Changes

[[Freud]]'s work is full of references to [[biology]]. [[Freud ]] regarded [[biology ]] as a model of scientific rigour on which to base the new [[science ]] of [[psychoanalysis]].

[[Lacan]], however, is strongly opposed to any attempt to construct [[psychoanalysis ]] upon a biological model, arguing that the direct application of biological (or ethological/psychological) concepts (such as [[adaptation]]) to [[psychoanalysis ]] will inevitably be misleading and will obliterate the essential distinction between [[nature]] and [[:category:culture|culture]]. Such biologising explanations of human behaviour ignore, according to [[Lacan]], the primacy of the [[symbolic]] [[order]] in human [[existence]].

These arguments are evident from the very earliest of [[Lacan]]'s psychoanalytic writings. In his 1938 work on the [[family]], for example, he rejects any attempt to explain family structures on the basis of purely biological data, and argues that human psychology is regulated by complexes [[complex]]es rather than by instincts[[instinct]]s.<ref>Lacan, 1938: 23-4</ref>

[[Lacan ]] argues that his refusal of biological reductionism is not a contradiction of [[Freud ]] but a [[return ]] to the essence of [[Freud]]'s work. When [[Freud ]] used biological models, he did so simply because [[biology ]] was at that time a model of scientific rigour in general, and because the conjectural sciences [[science]]s had not then achieved the same degree of rigour. [[Freud ]] certainly did not confuse [[psychoanalysis ]] with [[biology ]] or any other exact [[science]], and when he borrowed concepts from [[biology ]] (such as the concept of the [[drive]) he reworked them in such a radical way that they become totally new concepts. For example, the concept of the [[death instinct ]] "is not a question of biology."<ref>E, 102</ref> [[Lacan ]] expresses his point with a [[paradox]]: "Freudian biology has nothing to do with biology."<ref>S2, 75</ref> [[Lacan]], like [[Freud]], uses concepts borrowed from [[biology (e.g. imago, dehiscence)]], and then reworks them in an entirely symbolic framework.

Perhaps the most significant example of this is [[Lacan]]'s concept of the [[phallus]], which he conceives as a [[signifier]] and not as a bodily organ. Thus while [[Freud ]] conceives of the [[castration complex]] and [[sexual difference]] in terms of the [[presence]] and [[absence]] of the [[penis]], Lacan theorises them in non-biological, non-anatomical terms (the [[presence ]] and [[absence ]] of the [[phallus]]).

However, while [[Lacan ]] consistently rejects all forms of biological reductionism, he also rejects the culturalist position which completely ignores the relevance of biology.<ref>Ec, 723</ref>.

* [[BiogeneticsScience]]* [[nature]]