24,656
edits
Changes
→The Law of the Father and the Superego
Indeed, for psychoanalysis, we are not simply guilty if we break th elaw and commit icnest, but rather we are always –already guuilty of the ‘’desire’’ to commit incest.
Hence, the ultiamte paradox of the superego: “the more we submit ourselves to the superego imperative, the greater its pressure, the more we feel guilty.”<ref>Zizek 1994, 67</ref>
===More===
THE LAW OF THE FATHER AND THE SUPEREGO
The intervention of the [[Name-of-the-Father]] marks the point at which the [[child]] (leaves the imaginary world of infantile plenitude and) enters the symbolic universe of lack.
The [[Oedipus complex]] marks a transition from [[imaginary]] to [[symbolic]], from [[nature]] to [[culture]].<
ref>Freud theorized it in such works as Totem and Taboo (1991g [1913]) and Civilisation and its Discontents (1991f [1930])</ref>
The [[Oedipus complex]] marks the origin of [[civilization]], [[religion]], [[morality|morals]] and [[art]].
It is only through the [[repression]] and [[sublimation]] of our [[incest]]uous [[desire]] for our [[mother]]s that civilization and culture can develop.
The [[Name-of-the-Father]] is associated with the [[prohibition]] of [[incest]] and the [[instigation]] of [[symbolic]] [[law]].
The symbolic order and the process of signification, according to Lacan, is 'phallic' and governed by the paternal metaphor and the imposition of paternal law.
The father is seen to embody the socio-symbolic law and the function of the paternal metaphor is to substitute the desire for the mother with the law of the father.
This is also the founding moment of the unconscious for Lacan and the point at which the phallus is installed as the central organizing signifier of the unconscious.
The internalization of the paternal metaphor also creates something else, though, that Freud designates as the superego.
Lacan has developed the notion of the superego in a very specific and very important way.
The superego emerges through the transition from nature to culture via the internalization of the incest taboo and is often associated with the development of moral conscience.
Lacan retains this association between the superego and the law and points to an inherent paradox that Freud did not himself develop.
In Totem and Taboo Freud argued that the prohibition against incest provided the foundation for all subsequent social laws.
In other words, the most fundamental desire of all human subjects is the desire for incest and its prohibition represents the governing principle of all societies.
For Lacan, the superego is located in the symbolic order and retains a close but paradoxical relationship to the law.
As with the law, the prohibition operates only within the realm of culture and its purpose is always to exclude incest:
Freud designates the prohibition of incest as the underlying principle of the primordial law, the law of which all other cultural developments are no more than consequences and ramifications.
And at the same time he identifies incest as the fundamental desire.(
Lacan 1992 [1986]: 67)
The law, in other words, is founded upon that which it seeks to exclude, or, to put it another way, the desire to break and transgress the law is the very precondition for the existence of the law itself.
On the one hand, the superego is a symbolic structure that regulates the subject's desire, and, on the other, there is this senseless, blind imperativeness to it.
As Lacan says in seminar XX, nothing forces anyone to enjoy except the superego: 'The superego is the imperative of jouissance - Enjoy!' (1998 [1975]: 3).
The superego, therefore, is at once the law and its own destruction or that which undermines the law.
The superego emerges at the point where the law - the public or social law - fails and, at this very point of failure, the law is compelled, as Žižek puts it, 'to search for support in an illegal enjoyment' (1994:54).
The superego is, in a sense, the dialectical contrary of the public law; it is what Žižek calls its obscene 'nightly' law - that dark underside that always necessarily accompanies the public law.
According to psychoanalysis, there is simply no way a subject can avoid this tension between the law and the desire to transgress it and this manifests itself as 'guilt'.
Indeed, for psychoanalysis, we are not simply guilty if we break the law and commit incest, but rather we are always-already guilty of the desire to commit incest.
Hence, the ultimate paradox of the superego: 'the more we submit ourselves to the superego imperative, the greater its pressure, the more we feel guilty' (Žižek 1994:67).
We will see how these ideas work in practice later, but first we need to clarify one final ambiguity regarding the superego.
=The Two Fathers=
