct from oneself has yet to concretize in the mind of an infant. An ambiguous passage follows where the text states that ‘the preference (…for the object of the intention?) will change its meaning several times’ – which may lead to diverse fates, re-establishing itself however at its own tempo and tone, ‘by the way in which it sets its stamp both upon these crises and upon the new categories with which each crisis endows lived experience.’

- The Imago of the Maternal Breast

The imago as characterized by him seems to be a mechanism which keeps intact a means to augment instinctual drive. It arises in the refusal of weaning which gives the complex its positive basis.

The importance of the human face is noted, particularly in the development of expression in the infant. ie. - It can be readily observed in the child’s response to the arrival and departure of people who care for him. This characteristic is exhibited even before the motor-coordination of the eyes is completely developed. The ego is yet to be developed at this stage.

It is observed that the interruption of the satisfaction of suckling that a child experiences, and (the remnants’ of this nostalgia in a maturing infant) is only connected to the weaning complex by its restructuring by the oedipal complex. A homology or sublimation of some kind is seen expressed in the cases of highly developed erotic love. These semblances are often the link with reality on which the maternal imago is based.

Lacan even goes on to posit a relation between intra-uterine life and the dissatisfaction with the extra-uterine condition which lead to their manifestation in the post-birth imago.

The comprehension of the structure of the weaning complex is read as a drive created by a biological deficiency which expresses itself in a group via the regulation of a social function. A complex by itself is still understood to have a material basis often contingent on the individual’s relationship with the social group, often fulfilling a role. However Lacan does note that the imago must be sublimated so as to develop new relationships with the social group and to introduce new complexes to the psyche, which may be integrated.

The first stage at which the imago of the prenatal womb finds an anchor is within the domestic bond of the household. “In this way everything that constitutes the domestic unity of the family group, to the degree that the individual is capable of considering it separately, for him becomes the object of an affection distinct from that uniting him to each member of the group.” This is a curious statement, and I am drawn to consider what is referred to by this statement; what is its object? Is it household appliances, foreshadowing what will later be developed into a theory of partial objects? Or perhaps the threshold itself and the degree of safety and comfort it affords, remnant of the condition of pre-natal bliss echoing a prelapsarian idiom?

Not dissimilarly, the abandoning of the family economy often leads to a repetition of weaning, and it is observed - that it is only when this occurs that the complex is sufficiently liquidated. He even warns of the consequences the psyche will have to bear in returning to these conditions. “To reach completion every personality requires this new weaning. Hegel proposed that the individual who does not struggle to be recognized outside the family group goes to his death without having achieved a personality. The psychological meaning of this thesis will appear in the course of our study. As regards personal dignity, the family can only promote the individual to that of a name-bearing entity and it can only do this at the hour of his burial.”

The saturation of this complex (weaning) is read as the foundation of maternal feeling. This itself arises when it is adequately sublimated, an aspect that Fredric Jameson may have much to say about later, this sublimation however is what leads to feelings of familial sentiment. Such a liquidation, if I may use the gross metaphor, leaves traces, as the structure of the imago is yet what supports it, or as Lacan puts it, remains the basis of the mental developments it undergoes. Paradoxically, and philosophically so - it is this step which is characterized as the assimilation of totality into being, bearing with it the nostalgias of humanity. I can’t but read a touch of romanticism here, yet this would be a theoretical consideration here, and a diagnostic approach is indeed what the task of the analyst is to be delimited to.

- The Complex of Intrusion: Jealousy: archetype of all social sentiments.

The initial thesis posited here is that jealousy is not exactly rivalry; rather its root lies in mental identification. Even among young children, in observing their interaction, one can see that through communicating with each other and forming their semblances, a recognition arises that there may be alternative ways out of a situation. The recognition of this is facilitated by the formation of the other as object, i.e., a rival. Here I am tempted to ask, but why not as an example? Lacan’s seeming reply here is that it is possible for the two to understand each other’s imaginary identification to the situation and live out their roles with an insignificant degree of participation from the other. This may lead to discordance in their behavior vis-a-vis the situation however and it may be interesting to note how the notion of alienation may relate to this.

The imago of a fellow human

The similarity (or limited discrepancy) in age necessary for the identification of a partner indicates that the rapid transformations of the nervous structure required to overcome individual differences requires a similarity between the subjects concerned. Lacan states that it almost seems as if the other (or rather, the imago of the other) is somehow contingent on our own biological wellbeing, or to put it specifically - the structure of our body. The other, and here I add - the other as rival is linked to us by a similarity in the structure of our own body and its relational functions. This, you may notice, is not dissimilar to how Zizek uses the term homology.

In proximity to the ‘rival’ at an early stage, say in the form of a sibling, psychoanalysis allows us to observe the problem - and notices a confusion in the subject between two affective relationships - love, and identification. The opposition between which, we are told, will be fundamental at later stages.

The appearance of this ambiguity between the two manifests in an adult in the passion of jealous love, which often, in its fixation on the image of a rival, dominates the sentiment of love itself. I may add, perhaps not unlike two sportsmen who identify with each other and perhaps may even share some affection. In such circumstances it is possible to see the libidinal investment which may be posited in the image of the rival, this is in-spite of the fact that the force of this emotion is motivated by the love object. The result of this, it is noted, is often an incorrigible obsession. The aggression which often characterizes this relationship in its psychotic forms is often constituted by the negation of the interest taken in the image of the rival, than in the rivalry itself which justifies it.

Games played by children were viewed by Freud himself as a mechanism to sublimate the weaning instinct, the repetition of chasing a ball for example, and in this way to overcome it. The misery of human weaning however is also where he noted the first trace of a desire for death - which he later named the death drive, or death instinct.

The sibling or rival (or perhaps the sibling as rival) provides the image which fixes one of the poles of primary masochism (rooted in the weaning complex). The identification with the sibling is here is what resolves the division which began in the subject. Lacan notes, that these petty ‘death games’ are rarely about survival and the object of the drive in this case is often over a toy or scrap which is ‘biologically indifferent’. The subject ‘does away with happily’ completing the loss of the maternal object. The image of the ‘unweaned sibling’ here draws aggression because it replicates in the subject, the imago of the maternal situation, and with it the desire for death. This unfortunately, within the psyche appears to be secondary to identification.

-The Mirror Stage

The mirror stage as posited by Lacan is his theory of an affective identification, which is read as a psychic function. It is interpreted as the last stage of weaning, where the infant experiences dissatisfaction from a natural retardation in physical growth.

The point at which a subject can grasp a form as a unity is a significant stage in its metal maturation, and is correlative in the living being of its intelligence and sociability. In herd animals, the imitation of a call is read as a sign of this tendency.

The recognition and imitation of primary motor skills, known as echopraxis is a correlative tendency that arises along with this.

This very mirror stage, and the satisfaction or rather the insight it enables into the gaze of the other, particularly in conditions of human sociability is the key, Lacan notes, of the subject re-discovering their lost affective unity. In the wake of its appearance, there appears to be a ‘sudden manifestation of adaptive behavior’ and a ‘jubilant expulsion of energy. Its appearance also signals a break in ‘the immediate adaptation to the milieu which defines the world of the animal in its connaturality, and a break in that unity of vital functioning which in the animal puts perception at the service of the drive.’

At this stage, discordance in man is primarily a result of an incoordination between functions and drives. This results in a state which presents the body as fragmented. On one hand psychic drives are directed at a certain reconstitution of the body while reality is ‘perceptually fragmented’ with this affecting its categories as well. In such conditions the subject may use the imago of the other to reconstitute their own unity and coherence. This imago too evolves with the subject as well along different stages of their life. The effort to find again this unity is also where the energy to produce forms via which the subject represents his identity to himself, comes from. The most intuitive of these forms however is found in the mirror stage. The subject welcomes its mental unity, recognizing in it the imago of the double (a category which serves as structural placeholder for an other via which one retroactively identifies themselves with), and acclaiming its salutary tendency.

- The narcissistic structure of the ego

The conception of the world adequate to this stage is a narcissistic one. It is important to appreciate the full implications of this. It indicates that the subject’s essential meaning making process in such a world, deriving from the mirror stage is supported by the narcissistic fantasy of the double’s (or should I say other’s) imago. The illusion of this world (that of nascent narcissistic identification i.e.. differentiation via the double, which in retrospect and it light of how Lacan ends this study appears strongly similar to a concealed homosexual tendency) has no place for others.

Perceiving the activity of others is inadequate to break the subject’s affective isolation. In limiting the image of the other to the role of expression, the subject ensures that it would only reinforce similar emotions and postures possible within the prevalent conditions. While in the process of this interaction however, the subject does not distinguish themselves from the image itself, however, in drawing from a slightly later, Zizekian reading, seems to enjoy this image itself as an alien intrusion. The conditions of such an appearance however, being governed by the subject and their apprehension of the imago of the other regulates the contents of this appearance itself. Please note however, that at this stage in his career, Lacan is yet to develop the later distinction between the other as object and the Other as symbolic order. He succinctly names this the narcissistic intrusion. Its introduction to the subject’s tendencies however does contribute to the formation of the ego. Before affirming its own identity the ego confuses itself with the image which forms it while also subjecting it (the image?) to a ‘primordial alienation’.

These origins ensure that the ego retains ‘the ambiguous structure of the spectacle’, a taste for which is seen in the situation of despotism, parade, and seduction. It also gives form to what may classically be described as pathological drives such as sadomasochism and scoptophilia, which are sadly destructive of the other. This primary ‘intrusion’ however also helps us form projections of the completed ego, and in this regard is valuable.

- The drama of jealousy: the ego and the other person

Lacan states that the ego is constructed at the same time as the other as the drama of jealousy is being played out. He identifies, in the subject a tendency to draw satisfaction in relating to his mirror image. The introduction of the ego causes a dissonance in this relationship.

The subject in this encounter may commit to jealousy through his identification, and in this situation, arrives at a new alternative which would determine the fate of reality. “Either he goes back to the maternal object and insists on refusing the real and on destroying the other; or he is led to some other object and accepts it in the form characteristic of human knowledge, that is, as a communicable object, since competition implies both rivalry and agreement.” The ego thus conceptualized does not reach maturity constituted in its essentials until the age of three years. To be so, it must possess the character of objectivity fundamental to human knowledge.

Simultaneously however, the subject also recognizes the other, with whom he will either fight or enter into a contract. This is the discovery of the other person and object as socialized phenomena. Human jealousy is here distinguished from the ‘biological order’ since it forms its objects rather than being determined by them. Lacan characterizes jealousy as the archetypical social sentiment.

