SEMINAR BY GERRY SULLIVAN
on Saturday, March 20th, 2010 from 10a.m. to 1p.m.
in the EDITH STEIN ROOM
Carmelite Parish Centre, Clarendon St., Dublin 2
(entrance opposite Brown Thomas car park, through Bell Cafe)
Title: The Role of the Father; Decline or Displacement?
From his earliest psychoanalytic writings, Lacan had noted a decline in the social efficacy of the role of the Father; leading, in his later writing, to a fragmentation from the Name to the Names of the Father, and to the introduction of the sinthome, as a perceived supplement to its failure in particular circumstances. In the decades since Lacan’s passing, this has led to a recognition of a significant quotidian or everyday aspect to psychosis, where it is held that there is a significant component of untriggered psychosis in modern societies. There has also emerged a tendency to flatten the traditional three major psychic structures into a bipolar contrast between neurosis and psychosis. Perversion is thus downgraded, and the tendency is to see the psychotic end of the bipolarity of structures as the one with radical, critical potential. I wish to argue against this tendency. It seems to me, both from clinical and theoretical motivations, that all three structures need to be regarded as quotidian or everyday. If we consider Freud’s position, distilled in ‘Civilisation and its Discontents, it is that normality is neurotic, and the other two major psychic structures are peripheral. It seems to me, as indeed it appeared to Lacan, that Freud is outlining the structure of a ‘Civilisation’ just as its fundaments are shifting. I will also suggest that what is emerging, indeed has emerged, is a circumstance where all three classical structures operate in tandem to subtend the ‘normality’ of our modernity. However, all three classical structures range themselves around the question of the Father, believing in the Father, not believing in the Father, and knowing of, but not believing in the potency of the Father. They therefore belong, it seems to me, to the masculine side of the formulae of sexuation. I will signal, rather than develop, some questions which are posed from the structure of the feminine side.
APPI Members €15, Non-Members €20, Students €8
