Freud Lives! with Stephen Grosz
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2017-10-05 · 1:15:36 · 10,779 words
psychoanalysissexuality-genderideologyliberalism-political-correctnessconsciousness-mindsubjectivitycapitalismphilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a keynote before a dialogue with a clinical psychoanalyst (Stephen Grosz), arguing for the continued indispensability of psychoanalysis against challenges from historicism, identity politics, and brain science. He critiques the 'playful' performative approach to gender identity as a fit for late-capitalist ideology, defends the irreducible asymmetry of the analyst-analysand relationship, and reflects on his own abortive analysis with Jacques-Alain Miller. The talk also touches on Trump, commodification of sexuality, paranoia as a defensive cure, and the paradox that permissive culture produces more frigidity and impotence than repressive Victorian society did.
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The ideas in it 18
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
Implicitly invoked when Žižek notes that for Marx the moment of crisis/excess is the key to understanding capitalism, not a deviation but the system's own inner logic made visible.
as “the impossible professions”
Freud's category for psychoanalysis (alongside governing and educating): practices that would be fully realizable only in a world where they were no longer needed, indexing a constitutive gap between theory and practice.
as “Unbehagen (unease in culture)”
Freud's concept invoked to argue that sexuality as such prohibits full classificatory satisfaction: no expansion of gender categories will eliminate the fundamental unease because it is constitutive of sexuality.
Lacan's formula that there is no sexual relationship, meaning sexuality as such undermines any stable normativity rather than simply admitting of an expanded classificatory order.
as “performative enactment”
Butler's notion of gender as free play of ironic repetition and reconstruction, which Žižek critiques as too playful, it misses the radical, identity-defining weight of sexual choice.
Žižek's ironic label for the dominant late-capitalist ideological injunction, 'be truly yourself, realize your potentials, don't get too attached to any objects', which he argues coincides with the pseudo-Deleuzian playful-identity version of LGBT politics.
Not explicitly named but implicitly at work in the discussion of why permissive conditions produce impotence: the excess that escapes the normalizing circuit and cannot simply be freed by removing prohibitions.
Žižek labels the second psychoanalytic counter-argument against brain science 'transcendental': even if we know how the brain works, we still must subjectively inhabit and relate to that knowledge, which is where psychoanalysis retains its place.
as “coffee without cream / coffee without milk”
Žižek's signature motif (from Lubitsch's Ninotchka) used to illustrate that negative determinations are part of an object's identity: materially identical things differ because what they are deprived of differs.
as “obsessional neurotic”
Žižek applies the term self-diagnostically to explain his strategy in analysis: preparing three sessions in advance to forestall surprise and prevent any genuine disclosure.
Being active like crazy not in order to change something but to ensure that nothing will happen, activity deployed as a guarantee of stasis, illustrated by Žižek's obsessional preparation of sessions to prevent genuine psychoanalytic surprise.
Used autobiographically: Žižek explains that his analysis with Miller collapsed when he 'lost his transference' on Miller, leaving no institutional or personal basis to continue.
as “paranoia as cure”
Freud's (via Miller's teaching) idea that paranoia is already a false attempt to cure the more devastating illness of total indifference, it is easier to feel betrayed than to feel forgotten by everyone.
Žižek's label for the end-point of hyper-politically-correct anti-harassment sex: sexuality reduced to a transparent contractual negotiation of disclosed interests, which coincides with radical commodification.
The space produced by social media where posting naked images seen by millions is still experienced as private self-expression rather than genuine public exposure, authentic public space is being replaced by this hybrid.
as “hidden normativity beneath transgression”
Žižek's claim that every apparent norm-violation is itself regulated by a deeper meta-normativity that prescribes how and in what way norms must be broken, the true norms are the ones that organize transgression.
Operative in Žižek's account of the analyst's asymmetric position: the analyst is not a normative master who knows better than the patient, yet occupies a structural position that challenges the patient to go further.
Not named explicitly but structurally present in the discussion of attachment: the injunction not to get too attached to any object (Yoda/Western Buddhism) is what ideology enforces, suppressing the logic of the objet a.
Stories he reaches for 4
A customer asks for coffee without cream; the waiter says they only have milk, so he can only offer coffee without milk. Though materially identical, 'coffee without cream' and 'coffee without milk' differ because the absent ingredient is part of the identity of what is ordered.
“I cannot give you coffee without cream I can only give you coffee without milk. It's a very Hegelian lesson that the negative determination is also part of the identity of an object.”
Hawking no longer needs his finger, his brain is directly wired to move his wheelchair. But if it goes out it also goes in, raising the question of how we can be controlled once brain-computer interfaces allow two-way traffic.
“Stephen Hawking no longer needs his finger — his brain is directly wired, he just thinks 'chair move forward' and his chair moves forward. The problem is if it goes out it also goes in. How you can be controlled.”
After a suicidal love affair, Žižek went to Miller, who drew him into analysis by simply offering him the couch as if it were more comfortable. Žižek then obsessionally prepared every session in detail, invented symptoms, and eventually lost his transference on Miller, ending the analysis unresolved.
“I always prepared in detail invented symptoms everything in advance. And since Miller guessed it and tried to surprise me by saying okay come back in ten minutes — ah you don't get so easy with an obsessional neurotic like me.”
Classical Freudian patient: 'I don't know who that woman is but it's for sure not my mother' (resistance). Today the reverse: 'I don't know who she is but I'm sure it has something to do with my mother.' The over-readiness to accept interpretation sabotages its efficacy.
“Today a typical patient tells you I don't know who that woman is in my dream but I'm sure it has something to do with my mother — this overreadiness to accept interpretation which in a way sabotages its efficiency.”
Works invoked 2
Ninotchka film
Ernst Lubitsch film that contains the coffee-without-cream scene Žižek says he has repeated in about five or six books; used to illustrate the Hegelian lesson of negative determination.
Star Wars film
Yoda's injunction 'don't get too attached to any objects' is cited mockingly ('Yoda and all those jerks') as the pop-cultural expression of Western Buddhist late-capitalist ideology.
People invoked 14
Named alongside Foucault and Althusser as thinkers who, unlike Lacan, dissolved the subject into structural processes.
Jacques Lacan positive
Primary theoretical lens for the entire talk: Žižek uses il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel against LGBT classificatory expansion, and frames psychoanalysis through Lacanian categories; credits Lacan for making 'structure with a subject' possible.
Cited to illustrate the two-way problem of brain-computer interfaces: the wheelchair controlled by thought raises the question of control going the other way.
Named among French structuralists who, unlike Lacan, reduced the subject to an ideological effect, making structure-with-a-subject impossible.
Gilles Deleuze negative
Invoked negatively as the philosophical source of the 'pseudo-Deleuzian' playful identity politics Žižek critiques, the idea of playing with different identities as liberation is attributed to (bad) Deleuzian influence.
Judith Butler negative
Her performative theory of gender identity is the target of Žižek's critique: the playful/ironic free-play-of-identities view is dangerously close to late-capitalist ideology and misses the radical, painful weight of sexual self-definition.
Used as a case study for the psychoanalytic logic of identification with the obscene supplement rather than the ego-ideal; his supporters identify with his hypocritical inconsistency, which is why exposure strengthens him.
Chelsea Manning positive
Used as a counter-example to the playful gender-identity view: Manning's suffering and sacrifice demonstrate that gender transition is a radical, identity-defining choice, not performative play.
Mentioned as one of the French structuralists (with Levi-Strauss, Althusser) who diminished the subject to an imaginary effect of structural processes, in contrast to Lacan who retained the subject within structure.
Jacques-Alain Miller positive
Žižek's analyst and Lacan's nephew; Žižek recounts his analysis with Miller in detail, Miller handled Žižek's manipulations wisely but analysis eventually collapsed when Žižek lost his transference; also credits Miller for teaching the paranoia-as-cure insight.
Joschka Fischer negative
German foreign minister who wrote a book about his personal traumas and weight loss instead of political substance, emblematic of the dissolution of authentic public space into private self-revelation.
Karl Marx positive
Cited as precursor to Freud's logic: just as Marx showed crises are the key to understanding capitalism (not contingent excesses), Freud showed psychic breakdowns are the key to understanding the person.
Sigmund Freud positive
Central theoretical authority throughout: Žižek argues Freud's real moment is arriving only now in the permissive era; cites Freud on impossible professions, borrowed kettle, emotions lying, and the constitutive role of psychic breakdown.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Explicit reference-point: the coffee-without-cream joke is described as 'a very Hegelian lesson'; psychoanalysis's conversion of obstacles into instruments is called 'really Hegelian'; and Lacanian theory is presented as the vehicle for reading Hegel.
What it argues
indispensability of psychoanalysis against brain sciences and historicismcritique of playful/performative gender identity politicsparadox of permissiveness producing more inhibition than repressionthe asymmetrical structure of the analyst-analysand relationidentity politics and the primacy of feeling over thinkinghidden normativity beneath apparent transgressioninterpassivity as a strategy to keep things unchanged
Dialectical moves 10
“Far from being a mere deviation from normality, psychic breakdown is the key to understanding the human person — the obstacle is the condition of possibility.”
Following Freud (paralleling Marx on crisis), Žižek inverts the norm/deviation hierarchy: pathology is not an exception but the index of the system's truth.
“Psychoanalytic theory also explains why practice ultimately fails — the failures are not obstacles to analysis but its very instrument.”
In a Hegelian move, obstacles (transference, resistance) are converted into the tools of the treatment: the failure is the method.
“Precisely when the road is open, the effect can be debilitating — today's permissive era produces more frigidity and impotence than the supposedly repressive Victorian age.”
Reverses the Enlightenment-liberation model: removing prohibition does not free enjoyment but paralyzes it, because the obstacle was constitutive.
“It is only today, confronting the deadlocks of permissivity, that Freud's time is really arriving.”
The historical relevance of Freud is not diminished but actually inaugurated by the permissive present: the repressive reading blocked the real lesson, which only permissiveness makes visible.
“Coffee without milk is not the same as coffee without cream — although they are materially the same, the negative determination is part of the object's identity.”
A Hegelian reversal of the commonsense view that absence is mere absence: what an object lacks is constitutive of what it is.
“The true illness is not paranoia but the total devastation it defends against — paranoia is already a false attempt to cure.”
What appears as pathology (paranoia) is revealed as a defensive resource; the 'healthy' state (total indifference) is the real catastrophe.
“The more Trump is caught with his pants down, instead of ruining him it almost helps him — identification is not with the ideal image but precisely with the dirty hidden private side.”
Inverts the logic of ideological identification: people identify not with the ego-ideal but with the secret obscene supplement, making exposure a source of strength.
“The very violation of norms is regulated by another deeper level of normativity.”
Transgression is not outside normativity but is itself normatively prescribed at a meta-level, so apparent freedom from norms conceals a deeper subjection to them.
“All that sabotaging and being afraid of psychoanalysis means I take it extremely seriously — the defense is the index of authentic engagement.”
Resistance in the clinical sense is reread as the measure of genuine investment: fear and sabotage are more authentic than comfortable compliance.
“Political correctness about sex and radical commodification come uncannily close in their form — the only sex without harassment is purely contractual sex.”
Two apparently opposed positions (feminist anti-harassment ethics and market commodification) are shown to converge in the same structure of transparent contractual exchange.
