Fantasy Ideology, Lacan

[RE]

But most Freudians are very leery of Lacan.  I regularly read the major
journals, including the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, and his
influence on current analytic thinking is muted at most.   The reasons for
this are many.  Personally, while I was initially intrigued by his drawing
on Hegel and such, when I read of his unpredictable behavior in sessions,
e.g. stopping them abruptly, I wrote him off as a puffed-up jerk.  Among
current analysts, I think Andre Green draws on his work in the most
interesting and useful way, as in The Work of the Negative.

Warming to the subject -- har! -- here's this from Green:
"But the Rome address on "The function and field of speech and language in
Psychoanalysis" still bears its trace with the memorable analysis which
Lacan made of the Fort-Da [Freud's account of a child tossing a spool over
the edge of a bed and pulling it back up, working over the comings and
goings of his mother, according to Freud].  It is indeed in these few
paragraphs that the Hegelian inspiration of Lacan's thought finds it fullest
expression, giving an account of the combined effects of childhood, the
status of absence, the emergence of self-consciousness, alienation from
one's own productions (sound, signifier and sign), the conflict between
various aspects of the psyche in their relation to language and the
subject's relationship to death.  But this happy episode was not to last,
for Lacan's thought was to respond to the siren calls of the signifier, and
then to that of topography where references to languages and history were
gradually supplanted by other, more 'scientific' ones."

In short, as Lacan blew off a developmental account of the subject, his
notion of transference became reduced to theoretical coordinates, and this
set up the short sessions in which he slid into playing the cranky Papa
ordering the infantalized analysand out of the room.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeffrey Fisher" <jfisher at igc.org>
To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 1:01 AM
Subject: Re: Fantasy Ideology, Lacan


>
> On Monday, August 19, 2002, at 10:11 PM, Kelley wrote:
>
> > At 08:29 PM 8/19/02 -0400, RE wrote:
> >> Not sure why this is seen as Lacanian, it could be written by anyone
> >> who
> >> wants to emphasize the narcissistic aspect of someone's political
> >> involvement, or perhaps to characterize that person as a narcissist who
> >> cannot engage others except as objects.
> >
> > so what makes Lacanian political analysis different from conventional
> > Freudian analysis. In the hands of quite a few  people, Lacanian
> > readings aren't much diff. from Freudian readings--at least on this
> > list.
>
> unless i'm mistaken--which i admit is quite possible--most good
> lacanians would consider themselves pretty good freudians . . .
>
> j
>
>