“What is remarkable is that this knowledge draws its richness and power from the biological deficit which characterizes the origins of man. The primordial symbolism of objects favors both their extension beyond the limits of vital instincts and their being perceived as instruments.”

He further adds, that socialized ‘jealous sympathy’ is the foundation of both their permanence and their substantiality. Perhaps not unlike a privileged relationship, as appears to one outside, the primal scene in Freud - of the child discovering sexual relations between his parents etc. This is clarified as the essential traits of the psychic role of the fraternal complex.

- Conditions and affects of fraternity

The traumatizing role of the sibling results from his intrusion. Its meaning is revealed to the subject by their appearance and timing. A not unrelated point put philosophically by Sartre a little earlier being the famous ‘hell is other people’. The reaction of the subject to such an intrusion is contingent on their psychic development, and also whether they have been recently disorganized by weaning. If started by such an intrusion (by the sibling, which I am inclined to read as a role) and if it is symptomatised by the subject, this experience will be reactivated every time he sets eyes upon him.

If however the intruder arrives after the oedipal complex, he is most often adopted by a parental identification, which Lacan claims – ‘has a greater affective density and a richer structure’. ‘He is then no longer an obstacle or reflection for the subject, but a person worthy of love and hate, aggressive drives being sublimated into tenderness and severity.’

A sibling also provides an archaic model for the ego and Lacan offers pride of place to the elder one, inasmuch as he has a more active role. The conformity of the model with the drives of the subject will ensure the successful synthesis of the ego which accentuates the development of objectivity. I would like to add that I find it touching, that Jaques Lacan observes, perhaps through interactions between siblings or via other unspecified means that it is through one’s fellow creature that the object and the ego both come into being. This is from the person who has, in my mind, most acutely explicated the mechanisms of the human psyche and its capabilities. ‘The more the subject is able to assimilate from his partner, the more he strengthens both his personality and his objectivity, the guarantors of his future efficiency.’ To be remembered here is that the primary imago of the double is what the ego models itself upon. It is initially plagued by fantasies of form, such as the phallic mother (common to both sexes) and the phallic double of the neurotic woman.

An observation which drew my attention was the expression of paranoia in the fraternal complex exhibited in themes of “filiation, usurpation and spoliation, just as its narcissistic structure reveals itself in the more paranoid themes of intrusion, of influence, of splitting, of the double, and of all the delusional transmutations of the body.”

The conclusion he draws from this however is less clear as he claims that family groups reduced to the mother and siblings presents ‘a psychic complex in which reality remains imaginary, or at most abstract.’ He does state however that clinical cases demonstrate that the group composed in this manner does lead to the development of psychosis, and situated within it we discover most of the cases of ‘délires a deux’ – delirium for two.

- The Oedipus complex

The concept of the complex arose from Freud’s discover of oedipal events in the analysis of neuroses. Lacan however posits that the methodological order observed in the work in question will lead to a revision in our consideration of the complex and allows us to situate the paternalistic family in history ‘while also clarifying the neurosis of our time’.

- The schematic form of the complex

Psychoanalysis discovers in the child genital drives ‘which reach their apogee in the fourth year. They constitute a psychological puberty which is obviously premature in relation to physiological puberty. “Even though this frustration is inherent to the essential prematurity of the drives, the child links it to a third object which the same conditions of presence and interest normally indicate to him as being the obstacle to their satisfaction, namely the parent of the same sex.”

This frustration is complemented by an educative suppression which aims at preventing the fulfillment of these drives, especially in masturbation. The conjugal relationship between his parents is gradually revealed to him by diffuse signs or accidents – the relationship between them does become apparent. Through this, the parent of the same sex appears to the child, as both – a sexual prohibition (to the other? if I may speculate a root of this conception, and as an example of its transgression.)

This tension is addressed (though Lacan would say resolved) by the repression of sexual tendencies, via education, socialization etc. till puberty, and via the sublimation of the parental image to serve as and perpetuate ‘a representative ideal in consciousness which will ensure that at the moment of puberty, psychic and physiological drives will coincide. This appears natural to the role of a primary caregiver prior to access to culture and socialization which may be engaged with independently ie, art, education, enjoyment etc. This process leads, he posits, to the inscription in the psyche of two permanent agencies, and in this sense has a genetic importance. The repressive agency is named the super-ego and the sublimative one is known as the ego-ideal. ‘They represent the completion of the oedipal crises’.

- The objective value of the complex:

Through clinical procedure the phenomena of infantile sexuality has now been recognized. It’s miscognition across the ages however attests to the social relativity of human knowledge. The agencies of the super-ego and ego ideal themselves, having been isolated in concrete analysis of neurotic symptoms, has contributed to our understanding of human personality. These provide us with positive determinants which account for several anomalies in human behavior while also abolishing for these disorders, any reference back to an ‘organic order’ – which despite being a derivation from an abstract principle, or simply mythological ‘still takes the place of experimental method for a whole medical tradition.

It is observed that accidents or trauma encountered in the oedipal situation, which shape its evolution, are repeated as effects of the superego. On the other hand, the accidents which affect the ego in such a way so as to make its constitution atypical find their reflection in forms of the ego-ideal. It is noted that a great number of disorders, perhaps in encountering these dissonances, ‘have found their theoretical and therapeutic explanation as inhibitions in creative activity or as inverted forms of the sexual imagination.’

- The family according to Freud

A key contribution in the study of the anthropology of the family which was contributed to by Freud was an analysis of the prohibitions exercised in all of them principally the oedipal complex. It is observed that the simple process from oedipal desire manifesting to its suppression is clearly observable only in the male child, who ‘is constantly the subject of didactic expositions’. It is also noted, that the mechanism of suppression appears justifiable only if it is exercised by the father over the son. ‘This is accompanied by the castration complex.’

-The myth of castration

This suppression is brought about by a ‘double aggressive movement’ in the subject aggression against the parent with whom his sexual desire puts him in a position of rivalry, followed by the secondary fear that this aggression will be reciprocated. A fantasy underpins these two movements, one which has been isolated with them – that of the castration complex, the fantasy consists of the mutilation of a bodily member, ‘in an act of brutality’ that can ‘only be the castration of a male’. Lacan adds, ‘the apparent reality of this danger, as well ‘as the fact that the threat was actually formulated by certain educational traditions, was to lead Freud to conceive it as initially experienced at its face value and so to recognize the prototype of oedipal suppression in the terror inspired in a male by a male—in fact by the father.’

This view was supported by sociological facts, being that the prohibition of incest with the mother is a universal character of families irrespective of their primitivity. ‘Frazer recognizes, in the taboo against the mother – the primary law of humanity.’

- The myth of the original patricide

Observing the link between taboos and the totem, Freud passed to a hypothetical primitive family, where a male – on the basis of his biological superiority, dominated and kept the nubile females to himself in the horde. ‘He imagined a drama of the murder of the father by the sons followed by a posthumous consecration by the murderers, prisoners of an indissoluble rivalry, of his power over the women. This primordial event is represented as the source of the taboo of the mother and of all moral and cultural traditions.’

I do note the similarities here between the role of the dominant male in a tribe and Judaic prophet’s vis-à-vis their position in respect to the women, inasmuch as they occupied a position of instruction. In fact Freud’s last book released while he was alive was Moses and Monotheism (1939).

An ambiguous passage explicates a battle for the recognition of a law which seems to be the principle motif in Freud’s hypothesis regarding the primordial family in the form of a horde. What Lacan does clarify however is that advancements in our knowledge of primates as well as universally present traces of matriarchal family structures imply that this hypothesis may be a mere chimera. Further, the presence in these forms of ‘culture and especially of an often very severe suppression of sexuality, make clear that the foundations of the human family are not dependent on the power of the male.’

Yet, he concedes that the oedipal structure has yet permitted for the ‘harvesting of facts which have been objectified towards the clarification of the psychological structure of the family.

-The function of the Oedipus complex; a psychological revision

Lacan marks an insufficient differentiation in the planes in which psychoanalysts explain the Oedipus complex. ‘They think that the complex is the axis along which the evolution of sexuality is projected onto the constitution of reality, but in fact in the case of man these two planes diverge.’ The specific incidence of this divergence is recognized by theoreticians when they speak of the suppression of sexuality and the sublimation of reality. He calls for a clarification of their structural relation while noting the role of maturation has only a parallel relation to them.

- The maturation of sexuality

‘The psychic apparatus’ of sexuality expresses itself in the child initially in ways aberrant to its biological ends. The succession of these forms displays that it is only ‘by a progressive maturation’ that it comes to conform to genital organization. This process conditions the Oedipus complex which inversely directs it towards its objects.

The conflict in the subject characteristic of the oedipal movement seeks its first object in the form of the mother to be consumed as nourishment, and even as the womb into which the subject may be reabsorbed. This desire is better defined in the male who, through the reactivation of weaning, is offered the opportunity of sexual regression. These tendencies arrive at a psychological impasse while also opposing the attitude of exteriorization which conforms to the activity of the male.

These tendencies seem to be inverted in the opposite sex. The maternal object, in diverting oedipal desire, seems to blunt some of its sexualizing effects. By this, I presume we are referring to arousal in a mature and developed sexuality and expressions of primitive aggressivity in an underdeveloped sexuality. On a longer timescale, perhaps the attachment to this object also dilutes and hinders the development of secondary sexual characteristics. The imposition of a change in object however, the genital tendency is better detached from the primitive tendency – and it (the opposite sex I presume) does this easily by not having to reverse the attitude of interiorization inherited from these narcissistic tendencies.

- The constitution of reality

Observable here is the ‘influence of the psychological on a vital relationship’. Through this it contributes to the constitution of reality. It contributes to the attribution, or predication of a certain affective depth to objects. It is a dimension, which while forming the basis of subjective understanding, would not be distinguished from it were it not for the clinical experience of mental illness diagnosing a variety of degraded forms at the level of comprehensibility.

Despite this dimension being a norm, ‘it can only be reconstituted through metaphoric intuitions’ such as ‘density’ conferring existence and extension onto an object, and perspective – which places an object at a distance from us, and inspires in us a respect for the object. It manifests itself in vacillations of reality that fecundate a delusion. Examples of this occurrence include when the object is confused with the ego and reabsorbed into fantasy. Or when it appears ‘decomposed according to one of the feelings that form the spectre of unreality.’ ‘These range from feelings of strangeness, of déjà vu, of jamais vu, and include false recognition, illusions of one's double, feelings of divination, of participation, of being influenced, of intuitions of signification, and finally culminate in the twilight of the world and the abolition of affectivity, formally designated in German as object - loss (Objektverlust).’

