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[[Lacan]] asks:

Even an animal, he added, “has an economy: it acts so as to produce the very least possible jouissance. That's what we call the pleasure principle.”<ref>1969-70/1991, p. 88</ref>

But what did [[Lacan]] mean when he said that a woman, for being "not whole," was capable of a supplementary, nonphallic jouissance? With the "formulas of sexuation," he proposed dividing subjects not according to their biological sex, but according to their relation to the phallus. On the masculine side would be those subjects who take object <i>a</i> as the cause of their desire and depend upon their phallic nature to attain it. Subjects on the feminine side have one eye on the phallus and one eye on the ‘‘[[jouissance]]’’ of the Other, S(A̷). The male or female mystic—a designation independent of biological sex—is situated on the feminine side. Supplementary jouissance, strictly speaking, is feminine. But to attain it, the subject must stop looking both ways—toward phallic ‘‘[[jouissance]]’’ and ‘‘[[jouissance]]’’ of the Other—and become devoted only to the latter. Such an experience was attained by St. John of the Cross, for example, who was familiar with a mystical ‘‘[[jouissance]]’’ "outside sex," and thus beyond the mark of difference and beyond lack. The moment of ecstasy arrives when the mystic, entirely desubjectified and merged with object <i>a</i> of the Other's desire, becomes one with the Other, who in turn no longer lacks. The result is that to represent the Other's jouissance, "A" is rewritten as unbarred, S(A). In <i>Civilization and Its Discontents</i>, [[Freud]] referred to the "oceanic feeling" of being at one with the greater Whole. Such is the feeling of mysticism, and also of trances and ecstasy.

Whereas [[Freud]] discussed the dark relationship between mysticism and suffering with great hesitation, [[Lacan]] spoke of them more positively by remarking that on the cultural level, adoration of Christ suffering on the cross naturally sustains jouissance. If certain mystics directly experience ‘‘[[jouissance]]’’ by looking at the Other's face—by looking at the face of God—others can attain it only by allowing the ever so broken body of Christ on Calvary to sustain it. They partake of a vicarious ‘‘[[jouissance]]’’ from Christ's mutilated body offered up to God. Commenting on Catholicism, [[Lacan]] wrote, "That doctrine speaks only of the incarnation of God in a body, and assumes that the passion suffered in that person constituted another person's jouissance" (1998, p. 113)

== [[Kid A In Alphabet Land]] ==