This video lacks the usual diagrams. I didn’t want to further delay getting out another video and plan to return to that style of diagramming ideas next time.
After engaging with the video a bit more, here is a quick question. At the end of the video, you talk about the role that trauma has in the background of this interpretation, and how it is important to think about how the death of Robert's father pictures in Robert's mind as a child. It seems to me that a crucial aspect of Lacanian psychoanalysis is something like the retroactivity of trauma, how we cannot simply see the symptoms of the analysand as stemming from some kind of objective traumatic event that took place in in childhood; rather, it is more about how the traumatic event can emerge afterwards, from future to past, after the entrance into the symbolic. Could it be that we see this playing out over here? Can we really even point to a specific "objective event" in the child's development that is the source of the symptom? Robert claims to have trouble recollecting events from before he was 11 years old. Of course this didn't happen instantly after he turned 11, there must be some point in his later life after which he started to lose the ability to do so, which seems interesting to me. I may be obsessing over a minor point, though.
Actually you are absolutely correct and it adds an important nuance to what I said. I should have mentioned that we are not talking about objective trauma in childhood that is somehow causally connected to present symptoms. Instead what struck me is how well this memory of trauma (which is retroactively posited) is critical for grasping the structural positioning of the subject. Whether the trauma actually happened or not some objective sense matters little compared to how it functions for Robert. I am only surprised how little attention Lacan pays to “Robert must take my place” relative to the other notable signifiers. Thank you for raising this point!
This video lacks the usual diagrams. I didn’t want to further delay getting out another video and plan to return to that style of diagramming ideas next time.
He’s back! Thank you for your efforts, your channel is a goldmine. You don’t find content of this quality very often.
After engaging with the video a bit more, here is a quick question. At the end of the video, you talk about the role that trauma has in the background of this interpretation, and how it is important to think about how the death of Robert's father pictures in Robert's mind as a child. It seems to me that a crucial aspect of Lacanian psychoanalysis is something like the retroactivity of trauma, how we cannot simply see the symptoms of the analysand as stemming from some kind of objective traumatic event that took place in in childhood; rather, it is more about how the traumatic event can emerge afterwards, from future to past, after the entrance into the symbolic. Could it be that we see this playing out over here? Can we really even point to a specific "objective event" in the child's development that is the source of the symptom? Robert claims to have trouble recollecting events from before he was 11 years old. Of course this didn't happen instantly after he turned 11, there must be some point in his later life after which he started to lose the ability to do so, which seems interesting to me. I may be obsessing over a minor point, though.
Actually you are absolutely correct and it adds an important nuance to what I said. I should have mentioned that we are not talking about objective trauma in childhood that is somehow causally connected to present symptoms. Instead what struck me is how well this memory of trauma (which is retroactively posited) is critical for grasping the structural positioning of the subject. Whether the trauma actually happened or not some objective sense matters little compared to how it functions for Robert. I am only surprised how little attention Lacan pays to “Robert must take my place” relative to the other notable signifiers. Thank you for raising this point!
Derek Hook just released a series on dream analysis :)
Thank you for mentioning that. I was just looking for it and couldn't find it. What is the title of the series?