In the second and subsequent paragraphs of Son of Man, Le Père Sévère (1/15/16) wrote:
But then, what of Lacan’s exultation of Antigone? Here it is a matter of familial duty. But isn’t that the problem of every neurotic? How is Antigone different from a regular hysteric? The hysteric does not exist who does not see herself as a chaste martyr faithful to her true being.
I suppose the distinction between the neurotic symptom and the sinthomme of the one who has traversed fantasy is one of lucidity and assent. The neurotic is a reluctant martyr and a resentful one. He wriggles and tries to get off the hook or hopes that someone will take him off it. He flaunts his self-sacrifice and is bitter when it is insufficiently acknowledged. The neurotic is never done pointing out the wickedness of the world for having forced upon him a choice between his happiness and his duty.
The martyr’s narcissism, unlike that of the neurotic, is a narcissism that fully embraces the death drive. What makes Antigone sublime also makes her monstrous, unapproachable: it is the desire for sublimity, which renders all other desires insipid.
Le Père Sévère compared Antigone to both a neurotic – defined as a reluctant, exhibitionistic (narcissistic), resentful martyr, conflicted between happiness and filial duty; and an hysteric – defined as a faithful “chaste martyr.” Le Père Sévère also defined Antigone as sublime, but “monstrous” and “unapproachable” in such sublimity, with her main filial desire rendering all other desires meaningless.
Le Père Sévère then attempted to define the difference between the neurotic symptom and Lacan’s sinthome, in him/her who had “traversed fantasy,” as one of lucidity and assent. Le Père Sévère additionally defined the difference between the “true martyr” and the neurotic, as that of the martyr being the “uncomplaining,” narcissistic enactor who willingly embraced the rule of law and the death drive, to pay the price of “pure desire;” whereas the neurotic only did so with great reluctance.
Let me now proceed to deconstruct the above paragraphs in the writing Son of Man, within the context of Le Père Sévère‘s first paragraph in the same writing, as already deconstructed in my previous post.
Antigone
Antigone was the daughter/sister of Oedipus, who ended up killing herself after defying her uncle’s edict not to bury her brother, because she desired to meet the law of the gods, instead of that of her uncle, by carrying out her filial duty. Le Père Sévère considered Antigone a neurotic, a narcissist, and an hysteric. However, in so doing, Le Père Sévère showed poor understanding of the terms used, to begin with, let alone below baseline standards of clinical competence – if any was ever imagined to be possessed.
Specifically, one cannot be a neurotic, a narcissist, and an hysteric at the same time; or even have a enduring ‘in-and-out’ fluctuation between the three, because at the levels of personality and pathology, and their very intersection
- a neurotic does not function at the same level as a narcissist or an hysteric;
- a narcissist does not function at the same level as a neurotic or an hysteric; and
- an hysteric does not function at the same level as a neurotic or a narcissist.
The three cannot co-exist. Le Père Sévère, therefore, claimed both the physically and the psychologically impossible for Antigone. Not to mention the fact that an hysteric, in the historico-traditional sense of the term, is no longer considered an hysteric in today’s day and age.
Moreover, Le Père Sévère regarded Antigone as “monstrous, unapproachable” in her “sublime” martyrdom – that is, mightily fearsome, but awe-inspiring at the same time. But what was so awe-inspiring about Antigone? Or mightily fearsome? Nothing; absolutely nothing. Antigone killed herself, by her very own hand, to bury someone who was already dead, to fulfill a desire in keeping with a law that could not lead to life. Antigone’s act, therefore, was not one of sublimity; anything but. It was just an act of suicide.
The Neurotic Symptom, the Sinthome and the Nom du Père
Le Père Sévère attempted to define the difference between Freud’s neurotic symptom and Lacan’s sinthome in him/her who had “traversed fantasy” as lucidity and assent. But what does all that really mean?
Freud considered the neurotic symptom an unwelcome act or acts that were, at the least, useless in the life of an individual and, at the most, harmful. The symptom was a substitute for instinctual satisfaction that had been repressed and claimed considerable psychic energy from the individual in its formation, manifestation, and maintenance. Lacan initially considered the sinthome to be the symptom, but spelled out in its original form. However, he later redefined the sinthome as the fourth ring of the Borromean knot, and which held together the three orders of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic that formed both the structure of the world and of the individual. The sinthome came to be largely regarded as the paternal metaphor – the nom du père [name of the father] or noms du père [names of the father] that replaced the father of Freud’s Oedipus complex, with the sinthome par excellence being the Nom du Père – the Name of the (Eternal) Father. But was God the Father no more than a symptom or a metaphor for Lacan – as so many desire Him to be this day?
Theorizing in an attempt to find understanding, but I daresay finding little, if any, Le Père Sévère neglected to consider what Lacan had really said about the Nom du Père. Specifically, on the very eve of his official ‘excommunication’ as a training analyst from the IPA by his purported colleagues (and which he had just learned about), Lacan roundly declared
I will never say what might have been said about The Names of the Father, because they don’t deserve it [ils ne le méritent pas!] and they will never know it!
Lacan also declared that
I am inconsolable at having had to drop my project of relating the function of the Name of the Father to the study of the Bible . . . We put on hold the seminar we had announced on the Name of the Father, after having given the opening lecture.
Lacan additionally told his son-in-law and others
It is not by chance that I could not do my seminar on the Name of the Father . . . Moses’s tomb is as empty for Freud as Christ’s was for Hegel . . . Abraham revealed his mystery to neither of them.
So what really occurred?
Lacan had experienced either an epiphany or a revelation about the very Person of (God) the Father, not just His function or His divine attributes. Lacan had come to know the Father as the real Father He Is: the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; El Shaddai – I Am Who Am. And Lacan, in his upbringing, was Catholic.
In fact, Lacan specifically told his attendees, that fateful evening
I don’t want to leave you today without having at least pronounced the name, the first name by which I wanted to introduce the specific impact of the Judeo-Christian tradition . . . This tradition, in fact, is not that of the jouissance but of the desire of a God: the God of Moses. It is before Him that, in the final analysis, Freud laid down his pen.
Stunning admissions to say least, particularly coming from a didacticien in the fields of psychoanalytic psychology and psychoanalysis – fields long hostile to both the internal and the external realities of the Divinity. Lacan’s son-in-law later elaborated that Lacan repeatedly refused to speak anymore about what had occurred, even when questioned in subsequent years by some of his most intimate friends, because it was as though
The Name of the Father should remain under a veil, as if those who dare to interfere with the Name of the Father were doomed to some act of vengeance, as if some kind of curse was attached to the Name of the Father, the curse of the Pharaoh.
The truth is it was not yet time, at that point in time, for the truth to be further opened up to mankind, about the Name of God the Father and the inherent function of His Name in the very structures of both the world and the individual, in relation to the orders of the Real, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic. And Lacan, having come to know Who the Father really was on a personal level – the first Person of the Most Holy Trinity; not a symptom, not a metaphor – respected the Eternal Father’s desires, the Divine Will, by remaining silent.
The question of lucidity and assent after fantasy, and the difference between the neurotic martyr and the true martyr, in Le Père Sévère‘s Son of Man will be addressed in the next post.