Trent

I'm off to Trent (in Canada) tomorrow. I worry that my paper is a monstrous hybrid, a hideous mutant combination of esoteric theory and fringe culture. The cultural studies cadres in the audience will think there is too much psychoanalysis and not enough conspiracy theory; those interested in political theory and psychoanalysis will think there is too much conspiracy theory. No matter what, no will be satisfied (so, here I am, positing myself as someone who can't satisfy or who will not be an instrument or means of their enjoyment).

Still, I'm glad for the push to work more on the paper. Mladen Dolar's suggestions regarding psychosis were quite helpful. I think the analysis is better because of his input. What I'm now wondering is whether this long paper should be expanded from the inside into a book or whether is it more like a chapter. I'm inclined to think the former, which is not the way I usually write. As usual, I don't have an adequate ending.
Oh well. Here's the draft. Download popular_credibility_2.2.doc

Comments

[tim]

Hi there. I'll be in the audience (I'm a student at the Theory Centre) and I'm all up for a mix of psychoanalysis and conspiracy theory. Thanks for the draft - do you mind if I distribute the link to this post to some classmates?

[M Davies]

In my experience, it is easier to tear into conspiracy theory than psychoanalysis, so perhaps it is better the way you've described it. The less room for rhetoric the better.

[cynic librarian]

This is a great subject and your research into it is great. Have you considered doing a cross-cultural study of conspiracy theories? The 911 event is perfect for it, given the fact that many Muslims/Arabs believe that the Israelis were behind or some such nonsense.

[warszawa]

If you're not happy with the ending, you might consider concluding with this quote from Jamey Hecht. (I posted it here a couple of months ago and your ersponse was: "I don't disagree with Hecht" - so I don't understand why you continue to use the term as if it were not what it so very clearly is):

THE TERM ‘CONSPIRACY THEORY’

This phrase is among the tireless workhorses of establishment discourse. Without it, disinformation would be much harder than it is. “Conspiracy theory” is a trigger phrase, saturated with intellectual contempt and deeply anti-intellectual resentment. It makes little sense on its own, and while it’s a priceless tool of propaganda, it is worse than useless as an explanatory category.

Amen to that, as you say.

I don't have time to respond to your paper in detail right now. But essentially, you are asserting once again that the difficulty of eliciting the truth about 9/11 is epistemological: eventually, inevitably, we come up against "the Real", an impenetrable brick wall, the apriori Unknowable... and can go no further. Any attempt to do so must induce psychosis, "in the Lacanian sense".

Again, I am struck by the sheer obfuscatory quality of Lacan's terminology, and by the sheer destructiveness of its effects. A "Real" like that is another priceless tool of propaganda, an unnecessarily generous gift to reactionaries and power-worshippers everywhere.

Because, quite clearly, the problem is not epistemological but legal, criminological and above all political; "the truth of 9/11" is not unknowable per se. (Who would have us believe that it is, and why would they do so?) Nor is it even a specific problem of modernity or postmodernity; even Shakespeare knew that powerful liars usually have effective ways (including a careful use of language) of concealing their lies and thus consolidating their power.

"The truth of 9/11" is no more unknowable per se than the truth about any other crime, from shoplifting to mugging to regicide - and those who insist on that point are no more psychotic (in any other terms except possibly Lacanian ones) than are the families of those who Disappeared in Chile following a different but comparable 9/11. The Truth of the Chilean 9/11 is now generally accepted, thanks to concrete efforts, by the familes and others, that went beyond the inter- and intrapsychic. It is neither naive nor psychotic to expect that Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Myers might one day have to simulate Alzheimers in order to escape jail.

As in Chile, as anywhere, the difficulties surrounding 9/11 are legal, criminological and political. Crooks are not always easy to catch, especially when they are rulers. And time spent speculating on the mental states of political dissidents might be better used in recalling, and insisting upon, the validity of an ancient and generally accepted principle: that the Burden of Proof lies with the prosecution. In this case, they alone have full access to the remaining evidence, they are themselves among the main witnesses, and they have singularly failed to make their case against Osama bin Laden or anyone else.

P.S. "The US desired 9/11." The US is not an agent and cannot desire anything. In any case, "the truth of 9/11" is not merely an American issue. Nor are the consequences, which are ongoing as we speak, and as we speculate about each other's minds, motivations, desires and material interests.

