(for French, click on the flag)
 | First of
all because a theory
(to see the endpaper)
putting in the foreground the presence of an observer within its
representation of the World, can with difficulty escape the problem of the
representation of this observer himself. In that case, from which place
could we envisage the description of this one? |
| Then, we
shall see that the psychoanalysis envisages the progressive constitution
of the individual as the emergence of a Part
within a Whole, in the same way which drove us in the choice of the senaire
structure. It would seem, in a certain way that the individual constitutes himself in answer to a problem of partition, as well that the observation of a phenomenon forms himself as emergence of a peculiarity on the bottom of an undifferentiated whole. |
| In third
place, the Lacan's aphorism " the unconscious is structured as a
language " returns us closer of our anthropomorphic approach. There is an evident parallel between the incapacity of the language to report about itself (refer to Gödel), -the famous " I am a liar "- and the fact, as says by Lacan that the individual is the missing part of his proper speech about himself; where from the appeal to the description of the individual by a structure. There is obviously some misunderstanding in lacan about the meaning of what is a meta language, so Lacan refuses this concept. We will go back to this point, but only at the end of our route, having explained what is a fractal structure. |
| How finally
to refuse to envisage in terms of structures, a theory which
appeared, with Lacan, so obviously structuralist? |
It
is not a question, in the lines which follow to promote, or to expose a
psychoanalytical thesis, but only to transcribe some key concepts, of Freud
and Lacan in terms of system.
The
interest, of our point of view will be so to sketch a solution of continuity
between the structure of the observer and its vision of the World.
For
the psychoanalyst to the eyes of whom this exercise would seem a game without
stake, out of any
clinical context, we shall make present of a new problem:
What about the time
dimension in this progressive structuration which constitutes the emergence of a consciousness?
| Is there,
in particular a link between this progressive complexification of the
individual and the slowing down of the processes of perception and
adaptation, of his creative faculties? |
| Are there
quantifiable temporal relations between the various constituents of the
individual? |
We shall try here to describe the Man (such as he
offers himself to the psychoanalyst) by a structure in 3 levels.
We shall see then, having clarified the syntax of
the senaire structure, how to report the dysfunctions appearing at every change of
level.
We shall see finally, how the fractal approach of the senaire structure allows to define a particular state, which one can call, in
reference to the physical sciences " critical " state. The crucial
experiment which we shall submit then to the attention of the psychoanalysts
(who would follow us to there) will be to characterize the
"enjoyment", in the lacan's sense as a critical state
of the individual.
We shall tempt first of all, to articulate among them
the constituent elements of the personality (that / I / superego / object A/....) with a particular place for the concept of "phallus" then to represent
in the structure so obtained various processes identified by the psychoanalysts
(complex of Oedipus / castration / mirror state / identification /
debarment / narcissism / expulsion /....).
Let us remind here that
our objective is not to act as a psychoanalyst, but simply to show the
possibility of transcribing the psychoanalytical language in terms of senaire model. There is no inconvenience to see there, at the moment, only a simple
stylistic composition.
This stage is a fact of observation analyzed by
the psychologist Henri Wallon.
Between 6
and 18 months, the child shows his jubilation, his interest in front
of an image in a mirror where he looks or in the one sent back to him by any
other person, in whom he recognizes himself and becomes
identified.
Jacques Lacan had made of this stage of the
development of the child the stage of development of the
"I", in a conference of 1936, resumed in 1949: " The
Stage of the mirror as formative of the function of the I
".
The enjoyment of the child would come from the identification in this
image which is sent back to him. This image forms the mould
capable of organizing, of structuring all his fragmentary experiences.
This identification would be a first answer brought
to the chaotic experiments which offer themselves to the
child.
Presented with the terminology which we clarified, one could advance the hypothesis that the child
infers of this image which is
sent back to him that he constitutes an entity arising out of an undifferentiated
whole (and which in his immediate nearness is
essentially his mother).
It is only after the awareness of its
individuality, appearing from a whole that another problem will be
established: the question of the limits, the interfaces between this hardly
dreaded entity "I" and the outside.
The main cuts which are going to be
experimented will be for the main part:
The placenta / breast / excrements / glance / voice
.
The
psychoanalysis granting a particular development in 2
| The mother
and the child: |
The first cut is situated at the level of the womb: "I"
is extracted from the World by the breast which escapes.
| First
"reflection": |
The second cut, is excrements: "I" is with regard to the
breast as its excrements with regard to him.
To
dread these two cuts simultaneously and to define himself as being "in
the middle", absent part of these experiments, requires the child to establish
himself as "I", and doing so, to change level.
