Sexual relations are unnatural according to Lacan

General Discussion
1

I asked the subreddit about it but the answers seemed about as incomprehensible as the guy himself:

Per one of the answers:

“Well, I’m glad to say that I think that this makes it clearer. I’ll keep myself short as I’m tired and ready for bed – either someone else can pick this up or I’ll try to get back to you (if needed at all) tomorrow. Lacan is exactly about this – this right here, call it whatever you want: gaps, miscommunication, whatever. Lacans Problem is exactly here ‘all of us understanding what we mean by that’ – yes we do… kind of. Your sentence is basically exemplary for it: even if we both know what it means (and we both know that the other one knows), as soon as we would start defining it, problems would start arising.

‘What we mean by it’, is a good way out of this deadlock, but only as long as it works. I could for example keep pressing you on defining truth and then we’d get there to a disagreement or if we both wouldn’t care to get into defining the term at all, it could go into an extreme argument or disagreement or we would just talk past each other…

I hope you see in the way I’m trying to capture what I mean, that it’s tough to describe. And well here is a good point to bring lacans provocative statement into play, namely, “that there is no sexual relationship”. It is so provocative, maybe exactly so that we can’t let it slide, but in general he tries to get along just that point: the impossibility of communication or this certain gap that accompanies every kind of speech.

Saying that communication is impossible, evidently doesn’t mean, that we can’t do it – it’s the exact opposite: only because of this impossibility, the need to communicate as such arises. The same goes for the ‘no sexual relationship’ – precisely because it doesn’t ‘just work’ (in comparison to let’s say animal sexuality: they have instincts, so they fuck during mating seasons and don’t care about anything during hibernation except for sleeping and so on); as for humans – we are kind of derailed. For humans all these kinds of problems arise: obsessions (not being able to stop loving someone “even though our love is not possible”) or doubts (“does he really love me or not”) – everything that has to do with love or sexuality, we can’t just let be (as the Beatles would maybe propose lol). There is a big uneasiness in sexuality.

So to give it a short answer to your last point (after I’ve already been keeping myself short as you can see): no – I don’t think psychoanalysis or Lacan would want to say that your feelings or your sexual engagement are a lie and I don’t think there is anyone or any basis upon which could determine this. And maybe exactly this is the problem: if no one can determine it, how can I myself, determine it for myself? And how can I defend myself from others telling me what or who I am?

These are the problems and questions Lacan is dealing with I would claim. And maybe the paradigm of psychoanalysis in relation to sexuality could be described as such, that for psychoanalysis – in psychoanalysis we have for the first time the conception – not that there is a right or good form of sexuality and bad one, and even not that all kinds of sexuality are good an normal: in psychoanalysis we witness for the first time the proposition, that each kind of sexuality is equally unnatural. Which doesn’t mean that it’s wrong or bad, but just that there is a problem with it – an uneasiness as I said. And history shows, that we can’t just let it be: neither on a big political scale nor on a day to day personal level – something has to be done with it. And psychoanalysis finds this circumstance interesting, to say the least.

Good night:)

Edit: some typos”

And I’m not sure what to make of the whole thing. Like is this literal or some weird translation I don’t know about. Apparently he’s known for using words in ways other than what we do but the explanations from people make no sense, and more than that I’m not sure what to make of my own feelings in the wake of this if they’re unnatural.

2

After a brief research:

Lacan was a psychanalyst specialist of puns, known for his obscure langage. And he was known for his love of paradoxes and provocative langage.

Lacan’s writing is notoriously difficult, due in part to the repeated Hegelian/Kojèvean allusions, wide theoretical divergences from other psychoanalytic and philosophical theory, and an obscure prose style. For some, “the impenetrability of Lacan’s prose… [is] too often regarded as profundity precisely because it cannot be understood”. Arguably at least, “the imitation of his style by other ‘Lacanian’ commentators” has resulted in “an obscurantist antisystematic tradition in Lacanian literature”.

He had a big impact in Europe and South America, less in USA.

About Lacan langage

Lewis Carroll, in Alice in Wonderland, discusses the Masters’ use of words: “I don’t know what you mean when you say glory,” said Alice. Humpty-Dumpty smiled scornfully: “Of course you don’t know until I tell you. I mean, ‘There’s a fine argument for you!’” “But,” objected Alice, “glory doesn’t mean a fine argument.” Humpty-Dumpty said scornfully: “When I use a word, it means exactly what I decide it should mean, no more and no less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether words can be made to mean so many different things.” - “The question is,” said Humpty-Dumpty, “who will be the Master, that’s all.”

The dogma, often repeated by Lacanians, that “there is no sexual relationship” is an illustration of what we might call the “Humpty-Dumpty effect.” Lacan, the brilliant creator of an intellectual trend, never carefully and comprehensively defined what he meant by this formula. His disciples, rather than recognizing that it was a ludicrous statement, each came up with their own interpretation.

A synthesis sorry if it is in French.

In fact, Lacan plays with words. French “ rapports sexuels “ can be translated as “ Sexual relationships”

But it can mean the physical act, and Lacan does not negate that the sexual act exists, Or relationship can mean something more deep, more spiritual. And, as Freud, Lacan negates that a spiritual and deep relationship can be reached through the physical act.

3

Welcome back from your lengthy suspension.

I was hoping you would return with some new approaches to your discussions. As Deanna Troi said, “there is no such thing as false hope, there is just hope”.