[warszawa]

Here's a textbook case of a psychotic, in the Lacanian sense. We can see her hastily penned "works" as a psychotic clone of university discourse. Like Schreber, she produced “sheets of paper covered with writing”, for a while:

"Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct. ... Who among us has any conception of the dimensions of shame that will befall us and our children when one day the veil has fallen from our eyes and the most horrible of crimes - crimes that infinitely outdistance every human measure - reach the light of day? "

"Now the end is at hand. Now it is our task to find one another again, to spread information from person to person, to keep a steady purpose, and to allow ourselves no rest until the last man is persuaded of the urgent need of his struggle against this system. When thus a wave of unrest goes through the land, when "it is in the air," when many join the cause, then in a great final effort this system can be shaken off. After all, an end in terror is preferable to terror without end."

http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/leafoneeng.html

http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/leaftwoeng.html

Etcetera.

The patient never succeeded in shedding her fantastic investment in simplicity, meaning, and righteousness.

[Alain]

I had the rather difficult task of recently watching Oliver Stone's JFK. What made it difficult is that so much of it was speculative or simply false. The major premise essentially is that JFK was some sort of Peacenik and was a threat to the military industrial complex. Clearly this is just absurd. But the most frustrating part of the film was that it raised real questions concerning the assasination and whether it was a conspiracy (clearly it was).

I raise this in the current context only because it points to the difficulty of getting at the truth of such events. In principle, Warszawa is correct that the truth of 9/11 is knowable - but within the political and economic context of the United States today I think it is highly unlikely. There is no segment of the elite that would benefit from the facts to come out and most have a great deal to loose. And the fact that "conspiracy" is used by the elites to discredit legitimate skepticism is something that ought to be fought - I just do not think a large segment of the 9/11 truth movement are able to effectively do this.

[Alain]

Jodi, I look forward to reading the paper. If it incorporates some of the posts from icite, I think it will be very insightful. The fantasy of 9/11 still dominates our politics, even after Bush and his War of choice have been largely discredited. Few still believe Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, or that Iraq was a threat to the United States, but 9/11 is still the stage for political discourse. Thanks.

[Alain]

Jodi, I look forward to reading the paper. If it incorporates some of the posts from icite, I think it will be very insightful. The fantasy of 9/11 still dominates our politics, even after Bush and his War of choice have been largely discredited. Few still believe Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, or that Iraq was a threat to the United States, but 9/11 is still the stage for political discourse. Thanks.

[warszawa]

Alain comments on the Stone movie:

"The major premise essentially is that JFK was some sort of Peacenik and was a threat to the military industrial complex. Clearly this is just absurd."

I think the mistake you're making is to hypostasize "the military-industrial complex" as a unitary entity with one mind and a single clearly-defined aim. Clearly, it isn't. Lockheed and Boeing have many interests in common, but not everything that serves the one will necessarily serve the other. The same applies to the Guelphs and the Ghibellines or the Kennedys and the Bushes.

Jeff Wells gave a definitive reply to the familiar Chomskyan argument that "Kennedy was no threat to anyone": As seen from the left, the right often looks monolithic. As seen from the very far right, Kennedy may well have looked like - and indeed been - a threat. RFK all the more so. Not to mention King, and Lumumba.

[Alain]

Warszawa, you may be right. But in the film it is asserted that Kennedy was going to withdraw troops from Vietnam (there is little evidence of that) and he promised not to invade Cuba (while true, we continued our covert efforts to overthrow and/or murder Castro). Also, he makes quite a bit of the fact that Kennedy signed an above ground testing ban of nuclear weapons, which the military would not like. When you start to get to this level of policy detail, it becomes hard to imagine that these type of disagreements would motivate a coup. But I could be wrong.

[warszawa]

Jodi, by the way: I don't think it's accidental that you're having difficulty finishing that paper, as it stands. By the time you reach the Conclusion, you have painted yourself into a corner. There is literally nowehere to go.

You agree that the power of the US government is "obscene"; you mention much of the plentiful evidence that the "official account" of 9/11 is grotesquely implausible, and that the Bush administration has engaged in a massive cover-up; you agree that this notoriously ruthless and mendacious regime is lying about that sacred and uninvestigated crime, which was welcomed by them as a universal casus belli and as a legitimation for the extension of their already obscene wealth and power. You point out that they have refused to testify under oath while insisting that their worthless "testimony" must not be recorded. You agree with Jamey Hecht that the term "conspiracy theory" is nothing more than a blunt weapon for killing dissent. And I would add that they have persistently worked to overturn the principle that the Burden of Proof lies with the prosecution, i.e. them.

In order to conclude your paper, then, you would have to draw the obvious conclusion: that these serial liars and warmongers are - with a very high degree of probabilty - in it up to their necks, that they have to regarded as prime suspects, and that it is a matter of extreme urgency that their power over the planet - not just over the US - be terminated while the case is finally investigated.

- As Stan Goff argues here:

http://www.insurgentamerican.net/2007/02/06/an-appeal-to-people-outside-the-united-states-to-break-us-imperial-power/

But instead of drawing those consequences of what you have convincingly argued, you do a 180° turn. You spend the rest of your paper arguing that a persistent desire to draw the consequences amounts to a psychosis. And having advanced that diagnosis, you are left with literally nowhere to go, except to say: Get over it already - this is the way things are.

