#lacanian psychoanalysis

[celtos]

When you encounter the gaze of the Other, you meet not a seeing eye but a blind one. The gaze is not clear or penetrating, not filled with knowledge or recognition; it is clouded over and turned back on itself, absorbed in its own enjoyment. The horrible truth … is that the gaze does not see you. … You are on your own; the gaze of the Other is not confirming, it will not validate you.

—Joan Copjec

[iguanalysis]

Being and Event: The Point of Excess, Hegel's Logic, and the Name-of-the-Father (part 1 of 2, On Letters α and β)

Intro: On Writing “The Name-of-the-Father”

I normally choose not to use hyphens when writing out the term borrowed from Lacanian psychoanalysis, “the Name-of-the-Father”, because it looks precocious and it feels unnecessary; however, for the purpose of explaining and unifying the usage of Greek letters in Hegel-and-Badiou’s respective writings, I am obliged to include them here in the writing out of the term.

One can assume that the hyphens themselves carry out a clever function, that of putting several words together into a singularly understood and inscribed Word (“Name-of-the-Father”) that signifies a signifier for all the other signifiers, or a one-word for all the other multiple-word(s) which are also words that exist on their own, both alongside it and without it. Perhaps, then, the Name-of-the-Father is truly either “Lexicon”, “Language”, “Vocabulary”, “Dictionary”, or maybe even “Word-Bank”. Anything like that. But my personally-chosen approach to psychoanalysis is more emphatic about the future relationship of psychoanalysis to philosophy, and therefore, a primacy of the signified emerges over the signifier as the multiple of active agents which ought to be used for understanding both “existence” and “reality” simultaneously, if psychoanalysis is to possess any political usefulness at all.

First, examine this important passage from “Hegel’s Logic” (p. 113, Oxford University Press):

Is this not basically the same iteration as what Badiou terms “the theorem of the point of excess” in his conceptualization of Russell’s paradox?

Furthermore, one gets the impression from this comparison that the Greek letters used to write the theorems in Being and Event also possess properties unique to themselves, albeit only in relation to one another.

In conjunction with the concept of the Name-of-the-Father (Nom-du-Père), this observation finds its highest realization in philosophical principles derived from the grammatical mechanics of a written language. Examine the following passage from Being and Event (p. 87):

The resemblance to the concept of the Name-of-the-Father stricken here by the notation Alain Badiou uses in Being and Event, p(α), yields a linguistic analysis of the text that is indispensable for incorporating ideas from Hegel’s philosophy into a critique of psychoanalytic terminology that might have concretely political applications later on. Hegel’s philosophy, once it is finished giving its account of human history (which for him is also the history of philosophical progress throughout a living civilization), can commence with its more substantial and holistic analyses of logical thought, so as not to “give an inadequate conception of them”, as Hegel might put it.

However, Hegel wasn’t entirely “right”, was he? If human civilization had finally finished progressing philosophically, as Hegel hypothesized it ultimately would in a Napoleonic Europe, perhaps his Philosophy of Right would have been published a bit sooner, and democratic human rights would already have become universally granted to all without exception. We must consequently look towards more contemporary thinkers in our own present-day.

The Letters Themselves (α, β, γ, δ)

On Letter “α”

The philosophical or logical principle innate to α, then, is the “Abstract side” of logic, that of bare understanding. It is encountered in the very functioning of a “Name” so-called. This is a functioning that is simultaneously both different-from and identical-to that of a signifier, which in writing can take the form of either a word, a name, a title, a pronounceable character, a character that is never pronounced when reading (a notion of writing derived from the logical functionings of a given language’s various parts of speech, such as a comma or a semicolon), a symbol, a signal (a signified of the signifier that is unconscious), a part of speech (a signifier of the signified that is unconscious), or a void (either read-as-silence or a physical “space” between signifiers that separates them qua appearing as something-zero).

