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Phallus

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=====Sigmund Freud==========Phallus and Penis===== [[Freud]]'s did not distinguish between the [[penis]] as an actual ([[Works of Sigmund Freudanatomical]]) [[body|workbodily organ]] abounds in references to and the [[phallus|penis]] as a [[signifier]] of [[sexual difference]].
==Phallic Phase==[[Freud]] called the [[development|period]] between [[development|three and five years of age]] the "[[phallic phase]]." The [[phallic phase]] denotes a [[stage]] in [[development]] in which the [[child]] ([[boy]] or [[girl]]) [[knows]] only one [[biology|genital organ]] - the [[phallus|penis]]. At this stage, infants of both [[sexes]] are dominated by the question of who possesses a penis and the related issue of its masturbatory jouissance ([[gratification]]). [[Freud]] argues that [[children ]] of both [[sexual difference|sexes]] set great [[value ]] on the [[phallus|penis]], and that their discovery that some [[human]] [[being]]s do not possess a [[phallus|penis]] leads to important [[psyche|psychical ]] consequences. Up to this point, the mother is imagined as having a penis, and the discovery that she [[lacks]] a penis, after an initial [[denial]], precipitates the castration complex.
However, <!--Freud had his first intuition of the primacy of the term phallus as early as 1905 in "[[phallusThree]]essays on the theory of sexuality" rarely appears ; it is explicitly discussed in "The [[infantile]] genital organization," which Freudoffered in 1923 as a complement to "Three Essays." In this later [[text]], the predominance of the phallus is linked to the problematic of castration in the following way:<blockquote>The main characteristic of this 's infantile genital organization' is its [[difference]] from the final genital organization of the [[adult]]. This consists in the fact that, for both sexes, only one genital, namely the male one, comes into account. What is [[present]], therefore, is not a primacy of the genitals, but a primacy of the phallus. [ Freud 1923, p. 142 ]</blockquote>The fact that the essential [[Works role]] of Sigmund only one genital organ is recognized at a certain stage in infantile [[sexual]] development implies that this primacy, from the outset, is not located in the realm of anatomical reality or on the level of organs, but precisely on the level of what a lack of the organ might [[represent]] subjectively.Freud|work( 1923) makes the same radical [[distinction]] by linking castration to the phallic [[order]]and not to the penis.<blockquote>The lack of a penis [my italics] is regarded as a result of castration, and when so now the child is faced with the task of coming to [[terms]] with castration in relation to himself. The further developments are too well known generally to make it necessary to recapitulate [[them]] here. But it does seems to me that the [[significance]] of the castration complex can only be rightly appreciated if its origin in the [[phase]] of phallic primacy is also taken into account. [ Freud's italics] [p. 144]</blockquote>In fact, sexual difference is constituted from the outset on the basis of this [[notion]] of lack: the [[feminine]] genital organ is different from the [[masculine]] one only because it lacks something. In addition, the product of observation (perceptual reality) is used immediately elaborated on the [[subjective]] level as a synonym conception: Freud writes "the lack of a penis is regarded as." As Freud ( 1923) puts it, this lack confronts the child "with the task of coming to terms with castration in relation to himself"(p. 144).--><!-- It is in the [[domain]] of these [[Freudian]] references that Lacan systematizes the problematics of the phallus|penisas foundational to [[psychoanalytic]] theory. Specifically, Lacan establishes the phallus as the primordial signifier of desire in [[oedipal]] triangulation. The [[Oedipus]] complex plays itself out around locating the [[position]] of the phallus in relation to the desire of the mother, the child, and the father. A [[dialectical]] [[process]]"develops in two modes: that of being the phallus and that of having the phallus. -->
=Jacques Lacan====Sexual Difference===== The term [[Freudphallic]] does use the adjective "occupies an important [[phallicplace]]" more frequently, such as in the expression the "[[phallic phaseLacanian]]", but again this implies no rigorous distinction between the terms "[[phallusspeech|discourse]]" and ". The [[phallus|penis]]", since the [[phallic phase]] denotes plays a stage central role in both the [[developmentOedipus complex]] and in which the theory of [[childsexual difference]] (.<!-- Although not prominent in [[boyLacan]] or 's [[girlWorks of Jacques Lacan|work]]) knows only one before the mid-1950s, the term "[[biology|genital organphallus]] - the " occupies an ever more important place in his [[phallus|penisdiscourse]]thereafter. -->
=====Jacques Lacan==Not Penis===[[Lacan]] generally prefers to use the term "[[phallus]]" rather than "[[phallus|penis]]" in order to emphasize the fact that what concerns [[psychoanalytic theory]] is not the [[[[biology|male genital organ]] in its [[biology|biological]] [[reality]] but the role that this organ plays in [[fantasy]]. Hence [[Lacan]] usually reserves the term "[[phallus|penis]]" for the [[biology|biological organ]], and the term "[[phallus]]" for the [[imaginary]] and [[symbolic]] functions of this [[biology|organ]]. [[Jacques Lacan]] [[chose]] to use the term "phallus" for [[the imaginary]] and symbolic [[representation]] of the penis in order to better distinguish the role of the penis in the fantasy [[life]] of both sexes from its anatomical role.