I don't think there are many people in the world who would wish to join you in that corner. There is not much happening there, and the end result would be starvation.

Your advice to the population of the US (and presumably the rest of the planet too) is: "shed [your] fantastic investment in simplicity, meaning, and righteousness."

Does this mean: 'Invest instead in complication, meaninglessness and wickedness?' Presumably not. Does it mean: 'Face up to the fact that there is no way you can know the Unknowable, and that you'll just make yourself sick if you try'? Apparently so. But it's not a convincing conclusion, as you yourself have noticed.

Heiner Müller once said: "I was fortunate enough to witness the collapse of two states within a single lifetime." (i.e. Nazi Germany and the GDR). Maybe contemporary Americans will be fortunate enough to witness, or even induce, the collapse of at least one state before being entirely dispossessed. The rest of the world would applaud them if they did that. It would go some way towards easing the pain of gloabl warming, and it would function as a powerful example. But Americans certainly won't manage that undubtedly difficult task if they follow your advice and regard their justified outrage at the capers of the cryptocracy as a burden and a psychiatric symptom.

[Sinthome]

Warszawa, it seems to me that the central assumption working behind your hostility to Jodi's analysis is that describing something as a psychosis entails that thing is false. Take the case of hysteria. The hysteric often presents himself as a victim that's always being taken advantage of by those about him, and who perpetually engages in selfless acts without being properly recognized.

It is possible for all of this to be *true* and for a certain desire to nonetheless be at work. One need only look at Freud's Dora case to see this. Dora was treated pretty callously by those around her, but her desire was nonetheless imbricated in this little intrigue.

Where paranoia and psychosis are concerned, Lacan liked to joke that "just because your wife is cheating on you, it doesn't mean you're *not* paranoid". In other words, from the psychoanalytic perspective it's not an issue of truth or falsity that is relevant in analyzing the symptom and the structure of fantasy at work. This, of course, doesn't entail that questions of truth and falsity aren't important elsewhere, just not in the clinic.

It seems to me that you're failing to distinguish between these two types of investigations, and while I can't be completely certain this is Jodi's motivation, my sense is that the reason she's refused to take a stand on truth and falsity where alien abduction and 9-11 are concerned is that she's interested in investigating social formations of desire or various contemporary permutations of intersubjective relations.

Perhaps one other point bears noting. Your hostility towards the descriptor "psychotic" seems to suggest that you see this as a perjorative and dismissive term. In other words, if I'm reading you correctly, the issue lurking in the background is that of the distinction between the normal and the pathological, where the reason describing a particular social formation as "psychotic" is disturbing is that it suggests that it is pathological or false. It is often not emphasized enough that in psychoanalysis there is no such thing as a "normal" subject. One is either neurotic, psychotic, or perverse. In short, being neurotic, psychotic, or perverse does not, in psychoanalysis, equate to being "sick". Rather, these are just different ways in which desire, enjoyment, and intersubjective relations are organized. The great mathematician Cantor was psychotic, but this does not make his mathematics false. If I'm following Jodi correctly, she seems to wish to argue that certain social formations can be neurotic, psychotic, or perverse. This is of interest not as a way of rejecting these social formations, but of analyzing the various types of symptoms such systems might embody.

[warszawa]

Sinthome, thanks for the response. I disagree vehemently with many of your assumptions and premises, but I'm rushing out right now and won't be back online until much later. So I just have one question for the moment.

You write:

"from the psychoanalytic perspective it's not an issue of truth or falsity that is relevant in analyzing the symptom and the structure of fantasy at work. This, of course, doesn't entail that questions of truth and falsity aren't important elsewhere, just not in the clinic"

Consider the following case:

A patient visits a psychoanalyst's practice. Her symptoms include bouts of severe depression, feelings of emptiness and depersonalisation, and intrusive fantasies of harming her children. Eventually, she announces that she was sexually abused by her father on numerous occasions throughout her childhood, and that no-one has ever taken her claims seriously.

My question to you: Are "questions of truth and falsity" *really* of no importance to the person charged with analysing her case?

[Sinthome]

Warszawa, yes. All that's relevant in the psychoanalytic clinic is what the analysand says. Whether these events did or did not actually take place is irrelevant to how the treatment proceeds. You seem to suggest, with your example, that the analyst treating such a patient would say to the patient "whether you were sexually abused or not is irrelevant." The analyst wouldn't say one way or another. She'd just listen to what the analysand has to say.

[warszawa]

Sinthome,

1. How does the analyst respond if the patient says, "You don't really believe me either, do you?" By asking "Why do you ask that question?"

