Lacan the Charlatan by Peter D. Mathews

Author:Peter D. Mathews
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030452049
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

In his discussion of anxiety in Seminar X, Lacan calls this process ‘acting-out’ (Lacan 2014, p. 116), observing how the hysterical subject, while appearing to challenge the authority of the master, is in reality enacting a covert test of the master’s authenticity. The hysteric does not actually want to become a master, they simply wish to know whether the master they serve has genuine authority, or if that master is merely a charlatan.

The difficulty of understanding a hysteric, as Freud discovers in the Dora case, is that the internal conflict between wanting to serve the authority of a master, on the one hand, and the compulsion to question it, on the other, leads to a lot of confusing, mixed signals. In particular, the hysterical subject tends to acknowledge only the visible process of ‘acting-out’ against the master’s authority, while repressing their ulterior desire to conform to that authority. That is why the ultimate disappointment for the hysteric is to learn that their suspicions were right, that the master was a charlatan all along:In this sense, the hysteric is much more revolted by the weakness of power than by power itself, and the truth of her or his basic complaint about the master is usually that the master is not master enough. In the person of the master, the hysteric thus attacks precisely those rights she is otherwise so eager to protect, namely what remains or exists of the master besides the master signifier. In other words, the target of the attack on the master is his surplus enjoyment, a. This is what is superfluous, what should not be there, and what, on the obverse side of the same coin, represents the point where the master is accused of enjoying at the subject’s expense. (Zupančič 2006, p. 165)

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