“Psychoanalysis explains these very diverse qualities of lived experience by variations in the quantity of vital energy that desire invests in the object.” – This is taken into account by psychoanalysts in the ‘transferences’ operating in their treatment. The capacity of a subject for transference indicates whether treatment is called for or not. The formation of the ‘Oedipus complex’ still appears to provide proof of sufficient investment for “transference” and to indicate the moment at which it emerges. Important to keep in mind through this broad sketch is that the -

“This role of the Oedipus complex is held to be correlative to sexual maturation. The attitude established by the genital tendency is then supposed to crystallize in a normal way a vital relationship with reality.”

The exchange of gifts and the eulogisation of sacrifice are common practices in which this tendency is weakened, drawing comfort as it does from moralizing notions (perhaps not dissimilar to the maternal object). Via this, it is able to develop for itself an analogical psychogenesis which is in conformity with ‘the most striking flaw in analytic doctrine’ the neglect of the structural in favor of the dynamic. Please bear in mind that Lacan was writing this in 1938, and the advances made by French structuralism, as well as new forms of its utilization, such as in Badiou’s philosophy might have since addressed this inadequacy. Analytic experience itself contributes to the study of mental forms ‘by revealing their link, either as conditions or as resolutions –of affective crises. The task of analysis is to distinguish between the formal influence of the complex and the structure of the drama essential to it.

- The repression of sexuality

The Oedipus complex marks the highpoint of infantile sexuality. Simultaneously it is the source of repression which reduces its images to a latent stage until puberty. “While it gives to reality a life-like density, it is also the moment of sublimation which in man opens up dimensions of reality that extend beyond self-interest.”

The perpetuation of these effects are carried out by psychic agencies, either by the superego, in which case it is unconscious, or the ego ideal, in which case it is conscious to the subject. These forms reproduce the imago of the parent of the same sex, thus contributing to the sexual conformity of the psyche. The imago of the father does however serve a prototypical role in these two functions given the dominant role of the male.

In Lacanian doctrine, the suppression of sexuality is based on the fantasy of castration. “If the doctrine links it to a real threat, this is above all because Freud, while showing genius in his recognition of dynamic tendencies, remained closed to the notion of the autonomy of forms because of his traditional atomism” – Lacan’s words. Of interest to the religious or allegorically inclined (particularly Hindus) is an explanation of a precocious desire for virility in a little girl (who also shares the same fantasy i.e. castration). Please note that this is Freud’s. He posits that a revelation of male domination at an early age in the child ‘accompanied by the fantasy of the phallic mother’ this perpetuates a desire for virility, and to see one’s mother as virile. Perhaps a rudimentary psychoanalysis of the cultural forms consisting of the myth of Kalki. Lacan notes, that despite this origin finding identification – it is based on so many mechanisms that its occurrence seems unlikely.

- Fantasies of the fragmented body

Material drawn from psychoanalytic experience however points at another interpretation. “The fantasy of castration is as a matter of fact preceded by a whole series of fantasies of the fragmentation of the body that go, in regressive order, from dislocation and dismemberment through gelding and disemboweling to devoration and burial.” Might I add that some people work these drives into their cooking.Their examination illustrates the series as a form of penetration, in both a destructive and investigative sense. Lacan adds that they are directed at the secret of the maternal womb. I would however recall that it was he himself who, against Freud and in consonance with Plato see forms themselves as autonomous. It is simple to conceive of a philosopher investigating a form within these coordinates. Also stated by him – ‘the more archaic these fantasies are the more this relationship is experienced by the subject as ambivalent.’

- The maternal origin of the archaic superego

In man, imaginary forms of his own body precede their mastery and often form a defensive attachment the subject finds to protect him from being torn asunder due to his prematurity. The castration anxiety, Lacan posits, is linked to this same form – (the body I presume). It emerges prior to any mapping out, or as we have pointed earlier, before even the maturation of the body. Far from being determined by educative traditions, it determines them. It is, in this manner, a defense posited by the narcissistic ego (which has already identified with its mirror image), against the anxiety that unsettles it. This crisis is caused less by any eruption of desire in the subject, than by a reactualization of the object of the mother, or as Lacan puts it, the mother as object i.e. the maternal object.

To overcome this anxiety, the subject reproduces the ‘masochistic rejection through which he overcame his loss’, but ‘in accordance with a structure acquired’ that is to say, in an imaginary localization of the tendency.’

Lacan points to a sociological correlate of sexual suppression. ‘Primitive people’ in ritualistic celebrations which while liberating sexuality, in ‘orgiastic forms’ also designate, or perhaps determine, a moment of ‘affective reintegration into Totality’. This also does bear a resemblance to rites performed by Hindus after funerals, such as the dispersal of the deceased ashes into a sacred river. Semitic traditions have their own correlate with sexual maturity being sactioned only at the price of mutilation via circumcision.

- The maternal origin of the archaic superego

Suppression arises, from these findings – through the fantasy of castration, the imaginary game which conditions it, as well as the mother being the object which determines it. It hence constitutes a counterdrive to the super-ego which ‘analytic experience reveals to be its most radical kernel’ and which also exercises the greatest degree of suppression.

In the differentiation or rather separation of this form (the fantasy of castration from the object of the mother) the subject comes to see a progress in the suppressive agency ‘in the authority of the adult.’ This helps us understand why the rigor with which the super-ego suppresses the functioning of the subject establishes itself in inverse proportion to the real severity of education.

He does acknowledge that the super-ego receives traces of reality from maternal suppression, such as the discipline of weaning and sphincter control, Lacan posits that the Oedipus complex alone constitutes its passage beyond the narcissistic form.

- The sublimation of reality

This complex, Lacan claims, plays a crucial role in the resolution of the drama, ‘that is from the form known as identification that it discovered there.’ He states that it is via the identification of the subject with the imago of the parent of the same sex that the super-ego and the ego-ideal acquire characteristics of the same.

Psychoanalysis observes the emergence of a ‘secondary narcissism’ which is distinct from the identification in question here. The doctrine does not distinguish between the first and this ‘identification’. In both cases the subject is assimilated to an object. Their difference lies in their constitution, with the emergence of oedipal desire, of a more real object corresponding to a better formed ego. In classically Freudian terms this is also corresponsive with his idea of the introduction of the reality principle, often by the father. “The imago, while it imposes itself on the subject, is only juxtaposed with the ego, since as unconscious and ideal it is subject to a twofold exclusion.”

-The originality of oedipal identification

Lacan prescribes a structural analysis of oedipal identification ‘to arrive at its more distinctive forms’. At first we witness the antinomy of the functions of the parental imago. These entail the inhibition of the sexual function by the super-ego. This operates unconsciously as the actions of the super-ego against the repetition of this tendency remain unconscious so long as the tendency itself remains repressed.

The imago on the other hand also preserves this function while protecting its own miscognitions, as ‘what the ego ideal represents in consciousness is the preparation of the way of its future return’. Why would an ego-ideal opt for such a measure however, unless, it were to be understood as a repetitive function, or as in medieval drama, an allegorical character or representative which may have left something incomplete. Perhaps we may learn the mechanism it operates in the psyche. Lacan notes that the imago itself appears in two structures whose divergence itself constitute the first sublimation of reality.

The object of identification, at this stage, is not the object of desire; rather it is the object opposed to it in the oedipal triangle. The subject mimes practices designed to be propitiatory. ‘Sadomasochistic participation is isolated from the subject and takes its distance from him in a new ambiguity of fear and love.’ Perhaps this retroactively leads to the formation of an ego as distinct from the maternal object. The last stage of the weaning complex? Perhaps. This step towards reality however also conjures away the ‘primitive object of desire’.

Lacan posits that to him, it is not the moment of oedipal identification, but the moment of narcissistic defense that ‘erects the object of its new reality’. This moment produces an object whose very position defines it as an obstacle to desire. It is experienced as being surrounded by ‘a dangerous aura of transgression’. “It appears to the ego both as a support for its defenses and as an example for its triumph.” My question here would be whether this step is synonymous in any way with the act of naming, which also posited, in the form of a word, a symbolic mediator to the thing itself. Often, in everyday parlance, this word often defines a use, function or characteristic of the object taken by the subject, hence positing a relation between them. Anyway this object presents itself as both a support for the ego’s defense and as an example of its triumph. This is why, normally this object is seen in the context of the double in which the ego first identified itself, and through which ‘the ego can still confuse itself with another’. It, through this brings security to the ego by reinforcing this context. It may perhaps be worth interrogating how different this context in question is from what Alain Badiou describes as the ‘two scene’ in ‘In Praise of Love’. At the same time however, it puts the ego in opposition to it (the object taken by the ego; is this the preliminary form of what Lacan is later to develop as the object petit a?) as an ideal (if it is posited as an ideal, - are we still referring to it as an image here?), which alternatively exalts and depresses the ego.

This moment of the Oedipus complex forms the prototype of sublimation as much because of the role the masked presence of the tendency (identification, the taking of an object) plays in it as because of the form it gives the object. Lacan claims that this form repeats itself in every crises in which human reality appears with ‘that enigmatic density we have mentioned above.’ By this I presume that he is referring to the identification in the double, and the formation of the ego in the subject – which in my reading is what Badiou may have drawn on in characterizing the two scene. “It is this light of wonderment that transfigures an object by dissolving its equivalences in the subject and proposes it(self?) No longer as a means to the satisfaction of desire, but as a pole for the creations of passion.” I am inclined to think of this depiction as the act of reading itself, and as the object in question as being the signifier; however one can imagine its depiction or deployment in other domains and modes of representation.

Paradoxically (to my eyes) Lacan claims that it is by reducing such an object once more that progress in deepening experience is realized. Though, there may be a semblance of truth here regarding his later characterization of the Real, its inexpressibility and the subject’s perceived proximity to it. It would be interesting to note at what point he comes up with the Symbolic however, a concept that is to play a key role in his later work, and in that of Lacanians after him.

These ‘functional antinomies’ within the subject are hence constituted by the major crises of human reality. They serve, or result in containing the indefinite potentiality of its progress. Lacan reads the function of conscience as arising from a primordial anxiety, or at least as an expression of it. The function of equivalence, expresses narcissistic conflict. The example however is deemed to be the original contribution of the oedipal complex.

