ABSTRACT
Key concepts: the good of pleasure, the pleasure of the Good, hedonism, responsibility for desire, the ethics of the second death.
Lacan contrasts between ‘pleasure’ and ‘the Good’, like Freud does with the ‘Id’ and the ‘superego’. Lacan breaks down the distinction into ‘the good of pleasure’ and the ‘pleasure of the good’. Aristotle differentiates between the good and something that may not feel so good about frustration and/or privation, yet necessary for the formation of character. And, of course, the pleasure of the Good is beyond good or bad. Lacan deals with this in the seminar on ethics in psychoanalysis consistent with a distinction between morality and ethics.
The Lacanian sense of ethics includes the ethics of desire, where he says that the only thing that one should feel guilty of is having given up on one’s desire (as opposed to feeling guilty about having desires, which is the traditional view of “the Good”). And yet, at the same time, he says that it’s not a form of hedonism in the bad sense of word, because hedonism makes people think of “I just can’t get no satisfaction, but I try, and try, and try”. That would be more jouissance than desire in Lacanian theory because desire is always in relationship to the Law. Lacan says these two are intrinsically related so that you cannot have desire without the Law.
By the same token, if you choose desire – which is the example of Antigone – then it means you are willing to pay the consequences. You do not just act out without knowing what you are doing; if you make a choice to follow your desire, you must be willing to pay the consequences. What makes it ethical is that it is not just an impulsive act.
Lacan had ethical problems with the International Psychoanalytic Association at a time when Ego Psychology was the dominant force, and he was critical of this orientation. Then there is the conflict between the French and the Americans, and, of course, the American Psychoanalytic was the dominant force in international psychoanalysis at the time. Lacan’s practice of the variable length session was considered unorthodox by the IPA, and they also objected to the fact that he allowed his analysands to attend his seminars. Several leaders of APA and IPA psychoanalysis had had similar or more serious ethical problems than Lacan, but they were not banned from the institution. Further, Jungians do not reject Jung, and he was known to have had affairs with a patient.
