by Stijn Vanheule | Vol 37 (4) 2019
Vertrekkend vanuit het leven en het werk van Daniel Johnston bespreekt deze paper vanuit een lacaniaans perspectief de worsteling die manisch getint psychotisch functioneren met zich meebrengt. Kenmerkend voor de manie is dat de dimensie van de jouissance volatiel is. De betekenaar transformeert de jouissance niet tot betekenden die het subject in tijd en ruimte situeren tegenover de Ander, maar slaat op hol. Dit gaat gepaard met een destructieve herhaling van de situatie waar de psychotische verwerping betrekking op heeft. De grote uitdaging voor het manisch functioneren bestaat uit het vinden van een limiet en subjectieve ademruimte. Aan de hand van Daniel Johnston bespreken we twee sporen om zo’n limiet te implementeren: het actief extraheren van een object a en het cultiveren van identificaties die een tegengewicht bieden ten aanzien van de overspoelende jouissance.
by Hilda Fernandez-Alvarez | Vol 37 (3) 2019
An analysand arrives to the first session curating words to describe his suffering and demonstrating in his very own way of speaking, silencing and moving, the linguistic structure that seems to afflict him. How does the analyst listen and choose to intervene? At every moment, possibilities of intervention arise, yet the analyst chooses to remain silent at one juncture and to speak or act at another. What are the principles that guide such acts? This question is at the core of Lacan’s inquiry throughout his oeuvre. In this article, I reflect on the analyst’s knowledge with regard to technique and style in the conduct of an analysis. I argue that a successful analysis, by which I mean, a process that subverts compulsion repetition in order to allow the analysand’s encountering a “know-how-to-do” with jouissance, depends on two sources of knowledge: technique and style. Which would be more vital for a successful analysis: technique or style? My proposal is that an analysis can exist without technique but never without style. I will develop the notion of the analyst’s style as follows: style is an effect of the analyst’s desire, encountered at the end of analysis, that punctures the texture of the analysand’s speech to reveal the insistent letter; it involves a necessary savoir, a “know-how,” which does not permit the analyst’s jouissance into the analysis; and style is an informed lalangue, the active core of the real ways in which an analyst intervenes, which involves an orientation towards the letter.
by Abe Geldhof & Stijn Vanheule | Vol 34 (2) 2016
In 1965 Lacan paid tribute to Marguerite Duras and her novel The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein. In his homage Lacan claims that Duras’ art seemed to possess a certain knowledge. The authors argue that this knowledge relates to the difficulties for a speaking being of identification with the body. The novel is about the triggering of a psychosis at the specific moment when a woman is invited by a man to participate in a sexual act, while her strategy involved avoiding being positioned as object of male sexual desire. This case is compared with a case of paranoia described by Freud, in which the destabilizing factor also lies in the sexual sphere. For both women the triggering factor lies in the confrontation with the enjoyment of the Other and the impossibility to become the subject of the sexual demand of the Other.
by Abe Geldhof | Vol 32 (4) 2014
In his PhD defence the author discusses the theoretical evolution of the Lacanian concepts jouissance and psychosis. He analyses how nuanced shifts in Lacan’s thinking on psychosis influence his theory on jouissance, and vice versa, and how changes in his conceptualization of jouissance force a reconsideration of his theory of psychosis. This is done based on the cases Lacan presents throughout his writings and seminars.
by Wim Matthys | Vol 32 (4) 2014
This essay is based on the public defence of a dissertation in which the cinematography of Stanley Kubrick is analysed in light of Lacan’s concepts of fundamental fantasy, jouissance and gaze. Four of Kubrick’s films are discussed and located in the academic literature and the methodological and theoretical frameworks are outlined. In the thesis it is proposed that the narratives of these four films are underpinned by a concrete scenario of a fundamental fantasy: “C observes: A overpowers B”, and that this scenario forms the basis of both the staging of a taxonomy of jouissance and of the evocation of the gaze as instance of the object a. In conclusion, it is outlined how these findings align with the methodological point of departure of the research project.
