Silas Morgan - Lacan, Language and the Self - A Postmodern Vision of Spirituality

7/30/2019 Silas Morgan - Lacan, Language and the Self - A Postmodern Vision of Spirituality

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Lacan, Language and the self: A postmodern vision of spirituality

Silas M. Morgan

Abstract

Tracing the structural function of language in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, in hopes ofmining Jacques Lacans description of the Symbolic order as the primary location of religiousexperience and spiritual practices, I suggest that Lacans articulation of the unconscious asstructured like language elucidates the way that language works in the formation anddevelopment of the spiritual subjectivity of the self. The desires and drives of the human subjectare formed primarily by the unconscious relation of the subject through the Other. Applying thisto the spiritual practice of liturgy, I argue for a psychoanalytic reading of liturgy assublimation, while discussing spirituality as reenactment of fantastic desires for the Realthrough the Other the unconscious language foreign to the spiritual subject. This vision usesthe Lacanian emphasis on the Name-of-the-Father as the intruding outside figure of languagethat interrupts the relation between the subject and God and dissolves the self-deceiving image ofself found in the infantile Imaginary order. The obstacles that the subject experiences in spiritualrelations have primarily to do with an imprisonment by a language that is not ours the foreigndrives and desires of the unconscious Other. Liturgy as a radical gesture of retrieval seeks toovercome the illusion of fragmentary surfaces and deceiving images in the narcissisticimagination of the spiritual self.

Introduction

In this paper, I give attention to the way that Jacque Lacans turn to language in psychoanalysistransforms the notion of the spiritual self as operating primarily in a symbolic order. Thecharacterization of the spiritual relation as one that happens inside of, and is construed by,language prompts theologians and psychoanalysts alike to think about the spiritual dimensions ofliturgy as a spiritual form of sublimation. What does Lacans interest in structuring the relationaldynamics of the self by language mean for a postmodern spirituality that takes liturgy seriously?Examining the interdisciplinary space between psychoanalytic insights in the development of theself and a theological understanding of spirituality as a journey that strives after God/the Sacred,I argue that a postmodern psychoanalytic reading of liturgy binds together the symbolic(linguistic) order and the spiritual life. Lacan emerges as a resource that disturbs thecontemporary discourse on religious experience that renders God as the ultimate and absolute

other, leading to a theological account of the relation between language and spirituality thatcaptures Christian intuitions about the human desire to know and be known by God.

Lacan

The dynamic of interdisciplinary relations between psychoanalysis and spirituality doesntnecessarily seem the most promising. S. Freuds attitude regarding spirituality represents themodern resistance against religion as a neurotic repression a defensive opposition to reality inorder to maintain an infantile symbiotic dependence on maternal or paternal aspects andprinciples. Spirituality is then understood, as it is in many forms of the social sciences, as a


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repressive defense against sexual and/or other aggressive drives and desires, rather than part andparcel of the selfs subjectivity. Yet, the value of psychoanalysis for spirituality is the formersability to disorient the latter; psychoanalysis utilizes the belief that an interpretative moment canalter dysfunction and lead to at least partial satisfaction. (Crockett 2004, 11, 21) Classicalpsychoanalysis is primarily interested in discourse around the unconscious; Lacans uniquecontribution to psychoanalytic theory centers on his two major, famous axioms on the subject ofthe unconscious, the unconscious is the discourse of the Other (Lacan 1966, 16) and theunconscious is structured like a language. (Lacan [1955-56] 1993, 167) The unconsciousprovides the effect of speech in the other, but this speech is foreign it belongs to the Other; thisbecomes accessible when given words by the subject as the product of psychoanalytic therapy.

Why is the unconscious helpful to the relationship between psychoanalytic discourses andspirituality? Lacan attempts to locate Freuds interest in psychic structure inside the language ofthe analysands unconscious, pointing to the alterity of language to the self. (Lacan [1964] 1978,

131) For Lacan, psychoanalysis is the attempt to identify and interrogate this foreign discourseand its source by making sense of the system of signification going on inside the analysandsunconscious, particularly as it takes place in analytic therapy. (Lacan [1964] 1978, 149) Lacandismisses the idea that God is the foreign source of the unconscious; in true Freudian fashion, herenders God to be a fantasy and spirituality, the result of mythic illusion. (Lacan 1973, 32-22)The figure of God is synonymous with the trace of the Father that not only disrupts, but formsour dramatic knowledge and experience of the world, and becomes linked and formed in theeconomy of gratification, emptiness, loss and life; God then is dismissed as a product ofpowerful social myths that construct our own private psychotic desires for the symbolic Father,even as we know it is not actual. (Lacan 1986, 209) At first glance, it appears Lacan is simplyrepeating Freudian precepts for atheism: God is dead. Rather, Lacan offers instead a different

formula for atheism: God is unconscious. (Lacan 1973, 58) The progression of Lacanian logicunfolds: the unconscious is structured like a language. And like language, God escapes us,transverses us through transcendence, but appears dramatically in dreams and desires that formunconscious speech. (Jacobs and Capps 1997, 227) For Lacan, God is not dead, but rather is thedisruptive, but primordial signifier who creates the linguistic space that effectively breaks apartthe Real into language, which as the system of signification becomes the subjects discourse andthe substantive structure of the unconscious. (Lacan [1964] 1978, 188)

