FROM FREUD’S UNCONSCIOUS TO LACAN’S SUBJECT, identification from Freud to Lacan via Conté A thesis submitted to Middlesex University In partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Hariklia Pepeli School of Health and Social Sciences Middlesex University 5 January 2010 ABSTRACT The thesis starts with the question: ‘Does there exist a subject in Freud?’ and looks for answers first in Freud’s early formulations of the psychical apparatus in the ‘Project’ (1895), ‘Letter 52’ to Fliess (1896), then Chapter VII of ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ (1900), that is his first topography. The answer confirms our claim that there exists a subject in Freud, that it is unconscious and that it is largely included in and concealed by the Freudian term of ‘ego’ ( Ich ). In Chapter 2, our claim is carried forward through the second period of Freud’s work to another aspect of Ich , not as unconscious, but as the narcissistic ego. Freud’s introduction to the theory of narcissism (1914c) highlighted the dimension of ego as a libidinal object and its role in psychosis. The metapsychological papers, ‘Drives and their Vicissitudes’ (1915c), ‘Repression’ (1915d) and ‘The Unconscious’ (1915e) proved on the other hand that Freud had not abandoned his research on the structural, the symbolic dimension of the ego ( Ich ). In Chapter 3 the thesis focuses on two particular aspects of Freudian metapsychology, the structure of the ideals and identification. The sub-claim here is that identification in Freud is not simply an imaginary process involving regression from love, but also a particular substructure of the ‘ego’. We develop this claim through the study of ‘Group Psychology’ (1921c) and Freud’s second topography in the ‘Ego and the Id’ (1923b). In Chapter 4, we present a post-Freudian, object relations, view of the psychical structure, that is D. Lagache’s : ‘Psychoanalysis and Personality’s Structure’ (1958) and Lacan’s own counter-presentation of the psychical structure as an ‘Optical Schema’ (1958), named after a model he adapted from experimental 19 th century physics. In Chapter 5, we present Lacan’s largely unknown theory of identification, as he developed it in Seminar IX Identification (1961-1962), first the identification of the subject to the signifier, then to object a. This supports our final claim that the formalization of object a and the status of the Real were first developed in Seminar IX, which is before Seminars Book X and XI. In Chapter 6, we present two major contributions by C. Conté , ‘The Splitting of the Subject and his Identification’(1970) and ‘Topological Surfaces’ (1993) which lead us to conclude that Topology and the Real are the areas of research most suited to contemporary psychoanalysis which only now begin to show their relevance. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I owe the inspiration for this work to Claude Conté, analyst and supervisor who died tragically in 1992. I owe its completion to the director of my thesis, Bernard Burgoyne, colleague and teacher who encouraged me throughout it. I finally dedicate this work to my deeply missed husband, companion and supporter Robert Jackson, who also died unexpectedly three years ago in the midst of a life full of promise still; to my late mother too, who had placed so many hopes in me. CONTENTS Introduction .................................................. 1 Chapter 1 Does there exist a subject in Freud ? 24 Chapter 2 The insertion of narcissism........ 79 Chapter 3 Identification in Freud............ 133 Chapter 4 The Optical Schema………… 193 Chapter 5 Identification in Lacan………. 260 Chapter 6 Conté’s Contribution …. …… 313 Bibliography ……………………………… 372 1 INTRODUCTION A. The Freudian Ich In this thesis I argue that the Freudian Ich has been largely misunderstood in post-Freudian, psychoanalytic theory and that its mistranslation as ‘ego’ by Strachey in the Hogarth Standard Edition contributed to its distortions. My first claim is that Freud’s term and concept of Ich covers a much wider field, has a much wider remit: It is not only the preconscious ego of verbal associations and imaginary identifications, the unified and projected surface of the body, or its protective shield, and it is not to be confused with consciousness. It is the psychical apparatus in its totality including an ‘unconscious ego’, as Freud argued in ‘The Ego and the Id’ (1923b). Its structure and relations to the libidinal body and its projections were continuously developed by Freud. At the end of his work a new development underlined the process of ‘splitting in the ego during the process of defence’(1940e [1938]), bringing it closer to the concept of a divided subject, as Lacan developed it in his work . In the ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ 1950a [1895]), the earliest metapsychological development by Freud, Ich was the totality of the psychical system ( ψ) and in particular the instrument of defense, against the excess of excitation; but it was also the core of ψ were desire resided. Furthermore, in the unconscious formations such as the dream, the parapraxes and the joke, the subject was disguised and fragmented in its identifications; it was the ambiguous ‘I’ of the sentence, equivalent to the grammatical subject, called appropriately in linguistics the ‘shifter’. 