Here is, we could say, the first elementary system and the original links which connect "I"
to the World.
The
important is the fact of having established two different
levels:
| The one,
the field of imagination, which connects the
individual with the reality in his
most worldly experience, such as he fantasizes the World through its
experiment, always fragmentary and in which he refuses to be dissolved eventually.
This field, finally structured his
identity. We shall define this level as that where we " represent the reality ", of course, it is a fantasized reality, the World being always perceived -mediatized- by our senses and our affects. The demonstrations of the individual being interpreted, in posteriori as meaning. |
| The other
one, the field of symbol, the place of evolution of this
"I", imagined, by the individual as federative cause of its
experiments (referent, meant in
posteriori). |
If
we keep on mind what was exposed concerning the passage
from a level to the other one (refer to diachronism),
we find, here , in a clinical practice a
theoretical fact, namely the loss of information during a level
change:
| That it is
about the induction of "bits" of experience in the
constitution of "I", |
| Or
fantasies of the same "I" who interpret the experience
(deduction). |
Once again, we explain nothing, but we just point out an equivalence between the
experience and its
representation. Our interest goes on the description and not on its
object.
|
|
|
On the same way,
alone the breast of the mother distinguishes itself from the environment.
The
mother, in an instant of the sucking, is not distinguished clearly by the baby from
the unclear bottom of the World.
But, the proposed plan infers, of
itself, the following remark:
What could be the feed back of this action?
Because finally, the action of the sucking has indeed an impact
on the mother, who reacts on her child.
This reaction, this recognition of the child by the mother helps in the work of
structuralization of the child: it is by the glance of other than the child
will eventually become identified as individual.
Of a collection of
states, the child will infer the existence of the "I".
As says Lacan, the "I" is always the absentee of the speech, at this level of
explanation.
By a reversal of perspective, the child is going to
discover that he is, with regard to his mother, as his excrements with regard to
himself.
|
|
|
A dialectic is
established then between the individualization growth, and the desire to merge
in the whole, the enjoyment forbidden at the risk of annihilation.
The
"objects" from which extracts gradually the child are characterized by their
pre-eminent shape.
The parts of the body from which they get loose are, as
says J.D. NASIO of " pound crack openings ". Now, these
edges pound if they are animated by the stream of an energy which goes through them, an
energy called "enjoyment".
The "pound" term marks for us the raid of time in the
forming of the
individual.
Say that an opening pounds, it is to consider the temporal
succession of states opened / closed.
By considering the previous
plan, the question that we can settle is to know if the sequence breast
/ mouth / anus / excrements does not request a certain harmony between the
frequency of palpitation of the month and that of the anus.
More exactly,
it is possible that, the
education of the child, by the progressive decrease of the number of sucking,
and the later learning of the neatness, have role in the awareness of the link which
connects the mouth and the anus. Could it be the connection updated in the
image of the other one at the stage of the mirror?
All
these experiences of partial detachment during the phase of the
mirror, whereas he manages to recognize the "other one", allow the child
to constitute himself as an independent "I".
We can then consider a second level of
structuralization of the personality: that of the game of the
"I" and the "others".
The place of exchanges, however
the symbolic animal we are, will essentially be the place of the language, or
rather "Lalangue ", to continue to follow Lacan.
This level is going to
serve as scene in the oedipal crisis.
This
crisis here also can be presented as a new problem of partition; but centered this time on the ownership or not of a "phallus".
There is a faith in the universal ownership of a phallus
(girl or boy).
The plan of the relation
among the child and his mother can define itself as a symbolic
representation of the previous plan.
To do it, it is necessary that the
interest of the child goes towards this new erogenous zone that is the penis (or
the clitoris: in this undifferentiated stage, the anatomical difference
is not discriminate.
The previous exchange symbolizes then as a transfer of
the phallus between Mother and child (the child seeing himself, for the mother as
the phallus intended to fill her desire, his envy for phallus sublimated in envy for the child).
The mother breast-feeds
him, as he
looks himself to her (this is the second reflection of the child: the
narcissistic one, constituent of the "I").
|
|
|
It
opens on the observation that certain "fellow men" have a penis, and the others
not. For the little boy and under the threats of his Father, the penis
becomes a detachable part of his body threatened with
castration.
It holds the discovery that the Mother has no
phallus, and the location of the child with regard to this
revelation.