Following the Freudian concern for infancy, Lacans imaginary order represents an infantile pre-linguistic state where the infant perceives itself in complete unity, where the ego andunconscious are merged by the intimate relation between the bodies of infant and the mother.

(Wyschogrod and Crownfield 1989, 81) The figure of the mother provides satisfaction, pleasure,fulfillment and well being that eliminates pain and protects against loss. In the moment of self-representation mediated to the infant through the reflection in the mirror, the child becomesirrevocably narcissistic through its self-perception of its (falsely) constructed identity in themirror image. The baby makes an imaginary and delusional identification with the image of themirror, resulting in an erred distortion, and a symbolic miscommunication. (Gallop 1985, 46)The mirror images fail to capture the unconscious that houses the drives and desires that work tofragment the childs self. Namely the mirror lies; it provides for the child an illusionary fiction, afantasy. The subjects ego is formed by this amalgamation of distorted mirror images, resultingin the alienation of subjectivity that leads to the child becoming an other to itself, identifying


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instead with the desire felt by the maternal body. (Wyschogrod and Crownfield 1989, 28)Locating the self-image in the Others desire for the child, it succeeds in deepening the deceptionof unity that only implodes via the alienating fleetingness of signification. (Lacan 1977: 1-7)

The advent of symbolic language commences a dynamic of alienation and separation that givesrise to the being of the self and the formation of the subjects relation to the Other. (Fink 1995,49) Lacan uses the symbolic order as the way to demonstrate how symbolic relations render,order and organize social, political and religious life. Language interrupts the illusionary fictionof imaginary images and surfaces, and complicates the fantasy of completeness and perfectionthrough the display of gaps in signs, and the inexplicable void that exists in language: the lack ofthe Real. (Lacan [1964] 1978, 25) The work of language is to generate and sustain thisimaginary, yet inchoate signifier; while continuing the cynical Freudian concern that thesubstance of these images are only fantasy, Lacan tries to uncover the figure that exists inbetween the gaps of the human persons lived experience with God. (Fink 1995, 57) The

subjects unconscious is fractured by the lack of consistency and coherence that characterizes thepersons lived experience in the world. This results in an imbedded code of fractured signs thatserves as a disjunctive force that shape a persons (religious) optics. (Crockett 2007, 57) Thesubject comes to realize through the process of signification that it is bound to the void createdby language, this void being namely the desire of the Other for the subject. (Lacan 1977; 312)

Lacans 1955-56 seminar, the Psychoses introduces the Name of the Father, a symbolic functionand metaphor that mediates language to the subject. Introducing the subject to the chain ofsignifiers that is the symbolic order, it negates the imaginary fantasy of the child through theOedipal prohibition. (Lacan [1955-56] 1993) Lacan switches between le nom du pre, and le nondu pre to emphasis the way this moniker as paternal metaphor possesses both legislative and

prohibitive function; it gives the subject a name while constituting its desires and positioninginside the Symbolic order. For Lacan, the Name of the Father presents the paternal function; itis the name of symbolic figures that intrude into the child/mother dyad writ large metaphorically.(Lacan 1956-57) It represents the wider social network that inserts the subject into a worldobstructed and confused by symbolic meaning; but it also is that primordial signifier upon whichall signification depends. And so it interrupts not to occlude, but rather to institute and name thesubject. The subject struggles against this intrusion, clinging to the illusionary fantasy ofnarcissistic self-idealism. (Fink 1995, 12, 57)

For Lacan, the subjects religious experience is symbolic (linguistically significant) of a hiddenreality that is outside objectification, a veiled truth that is mediated to the subject via the desire of

the Other, namely the discourse of the unconscious, which for Lacan, is this Others speech. Theunconscious conditions the subjects experience of the Real through the symbolic. The name ofthe Father is the symbolic force that cancels out the real and neutralizes the Others desire; whilelanguage works to protect the child for its own narcissist idealism, the name of the Fatheractivates the incursion of the Others desire, resulting in the split and divided subject. (Crockett2007, 57) The origin (the real) of the subject is unavailable as it is caught behind the imaginaryand symbolic. (Sarup 1992, 104)

It is here that spirituality and Lacanian psychoanalysis converge: both try to make sense of theselfs experience of traversing between the imaginary and symbolic. While spirituality, operating


