Virtual Slip
I see the analyst upside down on my phone screen. She says, “Some people rotate their phone.” These are my first virtual sessions in the days of Covid-19. What can we learn from the appearance of a “virtual slip”?
The pandemic forced the screen on many analyzes. With the appearance of the figure and the sound on the screen, in the existence of the analysant’s signifiers and the act of the analyst, what is the difference between existence on the screen and reality, and the effects on analytical experience?
Lacan makes a distinction between the eye and the gaze, the voice and the resonance. The metaphor of Plato’s cave, demonstrates that we see only the reflected shadows of what is happening outside, hear only the different resonance, of the various phonemes, returning from the entrance and end of the cave [1].
This is essentially the dynamic of unconscious knowledge, which realizes only in retrospect. The precedence of the object gaze and voice (resonance) involves the extraction of the object from the field of the drive, and refers not the being, but the split subject of the analytical experience.
In the scopic field the split is located at the stain, which is the point that disappears from the eye, indicating that “you never look at me from the place from which I see you” [2]. The split of the subject takes place in the field of speech, where the vanishing point is embodied in the Master’s signifier that acts, while the subject is nothing but supposed relative to another signifier. The subject does not give meaning to the signifier, but gives it a body [3] of jouissance, which is equivalent on the plane of being (raison d’être) to the resonance of the thing (d’être réson) [4].
Virtual screen represent a perspective of the real world of being, and of metric relations. When the figure gets closer to the screen, it looks bigger and the sound is louder, and vice versa. But in analysis, although the analyst’s voice sounds close and loud, the analysant does not see him. The speech sent from the place of the subject to the void of the analyst’s room, returns to the subject, as resonance from afar [5].
These differences are related to the different paths of jouissance and desire. While we can describe screen sessions as “I see myself seeing myself”, an auto-eroticism on the very circuit of the drive, revolving around forbidden jouissance, analysis in presence takes place in a libidinal space, moving in the path of desire, and characterized by the appearance of an obstacle [6], which is the basis for the principle of the Oedipus complex [7].
To maintain desire, the object must be separated from the body, and create a lack. Here virtual analyses meats a difficulty, since the screen is opaque, and does not allow to extract un reflected images, as those of the objects gaze and voice.[8]. Therefore, being in different spaces on both sides of the screen, the resonance of the analysant’s voice may not return through the walls of the transference. The lack may not be produced, if he is not looked at from the objects that are bound in the unknown desire of the Other.
A virtual slip may indicate an unconscious attempt to re-establish a libidinal space, through an obstacle. In its absence, anxiety may arise around prolonged virtual analyzes, which serves as a sign of the lack of the lack [9], a way to maintain desire on the horizon [10].
But, since psychoanalyses should not withdraw from the discontent of our times, we can use the difference Miller indicates between Plato’s cave, and the prison of Lacan (11). While in the cave, most are captivated in the virtuality of appearance, in the dilemma of the prisoners, we are confronted with being alone with the Other, not knowing, and willing to reduce our jouissance over our identity. This subjective position may enable us to get out of the prison and be in an animated discourse with others, even virtually.
1. Lacan, J., “I’ve been talking to brick walls”, in Talking to brick walls, p. 82-83
2. Lacan, J., “The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis”, S11, p. 103
3. Lacan, J., “I’ve been talking to brick walls”, in Talking to brick walls, p. 99
4. Ibid, p. 103
5. Lacan, J., “I’ve been talking to brick walls”, in Talking to brick walls, p. 96-97
6. Miller, J. A., “Introduction a l’érotique du temps”, in La cause freudienne, n.56, 2004, p.64.
7. Ibid, p. 63
8. Lacan, J., “Subversion du sujet et dialectique du désir”, in Écrits, p. 818
9. Lacan, J., “L’angoisse”, S10, p. 24
10. Lacan, J., “Le transfert”, S8, p. 200
11. Miller, J.A., “Les us du laps”. Cours n.17, 10/5/2000, p.236