For the boy, this position
is conditioned by a social prohibition, expressed by the father, new
figure in the field of the consciousness.
|
|
The conflict with which
is confronted the child can come down to the following
equation:
|
" The paternal word which embodies the
symbolic law, accomplished so a double castration: castrate the Other one maternal, to have
the phallus, and castrate the child, to be the phallus ".
The
phallus is the significant of the law, what Lacan formulates so:
The castration is symbolic and its object is imaginary.
| The
castration is not so much a threat or an envy but an act of
cut, |
| This act
concerns rather a link than a person |
| This act
aims at an object, at the imaginary phallus, at object wished by the
mother with which the child becomes identified |
| The act of
castration, even assumed by the father is not the fact, really , of a
physical person but the symbolic operation of the paternal word. The act of the castration is the work of the law to which the father as subject himself is inevitably subjected. |
There is also a reversal between the report mother /
child and child / phallus
|
|
|
The last
consequence finally of this conflict, it is the recognition of the
part socially accepted of the "I" by the Father, that replaces the
recognition of desire by the Mother.
This inversion can be even
institutionalized by an initiatory ceremony. This second detachment of the
Mother, in any initiation is likened to a death follow-up of a revival: a new
cycle opens then to the child.
The resolution of this conflict introduces the
differentiation between the "I" and the
"Superego", finishing to structure the symbolic
level:
|
|
|
Naturally, the dialectic so established between Me and
Superego is not perfect: certain actions, slips of the tongue,
mean something which escapes the plan.
It is the rehearsal of the significant
that makes system towards the analyst.
This last one adopts a
particular position with regard to the individual he tries to understand: he is not any more in position of "other one", in the sense
that is not directly affected by the word of his patient.
To use our
vocabulary, he is situated in position " meta " with regard to
the speech of the patient.
The word of the
analysis is a speech on the speech of the patient, it is so formally about
a meta
speech.
Whereas the "I"
constitutes himself under the glance of the Other one and the
Father, the subject of the unconscious shows himself under the glance of the
analyst.
If the "I" is "narcissistic", that is a reflection setting
itself for object, the subject shows himself by reflecting this reflection.
This
is, after the stage of the mirror, and then the narcissistic
phase, the third "reflection" of the subject.
Beyond the common acts
under control of the consciousness, appear peculiarities which amaze:
subconsciously deliberate mistakes, slip of the tongue coming too well
conveniently for being only a bungling without meaning of the
reason.
By chance, when by the means of a third party we can have a new
glance at ourselves, then certain
peculiarities of our life organize themselves in a repetitive way: why for
example our partners show some common feature, which very often
escapes us: a size, a look, a stamp of voice, some element of
the body of the other whom attaches us more than we can say.
Behind these significant
features, the
analyst can suppose the presence of one meant.
How to
characterize one meant by definition unspeakable because
unconscious?
What bases the idea of an unconscious is the obstinacy of
significant features, revealed by the privileged observer whom is the
psychoanalyst.
When Lacan says that there is no Unconscious without the
presence of an
analysis, he does not notice the other thing.
There is in it no
essential difference between the psychoanalytical approach and quite other
scientific observation.
What makes difficult the observation, is that the incriminated phenomena occur on a different, unexpected
rhythm.
The analyst has for task, to tune the rhythm of
observation of the patient to this much slower, unknown rhythm. By pointing out the significant of the speech,
he presents to the patient a sort of film in accelerated of the significants.
To schematize the observation of the analyst, we shall say that
he is facing a subject, the conscious part of whom asserts its dominion upon an entity which
lives in himself. This
unspeakable entity, it is the nature which pushes its horn in us, which
continues through and in spite of us, and for which the "I"
makes
dam. This vital raid in us, Freud calls it the "that".
This vision that the analyst
made of the other one can not
be assumed, passed on, except if he experimented it himself,
as far as he submitted himself to a psychoanalysis.
The
unconscious is not only inside the subject in analysis, but rather in between
the subject and the analyst, the level where takes place the analysis.
|
|
The " that "
of the subject in analysis is revealed by its influence on "I". This influence is translated by
a lot of "significants" which do
not enter in the economy of the speech of the patient and surprise the
analyst. |
However, this
representation unfinished by the fact that we have no idea of what there are behind
the words which define the poles of the structure.
We have not, indeed any idea of what is the "that", because by definition
it is
outside the field of the consciousness.
We have no means
to "understand" this concept in itself, we can just there
perceive some of its effects, the "significants" which impose themselves upon our perception in
"extension".
