I Lacan Quit Any Time I Want

What exactly is Lacan’s idea of the Other? A short and surprisingly faithful gloss of the concept might be that the Other is absolutely everything. The Other affects subjectivity and the properties of language. For example, words can only be defined through other words, each in turn only definable through still more words, ad infinitum. This is what Lacan calls “the metonymy of speech,” yet the ultimate consequence is a radical division and subjectivity of virtually any concept that is verbalized or written (The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis 188). Even more importantly, the Other is the vehicle, locus, and meaning of the unconscious. As Lacan writes, the unconscious is “that which is inside the subject, but which can be realized only outside.” (147). Of course, the Other is also essential to a Lacanian understanding of drives, since “transference [is] no more than the concept of repetition itself.” (129). Furthermore, “man’s desire is the desire of the Other” and there is a “handing back of truth into the hands of the Other.” (115, 36). Today’s episode of Dr. Phil—like most episodes—seemed to contain a vast amount of Otherness, though latent. The show introduced America to two “pill popping” twins, Yvette and Yvonne. Early on, it was clear how each subject “realized” herself in the opposite twin, trying to get out and pull free (188). This is not so simple in a Lacanian universe, where every subject is divided and significant only through outside forces. This is quite evident in the fact that, according to Dr. Phil, the twins “enable each other” which we might more usefully read as enabling each Other. It is not simply their identity as sisters that requires an appreciation of the Other to be fully understood, but rather the entire circular logic of addiction. As Dr. Phil explained to either Yvonne or Yvette—both were so high on Xanax, it’s hard to tell the difference—such behavior is entirely “outside the limits of acceptability.” However, one questions to what extent that alone is a problem. Would it be okay to be a drug addict if everyone saw such behavior as acceptable? Anyone who says “yes” should read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, paying close attention to the passages on “soma,” the wonder drug of the future that makes everyone feel great with no apparent negative side effects. A Lacanian, though, would still see the potential dangers in such a drug, and a society that accepts it, since it represents an act of uninhibited surrender to the Other, comprehensively ingesting part of which must remain outside. Instead, the morality and safety of the act itself has little to do with societal values or conventions. It is precisely through the twins’ intentional internalization of such outward unacceptability that their identity, moral culpability, consciousness, and drives are formed—regardless of any moral or empirical absolutes. While Dr. Phil seems to criticize the drug use because of the “side effects” on the children, physical and mental states, and so on, Lacan point to the drug abuse as the effect of the twins’ untenable, ill conceived Others. Thus, while Dr. Phil suggests: “you need to create order, standards,” Lacan would much more likely find that it is the very social, economic, political, and psychic order which, through the standards of the Other, has forced the two to seek out such an unhealthy, precarious existence. If it is clear that the Other reveals a deep and powerful aspect of the sisters’s relationships toward each other, larger societal mores, and their drugs of choice, it should also be unmistakable that the Other is governing many more relationships in this situation. For one, I find it difficult to find drug use blameworthy through the rational of moral absolutism. Foucault, for example, called an LSD trip in Death Valley National Park the greatest experience of his life. For each religion-based system of morality that condemns such chemicals one could no doubt find an equal number of traditions that condone, or encourage the behavior. In relativist terms, however, it is precisely through the mechanism of the other that such behavior is portrayed as damaging. For example, Dr. Phil often reminded one of the Y sisters that “your husband drove high: two people are dead!” Still more frequently Dr. Phil, or one of the more conventionally well-behaved family members would says something like “drug addicts cannot raise children properly” or “this is not the right way to raise children.” It is impossible to point directly at the twins’ drug use and say, “look, look what it’s doing to you!” The other effectively converts such criticism into the positive building blocks of drives, identities, and interpersonal or communicative relationships. Similarly, one cannot point to a perfect way to raise children, but it is much more easy—in fact, one could say it is even Dr. Phil’s ultimate goal—to show the world exactly how not to handle kids, so as to inspire Others positively. However, most of this analysis has focused on how the other “can be realized only outside” of the subject, though it is equally true that it is “inside the subject.” (147) Therefore, one must question exactly how drug and child abuse are present in Dr. Phil’s personal psyche, and, of course, one’s own. The Other also blurs the line between who and what is at stake to the point that, when Dr. Phil brought back the usual refrain that “I’m doing this for the kids...obviously” it was, in all actuality, far from obvious that he wasn’t doing it for himself, the audience, or more abstractly all non-children anywhere since, of course, one would be hard pressed to find a 7 year old on Xanax. It is in this way that, from a psychoanalytic point of view, common sense, all of Dr. Phil’s suggestions, and even trips to qualified detox centers are all useless unless the analyst can help the patients in “the reopening of the shutter” to reveal that which has been there in the unconsciousness of the actor from the very beginning, without being fully known (131, 130).