Claims 14
asserts
Psychoanalysis is not one science among others but is indispensable for orienting ourselves in contemporary philosophy, because psychic breakdowns are the key to understanding the human person, just as crises are the key to understanding capitalism.the indispensability of psychoanalysis
asserts
The psychoanalytic view of sexuality demonstrates that any normativity ultimately always fails, so the correct response to LGBT is not to expand the classificatory grid to thirty-two positions but to accept that sexuality as such undermines normativity.psychoanalysis and sexual normativity
asserts
The playful, pseudo-Deleuzian version of gender identity politics — treating gender as a free play of performative identities — fits perfectly with dominant late-capitalist ideology (Western Buddhism) rather than subverting it.LGBT identity politics and capitalism
rejects
Victorian society was not more sexually repressive than today in any simple sense: London around 1900 had the highest number of prostitutes per capita in history, showing that the repression/permission binary is too crude.the historicist argument that Freud is dated because we now live in permissive times
asserts
In our permissive era we have more frigidity and impotence than ever, because Freud's real insight is not that prohibition blocks enjoyment but that precisely when the road is open the effect can be debilitating.permissiveness and sexual dysfunction
rejects
The three standard psychoanalytic counter-arguments to brain science — results are inconclusive; they are irrelevant (transcendental argument); they ultimately confirm psychoanalysis — are all too easy and we must directly confront what brain science actually teaches.standard psychoanalytic defenses against neuroscience
asserts
A digital machine cannot distinguish coffee-as-such from coffee-without-cream from coffee-without-milk because it cannot register negative determination as part of an object's identity, which is where the unconscious exceeds neuronal models.the limits of computational/neuronal models of mind
asserts
The appeal to 'feeling' in identity politics is a defense against thinking and interpretation; it cannot ground political claims because two conflicting feelings (the antiracist and the racist) cannot adjudicate between themselves.identity politics and the primacy of feeling
asserts
Politically correct anti-harassment sexual ethics and radical commodification of sex converge in form: both reduce sexuality to a transparent contractual negotiation that eliminates the irreducible risk and asymmetry of genuine erotic encounter.political correctness, sexuality, and commodification
rejects
Trump's support is not explained by pragmatic toleration of his obscenity for policy goals; supporters identify precisely with his hypocritical inconsistency — with the dirty hidden private side — which is why exposure strengthens rather than ruins him.the standard explanation of Trump's political support
asserts
The very violation of norms is regulated by a deeper level of normativity: in any community, how and in what way explicit norms must be transgressed is itself prescribed by a meta-norm, which is what psychoanalysis must attend to.normativity and transgression
asserts
Authentic public space is disappearing and being replaced by a 'private public space' produced by social media, where speech is personal self-revelation rather than public discourse on public matters.public space, privacy, and social media
asserts
Psychoanalysis is scary and thus unpopular precisely because it is taken seriously; sabotaging it is more authentic than treating it as a social fashion.the unpopularity and resistance to psychoanalysis
asserts
The analyst's asymmetric position is not oppressive mastery but a deeper form of the master: not knowing better than you what you want, but challenging you to be more free — a structural role being eroded by false egalitarianism.the analyst's structural position and asymmetry
Quotes 14
“Psychoanalysis for me is not just a particular science of a particular domain of psychic troubles — if we want to orient ourselves in contemporary philosophy, we need the legacy of psychoanalysis.”Slavoj Žižek · indispensability of psychoanalysis
“The greatness of psychoanalysis — here it is really Hegelian — is that all the obstacle failures that it faces, it turns them into the very instrument of psychoanalytic treatment.”Slavoj Žižek · Hegelian dialectic of psychoanalytic obstacles
“It's only today when we are confronting the deadlocks of permissivity that Freud's time is really arriving.”Slavoj Žižek · permissiveness vindicates Freud
“A certain style of this postmodern open sex whatever comes very close to radical commodification — not to be oppressive I show my cards, you open yourself, then practically we conclude a deal. It's basically the only sex without violence and harassment is a purely contractual sex.”Slavoj Žižek · political correctness converges with commodification of sex
“I feel means I don't want to think. And it's a way of stopping interpretation and stopping the analysis.”Slavoj Žižek · feeling as defense against thinking
“When a black person comes too close to me I feel disgusted. Why is your feeling better than mine? The moment you reduce it to feeling you lose the critical dimension — some other dimension is needed.”Slavoj Žižek · limits of identity politics based on feeling
“There is nothing worse than this type of pseudo-permissive father — precisely when the road is open the effect can be debilitating.”Slavoj Žižek · paradox of permissiveness
“My whole strategy was he should learn nothing against me. And this is a nice paradox — interpassivity: when you are active like crazy not to change something but to make sure that nothing will happen.”Slavoj Žižek · interpassivity as obsessional defense
“Why do I talk so much? To make it sure that if I talk all the time you will not ask me an embarrassing question — just to keep things the way they are.”Slavoj Žižek · loquacity as interpassivity
“The more Trump is caught with his pants down, instead of ruining him it almost helps him. Here psychoanalysis is needed — what if you don't identify with the ideal image of a person but precisely with what you perceive as the dirty hidden private side?”Slavoj Žižek · identification with the obscene supplement in Trump support
“In any community there is a certain explicit normativity, but there is a deeper normativity which tells you how to violate and in what way some explicit norms. The very violation of norms is regulated by another deeper level of normativity.”Slavoj Žižek · meta-normativity of transgression
“All that sabotaging being afraid traumatized even by psychoanalysis — it means that I take it extremely seriously. It's much more authentic this than social psychoanalysis where you go to chat.”Slavoj Žižek · resistance as authentic engagement with psychoanalysis
“Maybe my risk — we need in a good sense more alienation — like to speak in public about public issues, not about personal revelations.”Slavoj Žižek · defense of alienation and authentic public space
“A true master is not knowing better than me what I want, but I'm caught in my everyday stupid problems and the master's message is: you can do it, you can make a step further — it just solicits you to be more free.”Slavoj Žižek · the analyst as master who solicits freedom
Transcript 71 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I'm really glad to be here again, especially in the company of somebody whom not I only highly appreciate but also view with fear. Because you know, I'm doing my theory of psychoanalysis and my god, it's like a monster, you know. You really do it with real people. And now I really mean it, what I will say now. I am not a practicing psychoanalyst for the whole series of reasons. One is the obvious one. To all who know me, can you really imagine me sitting near a guy for more than half a minute and not interrupt him by myself talking? The other reason, much more interesting theoretically, maybe it has a minimal clinical interest is that it's too much responsibility. When you have somebody, I imagine, who is in real psychic crisis, then I would be under this, and I would like to ask you it's a very practical question, maybe even boring to you like, how do you deal, there are moments when you must be aware that one wrong word from you can have catastrophic consequences. One right word maybe, maybe not, can save the situation. How do you react in such a situation? I would be afraid of such situations. It's too much responsibility. But the reason I am nonetheless referring so much to psychoanalysis is simply that I do not only find it theoretically extremely, not only useful is too vulgar to say this but, indispensable. If we want to orient ourselves in contemporary philosophy, we need the legacy of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis for me is not just a particular science of a particular domain of psychic troubles and so on and so on. As Freud made it clear, in a way repeating almost Marx, in the same sense that Marx claimed that crisis of capitalism are not contingent excesses but key to understanding capitalism, the moment of excess, the moment when a system fails is the key to understanding the system. And Freud made clearly the same point. Psychic breakdowns, troubles are not deviations simply of some normality but are the key to understanding a human person. The other thing reason that I appreciate this link of clinical practice with theory is that as already Freud made it clear when he claims that psychoanalysis is one of the impossible professions, namely Freud says there that psychoanalyst would have been as a clinical practice fully possible only in a situation where it would no longer be needed. So I think there is a very subtle dialectical relationship between theory and practice. Theory is not simply instrumental in the sense of providing a theory explanation advises for the praxis, practice, psychoanalytic theory also explains why practice ultimately fails. I am not here a pessimist, what I'm saying and that's the nice paradox is that the greatness of psychoanalysis, here psychoanalysis is really Hegelian is that all the obstacle failures that it faces, it turns them into the very instrument of psychoanalytic treatment like transference or the psychoanalysis basically is an analysis of the obstacles to its progress. So I also think but I will not go into it today that psychoanalysis is not if you take it seriously, it's not simply an objective knowledge you know like biology talks about that, psychoanalysis about that, it involves a basic fundamental, I don't know how to put it I will use fashionable words, subjective experience. It's not an objective theory. It's something that if you are really in it even the theory has to change you subjectively. So my esteemed colleague here with all my, with all my curiosity, I would just like now to present briefly, outline three four fields and I wonder how you again, sorry for repeating my bad jokes, real guy dealing with real people in trouble, how do you feel no I hate the term feel, how do you experience this in your clinical practice with your broad experience. The first approach is no, the first standard approach in our postmodern, post-feminist, whatever you call it, commonplace is that psychoanalysis is historically dated and that it involved a certain hidden heterosexual patriarchal or whatever normativity. For example the standard approach is that the way at least the majority of psychoanalysts treat transgender, homosexuality and so on and so on even if they tolerate it they treat it as a tolerable exception, failure, whatever. I of course violently disagree with it. The way I see it the psychoanalytic view of sexuality is precisely that any normativity ultimately always fails. So on the other hand I think that the retreat into pure historicism is also wrong. The idea is that you just have to find your truth in different cultures it's different. This joke I heard maybe this will be interesting even to you in Argentina. They told me that in United States when psychoanalysis exploded German immigrants arriving there in the thirties, to be heterosexual and faithful to your wife if you are man was considered normal because you know you must know this better than me, the big decision which concerns interpretation and power in psychoanalysis is when is something to be treated as a symptom to be interpreted like oh my god this is patho, so the idea was that for those from the thirties, most of them classical German American psychoanalysts, if you are faithful to your wife just doing it with her and vice versa it's okay, nothing to interpret. If you or your wife jump around ah, what are you escaping from, trauma and so on. The Argentinean joke and I love it was that with them it's the opposite. If you are faithful to your wife it means what's this some maternal fixation something is wrong with you. But again I think that both versions somehow spontaneously this non-historical normativity, Freud is describing a certain normative process which is the way we become fully human all other versions are failures should be rejected but also this all too easy historicity like anything goes just to make you happy. If anything the lesson of Freud for me is precisely and Freud says it when he says that except anxiety emotions basically lie. And that's my problem now I'm coming to the second feature, topic already, all this ongoing undermining of so called normative heterosexuality embodied by the terms LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and so on and so on today. This as maybe some of you know brought me a lot of trouble. Not a problem for me. But what I want to say is this that we fully supporting unambiguously the goals of LGBT movement and so on and I also fully accept that one should not develop treat them as a kind of a minority which somehow failed to adopt our norms but we should nonetheless with our tolerance treat them kindly and so on and so on. So I wonder again I'm making an abstract theoretical point how would you react to this. The problems I have not with LGBT as such but with concrete versions of it which are at least predominant in the United States is this one. Sometime I what I find so suspicious is that while they are so much against binary logic normativity and so on but they have this the predominant version in United States terrible tendency to impose a new classificatory order a new normativity. For example I think I even mentioned this here one of the previous times even some state organ of the State of New York in United States even proposed a classification of thirty two sexual or gender positions. Male, female but then bisexual, trisexual, multisexual, asexual, butch and so on. And you know I think this is a tragic misunderstanding because it's as if okay we feel oppressed by we cannot clearly identify I understand this with the main sexual binary opposition but it's as if if we just expand it enough so that each of us can find a slot then each of us will be satisfied you know. Like I have my slot. No I think that if we take Freud seriously all the topic of unease, Unbehagen in culture and so on, sexuality as such prohibits this. This is what Jacques Lacan means I simplified very much now of course when he says il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel, there is no sexual relationship, which means that precisely sexuality as such undermines normativity. And also this is why sexual difference for me in my Lacanian perspective is not simply a normative order and then we have to open it up to plurality of positions and so on and so on. Of course we should do this but now I come to my second reproach things are here terribly serious. For example I almost had to laugh when in one of the but very strong versions of LGBT in the United States the idea is under the false she disagrees with it privately influence of Judith Butler that we should treat gender identity as just a free play of performative enactment ironic repetition reconstruction and so on and so on. I don't think I don't think it's so playful. Take a classical example Chelsea Manning. A man who was in the primitive sense who was entrapped in male body but identified psychologically as a woman. This is not a playful position oh today I'm gay tomorrow I'm that. He can you imagine how he suffered how much pain he was or she ready to endure to change his sex. So my point is this one that even if ultimately yes it's not prescribed in nature our sexual identity we choose it but this choice is a very radical choice which defines who we are our personality. It's not this playing the games you know today I'm gay tomorrow I participate in a bisexual orgy and so on and so on. So to be as aggressive as possible with all my absolute support for LGBT my fear is that a certain version this playful pseudo-Deleuzian version we play with different identities fixed role are oppressive and so on, it fits perfectly the predominant late capitalist ideology. Today ideology is not telling us be a good father patriarchal role it's kind of a I call it ironically Western Buddhism which is the common message like be truly yourself realize your potentials don't get too fixed or as they say Yoda and all those jerks in Star Wars don't get too attached to any objects and so on. That's ideology today. Let me conclude nonetheless the next point would be historicity of psychoanalysis. Namely one of the standard criticisms is that this disgusting patronizing attitude it was good for Freud's time with all the Victorian oppression and so on but today we live in permissive times problems are totally different. Again I wonder how you experience this because for me at my abstract theoretical level it's absolutely clear first it's not true that Victorian times were in this sense oppressive. They were doing dirty things maybe even more than today just in a different way. It's a standard topic do you know that in London around nineteen hundred just when Victoria died there was the greatest number of prostitutes per capita in the history of humanity with the possible exception of Vatican of course in medieval times that's always no. So and on the other hand I wonder how you would react to this the way I see it Freud's problem is never simply I want to enjoy sex or whatever but unfortunately I internalized some paternal or social prohibitions and the function of the analyst is to allow me to get rid of these prohibitions so I can easily so I can do it. No Freud's much more subtle problem is it's not I have an oppressive father I cannot make love. If any of you know it I know from my own miserable experience. My father was a nightmare I can say this because he's dead because he precisely you know from when I was fourteen solicited like did you already