2. A weblog is in any case not a psychoanalytical practice. Nor is it a specialist psychoanalytical journal with a tiny and controllable circulation. Jodi's arguments are addressed to the world at large. Her paper will be read aloud to an audience of her peers from several disciplines and various universities; not to a patient in a protected space paying large sums of money for a course of professional help with chronic emotional distress. The two sitations are radically different, as you admit. ("This, of course, doesn't entail that questions of truth and falsity aren't important elsewhere, ***just not in the clinic.***")

3. That paper attempts to draw a psychogram of one particular set of responses to 9/11. The diagnosis is: "psychotic".

Meanwhile, a vastly more common set of responses to the crime in question -- uncritical acceptance of the government's account, or prudent silence about its manifold and manifest deficiencies -- is never once addressed. No diagnosis is advanced, no label is applied. The implication, intended or not, is that such responses require no explanation. Being entirely unlabelled, they function as a norm, as a baseline of possible responses. In short, as "normal". What needs to be explained, instead, is why some people insist on asking questions and what that insistent questioning tells us about those people.

To recap: her arguments are addressed to the world at large - not to a patient in a clinic, and not to a small group of professional Lacanians teasing out the subtleties of Lacan's very idiosyncratic use of the term "psychotic". But the term has long since entered ordinary language; this is important to note. It also has undeniably negative connotations in the world at large.

In Jodi's paper, only one set of responses is labelled "psychotic". I take it that you would object vehemently if a newspaper article, or even an academic body, were to describe you as psychotic (or even "psychotic-in-the-controversial-and-not-generally-accepted-Lacanian-sense"). You would be right to do so, because you would recognise immediately that such a label would have very serious consequences for your standing in the world at large. Not to mention the clinic.

Precisely the same applies to everyone else, including those who openly doubt the veracity of the government's account. Unlike, you, me or Jodi, these people have just been so labeled (by her). And that has personal consequences (for them) and political consequences for everyone else. You will at least agree that being so labelled does not ease their task.

4. 9/11 was not just an intrapsychic event. It was, demonstrably, an act of mass murder that had further enormous demonstrable consequences in the three-dimensional world. Outside the clinic, it is not *irrelevant* whether the US government was involved in that crime. And this is where the argument takes place.

5. Saying, as Jodi does, that the term "psychotic" is (quoting from memory) "not to be understood as a pathologization" won't help. Because a pathologisation is what it is, and it's not in her power to change that.

6. 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'

[Sinthome]

With regard to your first question, the analyst simply turns the remark into a question: "you worry that I don't believe you?" or "you would like me not to believe you?" In this way attention is drawn to the transference and the desire it embodies. As Freud argued, the unconscious makes no distinction between reality and fantasy, so accordingly the analytic setting does not seek to determine whether the enunciations of the analysand actually took place or not. This was one of the prime reasons Freud abandoned the seducation theory (which your original response evoked) and moved to the fantasy theory. As for the remainder of your remarks, go back and reread my original post regarding diagnostic categories.

[NotOften]

Hi Jodi- Nice work. You are too hard on the paper (and yourself!). I thought it was quite well done. You are a very clear writer.
Personally, I'd like to hear more about Schmitt, but the reference you provided on revalation and parliamentary openness is good...

[warszawa]

Sinthome writes:

"With regard to your first question, the analyst simply turns the remark into a question: "you worry that I don't believe you?" or "you would like me not to believe you?"

I thought I was joking. If what you say is true, then it is no wonder that psychoanalysis has declined in popularity. Such a response, if sustained, can only be described as slow torture, and only very desperate people can be expected to experience it as a relief.

"In this way [the patient's] attention is drawn to the transference and the desire it embodies. "

And in this way, the patient's attention is also drawn away from a) her own embodied experience, and b) any possible countertransference on the analyst's part. The patient's desire to be believed is simply asserted to be pathological; the analyst's questions (his embodied refusals to answer) are simply asserted to be impartial, unpathological and - somehow - therapeutic.

It's hard to see how anyone can benefit from this set-up, except of course the analyst.

If the patient starts to complain that she's getting nowhere and feeling no better, then you can always argue - as you did to me - that a cure is not the point, was never the aim, and is in any case unachievable. ("One is either neurotic, psychotic, or perverse. In short, being neurotic, psychotic, or perverse does not, in psychoanalysis, equate to being "sick".")

What's really interesting about all this is the power relationship involved, which is also the result of embodied desires on both sides of the transaction. The whole process costs a lot of money, but only for one partner in this unique and unprecedented type of human exchange. And a sustained refusal to answer questions - plus the assertion that the questioning itself is a pathological symptom (though the "patient" is "not sick") - ensures that the analysis is likely to be lengthy.

