The Cumming Insurrection Part 2: Confronting Analysis
How could you expect him to give any answer other than that psychoanalysis is contemptible?
Part 1: The Role of Analysis
I’ve spent my entire career denouncing analysts
- Jacques Lacan
Do we need analysts? A simple yet important question as a field constantly under attack psychoanalysis has to be defended. The question whether we need analysts was already answered not by Freud when he created psychoanalysis, but by Plato in his defence of philosophers.
In Rival Lovers, Socrates ends up discussing whether philosophers are worthless indeed, confronting similar arguments still held up today to disparage philosophy. One of the lovers is a wrestler and finds little value in philosophy, the other who’s a polymath specialising in the humanities presents the idea that philosophers ought to specialise in everything. “Everything” blurs in metaphor between subjects of the humanities and labour skills such as architecture. Socrates however is able to pick apart this conception of philosophy very easily. The philosopher who specialises in everything is like the pentathlete - competing against wrestlers and runners they will lose - competing against other non-specialised athletes they still have a chance at winning.1 If philosophy is then not about the mastery or knowledge of everything, it may appear useless. If you need to build a house, you’d turn to an architect or a builder and not a philosopher. If you need food, you’d turn to a farmer and not a philosopher. The group in Rival Lovers then conclude so long as there are tradesmen - which there always will be - the philosopher is useless.2 Socrates then says to the group that philosophy cannot busy itself with learning many skills, philosophy is closer to the theoretical framework which allows oneself to distinguish between good and bad people - to have the cognitive function to know thyself.3 “If you were a horse, and you didn’t know what made a good horse or a bad horse then you wouldn’t know what kind of horse you are yourself.”4 The same applies to people, someone who doesn’t know what makes a good person or a bad person cannot know thyself.5 Therefore philosophy is useful because it allows the subject to begin to know thyself even without mastering all the skills of the world. Whilst labourers are useful to society with what they produce, philosophers are useful to society with what they teach.
Like Lacan, Socrates spends his entire life denouncing those within his field - the sophists. Yet he doesn’t attack philosophy itself, philosophy is still good even if it is perverted by those purporting to be its confessors. Lacan similarly breaks with the IPA and creates his own school of analysis not too dissimilar from Plato and the academy. No matter how terrible the philosophers of a specific society are, philosophy itself will still be useful. The sophists were the self-help authors of their day, or more accurately self-help authors are the sophists of our day. Self-help - especially through bargain bin books and weekend seminars - is supposed to replace psychoanalysis, even if not intentionally. Psychoanalysis was already in decline a few years after Freud’s death. The second generation were doing ego-psychology and Freudo-Marxism amongst other distortions. Eduard Bernays was continuing to make it big in America. Jung was still alive. In the 1950s, B.F Skinner would begin to formulate behaviourism, which would mostly end psychoanalysis’ influence on America outside of advertising and Marcuse. It was only beginning to emerge, and psychoanalysis was already on the decline.
When Freud arrived in America he turned to his student Jung and reportedly said, “They don't realise we're bringing them the plague.”6 America as the great libidinized signifier is adverse to psychoanalysis because with psychoanalysis you’re no longer mandated to enjoy. America on the other hand is entirely defined by a culture of enjoyment. Freud arriving in America is as if he is coming to tear the enjoyment containment system apart. It's why when psychoanalysis began properly in America with Anna Freud and the Ego Psychologists it was not the same radical teaching Freud brought with him. If Freud brought the plague, then Anna Freud brought the medicine. Eventually, psychoanalysis would all but die in America. Plato, in Athens (or more specifically Socrates) is bringing the Greeks the plague. There had been philosophy before Socrates, of course - hence the pre-Socratics - but with Socrates the whole point is to tear the whole philosophic system apart. With the Sophists who dominated “philosophy” at the time any real philosophy was left empty and then along came Socrates to bring them the plague. Clearly it was somewhat successful as everyone remembers Socrates and Plato whilst no one outside of philosophy thinks about Protagoras or Thrasymachus. And famously, the people of Athens put Socrates to death for “corrupting the youth.” Socrates’ provocation is that the people who think they know actually know not. Importantly, these aren’t just guys on the street - at least not entirely - but people who place themselves above the rest as the ones who know. Sophists or Politicians or Aristocrats. Everyone is revealed to have no idea what’s going on, Socrates shows that they’re all tincy tiny men in tincy wincy little bubbles. To abstract a broader point then, true philosophy sets itself up opposed to society - where society says there are simple truths about the world, the law is the law etc, philosophy goes deeper, there is a necessary assumption when doing philosophy that most people are wrong. Philosophy degrees are only deemed as worthless because they do not produce a skill set that is immediately 1:1 applicable with a standard workplace. Any defence of learning philosophy however should not cede this ground with the defence that it actually can be “useful” because of the “skills” you learn like “critical thinking.” But as Heidegger would tell us, “we are still not thinking.”7 And it is thinking that does not take place at work. The Sophists were the once that tried to think for money, and even philosophy professors are limited in their thinking. Where Socrates goes right is that he never has ideas, he only ever questions the other in order to first break down and destroy the ideas. Only once we no longer think we know can