Book
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis
L'éthique de la psychanalyse
Lacan's seminar of 1959–1960, established by Jacques-Alain Miller and published by Éditions du Seuil in 1986 as Book VII of Le Séminaire. Lacan takes up Freud's das Ding as the lost and inaccessible Thing around which desire is organised, and on that basis redefines sublimation: no longer a change in the drive's aim, but the raising of an ordinary object to the dignity of the Thing. Art, in this account, is organised around the void that the Thing leaves. Through a reading of Antigone, the seminar asks what an ethics of desire would be for psychoanalysis. Commentators often read it as the point at which Lacan's teaching turns toward the Real, although whether there was such a turn is disputed.
Main ideas
- Freud's das Ding becomes the Thing: the lost, inaccessible object around which desire is organised, which no actual object can replace.
- Sublimation is moved from a change in the drive's aim to the place of the object: it raises an ordinary object to the dignity of the Thing.
- Art is organised around a void, the emptiness left by the Thing.
- A reading of Antigone frames the question of what an ethics of desire would be for psychoanalysis.
- The seminar is often taken to mark a turn in Lacan's teaching toward the Real, a reading that remains contested.
What it shows
- 1960
Jacques Lacan reworked Sublimation
In the seminar of 1959–1960 Lacan moves sublimation away from a change of the drive's aim toward the place of the object. Sublimation raises an ordinary object to the dignity of the Thing, the lost and inaccessible das Ding, and art is organised around the void the Thing leaves.