Changes

As we have seen throughout this introduction, the lesson of psychoanalysis, or what we can call the tragedy of psychoanalysis, is that the subject is inherently divided and can never be satisfied. Furthermore, our knowledge is always limited by that unknown we call the unconscious. We are plagued as subjects by the anxiety that our jouissance - our pleasure or enjoyment - is never enough. In other words, we are driven by an inherent dissatisfaction and sense of insufficiency. We constantly have the sense that there is something more; we do not know what this is, but we have the sense that it is there, and we want it. This is what Fink refers to as a 'paltry' jouissance (2002:36) and it is the form of jouissance that Lacan identifies as phallic jouissance. 'Phallic jouissance is the jouissance that fails us, that disappoints us. It is susceptible to failure, and fundamentally misses our partner' (Fink 2002:37).