Restless Desire:
Autonomy or Subordination?
Where
can we find examples of analysands facing a similar dilemma and
analysts continuing to analyze? Very relevant is the work of feminist
psychoanalysts treating analysands experiencing penis envy. In “The
Significance of Penis Envy in Women,” Maria Torok began as follows:
It
is none the less true that in analysis, the woman's desire to have
a penis (that is to say, to be a man) reveals itself as a subterfuge,
because of its envious character. A desire can be satisfied,
envy never can. Envy can bring about only more envy and destruction. Pseudo-desire,
promulgated by envy, achieves a semblance of satisfaction, as shown
in the phallic attitudes of some women, who are immersed in imitation
of the other sex, or at least of the image they have of it. The
fragile structure which they build shelters only feelings of inner
void, anxiety, and frustration. [emphasis added]
Here
Torok distinguishes between desire and envy, between satisfaction
and its semblance. Zizek does not, likely reflecting his emphasis
on the idea that there is no desire that is authentic since all
desire flows from the ego’s misidentifications. What I will show
is that because he overlooks this distinction, he is effectively
oblivious to the discrete character of narcissistic desire, and
the fixated destructiveness that is part of it.
Torok
continues:
The
problem of analysis is precisely to bring back into the open the
authentic but repressed desire which, disguised as envy, has remained
hidden. Here, as with other fantasies, if one took the patient's
protestations literally one would preclude analysis. A sure
way of doing this would be to legitimatize woman's penis envy through
accepting an alleged castration as her lot, for which phylogenesis
would bear the responsibility…. For the analyst who dares face
up to this impasse in treatment—namely penis envy—the first step
is to clarify the nature of the conflict which produced such a
desperate solution. He should not underestimate the advantages
which it unfailingly provides, and he should utilize in treatment
the painful contradictions in which it inevitably locks the patient…Penis
envy is the symptom, not of an illness, but of a certain state
of unfulfilled desire – unfulfilled because of conflicting needs. [emphasis added]
Torok
investigated a form of envy in female analysands that serves to
imprison them in a state of desire for something they cannot have. Torok
refused to accept this as a “bedrock” condition of the female sex, and also notes that “patients
of both sexes” can become trapped in this position. Agreeing with
Torok, I will argue this is useful in understanding Kris’ male
patient.
Torok
quotes two of her analysands:
"I
don't know why I have this feeling," says Agnes, "as
it corresponds to nothing in reality but it has always been like
this for me As though, only man was fit to fulfill himself, to
have opinions, to mature, to go always further. And everything
to him is so naturally easy . . . nothing, nothing can stop him he
is a force that can stop anything if he wants to. Me, I am getting
nowhere, hesitating, there's a kind of wall in front of me. ...
I always had the feeling I wasn't finished. Like a statue waiting
for the sculptor to decide at last to model its arms. ..."
A
little girl, Yvonne, always thought that boys "could at once succeed
in doing anything . . . they instantly speak all languages . .
they could go into a church and take all the can candles and
nobody would stop them. If ever they find some thing in the way,
they would naturally jump over it.” These are eloquent descriptions
of an idealized penis. It is obvious that this always means: "the
thing whatever it is that one doesn't have oneself." Yet such
a vital detect could not be a natural one, but could only be the
effect of a deprivation or a renunciation.
She
then offers this formulation, which I will quote at length:
“A
complex, unconscious speech is concentrated in "penis envy," and
this speech is addressed to the maternal imago [the analysand’s
psychological representation of her mother]. One could expound
it by the following propositions:
1) "You
see, it is in a thing and not in myself that I am looking for what
I am deprived of."
2) "I
am searching in vain, because this thing can never be mine. The
obvious vanity of my search must be a guarantee of the definitive
renunciation of those desires you disapproved in me."
3) "I
shall insist on the value of this inaccessible thing so that you
may realize the greatness of my sacrifice in letting myself be
deprived of my desire."
4) "I
should accuse you and, in turn, deprive you, but that is precisely
what I want to avoid, deny, and ignore, because I need your love."
"In
short, idealizing the penis, in order to envy it more, is reassuring
you by showing you that this [my sexual desires not distorted through
penis envy] will never come between us, and that consequently
I shall never be reunified, I shall never fulfill myself. I tell
you, it would be just as impossible as changing bodies."
"Penis
envy" marks this oath of fidelity… One can now see that it
is not the "thing" itself that the patient is coveting,
but the acts which allow one to master "things" in general.
