One pays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil. And why do you not want to pluck at my wreath? You revere me; but what if your reverence tumbles one day? Beware lest a statue slay you. ~ Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
It seems like to the Lacan Bros, pontificating about Lacan is akin to playing an intellectual video game with points scored at every utterance of knowledge. Some of these young men are memorable readers of Lacan’s philosophy and have decent critical thinking skills, but here are ten reasons why younger American males cannot truly comprehend Lacanian psychoanalysis:
1. The Lacan Bros Have Extricated Lacan’s Philosophy from the Practice of Psychoanalysis
The Lacan Bros engage with Lacan primarily as a philosopher rather than as a psychoanalyst. They focus on his theories without appreciating and/or viscerally and somatically experiencing how these ideas would function in a clinical setting. This separation leads to misunderstandings of the practical implications of his theories, which are deeply rooted in the therapeutic process and especially the dynamics of transference: if you haven’t fallen in love with a therapist, fallen out of love with a therapist, and wanted to have sex with a therapist… everything else is just words words words. Further, the Lacan Ballers are seemingly immune to criticism (and shall not take this article kindly), not just of themselves but also of their statue, cf. Stuart Schneiderman’s “Jacques Lacan: The Death of an Intellectual Hero.”
2. The Lacan Bros Don’t See Freud in a Larger Historical and Cultural Context
Lacan’s work builds upon Freud’s theories but also moves away from them within a broader framework that includes historical shifts away from Victorian norms through the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Many young American males probably do not grasp how Freud’s insights were responses to specific cultural conditions; this would obviously limit their understanding of how Lacan reinterprets these ideas for contemporary society. In addition, Freud believed he was a scientist “discovering” things like the unconscious when actually he was creating heuristic models to interpret behavior.
3. The Lacan Bros Don’t Have Adequate Life Experiences
Comprehending Lacan requires a level of life experience and self-awareness that I don’t believe many young American males possess. The experiences of loss, heartbreak, relationship struggles, and existential quandaries are essential for grasping Lacan’s concepts of desire, lack, and jouissance. Without the accompanying life experiences, the Lacan Bros’ understandings are abstract and disconnected from real-life applications. Sit for 55 minutes eyeball to eyeball with a woman whose only child recently died… that’s what Colette Soler means by a “crisis of jouissance,” not being ghosted by an IG bathing suit model after sliding into her DMs.
4. The Lacan Bros Haven’t Completed Successful Analyses
It is not apparent that any of the Lacan Bros have undergone and completed years of “on the couch” 4–5 times per week Lacanian psychoanalysis. I imagine that most of them have not had the opportunity or finances to participate in such an undertaking, which would obviously limit their understanding of how Lacan’s theories play out in real therapeutic settings. Personal experience with analysis would provide visceral “aha” moments of transformation that are seldom attained solely from reading. Colette Soler says that one should enter psychoanalysis because of a crisis of jouissance. I’ve seen people in my personal and professional life amidst crises of jouissance, debilitating existential crises. Maybe it’s performative for Youtube, but the Lacan Bros seem to be rather insouciant and even jovial.
5. The Lacan Bros Don’t Fully Appreciate That the Seminars Were Live Performances
Lacan’s seminars were dynamic events meant to be experienced rather than merely read. His diction, exaggerated gestures, wry sense of humor, and interaction with students conveyed meanings that cannot be captured in written words alone. People who engage only with published French texts miss this vital dimension of learning that deeply informs the practice of psychoanalysis. And Lacan’s son-in-law Jacques-Alain Miller seems to have his own thing going on, his own agenda. I’m unconvinced that Lacan was meant to be read any more than Shakespeare was meant to be read and I’m suspicious of the way Miller has organized the seminars and inserted his own headings to many sections.
6. The Lacan Bros Lack the Cultural Background
Lacan’s work is steeped in European literature. This will seem elitist, but having spent 1991–1994 in Paris, I would argue that young American males cannot fathom the breadth of cultural literacy necessary to pass the baccalaureate exam in France. I think it is extremely difficult to understand Lacan by looking up 2,000 years of theatrical, mythical, musical and literary references on Wikipedia. If you didn’t spend afternoons throughout your years at lycée in cafes with butter-stained dog-eared Folio editions of Balzac, Hugo, Zola, Flaubert, and Proust, and weren’t dragged across the Pont Neuf by your stuffy over-dressed parents to Opéra Garnier and Théâtre du Châtelet, then you will probably miss many of Lacan’s cultural references and their historical contexts. This gap in cultural literacy precludes most Americans from truly comprehending Lacanian psychoanalysis.
