Lectures on Lacan Podcast

With the winter holidays fast approaching, and perhaps some angsty family dynamics as well, it seems like a particularly good time to launch our new podcast series on . . . a n x i e t y .As many of you know, Lectures on Lacan began at the behest of an intrepid group of clinical psychology doctoral students, all of whom attended my summer 2021 seminar on “The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire” at Pacifica Graduate Institute — the same doctoral seminar which yielded the first seven episodes of this podcast!From here, we turned to Lacan’s iconic, early-1960s seminar on Anxiety (Seminar X), generating 18+ hours of recorded lectures and many new diagrams, formulas, and mathemes. It’s these materials — or at least the audio files — that will make up our new podcast series on anxiety.Since all of these materials on Seminar X were developed in a live lecture series, I expect it’ll be tricky at times to follow along with the audio recordings alone, so all of the original videos, diagrams, formulas, and mathemes will remain accessible on our Linktree, just in case you need them. And with that, on to the podcast! Here’s the first episode — along with an image of the diagram we developed in the original session:If you’d like to purchase the complete series on Anxiety (Seminar X), including 18+ hours of video-recorded lectures and all of the diagrams, formulas, and mathemes we developed along the way, you can do so here: . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

This episode on “Science and Truth” brings us to the end of Écrits. And in bringing us to the end of Écrits, it also offers a convenient stopping point (or maybe just a pausing place) for our podcast series on often overlooked essays in the volume — just in time, coincidentally enough, for the start of our new lecture series on The Logic of Fantasy (Seminar XIV)!This episode on “Science and Truth” also gives us a chance to summarize some of Lacan’s key thoughts on two important themes, both frequently discussed in recent episodes — namely, the subject and the object of psychoanalysis.Along the way, we also explore a host of clinical and conceptual relations, including modern scientific delusions of objectivity versus the psychoanalytic science of objectality; retroactive connections between pre-linguistic life (presence in the All alone) and properly symbolic order (presence and absence marked by the One); why 1 + 1 = 3 in the science of psychoanalysis, but the hidden third in this equation is in fact comprised of two elements; and how the Lacanian notion of truth-as-cause differs from (and perennially disrupts) our all-too-human knowledge of things. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

This episode begins with Lacan’s account of “the cut brought about by the heteronomy of the symbolic” and ends by explaining his frequent claim that “the true father — that is, the symbolic father — is the dead father.” If you’ve ever wondered what, exactly, Lacan means by “the symbolic,” this episode’s for you.First up in the episode: imaginary triangles comprised of the child (read: fragmented body), the primary caregiver (read: maternal function), and the imaginary object (read: phallus). Our central theme: having versus being the phallus. And our primary stake throughout: a clear, coherent, tripartite definition of desire, in which desire is always (1) the desire for another body mediated through (2) the desire of another body resulting in (3) the experience of desire as another’s body. For, of, as — these are the operative terms in Lacan’s theory of desire.Next up in this episode: symbolic squares made of imaginary triangles by the name-of-the father (read: paternal function). Our central theme: the cut, gap, opening, minus-phi-turned-objet-a introduced by Mommy, Daddy, Baby Jesus, Santa Claus, Colonel Sanders, the Queen of England (R.I.P.), Aliens . . . indeed, any invokable external authority will due. And our primary stake throughout: how the nom-of-the-father begins as a non-of-the-father that effectively prohibits the maternal figure from having the phallus and the child from being it for them — but also, more fundamentally, that prohibits the child from any continuation of life without prohibition. From “no” to “no-things” to “nothing” — you know where we’re going with this: If there’s an ontology of Lacanian psychoanalysis, it’s in fact a mēontology. Along the way, this episode also considers the importance of keeping it 300 (nay, 400) when desire and law are involved, the way that the paternal metaphor staves off anxiety, the irreducible sadism of the superego, the reason wild west heroes always ride off into the sunset, why edenic states of nature aren’t blissful but utterly terrifying (Happy Halloween, y’all), and, last but not least, the difference between two keywords in Lacan’s theory of the symbolic: lost vs. loss. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

Good Lacanians, like good Hegelians, often enjoy counting. Odd-numbered counts tend to be the most productive. Hence, today’s triangulated podcast episode, which features Lacan’s response to Hyppolite’s commentary on Freud’s little 1925 essay on “Negation.” Three essays in one episode — hang on, y’all! But it’s a single even number — 4 — that often keeps Hegelian and Lacanian thought moving, so be on the lookout for a quadrangle of terms in today’s episode: affirmation (Bejahung), negation (Verneinung), repression (Urverdrängung and Verdrängung alike), and the primitive rejection of all three experiences characteristic of psychosis: foreclosure (Verwerfung).But enough about modern dialectical thought (even though this is almost certainly why Lacan invited Hyppolite to comment on Freud’s little essay in the first place). In today’s episode, you’ll also hear how the real wanders errantly through the symbolic (shoutout to Badiou), how origins differ from genesis, especially in analytic experience (shoutout to Benjamin), how most disagreements are founded on patterns of consensus (shoutout to Rancière), and how the non-liar’s paradox, ever overshadowed by its more famous sibling, applies throughout (shoutout to Eubulides).And props to anyone who understands my use of Korean in this episode — you know, to make up for my chaotic German from start to finish. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

