Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud Jacque Lacan How we understand

Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud Jacque Lacan How we understand ourselves as individuals and how literature plays a part in this

Lacan - Psychological theory Psychoanalytic theory deals with these questions • How do we understand ourselves as individuals? • How can literature help us understand ourselves? • How do we become fully functioning members of society? • How do we gain a sense of identity?

Our Unconscious • The unconscious is the foundation of all being and it is structured like language. • Our unconscious is made up of wishes, desires, images that are always the signifiers and never the signified. • There is an endless chain of signifiers without an anchor. • Self is an illusion, the product of the unconscious. • How do we go from infancy to the illusion called “self” The process of becoming an adult (a “self”) is the process of creating an illusion of an anchor, a stable reference point for all the signifieds. • The Other is a structural position in the symbolic order. It is the place that everyone and everything is trying to get to.

A part of Lacan’s theory Concept Phase of development • Need (mother’s breast) • Real (perfect unity, no language) • Demand (need • Imaginary (sense of self is a recognition and love, not just objects) misperception of self in mirror) • Desire (since self is • Symbolic (The symbolic order is other, there is a sustained and never-ending lack) the place of adulthood. Submit to rules of language)

The objet a • Desire’s main task is to keep itself circulating. • That objet a is perceived as a missing piece, shows that Other is not clearly distinguished from self. Value comes from being perceived as a missing part of the subject self. • The meaning is in the pursuit. The pursuit of the objet a is the condition for the production of art – the enjoyment of otherness. The objet a grants an excuse for the pursuit. There is a reason to pursue otherness when you see self as lacking. • The missing piece is retroactively given. It was not necessarily ever missing. It’s just a perception. • Narrators can work like advertising. To create the perception in the reader that something is missing.

Abjection • Abjection and the abject character embracing what we are supposed to be pushing away as impure – Abject hero (Shrek) (Quasimodo) – Abject characters haunt the edges of society – Physical abjection can be impossible to mask – Natalie is an obviously abject character – Young deal with abjection especially as adolescents.