#symbolic self

[realityhop]

“Man is not simply a product of objective circumstances. We all have this margin of freedom in deciding how we subjectivize these objective circumstances, which, of course determine us—how we react to them by constructing our own universe.” – Slavoj Žižek

[realityhop]

Too much possibility is the attempt by the person to overvalue the powers of the symbolic self.  It reflects the attempt to exaggerate one half of the human dualism at the expense of the other. In this sense, what we call schizophrenia is an attempt by the symbolic self to deny the limitations of the finite body ... the schizophrenic is not enough built into his world… Depressive psychosis is the extreme on the continuum of too much necessity, that is, too much finitude, too much limitation by the body and the behaviors of the person in the real world, and not enough freedom of the inner self, of inner symbolic possibility. ... the depressive is built into his world too solidly, too overwhelmingly... his *necessity* has become *trivial*...

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, pp. 75-81

[realityhop]

The body, then, is one’s animal fate that has to be struggled against in some ways.  At the same time, it offers experiences and sensations, concrete pleasure that the inner symbolic world lacks.  No wonder man is impaled on the horns of sexual problems, why Freud saw that sex was so prominent in human life—especially in the neurotic conflicts of his patients.  Sex is an inevitable component of man’s confusion over the meaning of his life, a meaning split hopelessly into two realms—symbols (freedom) and body (fate).

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death, p. 44

[realityhop]

The language of "your life"/"your brain" implies some true you has a separate existence that possesses the body. English as a language seems predicated on the notion of an afterlife.

[edit 11/15/2021]: After reading The Denial of Death and Love In A Time of Loneliness it’s more like the identity composed via the symbolic self has a body.

[edit 5/5/2022]:

"Indeed, we have a body as an effect of language and the distance created by this language. [...] The organism acquires a first mastery, a first identity by means of an externally imposed unified image of the body.  This unified body gets translated into the master-signifier “I”, to be understood as m’être à moi-même/maître à moi-même (to be myself, to belong to myself, to be master of myself), an “I” that has a body and has lost its being."

— Paul Verhaeghe, Beyond Gender: From Subject to Drive (2001)

"I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar."

— Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1889)

[edit 5/18/2022]:

"The signifier represents the subject who is not psychotic.  The subject is in the place of meaning; he is what is meant; he is what is signified for (pour) another signifier, by/next to another (auprès d’un autre).  Of course, this is never completely accomplished, because there is always a remainder: the object a.  In psychosis, the articulation with the second signifier is missing.  A signifier replaces the subject completely; it does not represent him.  This signifier does not need to conjugate with another; there is a coalescence of signifier and subject (meaning).  There is not an inassimilable remainder, a residue of the operation.  The psychotic is invaded by a jouissance from which the common, “sane” person is excluded.  Words are things for the psychotic.  In psychosis, there is an S1 that represents the subject in an absolute manner, without remedy, remission or any symbolization of lack.  This is why, let me insist, we speak of psychotic jouissance and not of psychotic desire.  There is no lack that would put discourse into motion."

— Nestor Braunstein, "’You Cannot Choose to Go Crazy’” in Lacan on Madness (2015)