In his seminar of 1959-1960 The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1992), Lacan developed the concept of jouissance (enjoyment) while discussing Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud, 1930). In that work, Freud had articulated a contradiction inherent in the concept of pleasure: "This endeavor [of striving for happiness] has two sides. . . . It aims, on the one hand, at an absence of pain and unpleasure, and, on the other, at the experiencing of strong feelings of pleasure. . . . The task of avoiding suffering pushes that of obtaining pleasure into the background" (1930, pp. 76-77).
For Lacan, these two aspects of pleasure were irreconcilable, and he argued that Freud connected the pleasure and reality principles under a no-displeasure principle. This is the very principle that blocks the path to jouissance. "Who is there who in the name of pleasure doesn't start to weaken when the first half-serious is taken step toward jouissance?" asked Lacan (1959-1960/1992, p. 185). Even an animal, he added, "has an economy: it acts so as to produce the very least possible jouissance. That's what we call the pleasure principle" (1969-70/1991, p. 88).
It is true that once we start down the path of jouissance, we do not know where it will lead: "It starts with a tickle and ends up bursting into flames" (Lacan, 1991, p. 83). In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud had already noted that "the most painful experiences . . . can yet be felt . . . as highly enjoyable" (1920, p. 17). On the basis of this text, Lacan made a connection between jouissance and repetition. He drew support for his argument from the hysterical symptom of repetition, as in the case of Elizabeth von R., and defined repetition as a trace, a kind of writing, that commemorates "an irruption of jouissance" (1991, p. 89). Jouissance (Genuss) is involved when the pleasure principle yields not necessarily to pain, but to unpleasure. The term was already present in Freud, but Lacan developed it as a concept. Still, he complained of never having had the time to outline its parameters, which he would have likely called "the Lacanian field" (1991, p. 93).
In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1992), Lacan emphasized that Freud posed the question of jouissance in terms of drive. The energy of the superego derives from the libido of this unsatisfied drive; the more the subject fails to feel jouissance, the more libido there is to feed the superego, and the more the superego will demand new renunciations. Lacan believed that in Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud was stating that "everything that is transferred from jouissance to prohibition gives rise to the increasing strengthening of prohibition" (Lacan, 1992, p. 176). Thus the guilt triggered by masturbation can be understood as an increase of libido in the superego, brought about by a short circuit in masturbation that achieves only a brief and stifled satisfaction instead of jouissance.
What is involved here is not the satisfaction of need, but of the drive. In fact, Lacan placed the two in radical opposition to one another: "And if the social bond is established by renouncing the satisfaction of the drive, it is because this satisfaction implies the enjoyment—in the juridical sense of the term—of objects that could either belong to others or deprive them of their jouissance." This situates jouissance in another field and simultaneously introduces the question of religion, moral precepts, and the law.
In The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1992), Lacan based jouissance on the law. If jouissance consists in breaking the barrier of the pleasure principle, if it can only be attained through a transgression, then only a prohibition opens the path toward it. As for the "other," he is already implicated in Freud's analysis of sadism: when we inflict pain on others, "we enjoy by identifying with the suffering object." From his reading of Civilizationand Its Discontents, Lacan concluded, "Jouissance is evil . . . because it involves suffering for my neighbor" (1992, p. 184). Moreover, he noted that love of one's neighbor seemed absurd to Freud. Each time that this Christian ideal is stated, "we see evoked the presence of that fundamental evil which dwells within this neighbor. But if that is the case, then it also dwells within me. And what is more of a neighbor to me than this heart within which is that of my jouissance and which I don't dare go near?" (Lacan, 1992, p. 186).
In "The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire" (2002), Lacan inscribed jouissance in the topography of his graph of desire. At the upper level of the graph, jouissance is indicated by signifying lack in the Other, S(A̷). This is phallic jouissance, which is related to castration as lack. Traditionally, the erectile organ, the phallus, represents the object of jouissance, not so much by itself, but rather as the missing portion of a desired image. Phallic jouissance is inscribed in the diagram at the level of a vector that starts out from S(A̷), the Other's lack, and goes toward (S̷ ◇ D), the drive as articulated by the subject and the demand of the Other. Thus jouissance is "of the Other" and at the same time operates on the level of the drive. Recognizing the Other's lack produces a fantasy in the subject's unconscious. In this fantasy, the object represents what the subject imagines that the Other is deprived of.
