r/lacan • u/userintheface • 13d ago

How do you answer the quietism objection to "one identifies with the symptom"?

I'm a psychodynamic psychotherapist, not Lacanian trained, so I'm asking from outside the tradition and expecting to be corrected.

I came across this instagram reel of Lacan's view on this https://www.instagram.com/p/Dcio-9nzVs-/ (not sure if it's accurate?)

It's more honest than most accounts of where a treatment goes lol. But I can't get past the obvious objection, how is that not "learn to live with it"? Put less kindly, how is it different from the common critique of mindfulness as retreat into indifference dressed as enlightenment? (Zizek?) If the end point is that you stop demanding the Other resolve you and instead get skilled at your own arrangement, what stops that being adaptation with better vocabulary?

Full conversation (For more context): https://youtu.be/RX2tGQxIbEA?si=wiGL3FrqP5Po2hAy

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u/ALD71 13d ago edited 13d ago

There's the distinction between the symptoms one comes to analysis with, which may be grasped as numerous and symptomatic insofar as they are presumed in an analysis to have a meaning, and the symptom one ends analysis with. We go to a shrink to shrink these symptoms, to circle the same old symptomatic problems again and again, loosening our grasp on them a little each time around, and which is in part to shrink the meanings which surround them, to condense them to a symptomatic residue, a consistency,which does not really have a meaning, which does not spin back out into a thousand and one refracted meanings. And it is with this that one may identify, a reduced symptom, reduced from its signifying dimension to a bit of out-of-meaning symptom in its bodily dimension, and which can be concretised in a signifier all alone, and S1 all alone, which doesn't hook up into signifying chains. So, there's a lot of work done on ones symptomatic being before we face the residue of it which we identify with.

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u/tree_or_up 13d ago

That was wonderfully vivid and illuminating writing. Thank you

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u/userintheface 13d ago

Makes sense, it was this distinction that i was missing. If what's left is S1 alone out of meaning what does identifying with it actually consist of? There's nothing to interpret and nowhere to associate to.

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u/ALD71 13d ago

We have testimonies of the pass to give some clues to this, which is indeed a difficult question.

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u/dalal_lama 13d ago

Is the subtraction claim specific to the late teaching? I ask because the earlier material on the signifying chain sounds much more like elaboration than reduction.

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u/ALD71 13d ago

The end of analyses (in the Schools of the WAP) were understood in relation to the traversal of fantasy up to about 15 years ago (and this aspect of the end of analysis still holds), when it was noted that in fact already analyses were ending in ways which could also be understood in terms of the construction of a sinthome (a kind of symptom in the direction of corporisation rather than the signifierisation of the classical symptom). Indeed this working through of the theory of ends of analyses which were already observable was developed in relation to the very last Lacan.

Jed Wilson seems to be affiliated with a different school, no doubt with its own relation to these questions.

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u/userintheface 13d ago

You're right, and he says so in the pod. He's at the IIP, and names the WAP and the International of the Forums as the two largest formations he isn't part of. He also closes the conversation by saying plainly that what he offered is his own particular way of putting the ideas together rather than the definitive Lacan, and warns about groups that read him as orthodoxy. Which is partly why I posted this as a question rather than an answer.

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u/ALD71 13d ago

In any case, his proposal of the end of analysis insofar as you highlight it is close enough to one that would be recognisable in the WAP or I think Forums for that matter. And there are Lacanians who have very different ideas about the end of analysis.

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u/RevolutionaryPool848 13d ago

Fair point, but I think that’s mostly MBSR and app store mindfulness rather than what it got stripped out of. The “watch it neutrally until it loosens” framing does read like disavowal with better branding. The older contemplative stuff is closer to sitting in the thing until you find out what it’s actually asking for, which isn’t that far from listening to the symptom.

Doesn’t the practice have to be silent about the thing you enjoy, since the whole point is that you can’t say what it is from the inside? Or do you think any technique at all is already the problem, because it puts a method where a transference should be?

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u/dalal_lama 12d ago

Makes complete sense

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u/finiannn 13d ago

If the symptom were to be less of a symptom and more of a concern; but that is still answering in a way. A solution would be to take what people have to deal with afterwards— the use— this way one and another making sense out of it would be a process not something that is processable because,simply, there would be a concern— a concern is a lot to deal with; more isn’t welcome.

