I really like psychoanalysis, well like might not fit exactly. But, have you ever had a thing for someone, in such a way that you sometimes hate them, but yet you can't quite ever stop thinking about them? How they just feel right, even though they're so flawed in so many ways. It seems a little like that. I appreciate the recent queer theory adaptations of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It feels fitting. Lacan comes so from the sixties and seventies, and feels so male, so undoubtedly masculine; that permeates psychoanalysis to its core. Especially since he built upon the foundation of Freud, who many would agree had his own chauvinistic issues. But psychoanalysis as rote descriptor for emotional states seems to pale in comparison to psychoanalysis as a way of thinking. To paraphrase Victor Burgin, psychoanalysis has a way of folding thought back on itself — now stepping away from Burgin and into my own language — defying linearization, exemplifying and disentangling the complexities of thought and emotion, paying special emphasis to context and meaning. I like that. I like the subjectivity. "The subject is always right" ~ Lacan. There's something in the almost phenomenological prioritization of an individuals perception of the situation that just really jives with me. It contrasts sharply the empirical science oriented ways of thinking I brought myself up with, but those same ways of thinking also felt like they fall flat when applied to humans. It feels rounding. Like that if I can both think very logically and empirically like a scientist, and intuitively and mushily like an analyst I'll be more complete. 'Mushy' does really feel like the right word — regardless of the juxtaposition to the rest of my language in this post — because psychoanalysis seems to dwell and deal so much in the gray areas, the non-binary reality of human existence. The struggle of reading Lacan, the way he wraps his thoughts in layers, obfuscating yet also nuancing, appeals to the part of me that likes a challenge. I've given you a taste of the writing style in this message, complete with em dashed out side thoughts, and comma sliced elaborations. But Lacan has a way of doing it that feels almost hostile, no not almost, literally hostile, abrasive, like a cactus protecting the rewarding interior flesh by prickly needles and spines. It leaves me with a feeling of accomplishment for extracting any meaning, and conjures imagery of Hermione deep in the library trying to gleam some knowledge from an ancient tome, how one can read something over and over and yet still always glimmer out a little more. In derivative psychoanalytic works — that feel less opaque — I like hearing about concepts and connecting them to my life. My heart jumps a little at the new way of looking at an old feeling. Or perhaps the relief that whelms through me at understanding the possible implications of Desire in a new way. With all that praise though, psychoanalysis also feels remarkably useless too at times. Like I'm sure it informs my advice in late night text sessions with a friend, but yet also the language (of psychoanalysis) feels so abstracted away from regular language that a significant translating must occur before I can possibly articulate the idea in a comprehendable manor to my interlocutor. And perhaps that uselessness comes also from my relative ineptness with psychoanalysis despite all my reading. If I had to recommend something about Lacanian psychoanalysis — besides diving straight into Ecrits, since that has felt like such a slog, and although rewarding in a going-to-the-source kinda way, it also felt like a very slow way to learn — I'd recommend Lacan: Bolinda Beginner Guide. Lionel Bailey does such a good job of articulating the ideas, far better than any other book I've read on Lacan. My other favorite bit of theory is probably definitely Object Oriented Ontology. That feels even less practical, and although Graham Harman writes well, it is very much contemporary philosophy. Without Heiddegger OOO feels unbased, and reading his texts feels somewhere between a foreign language, being a toddler in a calculus class and epiphanic revelations. I'll leaving you with some closing thoughts, first one from OOO and then two on psychoanalysis: "The black of the ink pen and the black of the executioner's hood are not the same black, even if they are putting out the same wavelength of light" ~ paraphrasing of Merleau-Ponty by Graham Harman, GH: "because the object in question infects the color with its own atmosphere.""To illuminate from behind is to play without injuring the possibility for interpretation, without the stakes becoming too high, too concrete, too essential, nor, too abstract, too empty, or too distant." ~ Jamieson Webster"Psychoanalysis is a prism through which to diffract the psychical light, it doesn't show you anything that wasn't there before, but spectroscopy helps understand things better." ~ me
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