Can someone into psychoanalysis actually explain what Lacan's Ontology is?

Okay, but I want to know..
how the hell does he defend his ideas? Why does he pursue them the way he does, under what justifications? Pigs like Ayn Rand wrote long ass treaties and essays on how their system is built.

I always hear about "The Mirror Stage" and the Real, all the Lacanian concepts, but I've never heard a single explanation from lacanians how they like, really logically construct these ideas or prove them at all. I'd like to know the actual basis before I start parroting something and go "It just works."

user above is not entirely wrong to mention the real and the symbolic as the crux of at least earlymid-midlate Lacan's "ontology". First of all, unlike Zizek, Lacan didn't consider himself a philosopher (until very late in his life... maybe) and he saw the philosophy of ontology as 'presumptuous.' This naturally leads one to think he's some Kantian sort of 'the real=noumena' sort, but he doesn't accept that. The 'real' can't be formulated symbolically so evades a symbolic totalising or satisfyingly rational philosophic account. To then formulate what the real 'could be' in a philosophical project--to align it with whatever pre-existing philosophy one deems most suitable--is already to come in too late in the game.

EXPLAIN LACAN TO ME OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU! DON'T DUMB IT DOWN INTO SOME VAGUE SHIT! EXPLAIN LACAN TO ME RIGHT NOW OR I'LL LITERALLY FUCKING KILL YOu! WHAT THE FUCK IS A SIGNIFIER? WHAT THE FUCK IS THE PETIT OBJET A? DON'T DUMB IT DOWN OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU

Lacan bases his ideas off of clinical praxis so "it just works" isn't a bad answer but his theories are built on those mentioned in

Have you ever read the mirror stage?

I can sum up the basics with a layman's knowledge. What part of Lacan do you want to know user?

Ya. It's an interesting interpretation of incompleteness.
You forget the imaginary and in some ways he is more Kantian than Kant.

What do you mean by "Read?"
I've gotten thru the skimmings of Ecrits, I know the basic ideas out of diapers like how the mirror stage works. I feel there's something deeper to it but is somewhat divided on that conclusion.

Signifier is the word. Signified is the thing referenced. Like Bruce Lee talks about in Enter the Dragon; the finger is the signifier, the moon is the signified. Lacan points out the way the relationship between these two constantly slips and stumbles. Objet petit a is the object of desire which is an illusion insofar as it can never be attained. Desire desires only desiring.

WHAT DOES SEXUATION MEAN?
WHAT THE FUCK DO HIS FORMULAS INDICATE?
WHY DOES HE SAY BEING A BOY OR GIRL IS A FORMULA PROCEEDED BY SYMBOLS/LOGIC INSTEAD OF BIOLOGY?

WHAT THE FUCK DOES HIM AND ZIZEK MEAN WHEN THEY SAY ONLY LESBIANS ARE THE TRUE HETEROSEXUALS? WHY DO THEY CONSIDER AYN RAND'S CHARACTERS LESBIANS DESPITE BEING MALE? WHY DOES LACAN MEAN ONLY MALES HAVE FETISHES AND FETISHES ARE LINGUISTIC TRANSFIGURATIONS HAVING TO DO WITH SHINY NOSES?

SOMEONE TELL MEEEEEEEEEEEE

lacan.com/symptom/elements.html

Lol

"But the psychoanalyst, because he does not disentail the experience of language from the situation it implies, that of the interlocutor, touches upon the simple fact that language, before it signifies something, signifies to someone" (Écrits, p. 86)

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I've never seen a picture of Lacan before. He looks like grown-up Eddie Munster.

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Unironically Hegelianism via Kojeve

But Lacan himself denies that

I don't remember the name of the article but Zizek makes the point that Lacan's Hegelianism is hidden within his readings of Kojeve and Hyppolite and that we shouldn't trust Lacan's insistence that Hegel isn't in his work. Lacan is more interesting iirc when you make the connection, but it's been a while so i'm a bit choppy on this

Not OP but thank you. This is a very thought-provoking article.

Lacan reaches Hegel thru his reading of Kojeve's reading of Hegel's master/slave dialectic

The same theory is made quite compellingly in the book mentioned here:

Hegel introduced otherness in philosophy.

