(mass)think!

[The father arrives in The Exorcist]

[Continues "Beyond the Bar"]

Central to the psychoanalytic schema is that which thwarts/frustrates/disillusions the alignment/overlapping/matching/filling of the two lacks/desires (by two subjects, e.g. the mOther and the child), what Lacan calls the paternal function—the father in Freud’s Oedipus—which is associated with the primordial signifier, i.e. that which signals the subject’s entrance into language, the Symbolic order. (Hence the rough equivalence given to the (functions of the) Symbolic and the father, language and the law, symbolization and prohibition, by interpreters such as Alexandre Leupin.)

Fink elaborates on the paternal function / primordial signifier:

The “primordial” signifier is instated through the operation of what Lacan calls the paternal metaphor or paternal function. If we hypothesize an initial child-mother unity (as a logical, i.e. structural, moment, if not a temporal one), the father, in a Western nuclear family, typically acts in such a way as to disrupt that unity, intervening therein as a third term—often perceived [by the child mostly] as foreign and even undesirable. The child, as yet a sort of undifferentiated bundle of sensations [before the advent of the mirror stage], lacking in sensory-motor coordination and all sense of self, is not yet distinguishable from its mother [or, more broadly, the caretaker (whoever s/he happens to be)], taking the mother’s body as a simply extension of its own, being in a kind of “direct, unmediated contact” with it. And the mother may be inclined to devote virtually all of her attention to the child, anticipate its every need, and make herself 100 percent accessible and available to the child. In such a situation, the father or some other member of the household, or some other interest of the mother’s, can serve a very specific function: that of annulling the mother-child unity, creating an essential space or gap between mother and child (55-6).

Thus to the interplay of the subject and the Other (as desire) a third term is introduced: the nom du père or the name-of-the-father (in the 1950s Lacan), implying both the father and the name (i.e. language), formalized in its function (thus not tied to biological factors, i.e. not necessitating that it be the literal father, or any father at all) (56). This third term is tantamount to the Symbolic cutting into the Real (transforming it into social reality (roughly, the imaginary)) (56). In the specific context that Fink describes, “the name that serves the paternal function bars and transforms the [R]eal, undifferentiated, mother-child unity, [. . . barring] the child’s easy access to pleasurable contact with its mother, requiring it to pursue pleasure through avenues more acceptable to the father figure and/or mOther (insofar as it is only by her granting of importance to the father that the father can serve that paternal function)” (56).

The paternal function, in other words, signals the socialization (which is related to but different from sublimation) associated with Freud’s reality principle, “which does not so much negate the aims of the pleasure principle as channel them into socially designated pathways” (56). The paternal function—with the father as “agent”—as the socialization of polymorphous desire—which, again (always associated with language, the Symbolic) “leads to the assimilation or instating of a name [. . .] that neutralizes the Other’s [Real] desire” (i.e. the Symbolic cutting into the Real) (56). This is the basic meaning in Lacan of the prohibition (later also referred to as castration), i.e. of the father (as a position/function) saying no, i.e. of non du père (the No!-of-the-father).

The (introduction of the) third term is not inherently good or bad. As Fink points out, it serves (as its name suggests) a function: namely, language / the father “protects the child from a potentially dangerous dyadic situation,” what can be interpreted as some kind of implosion/collapse (or at least exclusivity) between the mOther and the child—or, more broadly, the implosion/explosion of desire as Real (i.e. unadapted to the social) (57). Specifically, the person of the father (or, more broadly, an object of the Other’s desire (other than the child/subject)) substitutes (in the form of a name, i.e. through language) for—stands in for, mediates (represents?), transforms, makes commensurate—the mOther’s (Real) desire, thus avoiding/precluding the (exclusive, unrealistic, impossible) dyad (57). The father, in other words, through his name, “serves [. . . as a] protective paternal function by naming the mOther’s desire” (57). The name, of course, is not just any signifier. It is, in Fink’s terminology, a “primordial signifier,” i.e. one that rigidly—“always and inflexibly”—“designates the same thing”: in this case, the father (or, more broadly, the object of desire of the Other—other, that is, than the subject) (57).

This primordial signifier, Fink argues, must become “a full-fledged signifier” in order to fully—adequately, sufficiently—stand in for the mOther’s desire. In Fink’s words, “it must become part and parcel of the dialectical movement of signifiers, that is, become displaceable, occupying a signifying position that can be filled with a series of different signifiers over time” (57). The primordial signifier, in other words, has to become part of the (differential) signifying chain (that constitutes language, the Symbolic order). It is in this step proper that the name of the father becomes “more generally the signifier of the Other’s desire,” which in the later (1960s) Lacan becomes referred to as the phallus—symbol of the mOther’s desire (i.e. its object (where it is directed)) itself (i.e. as (like the subject as missing, as potential) an empty placeholder in search of an object) (57). Both the Other’s desire and the object of (the Other’s) desire are thus symbolized by the phallus (as signifier). (This is consistent with Lacan’s assertion of the subject (which, it must be pointed out, the Other also is) as the signifier (representing itself) to/for another signifier.)

