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==Translation==
===Enjoyment===
The practice of psychoanalysis with the psychotic differs from that of the neurotic. Given that the psychotic is in the position of the object of the Other's ''jouissance'', where the Uncontrolled action of the death drive lies, what is aimed at is the modification of this position in regard to the ''jouissance'' in the structure. This involves an effort to link in a chain, the isolated, persecuting signifiers in order to initiate a place for the subject outside the ''jouissance'' of the Other. Psychoanalysis attempts to modify the effect of the Other's ''jouissance'' in the body, according to the shift of the subject in the structure. The psychotic does not escape the structure, but there can be a modification of unlimited, deadly ''jouissance''.
== In the work of Slavoj Žižek ==
''Jouissance'', or enjoyment, does not equate simply to pleasure. In the Freudian sense, enjoyment is located beyond the pleasure principle. In his clinical practice, Freud had already observed incidents of self-harm and the strange compulsion in certain patients to keep revisiting the very experiences that were so disturbing and traumatic for them. Th is paradoxical phenomenon of deriving a kind of satisfaction through suffering, or pleasure through pain, is what Lacan designates as ''jouissance''. If pleasure functions in terms of balance, achieving discrete objectives and so on, enjoyment is destabilizing and tends towards excess. Enjoyment can be characterized as a kind of existential electricity that not only animates the subject but also threatens to destroy them. In this regard, enjoyment is always both before and beyond the symbolic field; it drives the symbolic but can never be fully captured by it. If the body of Frankenstein’s monster is the intelligible symbolic structure, then lightning is the raw substance of enjoyment that reflects the primordial character of human drives and obsessions.
According to Lacan, jouissance has a Real status and is the only “substance” recognized in psychoanalysis. Indeed, a central goal of psychoanalysis is not so much to bring to light the “guilt” of the analysand but rather to get at their “perverse enjoyment” (''SVII'': 4–5): the excessive forms of investment in guilt that are themselves symptomatic of a particular mode of ''jouissance'' rooted in the Real. This is why Lacan characterizes the [[superego]] – the inherent agency of guilt that constantly recycles feelings of inadequacy and makes impossible demands of the subject – in terms of a primary injunction: namely, enjoy! (''SXX'': 3).
Although ''jouissance'' is viewed as a (non-discursive) “substance”, it is not one that possesses any independence or positivity of its own. ''Jouissance'' is something that can be signposted only in relation to a limit imposed by the pleasure principle (''SXVII'': 46). It emerges as a beyond in relation to this limit – as that which marks the domain of forbidden and/or obscene excesses. To approach this from a different angle, ''jouissance'' is produced as the excess of repression; without this repression, there can be no jouissance (''LN'': 308). This is why ''jouissance'' cannot be directly targeted or apprehended (despite the ambition of the “politics of enjoyment” and its various incarnations). At the same time, it cannot be directly eliminated. ''Jouissance'' is something that always sticks to the subject.
David Fincher’s ''Seven'' is illustrative of the dynamics of ''jouissance''. Two detectives, Mills and Somerset, set out to investigate a series of brutal murders committed as a “sermon” on the seven deadly sins by John Doe. Doe’s victims are chosen on the grounds that they embody a particular sinful excess and are subsequently dispatched in an elaborately sadistic manner. He seeks to punishexecute his victims not because of any legal transgression but because they do not conform to the imaginary unity, the homeostatic ego-ideal, of a God-fearing community. Here we might say that Doe becomes a superego manifestation who acts beyond the law on behalf of the law, fi lling in for its failures (something similar could be said about Batman and various other super(ego)-heroes).
There are two especially perceptive insights in this film. The first concerns the intrinsic character of ''jouissance'': the more Doe renounces earthly pleasures in pursuit of his cause, the more his enjoyment-in-renunciation is revealed. What Doe attempts to conceal is precisely the surplus enjoyment he takes in personal sacrifice and in stoically carrying out his duty. His enjoyment is not so much an immediate gratification in violence, but rather an obscene satisfaction in carrying out complicated and ritualized killings/torture as part of a divine mission sanctioned by God. Doe is, in fact, a classic pervert who tries to hide his enjoyment behind his perceived ethical obligation. Put in other terms, he expresses the classic ideological alibi: “I was not there as a being of enjoyment but as a functionary of duty.” This also reflects Žižek’s point against [[Hannah Arendt]] and her conclusion regarding the routinized nature of the extermination of Jews as a “banality of evil” (Arendt 1963). That is to say, what Arendt misses is the way in which the bureaucratization itself became “a source of an additional jouissance” (''PF'': 55); a surplus satisfaction gained from carrying out the daily torture and humiliations in the guise of a [[Kantianism|Kantian]] sense of impersonal duty, as an instrument of the Other’s will (the law/state/universal mission, etc.). The essence of the matter is not so much the “banality of evil”, but rather the evil/excessive ''jouissance'' contained and nurtured within the banality itself.