sleep with a girl would you like me to show how the blah blah blah. He rendered me totally impotent for a couple of years you know. There is nothing worse than this type of pseudo-permissive father and so on. So first the enigma of psychoanalysis is not I cannot do it because I internalized prohibitions but almost I would say the opposite precisely when the road is open the effect can be debilitating. That's why today in our permissive era we have more frigidity and impotence probably than ever. So again here I think only today for in Freud's time it was still possible to read psychoanalysis in this simplistic way. We have a certain healthy tendency to enjoy let's get rid of prohibitions and then we will fully enjoy. But it's only today when we are confronting the deadlocks of permissivity that Freud's time is really arriving. And don't be afraid I apologize just the final point. So when people claim psychoanalysis is outdated there is the final argument against it in two words brain sciences. Brain sciences. Like the idea is okay that what's all some non-serious speculation today we more or less know what really goes on in our inner lives how it's all really just neuronal processes and so on and so on. And you know that joke quoted by Freud about the borrowed kettle where to destroy a certain argument you use three counterarguments which each of them is okay but they tend to contradict each other. You know the classical story first I never borrowed a kettle from you then the kettle was already broken when I borrowed it from you and so on. Isn't it simple here I noticed. The majority of psychoanalysts defend the actuality of their image by listening a series by listing a series of arguments which are self first they claim first they claim that the results of brain sciences are not conclusive it's all very much in the air it's not that they simply know how our brain works and so on. Their second argument is they concede this point but they claim it's ultimately irrelevant. This is what I call in philosophical terms transcendental argument. You may describe know how my brain works but you cannot in this way affect how I experience a situation. Even if I learn that I don't have personal freedom that it's all neuronal process still I have to subjectivize this. Enter in a certain attitude towards it and so on. And here psychoanalysis has a place and then we have the third position which is the desperate last surrender. Yes brain sciences are right but ultimately they confirm psychoanalysis. That they really amount to the same. I think that all these three ways out are way too easy. That we should first confront the problem what we really learn from brain sciences. And like we should simply in very naive terms confront this problem are they right in the sense of we are just neuronal mechanisms there is no freedom and so on and so on. From here to of course and the possible limits of this neuronal machinery model of brain. And then there are the obvious political questions of course. What does it mean if some institutions will be able to in this way regulate control our mind and so on. Here I often deal with this topic how what they already can do all the time friends are sending me results you know how even Stephen Hawking I was told he no longer needs his finger his brain is directly wired he just thinks chair move forward his chair moves forward. The problem is if it goes out it also goes in. How you can be controlled and so on. So all these problems again we should confront them and with this I will conclude just adding for example one idea came to me and I spoke with some of my brain scientist friends and I find it fascinating. I'm sorry if I repeat a joke which probably already repeated here and I find it again really fascinating. You know there is a joke that I repeated I would say not too often just about five six times in my books. The scene from Ernst Lubitsch's *Ninotchka*. You hear a joke there where a guy enters a cafeteria and says can I have coffee but without cream please. And the guy the waiter answers sorry sir we don't have cream we only have milk. So I cannot give you coffee without cream I can only give you coffee without milk. You see what's the paradox? It's a very Hegelian lesson that the negative determination the negative feature is also part of the identity of an object. Although they are materially the same but coffee without milk is not the same as coffee without cream. And I think that precisely in psychoanalysis when we have the topic of oppression allusion and so on this difference is crucial. So I just wonder and I didn't get a definitive answer from my brain sciences friends. A computer can do whatever you want or digital machinery but can it distinguish three kinds of coffee? Which is materially the same. Coffee as such just black coffee, coffee without cream, coffee without milk. I claim that just maybe here it's a hope for us that for a machine they are simply for a machine they are simply the same. Because again what nonetheless the challenge of brain sciences confronts us with is how when Freud talks about the unconscious he means something much more paradoxical than it may appear. It's not simply something that goes at some deep instinctual level that goes on in our in our brains and so on and so on. That's why just to return for a second then you have all to LGBT. For example the last pro-LGBT text that I read you know what shocked me? How all of it one verb was repeated again and again. Feel. The ultimate argument was how I feel. I feel oppressed I don't. My god haven't these guys heard about Freud? Feeling is not automatically authentic. And that's the danger of exclusive reference of feeling. American neocons we should learn from them basically their argument is yes you feel this but sorry we feel differently. For example when a black person comes too close to me I feel disgusted. Why is your feeling better than mine? The moment and I agree not with them but it's not the same feeling. But for this to decide this why if I say I feel that I have to fight for the rights of the black people and my friend tells me sorry but I feel disgust when I'm too close to black people. No it's not just feeling against feeling. Some other dimension is needed. This is I think the problem of identity politics. I'm really sorry I spoke too much but now please the field is yours. Why don't we start with the last point because I completely agree about the thing about feeling. Um because I think sometimes my experience as a clinician is people will say you make an interpretation to them which is painful or something and they will say, "But I feel." And what that means is exactly as you pointed out about the racist friend is I don't want to think about this. Yes, yes exactly definition. Feeling means I feel means I don't want to. I don't want to think and I don't want to and it's a way of stopping interpretation and stopping the analysis. Should we like the points that you made, should we talk about those a little bit the brain science and historicism and then talk more? Yeah but you talk nicely. I can I will yeah I will with pleasure. I mean the just to take the last thing about brain science. Um I don't think any I certainly as a clinician seeing patients how I don't see how anyone could object to all the developments in brain science that has to be a great thing and it has to be a great thing all the developments in things that we're learning about cognitive psychology as well. But I think you're right to think that maybe the I mean you laid out a number of different counter arguments but one of the things is that maybe the ends of analysis are not the ends of neuroscience. That where we're going is not to the same place. Um because of the things that you were mentioning most importantly the unconscious. That we are beings that are deprived of direct access to ourselves that we don't know our desire. But this ourselves it's not the neuronal ourselves. No it isn't it isn't. And it's an ourselves that goes all the way back to Sophocles and Shakespeare it comes up through literature to to contemporary times. I thought the other thing um I'm going backwards through them but the LGBT thing was also very very important. Um and you raise a a really I think serious point that about the normative nature of analysis that we don't know sometimes and what was right in Argentina wasn't right in Germany and how do we make an interpretation. I try to teach my students and I also try to keep in mind the violence of interpretation. That it is a huge imposition at times and you have to be extraordinarily careful about what you say to a patient. And often of course the patient is if you're listening carefully teaching you something very important about um the the medical or the the the culture of sexuality that we're in. I'm thinking about a patient I had many many years ago who was female-to-male transsexual. Technically surgically? Well no she was a woman who wanted to become a man and had been going along in a very certain sort of way with the surgeons at the gender clinic at Charing Cross Hospital and reached a point where they had reached an impasse. They wanted to perform the next stage which was a mastectomy and she couldn't understand why she couldn't be a man with breasts. Um and it actually was quite interesting because it became clearer that their notion of femininity this was quite a long time ago was Marilyn Monroe it wasn't it wasn't the women that I knew it was all Rita Hayworth it was all they had a very particular notion of what it was for a woman for a man to become a woman and a very clear idea of what it was for a woman to become a man. And in a way she was raising questions about normatively about what you know what she felt was appropriate. What then if it wasn't without breasts to be what then was her idea of implicit of men and women? She can I mean I think this is more accepted now and I can think of you know a number of books recently but where the notion of sexual identity wasn't as fixed uh I don't think it's as fixed now as it was then. They very clearly wanted her to be a very particular kind of man just as they wanted the men who were coming to be a very particular kind of woman. And really what the the role of the analysis was or the therapy was was to kind of listen with her but you're absolutely right that um these things aren't as set and the damage you can do if you are siding with uh because it was she came because she was really felt being driven crazy by the the demands of the clinic. I thought the and that goes to the very first thing that you said really about dealing with real people and you know you say one word or it I think um. How do you manage this? Well I was going to say even. Did you ever sorry to interrupt, did you ever do something that you regretted afterwards? All the time of course. That's the correct answer you are Freud. Every day. Not from time to time no all the time. No and in fact I would say I would say um ten minutes before the end of each session I have the thought, "What will I regret today if I don't bring it up now?" Is there I still have a few minutes left. Um and uh but no. And if anything goes right I always think it's the process if anything goes wrong it's of course it's my fault I mean you do feel. Aren't you tempted I must be an evil guy because I know this rhetorical figure that you used now
I'm really glad to be here again, especially in the company of somebody whom not I only highly appreciate but also view with fear. Because you know, I'm doing my theory of psychoanalysis and my god, it's like a monster, you know. You really do it with real people. And now I really mean it, what I will say now. I am not a practicing psychoanalyst for the whole series of reasons. One is the obvious one. To all who know me, can you really imagine me sitting near a guy for more than half a minute and not interrupt him by myself talking? The other reason, much more interesting theoretically, maybe it has a minimal clinical interest is that it's too much responsibility. When you have somebody, I imagine, who is in real psychic crisis, then I would be under this, and I would like to ask you it's a very practical question, maybe even boring to you like, how do you deal, there are moments when you must be aware that one wrong word from you can have catastrophic consequences. One right word maybe, maybe not, can save the situation. How do you react in such a situation? I would be afraid of such situations. It's too much responsibility. But the reason I am nonetheless referring so much to psychoanalysis is simply that I do not only find it theoretically extremely, not only useful is too vulgar to say this but, indispensable. If we want to orient ourselves in contemporary philosophy, we need the legacy of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis for me is not just a particular science of a particular domain of psychic troubles and so on and so on. As Freud made it clear, in a way repeating almost Marx, in the same sense that Marx claimed that crisis of capitalism are not contingent excesses but key to understanding capitalism, the moment of excess, the moment when a system fails is the key to understanding the system. And Freud made clearly the same point. Psychic breakdowns, troubles are not deviations simply of some normality but are the key to understanding a human person. The other thing reason that I appreciate this link of clinical practice with theory is that as already Freud made it clear when he claims that psychoanalysis is one of the impossible professions, namely Freud says there that psychoanalyst would have been as a clinical practice fully possible only in a situation where it would no longer be needed. So I think there is a very subtle dialectical relationship between theory and practice. Theory is not simply instrumental in the sense of providing a theory explanation advises for the praxis, practice, psychoanalytic theory also explains why practice ultimately fails. I am not here a pessimist, what I'm saying and that's the nice paradox is that the greatness of psychoanalysis, here psychoanalysis is really Hegelian is that all the obstacle failures that it faces, it turns them into the very instrument of psychoanalytic treatment like transference or the psychoanalysis basically is an analysis of the obstacles to its progress. So I also think but I will not go into it today that psychoanalysis is not if you take it seriously, it's not simply an objective knowledge you know like biology talks about that, psychoanalysis about that, it involves a basic fundamental, I don't know how to put it I will use fashionable words, subjective experience. It's not an objective theory. It's something that if you are really in it even the theory has to change you subjectively. So my esteemed colleague here with all my, with all my curiosity, I would just like now to present briefly, outline three four fields and I wonder how you again, sorry for repeating my bad jokes, real guy dealing with real people in trouble, how do you feel no I hate the term feel, how do you experience this in your clinical practice with your broad experience. The first approach is no, the first standard approach in our postmodern, post-feminist, whatever you call it, commonplace is that psychoanalysis is historically dated and that it involved a certain hidden heterosexual patriarchal or whatever normativity. For example the standard approach is that the way at least the majority of psychoanalysts treat transgender, homosexuality and so on and so on even if they tolerate it they treat it as a tolerable exception, failure, whatever. I of course violently disagree with it. The way I see it the psychoanalytic view of sexuality is precisely that any normativity ultimately always fails. So on the other hand I think that the retreat into pure historicism is also wrong. The idea is that you just have to find your truth in different cultures it's different. This joke I heard maybe this will be interesting even to you in Argentina. They told me that in United States when psychoanalysis exploded German immigrants arriving there in the thirties, to be heterosexual and faithful to your wife if you are man was considered normal because you know you must know this better than me, the big decision which concerns interpretation and power in psychoanalysis is when is something to be treated as a symptom to be interpreted like oh my god this is patho, so the idea was that for those from the thirties, most of them classical German American psychoanalysts, if you are faithful to your wife just doing it with her and vice versa it's okay, nothing to interpret. If you or your wife jump around ah, what are you escaping from, trauma and so on. The Argentinean joke and I love it was that with them it's the opposite. If you are faithful to your wife it means what's this some maternal fixation something is wrong with you. But again I think that both versions somehow spontaneously this non-historical normativity, Freud is describing a certain normative process which is the way we become fully human all other versions are failures should be rejected but also this all too easy historicity like anything goes just to make you happy. If anything the lesson of Freud for me is precisely and Freud says it when he says that except anxiety emotions basically lie. And that's my problem now I'm coming to the second feature, topic already, all this ongoing undermining of so called normative heterosexuality embodied by the terms LGBT, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and so on and so on today. This as maybe some of you know brought me a lot of trouble. Not a problem for me. But what I want to say is this that we fully supporting unambiguously the goals of LGBT movement and so on and I also fully accept that one should not develop treat them as a kind of a minority which somehow failed to adopt our norms but we should nonetheless with our tolerance treat them kindly and so on and so on. So I wonder again I'm making an abstract theoretical point how would you react to this. The problems I have not with LGBT as such but with concrete versions of it which are at least predominant in the United States is this one. Sometime I what I find so suspicious is that while they are so much against binary logic normativity and so on but they have this the predominant version in United States terrible tendency to impose a new classificatory order a new normativity. For example I think I even mentioned this here one of the previous times even some state organ of the State of New York in United States even proposed a classification of thirty two sexual or gender positions. Male, female but then bisexual, trisexual, multisexual, asexual, butch and so on. And you know I think this is a tragic misunderstanding because it's as if okay we