Hence ===Signifier===For [[Lacan]] usually reserves focus on the term "function of the [[phallus]] as a [[signifier]] of [[lack]] and [[sexual difference]]. The [[phallus|penis]]" for in [[Lacan]]ian [[theory]] should not be confused with the [[biology|biological male]] [[genital]] [[organ]], although it clearly carries those connotations. The [[phallus]] is first and the term "foremost a [[signifier]] and in [[Lacan]]'s [[system]] a particularly privileged [[signifier]]. The [[phallus]]" for operates in all three of [[Lacan]]'s [[register]]s - the [[imaginary]], the [[symbolic]] and the [[real]] - and as his system develops it becomes the one single indivisible [[signifier]] that anchors the [[chain]] of [symbolic[signification]]. Indeed, it is a particularly privileged [[signifier]] functions because it inaugurates the process of this [[biology|organsignification]]itself.
=====Freud's Work===Oedipus complex==While this terminological distinction The [[phallus]] is not found one of the three elements in the [[imaginary]] [[structure|triangle]] that constitutes the [[preoedipal phase]]. It is an [[imaginary]] [[object]] which circulates between the other two elements, the [[mother]] and the [[child]].<ref>{{S3}} p. 319</ref> The [[mother]] [[Freuddesire]]'s this [[object]] and the [[child]] seeks to [[satisfy]] her [[desire]] by [[identifying]] with the [[phallus]] or with the [[phallus|phallic mother]]. In the [[Oedipus complex]] the [[father]] intervenes as a fourth term in this [[imaginary]] [[structure|triangle]] by [[Works of Sigmund Freudcastration|workcastrating]] the [[child]]; that is, he makes it responds [[impossible]] for the [[child]] to [[identify]] with the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]]. The [[child]] is then faced with the [[choice]] of accepting his [[castration]] (accepting that he cannot be the logic implicit in [[Freudmother]]'s formulations on the [[phallus|]]) or rejecting it. ((For Lacan, the phallus is not to be equated with the penis, and as a signifier it performs a different function in each of the three [[orders]]: the imaginary, [[the symbolic]]and the real. ))
For example, when ==[[FreudSexual Difference]] speaks of a == [[symbolicLacan]] equation between the argues that both [[phallus|penisboy]] s and [[girl]]s must assume their [[castration]], in the [[babysense]] that every [[child]] must [[renounce]] which allows the possibility of being the [[girlphallus]] to appease her for the [[penis envymother]] by having a ; this "[[childrelationship]], it is clear that he to the phallus . . . is not talking about the established without [[biology|real organregard]]to the anatomical difference of the sexes."<ref>{{FE}} "p. 282</ref> The [[renunciation]] by both [[Works sexual difference|sexes]] of Sigmund Freud[[identification]] with the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] paves the way for a relationship with the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] which is different for the [[sexual difference|On sexes]]; the Transformations of Instinctman has the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] (or, more precisely, "he is not without having it" [''il n'est pas sans l'avoir'']), as Exemplified in Anal Eroticismbut the [[woman]]does not." 1917c. This is complicated by the fact that the [[woman|man]] can only lay [[claim]] to the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] on condition that he has assumed his own [[SEcastration]] XVII(has given up being the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]]), 127and by the fact that the [[woman]]'s [[lack]] of the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] is also a kind of possession.<ref>{{S4}} p. 153</ref>