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with an awareness of its provisionality and indirection, provides substance to the gaps andfragments of the religious struggle, psychoanalytic science acknowledges that there exists ahidden field and dimension of experiences and happenings that belong to an otherness of reality,a foreign discourse that while related to us, always escapes our knowledge. Lacans radicalrelocation of fundamental human problems, which are, for him, rooted in an analysis of desire(Wyschogrod and Crownfield 1989, 3), namely the desire of an Other, uttered through thesubjects unconscious (which is a foreign discourse) has sincere implications on the subjectsrelation to God, primarily because Lacan places ethical importance on breaking the narcissisticmirror, in order to reach the symbolic the truth. Spiritual desire to know and love God seeks todiscover the truth about God, and yet the impossibility of this identity is hidden behind thesystems of deferral and absence. Quoting Lacan: the reality of the unconscious is not anambiguity of acts, future knowledge that is already known not to be known, but lacuna, cut,rupture inscribed in a certain lack. (Lacan [1964] 1993, 158) This lack is the desire in the otherthat which the subject self identifies. This lack produces the desire in the subject of the other it

is namely a drive to know oneself. Arguably, this is spirituality the desire to know God or theSacred, but to also know oneself fully and completely.

Liturgy

The application to a Christian spirituality of liturgy should be clear at this juncture; liturgy islanguage; it is mediation of a hidden reality represented through symbolic gestures of theologicaland historical significance. It exists as a coded pattern of rhythmic signs that reflect the grammarof the faith - the story of Christian imagination about creation, redemption and the future. Itsreflects back to the gathered Christian community, offering an image of itself before God wrapped in covenantal love that transcends its misdirection and error. The name of the Father

interrupts liturgical language, sacramental patterns and doxological codes in order to dismantlethe mirrored world of imaginary self-projection. This interrupts the participants veiled andfantastical vision of the selfs imaginary relation to the world and instead offers through itsname, a law that helps give speech to what was before ineffable: namely desire. This is no longera pathologically delusional desire built on psychotic fantasy, but rather the truth - unmasterable,indeterminate and wordless as it may be.

This opens up the creative space to think about spiritual desire differently. Desire seeks ultimatesatisfaction as the elimination of need as need. Once it is given linguistic structure, desireexperiences detours and is undone by vicissitudes that represent deviations from immediatesatisfaction (Lacan [1964] 1978, 165).Does language mediate every drive in such a way thatprevents speaking of satisfaction, but rather only detours? Christian spirituality speaks of theradical ways contradictory forces on the human person disrupt the spiritual relation to God andthus subterfuge the most sincere of relational intentions. In Lacanian perspective, to understandliturgy (and also, sacramentality and prayer) as linguistic systems is to be left with a clearlylimited and fragmented medium with unexplainable gaps and novel innovations that exist inbetween the inter(textual) space of signifier and signifier. If the spiritual drive is to be consideredpart of the unconscious desire for an experience of something extra-linguistic that is beyond-the-real, psychoanalytic theory challenges this notion based on the contention that we cant speakabout drives that experience satisfaction due to linguistic detours that mediate and restrictfulfillment. Satisfaction of the spiritual drive to know and love God will not be fulfilled, but


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rather only frustrated by the disruptive nature of language. Insofar as liturgy is understood be acentral vehicle for the humans relation to God or the Sacred, liturgy becomes eitherproblematized as a symbolic system that perpetuates narcissistic fantasy through sublimation orit functions as the paternal metaphor that breaks into the subjects spiritual desire, interruptingthe false illusionary images of erred deception.

The first option: to think psychoanalytically about spirituality in a Lacanian perspective is toaddress liturgy as sublimation. Sublimation is a vicissitude; as a defensive mechanism, itaccomplishes only partial fulfillment of drives while pointing to the impossibility of completesatisfaction. Understanding the spiritual function of liturgy as a form of sublimation betterexplains the dynamics of spiritual desire. Spiritual desire takes the form of psychic repetitionsthat channel complex desires for life, happiness, and peace; it also becomes an avenue in whichto express the human desire to transcend oneself. In this way, spirituality is understood as aproductive form of repression. It channels the complex ways analysands manage experiences that

threaten a subjects well being or health. (Crockett 2007) The indeterminacy of the foreign Otherwhose discourse is located in the subjects unconscious is unbearable for the worshipper. Therector uses the liturgy to redirect the unconscious to better address the discourse that is foreign tothe subject and yet intimately and radical present inside her. Liturgy understood as sublimationserves as a redirecting correction to the primary desire to love and know God. It provides whatpsychoanalytic theory cannot: a concrete, transformative connection to a narrative matrix thatgives meaning to the cacophony of the human persons experience. (Jones 1991)

