Zizek on psychoanalysis

At the risk of adding in a non-symposium related post, and in posting here what I would usually post at I Cite, I thought it worth introducing some of Zizek's remarks on psychoanalysis from Parallax View. (I'm rereading the book because I have to write a couple of reviews of it; I find it more interesting and compelling this time, perhaps now that I have more time to go through the details.) At any rate, Zizek argues that the focus of psychoanalysis is "the Social, the field of social practices and socially held beliefs." He points out, moreover, that this field

is not simply on a different level from individual experience, but something to which the individual himself has to relate, which the individual himself has to experience as an order which is minimally 'reified,' externalized.

This is important, I think, because it explains how psychoanalysis is not simply some kind of account of individual psyches, or individualized perceptions and patterns of thought, but an account of the the Social--of society in all its ruptures, tensions, ideologies, laws, desires, fantasies, and enjoyments--and how this Social level is inscribed within individuals. As Zizek writes,

this objective order of the social Substance exists only insofar as individuals treat it as such, relate to it as such.

In a way, for the version of lacanian theory that Zizek continues to develop (and not for the clinic), the individual is interesting only as a vehicle or host for larger social tensions, struggles, and formations. Psychoanalytic theory enables him to consider ideology, ethics, open secrets, and the like because these exist only insofar as they are materialized in the practices of subjects.

Comments

[Nacho]

Jodi, thanks for the brief post. I'm a total newbie to Zizek, hence my apologies if this question seems completely stupid: Has Zizek delivered/written any comments/thoughts about Zen, as Lacan did? The statement, "this objective order of the social Substance exists only insofar as individuals treat it as such, relate to it as such" is indeed quite Zennist.

The notion of psychoanalysis as account of the social seems doubly the case, as psychoanalysis is filtered through the lenses of the psychoanalyst, it is a double performance of interpretation/transmission. But, is the psyche just a resonance machine?

Thanks again,

N

[Kenneth Rufo]

I don't know about Zen, but he does mock Western Buddhism in his On Belief. I can send you copies of the relevant pages if you want.

[Adam Kotsko]

You should do a post where you gather all the passages where Zizek discusses psychoanalysis.

[Jodi]

Adam--or you could!

Nacho--Ken's right. Disparaging remarks about Buddhism (which I read as aimed at European and American Buddhists whom Zizek, I think, associates with new age sorts of religions). I don't recall anything on Zen, but if I find something, I'll post it.

Is the psyche just a resonance machine. Not insofar as the the psyche is the psyche of a subject who can refuse, say no, and Act (I use a capital here to distinguish the Act in Zizek's sense from reactive acting out and from acting because of a conscious will or decision).

[Kenneth Rufo]

Jodi, out of curiousity, do you know if Zizek has ever practiced a religion? Especially any denominational variant of Christianity?

[Jodi]

I don't know. His parents were communist bureaucrats, if I recall rightly, and his avowed position is that of an aestheist.

[John Ransom]

Just trying to put the thought in my own words to see if it gets close to Zizek's point: The usual take on psychoanalysis is that it has to do with the mental dynamics of individuals, especially when they become dysfunctional. But Zizek's idea is that the individual is not the right 'level' for thinking about psychoanalysis. It's not that the individual gets sick and then a practitioner takes a look and proposes a diagnosis. Rather, psychoanalysis establishes norms of . . . normality and everyone gathers around to figure out what they're supposed to do -- conform, revolt, the whole matrix thing.

[Adam Kotsko]

It seems clear to me that if he had to choose a Christian denomination, he would be Roman Catholic -- in England.

[Jodi]

John, not quite--as Lacanian, he is concerned with language, with what can be expressed, is not expressed, disrupts expression, informs the fact that something is being expressed, etc. And, he is interested in the fantasies that cover over uncertainties and instabilities of meanings. Language and fantasy, then, are social, prior to the emergence of a subject. Or, the subject emerges in this context and comes to experience the world or reality of expression, its limits and seeming contradictions (how we can tell the truth in the mode of the lie: what are doing here? robbing your house? no, I mean, really?) as foreful and real. Psychotics don't experience the world of norms as real in this way. Zizek, emphasizing the later Lacan, says that psychoanalysis involves not helping the subject become normal but helping the subject grasp and accept that there is no overarching Other or Symbolic Order that guarantees everything. In a way, then, lacanian psychoanalysis might be thought of as the most demanding practice of freedom available.

and his avowed position is that of an aestheist.

...an aesthete atheist? no,no, this can't be.

[Jodi]

thanks for the catch--I've been reading Freud's Pathologies of Everyday Life (or something like that). For Freud, mistakes are rarely mistakes. So, is my 'mistake' really a way of saying that I don't take Zizek's atheism to be an actual atheism? That I think that it's an aesthetic move, a gesture, part of a performance? Or that I think what he really believes in is gesture, form, movement? Or, that he really believes in movies, popular culture, and cultivating an image/position for how it appears? In his reading of Hegel he emphasizes appearance over some kind of ontological movement of spirit--maybe this is the aesthetics in which Zizek really believes?

[Streeck]

The cover is good.