feel oppressed by we cannot clearly identify I understand this with the main sexual binary opposition but it's as if if we just expand it enough so that each of us can find a slot then each of us will be satisfied you know. Like I have my slot. No I think that if we take Freud seriously all the topic of unease, Unbehagen in culture and so on, sexuality as such prohibits this. This is what Jacques Lacan means I simplified very much now of course when he says il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel, there is no sexual relationship, which means that precisely sexuality as such undermines normativity. And also this is why sexual difference for me in my Lacanian perspective is not simply a normative order and then we have to open it up to plurality of positions and so on and so on. Of course we should do this but now I come to my second reproach things are here terribly serious. For example I almost had to laugh when in one of the but very strong versions of LGBT in the United States the idea is under the false she disagrees with it privately influence of Judith Butler that we should treat gender identity as just a free play of performative enactment ironic repetition reconstruction and so on and so on. I don't think I don't think it's so playful. Take a classical example Chelsea Manning. A man who was in the primitive sense who was entrapped in male body but identified psychologically as a woman. This is not a playful position oh today I'm gay tomorrow I'm that. He can you imagine how he suffered how much pain he was or she ready to endure to change his sex. So my point is this one that even if ultimately yes it's not prescribed in nature our sexual identity we choose it but this choice is a very radical choice which defines who we are our personality. It's not this playing the games you know today I'm gay tomorrow I participate in a bisexual orgy and so on and so on. So to be as aggressive as possible with all my absolute support for LGBT my fear is that a certain version this playful pseudo-Deleuzian version we play with different identities fixed role are oppressive and so on, it fits perfectly the predominant late capitalist ideology. Today ideology is not telling us be a good father patriarchal role it's kind of a I call it ironically Western Buddhism which is the common message like be truly yourself realize your potentials don't get too fixed or as they say Yoda and all those jerks in Star Wars don't get too attached to any objects and so on. That's ideology today. Let me conclude nonetheless the next point would be historicity of psychoanalysis. Namely one of the standard criticisms is that this disgusting patronizing attitude it was good for Freud's time with all the Victorian oppression and so on but today we live in permissive times problems are totally different. Again I wonder how you experience this because for me at my abstract theoretical level it's absolutely clear first it's not true that Victorian times were in this sense oppressive. They were doing dirty things maybe even more than today just in a different way. It's a standard topic do you know that in London around nineteen hundred just when Victoria died there was the greatest number of prostitutes per capita in the history of humanity with the possible exception of Vatican of course in medieval times that's always no. So and on the other hand I wonder how you would react to this the way I see it Freud's problem is never simply I want to enjoy sex or whatever but unfortunately I internalized some paternal or social prohibitions and the function of the analyst is to allow me to get rid of these prohibitions so I can easily so I can do it. No Freud's much more subtle problem is it's not I have an oppressive father I cannot make love. If any of you know it I know from my own miserable experience. My father was a nightmare I can say this because he's dead because he precisely you know from when I was fourteen solicited like did you already sleep with a girl would you like me to show how the blah blah blah. He rendered me totally impotent for a couple of years you know. There is nothing worse than this type of pseudo-permissive father and so on. So first the enigma of psychoanalysis is not I cannot do it because I internalized prohibitions but almost I would say the opposite precisely when the road is open the effect can be debilitating. That's why today in our permissive era we have more frigidity and impotence probably than ever. So again here I think only today for in Freud's time it was still possible to read psychoanalysis in this simplistic way. We have a certain healthy tendency to enjoy let's get rid of prohibitions and then we will fully enjoy. But it's only today when we are confronting the deadlocks of permissivity that Freud's time is really arriving. And don't be afraid I apologize just the final point. So when people claim psychoanalysis is outdated there is the final argument against it in two words brain sciences. Brain sciences. Like the idea is okay that what's all some non-serious speculation today we more or less know what really goes on in our inner lives how it's all really just neuronal processes and so on and so on. And you know that joke quoted by Freud about the borrowed kettle where to destroy a certain argument you use three counterarguments which each of them is okay but they tend to contradict each other. You know the classical story first I never borrowed a kettle from you then the kettle was already broken when I borrowed it from you and so on. Isn't it simple here I noticed. The majority of psychoanalysts defend the actuality of their image by listening a series by listing a series of arguments which are self first they claim first they claim that the results of brain sciences are not conclusive it's all very much in the air it's not that they simply know how our brain works and so on. Their second argument is they concede this point but they claim it's ultimately irrelevant. This is what I call in philosophical terms transcendental argument. You may describe know how my brain works but you cannot in this way affect how I experience a situation. Even if I learn that I don't have personal freedom that it's all neuronal process still I have to subjectivize this. Enter in a certain attitude towards it and so on. And here psychoanalysis has a place and then we have the third position which is the desperate last surrender. Yes brain sciences are right but ultimately they confirm psychoanalysis. That they really amount to the same. I think that all these three ways out are way too easy. That we should first confront the problem what we really learn from brain sciences. And like we should simply in very naive terms confront this problem are they right in the sense of we are just neuronal mechanisms there is no freedom and so on and so on. From here to of course and the possible limits of this neuronal machinery model of brain. And then there are the obvious political questions of course. What does it mean if some institutions will be able to in this way regulate control our mind and so on. Here I often deal with this topic how what they already can do all the time friends are sending me results you know how even Stephen Hawking I was told he no longer needs his finger his brain is directly wired he just thinks chair move forward his chair moves forward. The problem is if it goes out it also goes in. How you can be controlled and so on. So all these problems again we should confront them and with this I will conclude just adding for example one idea came to me and I spoke with some of my brain scientist friends and I find it fascinating. I'm sorry if I repeat a joke which probably already repeated here and I find it again really fascinating. You know there is a joke that I repeated I would say not too often just about five six times in my books. The scene from Ernst Lubitsch's *Ninotchka*. You hear a joke there where a guy enters a cafeteria and says can I have coffee but without cream please. And the guy the waiter answers sorry sir we don't have cream we only have milk. So I cannot give you coffee without cream I can only give you coffee without milk. You see what's the paradox? It's a very Hegelian lesson that the negative determination the negative feature is also part of the identity of an object. Although they are materially the same but coffee without milk is not the same as coffee without cream. And I think that precisely in psychoanalysis when we have the topic of oppression allusion and so on this difference is crucial. So I just wonder and I didn't get a definitive answer from my brain sciences friends. A computer can do whatever you want or digital machinery but can it distinguish three kinds of coffee? Which is materially the same. Coffee as such just black coffee, coffee without cream, coffee without milk. I claim that just maybe here it's a hope for us that for a machine they are simply for a machine they are simply the same. Because again what nonetheless the challenge of brain sciences confronts us with is how when Freud talks about the unconscious he means something much more paradoxical than it may appear. It's not simply something that goes at some deep instinctual level that goes on in our in our brains and so on and so on. That's why just to return for a second then you have all to LGBT. For example the last pro-LGBT text that I read you know what shocked me? How all of it one verb was repeated again and again. Feel. The ultimate argument was how I feel. I feel oppressed I don't. My god haven't these guys heard about Freud? Feeling is not automatically authentic. And that's the danger of exclusive reference of feeling. American neocons we should learn from them basically their argument is yes you feel this but sorry we feel differently. For example when a black person comes too close to me I feel disgusted. Why is your feeling better than mine? The moment and I agree not with them but it's not the same feeling. But for this to decide this why if I say I feel that I have to fight for the rights of the black people and my friend tells me sorry but I feel disgust when I'm too close to black people. No it's not just feeling against feeling. Some other dimension is needed. This is I think the problem of identity politics. I'm really sorry I spoke too much but now please the field is yours. Why don't we start with the last point because I completely agree about the thing about feeling. Um because I think sometimes my experience as a clinician is people will say you make an interpretation to them which is painful or something and they will say, "But I feel." And what that means is exactly as you pointed out about the racist friend is I don't want to think about this. Yes, yes exactly definition. Feeling means I feel means I don't want to. I don't want to think and I don't want to and it's a way of stopping interpretation and stopping the analysis. Should we like the points that you made, should we talk about those a little bit the brain science and historicism and then talk more? Yeah but you talk nicely. I can I will yeah I will with pleasure. I mean the just to take the last thing about brain science. Um I don't think any I certainly as a clinician seeing patients how I don't see how anyone could object to all the developments in brain science that has to be a great thing and it has to be a great thing all the developments in things that we're learning about cognitive psychology as well. But I think you're right to think that maybe the I mean you laid out a number of different counter arguments but one of the things is that maybe the ends of analysis are not the ends of neuroscience. That where we're going is not to the same place. Um because of the things that you were mentioning most importantly the unconscious. That we are beings that are deprived of direct access to ourselves that we don't know our desire. But this ourselves it's not the neuronal ourselves. No it isn't it isn't. And it's an ourselves that goes all the way back to Sophocles and Shakespeare it comes up through literature to to contemporary times. I thought the other thing um I'm going backwards through them but the LGBT thing was also very very important. Um and you raise a a really I think serious point that about the normative nature of analysis that we don't know sometimes and what was right in Argentina wasn't right in Germany and how do we make an interpretation. I try to teach my students and I also try to keep in mind the violence of interpretation. That it is a huge imposition at times and you have to be extraordinarily careful about what you say to a patient. And often of course the patient is if you're listening carefully teaching you something very important about um the the medical or the the the culture of sexuality that we're in. I'm thinking about a patient I had many many years ago who was female-to-male transsexual. Technically surgically? Well no she was a woman who wanted to become a man and had been going along in a very certain sort of way with the surgeons at the gender clinic at Charing Cross Hospital and reached a point where they had reached an impasse. They wanted to perform the next stage which was a mastectomy and she couldn't understand why she couldn't be a man with breasts. Um and it actually was quite interesting because it became clearer that their notion of femininity this was quite a long time ago was Marilyn Monroe it wasn't it wasn't the women that I knew it was all Rita Hayworth it was all they had a very particular notion of what it was for a woman for a man to become a woman and a very clear idea of what it was for a woman to become a man. And in a way she was raising questions about normatively about what you know what she felt was appropriate. What then if it wasn't without breasts to be what then was her idea of implicit of men and women? She can I mean I think this is more accepted now and I can think of you know a number of books recently but where the notion of sexual identity wasn't as fixed uh I don't think it's as fixed now as it was then. They very clearly wanted her to be a very particular kind of man just as they wanted the men who were coming to be a very particular kind of woman. And really what the the role of the analysis was or the therapy was was to kind of listen with her but you're absolutely right that um these things aren't as set and the damage you can do if you are siding with uh because it was she came because she was really felt being driven crazy by the the demands of the clinic. I thought the and that goes to the very first thing that you said really about dealing with real people and you know you say one word or it I think um. How do you manage this? Well I was going to say even. Did you ever sorry to interrupt, did you ever do something that you regretted afterwards? All the time of course. That's the correct answer you are Freud. Every day. Not from time to time no all the time. No and in fact I would say I would say um ten minutes before the end of each session I have the thought, "What will I regret today if I don't bring it up now?" Is there I still have a few minutes left. Um and uh but no. And if anything goes right I always think it's the process if anything goes wrong it's of course it's my fault I mean you do feel. Aren't you tempted I must be an evil guy because I know this rhetorical figure that you used now
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but I'm so tempted to say the opposite experience like no if anything goes right it's me if something goes wrong sorry it's you you know it sounds so much nicer. No I don't I know yeah I know yeah but I think it is it's like recently uh my daughter broke her finger you to literally literally literally and you think um you know what I don't know what to do and you go to the
but I'm so tempted to say the opposite experience like no if anything goes right it's me if something goes wrong sorry it's you you know it sounds so much nicer. No I don't I know yeah I know yeah but I think it is it's like recently uh my daughter broke her finger you to literally literally literally and you think um you know what I don't know what to do and you go to the
Slavoj Žižek
emergency room and
emergency room and
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they know what to do. They pretend sorry but I don't force it yeah I have horrible experience with emergency and all that. Um and I think you know you it's like anything else you learn things to do and I'm not alone you know you're usually supported by someone's GP by their psychiatrist people don't come just just without. I wanted to ask you about I mean because I feel the relationship between clinical analysis what I do and what you do I feel it's quite different. Absolutely. And um and I you know so many of the people that I know I'm curious how you came to bring analysis into your theoretical work in the way that you did I mean all the way back. It may ultra surprise you but it's I grew up in when I did my studies late sixties my god we are old I am old we are roughly the same age yeah ex-Yugoslavia which was so so but still a communist country but a relatively open. By this I mean that from precisely that period the Communist party abdicated no not real power but ideology
they know what to do. They pretend sorry but I don't force it yeah I have horrible experience with emergency and all that. Um and I think you know you it's like anything else you learn things to do and I'm not alone you know you're usually supported by someone's GP by their psychiatrist people don't come just just without. I wanted to ask you about I mean because I feel the relationship between clinical analysis what I do and what you do I feel it's quite different. Absolutely. And um and I you know so many of the people that I know I'm curious how you came to bring analysis into your theoretical work in the way that you did I mean all the way back. It may ultra surprise you but it's I grew up in when I did my studies late sixties my god we are old I am old we are roughly the same age yeah ex-Yugoslavia which was so so but still a communist country but a relatively open. By this I mean that from precisely that period the Communist party abdicated no not real power but ideology
Slavoj Žižek
there was simply no official philosophy. Right. Not only no
there was simply no official philosophy. Right. Not only no
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dialectical materialism but very so we were very happy because all the influences at least in my part Slovenia were there together and my path was this one. We when I was a student the big conflict in Slovenia was it's almost the same as today Frankfurt School versus Heidegger. Right. And this was our then the miracle happened for us this was the formative experience of my youth the explosion of so called French structuralism.
