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Jouissance

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Lacan’s In his seminar of 1959-1960 <i>The Ethics of Psychoanalysis</i> (1992), Lacan developed the concept of jouissance discloses (enjoyment) while discussing <i>Civilization and Its Discontents</i> (Freud, 1930). In that work, Freud had articulated a contradiction inherent in the concept of pleasure: "This endeavor [of striving for happiness] has two sides. . . . It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. . . . The task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the background" (1930, pp. 76-77).For Lacan, these two aspects of pleasure were irreconcilable, and he argued that Freud connected the intricate interdependence between sexuality pleasure and reality principles under a no-displeasure principle. This is the very principle that blocks the symbolic order; this interdependence subjects path to jouissance. "Who is there who in the name of pleasure doesn't start to weaken when the biological body first half-serious is taken step toward jouissance?" asked Lacan (1959-1960/1992, p. 185). Even an animal, he added, "has an economy: it acts so as to a traversal by produce the signifiervery least possible jouissance. Because That's what we call the body pleasure principle" (1969-70/1991, p. 88).It is necessarily mediated by languagetrue that once we start down the path of jouissance, we do not know where it will lead: "It starts with a tickle and ends up bursting into flames" (Lacan, 1991, p. 83). In <i>Beyond the Pleasure Principle</i>, Freud had already noted that "the libidinal drive remains in excess most painful experiences . . . can yet be felt . . . as highly enjoyable" (1920, p. 17). On the basis of this text, Lacan made a connection between jouissance and repetition. He drew support for his argument from the limits hysterical symptom of representationrepetition, jouissance tends to manifest itself symptomatically as in the body case of Elizabeth von R., and defined repetition as a trace, a kind of surplus meaning writing, that resists symbolic mediationcommemorates "an irruption of jouissance" (1991, p. 89). Jouissance (<i>Genuss</i>) is involved when the pleasure principle yields not necessarily to pain, but to unpleasure. The term was already present in Freud, but Lacan developed it as a concept. Still, he complained of never having had the time to outline its parameters, which he would have likely called "the Lacanian field" (1991, p. 93). In consequence<i>The Ethics of Psychoanalysis</i> (1992), Lacan emphasized that Freud posed the question of jouissance in terms of drive. The energy of the superego derives from the libido of this unsatisfied drive; the more the subject tends fails to apprehend feel jouissance only in , the more libido there is to feed the Other’s bodysuperego, and therefore as something beyond its graspthe more the superego will demand new renunciations. Lacan believed that in <i>Civilization and Its Discontents</i>, something Freud was stating that "everything that is transferred from jouissance to prohibition gives rise to the increasing strengthening of which it has been deprivedprohibition" (Lacan, 1992, p. 176). Because jouissance for Thus the guilt triggered by masturbation can be understood as an increase of libido in the subject is marked superego, brought about by such a lackshort circuit in masturbation that achieves only a brief and stifled satisfaction instead of jouissance.What is involved here is not the satisfaction of need, but of the drive. In fact, sexual relations between Lacan placed the two subjects are always structured in relation radical opposition to one another: "And if the social bond is established by renouncing the satisfaction of the drive, it is because this satisfaction implies the enjoyment—in the juridical sense of the term—of objects that could either belong to a missing third element—the phallus—that disallows others or deprive them of their jouissance." This situates jouissance in another field and simultaneously introduces the question of religion, moral precepts, and the law.In <i>The Ethics of Psychoanalysis</i> (1992), Lacan based jouissance on the law. If jouissance consists in breaking the formation barrier of the pleasure principle, if it can only be attained through a harmonioustransgression, complementary relationshipthen only a prohibition opens the path toward it. It was As for this reason that Lacan made the notorious claim "other," he is already implicated in Freud's analysis of sadism: when we inflict pain on others, "we enjoy by identifying with the suffering object." From his seminar Encore reading of <i>Civilization</i>   <i>and Its Discontents</i>, Lacan concluded, "Jouissance is evil . . . because it involves suffering for my neighbor" (1992, p. 184). Moreover, he noted that love of one's neighbor seemed absurd to Freud. Each time that this Christian ideal is stated, "there we see evoked the presence of that fundamental evil which dwells within this neighbor. But if that is the case, then it also dwells within me. And what is more of a neighbor to me than this heart within which is no sexual relationthat of my jouissance and which I don't dare go near?" (Lacan, 1992, p. 186).In " The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire" (2002), Lacan inscribed jouissance in the topography of his graph of desire. At the upper level of the graph, jouissance is indicated by signifying lack in the Other, S(A̷). This is phallic jouissance, which is related to