Sinthome
''Sinthome'' () is a concept introduced by Jacques Lacan in his seminar ''Le sinthome'' (1975–76). It redefines the psychoanalytic symptom in terms of the role of the subject outside of analysis, where enjoyment is made possible through creative identification with the symptom. Overview The idea of the ''sinthome'' was the final stage in Lacan's exploration of the Freudian conception of the symptom which gradually emerges through analysis, and especially Freud's conception of neuroses which emerge from a struggle for pleasure. Lacan first viewed the symptom as something inscribed in a writing process of the unconscious, not as a completed ciphered message calling for interpretation: it is not a call to the Other and has no addressee. For example, in the first seminar, explaining the Freudian concept of the "return of the repressed", Lacan compares the emergence of the symptom with a scenario posited by American cyberneticist Norbert Wiener: Wiener posits two beings each of wh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and published papers that were later collected in the book ''Écrits''. His work made a significant impact on continental philosophy and cultural theory in areas such as post-structuralism, critical theory, feminist theory and film theory, as well as on the practice of psychoanalysis itself. Lacan took up and discussed the whole range of Freudian concepts, emphasizing the philosophical dimension of Freud's thought and applying concepts derived from structuralism in linguistics and anthropology to its development in his own work, which he would further augment by employing formulae from predicate logic and topology. Taking this new direction, and introducing controversial innovations in clinical practice, led to expulsion for Lacan and his foll ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The Symbolic
The Symbolic (or Symbolic Order of the Borromean knot) is the order in the unconscious that gives rise to subjectivity and bridges intersubjectivity between two subjects; an example is Jacques Lacan's idea of desire as the desire of the Other, maintained by the Symbolic's subjectification of the Other into speech. In the later psychoanalytic theory of Lacan, it is linked by the ''sinthome'' to the Imaginary and the Real. Overview In Lacan's theory, the unconscious is the discourse of the Other and thus belongs to the Symbolic. It is also the realm of the Law that regulates desire in the Oedipus complex, and is determinant of subjectivity. A formative moment in the development of the Symbolic in a subject is the Other giving rise to the ''objet petit (a)utre'', establishing lack, demand and need. However, when it becomes an empty signifier, psychosis, which Freud had failed to tackle in theory, develops from an unstable metonymic sliding of the signified (i.e., foreclosur ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The Real
In continental philosophy, the Real refers to the remainder of reality that cannot be expressed, and which surpasses reasoning. In Lacanianism, it is an "impossible" category because of its opposition to expression and inconceivability. In human geography and depth psychology The Real is the intelligible form of the horizon of truth of the field-of-objects that has been disclosed. As the Real Order of the Borromean knot in Lacanianism, it is opposed in the unconscious to the Symbolic, which encompasses fantasy, dreams and hallucinations. In depth psychology and human geography, the Real can be described as a "negative space", analogous to a "black hole", a philosophical void of sociality and subjectivity, a traumatic consensus of intersubjectivity, or as an absolute noumenalness between signifiers. Lewis states that the Real can be a presence or is a substance and cites Derrida's claim that the real is authenticity. Jacques Lacan defines ''the Real'' as a ''p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Jouissance
''Jouissance'' is a French term meaning "enjoyment", which in Lacanianism is taken in terms both of rights and property, and of sexual orgasm. The latter has a meaning partially lacking in the English word "enjoyment". The term denotes a transgressive, excessive kind of pleasure linked to the division and splitting of the subject involved, which compels the subject to constantly attempt to transgress the prohibitions imposed on enjoyment, to go beyond the pleasure principle. In Lacanian psychoanalysis English editions of the works of Jacques Lacan have generally left ''jouissance'' untranslated in order to help convey its specialised usage. Lacan first developed his concept of an opposition between ''jouissance'' and the pleasure principle in his Seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" (1959–1960). Lacan considered that "there is a ''jouissance'' beyond the pleasure principle" linked to the partial drive. Yet according to Lacan, the result of transgressing the pleasure princ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Psychoanalytic Terminology
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: + . is a set of Theory, theories and Therapy, therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might be considered an unfortunately abbreviated description, Freud said that anyone who recognizes transference and resistance is a psychoanalyst, even if he comes to conclusions other than his own.… I prefer to think of the analytic situation more broadly, as one in which someone seeking help tries to speak as freely as he can to someone who listens as carefully as he can with the aim of articulating what is going on between them and why. David Rapaport (1967a) once defined the analytic situation as carrying the method of interpersonal relationship to its last consequences." Gill, Merton M. 1999.Psychoanalysis, Part 1: Proposals for the Future" ''The Challenge for Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy: Solutions for ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Matheme
The matheme (from el, μάθημα "lesson") is a concept introduced in the work of the 20th century French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. The term matheme "occurred for the first time in the lecture Lacan delivered on November 4th, 1971 ..Between 1972 and 1973 he gave several definitions of it, passing from the use of the singular to the use of the plural and back again". Characteristics David Macey writes in his introduction to the translation of Lacan's '' The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis'' that "Lacan saw his "matheme" as something that would ensure the integral transmission of his teachings ... proof against the "noise" or interference inherent in any process of communication". They are formulae, designed as symbolic representations of his ideas and analyses. They were intended to introduce some degree of technical rigour in philosophical and psychological writing, replacing the often hard-to-understand verbal descriptions with formulae resembling those used in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Being-in-the-world