dialectical materialism but very so we were very happy because all the influences at least in my part Slovenia were there together and my path was this one. We when I was a student the big conflict in Slovenia was it's almost the same as today Frankfurt School versus Heidegger. Right. And this was our then the miracle happened for us this was the formative experience of my youth the explosion of so called French structuralism.
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Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, all of them. And for us this was like we get out of that closed space. And it was a correct experience because it was incredible how although they were officially enemies Frankfurt School and Heideggerians all of a sudden they felt threatened by this new French way and ferociously attacked it. And then we needed a couple of years to discover Lacan and precisely because we were nonetheless we me and my friends trained in this German continental philosophy where you see what subjectivity is that subjectivity is not something that you can reduce to some ideological effect and so on and so on. And here Lacan enters. We immediately discovered that against all others Foucault, Levi-Strauss, Althusser who diminished subject to some imaginary effect of some deeper structural processes with Lacan you have what was for all others impossible to think structure with a subject. The subject is there. Then two things happened none of them clinical unfortunately the reason we didn't go into clinic this may surprise you we missed in all of Yugoslavia more or less I simplify it we missed the Freudian moment because first in the fifties there was more or less oppression psychoanalysis was was not well viewed. But then from late sixties it was opening and all of a sudden it was popular to say no we have primal scream therapy transcendental meditation for you know we jumped by we I mean population or ideological circle from not yet psychoanalysis directly to leaving it behind. So that's why probably we missed it. On the other hand I have honestly to
Levi-Strauss, Foucault, Lacan, Althusser, all of them. And for us this was like we get out of that closed space. And it was a correct experience because it was incredible how although they were officially enemies Frankfurt School and Heideggerians all of a sudden they felt threatened by this new French way and ferociously attacked it. And then we needed a couple of years to discover Lacan and precisely because we were nonetheless we me and my friends trained in this German continental philosophy where you see what subjectivity is that subjectivity is not something that you can reduce to some ideological effect and so on and so on. And here Lacan enters. We immediately discovered that against all others Foucault, Levi-Strauss, Althusser who diminished subject to some imaginary effect of some deeper structural processes with Lacan you have what was for all others impossible to think structure with a subject. The subject is there. Then two things happened none of them clinical unfortunately the reason we didn't go into clinic this may surprise you we missed in all of Yugoslavia more or less I simplify it we missed the Freudian moment because first in the fifties there was more or less oppression psychoanalysis was was not well viewed. But then from late sixties it was opening and all of a sudden it was popular to say no we have primal scream therapy transcendental meditation for you know we jumped by we I mean population or ideological circle from not yet psychoanalysis directly to leaving it behind. So that's why probably we missed it. On the other hand I have honestly to
Slavoj Žižek
emphasize this the first thing that attracted us is the use of some Lacanian
emphasize this the first thing that attracted us is the use of some Lacanian
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categories to analyze ideology. There are two things which characterize me and my friends there for already forty years a) the use of psychoanalytic categories especially in their Lacanian version to analyze ideological phenomena and I think we were productive there and second our big obsession it will sound horrible to say this but for us Lacan was a means to read Hegel to attack the big philosophical questions. So this doesn't mean we in any way dismissed actual clinical psychoanalysis. We have deep respect for them and I was even. Have you had analysis? I mean can I ask you. You can because I even write about it. Yes because I. It was a very it happened with Lacan's nephew Jacques-Alain Miller it's not a secret because you find it. Maybe two three thing would be interesting
categories to analyze ideology. There are two things which characterize me and my friends there for already forty years a) the use of psychoanalytic categories especially in their Lacanian version to analyze ideological phenomena and I think we were productive there and second our big obsession it will sound horrible to say this but for us Lacan was a means to read Hegel to attack the big philosophical questions. So this doesn't mean we in any way dismissed actual clinical psychoanalysis. We have deep respect for them and I was even. Have you had analysis? I mean can I ask you. You can because I even write about it. Yes because I. It was a very it happened with Lacan's nephew Jacques-Alain Miller it's not a secret because you find it. Maybe two three thing would be interesting
Slavoj Žižek
for you. It's a very standard story. I had a oh my god I'm so ashamed to say it a extremely
for you. It's a very standard story. I had a oh my god I'm so ashamed to say it a extremely
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unfortunate love affair. I was
unfortunate love affair. I was
Slavoj Žižek
absolutely passionately
absolutely passionately
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in love it didn't work and I was for a week or two practically suicidal. At a certain point I even I did all these tricks on myself. I survived so that I to find a breathing space. I wonder if you found this with some of your patients I said to myself okay
in love it didn't work and I was for a week or two practically suicidal. At a certain point I even I did all these tricks on myself. I survived so that I to find a breathing space. I wonder if you found this with some of your patients I said to myself okay
Slavoj Žižek
let's stop stop bullshitting I will kill myself but before I do it now it's decided I can go on. And then I desperate went to Miller and there he did a nice thing. He saw that I have a demand to be with him in analysis but he didn't want me to ask so he simply all of a sudden and he did it in a wise way started to treat me as if he
let's stop stop bullshitting I will kill myself but before I do it now it's decided I can go on. And then I desperate went to Miller and there he did a nice thing. He saw that I have a demand to be with him in analysis but he didn't want me to ask so he simply all of a sudden and he did it in a wise way started to treat me as if he
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said "Wait a minute it's more comfortable to talk why don't you
said "Wait a minute it's more comfortable to talk why don't you
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lay down there?" or something you know
lay down there?" or something you know
Slavoj Žižek
he did it in a very nice way
he did it in a very nice way
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and I must say later it didn't go well because I began to sabotage it but those
and I must say later it didn't go well because I began to sabotage it but those
Slavoj Žižek
crucial I mean. No no I was. First those couple of weeks
crucial I mean. No no I was. First those couple of weeks
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it's something beautiful you discern the sense of regular rhythm ritual for which I have a full respect. You know I was again in a suicidal mood but you know how I survived? I told myself okay I will kill myself but not today because tomorrow I have psychoanalysis at four you know like and I dragged with this on till but it took me one month even more till I said okay wait a minute we can postpone this indefinitely why kill myself at all. Then what
it's something beautiful you discern the sense of regular rhythm ritual for which I have a full respect. You know I was again in a suicidal mood but you know how I survived? I told myself okay I will kill myself but not today because tomorrow I have psychoanalysis at four you know like and I dragged with this on till but it took me one month even more till I said okay wait a minute we can postpone this indefinitely why kill myself at all. Then what
Slavoj Žižek
I did this maybe I wonder if this is pretty typical for you I know that I know enough of clinical theory that in this way you can disclose even more about yourself. But my idea was to to say as little as possible. So since Miller a Lacanian the sessions were like the usual if you are very lucky ten minutes otherwise much shorter. I always prepared in detail invented symptoms everything in advance. And since Miller guessed it and tried to surprise me by saying okay come back in ten minutes for another session ah you don't get so easy with an obsessional neurotic like me. I even prepared three sessions in advance already you know. Never never did he and at that point it didn't work because was Miller too lazy or what I don't know. But I then started to play games with him. I started to play a game if I say this how will he react. And I always guessed it precisely. There was absolutely no surprise. Again for some time this was a a beautiful game because I didn't feel threatened. My whole strategy was he should learn nothing against me. And this is a nice paradox a mention a notion that I already mentioned here elaborated by my Austrian friends interpassivity when you are active like crazy not to change something but to make it sure that nothing will happen. And I think this is my general feature. Why do I talk so much? To make it sure that if I talk all the time you will not ask me an embarrassing question just to keep things the way they are. And but at a certain point it stopped functioning I got so I definitely still need an analysis or whatever I admit it. But just there were other political institutional plots where I simply how should I put it lost my transference on Miller and then for some time I wanted to go on in Slovenia but you know Slovenia is a small country. Everybody knows put it in cold in this intellectual psychiatric circles everybody knows everybody else. So you cannot really and also we have a long tradition in Slovenia I knew some psychiatrists I consider this unethical. They like to tell stories oh you know that patient he had such and I simply couldn't gather enough trust in them to do it. So it took a long time now there are some new younger people who are trying to do clinics also in Slovenia. But so basically I accept it I'm proud of it I am basically a philosopher my problem is there. We're I'm looking at the watch we don't have yeah let's go one more question I forget. Again a question about your experience in theory. Because you mentioned that interpretation violence and so on. It can be yes you have to be so. Yeah but to what extent is the phenomenon of which I spoke I wrote but I'm always suspecting myself that I may be bluffing or whatever. But some psychoanalytic friends do complain to me about so called growing inefficiency of interpretation. Like this what I will tell you now is a caricature no but the idea is that in Freud's times you still had this naivety like I tell you a dream then you tell me oh you wanted to screw your mother and oh my god really no. But today you have a. Everyone knows that. Everybody says like I use this as a joke like you know that famous answer of a patient of Freud I don't know who that woman in my dream is but it's for sure not my mother. And Freud pulls his trick. Isn't it today a typical patient tells you I don't know who that woman is my dream is but I'm sure it has something to do with my mother
I did this maybe I wonder if this is pretty typical for you I know that I know enough of clinical theory that in this way you can disclose even more about yourself. But my idea was to to say as little as possible. So since Miller a Lacanian the sessions were like the usual if you are very lucky ten minutes otherwise much shorter. I always prepared in detail invented symptoms everything in advance. And since Miller guessed it and tried to surprise me by saying okay come back in ten minutes for another session ah you don't get so easy with an obsessional neurotic like me. I even prepared three sessions in advance already you know. Never never did he and at that point it didn't work because was Miller too lazy or what I don't know. But I then started to play games with him. I started to play a game if I say this how will he react. And I always guessed it precisely. There was absolutely no surprise. Again for some time this was a a beautiful game because I didn't feel threatened. My whole strategy was he should learn nothing against me. And this is a nice paradox a mention a notion that I already mentioned here elaborated by my Austrian friends interpassivity when you are active like crazy not to change something but to make it sure that nothing will happen. And I think this is my general feature. Why do I talk so much? To make it sure that if I talk all the time you will not ask me an embarrassing question just to keep things the way they are. And but at a certain point it stopped functioning I got so I definitely still need an analysis or whatever I admit it. But just there were other political institutional plots where I simply how should I put it lost my transference on Miller and then for some time I wanted to go on in Slovenia but you know Slovenia is a small country. Everybody knows put it in cold in this intellectual psychiatric circles everybody knows everybody else. So you cannot really and also we have a long tradition in Slovenia I knew some psychiatrists I consider this unethical. They like to tell stories oh you know that patient he had such and I simply couldn't gather enough trust in them to do it. So it took a long time now there are some new younger people who are trying to do clinics also in Slovenia. But so basically I accept it I'm proud of it I am basically a philosopher my problem is there. We're I'm looking at the watch we don't have yeah let's go one more question I forget. Again a question about your experience in theory. Because you mentioned that interpretation violence and so on. It can be yes you have to be so. Yeah but to what extent is the phenomenon of which I spoke I wrote but I'm always suspecting myself that I may be bluffing or whatever. But some psychoanalytic friends do complain to me about so called growing inefficiency of interpretation. Like this what I will tell you now is a caricature no but the idea is that in Freud's times you still had this naivety like I tell you a dream then you tell me oh you wanted to screw your mother and oh my god really no. But today you have a. Everyone knows that. Everybody says like I use this as a joke like you know that famous answer of a patient of Freud I don't know who that woman in my dream is but it's for sure not my mother. And Freud pulls his trick. Isn't it today a typical patient tells you I don't know who that woman is my dream is but I'm sure it has something to do with my mother
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you know this overreadiness to
you know this overreadiness to
Slavoj Žižek
accept interpretation which in a
accept interpretation which in a
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way sabotages
way sabotages
Slavoj Žižek