"As Freud argued, the unconscious makes no distinction between reality and fantasy,"

He did argue that, after the earliest stage of his career, but he certainly never demonstrated it. And it is very, very far from being a self-evident truth. In fact, it is entirely counterintuitive and contrary to all experience. Self-evidently, as Synge showed, there is a very real distinction between actually killing your father and merely fantasising about it, just as there is a distinction between actually being raped and merely imagining it. Anyone can check the truth of these assertions, should they wish to do so.

And yes, I did notice that you said "***the unconscious*** makes no distinction between reality and fantasy". The handy thing about that is that the assertion, though deeply implausible, cannot possibly be tested. It is merely an article of faith. People are expected to believe it.

Lewis Carroll is a helpful guide in this rugged intellectual territory: 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, '[who] is to be master - that's all.'

"so accordingly the analytic setting does not seek to determine whether the enunciations of the analysand actually took place or not. This was one of the prime reasons Freud abandoned the seducation theory (which your original response evoked) ..."

There were other, more pressing reasons for his abandonment of the seduction theory. Not least among these was the fact that it scandalised his colleagues and professional superiors. They said they didn't believe him. They turned their backs on him, and he worried that he wouldn't be able to make a living. This potentially very serious problem was solved overnight when Freud decided to believe that the girls had been making it all up.

A man's career was at stake, and a lot of money. As were the beliefs, the desires, the worldview and the amour propre of an entire professional Stand. So the outcome was practically inevitable.

You argue that the patient's desire to be believed is a symptom of her pathology. But if you ever present a paper on that patient to your peers, you too will desire to be believed (by them). Is your desire to be believed also pathological? Will you too require a lengthy and expensive analysis in order to get over it?

No. Because, like Freud before you, you know that the quality of your life depends very substantially on being believed about matters of importance. As does everyone's.

In fact, such a desire is universal - not surprisingly, since human beings are evolved social animals with good reasons to take a serious interest in what's real and what's not. Only in a highly protected space - only in a hypertrophically developed economy - is it possible to make a living in a profession that declares reality to be irrelevant.

"As for the remainder of your remarks, go back and reread my original post regarding diagnostic categories."

I obeyed. Your original post doesn't constitute a response to any of my remarks.

Nonetheless, you provide some fascinating insights into the realities of Lacanian analysis.

[Say Your Prayers]

Professor,
I'm a student from Peterborough currently studying at T.University, I couldn't make the Friday part of the conference but have heard from friends the scintillating and potent message of your presentation, will you be on campus Saturday or Sunday and available in any public forum?
Yours Chris

[Alain]

Warszawa, I probably should not intervene at this point but I am going to anyway. I am not a Lacanian and I have no professional stake in his work. My interest in psychoanalysis comes from both personal experience and reading Freud. I have always thought it usesful to (cautiously) apply psychoanalytic concepts to politics. But you point out the very real limitations to the approach - the analytic situation is impossible to "map" onto political conflict and the motivations of nations or elites is not necessarily useful.

And I agree that the technical use of terms like psychotic or hysteric seems to pathologize all political discourse, even that which attempts to challenge the status quo. But I disagree that it serves only to maintain, or even enhance the current relations of power - I think Jodi rightfully points out the essential role that the fantasy of 9/11 serves for both militarists and leftists. Whether this analysis gets overly esoteric is debatable, and I can certainly see your point that it takes away from exposing those responsible for the event. But if one is to mount an opposition, or even talk about what it would take to create one, it seems legitimate to talk about 9/11 in terms of desire,fantasy, and rhetoric. I respect your position but one can respectfully disagree with your conclusions.

[Dejan]

And in this way, the patient's attention is also drawn away from a) her own embodied experience, and b) any possible countertransference on the analyst's part. The patient's desire to be believed is simply asserted to be pathological; the analyst's questions (his embodied refusals to answer) are simply asserted to be impartial, unpathological and - somehow - therapeutic.

I can give you an answer to point a) by recounting an episode from my own analysis. I was once severely frustrated by the fact that the analysis went on and on and we spent all the time TALKING. THis was triggered by a visit to this psychodrama therapy presentation, where I saw people acting their problems on theatre stage. I was so enthusiastic about their operatic display of emotions that I thought, wow, this Lacanian thing is really one-sided. To this complaint my Lacanian therapist said: ''But Dejan, WHO is preventing you from acting - if you feel that's how you want to express yourself?'''

His message was not clear to me until I came back home and pondered it. And then I realized that indeed my therapist had never put any restrictions on ''embodiment'' - I assume by that you meant the use of, say, body language, versus verbalization. I realized that the prohibition I was contending, was actually aimed at my parents, who have persisently thwarted my artistic inclinations with arguments that such a thing is not practical and not good for me.