The (primordial) name-of-the-father and the (full-fledged) phallus thus symbolize “the signifier that comes to signify (to wit, replace, symbolize or neutralize) the Other’s desire,” what Lacan symbolizes with S(barred A) (with A referring to Autre, French for Other; hence also translatable (as Leupin prefers) into S(barred O)), read by Fink both as “the signifier of the lack in the Other” and (“as lack and desire are coextensive”) “the signifier of the Other’s desire” (58).

Fink summarizes the function of this signifier:

[S(barred O)] is [. . .] a signifier which plays a very precise role: it symbolizes the mOther’s desire, transforming it into signifiers. By doing so, it creates a rift in the mother-child unity and allows the child a space in which to breathe easy, a space of its own. It is through language that a child can attempt to mediate the Other’s desire, keeping it at bay and symbolizing it ever more completely (58).

The process in which the name-of-the-father, the phallus—S(barred O)—is able to do this is referred to by Fink (following Lacan) as the process of substitution or metaphor, where the fOther(‘s name) substitutes for the mOther(‘s desire) (58). Thus, even as earlier the Other (as desire) substituted for the Other (as language), subsequently and correspondingly the Other (as language) substitutes for the Other (as desire). This is no mere play, however. As in the earlier substitution, it serves a function/purpose. Lacan’s argument is that this process of substitution/metaphorization results into the advent/emergence of the Lacanian subject as such, the precipitation of the barred S (58). In Fink’s words:

The result of this substitution or metaphor is the advent of the subject as such, the subject as no longer just a potentiality, a mere place-holder in the [S]ymbolic, waiting to be filled out, but a desiring subject. [. . .] Graphically speaking, separation leads to the subject’s expulsion from the Other, in which he or she was still nothing but a place-holder. Simplistically described, this can be associated with Freud’s view of the outcome of the Oedipus complex (at least for boys), whereby the father’s castration threats—“Stay away from Mom or else!”—eventually bring about a breaking away of the child from the mother (58).

At the same time, the Other’s desire—as it is signified by S(barred O), the name-of-the-father, the phallus—“takes on a new role: that of object a” (a to symbolize autre, i.e. other with a small o) or, following Leupin’s translation, o object. This transformation (from Other’s desire to o object) signals for Lacan (as interpreted by Fink) the beginnings of the (determination of the) subject’s own desire. At this stage, “the Other’s desire [functioning as o object] begins to function as the cause of the [subject’s] desire” (59).

Fink reviews the mechanism and nature of desire in order to explain this:

Th[e] cause [of the subject’s desire] is, on the one hand, the Other’s desire (based on lack) for the subject—and here we encounter the other meaning of Lacan’s dictum “Le désir de l’homme, c’est le désir de l’Autre,” which [. . . this time can be translated into] “Man’s desire is for the Other to desire him” or “Man desires the Other’s desire for him.” [The subject’s] desire’s cause can take the form of someone’s voice or of a look someone gives him. But its cause also originates in that part of the mOther’s desire which seems to have nothing to do with him, which takes her away from him (physically or otherwise), leading her to give her precious attention to others (59).

Fink is saying, in other words, that desire (for Lacan) is induced by two things. First, by the desire of the Other (functioning as the Other’s desire)—in the sense of the desire that the Other has (for someone else, including but not limited to the subject) and the (subject’s) desire for the Other. This is the way in which the (m)Other’s “very desirousness [. . . is what the subject] finds desirable”—with desirousness referring to both the desire that the mOther’s has (i.e. the Other’s desirousness)—which (desire being mobile, bouncing, as it were, from one mirror to another) inspires in those who see/detect/experience it (i.e. detect that the Other desires (them)) further desire— and the desire that the subject (being one of those who detect it) harbors for the Other (because s/he is desirous/desirable) (59). Second, by the fact that this desire is frustrated/unfulfillable/impossible (in the sense that the desire of the subject and of the Other (as in the mother-child example) will never coincide/overlap) (59). By its very nature, desire creates a rift (comparable to the breach/breakout of/by the unconscious subject)—which, paradoxically enough, induces/creates desire.