its efficiency. How do you first is this a real problem at all and b) how do you deal with it? It is a real problem it is a big problem in the sense that um but I think it's been there it's even in Freud's papers um where people come to intellectually know what you're going to say or to intellectually even accept the. So I'm not original I was. Well to accept the interpretation but that is a defense against the the kind of deeper acceptance of the interpretation. And so uh a lot of time is spent thinking about how the patient is going to hear what you're going to say and thinking about ways of putting it to them first of all that it may perhaps surprise them or come at them at a different angle uh than something and also things happen the the people bring dreams people bring their life things turn out that uh are on the side of the analysis. Can I tell you a thing then I stop and we pretend that we are in democracy we can yeah yeah would you agree it or not there was an old Slovenian psychoanalyst more who dealt with a friend of mine forty years ago and that friend of mine was the worst manipulator dishonest and so on and he was in some kind of trouble because he was arrested by mistake he was a total conformist as a dissident had a nervous breakdown went to this analyst and then he cheated in my way he prepared invented dreams to fascinate him the dreams were these obvious ones how he hates his father he wanted to kill his father and what the psychoanalyst did I don't know I want your opinion I know you cannot decide in this abstract way but I find it so ingenious. The psychoanalyst immediately saw through him that this guy is bluffing so he did something again I consider ingenious instead of sorry telling this to him directly he did it in a much more refined way he consciously adopted this most conservative role and started to shout at this hypocritical friend of mine "Aren't you ashamed all that your father did to you how can you dream about killing him?" and my friend was so ashamed I think it was an excellent interpretation it broke my friend down. At this kind of a fake naivety you know how can you do this it's your father. I mean you you said at the beginning most of the people who come to see me are in terrible pain and they're not you know they're not going to. Are they? Because in my circle as Hegelian and this is serious something is happening here I'm critical towards Lacanian community the way it actually functions. We have a big fashion of how do I call it shall I call it going to an analyst as a social fashion you don't really have problems and I can tell you a secret from Paris thirty years ago so that there was even a kind of a anonymous knowledge rumor and when you asked a friend my god I have I would like to see an analyst the idea was that the friend told ask you you mean like as a social event or are you real in trouble if it's for social event go to this guy if you are. Do you get many of them or it's not so expanded here this you know they just want to have an analyst so. If you think of the world you you know the the world that we live in people I mean the people that come to see me are suffering they are at a crisis in their life they are upset about a love affair that's gone wrong they're gambling addiction they're crystal meth addict you know all sorts of things. Oh yes it's a very serious thing yeah people come. The last question because I'm intrigued by you. This is another point where I don't trust myself being an analyst isn't it that and I don't mean this covering up my brutality or what but often with not only with brutality even with sympathy for the analyst you should be very for the analysand for the patient you should be very careful isn't it that if you have a simplified example somebody close to paranoia if you are too friendly with him he can interpret this in a paranoiac way why is he in so isn't it that a very delicate region here you should not only be careful of not being too brutal but also of not be in the wrong way too friendly or too supportive. In my view is you know you you treat people well as they come in you treat people as you would treat someone coming into your home in a kind of formally that you don't know. But the thing about paranoia which I wrote about I mean I and is that to me it's about it links up to something that you talk about maybe we can talk about during the question but it's about indifference it's about the catastrophe of indifference that people would rather feel betrayed than forgotten. That again paranoia is actually a defense against. Freud says this what Miller taught me. Well he says that the true illness is not paranoia but is this total devastation and that paranoia is already a false attempt to cure. It's a cure it's a cure against uh the it's easier to feel betrayed and someone or the thought that someone hates you than the thought that no one is thinking about me. That's why pessimist didn't work and so on of course but okay the last we sorry okay okay democracy democracy. Yeah yeah but you know I'm a Stalinist like we are people's
its efficiency. How do you first is this a real problem at all and b) how do you deal with it? It is a real problem it is a big problem in the sense that um but I think it's been there it's even in Freud's papers um where people come to intellectually know what you're going to say or to intellectually even accept the. So I'm not original I was. Well to accept the interpretation but that is a defense against the the kind of deeper acceptance of the interpretation. And so uh a lot of time is spent thinking about how the patient is going to hear what you're going to say and thinking about ways of putting it to them first of all that it may perhaps surprise them or come at them at a different angle uh than something and also things happen the the people bring dreams people bring their life things turn out that uh are on the side of the analysis. Can I tell you a thing then I stop and we pretend that we are in democracy we can yeah yeah would you agree it or not there was an old Slovenian psychoanalyst more who dealt with a friend of mine forty years ago and that friend of mine was the worst manipulator dishonest and so on and he was in some kind of trouble because he was arrested by mistake he was a total conformist as a dissident had a nervous breakdown went to this analyst and then he cheated in my way he prepared invented dreams to fascinate him the dreams were these obvious ones how he hates his father he wanted to kill his father and what the psychoanalyst did I don't know I want your opinion I know you cannot decide in this abstract way but I find it so ingenious. The psychoanalyst immediately saw through him that this guy is bluffing so he did something again I consider ingenious instead of sorry telling this to him directly he did it in a much more refined way he consciously adopted this most conservative role and started to shout at this hypocritical friend of mine "Aren't you ashamed all that your father did to you how can you dream about killing him?" and my friend was so ashamed I think it was an excellent interpretation it broke my friend down. At this kind of a fake naivety you know how can you do this it's your father. I mean you you said at the beginning most of the people who come to see me are in terrible pain and they're not you know they're not going to. Are they? Because in my circle as Hegelian and this is serious something is happening here I'm critical towards Lacanian community the way it actually functions. We have a big fashion of how do I call it shall I call it going to an analyst as a social fashion you don't really have problems and I can tell you a secret from Paris thirty years ago so that there was even a kind of a anonymous knowledge rumor and when you asked a friend my god I have I would like to see an analyst the idea was that the friend told ask you you mean like as a social event or are you real in trouble if it's for social event go to this guy if you are. Do you get many of them or it's not so expanded here this you know they just want to have an analyst so. If you think of the world you you know the the world that we live in people I mean the people that come to see me are suffering they are at a crisis in their life they are upset about a love affair that's gone wrong they're gambling addiction they're crystal meth addict you know all sorts of things. Oh yes it's a very serious thing yeah people come. The last question because I'm intrigued by you. This is another point where I don't trust myself being an analyst isn't it that and I don't mean this covering up my brutality or what but often with not only with brutality even with sympathy for the analyst you should be very for the analysand for the patient you should be very careful isn't it that if you have a simplified example somebody close to paranoia if you are too friendly with him he can interpret this in a paranoiac way why is he in so isn't it that a very delicate region here you should not only be careful of not being too brutal but also of not be in the wrong way too friendly or too supportive. In my view is you know you you treat people well as they come in you treat people as you would treat someone coming into your home in a kind of formally that you don't know. But the thing about paranoia which I wrote about I mean I and is that to me it's about it links up to something that you talk about maybe we can talk about during the question but it's about indifference it's about the catastrophe of indifference that people would rather feel betrayed than forgotten. That again paranoia is actually a defense against. Freud says this what Miller taught me. Well he says that the true illness is not paranoia but is this total devastation and that paranoia is already a false attempt to cure. It's a cure it's a cure against uh the it's easier to feel betrayed and someone or the thought that someone hates you than the thought that no one is thinking about me. That's why pessimist didn't work and so on of course but okay the last we sorry okay okay democracy democracy. Yeah yeah but you know I'm a Stalinist like we are people's
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representatives we know better than people what they really want why you know it's like would you interrupt Stalin with a question my god you're. But how can I mean
representatives we know better than people what they really want why you know it's like would you interrupt Stalin with a question my god you're. But how can I mean
Slavoj Žižek
there's
there's
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a serious question about how you can because in a sense I often think of um free association as related to freedom of speech about freedom about thinking that analysis is on the side of uh it's kind of anti-Stalinist in the sense of trying to have. Absolutely. Not only psychoanalysis. Yes. Although free association is Miller did when he guessed that I'm bringing him prepared speeches no. When I pretend that oh you know I played it so bad
a serious question about how you can because in a sense I often think of um free association as related to freedom of speech about freedom about thinking that analysis is on the side of uh it's kind of anti-Stalinist in the sense of trying to have. Absolutely. Not only psychoanalysis. Yes. Although free association is Miller did when he guessed that I'm bringing him prepared speeches no. When I pretend that oh you know I played it so bad
Slavoj Žižek
probably when with all this fake spontaneity. Why would you do that? I mean just seriously between you. So that nothing should happen my god right and did he and did he not see that your I mean that's him a long time and so on yeah there are many ways people stop an analysis and that's one but people can be boring too people can you know try and do things to make the analysis as deadly as possible they play it. I know but what Miller Miller when he noticed that I'm giving him prepared speeches he I think said something which I think in some sense was correct. He told me "I know you're preparing everything yes but it still functions as a free association and so on." No matter how much you plan it you this and so on it can be treated as because I don't think that real free association in this absolute sense now I just think takes place. It's not as simple as that no you know it isn't as simple as that no I agree. Now really the people. Is there a microphone somewhere is there? And questions if people can put their hands up if they have some questions. There's a woman there back near the camera. Yep and then we'll take that one next. Hi and I was wanting to ask a question about um commodification because it struck me that when you were talking
probably when with all this fake spontaneity. Why would you do that? I mean just seriously between you. So that nothing should happen my god right and did he and did he not see that your I mean that's him a long time and so on yeah there are many ways people stop an analysis and that's one but people can be boring too people can you know try and do things to make the analysis as deadly as possible they play it. I know but what Miller Miller when he noticed that I'm giving him prepared speeches he I think said something which I think in some sense was correct. He told me "I know you're preparing everything yes but it still functions as a free association and so on." No matter how much you plan it you this and so on it can be treated as because I don't think that real free association in this absolute sense now I just think takes place. It's not as simple as that no you know it isn't as simple as that no I agree. Now really the people. Is there a microphone somewhere is there? And questions if people can put their hands up if they have some questions. There's a woman there back near the camera. Yep and then we'll take that one next. Hi and I was wanting to ask a question about um commodification because it struck me that when you were talking
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about identity politics um the problem of I feel and the problem of equivalences and how there's um no
about identity politics um the problem of I feel and the problem of equivalences and how there's um no
Slavoj Žižek
apparent truth in that uh that sense of I feel being equal amongst everyone although of course philosophically truth is always a bit of a sticky problem. Um I wondered how both of you feel about the idea that sexual relationships and also sexual identities to a certain extent have become very commodified um and that commodification money has has started to structure those relationships in late stage capitalism. Do you want to answer this first? No I will try pray to God that I will succeed to give short answers. I cannot answer your question in detail in no but I want to make one point because I think it was a very pertinent question that about commodification and so on the tragedy is that many critics of patriarchy fall into this trap that what they propose as the totally politically correct sex where you know there is no seductive manipulation and so on it comes pretty close to a total commodification. I am here more or I think that in
apparent truth in that uh that sense of I feel being equal amongst everyone although of course philosophically truth is always a bit of a sticky problem. Um I wondered how both of you feel about the idea that sexual relationships and also sexual identities to a certain extent have become very commodified um and that commodification money has has started to structure those relationships in late stage capitalism. Do you want to answer this first? No I will try pray to God that I will succeed to give short answers. I cannot answer your question in detail in no but I want to make one point because I think it was a very pertinent question that about commodification and so on the tragedy is that many critics of patriarchy fall into this trap that what they propose as the totally politically correct sex where you know there is no seductive manipulation and so on it comes pretty close to a total commodification. I am here more or I think that in
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sorry I still use this term in authentic erotic tension there is an irreducible violence risk and so on and so on. The only way to make it without harassment is totally to objectify it. I write down my interests yours and
sorry I still use this term in authentic erotic tension there is an irreducible violence risk and so on and so on. The only way to make it without harassment is totally to objectify it. I write down my interests yours and
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so on and so on and even some American feminists I'm not saying even my god I'm not patronizing them some of them
so on and so on and even some American feminists I'm not saying even my god I'm not patronizing them some of them
Slavoj Žižek
are very intelligent and noticed this how a certain style of this postmodern open sex whatever comes very close to radical commodification. In the sense that you know like not to be oppressive I should show my cards open myself to it you open yourself then practically we conclude a deal. It's basically the only sex without violence and harassment is a purely contractual sex. So I think that this is part of authentic sexual tension that one of the partners whether flirting at a certain point you have to take a risk you do a gesture where you take a risk either it will be accepted or it will be
are very intelligent and noticed this how a certain style of this postmodern open sex whatever comes very close to radical commodification. In the sense that you know like not to be oppressive I should show my cards open myself to it you open yourself then practically we conclude a deal. It's basically the only sex without violence and harassment is a purely contractual sex. So I think that this is part of authentic sexual tension that one of the partners whether flirting at a certain point you have to take a risk you do a gesture where you take a risk either it will be accepted or it will be
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rejected as harassing intrusive and so on and so on. So this is how I read your question the tragedy is not that we have on the one hand total political correctness on the other hand commodification the points where the two come uncannily close in their form. I mean the only thing I would add is I I think of the problem slightly differently increasingly from a clinical point