In everyday life, the mother, as primordial Other, is prohibited from making up for her lack with her child. Thus the Other remains prohibited. In his diagram, Lacan located jouissance at the place of the barred Other, S(A̷) this is also where Lacan inscribed the superego that orders the subject to enjoy, "Jouis!" To this command, the subject can only respond, "J'ouis!" ("I hear!"), for such jouissance is structurally prohibited. Lacan repeated that while the superego prohibits and punishes, it also requires that the subject experience jouissance. For Lacan, the requirement to enjoy is directly related to a taboo. But what is prohibited, what must remain unsatisfied, is only the subject's jouissance. Giving the Other an experience of jouissance does not seem to be prohibited.
The Other is barred in the diagram only by being marked by the loss of object a. Thus if a subject assumes the position of the Other's missing object and if this can make the Other whole, then "It would enjoy," as Lacan said (2002, p. 311). He thus introduced a jouissance outside the phallic order, a mystic jouissance, which he defined as a nonphallic, feminine jouissance (1998). For being not whole, a woman "has a supplementary jouissance compared to what the phallic function designates by way of jouissance. . . . Y]ou need but go to Rome and see the statue by [Gianlorenzo] Bernini [the Ecstasy of St. Teresa] to immediately understand that she's coming. There's no doubt about it" (1998, pp. 73, 76).
But what did Lacan mean when he said that a woman, for being "not whole," was capable of a supplementary, nonphallic jouissance? With the "formulas of sexuation," he proposed dividing subjects not according to their biological sex, but according to their relation to the phallus. On the masculine side would be those subjects who take object a as the cause of their desire and depend upon their phallic nature to attain it. Subjects on the feminine side have one eye on the phallus and one eye on the jouissance of the Other, S(A̷). The male or female mystic—a designation independent of biological sex—is situated on the feminine side. Supplementary jouissance, strictly speaking, is feminine. But to attain it, the subject must stop looking both ways—toward phallic jouissance and jouissance of the Other—and become devoted only to the latter. Such an experience was attained by St. John of the Cross, for example, who was familiar with a mystical jouissance "outside sex," and thus beyond the mark of difference and beyond lack. The moment of ecstasy arrives when the mystic, entirely desubjectified and merged with object a of the Other's desire, becomes one with the Other, who in turn no longer lacks. The result is that to represent the Other's jouissance, "A" is rewritten as unbarred, S(A). In Civilization and Its Discontents, Freud referred to the "oceanic feeling" of being at one with the greater Whole. Such is the feeling of mysticism, and also of trances and ecstasy.
Whereas Freud discussed the dark relationship between mysticism and suffering with great hesitation, Lacan spoke of them more positively by remarking that on the cultural level, adoration of Christ suffering on the cross naturally sustains jouissance. If certain mystics directly experience jouissance by looking at the Other's face—by looking at the face of God—others can attain it only by allowing the ever so broken body of Christ on Calvary to sustain it. They partake of a vicarious jouissance from Christ's mutilated body offered up to God. Commenting on Catholicism, Lacan wrote, "That doctrine speaks only of the incarnation of God in a body, and assumes that the passion suffered in that person constituted another person's jouissance" (1998, p. 113)
Bibliography
Freud, Sigmund. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle. SE, 18: 1-64.
——. (1930). Civilization and its discontents. SE, 21: 57-145.
Lacan, Jacques. (1991). Le séminaire. Book 17: L'envers de la psychanalyse (1969-1970). Paris: Seuil.
——. (1992). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 7: The ethics of psychoanalysis (1959-1960) (Dennis Porter, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
——. (1998). The seminar of Jacques Lacan. Book 20: On feminine sexuality: the limits of love and knowledge, encore (1972-1973) (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton.
——. (2002). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious. In hisÉcrits: A selection (Bruce Fink, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton. (Original work published 1960.)
—MARIE-CHRISTINE LAZNIK
