Seminar III -- The Psychoses -- Chapter 5-6b -- Bejahung

>> Welcome back.

Not surprisingly, with Bejahung, if you look
in the Dylan Evans Introductory Dictionary

to Lacanian Psychoanalysis,
you find an entry for this.

It's in the B section, Bejahung.

In his reply to Jean Hyppolite's
commentary on Freude's negation,

Lacan describes a primordial act of affirmation,
which is logically prior to any act of negation.

Logically prior is not the
same as temporally prior.

We're going to come to that in a moment.

Lacan uses Freud's German here,
Bejahung, which means affirmation,

to denote this primordial affirmation.

Primitive, primordial in the
beginning an affirmation must occur

in order for there to be a negation.

Now it could be as simple to
illustrate as a disagreement.

When you and your roommate,
when you and your parent,

when you and your friend have a disagreement,
you negate each other's positions.

"I disagree with you.

You disagree with me."

But Lacan's point would be that
in order to have that negation,

in order to have that disagreement, there has

to be a primitive antecedent
foundation of agreement in place.

And that foundation of agreement
could be as simple as,

we agreed to disagree in the same language.

Or we have defined this as a disagreement

in which we will express
opinions but not trade hands.

That could be another opportunity here.

The agreement can just be a
primitive tacit understanding,

mutual understanding of the rules of engagement.

You and your roommate might disagree on
whose dish it is that was left in the sink

and has been there since 1983, but that
doesn't mean that you're going to stab them.

There's an agreement that doesn't even need to
be spoken here that precedes the disagreement

that you're having about the dish.

Namely that we're going to speak
about this in English, perhaps.

Namely, that it won't resort -- result
in violence and so on and so forth.

These are primitive Bejahung or
affirmations that have to be in place

for the negation or the disagreement to occur.

It could be as simple as
understanding it that way.

So, when he says that this is logically
prior instead of temporally prior,

what he mean is that when the
disagreement starts it presumes,

it has a series of presumptions built into it.

One of which is that we're going
to speak the same language.

If we are starting a disagreement and I
suddenly start speaking Mandarin to you

and you're not a Mandarin speaker and you may
not have even known that I speak Mandarin,

then suddenly, we're going to say, "Whoa,
whoa, whoa, whoa, hold up, can you just --

can we talk in English or is there another
language we can speak that we both speak here?"

Then you have to go back and rework what
is usually assumed in a disagreement,

namely that I will address you
in a language that you speak.

That is a primitive affirmation that
has to be in place for my negation

of your position in the argument to occur.

Reading back to Dylan Evans.

"Whereas negation concerns what Freud
calls the judgment of existence,

Bejahung denotes something more
fundamental, namely the primordial act

of symbolization itself, the inclusion
of something in the symbolic universe.

Only after a thing has been symbolized
at the level of Bejahung can the value

of existence be attributed
to it or not, negation."

So, in order for negation to occur and
thus begin the process of repression,

the return of the repressed and
all the mechanisms of neurosis,

there has to be some primitive symbolization,

some inclusion of something
into a symbolic universe.

And what I would like to suggest
is that this is a basic acceptance

of the symbolic universe itself.

We're going to come back to this and continue
discussing it, but that's a first hint.

"Lacan posits a basic alternative
between Bejahung

and the psychotic mechanism
he calls foreclosure."

That's what we were just hearing about.

The former designates a primordial
inclusion of something

in the symbolic," that's our Bejahung."

Whereas foreclosure is a primordial
refusal to include something,

the name of the father in the symbolic."

Now the name of the father comes up here at
the end, and I think it's worth noting here

that the name of the father is
always also the no of the father.

And I don't mean know in the sense of knowledge,
I mean no in the sense of thou shalt not.

Why? It's as simple as Lacan's French, which is
never quite that easy, but think of it this way.

In French the word name, "nom," sounds
exactly the same as the word no, nom.

N-o-m sounds the same as n-o-n in French.

So, when Lacan talks about the name of the
father, he also means the no of the father.

And when he says father,
he doesn't mean bio-dad.

He doesn't mean male.

He doesn't mean any of that.

The position of the father is a subject
position that anyone or anything can occupy.

It is whatever serves the function of saying no.

And you've heard me say this before,
the first word that we learn,

no matter what that word is
that's meaning to us is no.

And the reason why that is, is that
when a child is introduced to language,

they experience that introduction
as a negation, as a prohibition,

as what Lacan refers to as castration.

The introduction into language says, thou
shalt not continue crying like a baby,

peeing and pooping in your pants, whining

when you don't get what you
want, babbling, et cetera.

Thou shalt not do all the baby things
you used to do at the level of pure need,

and instead you have to start articulating
your wants in the field of language.

You'll hear the parent tell
the child, "Use your words.

Use your words, I can't understand
you when you cry like that."

That is the child's introduction into
the symbolic and the child experiences

that as a refusal, but not in the
Lacanian sense of the psychotic,

a refusal of their ability to remain a baby.

They have to accept that if they're going to
get what they want, they have to use words.

And here's the difference between
the neurotic and the psychotic.

The neurotic accepts this alienation, this
castration, this prohibition, the neurotic.

The typical person grows up and accepts and does
their best to live with the fact that they have

to use a language not of their own
creation to get what they want with others.

And that is precisely what the
psychotic denies, forecloses, refuses.

In other words, what they do not admit

into their symbolic universe is the
existence of the symbolic itself.

We'll pick up there in a moment.