ABSTRACT
Key Concepts: the traversal of the fantasy, misrecognition, convenient and inconvenient jouissance, differences among femininity, mystical jouissance, and psychosis.
The way we are thinking of the traversal of the fantasy these days, is that the realization of the fantasy implies that when you see how it works in you, you are not fooled by it. We are never going to get rid of the fantasy or the Imaginary. Is the disaster of the fantasy related to misrecognition where the fantasy misrecognizes the situation? Lacan thinks of mecconaissance as not seeing the Other in the image. We don’t see how our image has substituted the Other or how the Other has structured our image. We also do not recognize the nature of the mirror, nor do we see our own image in it – that’s mecconaissance. We misrecognize the place of the Other. This is a necessary moment of alienation which is a misrecognition that cannot be undone, because otherwise there is a risk of psychosis. Thus, we must appropriate the Other to have a sense of ‘self’, and that involves a misrecognition. We must have a conventional sense of self that we can use to live in society.
Initially, jouissance was always inconvenient. When Lacan further developed the theory of jouissance, the third jouissance is no longer inconvenient. ‘Feminine jouissance’, the ‘jouissance of the Mystic’, and the ‘jouissance of Meaning’ are convenient. This settles the question about hysteria and women. How does it settle the question of the hysterical woman? No one can get rid of the excess in femininity because the excess is driven by the Real. The Real of femininity is foundational. The Other jouissance, the Third jouissance, is convenient. So, the One and the Third are always confused, and that is the quandary of femininity. And if it is not feminine or if it is not gendered, then it would be the jouissance of meaning or the jouissance of the mystic (which are all convenient). Lacan is trying to rescue the jouissance of the mystic from its pathological version. Psychiatry described the Biblical prophets as psychotic. Lacan is trying to clarify things by saying, ‘no, there is a kernel there that is outside meaning, but the Name of the Father is not foreclosed’. So it is not a psychotic structure, but it is outside meaning. And if you are too narrow in your rational, scientific perspective, then you miss it entirely. In this sense, Lacan is doing traditional psychiatry a big favor.