Here you see a subtle example of how everything is ''imbued'' with language. This is the meaning of the question ''why do you ask that?'' - to draw the client's attention to the way his desire is written into language.

Besides, you have to rmember, even body language, is a LANGUAGE.

So this often-repeated complaint against Lacan, relating to his privileging of language, especially coming from feminists and Deleuze-oriented psychologists, for me at least, does not hold water. It doesn't work in THE CLINICAL SETTING.

b) as for countertransference, you should read the PRACTICAL notebooks of Freud relating to the PRACTICE of analysis. They differ substantially from his theoretical work in that they give you a glimpse of just to what extent Freud was careful to stress that the analyst must by no means, ever, make the cardinal mistake of repeating the mistakes of the client's parents, who have tried to impose their opinions, attitudes, belief systems, unconscious desires, on the client. This credo is boldfaced all throughout the book as its motto. Therefore rest assured that Freud (and Lacan, although I do not have quotations at hand - maybe dr. Sinthome has them) took countertransference WELL into consideration.

Also, do not confuse the initial goal of analysis to face the client with the illusion of desire i.e. how desire is written into language, how language speaks us. That's just the beginning. The goal of analysis, unlike this seeming initial entrapment into countertransference, is to lend the client absolute freedom from any further attempts of others to imprint their own desire into the client. And in this sense, analysis is deeply subversive I would even say revolutionary. It posits itself against all ideologies aimed at mind control.

I have not really read Jodi's article, but I think the part of your complaint that is important and should be considered seriously is the fact that thanks to dr. Zizek we have developed a mannerism of deploying analysis in anything from gardening to politics. I think THIS is the point where the distortions, which you rightly point out here, take place. But that is no fault of Lacan himself, I believe.

You know I have had this discussion with philosophers, sociologists and other social scientists all throughout my study of psychology and I still don't understand why they;re having such a hard time separating the clinic from the praxis of politics.

Yet another example of the enormous disfavor dr. Zizek has contributed to the very discipline he claims to be his Bible.

[warszawa]

Thanks, Alain.

"But if one is to mount an opposition, or even talk about what it would take to create one, it seems legitimate to talk about 9/11 in terms of desire, fantasy, and rhetoric."

Certainly. I am not denying anyone the right to say whatever they want about anything they want. I am not trying to institure a party line. I am simply exercising my own right to disagree with certain things said and to contest their usefulness. And I am also pointing out that sometimes a speaker's chosen terms of reference serve nothing but that speaker's own vested interests.

Chomsky has been making that last point for 40 years now. There are 'bounds of the expressible', within the academy, the clinic, the board meetinng or the editorial conference. And those boundaries are not imposed by some ineluctable metaphysical Real. They are the social manifestation of specific material interests. Much more obviously than a psychiatric patient's description of a childhood rape, they are the embodiment of real desires.

But talking of "desire, fantasy and rhetoric", something else comes to mind. It was legitimate for Joyce to write Finnegans Wake while the world was on the verge of a ruinous war. He did what he could, and what he alone could. One may doubt the value of his achievement while still respecting it. Of course it did nothing to stop the war. But equally obviously, nothing in that enormous obscure book can be used to belittle or hinder anyone's efforts to stop a war before it starts.

So "desire, fantasy and rhetoric" are interesting topics, yes. Anyone should be allowed to discuss them any time they want and anywhere they want, even in the US in the sixth year of the oxymoronic War on Terror. Even in Munich-Stadelheim prison in February 1943.

It would be good if the discussion weren't too selective and one-sided though. And nobody should be surprised if the selected analysands object to the analysis, or to the diagnosis.

[Dejan]

And maybe the Zizek club in the West would come to realize his distortions much sooner if they knew anything about Yugoslav history, which they don't. Since Zizek has his mouth full of WESTERN culture, WESTERN problems, and WESTERN politics, the narcissistic Western academia is overjoyed to see its glorious reflection in his handsome Slovenian eyes, and therefore remain clueless about Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and their perspective (also, their perspective on Lacan). This is how it's possible for example to see Lacan in Hitchcock's pulpy burgeois fantasies, and actually seriously write about this and even draw parallels with politics.
To me it's an amazing trivialization of Lacan, not to mention it reveals an almost anti-intellectual ignorance and disrespect for other cultures on the side of the Zizek academia.

[Dejan]

What's really interesting about all this is the power relationship involved, which is also the result of embodied desires on both sides of the transaction. The whole process costs a lot of money, but only for one partner in this unique and unprecedented type of human exchange. And a sustained refusal to answer questions - plus the assertion that the questioning itself is a pathological symptom (though the "patient" is "not sick") - ensures that the analysis is likely to be lengthy.