It can be arguedThe status of the [[phallus]]: [[real]], then, that [[imaginary]] or [[symbolic]]? [[Lacan]]'s terminological innovation simply clarifies certain distinctions that were already implicit in speaks of the [[Freudphallus|real phallus]]'s , the [[Works of Sigmund Freudphallus|imaginary phallus]] and the [[phallus|worksymbolic phallus]].:
==[[The Real]] Phallus===Lacan's Work===== Although not prominent in As has already been observed, [[Lacan]]'s usually uses the term "[[phallus|penis]]" to denote the [[real]] [[biology|biological organ]] and reserves the term "[[phallus]]" to denote the [[imaginary]] and [[Works symbolic]] functions of Jacques Lacanthis [[biology|organ]]. However, he does not always maintain this usage, occasionally using the term "[[phallus|workreal phallus]] before " to denote the mid-1950s[[biology|biological organ]], or using the term terms "[[phallus|symbolic phallus]]" and "[[phallus|symbolic penis]]" occupies an ever more important place as if they were synonymous.<ref>{{S4}} p. 153</ref> This [[apparent]] confusion and semantic [[slip]]page has led some commentators to argue that the supposed distinction between the [[phallus]] and the [[phallus|penis]] is in fact highly unstable and that "the phallus [[concept]] is the site of a [[regression]] towards the [[biological]] organ."<ref>Macey, David. (1988) ''Lacan in his Contexts''. [[discourseLondon]] thereafterand New York: Verso.1988: 191</ref>
The While the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] and the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] are discussed more extensively by [[Lacan]] than the [[phallus|real phallus]], he does not entirely ignore the latter. On the contrary, the [[phallus|real penis]] plays a central has an important role to play in both the [[Oedipus complex]] and of the little boy, for it is precisely via this [[biology|organ]] that his [[sexuality]] makes itself felt in infantile [[masturbation]]; this intrusion of the [[real]] in the [[imaginary]] [[preoedipal]] [[structure|triangle]] is what transforms the [[structure|triangle]] from something [[pleasure principle|pleasurable]] to something which provokes [[anxiety]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 225-6; {{S4}} p. 341</ref> The question posed in the theory [[Oedipus complex]] is that of where the [[phallus|real phallus]] is located; the answer required for the [[resolution]] of this [[complex]] is that it is located in the [[real]] [[father]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 281</ref> The [[phallus|real phallus]] is written Π in [[Lacan]]ian [[sexual differencealgebra]].
==The Imaginary Phallus===Oedipus complex===== The When [[Lacan]] first introduces the distinction between [[phallus|penis]] and [[phallus]], the [[phallus]] refers to an [[imaginary]] [[object]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 31</ref> This is one the "[[phallus|image of the three elements in penis]]",<ref>{{E}} p. 319</ref> the [[phallus|penis]] imagined as a [[part-object]] which may be detached from the [[fragmented body|body]] by [[castration]],<ref>{{E}} p. 315</ref> the "phallic [[image]]".<ref>{{E}} p. 320</ref> The [[phallus|imaginaryphallus]] is perceived by the [[structure|trianglechild]] that constitutes in the [[preoedipal phase]]as the [[object]] of the [[mother]]'s [[desire]], as that which she [[desire]]s beyond the [[child]]; the [[child]] thus seeks to [[identify]] with this [[object]]. The [[Oedipus complex]] and the [[Castration complex]] involve the renunciation of this attempt to be the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]]. The [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] is written φ (lower-[[case]] phi) in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]], which also represents [[phallus|phallic signification]]. [[Castration]] is written -φ (minus lower-case phi).
