Ode to perversion
Report of the Saturday of the NLS,
18 January 2014
18 January 2014
by Abe
Geldhof
Geldhof
On January 18th 2014, Hervé Castanet, professor and psychoanalyst in Marseille, was our
guest in the ‘Kring voor Psychoanalyse’ on the ‘Saturday of the NLS’. His
lecture was entitled The Oedipus doesn’t say everything about
desire. He started with the
personal note that he already read the sixth seminar of Lacan thirty years
before the official publication. When Jacques-Alain Miller isolated a quote on
account of this publication, there was thrown a new daylight on the whole
seminar in retrospect. Lacan namely deconstructs there what he had been
elaborating in his earlier seminars. In the last chapter he says: “It is in
this sense that we can qualify what is produced as perversion, as the
reflection of the protest at the level of the logical subject against what the
subject undergoes at the level of identification, in so far as identification
is the relationship which establishes and commands the norms of the social
stabilization of different functions” (Lacan, 1958-1959: 569, own translation).
The lecture of Castanet was in fact a rigorous comment of this quote.
guest in the ‘Kring voor Psychoanalyse’ on the ‘Saturday of the NLS’. His
lecture was entitled The Oedipus doesn’t say everything about
desire. He started with the
personal note that he already read the sixth seminar of Lacan thirty years
before the official publication. When Jacques-Alain Miller isolated a quote on
account of this publication, there was thrown a new daylight on the whole
seminar in retrospect. Lacan namely deconstructs there what he had been
elaborating in his earlier seminars. In the last chapter he says: “It is in
this sense that we can qualify what is produced as perversion, as the
reflection of the protest at the level of the logical subject against what the
subject undergoes at the level of identification, in so far as identification
is the relationship which establishes and commands the norms of the social
stabilization of different functions” (Lacan, 1958-1959: 569, own translation).
The lecture of Castanet was in fact a rigorous comment of this quote.
And this quote is an important one! Those who
followed the recent debates in France concerning gay marriage and those who remarked how
psychoanalysis has been misused in these debates, will be warned immediately. Psychoanalysis
has been used by some who wanted to reject homosexuality as a perversion. This
is nonetheless absolutely incompatible with the Lacanian point of view. In such
a use of psychoanalysis the father is considered as a guarantee that anchors the
semblances of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in a biblical relation. Seen in this way,
homosexuality doesn’t confirm established ideals and would “thus” be a
perversion. This is not the opinion of Lacanian psychoanalysis.
followed the recent debates in France concerning gay marriage and those who remarked how
psychoanalysis has been misused in these debates, will be warned immediately. Psychoanalysis
has been used by some who wanted to reject homosexuality as a perversion. This
is nonetheless absolutely incompatible with the Lacanian point of view. In such
a use of psychoanalysis the father is considered as a guarantee that anchors the
semblances of ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in a biblical relation. Seen in this way,
homosexuality doesn’t confirm established ideals and would “thus” be a
perversion. This is not the opinion of Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Nevertheless
a
reading of Lacan’s early Seminars III, IV and V could mislead us
concerning the
status of desire. There he still asserts that so there could be desire,
there
is a need of the law, the father, the structure, the Oedipus complex. He
often
quotes in this context the letters to the Romans in which St. Paul
judges that
the moral law makes sin only more sinful. The law plays in fact in the
hands of
sin because it spurs on desire to it even more. Desire is so to speak
only
possible when the third phase of the Oedipus complex has been passed
through
giving the subject the certificate of “neurotic”. Lacan had already
taken the
step to unlink desire from the Freudian mythology and from the normative
ideal
of complete genital love. Against Maurice Bouvet he didn’t believe that
the
partial drives are bundled in one genital drive targeting one object. In
opposition
to Melanie Klein her dual conception of the relation between mother and
child,
he put forward a structure with four elements. The phallus is necessary
as a
mediating term between mother and child and it is the figure of the
father that
puts the phallus at its place. This is our dogma, stressed Castanet, but
it
remains a dogma and as such it has to be questioned incessantly.