This part of your complaint is completely valid - except that I think you erroneously introduce ''power'' into the discussion. The problem is more that psychological help is considered of secondary importance in the CAPITALIST vision of medicare. Because insurance companies want to spend as little money on you as they can, they prefer short-termed therapies based in behavior modification. Psychology like everything else is commodified in capitalism. That's the problem, not some ''power intention'' that you ascribe to Lacan. Dejan

[warszawa]

Thanks, Dejan. There are a alot of interesting things in your posts, but I'm just too tired to even attempt do them justice right now.

One thing, though:

"''power intention'' that you ascribe to Lacan."

- I didn't ascribe any 'power intention' to Lacan. I was saying that any therapeutic relationship involves an exercise of power. This is true whether the relationship is actually therapeutic or not and regardless of its length.

[Dejan]

However Warszava that exercise of power is only important in the initial stages of therapy, while transference is being established and counter-transference dealt with. That is not the point of therapy - the point is the precise opposite.

[Dejan]

...and the therapist will of course strive to enlighten the client to what extent his desire is often caught up in power games (with his family)...unless you're taking about some pathological therapist of course who has problems himself

[warszawa]

Oh, people can use their power to emancipate others and enrich their lives, no doubt about it. If you take skiing lessons or singing lessons, for example, you're also entering into a power relationship that may well benefit you in the short term and in the long run. Of course, you're likely to enter into that power relationship with someone who can demonstrably ski or sing better than you can.

I don't doubt that some people can help others overcome chronic emotional distress. The question here, specifically, is whether Lacanian premises, methods and terminology are in fact therapeutic and emancipatory.

And above all, whether their deployment outside the clinic (as in Jodi's paper) has a therapeuric and emancipatory effect. Or the opposite.

[Dejan]

Warszawa, let's take the simple example of a panicked person who is so overwhelmed by her idea that rabid dogs are chasing her. When she comes storming into your office needing to see in you a ''Big Other'' who will provide assurance and support, OF COURSE you're not going to tell her immediately that the Big Other doesn't exist and that she is in fact powerless in the face of the illusional nature of her desire. In order to win her trust, confidence et cetera, you have to spend some time allowing for that illusion *that YOU know the answer to her problems* to take place.

In a gradual process, slowly and eventually she will learn that the Big Other doesn't exist.

(Another remark on the length of analysis, which you put in focus: neuroses are most often created in childhood and youth. Have you ever tried changing a habit which has taken place for 20 years, in one or two months? I would say even five years is often not enough to change something that happened for 20 years.)

So if and only if we can use POWER here in the first place, then that power, I think, is something that Lacan would use only to dispense with it in the end.

But the very formulation (''power'') is problematic. People often fail to see, for example, that Lacan's sphynx-like, silent position in therapy (he called that ''le mort'' I believe) starkly contradicts the image of him as a dominating, power-abusing Messiah.I would have to refer you again to Freud's practical textbooks on analysis as well as for example Bruce Fink's rather good interpretations of Lacan.

Please do not confuse Lacan's public image, or his manner of lecturing, with his analysis. It would be an oversimplification to equate his teaching with his appearance.

On the other hand, Zizek's manic performance at conferences and his calling on Christianity via Marxism to save the world from Bush, DOES have Messianic proportions, and this performance is not at all different from his TEXT.

It would be awfully presumptuous of me to make conclusions about Jodi's paper which I haven't read, my WORD doesn't work and the document is in doc format...but in general Zizek sympathizers of the West channel Lacan THROUGH Zizek and since Zizek is a social-democratic propagandist with shall we say HIGHLY AMBIGUOUS motives, who contributed greatly to murder war mayhem and destruction in my own country, I simply must oppose this with all my intellectual and propagandistic cunning. For the sake of HUMANITY and LIBERTY and EQUALITY as well as for the sake of THE LEFT.

[Sinthome]

"I don't doubt that some people can help others overcome chronic emotional distress. The question here, specifically, is whether Lacanian premises, methods and terminology are in fact therapeutic and emancipatory."

What makes you assume that you haven't been talking to people that have been through analysis and benefitted from it and who practice themselves? Dejan's reference to Fink is a good one. Not only is he an excellent scholar of Lacan, he's also an outstanding analyst.

[warszawa]

Dejan, you're clearly wide awake right now while I'm on the verge of dropping. (It's been a long, long day and I've posted all these comments while working on something else.) There's much of interest in what you say and I respect it, especially the way you say it.

"It would be awfully presumptuous of me to make conclusions about Jodi's paper which I haven't read"

Well, my whole argument was with Jodi's paper, which I had read. I don't know to what extent her use of Lacan is filtered through Zizek. The points I was making were - but rather than rehash the argument all over again, I'll quote a response from Alain, in which he partly agreed with me, as follows:

"you point out the very real limitations to the approach - the analytic situation is impossible to "map" onto political conflict and the motivations of nations or elites is not necessarily useful.