- The imago of the father

The structure of the oedipal complex ‘designates to the father to give to the function of sublimation its purest and most eminent form’. The imago of the mother, in oedipal identification betrays the interference of primordial forms of identification ‘marking both, the ego-ideal and the superego in their forms and in their ambivalences’. In the case of the little girl, it is observed that the suppression of sexuality and its accompanying mental fragmentation is imposes upon the body resulting in what Lacan here defines as hysteria. Notice that we are hear not at a characterization of hysteria and its symptoms as yet, which is perhaps best depicted in recent times in the work of Slavoj Zizek. The sublimation of the maternal imago which accompanies this tends to change into a ‘feeling of repulsion and, because of its weakened position, into a systematic concern regarding the subject’s mirror image. Perhaps best manifested, in middle class households at least, with the infliction of comparisons of success that a child, father, husband, wife, or mother may undergo.

Lacan adds that to the extent that the imago of the father is dominant, it polarizes in both sexes, ‘the most perfect forms of the ego ideal’ – virility in the boy, virginity in the girl. In its diminished forms on the other hand, whose relation to the body is not entirely clear in the text, though physical lesions are mentioned, the imago is ‘disabled or blind’ (the text indicates that this may be a direct result of the lesions) – ‘diverting creative energy away from its creative function’ and towards an ideal of narcissistic integrity. One can see how useful, and tempting such an ideal, diminished or otherwise, would be to a subject, were he to have weakness in grasping familial interrelations, at the level of infancy, and perhaps those between institutions in maturation, provided sufficiently correct sublimation. These of course presume adequate levels of stability, in terms of safety and physical security. The death of the father, at whatever stage of oedipal development achieved, tends to fixate the progress of reality, bringing it to a halt.

-The complex and sociological relativity

Analysis indicates that the Oedipus complex has to be understood in terms of its narcissistic antecedents. It cannot be grounded however independently of sociological relativity. ‘The most decisive source of the complexes’ psychic effects derives from the fact that the imago of the father concentrates in itself the functions of repression and sublimation.’ This is qualified by the assertion that this tends to be determined by the paternalistic family.

- Matriarchy and Patriarchy

In matriarchal cultures, it is observed, with evidence from anthropologists, that familial authority is not exercised by the father but rather, by the maternal uncle. Malinowski, who was not unfamiliar with psychoanalysis, observes that in such structures it is the maternal uncle who ‘exercises his sponsorship’ over familial taboos as well as the initiator into tribal rituals. This does free the father of traditional repressive functions, leaving to him a friendlier and supportive role, in teaching skills and inculcating courage in the face of difficult situations or enterprises.

Malinowski observes that with this separation of functions in practice, for example among the tribes of Melanesia, a different psychic equilibrium is brought on - characterized by an absence of neurosis. The flip side of this coin is however, that with the separation of these functions, social suppression dominates the impulse to sublimate. This mechanism though intuitive when thought of requires explication in relation to our theory of the Oedipus complex.

Conversely Lacan identifies that the paternal imago’s investment in the function of suppression can infuse, or perhaps project the force of this investment, (suppression alone?) into the sublimations destined to overcome it. “The Oedipus complex is productive precisely because it binds the progress of these functions together into such an antinomy.” This antinomy plays a part in individual drama where its diminishing effects can be traced. Its progressive effects however are apparent in the cultural patrimony into which it is integrated in the forms of normal ideals, juridical statues and artistic inspiration. Lacan indicts the psychologist, who by neglecting these forms and isolating the oedipal conflict to within its functional condition, the conjugal family, reintegrates the social dialectic generated by this conflict into psychological progress in the patient. The alternative which is prescribed, requires the reading of the oedipal dialectic in relation to the objects it takes, objects which in every instance, as words, names, signifiers, as artifacts are product of a culture, which shapes them, and in whom and by which we may glean the kind of antagonism in place in society itself, rather than isolating it in its pathological expression in an individual.

I would like to add, that it is this step by him which led me away from the study of philosophy, at least as it is taught in departments in India, and toward sociology, where I believed such an inquiry may find a better soil. It also spoke to my earlier training in literary analysis in a way which I believe the contemporary investment in the reduction of thought to physicalisms and in trying to isolate the emergence of such phenomena to sensory effects, brutally misrecognises.

-The openness of social bonds

Morality, Lacan states, drawing from Bergson’s recognition of what is depicted as the ‘total obligation’ of the bond which closes the human group, is primarily a defense mechanism, and more strictly, a biological defense. Bergson however, also in opposition to this characterizes a transcendent life-force which in every movement opens up this bond by universalizing it. Correlates to this are evident to psychoanalysts and sociologists in the taboo of the mother and the paternal authority which opens up the bond. The functional conflict generated by the oedipal complex introduces into repression an ideal in the form of a promise.

In drawing on observations from primitive culture, which through the fantastic representation of divine violence, in the form of festivities, for example in durga puja among Hindus, though this is a brief spectacle – Lacan posits that such cultures posit a primary and almost primordial relationship with the mother. The advent of paternal authority here, it is observed, brings a tempering of primitive social suppression. It is also however, as Lacan observes, seen in the sacrifice of Abraham, which also hinges on a promise, a two fold one I may add as while Abraham counts on the will of God as absolute imperative Isaac’s life hangs in the balance. The relation of this to the mechanism of suppression is less clear to me. In the myth of the sphinx and her encounter with Oedipus he reads the tale of the emancipation from matriarchal tyranny and the decline of the ritual of royal murder. These myths are periodized as belonging to ‘the dawn of history’ and far from the birth of humanity from which they are separated by an ‘immemorial’ duration of matriarchal cultures.

This perspective, characterized as sociological is what led Bergson, Lacan claims, to the Jewish people, in whom the phenomenon of prophetism manifested because they held on to patriarchy when all other groups succumbed to matriarchal cults. One can see here how this singular practice develops an insight into time which calls into our present a historical perspective.

Lacan posits that it is in the history of patriarchal people that we see, throughout history, a ‘dialectical affirmation by society of the exigencies of the person and of the universality of ideals’. Evidence for this is witnessed in the progress in juridical forms that eternalize in power and consciousness, a mission perhaps begun by ancient Rome and the ‘moral privileges of a patriarchy’ to plebeians and others. Here, Lacan seems to be conflating patriarchy, in two sense – with Judaic tribes who may have been bedouins, and with a roman aristocracy. This seems to be a dilution of what was a violent history between the Jews and Romans; not least over the issue of the crucification of Christ.

- Modern man and the conjugal family

Two functions of the above mentioned process are reflected in the structure of the family itself. The tradition, drawing from Patrician ideals, of privileged forms of marriage and, the ‘apotheotic exaltation which Christianity brought to the exigencies of the person’. Lacan posits that the church integrated this into the ethics of Christianity, placing primacy of free choice in the marital bond itself. This is what led to ‘the silent revolution of society’ in the fifteenth century and brought the family closer to its modern structure, ie where the predominant social fact is not family but marriage. This, along with the economic revolution is the source of bourgeois society and modern man.

In psychoanalysis, the psychoanalyst encounters, gets to study and learn about the modern man in the conjugal family. In this encounter, analytic discipline requires that even the most intimate kind of knowledge is not decontextualized beyond the periphery of the demands which his culture make on him, while also taking into account the analyst’s own position in the encounter, which is often face-to-face.

Lacan speaks of Western man, and how to understand himself he requires to take into account the antinomies that characterize his relationship with nature and society. This, I believe may be true across all cultures, since industrialization at least. Impediments to this I would add may be isolation or ignorance. It is in recognizing this that we are able to represent the transgression brewed out of the anxiety which infused these conditions. It is also in this encounter, with the transgression that we may perhaps overcome it through conceptualization which reveals and bequeaths an insight that it is through this dialectical crisis that he - man creates both himself and (takes) his objects.

-The role of the formation of the family

The ‘subversive and critical’ moment depicted above finds its most active sources in three conditions layed out by Lacan, which are found in the conjugal family.

As the family ‘incarnates authority’ in the next generation, and in a family figure, this authority is placed within the immediate range of creative subversion.

The psyche is formed as much by the image of the adult as by going against his constraints. ‘The effect is produced by the transmission of the ego-ideal’. Here, I would like to add that inspite of the criticism that Lacan brings to bear against mythic traditions, it is not difficult to see the resemblance this bears to the function of allegorical figures, nor in the allegorization of figures for that matter. The issue at hand however, and what would be of interest to note is the role they may play in the formation of an ego-ideal.

Lacan also notes that the purest form in which this is transmitted is from father to son, involving a positive selection of tendencies and attributes and a progressive realization of ideals in the character. The phenomena of families of eminent men is due to this psychological process and not due to some hereditary factor.

Finally, the conspicuousness of sexual activity among those who represent moral constraints, particularly ‘the example of transgression of the primary prohibition by the imago of the father, lift the tension of the libido and the influence of sublimation to their highest degree’.

The reasons Lacan provides for the success of the conjugal family in producing superior forms of character, creativity and happiness are - that it ‘realizes in the most human way, the conflict of man with his most archaic anxieties.’ ‘It provides him an authentic arena in which he can measure himself against the profoundest figures of his destiny, while placing the most complete triumph over his original slavery within reach.

The complex, within this framework, ensures the most thoroughgoing differentiation in personality before independence and consequently, latency. The social conflict which characterizes this period is hence permitted to have the greatest possible efficacy in the formation of the individual.

The decline of the paternal imago

Lacan, while offering his respects to the role of the imago of the father during the classical age of progress, states that he does not bewail the reduction of the family to its biological group. He sees a correlation between the loosening of family ties and the endeavor to integrate the most advanced forms of cultural progress. He does however acknowledge the ‘psychological consequences which follow the social decline of the paternal imago’ borne by individuals in these situations, particularly the hardships of economic recession and political violence. Keep in mind that this text was originally written in 1938. Europe had already witnessed and was recovering from a catastrophic war whose embers were not entirely extinguished.

In an other plane, he also points that the most subversive critics of the paternalistic family in the 19th century, were yet marked by the imago of the father which so infused the writings of ideologues such as Corneille and Prudhon.

His insight into this situation however, is that the rise of the conjugal family, in the decline of the paternal imago results in the preponderance of matrimonial demands, citing America as an example.