Yes and no. The psychoanalytical conception of Otherness that Lacan conceives of is vastly different than its Hegelian usage. Whereas the latter is the more direct and literal interpretation, Lacan's other has more to do with how we internalize the field of social discourse into our unconscious and are radically violated by it.

I only dabble in philosophy, so please do tell me if I'm making a mistake in my assumptions.
Why does it seem like so much of philosophy is Socrates/Plato/Aristotle obscurantified? I saw this again with explanations of Lacan in this thread. Even when Heidegger tried to start from the ground up, it turned into this monstrous book of theory, requiring assiduous tracking of unwieldy language. What would an understanding of early vs late Wittgenstein add to this? How does this relate to what Marx/D&G/Baudrillard/Zizek etc. are saying about the current ideological system that the world functions under, that is, the Real vs realism(in this case of the capitalist variety)?

I'm Do any of these questions have anything to do with integration? Or does no one try to do that anymore? Is it a lost cause?

You can consider all philosophy after Plato to be anti-platonic. All attempts at philosophy after Plato are inherently a reaction against and away, or towards, or through Plato. That's why Plato still exists within most philosophy written today. An understanding of early/late Wittgenstein will just augment your readings of other philosophers.

and for the final section of this unironically read Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism

Late Wittgenstein tracks well with Heidegger and pomos. Early Wittgenstein is good for background of some of the early problematizations of language. Plato said a lot of things first and best. Sometimes things we have to pick apart because they are so ingrained and unquestioned. I think the idea of philosophical therapy has been revivified by many of these post-modern figures and their is an appropriation of ancient notions of therapy while simultaneously divorcing unrealistic aspects of that thought. I think Zizek claims psychoanalysis somehow allows one a privileged view of ideology. Psychotherapy has been justly criticized as overly capitalist by some but analysis is ideally not (though it may be a beneficial side-effect).

what are his views

>Socrates/Plato/Aristotle obscurantified
Their views form kind of a trifecta, with Socrates as a rational materialist, Plato as an Idealist and Aristotle as an empiricist respectively. Thus you see the crux of what they proposed in different forms everywhere.

>How does this relate to what Marx/D&G/Baudrillard/Zizek etc. are saying about the current ideological system that the world functions under, that is, the Real vs realism(in this case of the capitalist variety)?

The enlightenment tradition was fighting against Platonic idealism that fueled a lot of the romanticism as well as 'objective' type ideas, Hegel attempted to combat it with a more Socratic form of thought but was unsuccessful because the West found Kant more suitable instead, and Wittgenstein sides with Kant by the end of it but comes to regret it. Plato and the Neo-Platonic discourse of A is A still dominate today, that is the current realism which pervades thru scientism, post-modernism, the state and health fields, we're all treated as atomized rational units irreplaceable per our consumer/subject nature. Marx/D&G/Baudrillard/Zizek mainly try to work past the deadlock of this discourse altho Zizek says its largely impossible to imagine today because it would require backtracking an entirely different direction of civilization entirely.

Lacan is anti-philosophy back to Plato, he rejects A is A and the idea of absolutes, of solid ideals and his negative subjectivity comes from the Hegalian subject, the nothingness embodied in process rather than materialism or empirical reductionist trappings.

Just so we're clear like....

did this Lacan guy really do any research at all? Is his psychoanalysis built by theorems or sound deductions? Is there any truth in his theories at all? Any value?
>Inb4 hurr durr what is truth woooah man

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He worked in a clinic like Freud.

so his ideas are just 100% conjecture based on people he treated or, did he publish peer reviewed papers in his clinic or what?

You should try reading his books

courses.arch.ntua.gr/fsr/138757/Lacan-Ecrits.pdf

You are so very welcome :)

This is not science. There is no experiment you can design to confirm or refute his ideas. No scientist will ever waste their time thinking about Lacan simply because all scientists are Newtonian philosophers.
Lacan, so far as I can tell, has his own logical system that he never really articulates. He's fond of misappropriating mathematical concepts and symbolism to explain his ideas. That should give you a sense of where he's coming from.
In a sense, his theories come from subjective observation of himself as subject. It gets very mindbending here, but that's where the woo is.