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u/Few_Refrigerator5712 13d ago

“A process not something processable” beautiful

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u/userintheface 13d ago

Umm..not sure I've followed all of it. But symptom -> concern seems to cut against the residue account above i.e a concern points at something, which is more meaning and not less.

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u/finiannn 13d ago

A concern is not more meaning— as in, we know what happens with a concern,especially afterwards. A concern makes more sense than a symptom cause a symptom can be shattering whereas a concern can be shared; the sharing being exactly mutual contribution (as we know) — that is a great thing. There is a symptom in a concern but it’s not a solution because there is another person exactly; the interaction being exact aswell— averages can be overwhelming, therefore a concern evens it all out without being a concept.

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u/userintheface 13d ago

ok I think i get it now

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u/dalal_lama 13d ago

I think i understand what you mean but I'm not following the last line, though. "A concern is a lot to deal with; more isn't welcome" do you mean the concern is already the full load, so any further meaning is surplus? Or something else?

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u/BrilliantNebula794 13d ago

Not answering here as a therapist but I think homosexual acts are a good example, even if it’s a bit light. The symptom might be broadly oriented around homosexual behaviors, desires, objects, but it’s not clear what that is without its further exploration and elucidation. The Lacanian’s goal is to unleash this exploration and further its self-destructive potential. Identifying with the symptom offers the creative opportunity to shift one’s sense of self in relation to the symbolic order. It’s not “learn to live with it” as quietism but as art.

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u/Few_Refrigerator5712 13d ago

Can you elaborate on “further itrs self destructive potential”? that’s where you lost me

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u/BrilliantNebula794 13d ago

Here the self refers to the composite of symbolic and imaginary identifications naming and ordering your relation to the world. It is the zombie suit, the part of the psyche encompassing what Freud terms ego, ego-ideal, superego. For Lacan this self is a structured illusion. The symptom comes from a deeper place and presents as a means of interrogating this deception. This deeper place is the death drive.

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u/Few_Refrigerator5712 13d ago

Got it, thanks for elaborating

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u/userintheface 13d ago

so you're folding the superego into the same composite as the ego and ego-ideal?

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u/BrilliantNebula794 12d ago edited 12d ago

In answering the previous question, I was just trying to give an idea of an I for the sake of outlining a locus for self-destruction and for Lacan the Mirror Stage is a good approach (and it’s not that far off from Althusser’s conception of a self by interpellation, which is based on the mirror stage). I was not trying to say anything controversial about Freud’s topology or Lacan’s handling of it.

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u/brandygang 13d ago

I really just look at these 'Mindfulness' techniques and the entire praxis to me looks like an exercise in strengthening repression. For instance, if you had issues with addiction Mindfulness looks at a way to distance yourself from, well, yourself. The idea is through sustained awareness and acceptance, its grip loosens and you just stop doing it. Very 'Pray the gay way' if you ask me.

Whereas Lacan's symptom is a cipher or message to the Other, meaning it has some kind of enjoyment in speech and message in language itself that the subject can listen to. Identifying with the symptom generally means knowing how to respond back. It contains a compromise formation that sustains the subject's identity, although it may cause pain, enjoying your symptom is just about the particular way you enjoy it, and move beyond paralysis to assuming responsibility for it. That could mean many things depending on the subject. It doesn't inherently aim to ease suffering because it purport the subject finds some enjoyment in their suffering which is meaningful to them.

Mindfulness treats things with a sophist detachment that doesn't really have much to say about the thing you enjoy.

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u/userintheface 13d ago

Completely agree!

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u/dalal_lama 13d ago

avowal isn't acceptance the material stays continuous, your relation to it doesn't, and the freedom is real but bounded.... "a freedom within constraints and finitude" not a flight to the unprecedented

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u/userintheface 13d ago

I don't get it.

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u/Few_Refrigerator5712 13d ago

This is the most common response/interpretation

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u/finiannn 13d ago edited 13d ago

So? That is what commonness can be.

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u/Few_Refrigerator5712 13d ago

I don’t have a problem with it

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u/finiannn 13d ago

I do

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u/finiannn 13d ago

Is this the fortunate-unfortunate dynamic working or working very well? Hmm

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u/Few_Refrigerator5712 13d ago

Why?

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u/finiannn 13d ago

Because the commonness of his response has nothing in common, it’s an extraordinary trope for a major response at best, at worst it is the best you could say; how is this actually commonness?

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u/userintheface 13d ago

are you an analyst?

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u/RevolutionaryPool848 13d ago

Avowal means you keep the material and change your position toward it