Freud’s ‘On Transience’ through a Lacanian lens

Freud ‘On Transience’:

• The transient nature of objects is exactly what makes them so valuable
• ‘The value of transience is a rarity in time. The restriction in the possibility of enjoyment increases its preciousness.’
• ‘If there is a flower that blooms for only a single night, its flowering does not seem to be no less splendid. Nor can I comprehend how the beauty and perfection of the work of art and the intellectual achievement should be devalued by its temporal limitation. There may come a time come when the images and statues that we admire today have crumbled, or a race of humans comes after us that no longer understands the works of our poets and thinkers, or a geological epoch may arrive in which all the life on earth ceases. The value of all that is beautiful and perfect is determined only by its significance for our emotional lives; it does not need to survive and is therefore independent of the absolute duration of time.’
• ‘The idea that this beautiful thing was transient gave the two sensitive individuals a foretaste of the sadness of its loss, and, as the soul instinctively recoils from all that is painful, they feel their enjoyment of the beautiful impaired by the thought of its transience.’

http://www.sophia-project.org/uploads/1/3/9/5/13955288/freud_transience.pdf

(reading freud’s essay through the lens of lacanian psychoanalytical theory:)

• The mirror phase: what we see in the mirror is far more one-dimensional that what is going on within our own minds – we only see the exterior image/object, none of what is going on within
• Other people are also only ever stuck seeing this exterior, never able to experience what it is to be in someone else’s mind – this is why we are so careful with our external appearances
• This translates to love too – no man can ever fully understand a woman and vice versa – our partners are often built upon fantasies and illusions from our childhood, and slowly coming across this realisation is only natural – a more accurate representation of what is normal – to be more or less always alone
• We always have a desire for a leader/a responsible adult

