INTRO
Between 1956 and 1957, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) gave his fourth year-long seminar. The theme was The Object Relation. In his early seminar years, Lacan made what is known as a “return to Freud,” as he seemed vastly at odds with the direction psychoanalysis had taken under the Anglo-Saxon influence (for a brief historical context, read this). The British psychoanalytic schools, led by Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein, Donald Winnicott, and others, strongly relied on a later Freud, the one from the ego (post 1920), whereas Lacan instead shifted his focus to Freud’s first topic, from 1895 to 1920.
In the first half of his career, Freud delivered intense cycles of production, where he delved first into depicting his main object of study – the unconscious – with texts such as the groundbreaking Dream Interpretation (1900), The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) and Jokes and their Relations to the Unconscious (1905). He then elaborated in detail what he saw as the central aspect at the core of the unconscious, the concept of fantasy and its variations. This cycle entailed Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Delusion and Dream in Jensen’s ‘Gradiva’ (1907), and The Rat Man (1909). It was only after he gained a clear understanding of what he was dealing with and how the psychic apparatus worked that he published texts on the psychoanalytical technique.
The Three Essays… introduced another vital concept in psychoanalytic theory – the object – that later would mark a schism in how the British schools (formed by the object relations school and the school of thought following Melanie Klein’s work) conceived it versus how Lacan believed was Freud’s original framing. Around the UK, the notion of the object was central to the development of the individual (a Freudian term) and crucial in the treatment carried out by the analyst. Lacan cleverly did not deny this, yet recalled that, in Freud, what is stressed is the notion of a lacking object and, consequently, how each subject (a Lacanian term) deals with it. The object, according to Freud, is a mythical, forever lost object, and the relationship the individual establishes with such lack is a determinant of psychopathology.
Freud insists on the following: that every way, for man, of finding the object is, and nothing more than, the continuation of a tendency where it is a matter of a lost object, of an object to be found again.
Lacan, Seminar 4, Introduction
This lost object stems from the original weaning associated with the child’s first experience of satisfaction, says Lacan. It is a nostalgic object, forever sought after, in a repetition working over a reminiscence that, by definition, is impossible to satiate. The pursuit of the object is, then, referenceable to what Freud would later coin as the pleasure principle or the idea that the individual seeks to obtaining of satisfaction in hallucinated ways against a backdrop of nostalgia for an unattainable object.
According to Lacan, all attempts to formulate a notion that such an object, in fact, exists, is out there, and should be attained in the individual’s maturation process are representative of an adaptative vision of psychoanalysis. In the clinical setting, Lacan heavily critiqued such an approach because it would aim at making the individual merely conform to society by means of strengthening his ego in light of his analyst’s model ego.
Lacan embarked on what is arguably the most rigorous and diligent examination of Freudian theory ever done by a post-Freudian analyst. He said Seminar 4’s goal was to “maintain the prominence of Freud’s articulations regarding the object relation, based on the dimensions of the castration complex and the figure of the phallic mother.”
As is the case with any seminar by Lacan, we’re dealing with extremely dense and intricate texts transcribed from his oral presentations in Paris. Not only would a significant volume of words have been edited out had this been a written text, but Lacan spoke in nuanced, non-linear, and often indirect ways via an overuse of the passive voice that might sound the alarm for a native English speaker. Moreover, as a scholar, he ventured on to and drew from other disciplines, primarily linguistics, structuralism, mathematics, logic, and topology. Hence, a Lacanian seminar is challenging to grasp even if one reads in one’s language.
I undertook Seminar 4 in my mother tongue, Portuguese, and gave it a go to manufacture (what I hope is) a concise and more palatable version in English here on PANORAMA. My intent was not to cover the entire seminar, as this would be, at best, a disservice to the original, but to present what I see as the highlight of Seminar 4 – the three types of lack pertaining to the object relation.
Finally, every attempt to reduce and simplify an intricate theory risks leaving something out. If too simplified, it can alter the original idea. It’s difficult to kick off Lacan from any point in his work because the reader always has to backtrack and research links and references to other concepts to understand what he is talking about. Expect some liberty (and potential confusion) in my effort to situate us within the jargon utilized in the field. Most, if not all, technical terms are in bold letters.