Seth Woolf is writing a blog entry about Dr. Phil

Tonight’s Dr. Phil was all about women posting “inappropriate” pictures of themselves (i.e. sexually provocative or evincing extensive drinking or illicit drug use) on facebook and myspace. Even more than usual, today’s episode exhibited Dr. Phil’s proclivity toward using sweeping generalizations and blatant logical fallacies as the foundation of his analyses, which might better be characterized as arguments, if not Philicies. The good doctor was especially fond of Ad Hominem (“Okay, but you drink and you’re seventeen!”), appeals to tradition (“You think most people see this as liberating?), false dilemmas (these girls either don’t know what they’re doing, or are making stupid decisions), guilt by association (“You don’t post the pictures, but you do run the facebook group!”), slippery slope (“you’re not gonna be able to get into any colleges, or get any jobs!”), biased sampling (“so, you went into a coma after hitting your head from drinking?”), and the straw man (“I don’t look at these pictures and see Susan B. Anthony”). Beyond these simple, generally theory-less critiques, there are also deep, philosophically disturbing problems with Dr. Phil’s contentions. First of all, there is a large thematic and circumstantial problem with Phil’s approach. For one, though occasionally advised guests and viewers to refrain from participating in wild, compromising behavior, his focus was much more on simply restraining oneself from posting pictures of such behavior on popular internet forums. As such, his argument is not, in fact, about ethics, aesthetics, or everyday behavior as such, but rather the mouthings of a tragically unhip Luddite. A Marxist analysis of this strange parsing is very elucidating. If an individual of relatively simple means and power posts such a revealing picture or written omission, it is quite damaging to job prospects, the social order, and even the rituals of courtship. If, one the other, a major corporation or commercial power (i.e. Harpo productions, CBS, etc.) reveals selective information or negatively portrays someone it is not only said to be permissible, it is in fact lauded as being beneficial. Consider this simple hypothetical: you are an employer combing through candidates to fill a position in your company. You have settled on two candidates. The first, Ms. A, had a strong interview, resume, and references, but she has a picture on facebook of her clearly intoxicated, and vomiting. The second, Mr. B, also had a strong interview, resume, and references, and though he has no facebook account, he did appear on the Dr. Phil show in an episode that focused on spousal abuse. If you had to choose one of these two candidates, you would probably choose Ms. A. Similarly, one could imagine a website where users can communicate with others, view pictures and even movies of dubious social behavior, and learn potentially sensitive information about a variety of people. Is this website facebook or myspace? Yes, quite possibly. On the other hand, it might just as easily be Dr. Phil’s website. I do not intend to mirror Dr. Phils Ad Hominem thesis with and Ad Hominem antithesis of my own, however, one must realize that transference and projection are both very valid and significant issues in Freudian, Marxist, and postmodern thought. Indeed, a more positive antithesis to Dr. Phil’s thesis would be not to criticize people who are honest and open about their personal life, while embracing technology and feeling psychologically at peace with themselves, but to instead chastise those who behave deplorably and yet hide their authentically human actions and attitudes. It might be more accurate to say these people—and we could even include Dr. Phil among their ranks—are the ones in society who are antisocial and plagued by a certain psychotic tendency to admonish their own faults visible in the more economically and socially exploitable positions. To delve into another area of theory, there are a great many places to go in terms of gender, sexuality, feminist, and queer theory. Along the lines of my previous reasoning, one could take a lot from Luce Irigaray’s essay “This Sex Which Is Not One” where she writes that “woman is traditionally use-value for man, exchange value among men. Merchandise, then.” Particularly as Dr. Phil tried to show that the pictures he found so distasteful made employment opportunities scarce and possibilities of relationships with people like the audience member Roco impossible, it seemed more and more like the argument had less to do with one’s mental state, ethical value, and aesthetic well-being and far more to do with value as a lifeless commercial object. Other feminists, such as Susan Moller-Okin see sex as biological while gender is performed, claiming that “public policies and laws should generally assume no social differentiation of the sexes” (Justice, Gender, and the Family 175). Clearly, this is not Dr. Phil’s way. It is, to put it mildly, offensive and deeply biased to ask Roco if he would want to date women he only knows through “inappropriate” facebook pictures. For one, it reinforces a societal emphasis on the female exterior, only caring about a woman’s interior when it’s being vomited up in plain view. It also fails to ask these individuals—and one cannot forget that they are individuals—if they would ever consider dating someone like Roco. While this could be characterized as a double standard, it might be more realistic, and more inhumane, to interpret it as the male gaze and the lack of a female voice that is so often criticized by feminists. Lastly, there is also a very real questions pertaining to queer theory here. In “Imitation and Gender Insubordination” Judith Butler writes that “gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original” and that “the psyche is not ‘in’ the body, but in the very signifying process through which that body comes to appear.” These women are most assuredly not displaying themselves as women being taken advantage of, and women who are basically disgusting outcasts. That is the act of interpreting their actions, it is the “fantasy” as much as the “gender presentation,” and it is a potentially damaging, not advantageous, to closet that which desires to roam free, despite consequences. When one really looks at the topic with a postmodern gaze, rather than a male or Bourgeoisie gaze, the question is not why these women have facebook and myspace pages with pictures detailing their life, but rather, why doesn’t Dr. Phil? If it isn’t clear already, the simple point is, it is Dr. Phil, not any guest, who is in a position to really hide something significant, serious, and horrendous.

