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Agency

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{{Top}}instance, Instanz{{Bottom}}
The term '[[agencyLacan]]'' denotes a part s use of the term "[[psychic apparatusinstance]] that functions as a sub" goes well beyond [[structureFreud]] governed by its own 's "[[lawInstanz]]s, but that is coordinated with the other parts".
In [[Freud]]'s work this term first appeared in chapter VII It represents, one might say, an explitation of ''[[The Interpretation the linguistic possibilities of Dreams]]'' (1900a), as a synonym or near-synonym for the term [[systemFrench]], which he had been using for several years: "Accordingly, we will picture the mental apparatus as a compound instrument, to the components of which we will give the name equivalent of 'agencies' or (for the sake of greater clarity) 'systems."'<ref>pp. 536-537</ref>The term [[apparatusFreud]], used in a sense that never changed in Freud's work, explicitly gives the [[psycheGerman]] a status comparable to that of the major organic systems (respiratory, circulatory, etc.)term.
An agency is thus a functional sub-whole, or, in modern terms, a substructure within an encompassing structure. This idea clearly came from FreudIn the absence of any exact equivalent of [[Lacan]]'s extensive prior work in neurophysiology and then neurology. If Freud suggested in this text that the [[French]] term system was "clearer," this one is doubtless because it was more familiar thrown back to him. Indeedthe term used by [[Freud]]'s [[English]] translators, he had been using it for years, particularly in "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1950c [1895[agency]]), to evoke this type of functional groupings within the nervous system, whose workings he was trying to conceptualize at the time. He posited these systems as "producing" perception, consciousness, memory, and so forth. In the passage cited from The Interpretation of Dreams, he thus distinguished the agencies, or systems, of memory and perception (envisioned as being mutually exclusive), and censorship, but also the agencies that comprise his first topography: the unconscious, the preconscious, and consciousness (or perception-consciousness).
In [[Freud's writings from that point on, the terms agency and system remained close in meaning. However, system tended to be reserved for topographical distinctions]], while agency was used more broadly to refer to an organization being considered from the topographic, dynamic, and economic viewpoints in combination. It reference is because they are considered in this way that the id, the ego, and the superego of the structural theory are referred most often to as agencies rather than as systems. Freud tended to posit the tree "[[agency|agencies as being exclusive: A single phenomenon cannot at the same time belong to the realm ]]" of the [[id and that of the ]], [[ego, for example. By virtue of this very fact, when Freud at the end of his life came to see the opposition between conscious ]] and unconscious as being simply a difference in "quality" of certain psychic processes—as described in "An Outline of Psycho-Analysis" (1940a [1938[superego]])—those two terms were no longer considered as denoting agencies.
In [[Lacan]], one must bear in mind the conceptual architecture idea of metapsychology, the term agency is therefore situated at a level that makes its definition somewhat uncertain. Béla Grunberger thus generated heated controversy when he proposedan "acting upon", in Narcissism: Psychoanalytic Essays (1971/1979)even "insistence, to consider narcissism " as an agency having the same status as the id, the ego, and the superego. Similar controversies arose over in the concept title of the self as developed by Heinz Kohutessay, for example"L'instance de la letter".
ROGER PERRON
Bibliography
 
* Freud, Sigmund. (1900a). The interpretation of dreams. Part I, SE, 4: 1-338; Part II, SE, 5: 339-625.
* ——. (1940a [1938]). An outline of psycho-analysis. SE, 23: 139-207.
* ——. (1950c [1895]). Project for a scientific psychology. SE, 1: 281-387.
 
Lacan's use of the term '''instance''' goes well beyond Freud's 'InstanZ'.
It represents, one might say, an exploitation of the linguistic possibilities of the French equivalent of Freud's German term.
In the absence of any exact equivalent of Lacan's French term, one is thrown back to the term used by Freud's English translators, 'agency.'
In Freud, the reference is most often to the three 'agencies' of the id, ego and superego.
In Lacan, one must bear in mind the idea of an 'acting upon', even 'insistence,' as in the title of the essay 'L'instance de la lettre.'
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