rejected as harassing intrusive and so on and so on. So this is how I read your question the tragedy is not that we have on the one hand total political correctness on the other hand commodification the points where the two come uncannily close in their form. I mean the only thing I would add is I I think of the problem slightly differently increasingly from a clinical point
Slavoj Žižek
of view which is that more and more I see people if you think of Facebook Instagram all the the way that people
of view which is that more and more I see people if you think of Facebook Instagram all the the way that people
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that people have a public self and then they have a public private self uh which is they put out and then they have a private private self. Um that and
that people have a public self and then they have a public private self uh which is they put out and then they have a private private self. Um that and
Slavoj Žižek
so that people can be quite confusing in in a way perhaps that they weren't before uh and I think that that creates all kinds of levels of of difficulty right now. This is very nice point also from
so that people can be quite confusing in in a way perhaps that they weren't before uh and I think that that creates all kinds of levels of of difficulty right now. This is very nice point also from
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my abstract understand that you made because I also think that that's why uh putting your images naked if you want on Facebook is not the same as the classic exhibitionism. Classic exhibitionism you know the proverbial it's it's
my abstract understand that you made because I also think that that's why uh putting your images naked if you want on Facebook is not the same as the classic exhibitionism. Classic exhibitionism you know the proverbial it's it's
Slavoj Žižek
really public but then putting your image even if they are seen by millions it's still private public space. It's something different yes. That's why I think that when people complain that today with our media uh privacy is disappearing I'm not so sure I think that
really public but then putting your image even if they are seen by millions it's still private public space. It's something different yes. That's why I think that when people complain that today with our media uh privacy is disappearing I'm not so sure I think that
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maybe an authentic public space is disappearing and public space is more and more becoming this private public space. You know like for example I was shocked you remember the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer when he wrote a book and I was so disgusted instead of talking about
maybe an authentic public space is disappearing and public space is more and more becoming this private public space. You know like for example I was shocked you remember the German foreign minister Joschka Fischer when he wrote a book and I was so disgusted instead of talking about
Slavoj Žižek
serious political stuff it was all report about his private traumas how he lost weight and so on and so on. You know I find this so disgusting this making a political statement as a personal revelation and so on. Maybe my that's my risk we need in a good sense more alienation like to speak in public about public issues not about I stop I'm sorry. There was a question here yeah. Ah it's you. We live in a time of a lot of um division in our public world in our social world in our political
serious political stuff it was all report about his private traumas how he lost weight and so on and so on. You know I find this so disgusting this making a political statement as a personal revelation and so on. Maybe my that's my risk we need in a good sense more alienation like to speak in public about public issues not about I stop I'm sorry. There was a question here yeah. Ah it's you. We live in a time of a lot of um division in our public world in our social world in our political
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world economic world and I was just wondering in your clinical practice did you see any of this coming did you see as people
world economic world and I was just wondering in your clinical practice did you see any of this coming did you see as people
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brought
brought
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kind of bits of their
kind of bits of their
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unconscious in their
unconscious in their
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dreams and their lives and things as they brought it into your practice did you see any of this coming were you not surprised when it when all the sort of things we're seeing in the wider world happened did was there any intimations of this before? What sort of things are you thinking about I mean is there something do you um the kind of it's more acceptable for a lot of people to be a bit racist homophobic just at the same time as we're having more liberalism we're seeing a lot more racism again the whole post-Obama era in the states that kind of thing. It's it's interesting because in fact I mean
dreams and their lives and things as they brought it into your practice did you see any of this coming were you not surprised when it when all the sort of things we're seeing in the wider world happened did was there any intimations of this before? What sort of things are you thinking about I mean is there something do you um the kind of it's more acceptable for a lot of people to be a bit racist homophobic just at the same time as we're having more liberalism we're seeing a lot more racism again the whole post-Obama era in the states that kind of thing. It's it's interesting because in fact I mean
Slavoj Žižek
one of the things we could talk about for a moment now is I sometimes feel that my work is people will talk about general things but in clinical analysis you go from the general to the specific from talking about fathers to that person's father and often in politics will go from the specific to a kind of larger generalization in trying to make a an analysis so in that way I don't think I had any particular view in that and and maybe we could talk about this because I your use of analytic concepts and we haven't talked about things like Trump we haven't talked about Brexit and there are things that we could talk about maybe in the little bit that we have left. But I have a good example here I some of my American friends Lacanians mostly but also general psychoanalysts they are doing something a very honest open thing they have links in China People's Republic and they are trying to develop psychoanalysis there so they don't have firsthand experience they just how do you call it when you are an analyst you report to someone yes they play that role and now maybe this approaches to what you just said they told me that even now fifty years afterwards they were shocked about how often almost as a rule all these apparently private traumas echo the shock of cultural revolution how as a kind of a I don't like to use these pseudo terms but let's say absolute collective trauma of cultural revolution and those crazy rules it's still absolutely there as a background without which you cannot really understand not even all these psychic traumas of people there and so on and so on. So it's a nice example or I mean the one thing I would say which I don't know if people in the audience think but um you saw this with the whole thing in Las Vegas the shooting and saying that we can't talk about it now but a kind of um
one of the things we could talk about for a moment now is I sometimes feel that my work is people will talk about general things but in clinical analysis you go from the general to the specific from talking about fathers to that person's father and often in politics will go from the specific to a kind of larger generalization in trying to make a an analysis so in that way I don't think I had any particular view in that and and maybe we could talk about this because I your use of analytic concepts and we haven't talked about things like Trump we haven't talked about Brexit and there are things that we could talk about maybe in the little bit that we have left. But I have a good example here I some of my American friends Lacanians mostly but also general psychoanalysts they are doing something a very honest open thing they have links in China People's Republic and they are trying to develop psychoanalysis there so they don't have firsthand experience they just how do you call it when you are an analyst you report to someone yes they play that role and now maybe this approaches to what you just said they told me that even now fifty years afterwards they were shocked about how often almost as a rule all these apparently private traumas echo the shock of cultural revolution how as a kind of a I don't like to use these pseudo terms but let's say absolute collective trauma of cultural revolution and those crazy rules it's still absolutely there as a background without which you cannot really understand not even all these psychic traumas of people there and so on and so on. So it's a nice example or I mean the one thing I would say which I don't know if people in the audience think but um you saw this with the whole thing in Las Vegas the shooting and saying that we can't talk about it now but a kind of um
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ways and and the way we began this evening talking about feeling the way people block thinking uh and it seems that more and more with uh social media people are transmitting they're broadcasting but they're not thinking and in fact they use they want to give a message about who they are they give a performance increasingly and that has felt like it's kind of snowballed uh or even things like Trump where I feel um what's interesting is not the
ways and and the way we began this evening talking about feeling the way people block thinking uh and it seems that more and more with uh social media people are transmitting they're broadcasting but they're not thinking and in fact they use they want to give a message about who they are they give a performance increasingly and that has felt like it's kind of snowballed uh or even things like Trump where I feel um what's interesting is not the
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politics but as much more a kind of psychical
politics but as much more a kind of psychical
Slavoj Žižek
imperialism the way he's in people's minds and the way that it feels increasingly that what um it used to be that you wanted to be in particular people's minds and now it's to be in the most people's minds all the time everywhere I mean that's what I feel he's you know that we think about him and talk about him so much um but is there anything specific I I haven't seen anything like that. Is there another question some other hand. Yep. Hi um this question is for both of you and it sort of relates to the idea that we should all be normative in some sense. Um so some people would argue that CBT looks at thinking styles as a thing that needs to be changed and corrected and brought back to the norm. Um so would you sort of say that in psychodynamic in this in the psychodynamic approach we look at sort of non-heteronormativity as something that needs to be changed and again brought back to the supposed norm? It's like blind men guiding a blind man here you know. Okay I can but then you reflect you will give a different. I'm not sure I understand the question. If I got it
imperialism the way he's in people's minds and the way that it feels increasingly that what um it used to be that you wanted to be in particular people's minds and now it's to be in the most people's minds all the time everywhere I mean that's what I feel he's you know that we think about him and talk about him so much um but is there anything specific I I haven't seen anything like that. Is there another question some other hand. Yep. Hi um this question is for both of you and it sort of relates to the idea that we should all be normative in some sense. Um so some people would argue that CBT looks at thinking styles as a thing that needs to be changed and corrected and brought back to the norm. Um so would you sort of say that in psychodynamic in this in the psychodynamic approach we look at sort of non-heteronormativity as something that needs to be changed and again brought back to the supposed norm? It's like blind men guiding a blind man here you know. Okay I can but then you reflect you will give a different. I'm not sure I understand the question. If I got it
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correctly
correctly
Slavoj Žižek
I think that it's
I think that it's
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not
not
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really direct answer to your question but more the background that one big lesson from still actual from Freud and I wonder if you would agree is that we should drop this topic popular from sixties sexual revolution that sexuality some kind of free reservoir unconscious then oppressed by violent normativity norms and so on. Today I think that's why
really direct answer to your question but more the background that one big lesson from still actual from Freud and I wonder if you would agree is that we should drop this topic popular from sixties sexual revolution that sexuality some kind of free reservoir unconscious then oppressed by violent normativity norms and so on. Today I think that's why
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we get all this self sabotage guilt feelings
we get all this self sabotage guilt feelings
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and so on. You know the problem is not as neo-conservatives claims that we are just wild hedonists we don't have norms. We have unconscious norms maybe stronger than ever. The pathology today is almost the opposite of the
and so on. You know the problem is not as neo-conservatives claims that we are just wild hedonists we don't have norms. We have unconscious norms maybe stronger than ever. The pathology today is almost the opposite of the
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classical one. It's I feel free consumerist I do orgies whatever but then my unconscious can be very conservative some hidden oppressed norms and so on. So that don't simply identify the unconscious with some liberating energy that has to be set free and so on and so on. Again this is for me a much more interesting theoretically practically politically situation where you know you penetrate a little bit deeper into the unconscious you don't get some free floating energy you get extremely oppressive norms and so on. And that's maybe what is one of the
classical one. It's I feel free consumerist I do orgies whatever but then my unconscious can be very conservative some hidden oppressed norms and so on. So that don't simply identify the unconscious with some liberating energy that has to be set free and so on and so on. Again this is for me a much more interesting theoretically practically politically situation where you know you penetrate a little bit deeper into the unconscious you don't get some free floating energy you get extremely oppressive norms and so on. And that's maybe what is one of the
Slavoj Žižek
possible readings of today's neo-conservatives and so on. Although I think that there the situation is much more paradoxical like take you mentioned the guy I didn't pronounce this obscene name Donald Trump you know. Just imagine the paradox a guy who flirts at least with neo-cons moral revival it's obviously an extremely obscene lewd perverted guy and so on and so on. Now how can this happen? The official version is and there is some truth to it that conservative Americans true fundamentalists they know how Trump is and I often in debate with them some stupid public a debate I got this answer "Don't mention Trump's private life we know what he is. But nonetheless he promised certain things like limiting abortion and so on and so on and that's what really interests us. We are ready to toll" but I think this is a way too simple explanation. I think
possible readings of today's neo-conservatives and so on. Although I think that there the situation is much more paradoxical like take you mentioned the guy I didn't pronounce this obscene name Donald Trump you know. Just imagine the paradox a guy who flirts at least with neo-cons moral revival it's obviously an extremely obscene lewd perverted guy and so on and so on. Now how can this happen? The official version is and there is some truth to it that conservative Americans true fundamentalists they know how Trump is and I often in debate with them some stupid public a debate I got this answer "Don't mention Trump's private life we know what he is. But nonetheless he promised certain things like limiting abortion and so on and so on and that's what really interests us. We are ready to toll" but I think this is a way too simple explanation. I think