ARTICLE

Transience and Lack of Being

Kerimov, Khafiz

Language and Psychoanalysis, 2013-12-01, Vol.2 (2), p.51-63

• ‘The feeling of transience has its origins in the insistent slippage  of  the  present  into  the  past  and,  thus,  its  utter  inaccessibility’
• An impossibility of the actual present
• ‘Rather,  the  poet  feels  pain  in  his  inability  to  appreciate  the  joyous  objects  around  at the very  present  moment.  More  precisely,  it  is  as  if  each  object  is  not  only  historically transient but also evanescent at each instant of time. The beautiful escapes Freud’s young friend because of the very passage of time. It follows that the permanent evanescence of things  precedes  their  “historical”  transience.’
• (really good paragraph that I will struggle to summarise, but is essentially saying that we are not sad only about something’s transience but also at the nonexistence of the present moment and our own inability to enjoy something’s beauty which is also transient???)
• ‘From this perspective, memory is not impermeable, on the contrary, it is continually reconstructed in the light of present experiences and desires.’ – you can experience trauma and only emotionally react to it later once you’ve developed emotionally/experienced more and suddenly have a different emotional response to something than you had at the time – ‘The crucial  point  not  to  miss  here  is  that  the  meaning  of  each  memory  trace  results  solely from  the  simultaneous  presence  of  other  memory  traces.’
• **need to research the symbolic order**
• ‘It is, once again, the incompleteness of the present that makes the poet desire the absolute duration of the beautiful objects and anticipate the future so vehemently. What renders the present incomplete so as to perpetually defer its enjoyment onto the future?’
• ‘In  “The  Logical  Time  and  the  Assertion  of  Anticipated  Certainty:  A  New  Sophism” Lacan  (2012b)  distinguishes  between  three  evidential  moments  of  the  logical  time:  the instant  of  the  glance,  the  time  for  comprehending  and  the  moment  for  concluding.’
• (a signifier as something’s physical form as distinct from its meaning)
• (there is definitely a lot escaping me around here – possibly worth a re-read at some point, although equally perhaps not the most relevant – the misalignment of language with the real world and the non-existence of the present moment is roughlyyyy what is being discussed although I could be missing the point lol)
• ‘In simpler terms, the subject literally never is, rather, it is either that which has been or that which will have been. The present becomes accessible to the subject only insofar as it is symbolized, that is, incomplete and carrying absence within itself. Necessarily being either too late or too early in relation to itself, the subject never corresponds with its own being, with its own advent into presence.’
• ‘the rapid slippage of the  present  into  the  past  whereby  presence  as  such  is  only  experienced  as  absence’
• We desire a stopping of time or somehow being outside of time
• ‘On  the  one  hand,  he  mourns  over  the  perpetual  loss  of  the present,  on  the  other  hand,  he  is  nostalgic  about  the  present  insofar  as  it  always  already belongs to the past.’
• ‘And  memory-traces  are exactly like the images contained by the photographic plate. Once again, the photograph is  a  missed  encounter  with  the  present  that,  nonetheless,  always  preserves  a  certain residue  of  this  encounter,  the  punctum,  thereby  inciting  the  feeling  of  nostalgia  in  the subject.’ – the photograph as a similar lack of an in-the-moment-ness, an escaped capturing of the true instant of encounter
• ‘The universally familiar feeling of the supremacy of the past pleasures to the present ones can be, in fact, explicated through the notion of the punctum, as well. More precisely, the punctum  accounts  for  that  vague  and  poetical  quality  which  is  only  given  to  things  by time. In a sense, the events acquire something more to them once they start belonging to the past.’
• ‘What endows the past with a special charm is the belief that that which is lacking in the present,  namely,  jouissance,  was  acquired  back  then.  The  crucial  point  not  to  miss, however,  is  that  this  enjoyment  was  not  attained  during  those  moments  either.  The present becomes desirable only through being lost and never prior to the loss. Hereby the very pleasure of nostalgia lies in the displeasure of only being able to access the present as inaccessible’ – is this the idea of lack?? **research this – maybe rewatch simon’s lecture on this?**
• ‘The sublime object [das Ding] is an object which cannot be approached too closely: if we get too near it, it loses its sublime features and becomes an ordinary vulgar object –it  can  persist  only  in  an  interspace,  in  an  intermediate  state,  viewed  from  a  certain perspective, half-seen.’
• ‘The  paradox  (and  perhaps  the  very  function  of  the  prohibition  as  such)  consists  of course  in  the  fact  that,  as  soon  as  it  is  conceived  as  prohibited,  the  real  impossible changes  into  something  possible,  i.e.  into  something  that  cannot  be  reached,  not because of its inherent impossibility but simply because access to it is hindered by the external barrier of a prohibition.’ – links to Solnit’s a field guide to getting lost notes on accepting the unknown/’the blue of distance’
• ‘Herein  lies  the  Lacanian  logic  of  the  veil:  covering  sustains  the  sense  that there  is  something  substantial  being  covered,  while,  in  truth,  no  such  thing  is  present behind  the  veil.  Where  one  anticipates  protruding  presence,  there  is  always  only disappointing lack.’ – similar to what I was saying about the concept of concealing?? In doing so suggesting there is something to be concealed, whether or not this is true
• In summary: ‘This essay has highlighted how the universally familiar feeling of transience results from the  subject’s  inability  to  confront  the  present  in  its  actuality.  On  account  of  the infinitesimal    delay    between    the    subject’s    supposed    initial    perception    and    its symbolization,  the  actual  present  is  absolutely  inaccessible.  As  a  result,  the  subject  can neither achieve coalescence with itself nor discover the world around him in a complete fashion.  The  loss  felt  in  the  symbolized  present  is  either  nostalgized  in  the  past  or fantasized  as  compensated  for  by  the  future.’
• (own thoughts on photography: we take a picture to get past the transience, capture the beauty ‘for later’, postponing the lack of true encounter upon the inaugural gaze. When we then later look at this photo we have bypassed this and can instead concentrate on the nostalgia of ‘then’, in the moment, experiencing the subject very intentionally in the future and then the past, sidestepping the problem of the non-existent present)

Notes on FA202 Lecture (week 6/7?):

• The phallus as a symbol for masculinity, strength and power – but precisely as it is a symbol it actually has no tangible manifestation
• Lacan: ‘the phallus can only play its role as veiled’, symbolising power but being empty of content
• Hiding a lack behind a veil of power – a façade with no substance/ an illusion around a core of nothingness
• The example of the wizard of oz – a false illusion/impression of power
• Theory of subjectivity – before we are born into language, we have a sense in which we are omnipotently connected to the world, we don’t see the same distinctions as before. Then we become aware that we are our own individual subject, moving around others, one among many – we experience this as a sense of lack, encountering what we can’t do and are unable to do. We have language to in some way compensate for this, but beneath that is a lack.

https://medium.com/@mdowns1611/lacans-concept-of-the-object-cause-of-desire-objet-petit-a-bd17b8f84e69 (explaining all things Lacanian, objet petit a etc)