4

Honestly, i feel the question is a true one. Lacan is renowned for cultivating ambiguity and darkness.

I tried to answer.

5

So is @inthedarkness. It’s not surprising he is drawn to Lacan.

I appreciated your response. I don’t expect @inthedarkness will.

6

That sounds about right from what I’ve read but I can’t really make heads or tails of it all.

That seems rather mundane and something I’ve often heard from shows growing up. It’s even a trope in therapy of people who try to substitute sex for a deeper connection.

Though the difficulty of trying to understand the man doesn’t help when I come across what people say or bits of his stuff only to be told I have to read ALL of Lacan and psychoanalysis to understand.

Like if you look through the reddit post the explanations I got were more confusing than the material. It wasn’t until someone pointed this video out:

And that helped because it highlighted it clearly and concisely.

But then I got this from their too:

And I have no idea what any of that means. Like what exactly is stupid and everything else according to him.

The stackexchange was more confusing with some of the ideas I got there too:

“He means there is no direct, natural, fully satisfying symbolic formula for how two subjects relate sexually. Each subject’s desire is structured through language and fantasy, not through biology alone. Hence, “sexual relation” is always mis-relation: it gets expressed through myths, norms, love stories, jokes, pornography — all symbolic detours…”

And I’m just like…what does that mean and what am I supposed to make of it all?

Like if you read through the reddit and that there’s ideas that just sound wild to me. Like communication being impossible, sexuality being unnatural, I just don’t get it. Well I left a quote that summarizes that.

I’m just tired, and emotionally raw from reading all that. My head hurts also from not only not understanding all that and trying to make sense, but wonder if my life up until this point has been a lie and I was wrong about everything. I’m not even sure what to feel anymore nor who to ask about this.

7

Lacan was deliberately obscure and often meaning less.

His disciples have added interpretations, complexifying the tale.

No worth to lose time.

1 Like
8

For real?

I thought that instagram video seems to clear up what he meant by no sexual relation, but I guess what you’re saying is they could be wrong about it?

From what I read the dude seemed to on purpose make his writings deliberately obscure and hard to understand. When I saw the video breaking down what he meant it turned out to just be something banal and ordinary.

I’m wondering if he maybe just complicates topics needlessly. Like it turns out his sexual relation topic had nothing to do with sex. The comments trying to explain him just…don’t?

“Crowd. This issue will not be reduced here. You follow this development from Phantom Logic, an extremely dense seminar. If you don’t have knowledge in Fregue a Russel logic (zermelo too) it’s impossible, without contact the medium and extreme form which gives a headache. It’s worth remembering that Lacan kind of superimposes enjoyment as the value of enjoyment in reference to Marx’s theory of value, which is super difficult. The theory of value is incommensurable, different from surplus value.

We must be aware that our definition of a subject is that one signifier represents another. In other words, the signifier does not represent the reference, otherwise we would not believe in analytical philosophy that an expression must correspond to the reference. Understanding this takes a few years.

My position is clear: the notion of sexual act/relationship and even enjoyment will take a few decades to prove its theoretical and clinical relevance. Suffice it to say that in seminar 21 there is already change. And in the last seminars, Lacan transforms the Borromean knots of rubber geometry.

THERE ARE A LOT OF TASKS TO BE DONE, TERRIBLE COMMITTERS WHO SIMPLIFY, BUT THE ISSUES WILL NEVER BE SIMPLE. Calm. And study logic, because I think Lacan abandons Kant’s way of defining concepts, using Frege’s argument/function. We have a lot of work mate”

Like I said I have a hard time telling actual nonsense from just “difficult to understand”.

There’s this article too: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14735784.2024.2400152?scroll=top&needAccess=true

But apparently it’s more Hegel who was concerned with unifying opposites. I think the way someone else put it we react not to the person themselves but more to the image we have of them:

This is a more sane take on what I think Lacan is getting at, how much of our lives is symbolism and the power given to symbols. Though I’m not really sure how that’s supposed to help. Also not really sure what he means by corruption here.

9

Kind of a pattern here

10

The pattern is Lacan love of non sense and darkness

11

I’m starting to think that’s true. I asked another question and was met with saying that Sex is always violent, but their definition of violence is wonky:

“Violence is first and foremost symbolic. A symbolic truncation or “castration”. Violence is always symbolic before it is physical.”

“It represents who this other person must be for you to know who you are (what you are attracted to, categorically). “I’m a straight man attracted a ‘women’”.

What is lacking is what is cut off by the sexual fantasy. If you think of fantasy not as what you don’t have so you desire but instead as the coordinates or constellation of desire, and a desirable person is someone who happens to fill that cypher at that particular moment, then projecting a sexual fantasy onto someone is to reduce them to your masturbatory desire.

For example, if I were to tell you I purchased a new vehicle, that’s better than any other, and you were to ask what about it is better and I were to answer “the spark plugs” you’d think I’m mad. But that’s exactly how a sexual fantasy works. You desire a person insofar as they fullfil your sexual fantasy, in that moment - which has nothing to do with who they actually are. In this sense, where you reduce a subject to masturbatory fantasy, it is violent.

As Lacan said, ask a [straight] man what a woman is and you’ll hear his fantasy.”

And well, calling all that violence is just hyperbolic. Maybe Zizek isn’t as insightful as I thought at first.

12

There is also this video where the guy says there is no such thing as universes at 3:40: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48vmkZkPpak&t=257s