Coveting a thing is precisely the same as demonstrating to the
imago the renunciation of an act… To conclude, we are led to consider
that not only the repression of anal-pregenital conflicts underlies
penis envy, but also a specific, total or partial, inhibition of
masturbation, of orgasm, and of their concomitant fantasy activities.
Penis envy appears now to be a disguised claim—not for the organ
and the attributes of the other sex—but for one's own desires for
maturation and development by means of the encounter with oneself
in conjunction with orgiastic experience and sexual identification.”
Coveting
what one can never have replaces action based on desire. This
resonates strongly with Kris’ analysand, the plagiarist who, instead
of simply stealing and getting, unconsciously gives his own work
to the person he believes he is plagiarizing, then moves to desire
it, and then feels ambivalently – excited, yet guilty – trapped
in the position of thief. Regardless that he has a penis,
he has established a symbolic lack, like the women experiencing
penis envy, that he cannot overcome, and he thereby maintains a
dependent tie to the parent whose phallus he needs. But
in the same stance, he also expresses the claim to that potency,
transgressively framed as an act of stealing. The affective ensemble
of excitement and guilt that Kris saw in his analysand expresses
both the thrill of possibly acquiring phallic potency and a countervailing
assertion acknowledging the transgression involved; via guilt the
potency of the paternal position is additionally represented as
the call of conscience.
What
keeps the analysand in this position? One component Torok highlights
is the forestalled identification with mother:
… the
little girl possessed a means by which she could have indirectly
recovered what she had been deprived of, namely identification
with the Mother, sovereign of her powers. But one notices that
penis envy testifies to a total lack of identification. To
conclude, we are led to consider that not only the repression
of anal-pregenital conflicts that underlies penis envy, but also
a specific, total or partial, inhibition of masturbation, of
orgasm, and of their concomitant fantasy activities. Penis envy
appears now to be a disguised claim—not for the organ and the
attributes of the other sex—but for one's own desires for maturation
and development by means of the encounter with oneself in conjunction
with orgiastic experience and sexual identification. [emphasis added]
Here
what Zizek calls authenticity looks like arrested development. Because it is organized around renunciation
of identification with adults, this notion of authenticity remains
mired in the child’s understanding of herself-with-her-parents. Not
willful authenticity, but rather ambivalent dependence prevails. Kris’ analysand,
like those of Torok, does not follow through on the transitions
associated with the Oedipal passage. Instead of identifying with
father and simultaneously renouncing his current claims for the
father’s potency even as he prospectively claims his own in
the future, as a child Kris’ analysand-to-be settles into a counter-identification
as a never-to-be-successful thief of the father’s potency. In
this bargain, the analysand trades the prospective possession of
the capacities and joys of adulthood (necessarily mundane and
conformist?) for the thrills Zizek associates with jouissance. Here
I would stress that – when we consider the full clinical presentation
of analysands who are in this position – it appears to unavoidably
carry with it confusion, guilt and a sense, like Torok’s analysands,
of narcissistic deficit.
Once
we are able to take up the details of a case and to consider a
more complete psychoanalytic rendering, or embodiment, of Zizek’s
metapsychological propositions, the escape from stupid contentment
to restless authenticity ends in a bog of illusory fascination
and anguish. Instead of somehow harnessing the disattaching function
of the death drive to achieve authenticity, these analysands remain
in infantalized positions wherein the mundane exercise of adult
capacities, including sexuality, is distorted and blocked through
unconscious idealization and anxiety-limiting avoidance.
The
Sinthome over the Symptome: Madness-jouissance for All
Other
passages in Zizek’s writings help in understanding how he arrives
at a conception of authenticity consistent with Kris’ analysand’s
fixation on a lack of/stealing the phallus. Following his reading
of Lacan, a basic revision of psychoanalytic goals is necessary:
The
aim of psychoanalysis is to reestablish the broken network
of communication by allowing the patient to verbalize the meaning
of his symptom: through this verbalization, the symptom is automatically
dissolved…In
its very constitution, the symptom implies the field of the
big Other, as consistent, complete, because its very formation
is an appeal to the Other which contains its meanings….why, in
spite of its interpretation, does the symptom not dissolve itself?…The
Lacanian answer is, of course, enjoyment. …
In
this way we can also articulate two stages of the psychoanalysis
process: interpretation of symptoms – going through fantasy. When
we are confronted with the patient’s symptoms, we must first interpret
them and penetrate through them to the fundamental fantasy as the
kernel of enjoyment which is blocking the further movement of interpretation;
then we must accomplish the crucial step of going through the fantasy,
of obtaining distance from it, of experiencing how the fantasy-formation
just masks, fills out a certain void, lack, empty place in the
Other. But here again another problem arose: how do we account
for patients who have…gone through their fantasy…but whose key
symptoms persist?…What do we do with a symptom, with this pathological
formation which persists not only beyond its interpretation but
even beyond fantasy? Lacan tried to answer this challenge with
the concept of sinthome…Symptom as sinthome is a certain signifying
formation penetrated with enjoyment: it is a signifier as a bearer of
jouis-sense, enjoyment-in-sense.