In other words, history is something understood a priori within any given dialogue as already-written, but it is not something that is capable of interpreting itself in the mere act of becoming-read. Unlike the logical functionings of particles of grammar and language, which lead the thinking subject towards the conceptual completion of speech by means of their internal mechanisms of (a seemingly Kantian) necessity (i.e, the rules of forming a complete sentence), historical exposition must avoid taking on any kind of subjectifying narrative if it is to remain as something objective and factual. In other words, already-written history is something that can be investigated, or even revised, if needed. 

The condition of this intrinsic revisability is only that it must never become interpreted by means of its very own exposition. Otherwise history becomes more like a Netflix series (I’m thinking of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance) or something similar. This principle of historical exposition is continuously causing problems for the relatively nascent field of anthropology, for example, and causes even more problems for more contemporaneous (synchronic) fields such as law enforcement, forensics, and political legislation, which must always stay abreast of what is currently happening.

The side of logic Hegel called “Abstract”, that of mere understanding, is therefore highly duplicitous. The letter α only exists on its own, then, in the form of p(α), a letter “p” which alludes to Bertrand Russell’s paradox of set theory; this paradox states that a given set, written by Georg Cantor as λ(α) (source: Badiou, Being and Event, p. 42), can contain anything except itself (as an element). In other words, p(α) is identical to α, but qua set, it cannot include itself as an element, and this is not only a logical law for analytic philosophy, because it is also considered as a law of nature and a law of physics, so to speak, for any scientific ontology.

On Letter “β”

What is innate to β in Badiou’s theorems is what Hegel termed the “Dialectical” side of logic, or “negative reason”. This (β) is the argument whereby the distinction between belonging and inclusion is introduced by means of an other argument besides α, namely γ. It is called the “power-set axiom”, which states that if any set of any argument exists in the first place, it also belongs to a different set, designated as β, by means of its elements necessarily falling somehow into a relation with γ, another different set. The set of (all) multiples that actually exists, α, also founds the existence of the set of all multiples which can be inferred from α’s respective elements and subsets, that of β, solely and exclusively because of the inclusion of γ in α.

Inclusion relation: ⊂ (“included in”)

(source: https://lexique.netmath.ca/en/inclusion-relation/)

Membership relation: ∈ (“belongs to”, or, “is an element of”)

(source: https://lexique.netmath.ca/en/membership-relation/)

Universal quantifier: ∀ (“all”)

Existential quantifier: ∃ (“there exists”)

(source: https://lexique.netmath.ca/en/quantifier/)

Power-set Axiom:

(∀α)(∃β)[(∀γ)[(γ ∈ β) ↔ (γ ⊂ α)]]

As Articulated:

“For all α there exists β, but only such that for all γ, γ belongs to β because γ is included in α.”

I will add two (rhetorical?) questions to accompany this information: is there any more perfect way of writing out the concept of Absolute Knowing in Hegel’s philosophy? Also, should the third “side” of logic perhaps precede the second “side” of logic if γ is more fundamental to constituting α than β is?

As these Greek letters in Badiou’s written theorems also serve as “moments” of logical entity (according to myself), then, we maybe get some crucial insight into the synchronic grammatical constitution of complete sentences, and the informational entropy which is generated from the understanding of the signified that is undertaken by the Lacanian (barred) subject in either reading any text or listening to spoken language. For example, in the formula of sexuation written (∃x)-(Φx), or, “there is One who is not submitted to the phallic function” (I am utilizing a hyphen as a minus-sign in place of the horizontal bar usually written over the top of “Φx”), we can glean that a sentence, even if it is grammatically correct, may also approach an infinite length in its being-articulated. A long list of names read aloud at a graduation ceremony or a veterans’ memorial service are examples of this formula as it can be applied to actual speech. The monologue of Leopold Bloom’s wife Molly in the last section of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses is an example of the formula as well, since it can also be applied to written/printed literature.

