Where to start w Lacan

sm0k

>>8613960
you don't

>>8613974
why?

Highway 61 Revisited

>>8613960

The greeks.

File: 4782364823.png (279KB, 726x582px) Image search: [Google]

279KB, 726x582px

you start and exit here bourgie scum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqGYYBwKbQ

subterranean homesick blues

>>8614910

France is such a fucking meme. What a bunch of faggots.

I would say familiarize yourself with some of his key concepts first: the mirror stage petit object a, the other, the imaginary etc.
then try to get transcripts of his lectures.

>>8614932
https://larvalsubjects.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/between-the-master-and-the-capitalist/

File: tmp_22991-images.duckduckgo.com(13)-818666659.jpg (45KB, 338x500px) Image search: [Google]

45KB, 338x500px

Reading pic related right now as someone with no experience in theory or philosophy.

It's really quite dense at some points but take it slowly and you'll get it.

>>8614910
I don't know if I hate lacan, the gommie or the audience more in this video.

>>8613960
Paul Fry lecture to get basics (first his semiotics lecture for sausseure then the one on Lacan) then dive into the insistence of the letter in the subconscious, and The Mirror Stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience

And don't worry if you don't get everything at first. He's an obscure French bitchboy

I have to say, I've tried to just go read Lacan, but couldn't. At the time I have read a bit on Freud (though not his own work) and I've read Jung books, as well as other people like Carl Rogers. But not Lacan.

Then I was looking to start therapy and started seeing this woman, asked her on the first session what was her approach and she told me lacanian, to which I cringed and frowned. Although there were, of course, resistances and moments that made me want to quit, I pressed on and do not regret one bit. My interest in Lacan only grew afterwards and I've lost a lot of the prejudices that I had about him, specially from what I heard people say about him.

I think it is very important to understand psychanalysis as a practice more than anything. His concepts may sound weird and counter-intuitive, even irrational, but it's incredible on mark in what's happening. More importantly, it has "a hole in the middle", in the sense that it allows you to see each situation as unique, of its own kind, rather than just something that explain how things work. It's a tool to work with whatever is going on.

A big challenge, I think, is that you have to go through things that will appear meaningless or strange over and over again, and so you must be able to continue without knowing what is going on. It is only after you've gone through it that you can look back and make sense of it. Hence why it's so easy to dismiss him at first sight.

I believe knowing key ideas from Freud and Saussure are extremely important, so start there. Sex is not coitus, what you say is not what the other will listen, the public is there even in privacy, get a closer look at things like that otherwise it won't make sense. Learn the difference between Real, symbolic and imaginary. Read Zizek as well, watch lectures from lacanian analysts, etc. I think, if you can, get a look at how the analytic clinic works.

>>8613960
Start with Bob Dylan.

>>8615167
anyone else reccs this?

File: 72389479283423.jpg (20KB, 333x499px) Image search: [Google]

20KB, 333x499px

This is part of a good introductory series. I have not read it though.

>>8615333 here

>>8615434
I've read only parts of it. I think it's really good, but I admit it's quite dense at some points as well, a lot of it went over my head. I rec How to Read Lacan by Zizek as a starting point, memes aside.

But you also have to take into account that if Lacan is one of many ways to approach psychanalysis, which is one of many ways to approach the psyche, which is one of many ways to approach the world, then you may also know that there are several ways to approach Lacan himself. What Zizek talks about is not what Fink is on about, which is not what the other guy is on about, even if Lacan is used on all of them.

Psychoanalysis is the laziest of all critical methods.

>>8613960
Freud.
Freud Freud Freud.
It's really that necessary

>>8613960
You start with Freud. That is to say start by reading Lacan from the begining, from his first seminar and be sure to read the works of Freud he refers to. You really aren't going to get the point of his thinking without reading Freud and contemporary autors he refers to (Levi-Strauss and so forth). His first 10 years of his teaching are devoted primarily to a close structuralist reading of Freud.

So Freud, Freud and Freud, structuralism and his own texts- seminars and afterwards The Ecrits.