The second concerns the way in which Doe inscribes himself in his “sermon”. At the denouement of the film, Mills learns of his wife’s murder (her decapitated head is delivered in a package) and is consequently seized by the sin of wrath: he “over-kills” Doe in an act of desperate rage. Prior to this, Doe confesses to a powerful envy of Mills and his married life. By declaring (and demonstrating) this excess, Doe stages his own execution and literally enjoys himself to death – thus completing the circle.
From a Lacanian perspective, what this reflects is the way in which ''jouissance'' functions in terms of its “[[extimacy]]”. Extimacy is a hybrid word that combines the terms exteriority and intimacy. For Lacan it refers to “something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me” (''SVII'': 71). It is along these lines that [[Jacques-Alain Miller]] affirms that the hatred of the Other’s enjoyment is ultimately a hatred of our own enjoyment (Miller 2008). The image of the Other’s enjoyment is so compelling precisely because it symbolizes the Lacanian “in us more than ourselves”. In this sense, the Other is always someone who gives body to the very excess of enjoyment that in our innermost being denies us homeostasis. What ''jouissance'' bears witness to is not the unbearable difference of the Other but, on the contrary, an unbearable sameness – that is, the very fascination with (the projected sense of) the Other’s enjoyment draws the subject into too close a proximity with their own disturbing excesses.
In this context, we should read Doe’s confession as fake. His real “sin” is not envy but denial. What he denies is that his entire economy of righteous retribution is driven by enjoyment. His confession functions precisely as a way of sustaining this economy at a safe distance from any direct encounter with his traumatic excesses. By sacrificing himself, he is able to avoid any confrontation with his mode of private enjoyment – it is the opposite of what Lacan means by an act. We see a similar type of logic at play in the phenomenon of stalking. In their [[over-identification]] with their [[object of desire]] (often a celebrity), the stalker is drawn into an unbearable proximity with their excesses (the anxiety generated by their obsessional economy), which they then try to resolve through an act of severance – suicide, an assault on the target of their obsession, and so on.
[[Ideology]] derives its potency from its ability to manipulate economies of enjoyment. Th rough its repressive mechanisms, the social order relies upon a certain renunciation, or loss, of enjoyment. But as Lacan points out, this enjoyment is not something that was previously possessed; it is an epiphenomenal excess of social repression itself. Where ideology succeeds is in fantasmatically translating this sense of lost enjoyment into the theft of enjoyment (Miller 2008). From a racist perspective, the immigrant is someone with perverse forms of excessive enjoyment (they are idlers living off “our” state benefits and they work too hard, taking “our” jobs, etc.) and who thereby steals and/or corrupts our enjoyment (our “way of life”). And thus what “we conceal by imputing to the Other the theft of enjoyment is the traumatic fact that we never possessed what was allegedly stolen from us” (''TN'': 203).
At the same time, ideology “bribes” the subject into accepting repression/renunciation by providing subliminal access to a surplus enjoyment – that is, an extra enjoyment generated through the renunciation of enjoyment itself (''TN'': 308–9). What is manifest in fascism, for example, is the way in which the subject derives surplus enjoyment through acts of sacrifice (renouncing personal enjoyment) in the name of doing one’s duty to the nation. With today’s (Western) ideology – basically a capitalist fatalism (“the economy is what it is”) in support of private pleasures – the subject is bribed in a different way. Ideology no longer operates simply with a particular utopian vision or with definitive objectives. Contemporary ideology consists rather in assigning demands for change to the realm of “impossibility” (as so much “ideological fantasy”). What ideology offers the subject is the fantasy of change (“freedom of choice”, “opportunities”, etc.) precisely as a means of avoiding any real (or Real) change. Change is sustained as a fantasmatic abstraction in order to prevent (the fear of) any traumatic loss of enjoyment. We see this type of ideological operation in films like ''Bruce Almighty'' where the hero actually becomes God, capable of anything, but whose own world falls apart as a result – and so he returns to a more humble “mature” existence.
One of the central lessons of psychoanalysis is that while enjoyment is experienced as Real, it is ultimately an empty spectre, a kind of anamorphic effect of symbolic circumscription. Against its numerous ideological manipulations, we need to find ways of accepting, and living with, this traumatic knowledge. Extemporizing on an old Marxist maxim, when it comes to ''jouissance'' we have nothing to lose but the myth of loss itself.
==See Also==
==References==
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* Freud, S. (1951) [1905] 'The Three Essays on Sexuality'. S.E. 7: pp. 125-244. In: Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth Press.
* Freud, S. (1951) Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis. S.E. I0: pp. 153-319.