What this means for the interpretation of the theorem is that the Lacanian “little other” (in contradistinction to the big Other, “A”, in French, Autre), also called in English “object a” (in French, objet petit “a”), is an “other” α only in the form of γ. This applies directly and precisely to something that Jacques Lacan presented in the fifth year of his seminar (1957-1958), titled “Formations of the Unconscious”, on the interactions between messages and codes which are constitutive for the functioning of a metonymic object. This was called the two functions in a sequence of signifiers, which I interpreted to refer to the processes of “coding” and “re-coding”:

Since the properties of α are found in the functioning of a Name, it is far easier to make a list of the possibilities of the forms taken by α as they occur in writing than as they occur in speech, since speech frequently overlaps with the anarchic qualities of auditory perception in general. However, the properties of β complicate what is encountered in the written forms of α precisely because of the relationship that a Name necessarily bears to a metonymic object. The bare recognition of γ precedes any “Dialectical” understanding of language itself, insofar as a human child’s biological birth-event is a prerequisite of possessing any subjectivity in the first place. This further implies, of course, that language acquisition, as it relates to any bare understanding of language, begins at zero, at age zero, and possessing (a) zero understanding of anything. In this way, language becomes an immanent metaphor (immanent to our reality) for perception itself, since the “transcendental unity of apperception”, as Kant termed it in Critique of Pure Reason, must be forcibly synchronized with the fact of language’s existence; this is a fact which constantly asserts itself by means of languages’ practical usage in our real, social world of shared perceptions.

In turn, language not only codes and re-codes elements of α through the economics of discourse (via the real exchange of signifiers), but it also de-codes our sensory perception(s), and it does this by using Kantian cognition as a mediator, or as a kind of referee, of consciousness. Thus, the signification of a word is not the result of a unitarily understood signified; rather, signification is the result of multiple-signified(s) that are strictly unconscious, and move the forever-nascent subject towards ego-ideal formation, propelled by the cyclical economics of discourse in language acquisition. This specifically means the recognition (β) and identification (β’) of grammatical parts of speech as they present themselves in the usage of language (α), and how they interact with the Hegelian moments of logical entity through the multiplicity of γ.

Parts of speech (a signifier-of-the-signified that is unconscious): ego-ideal i(a) formation

Itinerary:

α → β → β’ → γ or δ

While it may seem that because the ideal-ego, I(A), is located at the dead-end of the Lacanian graph of desire at the lowest left position, the formation of the ideal-ego must therefore be a more mature process that happens later on in language acquisition than the formation of the ego-ideal, it is perhaps more true to state that the ideal-ego originates for understanding from the blank image of the mother, i, a point which is located on the pre-Oedipal triangle between M and -φ. In this way, understanding proceeds apparently from nature, from Nature-proper, and not directly from the de-coding processes that cognition uses to mediate the self-same consciousness that cognition also necessarily inherits some duty towards interpreting.

Signals (a signified-of-the-signifier that is unconscious): ideal-ego I(A) formation

Itinerary:

δ’ → β → β’ → γ or δ

Negative reason, or the Dialectical side of logic, defaults here from a reliance on language and the logical/affective entanglement with grammatical parts of speech to a philosophical form of cognition experienced as something more primally universal than speech. It is therefore implicitly understood to exist prior to the appearance of the mother’s image, i, within the subject’s relationship to language. In this acquired sense of cognitive difference, it becomes possible to register the phallus (on the pre-Oedipal triangle) as something more like the mother’s α. The desire of the mother, which transforms the “I” into a grammatical part of speech which is always present within speech even without its appellation, originates from the metonymic object which can be located in any sequence of signifiers, and whenever δ’, a signifier of language which seemingly proceeds from Nature, is understood as the initial trigger or catalyst of the mother’s desire, an anxiety develops that is foundational for ideal-ego formation probably a while before ego-ideal formation is ever encountered.

— (1/10/2023)

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

Trauma’ is a term that has long been used in medicine and surgery. It comes from the Greek τϱαŭμα, meaning wound, which in turn derives from τιτϱοσχω, to pierce.

‘Trauma’ is a term that has long been used in medicine and surgery. It comes from the Greek τϱαŭμα, meaning wound, which in turn derives from τιτϱοσχω, to pierce. It generally means any injury where the skin is broken as a consequence of external violence, and the effects of such an injury upon the organism as a whole; the implication of the skin being broken is not always present, however–we may speak, for example, of ‘closed head and brain traumas’.

