ABSTRACT
Neurotic individuals have very little access to reality’s basic foundation. Those suffering from psychosis, by contrast, lacking that foundation, know that they somehow fail to get the wink of those who are in on the secret, and are therefore aware of the existence of a common secret. Lacanian ethical understanding means the identification of desire. When desire is met—by means not of gratification but through acknowledgement— the demand becomes attenuated. The ethics of Lacanian psychoanalysis however is based on the assumption that where there is attention to desire suffering will be reduced. The ethics of happiness is an ethics of the pursuit of maximum pleasure which, paradoxically, issues in the suffering caused by crossing the boundary of pleasure. In an ethics that is characterised by the pursuit of objectives—like for instance happiness—yearning is perceived as a frustration, the result of non-achievement, rather than as vitality.