"The structure of the neurotic subject is exactly the torus"

>>8615333

"Hole in the middle"

Can you try to explain this concept to a mere STEMpleb like me? Sokal said this was nonsense.

>>8615248
Good post. Paul Fry is based.

File: BasedPaul.jpg (42KB, 573x350px) Image search: [Google]

42KB, 573x350px

>>8618394
Him and Sadler make the most based vids on YouTube (though I guess Paul doesn't "make" his videos technically)

>>8618226
Ok, I'll try, though I'm not much versed about it and I was really reaching with that torus-like thing to serve different aspects of what I think Lacan is about.

What I meant, in light of what I could take from Lacan, is that the mind cannot be explained in a mechanical way and have it as a case closed. Any input that tries to cover this hole will only stretch it. "But that's not it...". There is no essence, there is nothing in the middle, but it sucks on things around it. That is, who you are is what orbits that hole, just like you go on living by constantly going after what you think you are missing. The neurotic subject sees himself as lacking, he is at fault and suffers for it, he may even believe (and that's part of the problem) that the others "have it" and he doesn't.

Lacan realized that while you are there complaining you have no girlfriend, it's not that the girlfriend would actually be the one missing piece to the puzzle that will make you whole, it's just your attempt to fill it with something imaginary (your fantasy). If you did get a girlfriend, you'll continue to face problems like everyone else, even more so, because you'll be facing the other person, with a hole in the middle as well. To put it in a very simplistic way, Lacan's method is not to try and pinpoint what is missing or to give it to the person, but to make the person find his or hers own ways to deal with this ever present hole in the middle. Hence why each situation is unique.

It's not an impotence, it's an impossibility. You are subject to time, it takes time for you to understand things or to change things, there is also a hole between what you say and what the other hear and so you always break your face when you imagine that hole is covered and we understand each other just because we are using the same words. All of that is taken into account. That's why to Lacan there is no magical solution, no particular object that one can offer another that will make the other hole.

>>8618740
I think the Lacanian term for that is '
barred subject ($), right?

>>8618788
Yes, you're on the right track.

>>8618740
On a side note, and to put a Hegelian twist, is that the only reason you think there is a static and complete 'you' is precisely because of that void: only after being confronted with an other, external and seemingly indifferent reality can we even be aware of our interiority, so to speak.

I'm not that guy btw, just interested.

>>8618740
Not OP, but basically his approach to anxieties and neuroses in a theraputic context is to try and explore a mental space similar to the Freudian superego, rationalizing the difficulty and particularity of each case with a relativism that comes about through the semniotic nature of language? At least in this partial example?

>>8618804
Well said, anon.

>>8618843
I think you're getting it, but I'll just point some things out

>therapeutic
Lacan is opposed the term "therapy", he uses "analysis". Therapy has this notion of simply aiding where it hurts, it could mean to occupy the person with something meaningful, fill that hole. It's not what his method is about.

I don't know what you mean by
>explore a mental space similar to the Freudian superego
Are you talking about transference?

>rationalizing
Actually, it is verbalizing. To put it in words and to say them, that's the key to his method (and Freud's). It's not something that you think for yourself, but something you say to an other (the analyst) and work through this encounter. Perhaps I could ask you "but why do you think that?" to everything you say to me and get "deeper" into it. You'd realize it's not the gf you want, but something you think you'll get by having one and go deeper and deeper into that (though there would be a cut at some point). Or you could see that what hurts you is based on a completely absurd standard you think you ought to meet. Anyway, the examples are endless and Lacan was not fond of examples because we tend to derive rules from particularities like that. But I think the point is that you eventually "wear out" your attempts to fill and explain that hole of yours and so what you have left is to move.

It's completely different for me to say "c'mon, that means nothing, move on", to try and teach you a way out of it, or the secret solution to your problem, to make you actually believe someone else has that solution, than to allow you that place to talk, that time, that analytic listening which allows you to unravel your own shit through your speech.