7. The Lacan Bros Don’t Grok the (former?) Traditional European Game of Seduction
Lacan’s ideas about desire and seduction are rooted in hundreds of years of European cultural norms that sharply contrast with contemporary American practices. Dating apps such as Tinder — where phrases like “DTF?” now count as romance — stand in stark opposition to the French ideals of courtship embodied by Lacan. In addition to Shakespeare, if you haven’t studied Don Juan and Mozart’s “Don Giovani” as well as Truffaut’s alter-ego Antoine Doinel’s (usually failed) romantic escapades or lived in a major European city before mobile phones, it would be difficult to understand how people from Lacan’s world interacted in intimate relationships as influenced by the myths of romanticism.
8. The Lacan Bros Can’t Read Lacan in French
Reading Lacan in English seems like two extremely large steps removed from the actual experience of being in the lecture hall with Lacan. The Lacan Bros rely on translations of Lacan’s work, which rely heavily on an intermediary’s agenda. Reading Lacan in French allows for a deeper appreciation of his wordplay, which is often lost in translation. I took one course with Russell Grigg and two day-long classes with Bruce Fink and I think that Russell’s understanding of the French language is more finely nuanced and more precise than Bruce’s.
9. The Lacan Bros Probably Became Interested in Lacan via Žižek
Slavoj Žižek made Lacan accessible to the masses. I love his pop culture references and irreverent way of deconstructing belief systems. The scope of Žižek’s knowledge of philosophy is unparalleled, epic — I would daresay that he’s a genius. While Žižek’s interpretations are wildly entertaining and make Lacan digestible to the under-educated, Žižek (to the best of my knowledge) does not convey what he has experienced as an analysand or analyst and… if he’s so psychologically sorted then why does he have infinite hysterical ticks? This begs the question of connaître vs savoir: connaître is to know something; savoir is to know HOW to do something. Žižek possesses a staggering amount of knowledge. But is he teaching the Lacan Bros how to do anything, such as lead commendable, enviable, paradigmatic lives? I’m unpersuaded that he is. Wildly wildly entertaining, wicked smart, and an encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy.
10. Female Scholars Appear to Understand Lacan Better Than Their Male Counterparts
This is my personal observation but I feel as if female scholars such as Drs. Colette Soler, Mari Ruti, Jamieson Webster, Elisabeth Roudinesco, and Alenka Zupančič engage more holistically with Lacanian psychoanalysis than their male counterparts who seem to be more entranced by the philosophy. It feels like the boys get lost in the theoretical weeds and the girls don’t: they want to solve actual psychological and emotional problems. Also it feels as if the women have better understandings of intimacy, romance, affect, emotions, gender distinctions and parenting styles. For example, Soler argues that women can navigate the intricacies of desire and lack more adeptly because they are often socialized to confront these issues directly. Similarly, Ruti offers much more comprehensive and applicable understandings of how relationships shape subjectivity and desire. Their engagement with feminism, feminine concepts, hysteria, relational dynamics, and personal experience in analysis, all contribute to deeper comprehensions of Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Giving credit where credit is due, the Lacan Bros’ respect for more seasoned scholars such as Drs. Samuel McCormick, Todd McGowan, Leon Bremmer, Stijn Vanheule, Owen Hewitson and a few other European professors is lovely and warranted. Secondly, I’m not certain how the Lacan Bros feel about entering psychoanalysis but I would imagine them agreeing with me that it is antiquated and indulgent and dear few Americans have time 4–5 days per week nor the spare hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend looking at the ceiling and speaking whatever floats into their minds. In addition, knowing in advance that the end of analysis will be determined by traversing the fundamental fantasy (that wholeness of the Other or ourselves is possible) and accepting subjective destitution, identifying with the symptom/sinthome, and liquidating the transference (that the analyst knows more about us than we do) would make it difficult to fully commit to such a time-consuming and expensive process.
Obviously we would all agree that studying philosophy is a much more fulfilling endeavor than playing video games. And hopefully some of the Lacan Bros learn French, listen to the available recordings of the seminars, and develop interests in European literature, theater, art and music. Even better if some of them become involved in great love affairs like those passionately described in French romantic literature. Even better if some of them complete successful analyses and become analysts.
In the meantime, I would argue that a part of accepting subjective destitution is acknowledging that connaître is not equal to savoir. So while the Lacan Bros have tremendous knowledge of Lacan’s philosophy, myriad factors prevent them knowing how to employ that knowledge to make the world a better place.
I’ll leave the Young Turks with this: if Lacan is such an important philosopher then why can’t you study him in any university philosophy department in the U.S.? And if he’s such a lauded psychiatrist then why can’t you study him at any medical school in the U.S.? Ditto for his academic contributions to psychology. It is a show, my friends. With many acts. And much acting. Even some acting out. And the stage for the psychoanalytic act may just be much deeper, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.