It As we saw above, the child slowly comes to realise that it is not identical to, or the sole object of, the mother's [[desire,]] as her desire is directed elsewhere. He/she will therefore attempt to once again become the object of her desire and [[return]] to the initial [[state]] of blissful union. The simple dyadic relationship between the mother and child is an thus turned into a [[triangular]] relationship between the child, the mother and the object of her desire. The child attempts to [[seduce]] the mother by becoming that [[object of desire]]. Lacan calls this [[third]] term the [[imaginaryphallus]] . The imaginary phallus is what the child assumes someone must have in order for them to be the object of the mother's desire and, as her desire is usually directed towards the father, it is assumed that he possesses the phallus. Through trying to satisfy the mother's desire, the child [[identifies]] with the object that it presumes she has lost and attempts to become that objectfor her. The phallus is imaginary in the sense that it is associated in the child's [[mind]] which circulates between with an actual object that has been lost and can be recovered. The Oedipus complex, for Lacan, involves the process of giving up the identification with this imaginary phallus, and recognizing that it is a signifier and as such was never there in the first place. What Freud called castration, therefore, is a symbolic process that involves the [[infant]]'s [[recognition]] of themselves as '[[lacking]]' something - the other two elementsphallus. For Lacan, castration involves the process whereby boys accept that they can [[symbolically]] 'have' the phallus only by accepting that they can never actually have it 'in reality' and girls can accept 'not-having' the phallus once they give up on their 'phallic' identification with their mothers (we will discuss this very complicated [[idea]] in more detail in the chapter on sexual difference). This is the function of the Oedipus complex in Lacan.<!-- According to Lacan, the phallus at the outset represents what else the motherdesires is in addition to the [[baby]]. Thus, a [[pre-oedipal]] [[triangle]] of mother, phallus, and infant arises. At first the infant tries to be the phallus for the mother until the [[moment]] of a crucial transformation when the child, after identifying the phallus as a static image of [[completeness]]and sufficiency, sees it as representing the mother's desire, and thus her lack.<ref>{{S3}} pFrom then on, the phallus takes the [[form]] of something [[missing]] (-') within any imaginary, and hence [[libidinal]], [[frame]] of reference. Thus the phallus comes to [[signify]] desire, Lacan says. 319</ref-->
==The Symbolic Phallus==<!-- When the phallus takes on the role of signifier, this implies that the subject grasps it in the [[motherOther, the]] locus of the set of [[signifiers]] that determines the subject. There it signifies the Other's desire, which is to say that the Other is marked by her own [[incompleteness]]]. From then on, the phallus signifies the Other's this submission to the laws of symbolic [[objectexchange]] , and such incompleteness frees up in the subject her own jouissance. -->The [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] which circulates between [[mother]] and [[child]] seeks serves to satisfy her institute the first [[dialectic]] in the child's life, which, although it is an [[imaginary]] [[dialectic]], already paves the way towards the [[symbolic]], since an [[imaginary]] element is circulated in much the same way a [[signifier]] (the [[phallus]] becomes an "[[imaginary]] [[signifier]]"). Thus [[Lacan]]'s formulations on the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] in the [[desireseminar]] of 1956-7 are accompanied by statements that the [[phallus]] is also a [[symbolic]] [[identifyingobject]] with <ref>{{S4}} p. 152</ref> and that the [[phallus]] or with is a [[signifier]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 191</ref> The idea that the [[phallus|phallic mother]]is a [[signifier]] is taken up again and further developed in the 1957-8 [[seminar]] and becomes the [[principle]] element of [[Lacan]]'s theory of the [[phallus]] thereafter; the [[phallus]] is described as "the [[signifier]] of the [[desire]] of the [[Other]]",<ref>{{E}} p. 290</ref> and the [[signifier]] of ''[[jouissance]]''.<ref>{{E}} p. 320</ref>
In These arguments are stated in their most definitive form in [[Lacan]]'s paper on "[[The Signification of the Phallus]]".<ref>{{L}} "[[Oedipus complexThe Signification of the Phallus|La signification du phallus]] the ." ''[[fatherÉcrits]] intervenes as a fourth term in this ''. [[imaginaryParis]] : Seuil, 1966 [1958c]: 685-95 [structure"[[The Signification of the Phallus|triangleThe signification of the phallus]] by ". Trans. [[castration|castratingAlan Sheridan]] the ''[[childÉcrits: A Selection]]''. London: Tavistock, 1977; New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1977: 281-91].</ref><blockquote>The phallus is not a fantasy, if by that we mean an [[Imaginary]] effect. Nor isit as such an object (part-, [[internal]], he makes [[good]], bad, etc.). It is even less the organ, penis or clitoris, that it impossible for the [[childsymbolises]] . . . . The phallus is a signifier. . . . It is the signifier intended to designate as a [[identifywhole]] with the effects of the [[phallus|imaginary phallussignified]]. <ref>{{E}} p. 285</ref></blockquote>
Whereas the [[Castration complex]] and the [[Oedipus complex]] revolve around the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]], the question of [[sexual difference]] revolves around [[phallus|symbolic phallus]]. The [[childphallus]] has no corresponding [[woman|female]][[signifier] ]; "the phallus is then faced with a symbol to which there is no correspondent, no equivalent. It's a matter of a dissymmetry in the choice of accepting his signifier.'"<ref>{{S3}} p. 176</ref> Both [[sexual difference|male]] and [[castrationsexual difference|female]] (accepting that he cannot be the [[mothersubject]]'s assume their [[sexual difference|sex]] via the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]]) or rejecting it.
