What does Lacan mean by the negative? Mind you, I'm new to his thought (im at page 270 of his Ecrits), and I would love if you guided me...
Im trying to get into Lacan’s work. I know it’s such a heavy task that’s gonna take time and patience. And the many references to literature and older cases of freud and such don’t make it any easier. Not mentioning the technical terms he employs. I tried to read les écrits, of crs i couldn’t. I turned into reading james joyce ulysses, and judge shreber memoirs. Along side, i want some good videos on youtube explaining Lacan’s seminars. And im not talking about explaining Lacan in simple terms in 9 minutes. Any suggestions or advice?
I haven’t read Lacan’s seminars yet, but for now I’ve read books on Lacan’s thought. What strikes me deeply—and what I find absolutely pertinent—is that Lacan places somatic delusion at the center of schizophrenia, placing specific emphasis on the body. I find this pertinent because I have, in fact, known people with schizophrenia for whom the body was indeed the site of the most terrifying suffering. Not just fragmentation, but invasion, movements, co-sensory disturbances, “too much skin,” bodies being punched, bodies that don’t belong, bodies without boundaries, bodies felt to be deformed, bodies in excess—and I could go on. Yet, in the classic definitions of schizophrenia, (in psychiatry but in other psychoanalitic schools) very little is said about somatic delusions in favor of visual or auditory hallucinations. Why, in your opinion?
How do Lacanians conceptualize this type of experience? And is there a tendency to think of these experiences as part of the psychotic structure?
I don’t mean that these experiences only happen to persons who can be thought of as fitting in the psychotic structure, but more that these types of experiences are often common in people with a psychotic structure, or maybe are very related to this structure.
I am talking about depersonalization, where the person expresses the feeling of being distant from their own body, feeling the body as an external object, or something to which they are attached, perhaps feeling the body as something alien to them, etc.
And derealization, where the person feels the external world (other people, and whatever they see) seems to be perceived through a lens of uncanniness. The external world can feel flat, almost dreamy, distant, unreal, inaccessible, strange, etc.
I’m not interested in dissociative amnesia.
Also, not including these experiences as delusions or psychotic in the mainstream psychiatric sense.
And, more importantly, when these experiences seem to have crystallized in the subject, meaning not being occasional experiences, but rather the person experiences this type of phenomenon persistently.
Open to hearing your thoughts and also wanting to see if there is some literature on this.
Thanks.
Irrelevant of his atheism, has he ever commented on the ontological/metaphysical implications of reality? Was he an agnostic? I know he was interested in some transcendental experiences for they revealed special modes of jouissance
Apart from Seminar VII, does Lacan go in depth on the Greek Tragedy in any of his other seminars?
I'm also looking for good secondary sources on Lacan's theories of the Greek Tragedy, so if anyone has any recommendations to share, I'd greatly appreciate it.
I have a friend of mine who knows some stuff about psychoanalysis, but as far as I’m aware, she knows very little. I want to find a good text or source for her to read as an introduction, something even simpler than Bruce Fink’s work for example. If anyone has recommendations, please let me know. Also, she is a native Spanish speaker, so Spanish content would be ideal.
The It's Not Just In Your Head reading group of the Lefty Book Club is just about to start reading Lacan and Deleuze A Disjunctive Synthesis. This is an anthology of various writers who are trying to put Lacan and Deleuze in conversation. Alenka Zupančič, Adrian Johnston and Peter Klepec are some of the contributors. We have just finished a few books in the Lacanian world and comparisons between this world and the Deleuzian world have been coming up, so we are diving right into work that explores this! The Lefty Book Club is a collective of reading groups with the goal making difficult texts accessible. We welcome people of all levels to come work through this text with us. If you're interested, sign up on our website leftybookclub.org to get access to the zoom meetings. Everyone is welcome! This is totally free to participate in!
We meet Tuesdays @ 8:30pm EDT, (Wednesdays 00:30 UTC).