Sounds pretty similar to Jason Reza Jorjani who I am currently reading. Only switch out “Real” with “Spectral” and make it all paranormal and shieet. Very interesting stuff.

I mean if one of his theories is something like "The deep other of your mother's lost penis caused you repressed traumatic memories of sexual abuse as a kid and the reason you're unhappy is because she didn't have a penis and that's why you play minecraft because 'creepers' remind you of pickles aka dicks" I don't really have to be a scientist to say that's wrong?

Giving the whole "Disprove it!" spiel is honestly just a pretty weak immature defense for lack of evidence or proper thinking. When did the west get to a point where just because you call something a "Logical system" doesn't mean real logic be involved? I want to know why we should even listen to his ideas as opposed to Joe CrackSeller Quack on the street talking about "Quantum Healing" or whatever very un-refutable logical system he has.

I feel when you're taking people's money and making profit for this you should really be more honest about your edification y'know?

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So basically he made it all up and there's no basis for it whatsoever
Fuckin beautiful

All language is made up dumbass.
You still use that don't you?

You're getting at an epistemological problem. Just as you can say that Lacan is wrong, Lacan can say you are wrong about him being wrong. This is why we have debate/dialectic, but in order to have debate you must first understand what the other person is saying, and that is precisely the problem with Lacan and the rest of the post-structuralist Frenchie: deliberate obscurantism. Now there very well may be something interesting in what Lacan has to say, and from his application in contemporary cultural critique, this is true.
[It's tempting to ask why the Frenchies believed they had to be obscurantist, but hell if I know.]

>Giving the whole "Disprove it!" spiel is honestly just a pretty weak immature defense for lack of evidence or proper thinking. When did the west get to a point where just because you call something a "Logical system" doesn't mean real logic be involved? I want to know why we should even listen to his ideas as opposed to Joe CrackSeller Quack on the street talking about "Quantum Healing" or whatever very un-refutable logical system he has.

This is a strawman argument, and fairly irrelevant to the conversation. I will say that you should examine whether the empiricist framework really is the best framework to operate with in all situations.

>Implying I was really given a choice
I don't care if some idiot knows to know the grand unifying theory in klingon, if I cannot understand them I'm not going to spend the time listening to find out.

You should read Plato's Phaedrus. Optional: Derrida's essay on it.

Not only that, he was transparently using his clinical practice as a cult and using it to bilk money out of people. He used to make people fight for the "honor" of his "personal sessions" which meant getting to do errands for him and drive him home from work. He'd also do "variable length sessions" where you have to pay the full amount but he'd cut you off at five minutes and say you're not ready to go further. Then later in life he went totally batshit insane, like actual dementia, and his cult of followers kept trying to interpret everything he did and said as if it was a real thing.

But yeah, even with Freud, you have to dig REAL deep to find justification for many of his accounts of consciousness. You can aaaalmost kinda see how they're reasonable sometimes, but he was almost certainly manic and had strange fixations. He was also on coke all the time, literally all the time, and most deep accounts of his movement show that he exercised cult-like control over it, to outright bizarre and insidious degrees if some extreme accounts are to be believed. Beyond all that craziness however, there is a lot of strangely deep speculative philosophy of mind and depth psychology hidden away in Freud. Which is to say nothing of Freudians, who generally have none of that subtlety, simply take Freud as gospel, and go around diagnosing phallus obsessions everywhere.

That's Freud. Lacan is 1/50th the insightful thinker Freud was, and 100x as cult-like. And Lacanians are to Lacan what Freudians are to Freud. Note how rabidly defensive and cagey Lacanians can become when their movement is slighted - they are probably literal cult members, trained in parts of South America that still for some reason have practicing Lacanians still alive.

>spooks: the postening
Rent-free

Try not to post low-effort white noise just because you don't like what another poster is saying. Either rebuke them or don't. Don't post "heh not rly tho." We don't need to know some random anonymous dude disliked something he read. There's a reason Yea Forums doesn't have a "Dislike" button.

