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Ethics

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ethics (Èthique) Lacan asserts that ethical thought 'is at the centre of our
 
work as analysts' (S7, 38), and a whole year of his seminar is devoted to
 
discussing the articulation of ethics and psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1959-60).
 
 
 
 
 
Simplifying matters somewhat, it could be said that ethical problems converge
 
in psychoanalytic treatment from two sides: the side of the analysand and the
 
side of the analyst.
 
On the side of the analysand is the problem of guilt and the pathogenic
 
nature of civilised morality. In his earlier work, Freud conceives of a basic
 
conflict between the demands of 'civilised morality' and the essentially amoral
 
sexual drives of the subject. When morality gains the upper hand in this
 
conflict, and the drives are too strong to be sublimated, sexuality is either
 
expressed in perverse forms or repressed, the latter leading to neurosis. In
 
Freud's view, then, civilised morality is at the root of nervous illness (Freud,
 
1908d). Freud further developed his ideas on the pathogenic nature of morality
 
in his theory of an unconscious sense of guilt, and in his later concept of the
 
superego, an interior moral agency which becomes more cruel to the extent
 
that the ego submits to its demands (Freud, 1923b).
 
On the side of the analyst is the problem of how to deal with the pathogenic
 
morality and unconscious guilt of the analysand, and also with the whole range
 
of ethical problems that may arise in psychoanalytic treatment.
 
These two sources of ethical problems pose different questions for the
 
analyst:
 
Firstly, how is the analyst to respond to the analysand's sense of guilt?
 
Certainly not by telling the analysand that he is not really guilty, or by
 
attempting 'to soften, blunt or attenuate' his sense of guilt (S7, 3), or by
 
analysing it away as a neurotic illusion. On the contrary, Lacan argues that
 
the analyst must take the analysand's sense of guilt seriously, for at bottom
 
whenever the analysand feels guilty it is because he has, at some point, given
 
way on his desire. 'From an analytic point of view, the only thing of which one
 
can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's desire' (S7, 319).
 
Therefore, when the analysand presents him with a sense of guilt, the analyst's
 
task is to discover where the analysand has given way on his desire.
 
Secondly, how is the analyst to respond to the pathogenic morality which
 
acts via the superego? Freud's views of morality as a pathogenic force might
 
seem to imply that the analyst simply has to help the analysand free himself
 
from moral constraints. However, while such an interpretation may find some
 
support in Freud's earlier work (Freud, 1908d), Lacan is firmly opposed to
 
such a view of Freud, preferring the more pessimistic Freud of Civilization and
 
Its Discontents (Freud, 1930a) and stating categorically that 'Freud was in no
 
way a progressive' (S7, 183). Psychoanalysis, then, is not simply a libertine
 
ethos.
 
This seems to present the analyst with a moral dilemma. On the one hand, he
 
cannot simply align himself with civilised morality, since this morality is
 
pathogenic. On the other hand, nor can he simply adopt an opposing libertine
 
approach, since this too remains within the field of morality (see S7, 3-4). The
 
rule of neutrality may seem to offer the analyst a way out of this dilemma, but
 
in fact it does not, for Lacan points out that there is no such thing as an
 
 
 
 
 
ethically neutral position. The analyst cannot avoid, then, having to face
 
ethical questions.
 
An ethical position is implicit in every way of directing psychoanalytic
 
treatment, whether this is admitted or not by the analyst. The ethical position
 
of the analyst is most clearly revealed by the way that he formulates the goal of
 
the treatment (S7, 207). For example the formulations of ego-psychology
 
about the adaptation of the ego to reality imply a normative ethics (S7,
 
302). It is in opposition to this ethical position that Lacan sets out to formulate
 
his own analytic ethic.
 
The analytic ethic that Lacan formulates is an ethic which relates action to
 
desire (see AcT). Lacan summarises it in the question 'Have you acted in
 
conformity with the desire that is in you? (S7, 314). He contrasts this ethic
 
with the 'traditional ethics' (S7, 314) of Aristotle, Kant and other moral
 
philosophers on several grounds.
 
Firstly, traditional ethics revolves around the the concept of the Good,
 
proposing different 'goods' which all compete for the position of the Sover-
 
eign Good. The psychoanalytic ethic, however, sees the Good as an obstacle in
 
the path of desire; thus in psychoanalysis 'a radical repudiation of a certain
 
ideal of the good is necessary' (S7, 230). The psychoanalytic ethic rejects all
 
ideals, including ideals of 'happiness' and 'health'; and the fact that ego-
 
psychology has embraced these ideals bars it from claiming to be a form of
 
psychoanalysis (S7, 219). The desire of the analyst cannot therefore be the
 
desire to 'do good' or 'to cure' (S7, 218).
 
Secondly, traditional ethics has always tended to link the good to pleasure;
 
moral thought has 'developed along the paths of an essentially hedonistic
 
problematic' (S7, 221). The psychoanalytic ethic, however, cannot take such
 
an approach because psychoanalytic experience has revealed the duplicity of
 
pleasure; there is a limit to pleasure and, when this is transgressed, pleasure
 
becomes pain (see JOUISSANCE).
 
Thirdly, traditional ethics revolves around 'the service of goods' (S7, 314)
 
which puts work and a safe, ordered existence before questions of desire; it
 
tells people to make their desires wait (S7, 315). The psychoanalytic ethic, on
 
the other hand, forces the subject to confront the relation between his actions
 
and his desire in immediacy of the present.
 
After his 1959-60 seminar on ethics, Lacan continues to locate ethical
 
questions at the heart of psychoanalytic theory. He interprets the soll in
 
Freud's famous phrase Wo es war, soll Ich werden ('Where id was, there
 
ego shall be', Freud, 1933a: SE XXII, 80) as an ethical duty (E, 128), and
 
argues that the status of the unconscious is not ontological but ethical (Sll,
 
33). In the 1970s he shifts the emphasis of psychoanalytic ethics from the
 
question of acting ('Have you acted in accordance with your desireT) to the
 
question of speech; it now becomes an ethic of 'speaking well' (l'Èthique du
 
Bien-direy (Lacan, 1973a: 65). However, this is more a difference of emphasis
 
than an opposition, since for Lacan to speak well is in itself an act.
 
It is fundamentally an ethical position which separates psychoanalysis from
 
SUGGESTION; psychoanalysis is based on a basic respect for the patient's right to
 
resist domination, whereas suggestion sees such resistance as an obstacle to be
 
crushed.
 
''éthique''
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