For reference, during Seminar 4, Lacan largely utilizes Little Hans, one of the “Big 5” clinical cases documented by Freud, to support his angles and arguments on the object’s lack and the phallic mother. Readers of PANORAMA can find my summary of Little Hans here.
It is through the search for a past and surpassed satisfaction that the new object is sought, and it is found and grasped elsewhere than at the point where it is being sought. There exists a fundamental distance, introduced by the essentially conflictual element inherent in all object-seeking. This is the first form in which, in Freud, the object relationship appears.
Lacan, Seminar 4, Introduction
THE LACK OF OBJECT
To understand the concept of object relation in Lacan, we must first turn to Freud’s theory of the drive. According to the Vocabulaire de la Psychanalyse, a highly referenced dictionary of Freudian concepts by Frenchmen Jean Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, the drive (or pulsion in French, Trieb in the German original) is a dynamic process consisting of an energetic charge - a motivating factor - that directs the organism toward a goal, with the aim of suppressing a tension.
The term Trieb was inaccurately translated as instinct by James Strachey in the Standard Edition and, unfortunately, followed by authors and translators elsewhere. The word instinct (which also exists in German as Instinkt and carries the same connotation as in English, French, and Portuguese) is a term associated with zoology “to designate a behavior that is hereditarily fixed and appears in almost identical form in all individuals of the same species” as per Laplanche and Pontalis. They assertively remark that, by utilizing instinct instead of drive, the term falsifies the connotation originally intended by Freud – and here we begin to see how consequential these types of misreads would be later in the history of psychoanalysis, as alluded to in the first paragraph of this text.
It is within human sexuality that the notion of drive emerges in Freud. His effort is to elucidate that, in contrast to instinct, “the drive’s object is variable, contingent, and is chosen in its final form only according to the vicissitudes of the subject’s history,” as stated by Laplanche and Pontalis. The drive, therefore, is object-less. It is a requirement for work imposed on the psychic apparatus with sole aim to suppress a corporal tension that, in its nature, is narrowly associated with a psychic representative of satisfaction, an imprint left after the tension is reduced (think the buildup to sexual orgasm, or the satiating of hunger in eating, as examples of pleasurable and unpleasurable tensions, respectively).
Freud saw the drive as a boundary concept, delineating the contours of the psychism and the somatic, used in association with the idea of psychic representatives. These are a sort of delegation sent by the somatic to the psyche. The term drive first appeared in Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, from 1905, where he continually instilled distinctions between its source, object, and aim.
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With this in mind, we return to the concept of object in Freud: it is entirely predicated on the drive theory. Therefore, since the drive is objectless, the very lack of an object sets it in motion. Lacan’s essential distinction in Seminar 4 was that Freudian psychoanalysis fundamentally revolves around the lack of such an object and its effects on each person and not in determining the necessary objects in the development of a person – as per the British schools.
Lacan builds on Freud’s notion of lack by re-introducing the phallus – originally a Freudian term, reread by Lacan in an elucidative manner. In Lacanian theory, the phallus is a signifier that answers one’s desire. As such, it slides and morphs into widely many things, assuming the connotation of anything that would supposedly – yet only temporarily – fulfill lack.
Lacan persistently clarifies that contrary to what is misconceived by many of Freud’s views, the phallus in Freud is not the penis but instead denotes a particular stance in neurosis – the phallic logic. Such a stance is characterized by the idea that one has it while another does not. Freud formulated this idea by observing root phenomena when children attempt to gauge the sexual difference: a little boy tends to say, “I have something,” while a little girl says, “I do not have something.” It is obvious that, in such example, we are dealing with the anatomical difference revolving around the penis, nevertheless equating the phallus to the penis is, to put mildly, naïve.
One of Lacan’s most significant contributions – or perhaps the greatest, according to him – to psychoanalysis are his three registers: the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real (to be explored in detail across future texts on PANORAMA). These three are present throughout Lacan’s teaching, and their value is immeasurable. For starters, they enable the undertaking of anything (objects, concepts, narratives, etc.) through distinct prisms. For example, the phallus is both a symbolic signifier (a sound of the word that is capable of carrying multiple meanings) and an imaginary penis (with meaning here narrowly identified with one sole connotation in an unflexible fashion). The imaginary gives consistency to the symbolic – a troubling process, as we shall see.