Here's the terms you just described
>I tell Lacan he's a charlatan because he has no proof or logical basis for his ideas
>Lacan just says NO U
I'm all for a debate and investigating ideas, but in our modern age you should know ideas aren't really a premium. Not everyone /deserves/ a voice or debate or should just be an automatic subject of in depth engagement. In a world that promises that to no man, I guess I'm curious why does Lacan get an exception? What makes him exempt from the strawman?

Lacan like, privileges language and investigating word-slips and interpretation right? Take what you said at the end
>and fairly irrelevant to the conversation
>fairly irrelevant
I find these two a strange juxtaposition of words, because relevance by its nature is hardly ever fairly imposed or mediated. I don't know much about empiricism, but if his whole thing is trying to discover subjectivity and difference, shouldn't there be a Lacanian answer for what makes his subjectivity (his ideas and opinions, not facts) so different? Do you get what I'm saying here, I'm not sure I'm phrasing this right.

not him, but:
Shitposts get shitreplies

Et tu

His patients also infamously killed themselves at alarming rates.
There was one case where he flat told a transvestite subject they'd never be a woman and kys. So they did.
He shrugged and said they were beyond help- dude was a straight up sociopath.

If someone calls themselves a doctor and says they know about the mind and all your deep traumatic experiences, you better pray they know what they're talking about and have done their research.
Self-Help is bullshit thanks to people like him.

>>I tell Lacan he's a charlatan because he has no proof or logical basis for his ideas
Maybe you should fucking read his books instead of talking out your ass.

Shitposts are intentional and (at least trying to be) funny. This: is a redditor posting an unfunny mixture of memeshit that just translates to "I don't like your post." If he wanted to mock me in a funny way, that would be funny shitposting, and it'd no longer be white noise.

A plain old shitty post is not a shitpost. If you think my post is shit, reply to it and tell me how, or keep it to yourself. There is no in-between option, where you get to vent your ">:( I didn't like that post" woman emotions about how you dislike the post but also not substantiate your opinion. Unless you can be funny or interesting while doing so.

Think about the logical conclusion of posting in this way. I think your post is dumb and shallow, to the point that I'm pretty sure you're too fucking retarded to even understand the reply I'm writing right now and you'll just keep being an underage white noise poster either way. But I'm still giving it a shot. What if I just posted "no u?" Would you then post "no, U!!!!!" so we could go back and forth until one of us got tired?

Still not quite there. My advice is to stop posting from a phone, or give up altogether and stay on Reddit.

I am pursuing a social work degree and license. I have experienced multiple clinic modalities myself. I personally like Lacanian theory -- it makes a lot of sense to me. I am North American not South. He is not perfect but who is. Schopenhauer was not as compassionate as his philosophy promoted and Kant probably told lies ocassionally. Doesn't mean shit about their ideas just cause they had personal failings.

>buttflustered damage control: electric boogaloo
If you take posting so seriously, might I suggest >>>/reddit/

Why should I INITIATE that? You sound like a religious recruiter or cult member that goes "Just give it a chance, just READ it you'll see the way and the light if you let them into your heart!"

you didn't address my initial query.
what makes him so credible from assblow joe nextdoor that anyone should read a single word of his? As opposed to your blog, or a Scientology textbook or some New Age type shit.

I'm not arguing truth/correctness because I don't know the guys ideas. I'm asking about the initial relevance and posterity of ideas. What justifies my time and attention that's been already grounded to some benefit or value? Does he have any utility, any purpose or specific meaning and in what context does it warrant said investment?

When you say logical basis, you have to understand that logic is adherence to a set of axioms, and so if he seems illogical, then you are merely operating with different frames, different axiomatic set theories.

The point that is being made here is that your language pre-determines your facts.

For axiomatic set S we get a set of facts F
For axiomatic set S' we get a set of facts F'
Given that S=/=S', F=/=F'

As a concrete example: If suddenly we made it axiomatic that reducio ad absurdum does not constitute a proof, it has far reaching consequences for what we might consider mathematical 'fact'. Least of these is the fact that the proof for the irrationality of (for example) 2^(0.5) by reducio ad absurdum would no longer be valid. Furthermore, because of Gödel's incompleteness theorems, it would be impossible to tell if another proof existed unless you found one.