• ‘Lacan’s concept of the objet petit a is deeply inspired by the ideas of other psychoanalysts such as Sigmund Freud’s “lost object”, Melanie Klein’s “partial object” and Donald Winnicott’s “transitional object”’
• (also could do with researching/clarifying the Symbolic order, the Real and the Imaginary?)
• Lacan was very intrigued by the idea of the ‘other’, and objet petit a is a kind of object of the otherness
• (also other things to research/read could be other short Freud essays or Lacan’s seminars?)
• Objet petit a is not a physical other object but in some senses gets ‘incarnated’ into objects
• ‘The French term jouissance is very important for Lacan. Simply put, jouissance is pleasure-in-pain. It’s the excessive enjoyment that ends up bringing pain and discomfort. Jouissance destabilizes oneself. Jouissance can also be thought of as an abundance of intensity or stimulation in the body.’
• ‘This is why Lacan claims that every drive is a death drive (drive disrupts the functioning of our social or Symbolic selves)’
• ‘The security of presence is the possibility of absence’
• ‘The moment language takes hold and places restrictions on jouissance is the moment when a structural lack is produced within the human being — the lack of immediate jouissance.’
• ‘Now there’s some-thing that I’m missing, that I lack, that I must have in order to be whole again. There’s some “part” of myself that I have been separated from. This some-thing is objet petit a. We could say that objet petit a is the ghost of one’s primordial jouissance that emerges through the socialization process.’
• ‘As Lacan put it, “The objet a is something from which the subject, in order to constitute itself, has separated itself off as organ. . . . It must, therefore, be an object that is, firstly, separable and, secondly, that has some relation to the lack” (Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, p. 101). In this context, I take it that objet petit a is the “organ” and the subject is the “body”. The Lacanian object is an “organ” insofar as it is that lost, sacrificed jouissance (excess or remainder) cut away from the body by language (name-of-the-father, the signifier, Law, etc.). Jouissance is the price of admission into the Symbolic order.’
• ‘The objet petit a is the becoming-virtual of jouissance. Gilles Deleuze refers to objet a as a “virtual object”’
• (there are lots of different names for the same thing by different people)
• In this context by ‘virtual’ we sorta mean ‘potential’ – ‘Think about how a particular crack pattern is there in a window before it gets actualized. Before the window is actually shattered, the crack pattern was already there as a virtual potentiality. For jouissance to become virtual is for it to cease to be immediately present. In other words, it is something the subject lacks.’
• ‘The objet a is not, therefore, an object we have lost, because then we would be able to find it and satisfy our desire. It is rather the constant sense we have, as subjects, that something is lacking or missing from our lives. We are always searching for fulfilment, for knowledge, for possessions, for love, and whenever we achieve these goals there is always something more we desire; we cannot quite pinpoint it but we know that it is there. This is one sense in which we can understand the Lacanian real as the void or abyss at the core of our being that we constantly try to fill out. The objet a is both the void, the gap, and whatever object momentarily comes to fill that gap in our symbolic reality. What is important to keep in mind here is that the objet a is not the object itself but the function of masking the lack.’ (sean homer)
• ‘The objet petit a is the void or lack you unconsciously pursue in the hope that the attainment of this missing part of yourself will give you an ontological completeness you once “enjoyed” as an infant.’
• ‘Objet a eludes the capture of the subject.’
• Objet a causes desire, rather than being what is desired (like the spotlight on a ballerina – the spotlight is what is causing the desire (and is unconscious), the ballerina is what is being desired
• This is why some men marry women who look like their mothers – the maternal figure is the ‘primary marker of jouissance’ and thus there is an instinctive draw back to this
• ‘Consciousness forgets all kinds of things, but the unconscious remembers it all’
• ‘The signifier (language) puts an end to the unmediated jouissance experienced by the infant, but also produces a second-order, mediated jouissance through coming to represent it.’
• ‘The map of jouissance is not the original territory of jouissance, but the map itself becomes its own territory. But, of course, mediated jouissance, mapped jouissance, socially approved jouissance, is never quite the Real Thing forever lost.’
• Concept of the pure materiality of the signifier – memory-traces are material as they are traces of jouissance that were experienced and inscribed on our sub-conscious rather than anything more cognitive
• ‘The moment when the master signifier (S1) has been thoroughly inscribed in the young child’s mental apparatus is also the moment wherein the split between the desiring subject ($) and object petit a (a) occurs.’ They then say S1->$/a which tbh I feel is an unnecessary use of ‘maths’ lol
