The Sinthome in Everyday Life?  

I’ve questioned Zizek’s claim regarding the widespread experience of intense conflicts associated with a potential for psychosis.  At the same time, others have described more limited conflicts – in the sense that their containment does not become such a life-organizing preoccupaton – that are associated with delusions.  For example, Shengold regards “delusions of everyday life” as ubiquitous.  The following quotation is useful because he sketches a continuum Zizek doesn’t consider: 

Because we all retain a considerable degree of narcissism, alongside and beneath later developments, it follows that we all have some degree and variety of narcissistic delusion. A delusion is, according to Webster, "in psychiatry, a false, persistent belief not substantiated by sensory evidence". (To make this a more satisfactory definition one should emphasize the "persistent" and add the tremendous emotional intensity that characterizes the conviction in the "belief") There is a most complicated spectrum of delusion, ranging from psychotic delusions, in which almost no doubt in the belief is allowed; through delusions in which the reality can be given lip service without disturbing the false belief, as if these were in two different compartments of the mind which cannot  connect (I have called these quasi-delusions);  to transient insistent  beliefs in which conviction and doubt are both present, one along-  side the other, yet able to intermix, as it were, without canceling one  another out. Each individual would have his own dynamic stock  and variety (all along the spectrum) of narcissistic delusions, even  including what might be called psychotic ones. The differences  between the so-called normal (that is, the neurotic) and the psychotic individual are probably mostly quantitative, having to do  with preponderances, although the latter can be present in such  measure as to present the effect of qualitative diversity, and also  there can be true qualitative differences having to do with specific delusional content and related emotions and impulses. [1]  

Like Zizek, Shengold notes that analysands resist giving up their delusions: 

… these delusions and quasi-delusions are very difficult to analyze; they are frequently not conscious, existing as unconscious or at least not responsibly acknowledged assumptions and expectations and as associated affects (again, involving promise and dread) that are disconnected from responsible consciousness. And the delusions result in resistances to change in life and therefore give rise to stubborn resistances by the patient in therapy. In order to deal with the resistances, the analyst must recognize the delusional or near-delusional (remember, there is a spectrum here) qualities and convey these to the patient. Patients often have to struggle to see and especially to own, to become responsible for, these sometimes but not always subtle breaks with reality and reason. They often must learn (some already know) how much they want to hold on to the promise of intense gratification and the protection of powerful infantile defenses against intense bad feeling (together with the ties to the godlike parents of infancy, with whom these feelings are so implicated). 

However, unlike Zizek, he doesn’t concede the notion that the proper goal of psychoanalysis is “passing through fantasy,” i.e. recognizing and accepting the delusion as an essential part of psychological structure that protects the analysand from an autistic withdrawal from reality.  Instead, the multiple limitations to which the delusion contributes argue for its dissolution: 

Dr. B's conscious preoccupations featured denial of his parents', especially of his mother's, mortality more than denial of his own. For the most part his mother (and at first his analyst) was perfect. About me, on whom he had transferred his mother (or perhaps projected her as part of himself would be more accurate), he said, 

I know that the mystical, ideal feelings I have about you as perfect are crazy—my brain tells me that. It's all there for me: the idea that you will never get old, that I will always have you. But my heart tells me it is true all the same. Only at moments do I see  you as a separate real person and that I am not under your control nor you under mine. 

But this kind of delusional conviction of the other's perfection was much harder to maintain about his mother, for long since she was subject to recurrent irrational rages. He could watch her direct these at other people, especially strangers, with relative equanimity, but they were repetitively also aimed at him in the form of vicious verbal assaults. It was difficult to treat such attacks, and the counter rages they evoked in the patient, as not having happened, but after a while Dr. B was able to manage it. His mind was divided into nonconnecting compartments, vertical splits which could contain completely separate, contradictory ideas, feelings, and ways of functioning. For much of the time this form of maintaining delusion and idealization ("my perfect mommy”) could work because  he allowed no integration. After one vituperative, recriminatory  outburst attributed (as was frequent) by his mother to her son's  neglect of her, he reported, 

For a while I was in a rage with her. I still am. I suppose. But I    can't bear it. [He begins to cry.] When I get that angry I feel that  mother is dead, dead! 