This is sort of what Lacan is getting at (I don't understand Lacan very well, I'm . So you should ask someone who knows more about Lacan).
The mistake that you are making is this:
>I don't understand Lacan.
>A lot of people don't understand Lacan
>Lacan is deliberately obscurantist
>Lacan must be a charlatan and not worth my time
And you're perfectly alright to beleive this. But if you think that others can't get useful results from Lacan, then you need to reexamine your epistemology.

>I am North American not South.
Oh thank god

I like Lacans ideas as conceptual windows and tools into the self but as a praxis Lacanians tend to get batshit insane when Lacan's dogma is followed to the letter. It's something one can benefit from.. but honestly most people won't IMO and are better off not reading if their character favors a very unreasonable reading.

>There was one case where he flat told a transvestite subject they'd never be a woman and kys. So they did.

How can one man be so based?

Elizabeth Roudinescu (sp?) actually has pretty good books on both Lacan and the psychoanalytic movements in France, I think she's like the major intellectual historian of French psychoanalysis, but I find her to be a bit up her own ass. She's one of those people who got in on the ground floor of being into trendy pomo in the '80s and her books feel really dated, like she's trying too hard to use the jargon of that era. But they are still good historical accounts.

I also found this guy and I think I'm gonna read it:
amazon.com/Jacques-Lacan-Death-Intellectual-Hero/dp/0674471164

Check out the user review below for a few quotes from the book. Seems like at least an earnest attempt to glean a systematic presentation of Lacan's ideas from his unsystematic writings.

I do take it seriously, but that's because I've been here for years and I'm not a phoneposting redditor retard like you. Enjoy being background white noise on a website you'll never fit in on.

logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/145/Proving-Non-Existence

>I cannot prove that X exists, so you prove that it doesn’t.

>If you can’t, X exists.

>God exists. Until you can prove otherwise, I will continue to believe that he does.
Not them, but reminded me of this

Did I make a mistake in my logic? If so, I do not see it.

I like to read blogs, I also have read into Scientology and a number of different new age texts -- as well as scientific texts.

I think the geneaology would be what makes Lacan more significant than Joe Blow off the street. His ideas are building off those of others. Now if you disagree with his influenced like Freud on principle then feel free to disregard Lacan as well, I think, however, he is important enough in the cultural conversation that that would be a mistake regardless of the truth value of his claims (he does not subscribe to such a correspondence theory of truth but whatever).
Lol. I guess I can agree with that.

Okay, that seemed like a lot of logical hand waving so I can only really address this last point here

>But if you think that others can't get useful results from Lacan, then you need to reexamine your epistemology.
I don't know if others can get useful results from a theoretical discipline. Assumingly this has been conceptualized and practiced for decades, am I right on that? So to follow thru on that last criteria of "if you think that others can't get useful results" I don't really feel taking a philosophy class and relearning an epistemological framework just to consider whether some potential ideas might be true is necessary. That just sounds like someone telling me I should re-examine my faith before reading a bible because it might "Change my way of thinking."

More directly to the point..
>if you think that others can't get useful results from Lacan
Well, do they? Not in the abstract or under some frame logic game.

Do they, and what are the usual results?

Have sex

Depends.
Do you believe all sets of axioms to be equal?
Does the madman not owe a song to the piper?

Wish I could bitch slap this doofus.

Yes. I already mentioned that he's useful in the field of cultural analysis. Zizek, Fisher. I'm sure other anons will have more knowledge on this matter.
Also these:

I'm an engineer, so I'm biased here, but I would favor the current axiomatic set that is widely in use since it allows us to make good(read:reasonably accurate) models that help us make good(read: working as intended) contraptions that help us do things that we want to do.

What about the practice field it was intended for, psychoanalysis? Does that actually help ?

Are there any Lacanian marriage counselors or treatments for addiction? Depression? Is it practical that can be applied in daily life or some holistic "Let's talk about your mother as a cure-all" bullshit?

One thing I hate about the Lacanian discourse is for all the prattle about Lacan/Lacanians not caring if he's true or or 'right', they spend WAY too much time attempting to sound smart and doing exactly that, empty posturing. Everywhere I read it's very pretentious and there's very little gesturing on how the treatment and ideas actually affect patients and individuals who undergo Psychoanalysis.

