Changes

Freud's concept ====Aim of the Drive====The [[drive (Trieb) (pulsion) lies ]]s differ from [[biological]] [[need]]s in that they can never be [[satisfied]], and do not aim at the heart of his theory of sexualityan [[object]] but rather circle perpetually round it.

For Freud, [[Lacan]] argues that the distinctive feature [[purpose]] of human sexuality, as opposed to the sexual life of other animals, is that it [[drive]] (''[[Triebziel]]'') is not regulated by any to reach a ''[[instinctgoal]] '' (a concept which implies a relatively fixed and innate relationship to an objectfinal destination) but by to follow its ''aim'' (the drivesway itself), which differ from instincts in that they are extremely variable, and develop in ways which are contingent on is to circle round the life history of the subject[[object]].<ref>{{S11}} p.168</ref>

It is a thoroughly [[Lacanculture|cultural]] reaffirms the Freudian distinction between and [[drivesymbolic]] (''Trieb'') and [[instinctconstruct]] (''Instinkt'').<ref>E 301</ref>

[[InstinctLacan]] denotes a [[myth]]ical pre-linguistic [[need]].[[Drive]] is completely removed from thus empties the realm concept of the [[biologydrive]].[[Drive]], unlike [[biology|biological]] [[need]]s, can never be [[satisfaction|satisfied]].of the lingering references in [[DriveFreud]]'s do not aim at an [[objectwork]] but rather circle perpetually round itto energetics and hydraulics.

Lacan reminds his readers that Freud defined In this circut, the [[drive as a montage composed of four discontinuous elements: the pressure, the end, the object and the source]] originates in an [[erogenous zone]].

The This circuit is [[structured]] by the [[drivethree]] does not refer to "some ultimate given, something archaic, primordial."<ref>Sll, 162</ref> The [[drivegrammatical]] is a thoroughly cultural and symbolic constructvoices.

Lacan incorporates the four elements of the drive in his theory of the drive's 'circuit'# The reflexive voice (e.g. In this circuit, the drive originates in an erogenous zone, circles round the object, and then returns to the erogenous zone. This circuit is structured by the three grammatical voicessee oneself)

1 ===Activity and Passivity===The first of these two [[times]] (active voice (e.g. to see)2 The and reflexive voice (e.g. to see oneselfvoices)3 The passive voice (e.gare autoerotic; they [[lack]] a [[subject]]. to be seen)

The first of these two times (active and reflexive voices) are autoerotic: they lack a subject Only in the third time (the passive voice), when the drive completes its circuit, does 'a new subject' appear (which is to say that before this time, there was no subject).<ref> see S11, 178</ref> Although the third time is the passive voice, the drive is always essentially active, which is why Lacan writes the third time not as 'to be seen' but as 'to make oneself be seen'. Even supposedly '"passive' " phases of the [[drive ]] such as [[masochism ]] involve [[activity]].<ref>Sll, {{S11}} p.200</ref> The circuit of the drive is the only way for the subject to transgress the pleasure principle.

# [[Lacan]] rejects the [[idea ]] that the partial drives can ever attain any [[complete organisation ]] organization or fusion, arguing aruging that the primacy priamcy of the genital zone, if achieved, is always a highly precarious affair. He thus challenges the notion, put forward by some psychoanalysts after Freud, of a genital drive in which the partial drives are completely integrated in a harmonious fashion.

2. Lacan argues that : He thus challenges the drives are partial[[notion]], put forward by some [[psychoanalysts]] after [[Freud]], not in the sense that they are parts of a whole (a '[[genital drive'), but ]] in which the sense that they only represent sexuality partially; they do not represent the reproductive function of sexuality but only the dimension of enjoymentpartial drives are completely integrated in a [[harmonious]] relation.<ref>Sll, 204</ref>

# [[Lacan identifies four partial drives: ]] argues that the oral [[drive]]s are partial, not in the anal [[sense]] that thy are parts of a [[whole]] (a 'genital drive'), but in the sense that they only [[represent]] sexuality partially; they do not represent the scopic drive, and [[reproductive]] function of sexuality but only the invocatory drive[[dimension]] of enjoyment. Each of these drives is specified by a different partial object and a different erogenous zone<ref>{{S11}} p.204</ref>

Throughout ===The Four Partial Drives===[[Lacan]] [[identifies]] four partial drives: the various reformulations of [[drive-theory in Freud's work|oral drive]], one constant feature is a basic dualism. At first this dualism was conceived in terms of an opposition between the sexual drives (Sexualtriebe) on [[drive|anal drive]], the one hand[[drive|scopic drive]], and the ego-drives (Ichtriebe) or drives of self-preservation (Selbsterhaltungs-triebe) on the other. This opposition was problematised by Freud's growing realisation, in the period 1914-20, that the ego-drives are themselves sexual[[drive|invocatory drive]].

