Changes

By addressing the issues of psychogenesis, the [[mind]]/body problem, etc. [[psychoanalysis]] necessarily raises [[ontological ]] questions.

On the one hand, he insisted on the importance of the [[physical ]] substratum of all [[mental ]] events, in keeping with the materialist axioms of the [[science|scientists]] whom he had most respected during his studies (principally Hermann Helmholtz and Ernst Brücke). On the [[other ]] hand, he opposed Charcot's attempts to explain all [[hysterical]] [[symptoms]] by reference to lesions in the brain, distinguished [[psychical ]] [[reality ]] from material reality, and constantly emphasized the [[role ]] of [[experience ]] rather than heredity in the aetiology of nervous [[illness]].

These two trends often converge in his writings in an uneasy alliance, as in the following [[sentence]]:

<blockquote>[[Analysts ]] are at bottom incorrigible mechanists and materialists, even though they seek to avoid robbing the mind and spirit of their still unrecognized characteristics.<ref>{{F}} 1941d. (1921). [[SE]] XVIII p.179</ref></blockquote>

[[Lacan]] too presents himself as a [[materialism|materialist]]; in 1936 he criticizes associationist [[psychology ]] for not [[living ]] up to its purported materialism, and in 1964 he argues that [[psychoanalysis]] is opposed to any [[form ]] of [[philosophical]] [[idealism]].

However, as with [[Freud]], [[Lacan]]'s declarations of [[materialism]] are highly [[complex]]. It is clear in [[Lacan]]'s earliest statements on the [[subject ]] that he conceives of [[materialism]] in a very [[particular ]] way. In 1936, for example, he argues that [[materialism]] does not imply a [[rejection ]] of the [[categories ]] of [[intentionality ]] and [[meaning]], <ref>{{Ec}} p. 76-8</ref> and he rejects the simplistic [[idea ]] of 'matter' as "a naive form which has been [[left ]] behind by authentic materialism."<ref>{{Ec}} p.90</ref>

In 1946 he repeatedly criticizes the crude form of [[materialism]] which regards [[thought ]] as a mere "epiphenomenon."<ref>{{Ec}} p.159</ref> And in 1956 he distinguishes between a "naturalist materialism" and a "[[Freudian ]] materialism".<ref>{{Ec}} p.465-6</ref>

It is clear, then, that [[Lacan]] does not subscribe to a kind of [[materialism]] which reduces all [[cause|causation]] to a crude [[economic ]] [[determinism ]] which regards all [[cultural ]] phenomena (including [[language]]) as a mere superstructure,"<ref>{{E}} p.125</ref> and argues that [[language]] "is something material."<ref>{{S2}} p.82</ref>

<blockquote>"the point of view I am trying to maintain before you involves a certain materialism of the elements in question, in the [[sense ]] that the [[signifiers ]] are well and truly embodied, and materialized."<ref>{{S3}} p.289</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>"But if we have insisted firstly on the materiality of the signifier, this materiality is [[singular ]] in many ways, the first of which is that the signifier does not withstand partition."<ref>{{Ec}} p.24</ref></blockquote>

The [[signifier]] in its material [[dimension]], the [[real ]] aspect of the [[signifier]], is the [[letter]].

It is [[Lacan]]'s "[[materialism|materialism of the signifier]]" which leads him to give "a materialist definition of the phenomenon of [[consciousness]]."<ref>{{S2}} p. 40-52</ref>

[[Lacan]]'s claims that his [[theory ]] of the [[signifier]] is a materialist theory are disputed by [[Derrida]], who argues that [[Lacan]]'s [[concept ]] of the [[letter]] betrays an implicit idealism.<ref>Derrida. 1975.</ref>