=====Sexual Difference===== Unlike the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]], the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] cannot be [[negation|negated]], for on the [[symbolic]] plane an [[absence]] is just as much a positive entity as a [[Lacanpresence]] argues that both .<ref>{{E}} p. 320</ref> Thus even the [[boywoman]]s and , who [[girllack]]s must assume their the [[castrationphallus|symbolic phallus]]in one way, in can also be said to possess it, since not having it the sense that every [[childsymbolic]] must renounce is itself a form of having.<ref>{{S4}} p. 153</ref> Conversely, the possibility assumption of being the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] for by the man is only possible on the basis of the prior assumption of his own [[castration]]. [[motherLacan]]; this "relationship goes on in 1961 to state that the [[phallus|symbolic phallus . ]] is that which appears in the place of the [[lack]] of the [[signifier]] in the [[Other]]. <ref>{{S8}} p. 278-81</ref> It is established without regard to no ordinary [[signifier]] but the anatomical difference [[real]] [[presence]] of [[desire]] itself.<ref>{{S8}} p. 290</ref> In 1973 he states that the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] is "the sexessignifier which does not have a signified"."<ref>{{ES20}} p. 28275</ref>
The renunciation by both [[sexual differencephallus|sexessymbolic phallus]] is written ф in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]]. However, [[Lacan]] warns his students that the complexity of this [[identificationsymbol]] might be missed if they simply identify it with the [[phallus|imaginary symbolic phallus]] paves .<ref>{{S8}} p. 296</ref> The [[symbol]] is more correctly [[understood]] as designating the way for a relationship with "[[phallus|phallic function]]."<ref>{{S8}} p. 298</ref> In the early 1970s [[Lacan]] incorporates this [[symbol]] of the [[phallus|symbolic phallusphallic function]] in his [[sexual difference|formulae of sexuation]]. Using predicate [[logic]] to articulate the problems of [[sexual difference]], [[Lacan]] devises two [[algebra|formulae]] which is different for the [[sexual difference|sexesmasculine position]] and two [[algebra|formulae]]; for the man has [[sexual difference|feminine position]]. All four [[algebra|formulae]] revolve around the [[phallus|symbolic phallusphallic function]] (or, more precisely, "he which is not without having it" [''il n'est pas sans l'avoir'']), but here equivalent with the function of [[womancastration]] does not.
This <!-- desire and signification. It is complicated by the fact desire that [[drives]] the process of [[woman|mansymbolization]] can only lay claim to . The phallus is the ultimate object of desire that we have lost and always [[search]] for but never had in the first place. --><!-- To summarize, before we explore this complex idea further, the phallus|symbolic phallusstands for that moment of rupture when the child is [[forced]] on condition that he has assumed his own to recognize the desire of the other; of the mother. 'The mother is refused to the child in so far as a [[castrationprohibition]] falls on the child's desire to be what the mother desires' (has given up being Rose 1996a: 61). The phallus, therefore, always belongs somewhere else; it breaks the mother/child [[dyad]] and initiates the order of symbolic exchange. In this sense the phallus|is both imaginary and symbolic. It is imaginary phallusin that it represents the object presumed to satisfy the mother's desire; at the same [[time]]), and by it is symbolic in that it stands in for the fact recognition that the desire cannot be [[womansatisfied]]. By breaking the imaginary couple 's the phallus represents a moment of [[lackdivision]][that “lack-in-being”] of which re-enacts the fundamental [[phallus|symbolic phallussplitting]] of the subject itself' (Rose 1996a: 63). As a presence in absence, a 'seeming' value, the phallus is also a kind of possessionfraud .<ref>{{S4}} p. 153</ref-->