In adopting the term, psycho-analysis carries the three ideas implicit in it over on to the psychical level: the idea of a violent shock, the idea of a wound and the idea of consequences affecting the whole organisation.

Laplanche, J. and Pontalis, J.-B. (1973) The Language of Psychoanalysis. London: Hogarth Press – Reprinted by Karnac Books 1988

[mmmmalo]

One way to account for the gay/homophobic character of the Law in Homestuck (eg Gamzee punishing Equius's gender non-conformity while wearing a girl's glasses) is that prohibition is being construed in strictly Oedipal terms -- the Father is permitted to enjoy that which he forbids access to, with gender/sexual deviance assuming the rhetorical position of Mother.

[muisstil]

Lacanian theory in ‘Visualizing the Unconscious: Mary Kelly’s Installations’ -  Margaret Iversen 

[power-chords]

I love to take things very seriously and also be purposefully, floridly stupid about them.

[pitch-and-moan]

Lacaning Height and Depth

In an attempt to delve into his need to conquer and accept his past (including future) failures, this time Napoleon travels through time to 1950s Paris to undergo psychoanalysis by Jacques Lacan. The whole film is the two of them, in session, with Napoleon becoming increasingly agitated by the process, increasingly hung up on the concepts of "drive" and "desire."

[saionjeans]

In Defense of Akio Ohtori

While many fans of Revolutionary Girl Utena would refrain from employing such reductive terms to describe a narrative that so heavily critiques and deconstructs the role of archetypal figures in storytelling, it is nonetheless a widely held belief, albeit implicitly, that Akio constitutes the ultimate “villain” of the narrative. Akio constructs the borders through which their world is framed, and is thus uniquely culpable for all its violence. And yet, I would like this challenge this notion somewhat. While Akio may be the primary frame through which the narrative is constructed, we cannot ignore the hints that this narrative may also be, at least in part, retroactively framed. During the famous “Cantarella scene,” for example, the audience is shown that Utena and Anthy will ultimately escape the world of Ohtori through a cut to an empty room, time overlapping as the possibility to imagine a future becomes realized. Thus, if the narrative lies partially beyond Akio’s scope, it is fair to argue that Akio is being framed just as much as he frames others.

No character within the narrative, whether a bit player or a protagonist, is bereft of a complex psychological motivation underpinning their every action. So why is Akio, one of the most crucial players in the show, denied his nuanced psychological portraiture? Akio is as complex as any other character, if not more so, and thus merits our attention and analysis. In this essay, I will read Akio through a framework of Lacanian psychoanalysis as I interrogate and unpack the deeper implications and motivations that indubitably undergird his challenging and variegated psychological landscape, in an attempt not only to understand his violent patterns of behavior, but also, even, perhaps, to justify them.

lol jk guys happy april fools

[comradekatara]

what genres of music do you think the gaang would listen to? what about some of their favorite artists? i think katara would be a big olivia rodrigo fan and that aang would listen to a lot of taylor swift lol

aw come on now be nice to aang. he would have better taste than THAT. i think he would listen to a lot of disco, like donna summer. he would like upbeat funky music that you can dance to. and he’d have a pretty eclectic and varied music taste. like i see him also loving joanna newsom (and not just because divers is about his life). and maaayyybe he’d listen to taylor swift, like one or two songs perhaps, but his ass would NOT be a swiftie.

that said, katara would feel very passionately about her, although whether positively or negatively i do not know. but there is no way she is simply swift-neutral. she would care way too much about pop culture as a phenomenon. i think that even if she really did love taylor swift she’d always preface her name with “famous climate criminal…”

and look, i respect olivia rodrigo, i think she’s a talented performer and makes great songs for amvs (ty lee all american bitch kendall roy brutal nanami vampire, to name a few highlights), but if anything, katara would listen to actual 90s riot grrrl and female singer songwriters, because olivia is simply not as good as her inspirations.

katara would also listen to any music that has a subversive political message or is sung by a woman with eminently powerful vocals. so a combination of punk, folk, some gospel, some heavy metal, and a lot of r&b. also i think she’d listen to very specific shwotunes and defend those musicals with her life.