What
we must bear in mind here is the radical ontological status of
symptom: symptom, conceived as sinthome, is literally our only
substance, the only positive support of our being, the only point
that gives consistency to the subject. In other words, symptom
is the way we – the subjects – “avoid madness,” the way we ‘choose
something (the symptom formation) instead of nothing (radical psychotic
autism, the destruction of the symbolic universe)’ through the
binding of our enjoyment to a certain signifying, symbolic formation
which assures a minimum of consistency to our being-in-the-world.
These passages effectively reformulate the goals of psychoanalysis: the
ground of the distressing symptoms of the analysand is the sinthome,
which is psychostructurally essential in avoiding madness. Analysands
sense this, and will not give up the jouissance, the enjoyment
that saves them from insanity. This means that
If
the symptom in this radical dimension is unbound, it means literally “the
end of the world” – the only alternative to the symptom is nothing: pure
autism, a psychic suicide…that is why the final Lacanian definition
of the end of the psychoanalytic process is identification with
the symptom. The analysis achieves its end when the patient is able
to recognize, in the Real of his symptom, the only support of his
being.
However,
does the sinthome/madness binary really describe both the
ontological and psychoanalytic options facing Kris and Torok and
their analysands? Or, is the traditional psychoanalytic goal of
the interpretive dissolution of symptoms yet relevant? Consider Martha, analyzed by Torok:
During
several sessions Martha has violent bursts of crying or laughing.
Slowly, her emotions regain a meaning; when a little girl, she
met some boys in the swimming pool. Since then she often repeats
the same phrase: "I cannot live like this."
It
was this phrase which came up, during her analysis, in moments
of deep depression. Consciously, "this" means "being
deprived of a penis." But we must also understand that, on
that occasion, she "squeezed her thighs together," "rolled
up a little bit of swimsuit inside" and felt a kind of "sensitive
shiver." The laughter mixed with tears (mingled joy and guilt)
reflected her idea: if I am made "this" way (feeling
this shiver) then, "at home, will they want me?" At
puberty, the same patient had such a feeling of guilt toward her
mother that she kept her periods — the sign of her genital maturity — a
secret from her mother for a whole year. Her own sexuality, far
from being ignored, was a constant but latent, preoccupation;
in those days, the need to please her mother was greater than
orgastic pleasure. During the sessions she expressed the desire
for an orgasm, through the fits of laughter but repressed it through
penis envy itself. First of all there had been an indescribable
joy," "an immense hope." Then, she does not know
why, she was convinced that "something infinitely desirable
exists, not in me but over there, not in my body but in an object,
an absolutely inaccessible object." One can see the contradiction:
the sensitive “shiver of infinite goodness" makes the little
girl lose her feeling of being good for the sake of her family. The
penis is then felt, as we shall see, to be the "good" sex
which gives the possessor pleasure without guilt; this pleasure
is not tied up with masturbatory or internalized guilt. It has
all the conditions of a perfect harmony: pleasure for oneself and
harmony with others. Feeling the "shiver" is aggressive,
wicked to others. So all that is "good" is abandoned
and an external object substituted – the idealized penis. The void
thus created in the patient is filled by sadness, bitterness, jealousy.
But this smoldering aggression can never be a substitute for what
she has missed, the growing and voluptuous awakenings of maturity.
Only analysis can arouse those feelings by loosening up machinery,
as it were.
Instead
of the abstract condition of “madness,” or “radical psychotic autism,
the destruction of the symbolic universe,” the most disorganized
experiences of Martha in her sessions involved a dizzying confluence
of emotions. She felt joy, anxiety, hope, guilt, and anger that
reflected the run of psychological states associated with intense
conflicts over her emerging sexuality. As they developed in sessions
these states might feel “crazy,” but they do not develop into psychosis. Prior
to analysis, the idea that she lacked a penis served to organize
these states within a depressive container that in its core contained
an impossible idealization: the penis/phallus that represents a
wondrous resolution of all the conflicts in her “real” life. Psychoanalysis
of this symptom/sinthome did not lead to madness, but to
recovery of both sexual and relationship capacities, organized
around an experience of herself as an adult woman.
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