<!-- It is through the [[intervention]] of the [[Name]]-of-the-Father that the imaginary [[unity]] between child and mother is broken. The father is assumed to possess something that the child lacks and it is this that the mother desires. It is important here though not to confuse the [[Name-of-the-Father]] with the actual father. The status Name-of -the-Father is a symbolic function that intrudes into the [[illusory]] [[world]] of the child andbreaks the imaginary dyad of the mother and child. The child assumes that the father is one that [[satisfies]] the mother's desire and possesses the phallus. In this sense, argues Lacan, the Oedipus complex involves an element of [[substitution]]: , that is to say, the substitution of one signifier, the desire of the mother, for [[another]], the Name-of-the-Father. It is through this initial act of substitution that the process of signification begins and child enters the [[symbolic order]] as a subject of lack. It is also for this [[reason]] that Lacan describes the process of symbolization itself as 'phallic'. It is through the Name-of-the-Father that the phallus is installed as the central organizing signifier of the [[unconscious]]. The phallus is the 'original' [[reallost object]], but only insofar as no one possessed it in the first place. The phallus, therefore, is not like any other signifier, it is the signifier of absence and does not '[[exist]]' in its own [[imaginaryright]] as a [[thing]] , an object or a [[symbolicbodily]]? organ. Let us look at this more closely. -->
<!-- Lacan equates the process of giving up the imaginary phallus with Freud's account of [[castration anxiety]], but he argues that the process of castration in Freud is more complicated than [[people]] generally [[think]]. Castration involves not just an anxiety [[Lacanabout]] speaks losing one's penis but simultaneously the recognition of lack or absence . The child is concerned about losing its own penis and simultaneously recognizes that the mother does not have a penis. The idea of the penis, therefore, becomes metonymically linked to the recognition of lack . It is in this sense that Lacan argues that the phallus is not simply the penis; it is the penis plus the recognition of absence or lack . Castration is not the [[fear]] that one has already lost, in the case of girls, or will lose, in the case of boys, one's penis but rather the symbolic process of giving up the idea that one can be the phallus for the mother. The intervention of the father distances the child from the mother and also places the phallus forever beyond its reach. If the symbolic father is seen to possess the phallus|real , then the child can only become a subject itself in the symbolic order by renouncing the imaginary phallus. The problem for Lacan is how does one symbolically represent 'lack' - something that by definition is not there? His solution is the idea of the '[[veil]]'. The presence of the veil suggests that there is an object behind it, which the veil covers over, although this is only a presumption on the part of the subject. In this way the veil enables the perpetuation of the idea that the object [[exists]]. Thus, both boys and girls can have a relationship to the phallus|imaginary on the basis that it always remains veiled and out of reach. The phallusprovides the vital link between --><!-- ==Phallic Jouissance== In his seminar on [[female]] sexuality (1998), Lacan further specified what he meant by the term "[[phallic jouissance]]." He used the phallic signifier (Φ) in [[writing]] his "[[formulas]] of [[sexuation]]," which posit that every human being has to be on one side or the other of the sexual [[divide]] and . A woman always has something of the phallus (she is not entirely [[castrated]]), and the man is only supposed to "have" the phallus|when he fantasizes his castration. In Lacan's symbolic notation, the phallustakes on the [[formal]] role of a [[supplement]], which adds to the castration complex the fact that "there is no sexual relation," as Lacan said, referring to the [[impossibility]] of writing an equation of the relationship between the sexes. --><!-- ===Criticisms of Lacan===Of all [[Lacan]]'s [[ideas]], his concept of the [[phallus]] is perhaps the one which has given rise to most controversy. Objections to [[Lacan]]:'s concept fall into two main groups.
=====The Real Phallus===== As has already been observedFirstly, some [[feminist]] writers have argued that the privileged position [[Lacan]] usually uses accords to the term "[[phallus|penis]]" to denote means that he merely repeats the patriarchal gestures of [[realFreud]] (e.g. Grosz, 1990). Other feminists have defended [[biology|biological organLacan]] and reserves , arguing that his distinction between the term "[[phallus]]" to denote and the [[imaginaryphallus|penis]] and provides a way of accounting for [[symbolicsexual difference]] functions of this which is irreducible to [[biology|organ]](e.g. Mitchell and Rose, 1982).
