Difference between revisions of "Consciousness"
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==Sigmund Freud== | ==Sigmund Freud== | ||
===Topographical Model=== | ===Topographical Model=== | ||
− | In the so-called "[[topographical model]], | + | In the so-called "'''[[topographical model]]'''", [[Freud]] isolates [[consciousness]] as one of the parts of the [[psyche]], along with the '''[[unconscious]]''' and the '''[[preconscious]]'''. |
+ | ===Lacan on Freud=== | ||
[[Lacan]] finds [[Freud]]'s remarks on [[consciousness]] far weaker than his formulations on the [[unconscious]]. | [[Lacan]] finds [[Freud]]'s remarks on [[consciousness]] far weaker than his formulations on the [[unconscious]]. | ||
Revision as of 02:38, 3 September 2006
French: conscience |
Sigmund Freud
Topographical Model
In the so-called "topographical model", Freud isolates consciousness as one of the parts of the psyche, along with the unconscious and the preconscious.
Lacan on Freud
Lacan finds Freud's remarks on consciousness far weaker than his formulations on the unconscious.
"While he [Freud] can give a coherent, balanced account of the majority of other parts of the psychic apparatus, when it's a question of consciousness, he always encounters mutually contradictory conditions."[1]
According to Lacan, Freud's problems with discussing consciousness return again and again to haunt his theory:
"The difficulties which this system of consciousness raises reappear at each level of Freud's theorising."[2]
Ego
In particular, Lacan rejects the apparent attempts in Freud's work to link the consciousness-perception system to the ego, unless this link is carefully theorised.
If there is a link between the ego and consciousness, it is in terms of a lure.
The illusion of a fully self-transparent consciousness is subverted by the whole psychoanalytic experience (see cogito).
"Consciousness in man is by essence a polar tension between an ego alienated from the subject and a perception which fundamentally escapes it, a pure percipi."[3]
Materialism
In 1954 Lacan gives "a materialist definition of the phenomenon of consciousness."[4]
However, matter is not to be confused with nature.
Lacan argues that consciousness does not evolve from the natural order.
It is radically discontinuous, and its origin is more akin to creation than to evolution.[5]
Subject Supposed to Know
In the 1960s Lacan rethinks the illusion of a self-consciousness (Selbstbe-wufltsein) fully present to itself in terms of his concept of the subject supposed to know.
See Also
References
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p.117
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p.117
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p. 177
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, 1954-55. Trans. Sylvana Tomaselli. New York: Nortion; Cambridge: Cambridge Unviersity Press, 1988. p.40-52
- ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, 1959-60. Trans. Dennis Porter. London: Routledge, 1992. p. 213-14; 223