sokka doesn’t have a music “taste” he has one song that he plays on repeat for weeks until he gets sick of it. sometimes that song is a symphony by beethoven, and sometimes that song is “fireworks” by mitski (okay, it’s often “firework” by mitski). but his one constant is kate bush. he’s fucking obsessed with kate bush.

toph grew up a piano prodigy so she has a lot of opinions on classical music and that’s most of what she listens to for the first decade or so of her life. then she gets introduced to like, tracy chapman and fiona apple through katara and sokka, and realizes that classifying all music with lyrics as “trash” may have been a bit reductive. and when she gets a bit older she gets really into indie rock and begs sokka to take her to concerts. and he doesn’t even really care for the concerts. he just takes her because he knows how much she loves it.

zuko is a mitskigirl thru and thru. i know that ppl say he’d be emo and listen to mcr but that music is too coarse and unpolished for his sensitive ears. he likes music with a beautiful melancholy quality that makes him feel sad yet gorgeous. he also listens to jbrekkie and jay som and other musical equivalents to ocean vuong. he’s literally gaysian what do u want from him.

suki is by far the most into music of anyone in their friendgroup. music is one of her favorite things in the entire world, and if she couldn’t play and listen to music she wouldn’t even want to exist. she’s in an indie folk rock band with her friends called the kyoshi warriors, and they have a lot of followers on bandcamp. she has an incredibly varied and extensive music taste, which is why she’s basically always designated the aux cord. sometimes she’s playing the cranberries and sometimes she’s playing googoosh and sometimes she’s playing otyken. and her taste never misses.

ty lee is one of those freaks who doesn’t really listen to music by choice. instead, she listens to: true crime podcasts, audiobooks (eg, of lacanian psychoanalysis), or sometimes simply has her earbuds in with nothing actually playing so as to seem as if she isn’t eavesdropping on the conversations taking place in her vicinity. but when people ask her what kind of music she likes she just says, “oh, you know…. pop.”

mai is also a mitskigirl she’s even more of a mitskigirl than zuko is (so she claims, although zuko would contest this). she’s very active on spotify because she loves making various playlists for different moods, different vibes, different blorbos from her shows. she likes all different genres, and takes suki’s recommendations very seriously above all.

azula’s two favorite artists are, unfortunately, rachmaninoff and kanye, and that’s all you really need to know about her.

[celtos]

To know what your partner will do is not a proof of love.

—Jacques Lacan

[iguanalysis]

"S", Truth, Event, and Domain

Being and Event Notes: Taken From “Translator’s Preface” by Oliver Feltham: “Mathematics is ontology”

Alain Badiou’s main idea for introducing mathematics into ontology is influenced by developments in set theory that occurred in the 20th century. A schism between philosophy-proper and what are named “truth procedures” forms whenever the development of philosophical knowledge must reconcile itself with the actuality of an event, and the variables involved in its conditioning. Truth procedures may occur after the appearing of an event-site (?), and these procedures maintain the “name” of that event as their fundamental reference, or object [of understanding (?)]

Truth procedures such as these, which are heterogenous to philosophy, are also called “conditioning”, and they occur in the domains of art, politics, science, and love.

Orientations of thought which may characterize truth procedures in these domains as they attempt to approach their respective philosophical representations are as follows: transcendental, constructivist, generic, and praxiological. 

The convergence of these orientations of thought as they may direct the truth procedures which occur in reference to the name of an event becomes consistent with itself only in the field of philosophy; thus, the task of philosophy is to effectively communicate this “compossibility” of convergences and “accommodate the diversity of the various truth procedures without being rendered inconsistent“.

“The New Happens in Being under the Name of the Event”

First, read this post on my blog: https://at.tumblr.com/iguanalysis/what-is-the-structure-of-discourse-and-where/riwtcpm28bpz

How does all this about Being and Event correspond to the four discourses in Lacanian psychoanalysis?

