> kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca wrote:
> > The self would be assimilated into the Other (as is the case in psychosis).
> What in the hell are you talking about. This is a fucking near criminal
remark -- in the same ball park as Bettelhiem blaming mothers for autistic
children.
The psychotic condition involves a turning away from reality, brought about in two kinds of ways: either by the unconscious repressed becoming excessively strong so that it overwhelms the conscious or because reality has become so intolerably distressing that the threatened ego throws itself into the arms of the unconscious in a desperate revolt.
Exactly which part of this is the criminal problem?
My entire paragraph read like this: In this way, we could say that the legalization of abortion is an ethical judgement. But, strictly speaking, it would not be a moral one. In one were to actuall fulfill their moral obligation, the Other, the objective cause of their morality would disappear. The self would be assimilated into the Other (as is the case in psychosis). As ethical judgements, we are always called to be responsible for our transgression - and the power contained / manifest within such choices.
The only way I can make sense of your comments is to read them as follows: a woman who has an abortion, and who sees it as a moral choice, is psychotic.
In which case, yeah, I agree with you - in this reading the implication is obscene.
However, this is *not* what I was saying. My reading goes something more like this: a woman who has an abortion because she takes it to be the WORD OF GOD (a command), and who doesn't want to have an abortion, but does so anyway, because it is the WORD OF GOD, against her desire not to have an abortion, can be said to be is acting in a psychotic manner. In the same way that a bureaucrat, who thinks of theself to be following God's orders, who think it wrong to do so, and does so anyway (without fear and trembling), in the certainly of their decision - understanding themself to be a powerless agent of a divine will - is psychotic ("It wasn't me! It was the Other!!"). Its the equivalent of someone breaking a window while someone is watching and saying, "I didn't break that window" with the accompanying belief of not having broken the window.
The result is something like this: "I followed my orders, I did my duty, even though I didn't want to, I did it for the Other, whose will I seek only to obey in every instance, and even though I didn't want to do it, I enjoyed doing it because I know the will of the Other is divine. In short, 'I did not do that!' it was the Other who did."
In psychoanalytic terms, the ID (the real) and the SUPEREGO (the imaginary) collapse into one pulsating entity. The ego (desire) is left behind, completely - negated absolutely, in one absolute and swooping authoritarian gesture.
Given my use of the term morality - morality is: the fusion of the ID and the SUPEREGO - basically - ENJOY! This moral command, "DO IT!" is translated by the ego (desire) in ethics and short circuited, re-routed in conformity with the reproduction of desire itself. In rationalist terms: the conversation continues, in terms of the symbolic, desire continues. The failure to short-circuit this tautological pulse results in psychosis, ethical suicide. Again, in rationalist terms: the permanent end of the conversation and, in terms of the symbolic (desire), the fatal end of ethics.
Now obviously there is an empirical problem here: what happens when one accuses another of being psychotic and this is not the case. I'm not addressing that here (since this is a practical concern, and my concern here addresses moral theory). I'm talking about the institution of cultural logics, cultural logics which portray psychotic moments which are then instituted in both internal and external ways. I have no doubt that you will disagree with most of what is written here - but I want to make it clear that I have not assigned blame here. Who is to be held responsible? I don't know, not completely. But responsibilty lives in the hands of the guilt laden subject, the subject who has translated the moral imperative into ethical decision making. The one who takes responsibility is acting in an ethical manner ("I played a part in all of this."), by merit of their guilty conscience, the one who says, "It isn't my fault that I enjoyed doing that!" is operating according to a psychotic logic. Again, I'm not prescribing ethical roles or moral imperatives, I'm not assuming that morality in and of itself it good or bad, I'm simply trying to elucidate the logic of moral phenomenon in psychoanalytic terms.
ken