And I agree that the technical use of terms like psychotic or hysteric seems to pathologize all political discourse, even that which attempts to challenge the status quo"

Posted by: Alain | February 09, 2007 at 05:07 PM

- This, specifically, is what I was getting at. And regardless of Jacques L's actual virtues or vices as a therapist and a thinker, I find the proliferation of "Lacanian terms of art" in discussions of current affairs profoundly counterproductive. Especially the selective application of indisputably damaging labels to certain dissidents on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

Aaaanyway... goodnight!

[Dejan]

Warszawa, before you go to sleep (I did my share of sleeping in the day) -

the reason I went into the clinical explanations (and you will benefit here much more from dr. Sinthome, because I am not a practising analyst - I only have theoretical knowledge and the experience of being an analysand)
is that if you misguide what should be a criticism of the concrete practices of Zizek to Lacan, the criticism will end up ineffective. Zizek, even without Lacan, is not so hard to expose simply on the point of SERBIA.

And to your correct remark about the proliferation of ''the terms of art'' I would add that in Zizek's world, this dovetails entirely with any other socialdemocratic ''right-left'' ''post-modern ironic distancing'' and ''dialectic'' strategy found in Madonna, Bill Clinton, Susan Sontag, in fact it can safely be generalized to the whole socialdemocratic movement, of which Zizek is an avid supporter and member.

So it isn't even all that specific if you look more closely.

I do not know which damaging labels are applied to which dissidents, as I landed in this whole discussions solely by accident that is to say by responding to some posts of Col. Chabert which struck me as very revealing. So maybe you'd care to enlighten me on that point.

[Dejan]

P.S.
I would have to add that any further attack on psychoanalysis as a method is counterproductive for dissent to capitalism because:

(a) anaysis is already heavily attacked by the hordes of cognitive-neurobiological-behavioral fuckwits of the Anglo-Saxonic academia and finds itself forced to retreat into the academic catacombs of France, Argentina and the isolated efforts of dr. Sinthome or Bruce Fink,

(b) analysis is already under pressure from Bible Thumpers who essentially side with the behavioral academia in that they believe ''confession'' and a ''national catharsis'' is the solution to mental problems (and psychoanalysis claims the precise opposite) - notice the proliferation of confessions, live journals, reality TV shows and other forms of ''self expression''

(c) psychoanalysis is appropriated loosely by court jesters for the Empire like Slavoj Zizek, who are about as ''subversive'' and therefore about as important politically as Madonna Louise Ciccone (''Confessions on a dance floor'')

In this situation any more attacking on psychoanalysis will further impede its subversive potential, which in the current world situation we need more than bread.

Yes I know Zizek said this also, in his own highly convoluted way, negation of negation of negation, but Zizek is simply DIS-missed in my book for being an Imperial Propagandist.

[Dejan]

As for 9-11, interesting that in the discussions of Apocalypse which have taken place recently noone seems to have mentioned that the apocalypto-narratives of films like ''The Independence Day'' served as a simple propagandistic blueprint for the concrete action which the Bill Clinton government AND the George Bush government took against Serbia in 1999, and against Iraq in the past decennium, and which they presumably plan to take against Serbia AGAIN *right now, and against Iran. You don't really need anything as complex as psychoanalysis to draw the obvious conclusion that (since Hollywood creates much of American politics these days) the film was simply used as a propaganda device to justify the ''humanitarian bombing'' of these countries. I mean the plot was transcribed literally: America leads the world as a moral arbiter and disseminator of (armed) justice against the threat of the aliens (Muslims, Serbs, you name it). America disseminates DEMOCRACY by military force. There's nothing double-bind or even ambiguous about the setup! So I don't even know where the impulse to ''psychoanalyze'' it comes from. Frankly, it sounds silly.

Isn't it more interesting to consider the complicity of the American public, which likes to see itself in patrotic terms as a freedom-loving folk, I mean this is such a part of American national mythology that it hardly deserves mention, did not even invest the D of dissent to stop these developments - and I mean especially on the LEFT and DEMOCRATIC side of the show - could it be perhaps that the middle and upper middle classes are too selfish and worried about their houses, cars and credits, to take up any concrete action?

Why don't we psychoanalyze why Americans are generally so SELFISH?

If you wish to discuss movies, isn't 80% of the American public taking the position of that guy in THE MATRIX who doesn't want to see The Desert of the Real because it's safer for him to eat virtual food in expensive virtual restaurants.

[Dejan]

forgive me for ranting on, but I really think the dissent should be routed away from these farcical Slovenians like Zizek...they're totally useless in fact