Martin Heidegger, the 20th-century German philosopher, produced a large body of work that intended a profound change of direction for philosophy. Such was the depth of change that he found it necessary to introduce many neologisms, often connected to Idiom, idiomatic words and phrases in the German language. Two of his most basic neologisms, present-at-hand and ready-to-hand, are used to describe various attitudes toward things in the world. For Heidegger, such "attitudes" are prior to, i.e. more basic than, the various sciences of the individual items in the world. Science itself is an attitude, one that attempts a kind of neutral investigation. Other related terms are also explained below. Heidegger's overall analysis is quite involved, taking in a lot of the history of philosophy. See ''Being and Time'' for a description of his overall project, and to give some context to these technical terms. Terms ( grc, ἀλήθεια) Heidegger's idea of , or disclosure (), was an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The Sublime Object Of Ideology
''The Sublime Object of Ideology'' is a 1989 book by the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek. The work is widely considered his masterpiece. Summary Žižek thematizes the Kantian notion of the sublime in order to liken ideology to the experience of something that is absolutely vast and powerful beyond all perception and objective intelligibility. Žižek provides an analysis of "How did Marx Invent the Symptom?", in which he compares the ways in which the notion of symptom runs through the work of the philosopher Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Žižek opposes any simplistic reading of the two thinkers, who are shown to have discovered the "kernel" of meaning concealed within the apparently unconnected "forms" of commodities (Marx) and dreams (Freud). Žižek thinks it is more important to ask why latent content takes a particular form. Žižek therefore argues that according to both Freud and Marx the dream-work and commodity- ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek (, ; ; born 21 March 1949) is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University and a senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana's Department of Philosophy. He primarily works on continental philosophy (particularly Hegelianism, psychoanalysis and Marxism) and political theory, as well as film criticism and theology. Žižek is the most famous associate of the Ljubljana School of Psychoanalysis, a group of Slovenian academics working on German Idealism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, ideology critique, and media criticism. His breakthrough work was 1989's ''The Sublime Object of Ideology'', his first book in English, which was decisive in the introduction of the Ljubljana School's thought to English-speaking audiences. He has written over 50 books in multiple languages. The idiosyncratic style of his ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Lacanianism
Lacanianism or Lacanian psychoanalysis is a theoretical system that explains the mind, behaviour, and culture through a structuralist and post-structuralist extension of classical psychoanalysis, initiated by the work of Jacques Lacan from the 1950s to the 1980s. Lacanian perspectives contend that the world of language, the Symbolic, structures the human mind, and stress the importance of desire, which is conceived of as endless and impossible to satisfy. Contemporary Lacanianism is characterised by a broad range of thought and extensive debate between Lacanians. Lacanianism has been particularly influential in post-structuralism, literary theory and feminist theory, as well as in various branches of critical theory, including queer theory. Equally, it has been criticised by the post-structuralists Deleuze and Guattari and by various feminist theorists. Its clinical relevance is limited and outside France it has had no influence on psychiatry. There is a Lacanian strand in left ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Epiphany (literature)
Epiphany in literature refers generally to a visionary moment when a character has a sudden insight or realization that changes their understanding of themselves or their comprehension of the world. The term has a more specialized sense as a literary device distinct to modernist fiction.Morris, Beja. ''Epiphany in the Modern Novel'' (1916). London: Peter Owen, 1971. Author James Joyce first borrowed the religious term "Epiphany" and adopted it into a profane literary context in ''Stephen Hero'' (1904-1906), an early version of ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man''. In that manuscript, Stephen Daedalus defines epiphany as "a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself."Joyce, James. ''Stephen Hero''. (Ed. Theodore Spencer. New York: New Directions, 1963) p.211. Stephen's epiphanies are moments of heightened poetic perception in the trivial aspects of everyday Dublin life, non-religious and non-mystica ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Catharsis
Catharsis (from Greek , , meaning "purification" or "cleansing" or "clarification") is the purification and purgation of emotions through dramatic art, or it may be any extreme emotional state that results in renewal and restoration. In its literal medical sense, it refers to the evacuation of the '' catamenia''—the menstrual fluid or other reproductive material from the patient. But as a metaphor it was originally used by Aristotle in the ''Poetics'', comparing the effects of tragedy on the mind of a spectator to the effect of catharsis on the body. In psychology, the term is associated with Freudian psychoanalysis and specifically relates to the expression of buried trauma, bringing it into consciousness and thereby releasing it permanently. However, there is considerable debate as to its therapeutic usefulness. Social catharsis may be regarded as the collective expression of extreme emotion. Dramatic uses Catharsis is a term in dramatic art that describes the effect of tra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |