Biology

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biology (biologie)

Freud and Biology

Freud's work is full of references to biology.

Freud regarded biology as a scientific model on which to base the new science of psychoanalysis.

Biology was at that time a model of scientific rigour in general.

Lacan expresses his point with a paradox: "Freudian biology has nothing to do with biology."[1]

Freud borrowed concepts from biology (such as the concept of the [[drive]) but reworked them in such a radical way that they become totally new concepts.

Lacan, like Freud, uses concepts borrowed from biology, and then reworks them in an entirely symbolic framework.

For example, the concept of the death instinct "is not a question of biology."[2]

Biological Reduction

Lacan consistently rejects all forms of biological reductionism.

Lacan opposed the application of biological (or ethological/psychological) concepts (such as adaptation, biological explanations of human behavior) to psychoanalysis.

Lacan rejects the reduction of psychic phenomena to crude biological determination.

Lacan rejects any attempt to explain psychic phenomena on the basis of purely biological data.

Lacan draws distinctions between need and desire, drives and instincts.

Lacan stresses the distinction between nature and culture.

Lacan stresses the primacy of the symbolic order in human existence.

Penis and Phallus

Freud conceives of the castration complex and sexual difference in terms of the presence and absence of the penis.

Lacan reformulates the castration complex and sexual difference in non-biological, non-anatomical terms (the presence and absence of the phallus).

Lacan conceives of the phallus as a signifier rather than as a bodily organ.

Many Feminist theories have drawn from Lacan in constructing a non-essentialist account of gendered subjectivity.

Culturalism

Lacan also rejects the culturalist position which ignores the relevance of biology.

Lacan is in favor of attempts to discern the precise way in which biology has an impact on the psychic field.[3]

Lacan's refers to pigeons and locusts in his account of the mirror stage[4], and to crustaceans in his account of mimicry.[5]

Thus in his account of sexual difference, Lacan follows Freud's rejection of the false dichotomy between "anatomy or convention."[6]

Lacan's concern is not to privilege either term but to show how both interact in complex ways in the process of assuming a sexual position.

See Also

References

  1. 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.75
  2. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p.102
  3. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. Paris: Seuil, 1966. p.723
  4. Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Tavistock Publications, 1977. p.3
  5. Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar. Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1977. p.99
  6. Freud, 1933a: SE XXII, 114