He was thus led to reconceptualise the dualism Each of the drives in terms of an opposition between the life drives (Lebenstriebe) these [[drive]]s is specified by a different [[partial object]] and the death drives (Todestriebe)a different [[erogenous zone]].

Lacan argues that it is important The first two [[drive]]s relate to retain Freud's dualism[[demand]], and rejects whereas the monism of Jung, who argued that all psychic forces could be reduced second pair relate to one single concept of psychic energy.<ref>(Sl, l18-20).</ref> However, Lacan prefers to reconceptualise this dualism in terms of an opposition between the symbolic and the imaginary, and not in terms of an opposition between different kinds of drives. Thus, for Lacan, all drives are sexual drives, and every drive is a [[death drivedesire]]. Since every drive is excessive, repetitive, and ultimately destructive.<ref> (Ec,848)</ref>

Instinctual (pre-lingual) bodily impulses or instincts, which ==The Dualism of the Drives=====Sigmund Freud ultimately decided could be reduced to two primary drives: 1) the life drives (both the pleasure principle Life and Death===Throughout the reality principle); and 2) the death various reformulations of drive-theory in [[Freud]]'s work, which Freud saw as even more primal than the life drivesone constant feature is a basic [[dualism]].

<span style="fontThis opposition was problematized by [[Freud]]'s growing realization, in the period 1914-size: 14pt;">Freud20, Lacan and that the psychoanalytic [[drive</span><span style="text|ego-decoration: none;">&nbsp;</span></u></b></p>drive]]s are themselves sexual.

<p class="MsoNormal" align="center"><b>By Matthew JamesHowever, Mthe [[drive]] is not merely [[another]] [[name]] for [[desire]]: they are the partial aspects in which [[desire]] is realized.A.</b></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" alignSee Also="center">&nbsp;</p>={{See}}* [[Biology]]* [[Death drive]]* [[Demand]]||* [[Desire]]* [[Instinct]]* [[Need]]||* [[Pleasure principle]]* [[Sexuality]]* [[Subject]]{{Also}}

