My Teaching Book

"when it comes to the equation great civilization = pipes and sewers, there are no exceptions"

In this text, Lacan pithily explicates some of the underlying assumptions of his teaching. This text helps position Lacan in a number of ways. It reminds readers that he is a psychoanalyst rather than a philosopher and he is someone set on educating future generations of psychoanalysts rather than obtaining fame and fortune for his own work. The text is made up of 3 essays, "The Place, Origin and End of My Teaching," "My Teaching, Its Nature and Its Ends," and "So, You Will Have Heard Lacan."

In the first essay, Lacan calls into question the systemization of psychoanalysis and explores the function of language in relation to the subject. What is important to Lacan is that psychoanalysis is by nature a point of inquiry, both into the neurosis of the analysand and the nature of the practice itself. Each interaction between the analyst and analysand can produce methodological changes, thus psychoanalysis is not that which can be systematized. Lacan also asserts that the desire of the Other, and his own perspective more generally, would be well utilized in the organization of society.

In the second essay, readers encounter Lacan's clever exploration of the relationship between sewage and civilization. Primarily, as the essay goes on, Lacan is concerned with the relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy. Lacan asserts that the subject functions quite differently in psychoanalysis than in science or philosophy. Lacan brands the system of science a failure for its consistent desire to evacuate the subject from itself, and yet it is unable to do so. Lacan writes:

All possible enlightened experience indicates that the subject is dependent on the articulated chain represented by science's acquired knowledge. The subject has to take his place there, situate himself as best he can in the implications of that chain. He constantly has to revise all the little intuitive representations he has come up with, and which becomes part of the world, and even the so-called intuitive categories. He's always having to make some improvements to the apparatus, just to find somewhere to live. It's a wonder he hasn't been kicked out of the system by now.

And that is in fact the goal of the system. In other words, the system fails. That is why the subject lasts.

Here, we find one of the fundamental disagreements between Lacan and Foucault. For Lacan, "enlightened experience" or the system of scientific knowledge constantly attempts to evacuate the subject. Lacan is invested in maintaining and redeploying the subject, for what would there be for the analyst if there was no subject? In The Order of Things, Foucault suggests this same system is precisely what constitutes the subject and that prior to the system Lacan describes, there was no subject. Foucault envisions a world where such a system falls away, and so too does the notion of subject formation. It is worth noting, however, that Lacan and Foucault mean something a little different when they conceptualize the subject. For Lacan, the subject is the site where desire functions. The subject is the person who desires the desire of the Other. That relation crystallizes the subject. For Foucault, the subject is the person who has a self-awareness of themselves under the regime of certain identitarian logics.

Lacan's third essay praises Freud and positions Freud at the core of Lacan's thinking. In this text, Lacan also criticizes the self-promoting analysts only concern with raising their own scholarly profile. For Lacan, Freud should have the immense impact of a thinker like Marx, and Lacan's teaching intends to the end of placing Freud in such a venerated position.

To be frank, I find this text to be dense. But, I also find his seminars to be readable. I question, though, if this is a good starting point for interested parties. I might suggest his 7th seminar, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, instead. My Teaching is welcome for its brevity, but without context might not generate the kind of provocation that Lacan intended in these talks. Still, Lacan's brilliance is on full display and the text offers much food for thought when revisiting the seminars and Écrits.