However, he does not always maintain this usage, occasionally using The second main objection to [[Lacan]]'s concept of the term "[[phallus|real phallus]]is that put forward by [[Jacques Derrida]].<ref>Derrida, Jacques. (1975) " Le facteur de la vérité." ''The Post Card: From [[Socrates]] to denote the Freud and Beyond''. Trans. Alan Bass, Chicago and London: [[University]] of Chicago Press, 1987 [1975]: 413-96</ref> and echoed by [[others]]. [[Derrida]] argues that, despite [[biology|biological organLacan]]'s protestations of anti-transcendentalism, or using the terms "[[phallus|symbolic phallus]]operates as a [[transcendental]] element which [[acts]] as an [[ideal]] [[guarantee]] of [[meaning]]. How can there be such a thing as a " and privileged signifier", asks [[Derrida]], given that every [[signifier]] is defined only by its differences from other [[signifier]]s? The [[phallus]], in other [[words]], reintroduces the [[metaphysics]] of [[presence]] which [[Derrida]] denominates as [[logocentrism]], and thus [[Derrida]] concludes that, by articulating this with [[phallocentrism]], [[Lacan]] has created a [[phallocentrism|symbolic penisphallogocentric system of thought]]" as if they were synonymous.<ref-->{{S4}} p. 153</ref>
This apparent confusion and semantic [[slip]]page has led some commentators to argue that the supposed distinction between the [[phallus]] and the [[phallus|penis]] is in fact highly unstable and that "the phallus concept is the site of a regression towards the biological organ."<ref>Macey, David. (1988) ''Lacan in Contexts''. London and New York: Verso. 1988: 191</ref> --- While the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] and the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] are discussed more extensively by [[Lacan]] than the [[phallus|real phallus]], he does not entirely ignore the latter.  On the contrary, the [[phallus|real penis]] has an important role to play in the [[Oedipus complex]] of the little boy, for it is precisely via this [[biology|organ]] that his [[sexuality]] makes itself felt in infantile masturbation; this intrusion of the [[real]] in the [[imaginary]] [[preoedipal]] [[structure|triangle]] is what transforms the [[structure|triangle]] from something [[pleasure principle|pleasurable]] to something which provokes [[anxiety]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 225-6; {{S4}} p. 341</ref> The question posed in the [[Oedipus complex]] is that of where the [[phallus|real phallus]] is located; the answer required for the resolution of this [[complex]] is that it is located in the [[real]] [[father]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 281</ref>  The [[phallus|real phallus]] is written Π in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]]. =====The Imaginary Phallus=====When [[Lacan]] first introduces the distinction between [[phallus|penis]] and [[phallus]], the [[phallus]] refers to an [[imaginary]] [[object]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 31</ref>  This is the "[[phallus|image of the penis]]",<ref>{{E}} p. 319</ref> the [[phallus|penis]] imagined as a [[part-object]] which may be detached from the [[fragmented body|body]] by [[castration]],<ref>{{E}} p. 315</ref> the "phallic image".<ref>{{E}} p. 320</ref>  The [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] is perceived by the [[child]] in the [[preoedipal phase]] as the [[object]] of the [[mother]]'s [[desire]], as that which she [[desire]]s beyond the [[child]]; the [[child]] thus seeks to [[identify]] with this [[object]].  The [[Oedipus complex]] and the [[Castration complex]] involve the renunciation of this attempt to be the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]].  The [[phallus|imaginary phallus]] is written φ (lower-case phi) in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]], which also represents [[phallus|phallic signification]]. [[Castration]] is written -φ (minus lower-case phi). =====The Symbolic Phallus=====The [[phallus|imaginary phallus] which circulates between [[mother]] and [[child]] serves to institute the first [[dialectic]] in the child's life, which, although it is an [[imaginary]] [[dialectic]], already paves the way towards the [[symbolic]], since an [[imaginary]] element is circulated in much the same way a [[signifier]] (the [[phallus]] becomes an "[[imaginary]] [[signifier]]").  Thus [[Lacan]]'s formulations on the [[phallus|imaginary phallus] in the [[seminar]] of 1956-7 are accompanied by statements that the [[phallus]] is also a [[symbolic]] [[object]]<ref>{{S4}} p. 152</ref> and that the [[phallus]] is a [[signifier]].<ref>{{S4}} p. 191</ref>  The idea that the [[phallus]] is a [[signifier]] is taken up again and further developed in the 1957-8 [[seminar]] and becomes the principle element of [[Lacan]]'s theory of the [[phallus]] thereafter; the [[phallus]] is described as "the [[signifier]] of the [[desire]] of the [[Other]]",<ref>{{E}} p. 290</ref> and the [[signifier]] of ''[[jouissance]]''.<ref>{{E}} p. 320</ref> ---- These arguments are stated in their most definitive form in [[Lacan]]'s paper on "[[The Signification of the Phallus]]".