[This is the delusional mode and intensity.[[Shengold's comment]] 

But if I think about it, when I can think about it, I suppose it means that in my rage I feel that it is as if my mother could die, that I could really lose her. 

[Here the delusional quality begins to fade; the infant is becoming  an adult again, an adult who can at least hypothetically accept death and loss. [[Shengold's comment.] 

But, you know, that last thought, that "as if," is intellectual. And I begin to get frightened when I feel she really could die. Don't you understand? She really could. I just refuse to accept it! 

So the delusion, or quasi-delusion, returns. Following the session it sets in beneath the surface, the as-if surface, where what appears to be the predominantly adult functioning of Dr. B can fool not only the observer but, above all, Dr. B himself. 

… Dr. B had been spoiled … by frightened and overindulgent parents who had difficulty refusing their children anything. In the psychic universe transmitted by these dependent and childlike parents to their sons, any "no" was equated with death, the great negation of life, and so "no" became intolerable, evoking terror and rage. Instead, the world these parents helped construct for their children was full of the Promise, that unfulfillable, false promise, of continual narcissistic bliss.  [As Dr. B grew up and was] inevitably exposed to the insistent demands of the external world and the terrifying dangers attendant on their own unchecked instinctual wishes, [he] needed to cling desperately to the delusion of [his] own and [his] parents' power and immortality. To lose the idealized self-image mirrored in the parental eyes (Narcissus gazing at his reflection in the spring) was and remained an unbearable loss that could be denied only by delusion. Whenever this delusion was challenged, there arose a dreadful, intense rage—paradoxically, a murderous rage directed toward the indispensable parents and their false promises; this of course only intensified the danger of loss. The rage was ineffectually expressed in tantrums, which the parents found intolerable and usually tried to smother with indulgence rather than handle with discipline. The child (mirroring the childlike parents) was in the trap that all of us are caught in to some extent: the urge to kill those one cannot live without. But the intensity of their entrapment, appropriate to early infancy, had, disguised and sequestered, been fully retained in adult life. Most of us are able to modify (but never to eliminate) the vicious cycle—a modification that can be lost regressively if the conditions of life make old dangers return… 

When threatened or offended, patient C would resort to a fantasy of transforming himself into a Greek god.  Although this also had the connotation for him of being infinitely handsome and lovable (another quasi-delusional belief), it was the god's magical power to command changes in reality, especially to get rid of people who were obstacles to his wishes and whims, that he was calling upon. He thought of himself as Zeus or Poseidon (or Jupiter or Neptune—the Romans, having defeated the Greeks, made these the preferred names) wielding thunderbolts. All this was voiced in a manner that usually sounded jovial enough, but the intensity of need underlying the appearance of playfulness frequently showed through in an isolated, near hysterical tone; more  rarely he would say, directly and convincingly, "I really mean this!"  — again, with an obvious split in conscious awareness. (This kind  of split was described by Freud in a note added to The Interpretation of Dreams in 1909: "I was astonished to hear a highly intelligent boy of ten remark after the sudden death of his father: I know father's dead, but what I can't understand is why he doesn't  come home to supper' " [1900, 254].) 

As a child, C's claim to the assumption of godlike power had been admired and, apparently, even acceded to whenever possible by his parents, especially his father. But this had frightened C; the son required his father to keep the godlike power in order to protect him if his own magic failed. This unresolvable dilemma complicated C's oedipal development: taking his father's place and powers was at once too easy (not made less so by a seductive mother) and too terrifying. One way this conflicted godlike claim showed itself in his current life was that C. a prosperous businessman, repeatedly allowed his now almost indigent father to pay for the meals they frequently had together in expensive restaurants. The knowledge that the father couldn't afford the expense was put  aside by both parties in deference to their mutual need to maintain  the delusion of infinite parental resources with which the father  could endow the son. There must be no limit, no contravening of  the child's desires. This made for a powerful, entrapping bond  between parent and child that had many levels of meaning and  served to distance as well as to preserve the terrifying, murderous  implications for both. 