What I have done is decided that a truth procedure is triggered by the name of the event, and that the domains of art, politics, science, and love are the goal-sites of the trajectory from the Other (“A”) towards “S”. Thus, the name of the event is the command to “initiate launch sequence”, as it is said, and the object of truth contained in “A” is thus catapulted toward the “S” of the targeted domain name (“art”, “politics”, “science”, “love”). However, there would be no idea of such a command without the reality of the unconscious always in play, whose function is also to limit the capacities of ordered outcomes within a given series of events. Therefore, it is not the outcome of events that is predetermined, rather, the limitations of said outcomes are predetermined.

Orientations of thought for truth procedures are thus decided upon by the desires which occur that initially prompted them, and which also happen in relation to the four discourses. But the decisions reached about the conscious selection of these orientations (transcendental, constructivist, generic, and/or praxiological) are, for thought, decidedly philosophical (or perhaps for a computer program, prescriptive) and not enticed in consciousness by the beckonings of mutually-effected logical necessities which may be observed in reality. What anticipates this impasse (in thought, or even in computation) as well are both the activities of consideration and deliberation.

Consideration tends to occur prior to the necessity to decide to act, or “initiate launch sequence”; deliberation, on the other hand, tends to occur in the face of the necessity to decide to act. Their occurrence interacts in the process of mediation between truth and the Other: the payload of the Other must acquire an algebraic representation in order to fulfill its discursive function, in other words.

If truth is the desire for a subject, then the name of the event corresponds to the structure of the discourse of the master. 

If truth is the desire for a signifier, then the name of the event corresponds to the structure of the discourse of the university. 

If truth is the desire for a knowledge, then the name of the event corresponds to the structure of the discourse of the analyst. 

If truth is the desire for surplus-jouissance, then the name of the event corresponds to the structure of the discourse of hysteria.

Consideration is more philosophically-oriented than deliberation, since it is both synthetic and analytical in its combined method of thought. An orientation of thought, via consideration, may become pre-selected, or better understood, upon later reflection on the results of the truth procedure, and whether or not the same desire which occurred to prompt the orientation of thought for the truth procedure found a proper relationship to satisfaction based on the decision to act that followed.

Deliberation is more domain-oriented than consideration, however, since it is pressed to act by necessity and must therefore come to a decision. These decisions also seem to occur outside of philosophy, therefore, even though truth as either the desire for a knowledge or as the desire for surplus-jouissance, which will crop up later in conscious desire, are basically physically (pre)determined by the (identity of the) decision to act itself, or the variable. Once some people believe they understand this, for example, they may begin to behave irrationally. (I am no exception).

The Name of the Event, or the Domain Name?

What is a name? A name is a signifier for all the other signifiers. Sometimes it is a literal word: “English”, “language”, “Father”, “1”, “0”, etc. Other times it is an abstract logical or rational particle which occurs in or through syllogisms.

What is an event? An event is an identity or variable which retains the capacity to be linked to a signifier prior to becoming signified. It is already capable of being understood; it does compute.

The unconscious interactions which happen between names and events are the determining factors of a society’s “philosophical infrastructure”.

The name of the event triggers the truth procedure; the domain name is like the target or aim of the catapult trajectory, as it is decided by the structure of discourse.

How is the domain name decided by the structure of discourse? The three indications of the rotational mechanism (as I have described them), namely, the id, egoity, and reflection, come into contact with desire at the subconscious level, and form the identity of “S” on schema L: either signifier, word, or subject. Truth here becomes aligned with the Aristotelian “Chief Good” by the functioning of thought. Jacques Lacan may have called this idea (or something similar) “das Ding”, or in English, “the Thing”, in his seminar The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Since desire always wants to achieve the Good by means of some truth that it knows in reality, the identity of “S” becomes its driving or motivating object, and this identity short-circuits by the logical necessity of its very possibility into the form of a name in conscious thought.

The selection of a domain name, then, is closely related to how an orientation of thought is also necessarily selected by the identity of an object. The difference is that a domain (name) is what truth is unwittingly thrown into by desire, and an orientation of thought is an expression of desire for the truth. However, the expression of desire for the truth must also be of desire for the truth about something. This about (something) is the centerpiece of the philosophical problem of events: how is it that all of these interactions concerning [1] the four discourses, [2] schema L, [3] desire, and [4] truth procedures seem to correspond to human cognitive psychology (as well as computation and engineering), yet the domains of art, politics, science, and love, which are the very sky of truth’s trajectory, are predetermined by an existent structure of society which is prior to the event anyone’s biological birth?