This decline however, bears a deep imprint in Lacan’s works and he goes as far as to claim that the birth of psychoanalysis is intimately linked with it. He brings to notice that the Oedipus complex was discovered in Vienna during a period when the most diverse set of families, in terms of their mode of production, commingled. The son of a Jewish patriarch, Freud reached its hypothesis through his clinical findings.

Lacan, in his study, notices that the neurosis that his doctrine sought to diagnose have evolved since then towards a kind of ‘character complex’. His experience leads him to posit, the lack in the personality of the father, whether as humiliated, divided, or absent - as the chief determinant of the Oedipus complex. This lack in the father’s personality, which here seems to mean the same as the paternal imago, is what ‘exhausts instinctual energy and vitiates the dialectic of sublimation’.

“Impotence and a Utopian spirit are the sinister godmothers who watch over the cradle of the neurotic and imprison his ambition, either because he stifles in himself those creations expected of him by the world into which he comes, or because in the object against which he proposes to revolt he fails to recognize his own activity.”

Chapter 2: Family Complexes in Pathology

Lacan emphasizes the commonness of family complexes in the function of psychoses. These tend to be so because they are in conformity with the arrests of the ego. He even seems to indicate that they bring it about, through this. From the outset, it is made clear that the understanding of the pathology in question needs to be framed within the social constellation set by this study. This is why cases of biological transmission should be termed ‘hereditary’ and not ‘familial’.

- Psychoses with a familial theme

At that time, the predominant view in France was that the whole psyche was involved in any lesion or deficit in any one of its functions. This he claims, was further discernible in the reactions to the psychoses which when typified, evoked the coherence of an archaic ego ‘whose very discord revealed its internal law’.

These conditions, we are reminded, correspond to what is commonly known as madness. What may be of some interest to a cultural analyst is the assertion that these need not even inhere in a personality to be identified. The relation of a character to a scene, forms to narratives, or even the relations between genres may bear them. Lacan does however identify one psychoses which exhibits these traits, which he isolates under the name of ‘self-punishing paranoia’. It is formed not merely in relation with the ego, but also the super-ego and the ego-ideal. The super-ego here exercises the most extreme punitive effects, while the ego-ideal, perhaps as a self preservatory mechanism, resorts to ambiguous, and may I add brief, objectification which favor repeated projections. He abandons this pursuit however, in the face of the double impasse of an original form coinciding with a nosological frontier. Whether there has been any progress at this site is a question whose answer I do not as of now, know.

- Delusional forms of knowing

Progress in the psychoanalytic investigation would yield the ‘reconstitution of the ego stages’ by which I understand the forms that the subject takes in its grasp, and their respective level of libidinal development. These are yet prior to the hardening of personality. The pathology, as I understand it, is localizable in the inadequacy, or perhaps the insufficient sublimation of these forms. This history of the forms which the subject takes, which is here to be read as the object grasped by the subject, which retroactively constitutes the subject itself, would be marked by a series of arrests. The unearthing of this topology, and perhaps its therapeutic effects, inasmuch as they become self-transparent to the subject, are one of the boons of psychoanalysis. Traditionally, psychoanalysis has sought to formalize the stages of the subject’s libidinal development into oral, anal, libidinal, etc. I do think however that there is something to be said of schizioanalysis as determined by Guattari and Deleuze which seem to address certain doctrinal fixations while also revealing, or perhaps producing a narrative far richer in its coherence for the subject in question vis-à-vis their lifeworld, while informalizing, to an extent, the relationship between the analyst and the analysand. Whether this latter step is good, particularly regarding the economic underpinnings which sustain the analytic practice is an open question. This however, the procedure adopted by schizioanalysis, in Guattari’s own words, does not lead to a simplification, or reduction of the complex, but rather its bifurcation and differentiation, towards its ontological heterogeneity.

Regarding Lacan and psychoanalysis’ handling of these concerns however, regarding the objects and their arrests and the (resulting?) psychoses, it is plain to note that they (the objects) take the form characteristic of human knowing – ‘formal identity, affective equivalence, repetitive reproduction and anthropomorphic symbolism’. Lacan here mentions the ‘stylization’ of their representation – alluding perhaps to the stages in libidinal development which Freud set out, he holds firm however, that in the absence, or perhaps the obliteration of ‘secondary integrations’ their outlines are discernible all the more clearly. He does this while conceding that it is precisely these uses, if I may term it so, of which sublimation is certainly one that gives objects their mobility, relativity and reality. It is clear here, that we are at a point where theory does make its presence known on a ground that philosophy may not have traversed.

The limit of the reality of the object in psychosis, coinciding with the retrogression of sublimation is given at the moment indicated by ‘the aura of oedipal fulfillment’. The productive phase of the delusion sets up an object in an ‘atmosphere of astonishment and wonder’. In this phase, objects are ‘transformed by an ineffable strangeness’ and become saturated with meaning, or as enigmatic or shocking. It is here that the conformism within which the subject masked his narcissistic relation to reality slips away.

Lacan lays before us a series of the forms that the object takes in the subject’s primary narcissism. These often develop before the ‘revelatory crises’, along with a reduction of oedipal objects to secondary narcissism. In the first form however, the object remains irreducible to any form of equivalence. Further, and I quote “and the value of possessing it and its capacity to do harm outweigh any possibility of compensation or compromise.” It is clear here that we are referring to something which the subject doesn’t consider to be a commodity. Secondly, the object’s form can remain linked to the high point of the crises, as if ‘the imago of the oedipal ideal were fixated on the moment of its transfiguration.’

The imago in this case is not formed as it is usually stated, along with an identification with the double. I reiterate here that what Gallager terms the ‘double’ here, may in other texts be translated as the other, and, my reading guides me to suggest, that it is this conception which is to become the Other as a symbolic order in Lacan’s later works. Instead, the object is formed via ‘repeated projections of the ego-ideal onto it.’ This object’s action hence remains external. Lacan, with remarkable insight does see that such an object would devolve into a means, and perhaps even a mechanism of censorship or surveillance. The modern security camera comes to mind, along with the entire tendency of stalking on social media. Finally, through analysis, or perhaps other means, the object can re-discover its primary narcissistic structure prior to the crises when its formation was arrested.

In the last case, the super-ego, unrepressed ‘expresses itself in the subject’ via repressive intentions, but also emerges as an object grasped by the ego. Lacan’s original formulation depicted the subject with the masculine pronoun - ‘him’, yet in a clinical setting gone wrong, if an analyst has yet not been able to isolate the ego of the subject, or perhaps if the field of analysis were not an individual, then my formulation would be adequate.

- The function of complexes in delusion

Family complexes, imaginably – play a pronounced role in these delusions. Or, to be precise, the ego and the stages via which it is brought to psychosis. They are often motives for the subject’s reaction, or themes for his delusion – indicating (incorrect) sublimation. The complexes themselves, may be integrated into the ego and may correspond with the regressive series of objects which they take in (or perhaps towards) psychosis.

- Family reactions

Psychoses is often accompanied by morbid reactions brought on by family objects. These reactions wax in proportion to their diminishing reality which, paradoxically, is accompanied by their ascending symbolic significance. Lacan recommends studying the complainant’s conflict with their family circle or spouse, this is to be followed by recognizing the meaning of the paranoic’s persecutors as substitutes for his father, brother and sister – Lacan seems to be strongly enforcing his own conception of the familial complex here, in stark opposition to Late Freud’s emphasis on tribal totems and rituals, even if played out across time in the literary domain. Yet, this is done to arrive at his secret ‘romantic filiations’ or to ‘fantastic Olympian genealogies’ where the paraphrenic’s myths are acted out.

Immediately identifiable here, to a discerning reader, is the difference in how a fantasy is treated, within psychoanalytic doctrine, between the early Lacan, and here - I confess I am not very familiar with much of his later work, and Zizek, who follows him almost to the letter, yet seems able to put fantasy within a productivity oedipal machine capable of grasping the kind of societal contradictions which engage the oedipal scene.

Crucial to note is the repositioning of the super-ego and its role which is diagnosed by Zizek in the form of presentation ie. a commodity, in capitalist society. Here, we are no longer dealing with a juridical subject which is prescribed rights on the grounds of precedents, but rather with a blind injunction riding on the profits of consumer culture, of the injunction to enjoy, raised to almost a Kantian categorical imperative.

An earlier culture’s emphasis on restraint and forbearance have an increasingly diminished role in a society whose new temples are casinos, whose collective unconscious is pornography and whose very communication is monetized. One of Zizek’s principle hypotheses, which I do follow, is that in the world of the commodity as governed by the bourgeoisie, this is the only possible effective position of the superego. The manager driven by targets, coordinating interests between employees and the board while competing with other players may be the closest formalization of this role.

In any cases, the object constituted by familial relations show progressive changes ‘in affective value, when they are reduced to being simply pretexts for passionate exaltation; in individuality, when it is no longer recognized in their delusional repetition; and finally in their very identity, when it is no longer recognizable in the subject except as an entity exempt from the principle of contradiction.’ This final point seems to be the crystallization into what may be referred to as dogma.

- Family themes

The expression of familial themes and their attachment to it by the subject is sutured to the ego’s attachment to and identification with a family object to the extent of forsaking the distance between themselves and their ‘delusional conviction’. Lacan shows remarkable insight in his observation that there may be an aspect of the complainant’s world which is contingent on a charge against their family. This point is elucidated in examples of a family holding onto a conviction in obstinacy for the sake of their ‘honor’ for example, even if the said conviction is a charge against the other. It would be remarkable to observe how Alain Badiou may have picked up on this is Logics of Worlds, a book I have unfortunately not read.

In cases of escalating neuroses however, the subject completely abandons their gap from the object and identifies with semblances such as ‘the all-powerful Father, the filial Victim, the universal Mother or the primordial Virgin’ - archetypes, to be sure with histories, yet essentially modes which allow the ego to affirm itself powerfully.

In a moment of wisdom, Lacan sees that this affirmation itself would become increasingly tenuous, the further the ego is bound by or integrates the delusional theme. He traces this movement from being a ‘communicative force’ – which I read as a particular deployment of the subject’s Oedipalisation, a means of signification, to a ‘demonstrative intention’ apparent in the subject’s reactions and interpretations. Finally, in cases of paraphrenia it dissolves, or ‘looses itself’ in discordance between conduct and belief.