Read Allain-Miller or Kristeva

>>8619173
For someone who didn't read anything by Freud or Lacan, I think that's the exact opposite of things to do, they are already complex and disputed interpretations of lacanian theory

(By the way, Jacques-Alain is his first name, his last name is only Miller)

>>8619184
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eMbN7pqNMA

>>8619374
This is one of those vids in which I can't help but feel sad for his rhinitis, that must suck :(

good vid though

>>8618881
>it could mean to occupy the person with something meaningful, fill that hole
isn't that what it ultimately is about though?
as you've said, to move?
or is it that through the verbalizing you get a clearer picture of what your own particularities are and how irrational they are and thus it gets easier to move, but ultimately it's about finding something to fill the hole right?

>>8619463
"To move", "hole", "meaningful". This is the point where my colloquial language fails and the complicated way Lacan talks about is needed.

But to answer you, it's different, you learn that it is impossible to fill that hole. This hole can mean a lot of things. For instance, you say how one can learn how your own particularities are irrational and move on. Does that mean you'll be living a throughly rational life? Is that even possible? That's also the hole: you will always have an irrational part, you'll always make mistakes, etc. A person who is invested in becoming rational may believe that this would fill his hole, and when facing the inevitable irrationality of his actions, he may insist on rationalizing it instead of accepting this irrationality is part of who he is.

To fill this role is what a teacher does, a priest, a friend, a hobby, a scientist, a product, a therapist. It's the master discourse. It may not even be YOUR hole (they sell you what the nature of your fault is and then sell what you could use to cover it). Lacanian analysis lets you walk around and face that hole and its particularities and you'll face it many many times, you repeat the same steps, like walking into the same dead ends, as many times as they are needed, not because you are stupid, but because they are not enough times for you to move. Until you do.

It's not that you gain some certainty that was necessary for you to move. A lacanian analyst would never* say "c'mon, be brave, do it!", because what's stopping you is not that you aren't brave, but that you think you lack bravery and think only with bravery you can go on. Lacanian analysis would ask why don't you go even without bravery? Why don't you move even withour rationality? What would happen? And from this answer you'll know the absurd of your standards. That is, you can't know what will happen next, you cannot be loved by everyone else, you cannot marry someone that is perfect, you cannot be perfect yourself, you cannot know everything or be totally rational. And actually it's not because you "can not" do it, but that it is impossible to do it.

That's why it is so important to have this encouter with the other. The other is this region out of your full control. You are not responsible for how the other responds to you, but you are also not without tools to work with it in spite of this unknown territory.

*never say never though, I also cannot possibly know this

>>8619542
could this be crudely summarized as just do it and you're your own worst enemy?

>>8618226
Forget about this if you come from STEM. don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for "naturwissenschaften", but psychology is far from them, and psychoanalysys is even further. any explanation will be for you something like "yakyak magic&shit"

>>8617012
this. I would say, Freud and Saussure before Lacan

>>8619592
No, you couldn't. Or better yet, you could, but you would be wrong. What I'm talking about is already a crude and wiggly and possibly mistaken description of what it is like. This is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg anon.

>>8619542
>you learn that it is impossible to fill that hole.

Not only that, but I'd say the hole itself is a logical necessity, it is the 'omnis determinatio est negatio' of Spinoza.

I rec this interview for a glimpse

http://braungardt.trialectics.com/sciences/psychoanalysis/jacques-lacan/interview-jacques-lacan/

>>8614855
is quackery

>>8618804
Just a little confused on this point. How exactly is the static 'you' defined by the fact that there is a void. Let's say there's a 'you'. The 'you' exists not because of a existential 'essence' But that there is a void which only gets static realization when the void realizes that it is empty and that the external world might help it fulfil itself?? Im lost on the point.

>>8614910
The translation is shit.

>>8620248
>How exactly is the static 'you' defined by the fact that there is a void

Think like this: every defined being is inevitably determinated by an 'other' or non-being of itself. If you draw a circle, not only there is an interior part but at the same time you create and exterior, they only exist together.

Check Heraclitus' philosophy, he's a great influence on dialectics and all subsequent continental tradition.

>>8620294
an exterior*, damn it.

Right here: http://www.psychiatrie-und-ethik.de/infc/en/Shrink_from_Hell.htm

>>8620385
>some literal nobodys review of a book.