This is the collateral side of the Other, one that belongs to a child’s parents, which evades any form of thought or selection. The incessant activity of the production of truth and knowledge are what I have called, inspired by Alenka Zupancic’s book Why Psychoanalysis?, the “Laplanchian Engine”. Read my blog post about it here: https://at.tumblr.com/iguanalysis/a-laplanchian-engine/jq0lalin4lrl

– (10/17/2022)

[lacan-psychoananalysisaspraxis]

My depression points to my not knowing how to lose... What is more, the disenchantment that I experience here and now, appears, under scrutiny, to awaken echoes of old traumas, to which I realise I have never been able to resign myself.

My depression points to my not knowing how to lose...

Nevertheless, the power of the events that create my depression is often out of proportion to the disaster that suddenly overwhelms me. What is more, the disenchantment that I experience here and now, cruel as it may be, appears, under scrutiny, to awaken echoes of old traumas, to which I realise I have never been able to resign myself. I can thus discover antecedents to my current breakdown in a loss, death, or grief over someone or something that I once loved. The disappearance of that essential being continues to deprive me of what is most worthwhile in me; I live it as a wound or deprivation, discovering just the same that my grief is but the deferment of the hatred or desire for ascendency that I nurture with respect to the one who betrayed or abandoned me. My depression points to my not knowing how to lose – I have perhaps been unable to find a valid compensation for the loss? It follows that any loss entails the loss of my being – and of Being itself. The depressed person is a radical, sullen atheist.

Julia Kristeva - Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia. Columbia University Press; Reprint edition (1989).

[simurghed]

in my mind palace there dwells a giant ever-toiling machine that places the undersiders in one situation per second. the undersiders at the supermarket. the undersiders and their pondering orbs in the theoretical universe where they are all wizards. the undersiders at the aquarium. the undersiders trapped in an elevator. the undersiders in wonderland. the undersiders in the paleozoic era. the undersiders if i baked them into a pie. the undersiders when its laundry day. the undersiders but brian is really into male interior design. the undersiders but lisa is really into lacanian psychoanalysis. the undersiders in a communal saw trap. the undersiders but they all have to dress and speak like dickensian orphans and say things like oh heavens me. the undersiders at the minion movie. the undersiders at ohtori academy. the undersiders but alec and aisha pissed someone off on 4chan really bad and now theyre all superdoxxed and at security risk. the undersiders at a fancy hotel. the undersiders hiding a body. the undersiders if they opened a mattress store as a money laundering scheme

[libbee]

Jacques Lacan had Venus in the 8th House

And that is quite visible in his work. Some of his quotes are shared below. These are the words of someone who must have felt the tragedy of losing a grip over their reality. Who must have lived a fantasy first and seen it tear apart later. Therefore comes the school of psychoanalysis.

What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?

Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.

All sorts of things in this world behave like mirrors. 

His description of psychology and the unconscious touches the depths and borders of the unknown. It is the exploration of the 8th house but in a scientific way rather than spiritual or magical. Perhaps it is the closest we can get to understanding this house of astrology:

I always speak the truth. Not the whole truth, because there's no way, to say it all. Saying it all is literally impossible: words fail. Yet it's through this very impossibility that the truth holds onto the real.

I identify myself in language, but only by losing myself in it like an object. What is realised in my history is not the past definite of what was, since it is no more, or even the present perfect of what has been in what I am, but the future anterior of what I shall have been for what I am in the process of becoming.

Desire, a function central to all human experience, is the desire for nothing nameable.