The phallic logic is fundamentally the way the neurotic deals with difference. For him or her, any difference is to be plotted on a measuring scale, operating on reasoning where the “I have it, and you don’t” or the “I am, and you are not” (and vice-versa) establish the base for all internal conflict and suffering, ultimately leading to symptomatology and all sorts of complications in the life of the neurotic.
Applying this framing to Freud’s initial conceptualization, it would be as if the boy and the girl could not recognize that it is not about having or not having a penis, but about having the penis and having a vagina– which changes everything, because as one moves from an either/or to a both/and stance.
One can quickly see how problematic the neurotic position can be and how potentially harmful the phallic logic underpinning it is – both at individual and societal levels. By borrowing from someone sitting largely apart from psychoanalysis, the phallic logic would be the equivalent to a “constant game of one-upmanship,” as per British philosopher Allan Watts.
THE THREE LACKS, AGENTS, and OBJECTS
Unfortunately, or not, the notion of a lacking object isn’t something we deal easily with; on the contrary, it happens against a backdrop of a distressing angst-inducing reality. Our constant pursuit of completeness is a response to such discomfort, that renders nothing but the hallucinated objects, says Lacan, merely sucked into our system of pleasure only to be discarded afterwards. In such pursuit, the subject identifies with each object. Lacan would support his entire conceptualization of desire on the flip side of an inherent lack.
But how does this play out in the constitution of the psyche?
In Seminar 4, Lacan gathers and re-introduces in a coordinated manner the three types of lack that are present across Freud’s work. While carrying out such a task, he resorts to Little Hans, the Freudian case of a phobic 4-year-old child in the unfolding of a convoluted yet commonly found relationship with his parents. This case comes in handy for Lacan because if offers the support for him to re-formulate the three forms of lack in light of his three registers (imaginary, symbolic, and real). Moreover, Little Hans works neatly to demonstrate the Oedipal drama playing out almost in full, in such natural and tender way, allowing Lacan to match the three lacks with the different moments of “entering” in the Oedipus complex that eventually lead to the constitution of the Lacanian subject.
According to Lacan, the first moment of entering the Oedipus complex is marked by a relation with lack under the name of frustration. It is characterized as an imaginary lack of a real object caused by a symbolic agent. Picture a scene of a baby that is denied the breast, here as the real object. The denial carried out by an-other (the mother) represents more than just a denial of nutrition in this case, but as this other denies access to more than just the breast, the presence and absence of this other instill in the baby the idea of an omnipotent other, a gifted other, capable of giving when it wants and taking away when it wants. The position then held by this other (who may also be someone else and not necessarily the biological mother) is therefore symbolic, while the experience of lack is imaginary in the sense that whatever is desired is taken as fulfilling: that which I do not have will complete and satisfy me.
The structure of omnipotence is not in the subject, but in the mother, that is, in the primitive Other. It is the Other who is all-powerful.
Lacan, Seminar 4, Identification with the Phallus
Freud points out that the first breastfeeding is also a first experience of satisfaction, which will leave a remainder (a psychic imprint) of pleasure. This leftover will be what the baby (and the adult) will seek through life, as it aims for the impossible of re-living the first experience of pleasure, which, frustratingly, can never be totally replicated. In Lacan, frustration is “imaginarized”, idealized, and remains unfulfilled.
This dynamic will re-appear in adult life; in the usual forms, one sees this “other” as a mighty other, another that detains what lacks in me and can put an end to my frustration. Typically seen in complaints such as “I am like this (or my situation is such)…because of ‘this’ other person.”
Lacan highlights that in frustration, there’s a dialectic between the mother as this other of total satisfaction for the child and, concurrently, the child as the phallus that fulfills a lack in the mother. With time, as the mother is present and absent for the child, this dialectic changes into one where the child realizes that it no longer fulfills the mother’s lack and, crucially, that the mother desires other (something else) than just the child. Such realization inherently leads the child inward, in a sort of “what in me is missing that she does not want me anymore?” which coincides with the beginning of the narcissism phase. Above all, such realization will denote something consequential – that if the mother desires, she lacks; therefore, she is no longer potent.