castration as lack . Traditionally, the erectile organ, the phallus, represents the object of relation between jouissance, not so much by itself, but rather as the missing portion of a desired image. Phallic jouissance is inscribed in the diagram at the sexes—or between any two subjects level of either biological sex—distinguishes human sexuality a vector that starts out from S(A̷), the Other's lack, and goes toward (S̷ ◇ D), the drive as articulated by the subject and the demand of the Other. Thus jouissance is "of the instinctual satisfaction presumably Other" and at work the same time operates on the level of the drive. Recognizing the Other's lack produces a fantasy in the animal realmsubject's unconscious. In this fantasy, the later stages object represents what the subject imagines that the Other is deprived of .In everyday life, the mother, as primordial Other, is prohibited from making up for her lack with her child. Thus the Other remains prohibited. In his career diagram, Lacan attempted located jouissance at the place of the barred Other, S(A̷) this is also where Lacan inscribed the superego that orders the subject to shed light on Freud’s notoriously unclear theories of femininity and sexual difference by introducing his concept of enjoy, "Jouis!" To this command, the subject can only respond, "J'ouis!" ("I hear!"sexuation), for such jouissance is structurally prohibited." Lacan claimed repeated that every neurotic while the superego prohibits and punishes, it also requires that the subject experience jouissance. For Lacan, the requirement to enjoy is directly related to a taboo. But what is prohibited, what must remain unsatisfied, is only the subject experiences symbolic castration 's jouissance. Giving the Other an experience of jouissance does not seem to be prohibited.The Other is barred in one the diagram only by being marked by the loss of only two possible waysobject <i>a</i>. Though he qualified Thus if a subject assumes the modes position of sexuation the Other's missing object and if this can make the Other whole, then "It would enjoy," as Lacan said (2002, p. 311). He thus introduced a jouissance outside the phallic order, a mystic jouissance, which he defined as a nonphallic, feminine jouissance (1998). For being not whole, a woman "masculine" has a supplementary jouissance compared to what the phallic function designates by way of jouissance. . . . Y]ou need but go to Rome and see the statue by [Gianlorenzo] Bernini [the Ecstasy of St. Teresa] to immediately understand that she's coming. There's no doubt about it"feminine(1998, pp. 73," 76).But what did Lacan made clear mean when he said that a subject’s woman, for being "not whole," was capable of a supplementary, nonphallic jouissance? With the "formulas of sexuation need ," he proposed dividing subjects not correspond according to its anatomical their biological sex, but according to their relation to the phallus. This On the masculine side would be those subjects who take object <i>a</i> as the cause of their desire and depend upon their phallic nature to attain it. Subjects on the feminine side have one eye on the phallus and one eye on the jouissance of the Other, S(A̷). The male or female mystic—a designation independent of biological sex—is situated on the feminine side. Supplementary jouissance, strictly speaking, is sofeminine. But to attain it, the subject must stop looking both ways—toward phallic jouissance and jouissance of the Other—and become devoted only to the latter. Such an experience was attained by St. John of the Cross, for Lacanexample, who was familiar with a mystical jouissance "outside sex," and thus beyond the mark of difference and beyond lack. The moment of ecstasy arrives when the mystic, because sexuation exposes entirely desubjectified and merged with object <i>a fundamental impasse or contradiction characteristic </i> of human sexuality the Other's desire, becomes one with the Other, who in turn no longer lacks. The result is that results from to represent the Other's jouissance, "A" is rewritten as unbarred, S(A). In <i>Civilization and Its Discontents</i>, Freud referred to the "oceanic feeling" of being at one with the greater Whole. Such is the properly structural lack feeling of adequation mysticism, and also of trances and ecstasy.Whereas Freud discussed the symbolic order dark relationship between mysticism and suffering with respect great hesitation, Lacan spoke of them more positively by remarking that on the cultural level, adoration of Christ suffering on the cross naturally sustains jouissance. If certain mystics directly experience jouissance by looking at the Other's face—by looking at the face of God—others can attain it only by allowing the ever so broken body of Christ on Calvary to sustain it. They partake of a vicarious jouissance from Christ's mutilated body offered up to God. Commenting on Catholicism, Lacan wrote, "That doctrine speaks only of the realincarnation of God in a body, and assumes that the passion suffered in that person constituted another person's jouissance" (1998, p.113)  
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# ——. (1998). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 20: On feminine sexuality: the limits of love and knowledge, encore (1972-1973) (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
# ——. (2002). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious. In his Écrits: A selection (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1960.)
 
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