He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organised Particulars.William Blake
in memorium: Glenda Jackson1936-2023
The Tyranny of an All
This brief paper arises from encounters with the “All” in my clinical work. It is also inspired by an ongoing philosophical perplexity about “the All”. This series of aporiae began in my youth, when monks at my seminary laboured hard to teach me symbolic logic. Sadly -or fortunately- their logic managed to make me even more confused!
Although I see analysands much less than earlier in my career, I have become aware recently of how an analysand’s “All” might try to dominate -and even subvert- both an analysis as well as its subject.
Lacan’s triple registration of Symbolic, Real, and Imaginary might seem to dissolve any All for both analysands and analysts. Instead everything that can be thought and experienced must, in principle, belong to one of these registers or some combination of them. But this is not necessarily the case for everyone. Not everyone lives in a world dominated by three registers.
Commitment to an All might involve individuals operating with other registers, that of the Ideal for instance. Of course the notion of an Ideal was ruthlessly criticised by early psychoanalysis. The Ideal in this instance would be some remnant of enforced religious orthodoxy, a weird science, authoritarian regimes, or simply the prevailing norms of a civil community -whether that community be some rural stekl or fashionable suburb of imperial Vienna.
Nevertheless psychoanalytic theory and practice did eventually establish a lofty Ideal of its own. I instance here notions of “genital maturity”. Once upon a time this represented the goal (or end) of analysis for both patients and practitioners. Whatever genital maturity was supposed to have represented then, it was thankfully deflated by Lacan when thematising sexual relationships. Here there is no ideal, real, or imaginary: instead there are perplexing lacunae of various sorts. (see footnote)
Ideality is also associated with political theory, action, or cause. An analysand might well be committed to a programme of political action inspired by ideals of social equality for the distribution of goods and services, for instance. This noble ideal can easily become a sort of drive. It becomes an All in short. It dominates the living, thinking, and actions of the individual.
A massive challenge to this commitment very often arises from others -namely ones closest political associates and comrades. Even the analyst becomes one of these. I remember well one analysand who had been expelled from every socialist group in his locality. Often he would engineer actively his own expulsion. In short he refused all compromise with any of his social and political ideals. Though he needed comrades to achieve his ideal political objectives, he invariably chose to remain faithful to his ideal, which functioned as the All of his life. This was his great desire and remained so. He preferred to be a solitary revolutionary than to dilute his ideals with any social bond
Analysing one’s own construction of the All could well threaten to betray your own very being, striving, and doing to date. An analysis may seem to push you to you towards evil opponents of your progressive programme -like intellectual nihilism or profound apathy. Apatheia in the true sense of the word involved ataraxia too: inactive passivity, an empty longing, and inability to achieve.
Is there any hope for a politically active analysand?
After years of analysis one politically active person told me that his life was governed by a dilemma. Apparently the only alternative to his All was complete unhappiness, the death of hope. This crucial formulation marked a tremendous change in the direction of his analysis. Unlike the other socialist I mentioned above, this individual began to question the dominance and tyranny of his ALL with surprising consequences.
Briefly I have considered two alternatives to a dearly held social and political All. One took the way of sticking to the All of his desire. The other began to reformulate a central dilemma resulting from the tyranny of his All.
In both instances the All abhorred castration.
footnote: lacunae
I use this word to designate several gaps, hollows, emptinesses or surds. Regrettably a lacanian gap (hole or whatever) is in danger of becoming a massive singularity.....a sort of "empty" All. It is quite easy to slip from believing there is one All, albeit empty, to believing there is One answer to plug that gap
Maybe an individual has a plurality of splits, lacks, and inaccessibles. Why should a he, she, it, or they have just one??
Castellamare di Stabia November 6 2024