This imaginary, dual relationship of momentaneous completion between child and mother morphs into a more complex triad: enters, the phallus. As mentioned before, the phallus works as this shifting element, capable of taking the form of many things or people. The essential is that, for the child, the phallus is what keeps the mother away; it is this element that is an object of the mother’s desire – it could be her job, as well as her partner, or the very father of the child.
In the pre-oedipal phase, the triad mother-phallus-child marks the pivotal entering of the paternal function and the shift in the status of the lack from frustration to privation. The father, who, in Lacanian terms, does not necessarily equate to the biological father (nor to a male or even a person), deprives the child of the mother - privation is, then, real. Therefore, he is this imaginary father (all-mighty, phallic) and because he reigns over all possible objects attainable by the child, the status of the object shifts into symbolic.
Because the child isn’t yet capable of discerning who this “other of the (m)other” is, it hallucinates, creates deliriums that often show up in the form of phobias, and attempts to give “shape” or image to this imaginary “father.” Lacan refers to Little Hans to illustrate how his phobias of horses are actual attempts to deal with the notion of privation of the object, which is symbolic – that mutates and displaces itself, losing its consistency found in the imaginary object of frustration: I do not know what I lack, and that provokes angst.
In short, angst is correlated to the moment when the subject is suspended between a time where they no longer know where they are, moving towards a time where they will become something they can never fully recognize themselves in again.
Lacan, Seminar 4, About the Castration Complex
The paternal function gives consistency to the lack in the mother. Moreover, it is the figure that will instill the law in the symbolic register of the child and, with that, a new dialectic denoting to the child that, at times, it will get what it wants, and at times, it will not. Frustration turns into castration.
CASTRATION
The third and final moment in the Oedipus complex is a refined operation, crucial in psychoanalysis in that it is consequential for determining the subject’s structure in Lacan: neurosis, psychosis, or perversion (these will be explored in detail in future posts). In castration, the child associates the function of the mother, represented by her presence and absence, with the name of the father (or caregiver), creating a metaphor that, in Lacan, is the concept of name-of-the-father.
This symbolic operation takes place when then all-mighty imaginary father from privation, who, in the eyes of the child, detained the gift of conceding and taking anything away, depriving the child of its mother, assumes the role of real father – it is, at last, “impersonated.” Thus, since he (or it) is “the gatekeeper” for all things, including the mother, objects assume an imaginary role in that they become the answer that the child seeks: the imaginary phallus associated with the mother’s desire. The imaginary phallus will disguise itself as the objects each subject pursues in life in an attempt to fulfill their desire. Castration, thus, is paramount in the institution of human inter-relations.
A simple way to define the symbolic nature of the castration complex is: there is lack. But what is this lack, exactly? How is it manifested?
The constitutive nature of the symbolic in human desire: the deepest desire of all, the most constant and difficult to ignore, is the desire for something else.
Lacan, Seminar 4, Circuits
Often taken in negative ways, castration for psychoanalysis is vastly away from this. In fact, if anything, castration is a positive operation that renders desire. Without lack, there isn’t desire. However, the critical thing here is that, in Lacan, desire is, by definition, unconscious – it is not the same as wanting something.
Rather, desire is a hole, always to be fulfilled, that sets the subject in motion. However, whenever we think we will fulfill our desire, it is but with an imaginary object: goals, promotion, a new car, a new house, getting married, having children, and so on. We are, in fact, operating via the imaginary register, attempting to close that hole. Such completion isn’t possible. Hence, we will always continue to desire and replace object by object in alternating fashion.
The way each subject responds to the castration complex corresponds to each of the Lacanian structures – neurosis, psychosis, and perversion – and, in Seminar 4, Lacan formulates in rather indirect and complex ways the idea that castration is not about the limits of life, but about accepting that things are not as we want them to be: this will underpin what will follow both on Seminars 5 – The Formations of the Unconscious- and 6 – Desire and its Interpretation, as Lacan shifts his focus toward neurosis and its peculiar relation with lack and desire.
With care,
Gui