This nature of the Other’s desire “leads to the advent of [the o object],” is in fact why/how the o object emerges—which in turn is essential to, plays an important role in, the precipitation/constitution of the (whole) subject (59). Fink explains:

[The o object] can be understood here as the remainder produced when that hypothetical unity [or the coincidence/fulfillability between the two desires] breaks down, as a last trace of that unity, a last reminder thereof. By cleaving to that rem(a)inder, the split subject, though expulsed from the Other, can sustain the illusion of wholeness: by clinging to [the o object], the subject is able to ignore his or her division. That is precisely what Lacan means by fantasy, [. . . i.e.] the divided subject[‘s . . .] relation to [the o object]. It is in the subject’s complex relation to [the o object, a relation that Lacan describes] as one of envelopment-development-conjunction-disjunction, that [the subject] achieves a phantasmatic sense of wholeness, completeness, fulfillment, and well-being (59-60) (my emphases).

Even as it constitutes the subject as whole, like the ego (from the mirror image), this (whole) subject is but a fantasy, a (fantastical) subject—a phantasm—that the psychoanalyst needs to help the subject to get beyond. Fantasy (in shedding light on the subject’s position in relation to the Other (as desire)) thus proves key to the psychoanalyst’s task. Fink continues:

[Fantasy is] the way [the subject] would like to be positioned with respect to the Other’s desire. [The o object,] as it enters into [the subject’s] fantasies, is an instrument or plaything with which subjects do as they like, manipulating it as it pleases them, orchestrating things in the fantasy scenario in such a way as to derive a maximum of excitement therefrom. Given, however, that the subject casts the Other’s desire in the role most exciting to the subject, that pleasure may turn to disgust and even to horror, there being no guarantee that what is most exciting to the subject is also most pleasurable. That excitement, whether correlated with a conscious feeling of pleasure or pain, is what the French call jouissance [roughly: orgasm . . .] This pleasure—this excitation due to sex, seeing, and/or violence, whether positively or negatively viewed by conscience, whether considered innocently pleasurable or disgustingly repulsive—is termed jouissance, and that is what the subject orchestrates for him or herself in fantasy (60).

In this way, jouissance, Fink explains, serves as “the substitute for the lost ‘mother-child unity,” constituting sublimation proper (60). More generally, we can say that jouissance (as a fantasy) substitutes for (and/or covers over) the noncoincidence/non-overlap/frustration/unfulfillment/impossibility—the non-rapport—inherent in desire (between two subjects, e.g. the mOther and the child). Fink relates this subject-level phenomenon to Lacan’s ontology by making it parallel to what happens to the Real upon its entrance into the Symbolic. In Fink’s words:

We can imagine a kind of jouissance before the letter, before the institution of the [S]ymbolic order—corresponding to an unmediated relation between mother and child, a [R]eal connection between them [that supposedly would have been possible before the realization of desire’s non-rapport, i.e. possible mythically (not in the least because the subject is always already in the Symbolic)]—which gives way before the signifier, being cancelled out by the operation of the paternal function. Some modicum or portion of that [R]eal connection is refound in fantasy (a jouissance after the letter), in the subject’s relation to the leftover or byproduct of symbolization: [the o object] ([. . . which is what] precipitates out a subject [as whole]) (60).

This then leads to the subject’s sense of being. Fink continues:

This second-order jouissance takes the place of the former “wholeness” or “completeness,” and fantasy—which stages this second-order jouissance—takes the subject beyond his or her nothingness, his or her mere existence as a marker at the level of alienation, and supplies a sense of being. It is thus only through fantasy, made possible by separation, that the subject can procure him or herself some modicum of what Lacan calls “being.” While existence is granted only through the [S]ymbolic order (the alienated subject being assigned a place therein), being is supplied only by cleaving to the [R]eal (60-1).

By thus recovering a rem(a)inder of the Other’s desire, the subject takes something from the Other and “sustain[s] him or herself in being, as a being of desire, a desiring being.” Fink concludes:

[The o object] is the subject’s complement, a phantasmatic partner that ever arouses the subject’s desire. Separation results in the splitting of the subject into ego and unconscious, and in a corresponding splitting of the Other into lacking Other [barred O] and [o object]. [. . .] Something of the Other (the Other’s desire in this account) that the subject considers his or her own, essential to his or her existence, is ripped away from the Other and retained by the now divided subject in fantasy (61).

Thus the subject completes the process of separation—separates (by taking a rem(a)inder) from the Other—constituting itself as a subject—who, however, retaining (from the Other) only a rem(a)inder, keeps desiring, desires—is constituted as a being of desire, a desiring being, a being that keeps to desire . . .