Here still, there is no fundamentally different
method between science and psychoanalysis: in front of the impossibility
"to understand", the analyst contents with ordering a
taxonomy.
|
|
The role of the analyst is then to make the significant circulate. |
For Lacan, the
subject of the unconscious is the name of the abstract relation between a
particular significant and a complete set of significants.
Return
We
structured our subject in three levels which we can define as:
| Level 1:
Field of the imagination |
Level of the contact with the reality, in the form of
elementary experiments.
These experiments are understood according to our needs, and the perception which
we have of it remains in the field of our imagination. We have, obviously, no
direct contact with the reality.
| Level 2:
Field of Symbolism and the language |
This
field - specifically human - of the reflection of the existence on itself. There is
level where our personality is formed, in answer to stimuli coming from levels lower and
superior. It is the level of the socialization of
the individual. It is finally the only level which can serve as model in
the two others; Because contrary to the two others, it is the domain of
the consciousness.
| Level 3:
Field of the unconscious |
At the level 1, the individual parts gradually from the
nature and he constitutes this nature as outside of him at the level
2.
This nature re-appeared at the level
3, as from the outside. The life, pushed away at the level 1, crosses
the level 2 to re-appear at the level 3 and show itself there intact in its
essence.
(Remark:
this 3 levels model can quite easily be seen as a Chinese's hexagram. Refer to
my page I Ching)
The
conscious thought appears as the fragile surface separating the Part ( the individual) of the Whole.
Consciousness strictly dependent on its means of
expression:
The man is a symbolic animal
It
is because our conscious is structured as our language that we use on the levels 1 and 3 the
structure of the level 2. There is however a perceptible difference between both
extreme levels: it is the difference of rhythm of the actions the
theater of which they are.
We can
use these differences of rhythm to elaborate strategies of flight,
strategies of evasion of the personality:
| On the
bottom, by trying to increase the rhythm of the exchanges: game strategy where the player forgets his existence,
forgets everything except the present instant; |
| By the
height by evacuating any thought, as in the contemplative techniques, when the rhythm of the thoughts is slow up to the stop. |
The man, always absent in our speech, can be situated on
the axis crossing the various levels where join his contacts with the
environment.
Axis steered by the
level 1 at the level 3 because by rising from a level to the other one the
essence of the man asserts itself.
Although from the level 3,
it is not completely sure any more than we can speak about the Man, but
rather about "Humanity" because the unconscious shows itself in a relation
implying either two partners (Lacan), or a whole society (Jung).
The man would be the track of the axis connecting the
levels 1 and 3 on the level 2:
The track of an ideal point left in his speech.
Note 1:
The notion of phallus is different from that, physical, of penis.
According to Freud in " The Sexual Life "
P.U.F, 1969 , p112 (quoted by J.D.NASIO education of 7 crusial concepts of the
PSYCHOANALYSIS), the phallus is a detachable and substitutable
object.
" The penis is then recognized as something that
one can separate from the body and is identified as analogue of the excrement
which was the first detail of physical substance which one should give up
".
On the concept of phallus:
| There are 3 levels (about the phallus): |
 | Level of the physical penis (but it is always about a representation of the reality, not of the object in itself |
| Level of the imaginary phallus |
| Level of the symbolic phallus |
Note 2
In this definition of the meta speech, nothing says that
its structure differs from the common language.
In the same way as
we can speak about the syntax of a language with the words of this language
itself.
It is in this way - in my opinion- that we can agree on Lacan's formula:
" There is no meta
language "
What denies indeed Lacan it is the existence of a
different or specific structure for the conscious and unconscious
parts of the personality.
What
we understand here by meta language,
refers to the
object of the speech, but
doesn't infers a difference of structure.
The negation does not so concern the same
proposition.
Return
Let us remind, for those that arrive directly on this page, that the general subject of this theory is about a systematic approach of the " Absolute Structure " of Raymond Abellio.
Our theoretical definition of this structure (which goes away from that of Abellio) is presented in the synchronic analysis of the systems. A fast presentation of its functioning can be seen in the analysis of the bureaucratic dysfunctions.
For the dreamers, finally: I introduced this method when young person still, I dreamed about what could indeed be a theory of the "psycho-history", such as described by Asimov in "Foundation". The most interesting, maybe, is that I managed by many bends to move closer this famous Senaire (or Absolute) structure from hexagrams of I Ching.
To leave the psycho-history to arrive at I Ching by adopting a structuralist method represents a long walk, the lacan's stage of which is not the least fascinating.
page updated on 12/11/02
author : Alain SIMON
© copyright 1998 Alain SIMON
adresse : isa.al.simon@wanadoo.fr