• ‘two men are sitting in a train; one of them asks: ‘What’s that package up there in the luggage rack?’ ‘Oh, that’s a MacGuffin.’ ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’ ‘Well, it’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ ‘Well, you see how efficient it is!’’ – a kind of anecdotal/physical representation of objet a – ‘a pure void which functions as the object­ cause of desire’ – could be similar to my fake rocks in the sense of entirely pointless/filling a void but I think I would need to understand this better to say that for certain
• (key difference between objet a and object of desire – objet a is what causes something else (something usually/often (?) physical) to become the object of desire)
• Can be dangerous seeking objet a in a person as you will forever be loving them/desiring them for something more than they are or can be
• ‘Desire aims at parts — love aims at the whole’
• ‘Love loves that about another person which is theirs alone while desire fixates on specific traits (objet a) that are shared by many people.’
• (paragraph before this very interesting too):‘Again, this is why the premature “I love you” shatters the fantasy. It discloses that what the other “loves” is not you but, rather, that “object” inside you that is more than you, that is, objet petit a.’
• Objet petit a inside of another object makes it desirable, and other undesirable traits must be supressed in order to keep it being desirable, or desire will move on – this is the violence of desire, the ‘mutilation of the Other’
• There’s a constant threat of an object/person in which objet a is placed becoming ‘excremental trash’ as of course objet a can never be truly found/realised – they are all substitutes
• Long section on coca cola as a representation of objet petit a: ‘So along the same lines, in the case of caffeine-free diet Coke, we drink the Nothingness itself, the pure semblance of a property that is in effect an envelope of a void.’ – again perhaps a comparison for my fake rocks, an entirely meaningless exercise attempting to go beyond itself? (don’t wanna make it too nihilistic though)
• The cola passage also draws some interesting links between capitalism and the desire for objet petit a – very interesting idea of the more you possess it (objet petit a), the more you lack
• The more you try to fill our voids/get satisfaction, the less we have it – this also gives objet petit a its own kinda of jouissance, ‘surplus jouissance’
• Fantasy tells you what you desire (rather than vice versa) – it is ‘the little piece of imagination by which we gain access to reality’
• ‘Simply put, all desiring subjects unconsciously pursue objet petit a, that lost remainder of themselves, but fundamental fantasy gives each of them a way to stage a scenario in which they regain it. The fundamental fantasy is a roadmap to that lost part of yourself (of course, the problem is that it can never actually be regained, but one feature of fantasy is that it conceals this impossibility).’
• Fantasy also functions at a societal level – ‘His point is that all ideologies elevate a particular object to the sublime status of objet a or das Ding, for example, “freedom”, “the people”, “the Nation”, “God”, “the church”, “history”, “blood and soil”, “equality”, “the free market”, “competition”, “proletariat”, “the King”, etc.’
• Objet petit a can also be a cause of anxiety, usually when the desiring subject gets too close to it, so it starts to lose its power as a lure
• ‘According to Lacan, anxiety is about the lack of a lack or the presence of something that was and/or is supposed to be absent. Anxiety is about some overbearing presence that threatens to consume the subject — the overwhelming presence of objet petit a. The desiring subject only exists as a desiring lack, so the presence of objet a, the Real of jouissance, is the threat of Imaginary-Symbolic death (the deconstruction of our socialized egos). For fantasy (◊) to function, objet a must remain off its stage or out of its frame, that is, it must remain something absent that we’re unconsciously searching for in order to work.’
• ‘On the one hand, objet a is what keeps us living life, what keeps us striving for new and better things, but on the other, it is simultaneously what prevents us from ever having peace, satisfaction and contentment.’
• ‘The original question of desire is not directly ‘What do I want?, but ‘What do others want from me? What do they see in me? What am I to others?’’
• ‘Lacanian psychoanalysis can be summed up with the words of Oscar Wilde: “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it” (Lady Windermere’s Fan, Mr. Dumby, Act III).’
• ‘The lack of jouissance is unsatisfying, but so too is jouissance itself.’
• ‘We desire in order to escape jouissance (drive), but, then, we spend all of our lives trying to regain it. Yet those who do find themselves submerged in jouissance, e.g., drug addicts, desperately yearn to get rid of it.’
• ‘[objet petit a] is that lost “part” of jouissance we sacrificed on the alter of language and that which we unconsciously seek out our entire lives. It is also a false promise of an ontological completeness we can never achieve. The objet petit a is the impossible object, the unattainable it.’

Very comprehensive information of all things Lacan, incl Real, Symbolic and Imaginary ‘definitions’: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lacan/