Love and Discourses

Rik Loose

Prevented Love

Nassia Linardou

In the first lesson of his seminar on Anxiety, referring to Aristotle, Lacan argues that “the best there is on the passions is caught in the net, the network, of rhetoric.” He makes his own net with the signifiers he brings to the blackboard, trying to catch anxiety. He takes his cue from Freud's Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. He breaks down inhibition into difficulty on the horizontal axis and movement on the vertical axis of coordinates.

Lacan wishes to avoid the learned word inhibition. He intends to remain on the very ground of experience. He brings in the word impede (empêcher), which patients use when they feel inhibited and inscribes it in the column of the symptom. “To be impeded is a symptom,” he says. Turning to etymology, he points out that impedicare means “to be ensnared.” Something impedes, “not the function […] but the subject.” But Lacan immediately points out that “the snare in question is narcissistic capture.” It introduces a limit as to what can be invested in the object.

« Or le discours analytique, lui, fait promesse : d'introduire du nouveau. Ce, chose énorme, dans le champ dont se produit l'inconscient, puisque ses impasses, entre autres certes, mais d'abord, se révèlent dans l'amour. »

 

"Now this analytic discourse implies a promise: to promote a novelty. And that, awesomely enough, into the field from which the unconscious is produced, since its finesses [impasses] — among other situations to be sure, but it is still the main one — come into play in the game of love."

Amour savoir et vérité, études freudiennes et lacaniennes
Frank Rollier

 

 

Man, Woman and Love

Inga Metreveli

 

Man, woman and love…. Do these first two signifiers, “that are altogether related to the ‘curcurrent’ (courcourant) use of language” rhyme well with each other, and what does love have to offer? In his Seminar Encore – and it is precisely in this "Encore!" that we can hear the inexhaustible demand for love, Lacan notes: "Love is impotent, though mutual, because it is not aware that it is but the desire to be One, which leads us to the impossibility of establishing the relationship between ‘them-two’ (la relation d'eux). The relationship between them-two what? – them-two sexes." 

It is possible to extract a hypothesis: the pain of love comes from this impossible absolute union with the other to be One, to fulfil this famous myth of Aristophanes which proclaims the Unity of two halves finally reunited. It's easy to see why love can be so painful. Despite this disappointing vision of the powers of love, what are the declinations in men and in women and, finally, could it nevertheless create a bond between them?

 

« Comme je l’énonce de toute Verwerfung […], l’amour se manifeste dans le réel par les effets les plus incommodes et les plus déprimants. Les voies de l’amour ne sont nulle part à désigner comme si aisément tracées.  »

Lacan J., Le Séminaire, livre XIV, La logique du fantasme, texte établi par J.-A. Miller, Paris, Seuil, 2023, p 144.