we begin to think. This is sort of how the big Other operates with the subject’s beliefs that the subject can defer their knowledge on to the big Other so that it thinks for them. In ‘How to Read Lacan’ Zizek uses three easy examples: Communism, Nation, Freedom.8 Once the big Other is reified into a single substance thought becomes easier as it is deferred onto the big Other and allows us not to think any more. This phenomenon is very prevalent in online philosophy or “theory” spaces where thought is mediated by a chosen theorist, any thought or opinion has to go through the chosen theorist. “What do you think about X?” “Well Deleuze says…” Here Deleuze could be any philosopher. Thinking is not occurring here, and neither is philosophy. If philosophy simply becomes the rearticulation of another philosopher’s ideas through me, then philosophy will end. The point of Rival Lovers is to prevent this, the conflict between pure ‘thinker’ vs bodybuilder (the anti-thinker) is not entirely resolved they do however recognise that the definition presented by the ‘thinker’ (who actually uses the definition of a different philosopher) is wrong.9 Socrates does not tell us what to think simply that we must think. The judge says what is right or wrong only because of his symbolic relationship to the law, the judge does not have to think. If it was contemptible for the philosopher to comment on the law because he is not a judge, then the law would go unchallenged, and we would not know what the law was. The law would simply be the law. The philosopher then is useful because he is the only one able to get us to think, without philosophers we would not be thinking. Analysts, then, hold the same importance. Psychoanalysis can’t cure you, it is not a Lebensphilosophie that will allow you to dominate the irrational drives in order for the rational self to flourish etc. Rather, its clinical role is to get the subject to confront the deadlocks of their desire. Because of this, psychoanalysis remains contemptible, it does not allow the subject to get on with their life or free their desires in a political revolution. It’s the philosophers however that reorient psychoanalysis towards a political praxis, from Marcuse, to Deleuze and Guattari to Zizek. Psychoanalysis teaches us who we are and how to confront it. The discontent of the subject’s desires will still be there after analysis. To escape from the utopian view of the rescued subject is the role of psychoanalysis.
Part 2: The Conflict of Desire
Moving on from Rival Lovers to Euthyphro, we can now recognise the conflict and inevitable deadlock of desire. If anyone has had to read Euthyphro for a philosophy class it’ll likely be taught in a very particular way, focusing on the dilemma Socrates confronts his interlocutor with. “Is the pious being loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is being loved by the gods?”10 Importantly its “gods”, plural, the point being that there are many gods who have many views on ‘what is good?’ This then presents a challenge for the pious because they would have to know which god is correct. Hence, the question whether being loved by the gods is pious because it is pious, or if pious is pious because it is loved by the gods. In order to be pious one must know which is correct, whether they’re already pious or only become pious once loved by the gods. If the gods love many things, then am I pious because I’m loved for my piety, or am I only pious because I’m loved by the gods? The problem here is that the pious subject does not know the answer, and neither does Socrates. But he does come close to an answer in the dialogue, using affection as the explainer. An object is affected because it is being affected not because it is an affected object, Socrates says.11 Bringing it back to love then, something is loved because it is being loved not because it is something loved.12 This doesn’t complete the problem of Euthyphro, but it does give us insight into the subject’s role in desiring. Desire is not already there in the object, it has to be invested by the subject. Although the dilemma still presents to the subject in the form of “do I really love this/them.” “Is the object being loved by me because I love it, or is it loved because it is being loved by me.” The mark of the signifier that creates the subject’s symbolic identity is inevitably confronted by the subject, asking whether it truly is me. This is the conflict of desire. Never truly knowing whether you desire something or whether you have a bad symptom. This conflict is what creates the subject in trying to find their true self, they simply fall back into the deadlock of desire.
To desire through discontent is what it means to be the subject. So long as there is desire, there will be discontent from the subject’s inability to ever end their desiring process. The subject is the reference point because it does not have any predisposed substance in language unlike man or woman, and as Lacan says “Man is no longer so sure a reference point.”13
Plato, ‘Rival Lovers’ in (ed.) John M. Cooper, Plato: Complete Works (Indiana: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997), p.622
ibid., p.623
ibid., p.624
ibid., p.625
ibid
Jacques Lacan, Ecrits (USA: Norton & Company: 2006), p.336
Martin Heidegger, ‘What Calls for Thinking?’ in (ed.) David Farrell Krell, Heidegger Basic Writings (Oxon: Routledge, 2011), p.262
Slavoj Žižek, How to read Lacan (London UK: Granta Books, 2006) p.9
Plato, rival lovers, 626
Plato, Euthyphro, 9
ibid., p.10
ibid.
Lacan, Ecrits, p.3
One of the best things I've had the pleasure of reading recently! A great question and inquiry which takes us through the history of philosophy - full of Substance, and Style. I found parts of this to be incredibly insightful and also funny, I don't know if humour was an intention or if I simply enjoyed reading it so much that I couldn't help but laugh at how good an essay in continental philosophy could be - especially in something where the title has the word "cumming" in it
Your recent Biopolitics text had got all three of us from the Negative Maps gang writing a long piece on Post-Humanism, you inspire us both stylistically and philosophically, each piece from your collection of writings has been a joy, I cannot wait for more!
Absolutely amazing content, always look forward to reading your work! 🔥🔥🔥