1 1 Thus, not only the first but also the second topography of Freud were misunderstood, as the translation of 2 Freud introduced the term Ich as early as the ‘Project for a Scientific Psychology’ (1950a [1895]). From the totality of the ψ processes it was narrowed to its kernel, the place of desire and repetition ( Begierde im Ich, Project Part III, S. E., 1, 361), but it was also on the surface of the nervous system designated there as a particular ‘group of neurons,’ with a special task to protect the psychical organism from damage due to excessive excitation, and ensure its smooth functioning. The nervous excitation was defined as ‘neuronal quantity’ (Qη); it was transmitted through the paths ( Bahnungen ) of neuronal conduction ( N), and from there it rushed initially for discharge to the other end of the apparatus. Freud presented first the psychical apparatus as a kind of reflex arc and the specialized function of ‘ego’ ( Ich ) as a differentiated organ offering cumulative resistance and defence thanks to the contact-barriers, Freud’s intuition of the soon to be discovered ‘synapses’( Kontaktschränken ). It was first the instrument of inhibition and defence. The whole apparatus φψω or Ich was subjected ( subjicere ) to the principle of inertia, or at least to that of the lowest possible level of tension, keeping away excessive excitations from φ (external sensations). The ‘primary processes’ in ψ, those of desire and its return where delayed through various checks by ω before the experience of satisfaction, through secondary processes. The psychical apparatus in the ‘Project’ (1950 [1895]) was thus the complete subject of psychical experience 2, where pain and affects and the experience of satisfaction accumulated, but primarily of unpleasure, mitigated defence, inhibition and the famous Freudian aphorism testifies: Wo es war, soll Ich werden : ‘Where id was, there ego shall be’ (Freud, S., 1933a, S.E. 22 , 80). Lacan mocked the French translation: le moi doit déloger le ça , and proposed: ‘where it was, the Ich -- the subject, not psychology-- the subject must come into existence’ (Lacan, J., The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis , 1964, Seminar Book XI, 1981, 45). 3 repression . 3 Primary processes aimed at discharge, either immediate satisfaction or hallucination of it, which often threatened the subject’s very existence. Defences interfered with the desiring processes in ψ assisted by indications of reality or quality ( Realitäts-- /Qualitätsprüfungen ), provided by the ω neurons. In the ‘Project’ (1950a ([1895]), as Lacan argued: ‘It all seems to happen in the same place, on the same surface’ 4. During the second period of his work (1914-1918), just ahead of the five known metapsychological papers, Freud introduced the concept of narcissism in psychoanalysis which he found in psychiatry and literature, and adapted it to his own theory, inserted it to the libidinal logic as a narcissistic ego, object of libido. Narcissism was responsible for the appearance of ‘ego’ as an entity not existing from the beginning, but formed after the period of autoerotism, able to become object of libidinal investment. Lacan compared it to his mirror stage. Freud talked of an ideal ego (ideal-Ich) and of narcissistic object-choice. In the third period of his work, following his major theoretical shift in ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’(1920g) with the compulsion to repeat and the death drive, Freud abandoned the old psychical structure for a new entity, but highly differentiated, a new conception of the ‘ego’. ‘From the opening of ‘The Ego and the Id’(1923b), Freud 3 Freud underlined that the ego has to obtain satisfaction ‘by its influencing the repetition of experiences of pain and of affects, and by the following method, which is described generally as inhibition ’. (Freud, S., 1950 [1895], S. E. 1, 323) 4 ‘It seems obvious to me that this apparatus is a topology of subjectivity, of subjectivity insofar as it arises and is constructed on the surface of the organism.’ (Lacan, J., 1959-1960, p. 40). The symbolic function was stressed in Seminar Book II, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis (1954-1955). Consciousness was nothing more than a reflexion, either on the mirror, or on any other reflective surface, and did not presuppose a subject, while ‘The unconscious is the unknown subject of the ego’ (Lacan, J., 1954- 1955, p. 43). What is the ‘ego’ then? Lacan asked. The ego is an object. As we see in Freud, the split is between ego-subject and ego-object, symbolic and imaginary.