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left; margin-left: 0.5in;" align="center"> <font size="2">After an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was  a very rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was going to reply indignantly that we were not  National School boys to be <i>whipped</i> as he called it, but I remained  silent. He began to speak on the subject of chastising boys. <i>His mind, as if  magnetized again by his speech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new  centre</i>. He said that when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and  well whipped. When a boy was rough and unruly there was nothing would do him any  good but a good sound whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the ear was no  good: what he wanted was to get a nice warm whipping. I was surprised at this  sentiment and involuntarily glanced at his face. As I did so I met the gaze of a  pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me from under a twitching forehead. I  turned my eyes away again.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; margin-left: 0.5in;" align="center"> &nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right; margin-left: 0.5in;" align="center"> <font size="2">James Joyce, ‘An Encounter’</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b><u>The Freudian  drive</u></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>The drive is a mythological concept</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">The theory of the  drives is so to say our mythology. Drives are mythical entities, magnificent in  their indefiniteness. (Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><font size="2">&nbsp;</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The concept of the drive is a hypothesis, a strategic  assumption, a myth. Along with the related concepts of the unconscious and  transference, it represents Freud’s (perhaps unwitting) attempt to move from the  objective natural sciences of his time - physics, biology, and chemistry -  towards a theory based on subjective discourse and speech, dreams, fantasies and  symptoms.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">The forces which we <i>assume</i> to exist behind the tensions caused by the needs of the id are  called drives. (Freud, An Outline of Psychoanalysis)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">&nbsp;</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Freud’s technique was to forge theory from practice,  knowledge from observation and interaction. Real phenomena such as bodily  symptoms, repetitive phrases, and apparently bungled actions form the basis of  theoretical constructions. <i>Ça parle</i>, as Lacan says - it, the unconscious,  speaks. Thus the idea that psychoanalysis itself was born from hysteria, the  hysteric’s discourse of Anna O. as addressed to Freud <i>qua </i>analyst.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">We have often heard  it maintained that sciences should be built up on clear and sharply defined  basic concepts. In actual fact no science, not even the most exact, begins with  such definitions. The true beginning of scientific activity consists rather in  describing phenomena and then in proceeding to group, classify, and correlate  them. Even at the stage of description it is not possible to avoid applying  certain abstract ideas to the material in hand, ideas derived from somewhere or  other but certainly not from the new observations alone. (Freud, Instincts and  their Vicissitudes)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Freud’s analytic theory represents the application of  subjectivity to science, which is precisely what science defines itself in  opposition to. In this way, Lacan will say that psychoanalysis represents  Freud’s <i>desire</i>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>The drive is not an instinct</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">We might start by making, with Freud, a provisional  distinction between animal instincts, ‘instinkts’, based on hereditary patterns  and corresponding to organic needs, with ‘triebe’, specifically human, and  dynamically variable, drives. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Laplanche and Pontalis provide a useful gloss on the two  German terms. Instinkt is “traditionally a hereditary pattern peculiar to an  animal species, varying little from one member of this species to another and  unfolding in accordance with a temporal scheme which is generally resistant to  change and apparently geared to a purpose.” Trieb “retains overtones suggestive  of pressure (<i>treiben</i>, to push); the use of ‘Trieb’ indicates not so much  a precise goal as a general orientation, and draws attention to the irresistible  nature of the pressure rather than to the stability of its aim and object.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The so-called ‘hunger instinct’, the need to eat, would  thus not be the same as what Freud calls the oral drive. A better example is the  disjunction between the ‘reproductive instinct’, with its fixed aim and object,  and the panopoly of human sexual drives. The point here is not to claim that  humans are immune from the influence of instinct and biological need, but to  propose that these ‘instincts’ are mutable, colored by individual experience. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Freud’s authorized English translator, James Strachey,  renders both ‘instinkt’ and ‘trieb’ by the English ‘instinct’, a strategy which  later translators have for the most part also adopted. Thus the distinction  between the two German terms can be somewhat hard to grasp, a distinction Lacan  will take as the starting point for his work on the drive. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>The structure of the Freudian drive</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In his 1915 paper ‘Instincts and their Vicissitudes’, Freud  outlines the four components of his drive: pressure, source, aim, and object.