Science (with a capital S) is assumed to refer to a self-evident set of "bodies of knowledge" (opposed to a diverse group of hotly disputed social practices) and a fixed set of verification and refutation procedures, model-building methods, concept formation processes, and so on - that is, when those who discuss science know anything whatsoever of scientific endeavor.
Science is not, however, the monolothic edifice positivists and everday 'American' common sense make it out to be. Work in the history and philosophy of science n the latter part of the twentieth centruy, as well as the individual sciences themselves, has decisively dispelled the notion that every science is based on a set of axiomatic mathematizable propositions, measurable empirical entities, and pure concepts. There is virtually no agreement among scientists, philosophers, and historians regarding what constitutes a science and what does not." (Fink, LS, 138).
Science is a discourse. Freud may be interpreted as translating "rationality" into "rationalization," and Lacan's discourse theory suggests that there are as many different claims to rationality as there are different discourses. Each discourse, seeking its own end and having its own mainspring, attempts to make its own form of rationality prevail.
Lacan then asks, "Do all presently existing scientific discoursse have something in common?"
Science "sutures" the subject, that is, neglects the subject, excluding the latter from its field. At least it attempts to do so to the fullest extent possible, never fully succeeding. Lacan distinguished psychoanalysis from linguistics and structural anthropology because they do not take truth into account: the cause, and thus the subject that will have resulted from that cause. If science canbe said to deal with truth, it is only insofar as it reduces truth to a kind of value.
A B A and B
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T T T
T F F
F T F
F F F
"I assert that Lacan was French (proposition A) and that he never set foot outside of France (proposition B), in order for my statement as a whole to be true, both A and B must be true individually. If only one of them is true, my statement as a whole is false. It is only when both of them are true that my statement as a whole is true. Science relies on the designations "true" and "false," but they take on meaning only witin a propositional or symbolic logic: they are values understandable within the field defined by that science and make no claims to independent validity. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, gives precedence to that which throws into question the self-confirming nature of its own axioms: the real, the impossible, that which does not work. That is the Truth taken responsibility for in psychoanalysis.
Existing sciences do not take into account the split subject for whom "I am where I am not thinking" and "I think where I am not."
Science is not yet capable of encompassing psychoanalysis.
Science must first come to grips with the specificity of the psychoanalytic object.
Psychoanalysis as a whole is praxis. Nevertheless, its different facets can be examined separately in terms of discourse theory. Psychoanalytic practice, in other wods, in the analytic setting, adopts analytic discourse - in the best of cases, that is, for many analysts clearly adopt something more along the lines of the university discourse.
Psychoanalytic theory and teaching adopt the hysteric's discourse. Psychoanalytic associations, as social-political institutions, may adopt a variety of discourses (hysteric's, master's, or university).
"The real is what does not depend on my idea of it." - Lacan, Seminar XXI, April 23.
"You can't do whatever you want with it." - Lacan, Seminar XIII, January 5.
THis new way of thinking about different discourses defines each discourse according to the order in which the three registes - imaginary, symbolic, and real - are taken up in it. RSI, SIR, and IRS are to be distinguish from those that go around in a counterclockwise direction, RIS, ISR, SRI. Lacan adopts the term "right polariation" for clockwise directions and "left polarization" for counterclockwise directions, terms used to describe the "orientation" of knots like his Borromean knot.
Real (R)
Imaginary (I) Symbolic (S)
Lacan never provides a detailed account of all the discourses covered by this particular combinatory. He mentions only two: religious discourses: RSI and psychoanalytic discourse: IRS.
In the 1960's Lacan takes formalization / mathematization to be one of the main characteristics of science, that being a key to 100 percet transmissibility, the ability to integrally transmit something from one person to another. While mathemes or formulas cannot, in and of themselves, guarantee the integral transmission of an idea or concept from one person to another - asort of ideal communication ("I see what you mean") that Lacan himself decisely critiques, the essence of all "communication" being "miscommunication" - what is transmitted is the matheme itself.
Science with a captial S does not exist: "it is buta fantasy."
"The ethical limits of psychoanalysis coincide with the limits of its practice." - Lacan, Seminar VII
Analysis is a praxis of jouissance, and jouissance is anything but practical. It ignores the needs of capital, health insurance companies, socialized health care, public order, and mature relations. While therapists in our society are expected to interact with their patients in ways that are considered by dominant contemporary social, political, and psychological discourses to be for their own good, analyts act instead so as to further their analysands' Eros. That aim is constitutive of the praxis that is psychoanalysis.
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