Alienation is an often tragic form of dislocation in the social sphere. It is a
condition which entails a dissonance between oneself; one's hopes, dreams and
aspirations and the wider social whole, which seems to be moving in a direction
contrary to one's own desires. It quite often entails an almost ascetic
withdrawal into a private, imaginative world and the birth of a furious internal
questioning. This seeking of answers to corroborate one's identity as it drifts
further into a potentially destructive malaise may also herald the dawn of a new
awareness and the emergence of a stronger personality more equipped to deal with
the complexities of the world.
Oftentimes, we are on the wrong track with
our lifestyle spiralling out of control. Sometimes, we feel intuitively that we
are on a pointless merry-go-round and so, we arrest this process, via an
internal wisdom and grant ourselves the space to begin anew. However, though
there are potential great rewards, an all too severe severing from the thrust of
daily life and the retreat into a reclusive shell - almost like the chrysalis of
the pupae before s/he gains the wings of the butterfly - invites visitors from
the deep; the restless unconscious mind.
What is now brought forward in
this period of introspection must be dealt with, and most often, it can only be
dealt with alone. The switch from external mediation via the Symbolic (the
familiar meanings attached to everyday life) to an interior intrapsychic life
dominated by imaginary modes of thought is precisely what Lacan highlights as
the dominant feature of the foreclosed alienated subject;
"What is
altogether remarkable is that the subject is stagnant with respect to any
dialogue". And again, in his 1964 seminar, in words that recall the later
non-diagnostic approaches of R.D. Laing and Al Siebert;
"Analysis is not
a matter of discovering in a particular case the differential feature of the
theory, and in doing so believe that one is explaining why your daughter is
silent - for the point at issue is to get her to speak, and this effect proceeds
from a type of intervention that has nothing to do with a differential
feature."
The subject, yet to become the subject of the subjective Real
(the emergence of the stable future persona), has become locked into a set of
imaginary identifications which aren't being corroborated by their interactions
with their social environment. Perhaps, for example, s/he has introjected into
their ego-ideal imagos of historical personages whose life histories, character,
perceived nobility etc. amount to an impossible ideal. This self-image will no
doubt conflict sharply with the appraisal to be found in the field of the Other
(the entire set of arenas for social interaction). A cycle of frustrating social
encounters has been established. Yet these types of identifications should not
in themselves lead to an alienated subjectivity since they are the grist and
mill of any respectable educative programme.
Psychoanalysis, due to
Freud's insistence on the point, used to assume that the underlying cause of
this silence is to be located in an inexpressible homosexuality. Lacan himself
is often ambivalent on this point despite how he handled the question of the
case study of the tram-driver's desire (Les Pscyhoses, Seminar). This is because
he is subtle enough to realise the folly of applying universal solutions to
cases of such extreme variation. On the one hand he is scornful of the rich
proliferations of deliria being reduced to the struggle against homosexuality
while, on the other he appears to affirm this controversial Freudian
doctrine;
"This is where all the between-I phenomena that make up what is
apparent in the symptomatology of psychosis (extreme alienation) take place - at
the level of the other subject, of the one who holds the initiative in the
delusion - in the case of Schreber, Professor Flechsig or God who is potentially
so seductive that he places the world order in danger by virtue of the
attraction"
Here, Lacan clearly intimates that for Schreiber (the 19th
century German judge who wrote "Memoirs of my Nervous Illness") the acceptance
of a homosexual impulse towards Flechsig (his physician) is, in fact, tantamount
to jeopordising his world order, for to act upon it would require in any case a
significant restructuring of his relations in the Other. Again, briefly, what
has occurred according to Lacan, is the failure of the paternal metaphor. The
successful establishment of the Name-of-the-Father provides the child with a
point of orientation within the field of the Other. It overlays, improves and
embellishes what Lacan has elsewhere described as the "judgement of existence",
conceived as the child's initial and primordial affective reaction to his
environment.
This does not mean that Oedipus implies the universal
adoption of coherence to the Law. The Lacanian return to Freud involves, among
other things the reconceptualization of oedipal triangulation. It is the phallus
conceived as a generalised locus of power and 'castration' in this context
merely means being deprived, denuded or otherwise diminished within the ambit of
it's emanant sweep. So, it merely means to suggest that the child believes in
the modus operandi adopted by the figurative father (a phrase which
incidentally can also embrace the mother), that he finds his/her dictates
credible and practically important and utilises them in an adequate manner in
his own dealings with(in) the Other.
Conversely, with the failure of the
paternal function there is introduced a discordance between the messages
emanating from that centre and the child's apprehension of the external world.
This can take place, obviously, along a multitude of different paths, implying
all manners of attitudinal responses from the child. We can then suggest that
there comes into play a habitual mode of negation, directed both at the source
of the paternal function, which is found to be objectionable, and the values
found in the external environment. This reactionary position involves from the
onset a necessary over-reliance on ones own intrasubjectivity, a position that
cannot have been easy to arrive at, but once accomplished the subject can
proceed to dissemble both 'accounts' of reality and in their place erect his
own.
In the silence of alienation there is registered a profound
objection to the constitution of the Other; the discourse of the Other as it
impinges upon the person is so antithetical to the interior dialogue that their
comes a refusal to participate in the "rules" of the language game. The failure
of Dora's "transference" (an empathic identification with the therapist deemed
necessary to progress the treatment) lay in Freud's inability to perceive the
strength of her contempt for the assumptions of a patriarchal social order that
would deliver her into the hands, through marriage, of a man who had sexually
assaulted her as a 14 year old. Freud, ensconced in the hermetic oasis of
bourgeois myopia failed to perceive these feminist rumblings and, indeed,
retained a self-confessed mystification of the opposite sex that was to last a
lifetime.
As for Dora, it has been concluded, mainly by Freudian
apologists, that she never satisfactorily overcame her "neurotic personality
structure" and so, eventually sunk into the abyss of what we would today refer
to as social exclusion. I am not suggesting that Dora could articulate a
coherent social doctrine based upon egalitarian gender relations. She was, after
all, only eighteen when first admitted to Freud's clinic. But this is precisely
the area where the transference would have yielded positive results.
In
Dora's never to be explored unconscious lay all the rudiments of a social
critique; a critique of assumptions and attitudes. Because the focus would have
been on the structure of daily relationships and how they in turn succeeded in
undermining the fledgling autonomy of an individual who eventually withdrew from
that society on the strength of a moral objection, the case study could have
been a valuable social document; a microcosmic slice of dreamy upper-middle
class Vienna prior to the massive upheaval of 'The Great War'.
The
assumption is still often maintained, as an underlying pretext as it were by
psychiatry that the deficit, the inability to thrive in one's environment,
arises from a genetic disposition of the individual, often allied to their lack
of "coping skills". This deficit is today writ large in the indelible ink of
genetic predisposition and pathogenic psychogenesis, cruelly absolving the
person of "responsibility", that is to say emasculating them, taking them out of
the debate, whilst all the while downplaying the effect of their immediate
social environment. It is in this instance, where one's own personal internal
journey, an often necessary one, can be hijacked by larger interests, who, in
turn, proceed to define for you, what it is that your specific form of
alienation has been about.
In such cases it is best to spread one's new
found wings and leave these definitions behind.
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