Deconstructing Phil. Is Back; Believe It or Not

In the urban, industrialized northern hemisphere it is winter. The days are cloudy, and short. Darkness—both metaphorical and meteorological—prevails as final exams force the most well-intentioned students into an inescapable abyss of anxiety and incomprehension. In short, the time is perfect for reading Kafka, that fun-loving lawyer who teaches that man cannot know the Law, though the Law knows a man better than himself. Today’s episode of Dr. Phil brought 5 (later 4, when 1 quit) judgmental people into the Dr. Phil house. Unfortunately, Dr. P.’s characterization and theory about what constitutes a judgmental person is, as usual, vapificialess (which is my new portmanteau for vapid, superficial, and some other “random” word such as: useless, meaningless, senseless, or reckless). Kafka, on the other hand, provides an elaborate schema of different meanings and meta-meanings of judgment in his aptly named short story, “The Judgment” (which can be read here, though all citations come from The Complete Stories). The judgmental people in the Dr. P. house all fit into easily stereotyped categories, there was the “chauvinist,” the “anti-social,” “the bitch,” and my two favorites, a poor excuse for an “elitist” and a holier-than-thou Christian Right revivalist who is, according to the Dr. P. show, a “moralist.” Such cliché caricatures of judge-mentality do exist in Kafka’s work, as they do in P.’s. Like so many of P.’s guests, the unseen, but oft talked about friend of Georg, who lives in the distant and alien land of Russia is described as “dissatisfied with his prospects,” “embittered,” and “estranged”(77, 78). Georg, the proto-protagonist, is preoccupied with passively keeping various people in his life (his father, his friend, his fiancé, his friends) separate in easily classifiable groups under his defensive control, again similar to many of the guests. Even confined to the trite and shallow characterization put forward by P of what judgmental means, Georg’s father would take the whole bakery along with the cake. Having come to the decision that his son is a deceitful, bad person (read: actually inhuman), the father takes judgmental action. He purports to have spent years secretly corresponding with Georg’s friend telling him truths Georg was ashamed to admit to gain an advantage and, in turn, reveal these truths to Georg, screaming “till now, you’ve known only about yourself…you have been a devilish human being!” The next line is the key: “And therefore take note: I sentence you now to death by drowning!” This is interesting because it is, in effect, the most extreme statement and manifestation of Dr. P.’s conception of being judgmental: I don’t like you, I want you to die. At the same time, it shows how trivial and flawed it is. After all, no reasonable person would think, just because someone says they want you to die, you have to, or even should. There’s no judicial-political, economic, or social authority here. The father may carry familial authority, but in modern times that is hardly enough to make such a judgment binding. Except, of course, for the fact that Georg’s last name is Bendemann, German for boundman. This is one of the higher levels of judgment at play, one with deep and far ranging effects, one which, if Dr. P. has any inkling or notion of it, he’s been more preoccupied with showing that he knows how to keep