Reading Écrits is like riding a bike — not because you never forget how (on the contrary!) but because different essays in the volume often require different intellectual gears. Some essays, like those featured in our concluding session on the drive, have to be read slowly, in the lowest conceptual gears we’ve got. While other essays, like those covered in this week’s podcast, allow for much quicker reading.So it’s no surprise that our second often overlooked essay of the week, “Introduction to Jean Hyppolite’s Commentary on Freud's ‘Verneinung’,” yielded another speedy podcast episode! Like our last episode, this one begins with several familiar themes: resistance, empty speech, ego formations, and the absolute master of them all: death. But then come two twists. With being-toward-death comes future anteriority: Only when my life will have been can I determine how best to live it out in the meantime. And with the phenomenology of death comes negation, especially as it finds expression in the only place it can: discourse.Along the way, we also encounter elephants doing elephant things in my office, O’s in oxygen doubling as 0’s in language (and closely approximating objet a), and the curious way that words simultaneously engender and destroy things.And you can guess where we’re headed from here. “Response to Jean Hyppolite's Commentary on Freud's ‘Verneinung’,” here we come! Get ready to shift back into low gear, y’all! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

Here’s a little episode on a little essay in Écrits with lots of iconic themes strung throughout: Truth, language, and the unconscious, triangulated at the level of the signifier, and thus the subject as well… How need conditions demand, and vice versa, setting the stage for castration… What, exactly, the non-of-the-father prohibits… Dreams of wholeness, nightmares of being torn apart… And, of course, why we’re more like worms than horses. Best of all in this episode, though, is our collaboration with the artist Jerry Paper, secret lover of psychoanalysis, on the new theme music for our podcast! Mountain-high thanks to them for letting us sample one of their earlier releases — titled “Time Spent Waiting,” no less — and slather it with Lacan theory and technique! Here’s the full track, for your listening pleasure — nay, enjoyment: This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

Our final episode on this often overlooked essay in Écrits begins by returning to the topic of speech. Because speech is always addressed, its meaning is always intersubjective — in keeping with the etymology of “communication,” which has nothing to do with unity but, instead, traces its origin to the Latin word for sharing. Classic 1950s Lacan.Which brings us back to another classic theme: truth vs. knowledge. This time, however, the operative word is ignorance. According to Lacan, ignorance is not the negation of knowledge but, instead, its most elaborate form. And psychoanalysis follows suit: It’s along the pathway of learned ignorance that the analyst helps the analysand discover the outer limit of knowledge: death. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

“Variations on the Standard Treatment” is about life and death — but not as we usually conceive of these basic human experiences. Between early lives tinged with death and encounters to come with this absolute master, there are egos fixated on images of life and, thank goodness, analysts who know the benefits of playing dead (and, wherever possible, dumb as well). What egos guard against, analysts help them confront, suggesting that psychoanalysis is not just about learning how to die, but also, more fundamentally, about learning how to live as though dead. From Zeno to Foucault, with important stops at Heidegger and Lacan, the lesson is the same: Only by subjectifying death do we finally learn how to live.And to think: “Variations on the Standard Treatment” is an often overlooked essay in Écrits!Stay tuned for our part three of this podcast early next week — and soon thereafter our second get together on THE DRIVE! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

“Variations on the Standard Treatment” in 10 moves — that’s our wager in this week’s installment of Often Overlooked Essays in Écrits. I’m not sure how I arrived at this number, or whether these mini-lectures even attempt to adhere to it, but there are definitely four clear themes in this episode:* The psychoanalytic semantics initially discovered by Freud, in which free associations are never exactly “free” because parapraxes aren’t just symptoms of underlying clinical structures but also signifiers in a sociolinguistic order known as the symbolic. * The theory and technique of psychoanalytic anemnesis enabled by Freud’s momentous discovery, in which secret affinities between present speech and past experience allow the latter to be recovered, reclaimed, and, above all, resubjectivized as one’s history — and with no small amount of self-compassion along the way.* The reciprocal misrecognition of ego and unconscious alike that many of Freud’s inheritors, especially in the tradition of ego psychology, have allowed to flourish by confusing the cause and effect resistance in analytic experience. * The fragmented bodies, specular images, mashed-up egos, and others big and small that populate child development — because apparently there’s still a lot of confusion about the mirror stage, too?! Be on the lookout for episode two later this week — and see you on Wednesday for our opening session on THE DRIVE! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com

The keyword in the title of this often overlooked essay in Écrits is “subject.” No surprise there! But notice how Lacan presents the subject at essay’s end:Why and how the subject functions “a joint” — and not just any joint, but a joint between “the consequences of language and the desire for knowledge” — are the primary questions in part two of our podcast "On the Subject Who is Finally in Question."Along the way, we define subjects as symptoms as signifiers apart from signs and representational logics, with identity formations in the digital age as touchstones throughout. Lo! the networked self of late-modernity! Which is not the same, of course, as somebody sitting on a toilet. More like a dictionary shot through with desire. Or so this episode suggests. You’ll also hear one-line definitions of objet a, castration, holding environments, and the sinthome, along with shoutouts to Heidegger and Norbert Elias, a two-minute crash course on consumer logics of desire, another round of truths detoured in knowledge, and a final word on those bloody velvet shirts stuck to our skin.Stay tuned for two more episodes next week. “Variations on the Standard Treatment,” here we come!And I look forward to seeing y’all live and in-person (at least via Zoom) on Wednesday, the 28th, for our opening session on THE DRIVE! Link below for all the key details. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit lecturesonlacan.substack.com