Lacan by Elisabeth Roudinesco

Author:Elisabeth Roudinesco
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2014-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

10

LOVE, WOMAN

Lacan concerned himself with the relations between men and women in modern society. A libertine in his private life, he could never remain faithful to a woman, but never wanted to leave one, concealing from one what he was up to with another. Did he experience the decidedly Freudian fear of suffering from a new separation each time? Love in the romantic sense was alien to him and love stories left him largely cold: ‘Love’, he said, ‘is a kind of suicide’. The only thing that counted for him was the irrational, compulsive aspect of passion. From his master in psychiatry, Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault, fetishist of fabrics, and from his frequentation of madwomen and surrealist poets, he had retained the idea that love leads to the madness of amour fou. Also, the model of erotomania was the paradigm of his conception of love. Just as Freud was a representative of romantic love – woman, wife, mother, taboo, guilt – Lacan was the man of the dislocation of this model. He was not far from regarding love as an assault by a dark star on a persecuting object that eludes any encounter.

Seductive, anxious to please, unable to bear not being liked, he wanted to be loved, suffered from being loved and not being loved, while remaining convinced that people could not but love him – even when they hated him. A friend of women whom he admired, he addressed all of them by the formal vous, with hand-kissing and exaggeratedly courteous terms taken directly from the seventeenth-century literature of préciosité. And he had no hesitation in analysing his lovers.

But he also behaved like a temperamental child, refusing to accept that reality did not conform to his wishes. A particular kind of cigar, a particular brand of whisky, some object, certain confectionary, a certain food: everything had to be brought to him that instant, wherever he was. And in fact he nearly always managed to persuade his host to yield to his requirements. Any argument would do: okay, if you have no asparagus, give me truffles, and if you have no truffles, give me ortolans or tea – Japanese, preferably – with this make of chocolate. And if you cannot find them round here, have them sent by express delivery. An implacable, unforgettably amusing logic.

Lacan had his letters taken to the dwelling of his addressee to ensure that they reached him or her. Out of snobbery, he enjoyed dropping the names of famous people in conversation. Similarly, as if in order to avenge his origins, he loved frequenting the great and the good: thinkers, stars, journalists, actors, politicians, writers.

Françoise Dolto, whom he addressed with the informal tu and occasionally treated as a ‘tough one’, was his greatest friend. Without him, she would probably not have had the same clinical career; and without her, he would not have been what he was. For decades they formed an atypical couple, without however practising therapy in the same way: ‘You do not need

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.