<ref>{{L}} "[[The Signification of the Phallus|La signification du phallus]]." ''[[Écrits]]''. Paris: Seuil, 1966 [1958c]: 685-95 ["[[The Signification of the Phallus|The signification of the phallus]]". Trans. [[Alan Sheridan]] ''[[Écrits: A Selection]]''. London: Tavistock, 1977; New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 1977: 281-91].</ref> <blockquote>The phallus is not a fantasy, if by that we mean an [[Imaginary]] effect. Nor is it as such an object (part-, internal, good, bad, etc.). It is even less the organ, penis or clitoris, that it symbolises. . . . The phallus is a signifier. . . . It is the signifier intended to designate as a whole the effects of the signified.<ref>{{E}} p. 285</ref></blockquote> Whereas the [[Castration complex]] and the [[Oedipus complex]] revolve around the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]], the question of [[sexual difference]] revolves around [[phallus|symbolic phallus]].  The [[phallus]] has no corresponding [[woman|female]] [[signifier]]; "the phallus is a symbol to which there is no correspondent, no equivalent. It's a matter of a dissymmetry in the signifier.'"<ref>{{S3}} p. 176</ref>  Both [[sexual difference|male]] and [[sexual difference|female]] [[subject]]s assume their [[sexual difference|sex]] via the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]]. ---- Unlike the [[phallus|imaginary phallus]], the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] cannot be [[negation|negated]], for on the [[symbolic]] plane an [[absence]] is just as much a positive entity as a [[presence]].<ref>{{E}} p. 320</ref>  Thus even the [[woman]], who [[lack]]s the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] in one way, can also be said to possess it, since not having it the [[symbolic]] is itself a form of having.<ref>{{S4}} p. 153</ref>  Conversely, the assumption of the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] by the man is only possible on the basis of the prior assumption of his own [[castration]]. [[Lacan]] goes on in 1961 to state that the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] is that which appears in the place of the [[lack]] of the [[signifier]] in the [[Other]].<ref>{{S8}} p. 278-81</ref>  It is no ordinary [[signifier]] but the [[real]] [[presence]] of [[desire]] itself.<ref>{{S8}} p. 290</ref>  In 1973 he states that the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] is "the signifier which does not have a signified".<ref>{{S20}} p. 75</ref> ---- The [[phallus|symbolic phallus]] is written ф in [[Lacan]]ian [[algebra]].  However, [[Lacan]] warns his students that the complexity of this [[symbol]] might be missed if they simply identify it with the [[phallus|symbolic phallus]].<ref>{{S8}} p. 296</ref>  The [[symbol]] is more correctly understood as designating the "[[phallus|phallic function]]."<ref>{{S8}} p. 298</ref>  In the early 1970s [[Lacan]] incorporates this [[symbol]] of the [[phallus|phallic function]] in his [[sexual difference|formulae of sexuation]].  Using predicate logic to articulate the problems of [[sexual difference]], [[Lacan]] devises two [[algebra|formulae]] for the [[sexual difference|masculine position]] and two [[algebra|formulae]] for the [[sexual difference|feminine position]].  All four [[algebra|formulae]] revolve around the [[phallus|phallic function]], which is here equivalent with the function of [[castration]]. =====Criticisms of Lacan===== Of all [[Lacan]]'s ideas, his concept of the [[phallus]] is perhaps the one which has given rise to most controversy.  Objections to [[Lacan]]'s concept fall into two main groups. ---- Firstly, some feminist writers have argued that the privileged position [[Lacan]] accords to the [[phallus]] means that he merely repeats the patriarchal gestures of [[Freud]] (e.g. Grosz, 1990).  Other feminists have defended [[Lacan]], arguing that his distinction between the [[phallus]] and the [[phallus|penis]] provides a way of accounting for [[sexual difference]] which is irreducible to [[biology]] (e.g. Mitchell and Rose, 1982). --- The second main objection to [[Lacan]]'s concept of the [[phallus]] is that put forward by [[Jacques Derrida]].<ref>Derrida, 1975</ref> and echoed by others.  [[Derrida]] argues that, despite [[Lacan]]'s protestations of anti-transcendentalism, the [[phallus]] operates as a transcendental element which acts as an ideal guarantee of [[meaning]].  How can there be such a thing as a "privileged signifier", asks [[Derrida]], given that every [[signifier]] is defined only by its differences from other [[signifier]]s?  The [[phallus]], in other words, reintroduces the metaphysics of [[presence]] which [[Derrida]] denominates as logocentrism, and thus [[Derrida]] concludes that, by articulating this with [[phallocentrism]], [[Lacan]] has created a [[phallocentrism|phallogocentric system of thought]]. =====See Also=====
{{See}}
* [[Algebra]]
{{Also}}
=====References==<div style="font-size:11px" class=="references-small">
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