ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an overview of the trajectory of the seminar: from identification to identity in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
It begins by differentiating the usage of both terms in psychoanalytic and common discourse. The theme of identification has proliferated widely in psychoanalytic literature, and therefore its definition and function need to be elaborated; the term identity, on the other hand – defined as difference but also identicality to oneself – is rarely found in this literature, but abundantly used in common discourse, mainly for social control.
It then posits that in Lacan’s entire teaching, from beginning to end, under the question of identification lies the theme of identity, crucial for the subject of psychoanalysis who is subverted, unknown and lacking in identity.
The chapter suggests that identification can only provide an alienated identity. All subjects receive a discursive identity structured by identifications borrowed from the social Other and its norms, which provides an “identity consciousness” for each one. But this identity, which passes through identifications taken from the Other of discourse, is an identity of alienation that is often rejected and contested. Identifications, therefore, cannot univocally identify a subject due to its structure as represented by the signifier, a divided subject who is not one but “some two”.
It then poses the question: how then is the theme of the subject’s identity taken up and resolved in Lacanian psychoanalysis? The response: it is by an end through identity of separation, a fixed identity, identical to itself, which is a One-identity of jouissance, whether object or symptom.
The chapter concludes with the definitive thesis of the seminar: Lacan’s saying about the trajectory of an analysis does not vary, even if the formulas change. It is from the question to the answer, from the unidentified subject to identity; psychoanalytic treatment begins by putting into question the subject’s alienated identity consciousness but ends with a fixed one-identity of separation.