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Laplanche and Pontalis describe the relations between these  terms by stating that the drive is “a dynamic process consisting in a <i> pressure</i> (charge of energy, motricity factor) which directs the organism  towards an aim. According to Freud, a drive has its <i>source</i> in a bodily  stimulus; its <i>aim</i> is to eliminate the state of tension obtaining at the  instinctual source; and it is in the <i>object</i>, or thanks to it, that the  drive may achieve its aim.”</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In defining the drive, Freud goes on to differentiate  between a singular external stimulus (i.e. the sight of a predator) which can be  assuaged by the body through muscular activity (i.e. fight or flight), and  internal stimuli of a more constant nature which must be regulated by the mind -  “an internal <i>alteration</i> of the source of stimulation” (Instincts and  their Vicissitudes) - rather than  eradicated. These responses to excitation are in accordance with Freud’s  economic principle of equilibrium, the pleasure principle, which is based on the  discharge of tension. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Freud is somewhat vague on the origins of such constant,  internal excitation - he has not yet indexed its status as fundamentally <i> beyond</i> the pleasure principle - but admits that “there is naturally nothing  to prevent our supposing that the drives [i.e. the internal stimuli] themselves  are, at least in part, precipitates of the effects of external stimulation”  (Instincts and their Vicissitudes). The  idea, as Freud expresses it earlier, in his ‘Project for a Scientific  Psychology’ of 1895, is that an intelligent organism faced with an array of  confusing sensations and experiences must effectively filter and regulate this  sensory data in order to survive.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The psychic apparatus thus intervenes as a method of  defense, to ‘alter’ or redirect the internal stimulus, the instinctual drive  which cannot be mastered by the body alone, i.e. by fight or flight. The drive  “appears to us as a concept on the frontier between the mental and somatic, as  the psychical representative of the stimuli originating from within the organism  and reaching the mind, as a measure of the demand made upon the mind for work in  consequence of its connection with the body” (Instincts and their  Vicissitudes). The ‘psychical representative’ of the drive, the representation  of that energetic pressure which the body redirects towards the mind, is  localized by Freud in his concept of the unconscious. The somatic pressure  itself, split off from its bodily origins, becomes manifest to consciousness as  an ‘unmoored’ quota of affective energy. Thus the essential <i>Spaltung</i>,  or splitting, which defines Freud’s model of the psyche.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The psychical transformations and displacements of the  pure, somatic instinct are the only means Freud has to conceptualize his ideas  on the drive: </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">I am indeed of  the opinion that the antithesis of conscious and unconscious does not hold for  drives. A drive can never be an object of consciousness - only the idea that  represents the drive. Even in the unconscious, moreover, it can only be  represented by the idea. If the drive did not attach itself to an idea or  manifest itself as an affective state, we could know nothing about it. (Freud,  The Unconscious)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The psychical aspects of the drive, its representations,  become a necessary foundation for Freud’s theoretical framework. This sets the  stage for the basis of Lacan’s reading of the Freudian drive as defined by its  place in a language-system, or signifying structure to use his terms.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-indent: 0.5in;"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b><u>Drive theory  in the Freudian field</u></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Lacan and the truth of Freud</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">It is worth briefly examining the conceptual development of  the drive in psychoanalytic theory after Freud because, especially in his early  work, this is where Lacan himself begins. His self-proclaimed ‘return to Freud’,  by which he means a return to the truth of the Freudian analytic experience, is  characterized in part by a series of commentaries on the work of other analysts  and analytic movements he perceives as deviations from this truth. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">I am not, for all  that, denouncing the anti-Freudian aspects of contemporary psychoanalysis.  Indeed, we should be grateful to the partisans of the latter for throwing down  their mask in this regard, priding themselves, as they do, on going beyond what  they, in fact, know nothing about, having retained just enough of Freud’s  doctrine to sense how significantly what they are led to enunciate about their  experience diverges from it. (Lacan, The direction of the treatment)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Lacan alludes here to a certain ‘not wanting to know’, an  effect of (in this case perhaps social and moral) repression which separates the  subject of the enunciation, the speaking subject which experiences analytic  truth, from the subject of the statement, the contemporary analytic ego through which  it is repressed.&nbsp; </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Freudian field</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The concept of the drive, and in particular Freud’s  insistence on the sexual nature of the drive, was to prove a divisive issue for  psychoanalysis. Psychology, the science from which Freud sought to differentiate  his own discipline while at the same craving its acknowledgement, would attempt  to ignore Freud’s discoveries, and then discredit them - sexuality and the body  were seen as incidental if not irrelevant to a science of the mind. Alfred  Adler, one of the first analysts to break from Freud, rejected the sexual basis  of the drive in favor of a more aggressive human principle, a drive towards  knowledge and self-perfection. Jung would propose a more symbolic, archetypal  notion of the unconscious than his mentor, and rethink the human drive, and  analysis itself, as a form of spiritual quest. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Moving forward in time, Melanie Klein will accept the  centrality of sexuality and the drives, yet according to Lacan, she imposes her  own, partially erroneous theoretical structure on top of Freud’s - one  over-emphasizing imaginary relations and the role of the mother. In America,  with the rise of object-relations theory, there is the movement from a so-called  1 person to 2 person psychology, a move away - in Lacan’s view - from the  Freudian subject of the unconscious towards a model based more on communication,  construction, and intersubjectivity. More recently, the idea of a sexual drive  innately connected to the body has been questioned by gender theorists  emphasizing the performative, and therefore potentially renegotiable, nature of  sexuality.&nbsp; </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">By contrast, Lacan will claim for himself a more  conservative role, repeatedly stating his fidelity to the texts of Freud and  their clinical implications. Whilst this claim is a matter of some debate, it is  nevertheless useful to think of the Lacanian drive as a reaction to, and a  rebuttal of, certain developments in post-Freudian psychoanalysis. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b><u>The Lacanian  drive</u></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">The drive has a central place in Lacan’s work - along with  the unconscious, repetition, and transference, it is one of the Four Fundamental  Concepts of Psychoanalysis which he proposes in his 11^th annual  Seminar of 1964. In a conference paper given that same year, Lacan introduces  the concept of the drive thus: </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">The drive, as it  is constructed by Freud on the basis of the experience of the unconscious,  prohibits psychologizing thought from resorting to “instinct” by which it masks  its ignorance through the supposition of morals in nature. It can never be often  enough repeated, given the obstinacy of psychologists who, on the whole and per  se, are in the service of technocratic exploitation, that the drive - the  Freudian drive - has nothing to do with instinct (none of Freud’s expressions  allows for confusion). (Lacan, On Freud’s <i>Trieb</i> and the Psychoanalysts  Desire)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In order to define what the drive <i>is</i> for Lacan, as  opposed to what it is not, a little theoretical groundwork is involved.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Need, Demand, Desire</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Lacan substitutes Freud’s myth of the intelligent organism  besieged by potentially harmful stimuli with his own image of a helpless child  before its mother. The child, like other animals, is subject to what Lacan terms  need, a series of biological instincts (for example hunger) which can be  satisfied by certain objects (for example milk). Lacan theorizes (non-human)  animal communication in terms of a code based on signs, which can be transmitted  and received with no risk of misinterpretation - i.e. a certain type of cry (as  defined by pitch, volume, time of day or some other consistent variable) would  convey a specific need for food, rather than say warmth or water, to the parent.  By contrast, the human animal can only express his need through speech, and a  symbolic language-system based on signifiers, which do not correspond to any  ‘real’ object of need, but only achieve a semblance of meaning in their relation  to, and difference from, other signifiers. Ferdinand de Saussure, the Swiss  linguist whose work Lacan draws on here, gives the example of the signifier  ‘cat’, whose ‘catness’, as it were, is constructed from the cumulative premises  that it is not a dog, or a horse, or a windmill, or any other signifier. Thus  Lacan will propose that ‘the signifier represents the subject for another  signifier’ in a potentially infinite signifying chain. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The human child, then, can express himself only through a  demand, which is by nature inarticulate - he is without the linguistic means to  articulate what he wants. For Lacan, this is equivalent to saying he does not  know what he wants. The child is alienated from his body, he cannot speak it.  Thus his cry, his demand to satiate whatever it is that is troubling him, to be  given whatever it is that he wants, is destined always to be misinterpreted - or  rather to be overwritten, inferred, decided for him, in a process not unlike  that of analytic suggestion, by his mother, or whoever first takes this place of  guardian, listener, analyst, which Lacan terms the Other. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>What do you want of me?</i> Are you hungry, thirsty,  tired, wet? The Other, unable to comprehend, or thus to satisfy, the child’s  abstract demand, provides a series of substitute objects for him. Oh, you must  need ‘x' - the breast, the bottle, the toy. The child in his turn determines  these responses as demands <i>from</i> the Other, answers to his primordial  questions, pointers to his place in the world. <i>What do you want of me?</i>  Oh, you must want me to suck, crawl, speak, shit. The signifier is thus reduced  to a sign in these primitive encounters with the demand of the Other. Lacan  theorizes demand as essentially a demand for love, an impossible, narcissistic  demand for access to a ‘real’ object in the Other, unmediated by language, which  would act as a sign of love, a gift bringing complete satisfaction.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2"> Demand in itself bears on something other than  the satisfactions it calls for. It is a demand of a presence or of an absence -  which is what is manifested in the primordial relation to the mother. Demand  constitutes the Other as already possessing the ‘privilege’ of satisfying needs,  that is to say, the power of depriving them of that alone by which they are  satisfied. This privilege of the Other thus outlines the radical form of the  gift of that which the Other does not have, namely, its love. In this way,  demand annuls the particularity of everything that can be granted by transmuting  it into a proof of love, and the very satisfactions that it obtains for need are  reduced to the level of being no more than the crushing of the demand for love.  (Lacan, The Signification of the Phallus)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This closed, circuit-like structure of demand bears very  closely on the drive, as we shall see. The mutual co-dependency of mother and  child, subject and object, cosseted in a womblike world which attempts to suture  over the cuts of language, Lacan will term imaginary, a retroactively  constructed fantasy created by the ego. This fantasy enables the speaking  subject, the subject of language, some partial and temporary access to what  Lacan names <i>jouissance</i>, the satisfaction, or complete enjoyment, which  language denies him by separating him from his body, and thus the body of the  Other. However, as a mode of being, a way to live in the world, such a fantasy  is untenable, or, strictly speaking, impossible in the Lacanian sense - an  existence ‘in the real’ without the supporting structure of a symbolic  language-system, a Wittgenstinian private-language game. Such is the Lacanian  definition of psychosis. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The way out of such a traumatic dead-end, and the entry  into a signifying system which alienates while providing a necessary structure,  is theorized by Lacan as an acceptance of, or at least a confrontation with,  what he calls the <i>Nom du Père</i>, to be heard as both the ‘name’ and ‘no’ of  the father. This localization of the Freudian Oedipus and castration complexes<i> </i>in the signifier of paternity and the law bears the essential function of a  prohibition. The child is forbidden its secret trysts with the maternal  love-object, its games of signs and seductions, and forced to recognize the  existence of a third term in its dyadic universe, and thus by expansion the  potentially infinite number of such terms. This paternal ‘metaphor’, as Lacan  calls it, acts as the catalyst which will transform the child’s signs into  signifiers, allow him to negotiate with the world&nbsp; and be negotiated by it,  experience acceptance and rejection, love and loss - in short to enter the  symbolic system as a <i>desiring</i> subject. The infantilizing trajectory from  need to demand and back is thus dialecticized by what Lacan terms desire, which  he defines as that which is left over when need is subtracted from demand, i.e.  the specifically human <i>wunschen</i> or wishes which suture over the  frustration of an impossible demand.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>The drive as the relation of the speaking subject to the  demand of the Other</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">During the late 1950s, Lacan formulates his first attempts  at a visual topography of the subject in a series of ‘graphs of desire’. The  final version of the graph, as detailed in the 1960 conference paper ‘The  Subversion of the Subject’, defines the drive as ($&lt;&gt;D) - the relation of (&lt;&gt;) the speaking  subject ($) to the demand of the Other (D). As we have seen, this relation forms  a circuit-like structure, based on a mutual co-dependency of terms. The drive  might be described as a compromise formation in that both subject and Other  depend upon each other to exist, to be recognized as existing. Thus the absolute  subjection to demand implies the dissolution of the subject into an object - an  object which <i>makes the Other exist</i>, exemplified in Schreber’s psychotic  delusion that he was the target of neuron rays sent by God to impregnate him.  And in turn the freedom of the subject from the demand of the Other - this is  one way in which Lacan theorizes the aim of analysis - requires the <i> dissolution</i> <i>of the Other</i> as existing, its dematerialization as a  locus of meaningful signifiers.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The speaking subject - which we can specify here as the  subject who comes to speak in analysis (we might say that the psychotic, rather  than speaking, is <i>spoken</i>) - exists in a sort of limbo between these  two extremes, pure subjectivity and pure objectivity, and is thus for Lacan  fundamentally split, fissured, lacking in substance. The subject of the  unconscious exists only as the gap, the alterity, between the signifiers which  represent it to consciousness. If desire can be theorized as the metonymical  attempt to sustain these signifiers, to condense and displace them, break them  up and put them back together again, then demand, by contrast, can be thought of  as an oppositional process which attempts to mortify the signifier, fixating it  in the unconscious as a sign. The drive is precisely the orbital movement around  such a sign <i>qua</i> drive-object.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The following case vignette by the Lacanian analyst Marie-Hélène Brousse provides a clinical application of the ideas we have just  been discussing:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">I have a patient who is  grappling with her mother’s desire because she can’t decide whether or not to  have a baby. In reference to her mother’s desire she can only remember one  sentence. It’s a memory of her mother being furious with her children, running  after them saying ‘I’m going to kill you’. The signifier of her mother’s desire  is ‘I’m going to kill you’. In a sense, my patient was constituted on the basis  of those signifiers, to kill a child. It’s her interpretation of the Other’s  demand. The Other’s demand is ‘die’!</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">In the case of my patient  and her mother, the Other’s demand is quite simple: the definitive silence of  the children. She demands that they be quiet, and that is the ultimate  consequence. In that case, the mother’s demand, ‘be quiet’, can be understood as  ‘be dead’ – the object of the patient’s fantasy. In her fantasy she always  appears as disappearing. What is her object? Her own disappearance as an object.  (Brousse, The Drive II)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p classReferences="MsoNormal"><b>All drives are partial drives</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">Lacan follows Freud in stating that the object of the drive  is variable, which is to say it has no natural object:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" div style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">This is what Freud tells us.  Let us look at what he says - as far as the object in the drive is concerned,  let it be clear that it is, strictly speaking, of no importance. It is a matter  of total indifference…How should one conceive of the drive, so that one can say  that, in the drive, whatever it may be, it is indifferent? As far as the oral  drive is concerned, for example, it is obvious that it is not a question of  food, nor of the memory of food, nor the echo of food, nor the mother’s care,  but of something that is called the breast…If Freud makes a remark to the effect  that the object in the drive is of no importance, it is probably because the  breast, in its function as object, is to be revised in its entirety. (Lacan,  Seminar XI)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">For Lacan, this function of the object is to mark the place  of a primordial lack or void created by the subject’s accession to language, a  piece or fragment of the real body which eludes both imaginary representation  and symbolic elucidation. Thus the breast will be theorized in terms of a lost  object, an absence for the subject to recreate in his fantasy. Lacan writes this  lost object as <i>a </i>(<i>autre</i>, or 'other'), defining it as the object-cause of desire, the  traumatic object of separation which the subject ($) attempts to refind in a  fantasized image ($&lt;&gt;<i>a</i>) and thus annul. Its horizon is that of a cut at  the edges of the body, where the subject attempts to define inside and outside,  subjectivity and Otherness:</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">Let us note that this  characteristic of the cut is no less obviously prevalent in the object described  by analytic theory: the mamilla, the feces, the phallus (as an imaginary  object), and the urinary flow. (An unthinkable list, unless we add, as I do, the  phoneme, the gaze, the voice…and the nothing). For isn’t it plain to see that  the characteristic of being partial, rightly emphasized in objects, is  applicable not because these objects are part of a total object, which the body  is assumed to be, but because they only partially represent the function that  produces them. A common characteristic of these objects as I formulate them is  that they have no specular image, in other words, no alterity. It is to this  object that cannot be grasped in the mirror that the specular image lends its  clothes. (Lacan, The Subversion of the Subject)</font></p> <p class=11px"MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The object <i>a</i>, as a hollow, an empty husk at the  limits of the body, can thus be represented in the drive by any specular object  of consciousness, but this representation remains partial, incomplete, in the  same way that the 1 can only partially represent the 0, and the signifier can  only partially represent the real. In a sense, every drive-object is by nature  fetishistic in its veiling of the anxiety-provoking object <i>a </i>which it  embodies. This essential disjunction between the object and its function leads  Lacan to rethink the hypothesis of a series of partial ‘component’ sexual drives  (i.e. oral, anal, etc) which integrate to form a ‘developmentally mature’ genital  drive in the subject. In place of this teleology, denounced variously as a  normalizing social construct and an idealistic fantasy, Lacan affirms the logic  of Freud’s ‘polymorphous perversion’. Any part of the body can become  sexualized. All drives are partial to the extent that they ‘know nothing’ about  the imaginary unity of the subject (or indeed the ‘sexual responsibilities’  instated by his superreferences-ego) - instead of this ‘Gestalt’ they form a ‘montage’ of  discontinuous elements which in Seminar XI Lacan compares to a Surrealist  painting. </p> <p class="MsoNormalsmall">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>The structure of the Lacanian drive</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">If the drives are not a product of nature, if they are  ‘constructed’ in some way, this is not to say that they are therefore  ‘malleable’, that they can be changed or reformulated at will. We touch here on  the Lacanian critique of recent gender theory such as the work of Judith Butler.  The relation of the subject to <i>jouissance</i>, to the satisfaction produced  by the drive, is for Lacan a very intimate one, and on an unconscious level it  is often a relation the subject wants to know nothing about, let alone change.  Let us recall Freud’s image of the mind as the site of an ongoing archeological  excavation, the deepest layers being all but inaccessible to consciousness. We  might speak of a subject ‘in thrall’ to, and ‘enthralled by’, the drive. This  notion of servitude, ‘thralldom’, indexes the degree of attachment which bonds  the subject of the drive to the Other.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In neurosis, there exists an unconscious equation between  demand and lack. To demand something is to be without it. As far as the neurotic  is concerned, the demand of the Other, as expressed in its signifiers, thus  indicates the nature of its lack. However, according to the logic of the  signifier, this nature is destined to remain opaque to the subject, mysterious,  always represented by another signifier - we might say that it is experienced as  the desire of the Other (What does the Other want?). This desire is precisely  what is intolerable for the obsessional, who always does his best to reduce it  to a demand, and thus himself to an object. By contrast the hysteric cannot bear  the intransigence of the Other’s demand, depending instead on the desire of the Other in order to exist as a subject. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Lacan will formulate the desire of the Other as S(<s>O</s>),  the signifier of a lack in the Other. A signifier is always missing, the  signifier which would complete the subject by allowing him to satisfy the  Other’s demand (<i>That’s</i> what the Other wants). The subject of the drive  attempts to locate this missing signifier in the Other’s demand by <i> identifying with the object of that demand </i>(i.e. by ‘being dead’ in the case  of Brousse’s patient). The logic of the drive resides in this movement of  identification, a reflexive movement from subject to object and back again,  whose aim is to return to its source.</p>   [[Image:Goal.jpg|center]] <p class="MsoNormal" align="center">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center"> <span style="font-size: 11pt;"> (Lacan, Seminar XI)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>La pulsion en fait le tour</i> as Lacan says in French,  the drive always misses its object - precisely because the object itself is a  lack, it has no corresponding signifier. We might say that the pervert takes the http://www.nosubject.com/Special:UploadUpload fileneurotic’s identification to its logical conclusion and <i>becomes</i> the  object of the Other’s demand, working ceaselessly to make of the Other a pure  subject of <i>jouissance</i>. Lacan will write the perverse fantasy as an  ‘inverse’ neurosis (<i>a</i>&lt;&gt;$) - freed of neurotic guilt, the pervert is thus  all the more certain of his own satisfaction. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In Seminar XI, Lacan draws on Freud’s work ‘A Child is  Being Beaten’ to underscore the grammatical edifice of the drive, its existence  as a combinatory of subject ($), verb (&lt;&gt;), and object (D) - in this way it  embodies dialectically the logical structure of fantasy ($&lt;&gt;<i>a</i>). The  alternating status of the verb, represented by the lozenge, as both active and  passive is rendered in French as ‘se faire’ - to make oneself be (seen, heard,  shitted, sucked etc). There are thus two moments to the drive - the scopic  drive is both voyeuristic (making oneself be seen by the Other) and  exhibitionist (making the Other be seen by oneself). The masochist enjoys his  own pain from the position of the sadist, and the sadist enjoys the pain of his  victim from the position of the masochist.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In a sense, the circular nature of the drive offers no way  forward, its logic is binary. The ‘constant pressure’ is resolved by an  alternation between two terms - everything and nothing. Thus Lacan states that  every drive is a manifestation of the death drive, its compulsion to repeat  encapsulated in the image of a serpent chasing its own tail.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;<a></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>Conclusion: from Drive to Desire</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In concluding I would like to refer to a distinction  Jacques-Alain Miller draws between drive and desire in a commentary on one of  Lacan’s papers: </p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><font size="2">The subject is happy. The  want-to-be is on the side of desire. But on the side of the drive, there is no  want-to-be. What Freud calls the drive is an activity which always comes off. It  leads to sure success, whereas desire leads to a sure unconscious formation,  namely, a bungled action or slip: ‘I missed my turn, ‘I forgot my keys’, etc.  That is desire. The drive, on the contrary, always has its keys in its hand.  (Miller, Commentary on Lacan’s ‘On Freud’s <i>Trieb</i> and the Psychoanalysts  Desire’)</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Implicit in this distinction is an opposition between old  and new. If the drive succeeds, it is because it has nowhere to go, it has been  there before, its route is already decided. Desire, on the other hand, can  always take a detour, reformulate its signifiers, interpret its own mistakes. In  this sense, it can function as a learning experience, allowing the subject, in  the words of the writer Samuel Beckett, to ‘fail again...fail better’.<a></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;<a></a><a></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center"><u><b>Bibliography</b></u></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b>&nbsp;</b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Brousse, Marie-Helene</i>  ‘The Drive (I)’ and ‘The Drive (II)’ in <u>Reading Seminar XI</u>, in R.  Feldstein, B. Fink, M. Jaanus (eds.), <u>Reading Seminar XI</u>, State  University of New York Press, 1996</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><i>&nbsp;</i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Freud, Sigmund </i> <font color="#000000" face="Times New Roman,Times,Times NewRoman"><u> The&nbsp;Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, 24&nbsp; volumes</u>,  ed. James Strachey et al., The Hogarth Press and the&nbsp; Institute of  Psychoanalysis,&nbsp;1953-74</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Lacan, Jacques </i> <u>Écrits: A Selection</u>,  trans. Alan Sheridan, Routledge, 1977</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Ibid.</i> <u>The Seminar.  Book XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis</u>, trans. Alan  Sheridan, Hogarth Press, 1977</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Ibid.</i> ‘On Freud’s “<i>Trieb</i>”  and the psychoanalyst’s desire’, trans. Bruce Fink, in R. Feldstein, B. Fink, M.  Jaanus (eds.), <u>Reading Seminar XI</u>, State University of New York Press,  1996</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Laplanche, Jean </i>and <i> Pontalis, Jean-Bertrand </i><u>The Language of Psychoanalysis</u>, Karnac Books,  1996</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">&nbsp;</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i>Miller, Jacques-Alain </i> ‘Commentary on Lacan’s ‘On Freud’s “<i>Trieb</i>” and the psychoanalyst’s  desire’’, trans. Bruce Fink, in R. Feldstein, B. Fink, M. Jaanus (eds.), <u> Reading Seminar XI</u>, State University of New York Press, 1996<a></a><a></a><a></a><a></a><a></a></p> == References ==

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