The second option: the obstacles that the subject experiences in spiritual relations have primarilyto do with an imprisonment by a language that is not its own the foreign drives and desires ofthe unconscious Other. Liturgy works as a form ofle nom du pre - a radical gesture of retrieval

that seeks to overcome the illusion of fragmentary surfaces and deceiving images in thenarcissistic imagination of the spiritual self by refusing to ignore the split subject or the fantasticclinging to the Others desire. A psychoanalytic reading of liturgy binds together the symbolic(linguistic) order and the spiritual life in such as way that fantasy gets crossed over ortransversed. Lacan disturbs the contemporary discourse on religious experience that renders Godas the ultimate and absolute other, instead creating space in which to understand the relationbetween language and spirituality that captures the spiritual desire to know and be known byGod. Namely this relation is an interpersonal struggle; a detoured and frustrated dynamic thattries to escape the proclivity towards narcissistic self idealism. Yet, it is the Name of the Fatherthat interrupts this dynamic, forcing a split between the subject and the objects of her spiritualcomfort (Lacan 1955 [1993). The fantastic clinging to the Others desire for us ignores division

in favor of a deception that only succeeds in fooling the subject into believing that she ispositioned as the others desire the imagined mirror image. It tries to resurrect what was beforethe symbolic: the Eden-like illusion of wholeness, completeness and well being that only existsthe subjects fantasy.

A Psychoanalytic Vision of Postmodern Spirituality


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How can psychoanalytic science help inform a postmodern spirituality? The return to Freudianunconscious offered by Lacans linguistic framing of psychoanalytic theory shapes the contoursof spirituality that is namely the desire for God. Lacanian psychoanalysis interrogates theunconscious as a language, traversing its repressive gaps, fragmentary surfaces and pathologicalimages in search for a text - a discourse that is the Other. It is my belief that Lacan gives us aglimpse of the language of postmodern spirituality by helping us understand liturgy as an attemptto narrate the subject out of fantasy by retelling a delusional story that has been overtaken by themadness of religion.

The adventure of a postmodern spirituality recognizes that any object of religious longing is theImpossible: the real that was before the symbolic. To be spiritual is to be caught in an internaldeception of language that promises restlessness while offering only the chance to be on the Waytowards the Something that captivates our imagination but disappears in the whispers of ourhearts uneven missteps. A Lacanian spirituality pursues the beyond-the-real of transcendence

into the reality of the Other that is eternally disrupted by linguistic sublimation. It is thisdisturbing space that interrupts our fantasies and exposes our spiritual subjectivities to the truththat is eerily haunting our spiritual desires are mediated to us by symbols, namely liturgicallanguage. Lacanian emphasis on the Name-of-the-Father is the intruding outside figure oflanguage that interrupts the relation between the subject and God, dissolving the self-deceivingimage of self, found in the infantile Imaginary order. The obstacles that the subject experiencesin spiritual relations have primarily to do with an imprisonment by a language that is not ours the foreign drives and desires of the unconscious Other. Liturgy as a radical gesture of retrievalseeks to overcome the illusion of fragmentary surfaces and deceiving images in the narcissisticimagination of the spiritual self, offering instead a chastened hope of truth, trapped somewhere inthe whispers of the yet unspoken.

Reference List

Benvenuto, Bice, Roger Kennedy, and Jacques Lacan. 1986. The works of Jacques Lacan:an introduction. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Crockett, Clayton. 2007. Interstices of the sublime: theology and psychoanalytic theory.New York: Fordham University Press.

Fink, Bruce. 1995. The Lacanian subject: between language and jouissance. Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press.

Gallop, Jane. 1985. Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.


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Jacobs, Janet Liebman, and Donald Capps. 1997. Religion, society, and psychoanalysis:readings in contemporary theory. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press.

Jones, James William. 1991. Contemporary psychoanalysis and religion: transference andtranscendence. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Lacan, Jacques. 1966. crits. Paris: Seuil

Lacan, Jacques, and Anthony Wilden. 1973. The language of the self: the function oflanguage in psychoanalysis. Baltimore [u.a.]: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.

Lacan, Jacques, and Jacques-Alain Miller. 1994. La Relation d'objet: 1956-1957. Champfreudien. Paris: Editions du Seuil

Lacan, Jacques, Jacques-Alain Miller, and Russell Grigg. 1993. The psychoses. London:Routledge.

Lacan, Jacques. 1977. crits: a selection. New York: Norton.

Lacan, Jacques. 1978. The four fundamental concepts of psycho-analysis. New York:Norton.

Sarup, Madan. 1992. Jacques Lacan. Modern cultural theorists. Toronto: University ofToronto Press.

Wyschogrod, Edith, David Crownfield, and Carl A. Raschke. 1989. Lacan and theologicaldiscourse. SUNY series in philosophy. Albany: State University of New York Press.

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Silas Morgan - Lacan, Language and the Self - A Postmodern Vision of Spirituality

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