Lacan, has a curious and striking conclusion to his diagnosis here, - as the reactions of the subject become increasingly fantastic, and the ‘delusion’s theme’ becomes increasingly objective – the ego confuses itself with the expression of the complex, ‘while the complex tends to express itself in the intentionality of the ego.’ This appears to me as an instance of closed reading on the part of Lacan. Can we not also read such a moment as a case of a subject having identified the analyst as the double and realized an object which allows them to develop a kind of resistance to the analysis in question? Do observe here that this is hardly limited merely to the face-to-face encounter in the clinic, which, bear in mind is a place governed by its own doctrines of interpretation and a practice of diagnostic naming. This does tie back to my original question regarding the place of naming in the narcissistic constitution of the self in the encounter with the double, or as I read it, what is later to become the Other in Lacanian, or should I say psychoanalytic theory. An example of this in a case of psychosis from Lacan, here would seem called for.

On another plane it is worth investigating the relation of expression to the unconscious here. For, as observed, ‘psychoanalysts usually say that complexes are conscious in psychoses whereas they are unconscious in neuroses.’ If the principal method of diagnosis for psychoanalysis is free association then we need to ask how such a discipline reads silence or uncooperation even, remembering that we are still speaking of an analytic setting. There may be a case made for reading acts, and not merely communicative ones via the hermeneutic of psychoanalyses.

For us, in the field however, it is important to observe that the isolation of the familial themes in neuroses are ‘virtual static effects’ of their structure, ‘representations in which the ego is stabilized’. They show the morphology of the complex without displaying its organization or revealing the hierarchy of its characteristics.

Lacan warns against explanations in which the tendency focuses on ‘delusional themes’ and a classification of psychoses according to it. The theories regarding erotomania, and ‘delusions of filiation’ were read as ‘romantic creations’ hence becoming palpable as (oedipal) structures. Here, Lacan emphasizes – that it is only knowledge of the complex which can guide research with ‘both a systematic direction…, sureness…, and sense of progress that goes far beyond the means of pure observation.’

- The determinants of psychosis

Lacan states that the doctrine (at this stage) has not yet arrived at whether the role of the complex in motivation and theme in symptoms of psychoses are also causally determining. The study, while psychogenetic, in the sense of originating from the mind or from emotional states, does not try to localize the origin of the psychoses in them. Lacan emphasizes the necessity of some organic contribution that may prefigure mental withdrawal leading to delusional states.

Further, he states that the cause of stagnation of sublimation (identified as the essence of psychoses) ‘must be looked for in some biological flaw in the libido’. This acknowledges the possibility of an endogenous determinant for psychoses.

Were one to try and identify a flaw in the psyche before psychosis, it would be gleaned in the subject’s most secret aversions and impulses. The evidence for this is palpable in the inexpressible distress which subjects acknowledge in the first expression of their genitality at puberty.

To trace an explanation which posits such symptoms as degeneration, or to link it to questions regarding the perversion of sexuality open up a terrain of psychological heredity. Lacan emphasizes the strictly familial theme of this investigation.

- Familial factors

We have established here the relation between the familial situation and the development of neurosis, there are often however anomalies in this very situation which contribute to it. The subject in this situation, in an inability to cure the psychosis, models the ego-ideal on the form of a sibling. This ‘sibling-object’ switches the libido destined for the Oedipus complex onto the ‘imago of primitive homosexuality’ thus bastardizing the structure of sublimation. A family cloistered into itself intensifies these cumulative effects. This may even come to characterize their transmission of the ego-ideal. While earlier this was geared towards selectivity, here it veers into degeneration.

Our understanding here is that while neurosis may have a biological deficit in the libido. ‘It also reflects a drift away from sublimation’. We also acknowledge the familial transmissibility of such cases of neurosis may take the form of paranoia, and in cases of an advanced frequency of transmission in the family, may even develop into paraphrenia. This, may even reveal a temporal precession in descendants. Finally, if this is permitted to persist, the pathology may develop into an exclusive choice of certain familial members as documented by Legrand du Saulles studies of delires a deux which often demonstrate characteristic or persecutory delusions. I would like to sadly observe here that I am writing this from India, where on the 16th of November, in the state of Karnataka a rather striking case came to light. A woman lost her husband about a year back. Following this she entered into sexual relations with her son, a 21 year old named Shivappa, and other men. This upset Shivapa as he did not want her to be involved with anyone else but himself. Upon finding out that she continued her affairs with other men, he murdered her. The brutal literality of such cases point to a reason for the place of clinical practice, apart from psychoanalysis’ interpretative uses in literary and political works.

Lacan notes, that these cases are more frequent in situations where the family may be incomplete.

- Family neurosis

In cases of neurosis, family complex displays no particular relation to family objects. Here however the complexes (as opposed to biology) do play a causal role diametrically opposed to the ‘role family themes play in the case of psychoses.’

- Neurotic symptomatology and individual drama

Freud attempted to understand the ‘content’ of the symptoms in order to heal the person exhibiting them. To this end, the discovery of the complexes was revolutionary. He attempted to isolate the object which provoked the phobia, the bodily function which was involved in hysteria and ‘the representation or effect preoccupying the subject’.

Lacan reads his effort as a means of revealing the causes of the symptoms in their contents. Despite the advancement in the complexity of causes with the progress of our experience, he stresses it is important not to reduce them to ‘mere abstractions’ but to deepen the dramatic sense in which they imposed themselves as a response to the quest the causes had inspired. Can one not hear, in this sentence, echoes of the dialectical maxim, not only as substance, but also as subject? The dramatization of this force, I believe, is the stage upon which his contemporary and rival, Deleuze dramatized his philosophical arguments deploying figures from the history of philosophy. For an elucidation of this please see my paper Familialism in Psychoanalysis.

Freud attributes the origin of these functions in the awakening of sexuality, either via seduction or through the unwitting discovery of sexual relations between adults as a child. The perversion, in the strict sense of the term, this engenders can be traumatic for the subject.

Few experiences can as powerfully reactivate these sensations as the birth of a sibling, which invokes again in the subject the remembrance of his maternal attachment which springs from witnessing the care she lavishes on the new born. In witnessing the father with the mother, the suspicion of sexual relations and the event of birth are crystallized in his mind.

In concluding, it is observed that a double system of causes define the complex. The traumas suffered by the subject as described above, and the familial relations occurring in the family at the time, including particularly any anomalies in them. Lacan seeks to analyze their effects by studying the way the symptoms are produced.

- From the expression of the repressed to the defense against anxiety

Initially one is led to observe that the impressions which arise from the trauma determine the symptoms. The memories of these impressions are often not forgotten but repressed into the unconscious. The symptoms exhibited can be understood as an expression of the repressed, which is harbored now in the psyche in this way. Its origin can be understood by interpreting symbolism, displacement and other appropriate keys. It is important to observe that the symptom itself however often disappears to the extent that this understanding were to be communicated to the patient. Hence, curing the subject entails by bringing the impression of the trauma back to the consciousness and through this demonstrating the irrationality of the form it takes to the subject. This often reopens paths in the mind, much in line with the Socratic notion that ‘man can know himself through the intuition of reason’.

There are difficulties however as analytic experience has shown that a subject demonstrates resistance to the elucidating of the symptoms. I would like to add here, that this is very much similar to the contemporary academia’s aversion to theory. Also, this is further pronounced in the third world where an originary trauma, and myths associated with it are often the unavowed ground which anchors certain scholastic positions, proving to be the genesis of their narrative – I count post-colonialism to be prime amongst them. Also, as the treatment progresses, a transference with the analyst as object comes to predominate.

What remains from this stage is the neurotic symptom which entails an unrecognizeability of the subject to himself. Lacan posits this as a division in personality, perhaps not unlike schizophrenia. The progress of analysis reveals however that this need not be a function of the expression of the unconscious and may rather be a ‘defense against anxiety’. It was Freud’s view that because this anxiety emerges from a primordial situation (I presume the weaning complex), it is reawakened in any situation threatening castration.

The defense erected by the subject, in this case, may entail the erection of a symbolic or sublimated form which may protect the subject by prohibiting a certain access to reality. I personally do not read this as an entirely pathological measure. With a degree of constructivism, this may even be sublimated into the drive to simple commodity production – creating a new and perhaps non-pathological relation to society, at least at the level of the individual, provided that it can address the concerns or desires, or may inform or entertain them. Do note, that this may still result in a fragmentation of the personality. This ‘defense’ if it may still be called that, does however hinder analysis of the subject itself, as it displaces focus away from the relation between the subject and the symptom to the ‘relation of the symptom to reality, which the form now mediates between.

The chief difference between classical psychoanalysis and this view is that the form produced in question may be unconscious in the domain of a subject in analysis who may simply be exhibiting a symptom. This symptomal-drive as it were, may be sublimated into conscious tasks actively undertaken by the subject, in consonance with the Freudian maxim of the elementary task of psychoanalysis, to bring to the awareness of the ego, where the id has been, or to use a non-latinized idiom ‘where it was, there I shall be’. This does leave the question as to why the symptom appears in the first place however, and also as to why the subject believes it to be necessary.

- Specific deformations of human reality

Lacan, in his own formulation does specify that the prohibitions referred to are inaccessible to conscious control. Here, I do read, and perhaps repeat myself - that the task of psychoanalysis, as Freud presented it, was to make conscious to the ego, the acts undertaken by the subject, which may include repressions of the super-ego. In other words, to bring to light what the subject was already doing. This act, in perhaps a revelatory moment, presents a degree of agency to the subject in question, which may have earlier been distorted.

Were the prohibitions to remain unconscious however, they would only manifest in their negative form, in behaviors whose intentionality may be discernible to analysis. Lacan is literary in his exposition and I would encourage you to read his prose in the original on this count, which may even assuage those who suspect him on moral grounds.

Freud, in consonance with rationalism, conceived of the ego as the system of psychic relations via which the subject subordinates reality to conscious perception. In opposition to this, he also posits the super-ego as the unconscious inhibitor of defenses defined. To this, Lacan adds the ego-ideal. This is also the secret hold which the analyst has on the mysteries of the unconscious. It is because it is so immanent to experience that it is the last to be discerned in the doctrine. He defines his present work – Familial Complexes in Individual Formation as a contribution to that task, which, in part it must be admitted, is an education of the analyst.