A concomitant delusional aspect of omnipotence and immortality is the claim to perfection, most often felt as intolerance for  any defect, limitation, contingency, or postponement. For Dr. B,  the pathologist whose relations with people were so unsatisfactory  and superficial—other people were always, he felt, disappointing  him—perfection was in the realm of things. Only with things could  complete control be at least approached. He was a model of anal  defensiveness: fastidious in his dress and appearance, a collector  and putter of things in order, a classifier and labeler. Things, as  lifeless as the cadavers he dissected, were. in his view, the least likely  to age or change. [2]  

For all of these analysands, the madness-jouissance couplet that Zizek discusses arguably captures some elements of their immediate experience of their condition.   However, given the demonstrated possiblity of helpful analytic intervention – illustrated by the psychoanalytic cases described above –  the Lacanian revision “interpretation of symptoms – going through fantasy” involves a premature concession to the analysand’s fears and evasion of them.  For example, aside from the unreal, delusional quality of the idea of being a Greek god, if we properly understand that omnipotent idea as acting to paper over a profound fear of weakness, the belief’s tremendous liabilities are evident.   

Summary and Conclusion  

Zizek draws on psychoanalytic theory to describe a form of desire that is resistant to normalization, open-ended, and insistent.  We have considered two formulations.  First, in The Ticklish Subject he argues that subjects pursue positive objects that serve to cover over the death drive, yielding a paradoxical attachment to an object  – perhaps better understood as a fantasy embodied in an object – that mediates the force promoting disattachment, the death drive.  Second, in The Sublime Object of Ideology he argues for a psychological force fueled by the more immediate goad of avoiding madness, the enticing lure of a jouissance that entails the conversion of the threat of madness into a form of ecstasy.   

When we consider these metapsychological formulations in light of  psychoanalytic case material, both proposals fall apart.  The Kris case material he cites as pertinent to the death drive formulation does indeed reflect forms of ongoing dissatisfaction and, in a sense, desired dissatisfaction.  But examination of the case material points to clinical syndromes involving forms of penis envy or, to use a more apt current term, phallic narcissism or, in Judith Kestenberg’s terminology, outer-genital narcissism. [3]    Analysis of that syndrome reveals subjects to be trapped in postures of renunciation of a fantasized phallic object, and that they are doing so – as explicitly interpreted by Torok, and as potentially interpreted by Kris –  to both ward off Oedipal conflicts and maintain fantasied dependent relationships.  Contrary to what one would expect if the death drive were as powerfully involved as Zizek suggests, these syndromes are subject to analytic resolution.  Such a resolution involves an escape from fantasy constructs that, to put it generally, leave the subject subordinated to a parental imago and plagued with depression and anxiety over aggressive impulses.  Indeed, in a strong sense a resolution is possible precisely because the analysand is not in the grip of a death drive derivative, but rather of a terrible psychological quandary organized in terms of relations with others, and the emotions that accompany them.  That definition of a problem implies the possibility of a solution via transformed fantasies about relationships and thus relationships themselves.  Simply, once analysands work through the narcissistic insults and outrage they are preoccupied with, they can live more fully.  While it can be argued that this escape does not necessarily lead to authenticity, it is much, much less plausible to argue that phallic narcissism represents an authentic way of life.  Psychoanalytic case material suggests the opposite. 

We question Zizek’s madness-jouissance couplet in much the same terms.  Again, taking the madness-jouissance structure as a guide for selecting relevant psychoanalytic case material, it is very doubtful that the power Zizek attributes to this psychological structure is universally experienced.  Instead of madness representing a universal possibility that must be forestalled by jouissance, the most relevant psychoanalytic case literature suggests that madness-jouissance are psychological options for subjects suffering from serious narcissistic injury, and who have fabricated a solution to this injury that is heavily reliant on the mobilization of sexual feelings.  This solution (in McDougall’s useful innovation, a neosexuality [4] ) can be questioned not as a deviation from the heterosexual norm, but because it rigidly freezes the subject in their history, warding off rage and depression associated with childhood insufficiency and helplessness.  In this state, relationships with others tend to be relationships with props in the subject’s neverending narcissistic drama. [5]   Once more, this cannot plausibly be regarded as an authentic way of life.  When we consider the more common circumscribed “delusions of everyday life” described by Shengold, in which jouissance is not strongly organized around sexuality and transpires with less complex omnipotent renderings of self and other, our conclusions are the same. 

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