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that in a way they identify precisely with this Trump's hypocritical inconsistency you know. You pretend to be ethical neo-con but you are really an obscene guy and so on and so on. This is because this is the big tragedy with Trump. The more he is caught with his pants down you know like saying something stupid obscene instead of ruining him it almost helps him you know. Here psychoanalysis is needed. Here you can see how the process of identification is much more subtle. What if you don't identify with the ideal image of a person but precisely with what you perceive as the dirty hidden private side and so on and so on. So with considering a normativity if you mean any type of sexual normativity and so on. I don't think that an authentic psychoanalysis is doing it. In the sense that you presuppose a certain model and so on and so on. We just again psychoanalysis would tell us this first that especially to be attentive to hidden normativity precisely from those who pretend to fight against normativity and so on and so on. For example
that in a way they identify precisely with this Trump's hypocritical inconsistency you know. You pretend to be ethical neo-con but you are really an obscene guy and so on and so on. This is because this is the big tragedy with Trump. The more he is caught with his pants down you know like saying something stupid obscene instead of ruining him it almost helps him you know. Here psychoanalysis is needed. Here you can see how the process of identification is much more subtle. What if you don't identify with the ideal image of a person but precisely with what you perceive as the dirty hidden private side and so on and so on. So with considering a normativity if you mean any type of sexual normativity and so on. I don't think that an authentic psychoanalysis is doing it. In the sense that you presuppose a certain model and so on and so on. We just again psychoanalysis would tell us this first that especially to be attentive to hidden normativity precisely from those who pretend to fight against normativity and so on and so on. For example
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many gay theorists and they admitted this to me just propose a different normativity. That gay people have a normative superiority over us who conceded to patriarchal ruling ideology. So for them it's not just we have the right to be gay but in their reconstruction of psychic process of how subjectivity emerges there is if I may put it in these terms some ontological even priority of being gay. Something is visible there in sexuality which gets oppressed in
many gay theorists and they admitted this to me just propose a different normativity. That gay people have a normative superiority over us who conceded to patriarchal ruling ideology. So for them it's not just we have the right to be gay but in their reconstruction of psychic process of how subjectivity emerges there is if I may put it in these terms some ontological even priority of being gay. Something is visible there in sexuality which gets oppressed in
Slavoj Žižek
normal heterosexuality. So that would be my basic answer look for normativity especially with those who claim oh we are just violating norms and no. We have time for one or two more questions so up on the back. Yep. Hi my question is for Stephen. Um I was wondering more because you work into the mental you know into the mental health in Portavistock in London um the Porter Clinic. Um I was wondering why there is um less I don't know like less of psychoanalyst giving care into the people that is requiring the mental health um services from the NHS rather than getting the CBT practices I don't know if you know anything about it I think having the psychoanalyst would be a more beneficial thing for most of the patient I know because I've been through the loophole it took me to start studying psychology so that my own teacher told me when I was in conversation with him "You are failing to the CBT analyst to say that you have been you're suffering from PTSD from sexual abuse." That's what they said in the NHS everything works like a code so if you're failing to say that code that's what they give you CBT after CBT after CBT so and in my experience I have seen a lot of patients that they get referred to CBT for things that in psychoanalysis would be resolved which even if the pace is lower that in a psychoanalytic space because I know because I took ten years of a Lacanian therapist things would be resolved in a much better place. I was a suicidal intake in my country and I've been so I see most a lot of cases and I don't understand what's the process with the NHS. Thank you. Okay thank you. Well this one is definitely for you. Yeah it's a very it's a very complicated and I have I worked I stopped working in the Portman many years ago and uh I think it's everything is a very complicated question about the resources that are available. Um and I think what I find increasingly is that there are people who have had different kinds of treatment and feel hurt if they haven't been referred to the most appropriate treatment that's right for them. Um you know I that's all I can say right now. Can I just add something not to this just an important point it came to me now with getting old senile debate about that question about normativity. You know where things go really interesting. You think in many communities departments classes in school classes and so on there is a certain explicit normativity but when you get to know that circle you discover that there is a deeper normativity which tells you how to violate and in what way some explicit norms. Like there are departments where to be university where to be really accepted you have to violate certain rules make fun of certain professors and so on and that's what interests me so much how the very violation of norms is regulated by another deeper level of normativity that's it I. One last question because we're at time now yeah please do you see a point. This is a bit of a funny one. Um what's clear tonight is one of you is a clinician and one of you is a philosopher slash theorist I'm afraid I probably not giving a very clear description. But what was very interesting is when you described your own analysis you described the way in which you sabotaged it and it what was clear was a kind of terror of psychoanalysis. So you can break down a lot of the theory about Freud and the history and the philosophy and everything else but next to you is
normal heterosexuality. So that would be my basic answer look for normativity especially with those who claim oh we are just violating norms and no. We have time for one or two more questions so up on the back. Yep. Hi my question is for Stephen. Um I was wondering more because you work into the mental you know into the mental health in Portavistock in London um the Porter Clinic. Um I was wondering why there is um less I don't know like less of psychoanalyst giving care into the people that is requiring the mental health um services from the NHS rather than getting the CBT practices I don't know if you know anything about it I think having the psychoanalyst would be a more beneficial thing for most of the patient I know because I've been through the loophole it took me to start studying psychology so that my own teacher told me when I was in conversation with him "You are failing to the CBT analyst to say that you have been you're suffering from PTSD from sexual abuse." That's what they said in the NHS everything works like a code so if you're failing to say that code that's what they give you CBT after CBT after CBT so and in my experience I have seen a lot of patients that they get referred to CBT for things that in psychoanalysis would be resolved which even if the pace is lower that in a psychoanalytic space because I know because I took ten years of a Lacanian therapist things would be resolved in a much better place. I was a suicidal intake in my country and I've been so I see most a lot of cases and I don't understand what's the process with the NHS. Thank you. Okay thank you. Well this one is definitely for you. Yeah it's a very it's a very complicated and I have I worked I stopped working in the Portman many years ago and uh I think it's everything is a very complicated question about the resources that are available. Um and I think what I find increasingly is that there are people who have had different kinds of treatment and feel hurt if they haven't been referred to the most appropriate treatment that's right for them. Um you know I that's all I can say right now. Can I just add something not to this just an important point it came to me now with getting old senile debate about that question about normativity. You know where things go really interesting. You think in many communities departments classes in school classes and so on there is a certain explicit normativity but when you get to know that circle you discover that there is a deeper normativity which tells you how to violate and in what way some explicit norms. Like there are departments where to be university where to be really accepted you have to violate certain rules make fun of certain professors and so on and that's what interests me so much how the very violation of norms is regulated by another deeper level of normativity that's it I. One last question because we're at time now yeah please do you see a point. This is a bit of a funny one. Um what's clear tonight is one of you is a clinician and one of you is a philosopher slash theorist I'm afraid I probably not giving a very clear description. But what was very interesting is when you described your own analysis you described the way in which you sabotaged it and it what was clear was a kind of terror of psychoanalysis. So you can break down a lot of the theory about Freud and the history and the philosophy and everything else but next to you is
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very quietly an actual clinician and what
very quietly an actual clinician and what
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really strikes me about tonight is something about why is psychoanalysis so unpopular so uh out of well demodé to use a you know a simple word and why is it something about it being so scary. And what actually happens in psychoanalysis because what we've heard from Mr. Grosz is that what actually happens is he listens very quietly and thinks very carefully about what is going on what the patient is saying or what the patient is not saying and he's trying to work with something and how is it that that has become so terrifying and so unpopular. It's an if I may it's an extremely important and crucial question the only thing I can say and I hope you will agree is that my sabotaging it and so on was really and not in some stupid masochist sense and that where my analyst I think failed a desperate attempt like break this defense of mine do something and so on. I'm here can say absolutely sincerely that all that and you detected it totally correctly all that sabotaging being afraid traumatized even by psychoanalysis my god it means that I take it extremely seriously. It's much more authentic this than
really strikes me about tonight is something about why is psychoanalysis so unpopular so uh out of well demodé to use a you know a simple word and why is it something about it being so scary. And what actually happens in psychoanalysis because what we've heard from Mr. Grosz is that what actually happens is he listens very quietly and thinks very carefully about what is going on what the patient is saying or what the patient is not saying and he's trying to work with something and how is it that that has become so terrifying and so unpopular. It's an if I may it's an extremely important and crucial question the only thing I can say and I hope you will agree is that my sabotaging it and so on was really and not in some stupid masochist sense and that where my analyst I think failed a desperate attempt like break this defense of mine do something and so on. I'm here can say absolutely sincerely that all that and you detected it totally correctly all that sabotaging being afraid traumatized even by psychoanalysis my god it means that I take it extremely seriously. It's much more authentic this than
Slavoj Žižek
this
this
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what we mentioned social psychoanalysis you go that to chat and so on and it's the crucial question that you approach there of why what kind of defense is this of because as you pointed out you know already around nineteen ten or when it was fashionable to
what we mentioned social psychoanalysis you go that to chat and so on and it's the crucial question that you approach there of why what kind of defense is this of because as you pointed out you know already around nineteen ten or when it was fashionable to
Slavoj Žižek
say Freud is demodé and so on it's almost from the beginning but why it persists and it goes on and on and on and yes it's a crucial question I think that precisely in our permissive mediatic culture and so on look if you can if you just imagine an absolute op you know why I like about psychoanalysis precisely this asymmetrical duality that you know I was really here almost like a kind of slightly crazy patient even here you were the analyst and what humanist liberals are bothered is this obvious asymmetry that's why it's crucial the very material disposition of analyst. It's not this human touch we sincerely no I don't look at you you sit at
say Freud is demodé and so on it's almost from the beginning but why it persists and it goes on and on and on and yes it's a crucial question I think that precisely in our permissive mediatic culture and so on look if you can if you just imagine an absolute op you know why I like about psychoanalysis precisely this asymmetrical duality that you know I was really here almost like a kind of slightly crazy patient even here you were the analyst and what humanist liberals are bothered is this obvious asymmetry that's why it's crucial the very material disposition of analyst. It's not this human touch we sincerely no I don't look at you you sit at
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my side it's a radical
my side it's a radical
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asymmetry and for this it's not because it's an oppressive state where you are the master it's something much more subtle. Psychoanalyst is not a normative master but I try to do this there is a deeper sense of the master where master is not knowing better than me what I want but I'm caught in my everyday stupid problems and the master's message is you can do it you can make a step further it's just this challenge as it were a true master solicits you to be more free to be you know and this is there is something so subtle going on here which is simply
asymmetry and for this it's not because it's an oppressive state where you are the master it's something much more subtle. Psychoanalyst is not a normative master but I try to do this there is a deeper sense of the master where master is not knowing better than me what I want but I'm caught in my everyday stupid problems and the master's message is you can do it you can make a step further it's just this challenge as it were a true master solicits you to be more free to be you know and this is there is something so subtle going on here which is simply
Slavoj Žižek
again less and less present in our falsely egalitarian society. It's excellent point that you mentioned. It's a very good question I agree with Slavoj it's a very good question because especially right now um the aim of analysis I I think that the all the so many of the arguments against Freud or psychoanalysis are actually against psychoanalytic thinking and what is psychoanalytic thinking but is really trying to get people to look at the full range of meanings their unconscious motivations hidden desires why we do the things that we do and it's such an important thing to be doing particularly at this time right now. And I think I do that try to do that with my patients in my clinical setting I think Slavoj does that in his work and um but that's the aim of of uh clinical analysis. I think we should probably stop there I think that's the thank you so much for your
again less and less present in our falsely egalitarian society. It's excellent point that you mentioned. It's a very good question I agree with Slavoj it's a very good question because especially right now um the aim of analysis I I think that the all the so many of the arguments against Freud or psychoanalysis are actually against psychoanalytic thinking and what is psychoanalytic thinking but is really trying to get people to look at the full range of meanings their unconscious motivations hidden desires why we do the things that we do and it's such an important thing to be doing particularly at this time right now. And I think I do that try to do that with my patients in my clinical setting I think Slavoj does that in his work and um but that's the aim of of uh clinical analysis. I think we should probably stop there I think that's the thank you so much for your
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questions.
questions.