- The existential drama of the individual

Initially, while psychic agencies which escape the control of the ego appear to be the result of the repression of sexuality in infancy - Lacan states that analysis and experience reveals it to be closer to the experience of birth – its separation in particular. Our conception of the mirror stage may help in clarifying this by extending the hypothesized trauma of this stage into the whole series of ‘functional fragmentation’. By this I presume he is referring to the development and coherence of the ego from an initial infantile polymorphous perversity. Also note that Lacan, still adheres to a Freudian biological understanding of a special incompleteness of the nervous system which characterizes our infantile state and later progress. Lacan, notices that in the repetition of throwing an object there is perhaps a way in which a subject asserts the unity of their own body by identifying with its mirror image. Lacan reads a theological register into this, of the identification of one’s salvation in the interest of a fellow person. It does appear however that this may not pertain specifically to the mirror stage as a situation but may be a possible use that the subject finds for the other and his discourse, if I may posit that here. Some credence is offered to this reading by the later assertion that it is via this process that the subject comes to identify the difference between the common progress of the other, and of object as taken or grasped by the ego.

I have emphasized less on the progress of sexual maturity entailed here for which readers may have to refer to the original. I would also like to posit that the separation which Lacan acknowledges marking the trauma of infantile sexuality comes to be assuaged by the discourse of the other which later in his work comes to take on the algebraic denotation of ‘Other’. The above mentioned situation, particularly the relation of the loss of the object (or rather the positing of it?) and its role in the retroactive identification of the self via one’s mirror image achieves its full differentiation only in infantile sexuality however as it is only here that it can accomplish its function with regard to the species.

There is a section where Lacan seems to develop a site for commodity fetishism, with the object itself conceived in psychical terms. The positing of the object and it’s identification as the object of one’s desire.

The psychical development entailed in the infant’s turning away from the mother and realizing their own autonomy comes with a realization of sexuality in the subject. Primitive societies, which may deal with this initiation more pleasantly often, include rituals of an individual identifying their own essence with a totem, finding in this site a moment of truth. Freud equates the totem with the Oedipus complex. Lacan, however identifies it with the function of the ego-ideal, and this makes sense when the totem is a deity, or a guide, teacher or father like figure. Bear in mind however, that the ego-ideal is nonetheless a functional projection of the ego.

- The degraded form of the Oedipus complex

I note with pleasure here, echoing Lacan, how the abstract terms used in analysis are linked to their concrete existential implications. He now sets out to determine the genesis of these afflictions and the role of the family in it. His explanation here and it may be admitted that this is the weakest point in the immanence of the doctrine, is that the introduction of the complex provides occasionally a certain narcissistic progress which offers itself to a ‘structural completion’ of the ego. The images that may be associated in this, (be it totemic or otherwise) may provide an affective animation of reality, perhaps not dissimilar to a hand-me-down or heirloom. “The regulation of these effects is centered on the complex to the degree that the forms of social communion in our culture are rationalized—a rationalization which it determines reciprocally by humanising the ego-ideal.” These effects are often disordered by the demands the culture makes on the ego’s coherence and creative energy.

The regulation mentioned however is met with conflict that the same force which leads to the formation of conjugal families, leads to their individual variations. These circumstances favored the discovery of the complex. The form in which it is encountered however, which in most cases would not be within clinical practice, will not present the complex, or depict it, in its algebraic concision. And life is not a meditation on the ego, so we find it in relation with objects; there may be narratives etc. An interpretation for this is the incomplete repression of the desire for the mother, though this may be put to work only within a therapeutic or analytic setting, and schizioanalysis may be better geared towards dealing with a constructivist deployment of the subject.

This is often characterized by the anxieties which accompany birth, as well as the bastardization of the idealization (or ideal?) of the father. In the oedipal identification, this emphasizes ‘aggressive ambivalence as the primary relation’ to one’s fellow man. There may be a history of this trauma, as well as a practice which may unwind it. Understanding its immanent object relations may be key. Lacan diagnoses two types of pathologies which may correspond with these causes; transference neurosis and character neurosis.

- Transference Neurosis

The subject, particularly as a child experiences the Oedipus complex in its degraded form where it takes for its object what amounts to an animal – a large one representing the mother as child bearing, the father as threatening and the sibling as intruder. In defending oneself against anxiety however, the subject may find the very form of the ego-ideal, as in the case of the totem – deployed by primitive societies, giving a firmer reinforcement to the sexual formation of a subject.

Repercussions of the Oedipus complex on narcissistic development can lead to other transference neurosis such as hysteria and obsession. These however tend to indicate a degree of fixation that the subject harbors similar to a resistance, perhaps not unlike the role of a totem, which while inanimate – yet provides the legend of an ego-ideal, even in a primitive tribe. It would be interesting to note if any anthropologists have developed this.

We are reminded about the homology, if I may use this clumsy word – between the development of sexuality and psychic development in man, is subject to the law of communication. How the subject incorporates this into their identification may be a mechanism via which the subject narcissistically constitutes themselves.

The separation and affirmation of the subject’s identity is sexualized; it may be identified as a form of scoptophilia or sado-masochism. It consequently undergoes the repression natural to its sexual maturation. This does however drag with it a part of the narcissistic structure into repression, which hence does not participate in the constitution of the ego – yet answers to the efforts of the ego to unify itself. ‘The symptom is an expression of both the lack and the effort, or rather of their banding together in the primordial necessity of fleeing from anxiety.’

- Hysteria

Lacan links the expression of hysteria to the ‘disintegration of a somatically localized symptom’ - a medicalization of the rather more common depiction of psychoanalysis as a talking cure. He uses a term, underlined – ‘organomorphic symbolism’ to characterize this phenomena, which he states, according to Freud, is a fundamental structure of the human psyche which in its manifestation represses genital satisfaction – this mutilation, worryingly – in cases of excess may be linked with jouissance, such in the cases of religious fervor etc.

The primacy of this symbolism in emphasized, Lacan, even characterizing it as the ‘mental structure by which the object participates in the forms of the body proper’. It is hard not to read a religious register here, similar to the structure of an apparatus as represented by Agamben. The emphasis on the symbol here, whether organomorphic or otherwise – may be read as a precedent of the later development of the symbolic as the privileged space of communication itself.

Here, Lacan does however state the necessity to search for signs of somatic compliance which often accompanies hysteria, and is even deemed to be one of its conditions. Anxiety is hidden from view and there is an effort in the hysteric to repeatedly reconstitute the ego by recalling the repressed.

- Obsessional neurosis

In this pathology Janet identifies a disassociation of the ego’s organizing behavior (I presume the reference is to Pierre Janet, a French psychologist.) The behaviors that manifest in its place, including obsessional apprehensiveness, ceremonials, scrupulosity, and obsessional doubt can be discerned (or to be true to the text, their meaning comes from…) what Lacan depicts as the displacement of affect in representations.

It is posited that Freud recognizes the manifestation of an aggressive tendency which is displaced via repression into guilt. This is said to be similar to the effects of sublimation, characterizing ‘obsessional-thinking, —isolation of the object, causal disconnection of facts, and retrospective annulations of events’ – according to Lacan, bear a resemblance to ‘forms of knowledge itself’ - this is not entirely apparent to me, yet he adds that it prods him to search for an origin of this ‘neurosis’ in the first identificatory activities of the ego. We are informed that analyst’s identify precocity in the ego’s development in obsessional subjects.

The position from which Lacan makes these observations is to be noted – he is not responding to the subject out of empathy – infact he may even be a tad disdainful when he says that ‘the superstructure of personality mystifies anxiety’. The obsessional is depicted as forever in the pursuit of some lost unity, a theme I am sure you may have already noted. And this is yet again allegorized to express a ‘naïve’ representation of the existential dilemma of man. I must state here that the form of these exegesis resemble lectures and bear with them the flourishes that a mind like Lacan easily categorizes as ticks, obsessions, or indeed – symptoms.

- The incidence on the individual of family causes

In returning to our study of the text however, we see a re-emphasis on the inhibitions on the early narcissistic development of the ego being instrumental to its pathologies. These inhibitions may indeed, in relation to their severity, be named traumas. The ego however, as you may recall – is constituted via a retrospective identification of itself. Here, the other, which may later be algebraised into the Other, representing another symbolic order – is gauged, as perhaps the progression of a subject from the mirror stage, to one of mimicry, and indeed, resistance and identification. The means of taking an object – the act of focusing, which is quite a necessary aspect of normal life, is hence developed, as is the capacity to identify discrete objects in relations to the subject. This is how I read what is termed the functional fragmentation entailed in the multiple divisions enacted by the ego. Lacan here posits, a ‘hysterical substructure’ which reveals itself whenever the archaic development of an obsessional neurosis is re-constituted.

Highlighted, is the postponement of recourse to citing constitutional factors in the identification of the neurosis, this permits for the identification of the singular nature of the pathology in question. Remember, the oedipal complex, and its resultant drive continues to be that which is diagnosed. We are given to understand, that a subject, particularly an adult may have developed secondary adaptations to the neurosis, as well as defenses against the symptom itself, which may be a returning of repressed tendencies. The multiplicity of possible causes, and its expressions are to be diagnosed and recorded in the form of case histories, here, Freud’s examples are eulogized.

An interesting observation made, is that the hysterical tendency tends to suppress a homosexual component. This hysteria, and you will find much on the forms of its expression in later works, is characterized by a ‘general stamp of ambivalent aggressiveness towards the father in obsessional neuroses.’

As accounted for earlier, a sibling presents new forms of object-relations for the subject – jealousy, attachment, rivalry, guilt etc. though may I also add - the opportunity to play. The importance of this effect, and as far as I am concerned, in the domain of psychoanalysis, the importance of any event, is measured by its effects on the process of identification – which is perhaps the simplest way of explaining what the symbolic order as a function is.

From this survey, we gather that while familial factors play a causal role in these neuroses, the pathologies themselves cannot be correlated to an anomaly in the family system. We are reminded that they are primarily to be interpreted as manifestations of the existential drama of the individual, their relation to society, their sublimative aspirations, and maybe even religion. This depiction is deemed to be true at least in the case of transference neurosis among psychoanalysts.

- Character neuroses

This is not the case in character neurosis, where there does exist constants between typical forms and the family in which the subject is raised. Here, psychoanalysis is said to have been able to find pathologies where one just supposed idiosyncrasies. And, even unconscious intentions and imaginary objects. Following Freud, a dynamic viewpoint is inserted where the notion of constitution resided.