As to why 8th house Venus could influence Lacanian psychology, we find its answer in the nature of this house. This excerpt is from Barbara Pijan's article on her website:

Whichever graha occupy bhava-8 become fuel for the Kuja (Mars) -Ketu magical-transformation engine of hidden and secret tantric processes in the human consciousness. Will the native become a victim of this process or an instigator of it? A long-lived and wise magician, or a tragic childhood death? A brilliant surgeon or psychiatrist? An attorney of wills and estates? Or a sorcerer, caster of curses, agent of superstitious fear and petty control? Will"self-destructive" urges be recognized as healing transformations, or will the native and-or his culture adjudge such behaviors to be undesirable?

True to this description, Lacan did indeed become a brilliant psychiatrist. If you read how he speaks of psychoanalysis, it is not merely his profession or source of income, it is rather something that has touched something inside him, that he cannot articulate but knows it is connected to psychology. How do we even know if something is scientific work and not the gibberish of a mystic who speaks whatever he wants? Anyone with planets in the 8th house or aspects to this house is bound to experience a similar psychic fate: of self-undoing and psychological analysis.

The madman is not only a beggar who thinks he is a king, but also a king who thinks he is a king.

Yet, analytical truth is not as mysterious, or as secret, so as to not allow us to see that people with a talent for directing consciences see truth rise spontaneously.

Obsessional does not necessarily mean sexual obsession, not even obsession for this, or for that in particular; to be an obsessional means to find oneself caught in a mechanism, in a trap increasingly demanding and endless.

In other words, the man who is born into existence deals first with language; this is a given. He is even caught in it before his birth.

[grendelsmilf]

no offense to natalie who has clearly read more lacanian and freudian psychoanalysis than i ever will (and has, you know, actually read twilight, which is also something i will never actually do) but i do think a 3 hour long video about the politics of heterosexual feminine desire in twilight is just fundamentally remiss if it doesn’t mention the fact that twilight is an explicitly mormon text and how that informs our understanding of vampirism as a symbol of sex, specifically in the mormon imagination as it ties vampirism to eternity as explicitly interlinked with the notion of marriage as a sacred transcendence. there is so much there when reading twilight through a mormon lens as it relates to female sexuality, and i would know because i read multiple graduate dissertations on the mormon overtones in twilight during the height of the pandy (because what else are you supposed to do in lockdown). and of course the mormonism of the text is also crucial in how that informs the racism and dehumanization of the quileute and native americans more broadly. i understand that her goal was to focus on the cultural reception of twilight to make a broader critique about how we discuss and approach the complex functions of sex and desire in media, but it feels like a missed opportunity to not actually address these crucial elements of why stephanie meyer is, in fact, like this, and how those overtly mormon ideas interface with the more secular or (traditional) christian elements of our culture. this isn’t to say that the video wasn’t well-researched, well-informed, well-written, well made, aesthetically impressive, or hilarious, because it was obviously all of those things, but if you’re going to make a 3 hour long video discussing the political/sexual ideologies underlying the twilight series, than the least you can do is read a 26 page essay explaining how the notion of marriage and the notion of vampirism are connected within the mormon imagination to represent an ideal of spiritual transcendence and eternity, and how that in turn reflects the religious emphasis on imposed patriarchal institutions as a motivator for specific feminine fantasies and conceptions of domination and submission. like i haven’t even read twilight and im just saying this now just off the top of my head. idk.

[eesirachs]

Very interested in theology from your blog. I've seen you mention 'fascinance' once or twice and despite my interest in psychoanalysis I've never heard the term. Google isn't giving me too much satisfactory info on it, do you have a specific text on it you recommend?

it emerges against the lacanian, phallic term of fascinum (the penetration and preoccupation of the gaze of the Other). fascinance, its cognate, is explored by feminist psychoanalyst bracha ettinger. it refers to the mutual regard of girl-becoming-woman and the femme-fatale-autre-Mére, a woman who offers the girl the opportunity to re-enact matrixial, pre- and post-natal co-emergences wherein two beings (mother, child) share in affective space. ettinger's work on matrixial borderspaces and co-emergences has been, i think, the most formative to my own psychoanalytic rubric. starting with her matrixial borderspace might work, but also, griselda pollock (an art theorist whom i also adore) writes of ettinger in ways that sometimes exceed the latter's content and style