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Lacanian psychoanalysis doesn't really concern itself with those topics you mentioned. It's not designed to make you happy, functional, healthy or your definition of 'better'

The point of analysis is to find 'Truth'

Lacan usually just told his patients to kill themselves rather than face their trauma if they weren't able, since it was better to die with redemption rather than live repressed. Take that into consideration and think about it for abit.

Are you trying to imply if someone just makes up their own logic and goes to a bank to rob money or molest people on the street then tells them "Don't worry, we just follow a different set of operating frames, come convert to my symbolic order instead where I'm justified and logical" they're exempt from making an ass of themselves?

As far as I can tell, most real therapists don't do analysis. Psychoanalysis has generally always been a philsophical thing with application within philosophy.
I don't personally think that therapy in general is all that useful; I've gone through that wringer myself.
Again, thinking that all of this is pretentious, empty posturing is perfectly fine. But just because you can't see a use for it, doesn't mean others can't find it useful.
Here's my advice: sometimes discussions just reach a point where neither side can get anything useful from the other. At this point it's best to agree to disagree. There is no necessity for consensus right here right now between us.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekantavada

did he? pretty based

The truth of what?
Oh-
>"Let's talk about your mother as a cure-all"
So it is just nonsense then..

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isn't that Freud?

Of course not. They should be thrown in jail. Because they do not hold the power to change the normative frame, therefore, their operating frame will get them thrown in jail to maintain the stability of the existing system.
I don't see how I made any injunction in my post, I was merely trying to explain a concept about how language mediates our ontology.

Different user
I don't think you're quite aware how strong the Lacanian therapy lobby is in France, they've outstripped conventional medicine and end up putting even autistic kids in rooms where they just rock back and forth with the analysts trying to decipher deep Freudian truths about them from their drool and write essays about them. (The kiddos and patients obviously don't get help)
youtube.com/watch?v=2_htl3hELcA
It's slowly changing now but, still going strong..

Lacan declared himself "The return to Freud"

Interesting. I'm in the US. Here it's all CBT, DBT, and for everything else, there's Xanax.

It's amazing that Lacan wasn't treated the same with malpractice after how many of his patients killed themselves.

Not saying that's good but atleast on the level of the therapist, seems well intended. Lacanian psychoanalysts treat patients like basically test subjects and are only considered successful if they write long winded analysis, as if they were at a zoo or mental asylum.

There's no really much concern for the patients or helping them, it's pretty callous and that's why there's still a big outcry about it.

well that sounds pretty gay, did they fuck?

No, but he notoriously slept with a lot of his patients and constantly got them to let him fuck their wives.

Umm Kant and Fichte buddy.

Just watch Lacanians explain their ideas and try not to cringe

youtube.com/watch?v=nMbSeQFweo4

Why wouldn't philosophy have a technical vocabulary? Tempted to accuse you of brainletism.

Why would it inherently need to?
What kind of elitism is a statement like that?

> what Lacan's Ontology is?
trash
> I'm interested in some of the metaphysical grounding of his complicated psychological views.
psychology is part of natural philosophy and can't possibly have anything to do with metaphysics. The only thing theology has to say about psychology is that the purpose of human life is "go forth, be fruitful and mutiply".

what you mistake for obscurantism is other worldviews being expressed. Once you understand them you will have no trouble reading them.

...up until recent centuries when obscurantism was actually used to cover up not having anything interesting to say

wtf that's prety much what Zizek said. wait is Zizek not a coked out retard? does he actually know about the philosophers he talks about?

>trained in parts of South America that still for some reason have practicing Lacanians still alive.

those Latinoes have a tendency to embrace the arcane French fads and gee gaws and hold on to them way beyond their expiration date. lacking in parisian self consciousness, unable to escape inherent catholic penchant for superstition, postcolonial magpie cargo cult instincts, dazzled by the pompous lycee rhetoric of the foreign mystificator... Kardeckian Spiritualism, Comte's positivism, and the teachings of Saint Simon fluorished in Buenos Aires, La Havana, Rio and Mexico city long after they had been ceased to be taken seriously in the metropolis.

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sounds like most of Yea Forums desu