Ashley Shelden: Lacanian Psychoanalysis

Thank you Ashley for being a "guest blogger" this week on the Lacanian Psychoanalysis. I feel that your overall break down of meaning and language, the Mirror Stage, and the death drive was very insightful. The affects of the death drive is of course is the shattering of the self and even all sign of reality as well. I think this can be seen in the first part of Mantissa first and foremost from the fact of Miles having a severe case of amnesia. This than leads to a very powerful and sexual fantasy dream he has with the female characters in the book. This is when the death drive through an orgasm is shown. Both characters are portrayed as have gone "beside themselves" and evidently there is a lost of reality and self for all. When MIles is subjected to "memory-restoring" sex therapy form the female doctor and nurse, his inability to comply with the act of mind-over-matter as the "assault" is in progress, is a representation of a mind/body split. The death drive has "destabilized the self and has threatened to undo all structures within which we try to make meaning of the world." According to Lacan, and shown in the book, this process is continuous since we are never able to actually grasp and have a fixed meaning. It is a continuos and everlasting search.

As far as evaluating the Lacanian psychoanalysis, i found  the mention of the metonymic chain very interesting and very relevant to everyday life. As far as the movement of desire is concerned, we as people/humans are continuously  craving or searching for something to fulfill a void that we have. It may be a new job, good grades in school, a lover, etc. If we are lucky enough to obtain whatever desire we are searching for, most of the time we find ourselves dissatisfied and then eventually searching for a different and new desire. This goes back to the concept of never finding a fixed meaning. It is always a search for something. Desire can not end because it can never be satisfied. I guess it goes back to the concept of always wanting what we don't have. We are always searching and looking for the new "thing". Something to fill that void that always seems to be present no matter what we do in life. Trying find that "self" and "who we are". An everlasting search of a "fictional identity", eventually realizing its illusion.