a secret. This does not mean it does not exist on the Dr. P. show; like in Kafka’s work, there are deeper, more insidious examples of ideological interplay at stake in every judgment. While Kafka is quite cognizant of these deeper truths to acts of judgments, focusing about them in the story, to Dr. P. they remain only latent and subtle, if they appear at all. What he does say, though, is that being judgmental is about “get them, before they get you.” In the same show, he said “you are responsible to your own creations, you did this to yourself.” These phrases seem incongruous, if not utterly contradictory. Kafka it seems, rejects the first, or rather subsumes it beneath the second. How does “The Judgment” end? Simply put, in Georg’s suicide. But the fact that it is suicide—one killing one’s self—is very important here. The father suddenly seems to disappear. Kafka writes: “George felt himself urged from the room…he swung himself over” a bridge (87-88). This is Dr. P’s idea that “you are responsible for your own creations,” but all judgments, including those made to get someone “before they get me” are also subject to this ambivalent, Existential test. Slavoj Žižek theorizes this counter-intuitive causality quite well in his essay on another one of Kafka’s notable works, The Trial. He writes:

“The necessary structural illusion which drives people to believe that truth can be found in laws describes precisely the mechanism of transference: transference is this supposition of a Truth, of a Meaning behind the stupid, traumatic, inconsistent fact of the Law. In other words, ‘transference’ names the vicious circle of belief: the reasons why we should believe are persuasive only to those who already believe.” (The Sublime Object of Ideology, 38)

Replace Kafka’s sweeping, metaphorical idea of Law with his more specific idea of judgments, and you learn that, to follow any authority’s judgment is, in fact, only to follow one’s own judgment, the pre-existing belief in the authoritativeness. Of course this is true of the judgmental people who fit Dr. P.’s more provincial model, but, more subversively, it is true of everyone. Dr. P. equates a judgmental nature as constantly looking down at people, but one could just as easily say that listening to a judgment, no matter the source, is looking up at someone without any real justification. There seems to be one final form of judge-mentality that even Kafka does not appear to be fully conscious of—forget Dr. P. In his diary entries, Kafka writes of the one night when he wrote “The Judgment” by saying that it came out of his head “like a real birth.” (Diaries, 214). He adds that: “only I have the hand that can reach to the body itself” (Ibid.) At first glance, this seems like the way a visceral, relieved writer would boast of his work. But one needs to remember how closely the story involves not just the father and son relationship, but the importance of spawning something versus causing death, including one’s own. In addition to these ever-present motifs, the story’s famous last sentence, in its original German, carries a deep sexual, progenitive implication that it loses in translation. The “unending stream of traffic” that is going over the bridge is the societal materialization of violent ejaculation, where jouissance, where pain and pleasure, life and death, and authority and belief meet, the source and site of the ultimate judgment.