As the ego-ideal and the super-ego are ‘structural conditions’ of the subject, they are subject to relational changes as they are expressed in the personality, apart from interfering in the genesis of the ego manifesting the disintegration expressed as a symptom. These changes in their respective agencies can lead to alterations in the ‘personal formula of the subject’, or how the subject positions themselves vis-à-vis their ego-ideal and superego. The agency of the ego itself here is unclear, yet I am inclined by my reading to suppose that strengthening it is one of the tasks psychoanalysis works towards. Given it’s applicability to the study of character, and its inherent relationality, such an analysis is privileged over constitutional, or intrinsic explanations seeking to found an essentiality which is principally inert.

To be clear about what we are referring to here, Lacan spells out that the impasses characterized under the rubric of character neurosis are imaginary, and yet the impact is adequate for them to interfere in the subject’s everyday life, or to use his own word - his relation with reality.

When (the ego, I presume) amalgamates these impasses, with its sense of autonomy - they, or perhaps their effects are purified. An analogy which I would like to draw here, for the sake of a reader who may be wondering whether one can be made, is with the field of political rights. Basic restraint in speech, commonly practiced in much of the civilized world - appears to be a constraint which is readily accepted in everyday parlance. We recognize how it is a condition of possibility that enables everyone to have their say.

In rounding up to what appears as a conclusion, Lacan looks back and says that the point of his study seems to be the examination of a certain typical psychological relation between the parents involved in the oedipus complex. It also elucidates the two-fold role of the father in representing authority which paradoxically, enables the expression of sexuality. This operation helps in the tempering of the super-ego and inculcates an evolutionary pre-disposition in the personality.

With acuteness, Lacan notes that the formation of the super-ego and the ego-ideal rest not so much on the parents themselves, but on the intentions which they affectively convey to the child, sensitivities which infancy is very receptive to. The precise mode of expression, may after all, be determined, or in the very least regulated by the conditions of the family.

The self punishing neurosis

Lacan, like others cites the relationship between father and son as the privileged moment which enables the Oedipus complex to sublimate the familial situation within the context of the fabric of society. In particular, this conflict is instrumental, perhaps when viewed from the outside, in passing on the parental type. It may even be instructive, from within the familial situation.

In a curious dialectic, which smacks of Kierkegaard - Lacan notes that the individual whose ego is weakened, by this conflict, takes upon the mantle of an exaggerated super-ego. Also noted, are attempts to depict a family super-ego. As I have pointed out earlier, in the later texts of Lacan - this register may answer to the name of a symbolic order. As for the meaning of the word family, here - within the new reading provided by those subsequent developments, I hope you can follow how they may be discernible in the study of genre for example, or religion for that matter.

In isolating the influences which lead to the above mentioned pathology of the ego, neuroses, psychosis etc. patriarchal domination is cited, as well as the prohibitions which accompany the matriarchal structure which come with a stagnation in domestic ties. Also charged are religious ideals, and similar social equivalents which promote the exclusivity of the family group and their demands, or worse - their race.

In the form of the text an indented paragraph presents a suggestion that this may be an extract from somewhere, possibly Freud - following the standard procedures regarding indentation. I have earlier included and commented on these as part of the body of the text - but a note on how it appears allows me to place my suspicion regarding its sources. In any case, regarding neurosis of destiny, Lacan notes that in reading them, an unconscious intention may be discerned, and that where pathological, these can even lead to bodily trauma. The case of a mother stimulating morning sickness when not pregnant for example, is one that may be recognized in the medical community.

On a grimmer note, Lacan notes that certain predispositions, regarding neurotic illness, can even be hereditary - the case of suicide is cited.

Introversion of the personality and schizonoia

In depicting the way in which the effects of the oedipus complex are felt, a brief revision of its role in presiding over the sublimation of sexuality - these of course, are exemplified by and determined within, at least in infancy, the family situation.

A point which is made is that as the interest the subject takes in reality diminishes, the élan if you will, the interest which the subject reflects back on their own self, takes on a more imaginary dimension. This does appear familiar, to a careful reader to what was presented earlier as the formulation of narcissism, necessary in ego formation, yet can we question at this stage, where perhaps the maturity of a life may afford it some comforts, as in the end of a text afford reflection, that this imaginary nature of the interest that a subject takes in themselves, may be afforded by circumstance, and perhaps, not unlike the kind of fantasy entertained by a child in their infancy?

Lacan, wordily takes up the prevalence of mood swings, a sign if there ever were one, of a lack of clear position on the matter at hand. He notes, well, how the manifestations of these affects cannot but be expressions of individual triumph or defeat. This of course, brings us back to the formation of the ego, and what it draws from its double. A brief aside on how the term here, double, is used. As with much of Lacan’s concepts, this takes on the role similar to an algebraic sign, serving a particular function in the psyche of the ego - in the case presented in this text, that of a retroactive identification of oneself, through the other. We are reminded, that every integration of human desire are derived from a primary narcissism.

Regarding their respective roles however, the ego-ideal is read as a resolution or completion of the double, which is attained in maturity. Here, I must ask, in light of Lacan’s later texts whether this is a position he himself would hold onto? In fact, even at this stage of theoretical infancy, can we not see that the ego ideal seeks a correspondence with the super-ego, even if they are understood to be mere relational states internal to the subject? However, in being true to this text, Lacan anticipates a narcissistic introversion in the personality when this synthesis as it were, is not met, and notes that this may be the result of remnants of the weaning complex. This does not appear to be the strongest part of his insight, and we can perhaps anticipate theorists of partial objects amongst recent psychoanalysts such as Melanie Klein to pick on and resolve this. Notwithstanding my digressions, the name for the regression which Lacan identifies and presents is schizonoia.

Discord between the parental couple

Lacan notes incidences of conflict between the parental couple, always having a negative influence on the development and well being of the child. Often, as may be expected, there are biological roots to some of these issues, such as the mother’s attention being devoted to the child, or who has become frigid later in life. Whatever the causes, the child’s perception of the barriers in the relationship between the parents is the principle neurotogenic factor.

To note and remember, and this would go along with the practice of analyses, particularly the Oedipus complex, ‘the psychological fate of the child depends on the perception of the barriers which separate his parents from one another.’

The prevalence of the weaning complex

The consequences of the prevalence of the weaning complex, can be severe - such as a literal wasting away, intentionally, in a non-violent suicide. These have been associated with certain oral and digestive neurosis. Stagnations in the psyche, which I believe, in their identification, mark Lacan’s own influences from philosophy are noted here. Examples which are offered are the supposed imaginary equilibrium between what is eaten and what is excreted . In a curiously contemporary turn, and I am writing this commentary amidst the outbreak of the coronavirus across the world, (18th February, 2021) - Lacan notes a social corollary to the stagnation of domestic bonds in a family. When family members cling to one another, in a cell as it were, to isolated themselves from society as though stricken by an imaginary illness - this cell remains ‘as sterile for the commerce of society as it is useless in its construction.’

The inversions of sexuality

Notwithstanding the family situation of the individual, which we have drawn on in characterizing in its initial development, the Oedipus complex, also serves another important psychic function which is not merely symbolic and pertaining to the reasoning or understanding of the subject. This is an identification between the personality of the subject, a topic which is initially imaginary for sure but perhaps in the last instance mediated by social relations, and their biological sex. The term Lacan uses for this is psychic sexualization. He notes, that this relationship may be inverted at various levels, including ‘psychological determinations of manifest homosexuality.’

Regarding the cause of the above mentioned inversion, psychoanalysts readily isolate the mother, and her expressions of overt tenderness towards the child as responsible. As a counterpoint, they also identify in expressions of ‘masculine traits’ in her character - cause for the above mentioned inversion, at least in the male child. I must mention that this is perhaps one of the weakest arguments presented in the text. Lacan, while reporting on these observations cities ‘clinical data’ however does not mention case studies, something Freud was very careful to do and elucidate extensively in individual book length studies.

However, regarding the subject of these inversions themselves, I believe, and here reinforce my hypothesis of the requirement to see the ‘other’ as a symbolic order, and not merely a person, perhaps an alternative object cause.

Recently (1996) Renata Salecl of the Slovenian school, along with Zizek published a book, drawing on Kleinian concepts of the partial object, studies on what the voice and the gaze may be when understood within such a reading of the other. To a historian of the discipline, and literary theorists, it would be of interest to note as to when precisely this new reading of the other instated itself, as it may be identified as a significant break in the history of psychoanalytic theorization.

Perhaps of slightly tangible relevance is the forms in which these observations on the role of the mother in inversions of sexuality, are expressed. Here, the relationship between the parents is again, emphasized - with ‘domestic tyranny’ being raised as a nexus, or subject if you will. More severe forms of protest such as emotional demands to seizure of property are cited as instances which elucidate the above inversions. There are obvious material dimensions to these expressions, most prominently the satisfaction of holding on to the purse strings.

Socially, it may be advantageous for a husband to find a sort of harmony in these conditions, yet they only augment married life as a site which cultivates neuroses. A cryptic sentence is sadly all that elucidates the ‘mechanism’ of this - ‘Having guided one or both of the spouses in making a divinatory choice of a complementary subject, the warnings coming from the unconscious of one respond without intermediary to the signs that reveal the unconscious of the other.’ Though, I am sure, you can imagine why drama may be a better form for its exploration - or at least the narrative of a presented case study.

The prevalence of the male principle

Here, which is the final section of the book, we see a re-iteration of the assertion that the oedipus complex can be noticed, perhaps most clearly in its effects. Namely the masculine protests of women which seem integrated into all forms of culture. Even more paradoxically, this seems to usher in a kind of harmonic balance between the masculine and the feminine principle. Yet, and since Lacan uses the term superstructure and the threat of its weight on the base, let me add, that the hegemony which this masculine form asserts over culture finds its correlate, or in Lacanese, it object cause of desire, the object petit a - in a feminine counterpoint - the virgin.

Lacan, following his nod to Marx, makes the closest he comes, in this text to dialectics itself, when he asserts that ‘no link is clearer to the moral philosopher than that finds the thread of social progress in psychic inversions and their relation to a to a Utopian quality in the ideals of a culture.’ - the closest I have seen to sublation being said in French.

As for the task of the analyst however, Lacan charts that an insight into the individual links in this chain, is gained through the decipherment of the most emasculating actions of the mother, which perhaps still bear an impression in the subject and may be gleaned in analysis.

In closing, we are reminded, in a brief panorama of the history of the discipline, the stages it has been through, from the study of open homosexual relations, to those of subtle impasses and the antinomies which condition it - these, being the unconscious principle as it were, that the forms of our art, culture, and religion are ‘invisibly committed to’.

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