Starting from
the sixth Seminar we can say that desire was before that considered as
an
imaginary quantity. The Oedipus complex and perversion were facing each
other.
The consequence is that homosexuality could be considered as an
unachieved Oedipus complex and that only neurotics (in the orthodox
meaning) could become
analyst.
a
reading of Lacan’s early Seminars III, IV and V could mislead us
concerning the
status of desire. There he still asserts that so there could be desire,
there
is a need of the law, the father, the structure, the Oedipus complex. He
often
quotes in this context the letters to the Romans in which St. Paul
judges that
the moral law makes sin only more sinful. The law plays in fact in the
hands of
sin because it spurs on desire to it even more. Desire is so to speak
only
possible when the third phase of the Oedipus complex has been passed
through
giving the subject the certificate of “neurotic”. Lacan had already
taken the
step to unlink desire from the Freudian mythology and from the normative
ideal
of complete genital love. Against Maurice Bouvet he didn’t believe that
the
partial drives are bundled in one genital drive targeting one object. In
opposition
to Melanie Klein her dual conception of the relation between mother and
child,
he put forward a structure with four elements. The phallus is necessary
as a
mediating term between mother and child and it is the figure of the
father that
puts the phallus at its place. This is our dogma, stressed Castanet, but
it
remains a dogma and as such it has to be questioned incessantly.
Starting from
the sixth Seminar we can say that desire was before that considered as
an
imaginary quantity. The Oedipus complex and perversion were facing each
other.
The consequence is that homosexuality could be considered as an
unachieved Oedipus complex and that only neurotics (in the orthodox
meaning) could become
analyst.
The sixth Seminar of Lacan is a major step forward
to this. Now perversion is considered as a protest! And in this context it
provokes Lacan’s sympathy. Perversion doesn’t accept what the Other drivels. It
is a disagreement with imposed identifications to the social order that makes
the subject dumb. When Lacan takes in this point of view, he leaves the
structuralism that is like Lévi-Strauss searching for the elementary structures
of kinship or like Durkheim researching rules of Patriarchate. With the
perversion Lacan introduces a split with regard to the structure. The sixth
Seminar can therefore be seen as an important moment: it is the Seminar of the
non-existence of the sexual relation.
to this. Now perversion is considered as a protest! And in this context it
provokes Lacan’s sympathy. Perversion doesn’t accept what the Other drivels. It
is a disagreement with imposed identifications to the social order that makes
the subject dumb. When Lacan takes in this point of view, he leaves the
structuralism that is like Lévi-Strauss searching for the elementary structures
of kinship or like Durkheim researching rules of Patriarchate. With the
perversion Lacan introduces a split with regard to the structure. The sixth
Seminar can therefore be seen as an important moment: it is the Seminar of the
non-existence of the sexual relation.
In a certain sense Lacan is thus paying homage to
perversion. This ode concerns especially the point at which a speaking being
accepts its most intimate relation to its own body. Nonetheless we can always
perceive a double movement in Lacan’s opinion on perversion. After the initial
ode there also comes a disregard to perversion. In his Seminar XXI on Les non-dupes errent Lacan for example states that
masochism is a sham. “Le
masochisme c’est du chiqué”. Lacan is indeed much more resolute in his ode to
psychosis. Among other things he praises psychosis because of its rigor. In this
sense Lacan pays only homage to perversion insofar as it denudes and challenges
desire.
perversion. This ode concerns especially the point at which a speaking being
accepts its most intimate relation to its own body. Nonetheless we can always
perceive a double movement in Lacan’s opinion on perversion. After the initial
ode there also comes a disregard to perversion. In his Seminar XXI on Les non-dupes errent Lacan for example states that
masochism is a sham. “Le
masochisme c’est du chiqué”. Lacan is indeed much more resolute in his ode to
psychosis. Among other things he praises psychosis because of its rigor. In this
sense Lacan pays only homage to perversion insofar as it denudes and challenges
desire.
After this theoretical lecture Castanet gave an
account on a case in his own practice that has a direct link to what preceded.
account on a case in his own practice that has a direct link to what preceded.
