1. A Preliminary Analysis of the Psychology of Imagery Largely based on our discussion in week 2, but with some Lacanian ideas thrown in for good measure

2. In week 2, I asked you to distinguish between wish and fantasy, and then we began to think about need and desire. Right at the end of the discussion I asked you to think about the relationship of the language we used to describe these psychological states to our sense that they all had their origins ‘within’ the body. Broadly speaking, these were the conclusions reached:-

3. One suggestion was that there is a range running from those states which can be completely expressed through language, like ‘wish’, and those which are more ‘physiological’ – almost prior to language, such as need or demand – as though the words label something without conveying its underlying reality. In the middle of this range is fantasy. Although its narrative-like form seems to rely on the conventions of language, it names a form of depiction that is identified as being thought ‘unreal’.

4. Another line of thought was that our definitions had to allow for our capacity to misrepresent the psychological status of our mental condition to one another through language – either deliberately to gain some advantage, or through some genuine mis- recognition. Once again there was some agreement that with both ‘wish’ and ‘need’ there was a sense that they could be publicly expressed more easily than fantasy and desire – at least if one’s sense of self respect was not to be put at some risk.

5. Reflecting on this discussion, what emerges, I think, are some assumptions about how the self is expected to present itself through language. Essentially, this seems to rest on an ideal of self-control. Demands, rooted in the physiological, driven by basic needs such as food and water, can only be resisted for a short time before it is accepted that they will dominate the lives of those who are starving or dying of thirst:-

6. Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa.

7. Wishes, of course, allow one to talk about a publicly accepted (and predictable?) form of unreality. But what criteria are used by a commentator to distinguish between those wishes that are ‘realistic’, and those that are not? Once again, the distinction seems to rely on the commentator’s view of what is likely to be within the scope of the wisher’s control, relative to the commentators own knowledge of the ‘ways of the world’. So the sense of ‘self’ is not simply an artefact of language, rather it is a reflection of language practice, which itself is rooted in family life and other familiar social settings.

8. So we are left with fantasies and desires appearing to be, at one and the same time, part of our ‘embodiment’ (as psychological states), but also aspects of our self-representation to others (through our various language practices). Normally, it seems, revealing them to others demands some circumspection – and probably once again this is a reflection of the general expectation that as an adult one should be ‘in control of one’s self’. So the ‘language’ of fantasy and desire is always going to be seen as, in some sense, illicit, corrupting, self- indulgent, non-rational, etc.

9. Can we go any further? The remaining slides explore this possibility. They take, as their postulate, the notion that fantasies are, in their first conception, tied to specular (visual) forms of representation, while desires, being more ‘physiological’, manifest themselves visually only as ‘symptoms’ of these ‘inner’ states. But, both remain subject to mediation through the language practices of the self, but there is more ….

10. So far we have explained these terms by talking about the idea of the self’s control of its sense of reality, and its recognition of the public forms of reality shared by others. But the ‘unreasonableness’ of desire suggests that the body is dancing to another tune – a different sense of reality to that of the everyday. With desire, it seems, there is much difficulty, even resistance in the Freudian sense, in recognising what this altered reality is, since all we have are symptoms which we may be unaware of.

11. Fantasy also seems to be related to a different sense of reality, or unreality, but we need to be clear just what its narrative structure achieves. Presumably, some form by which the self can exercise control over the relationship between ‘normal’ reality and the altered state it is exploring through fantasy. And what if this normality is also a fantasy? Does it make sense to talk of ‘normal’ reality as a narrative – or is it more sensible to suggest that our perceptions of normality are populated by familiar fictions?

12. There seems to be at least two things in play here: the splits between public and private ‘selves’, and how the different forms of utterance associated with these relate to the ‘expressable’, and to what is ‘beyond’ a particular form of language; Jacques Lacan, a psychoanalyst, links the two. What follows is adapted from Leader, D. & Groves, J. (2000) Introducing Lacan Duxford: Icon Books. This is an introductory text cutting too many corners to be worth buying, but offering some useful starting points.

13. Lacan’s analysis builds around the circumstances in which we might use the word ‘demand’. Although we are used to ascribing needs to children from the moment they are born, later on, this gives way to social contexts in which the child is expected to recognise its own needs and express these to others through language; they become demands.

14. According to Lacan, as soon as language is used in this way, the child enters into another ‘register’ – a separate system of inter-relationships – the system of arbitrary symbols which we call language. If the child starts out by needing water, it ends by demanding ‘water’; the object of its need has become displaced by a representation of this relationship in language. Now what matters is whether or not the child can use language effectively so that water is supplied. So the material relationship – the need – is eclipsed by the conventions of utterance and the language practice tokens of love and caring.

15. Language, as we discussed, attempts to mediate the whole of the range of psychological states we considered. Lacan comments on the differences we were exploring, and he concludes, as we did, that language tackles the business of representing this range by operating in different ways. In the case of need, as we have seen, the object is ‘lost’. Once ‘eclipsed’ by the inter-subjectivity of language – the satisfaction of the child’s need becomes contingent on the intelligibility of its demand, and the readiness of the mother or carer to respond. The child’s growing control over its own linguistic ‘self’ presence begins.

16. Lacan indicates that demand is, ultimately, in all its forms of expression, a demand for love. But this is a demand, like all demands, which can never be satisfied. This is because Lacan defines demand as a state of continuous request, beyond any temporary satisfaction. Is this an artefact of language, or an aspect of language use which accurately mirrors the nature of needs?

17. In lacanian analysis, whatever we may think desire is, it also is transformed by language. While the language of demand eclipses the object of need, the language of desire responds differently. Desire ‘introduces an absolute condition, in opposition to the absolutely unconditional nature of demand’ (Leader & Groves: 81). Within the language practices surrounding the expression of desire, satisfaction becomes contingent on one or more prior conditions, e.g. ‘I only want to start a family in my own house.’

18. Lacan’s analysis of desire illuminates through comparison. If I am a prisoner dying of thirst, I need water, and I will express this as a demand, and do whatever is needed, no matter how brutal my guards are, etc. Any form of water will be attractive; I may even willingly drink my own urine. But if I desire a drink, I may be unwilling to satisfy my thirst unless I know that the water I will be drinking has been filtered three times.

19. Demand always has a symbolically identified object. Desire, however, has nothing as its object – nothing in the sense of a ‘lack taken as an object’ (Leader & Groves: 83). This sounds odd, but consider a teenage anorexic. Her desire results in a refusal to eat: her desire has replaced demand with an absence. In a typical family setting, the demand is sustained by the mother: her child must eat. The child, however, responds by staging a symbolic refusal: she desires ‘nothing’.

20. This leads onto a more general proposition that you may be less convinced by: I can desire something or some outcome without being aware of my desire. Consider my earlier example: ‘I only want to start a family in my own house ….’ Within a relationship this could express the prior condition of a desire that is not only not admitted or acknowledged within the couple’s mutual conversations, but is not even recognised by the woman herself – her desire to avoid having children.

21. It follows that for Lacan, as it was for us, it is important to distinguish between a wish and a desire. A wish is something that you want consciously, but Lacan argues that desire is barred from consciousness. It only makes itself manifest to us by the kinds of details and conditions previously explored, i.e., desire produces symptoms, but these are often not recognised for what they are.

22. Evidence for a desire has to be sought indirectly, by searching ‘in between the lines’. This aspect of desire often features in detective stories, and in romantic tales featuring separation and loss. The criminal leaves traces at the scene(s) of the crime that are an essential feature of how his/her passion must be expressed. The lover is thrown into a reverie of happier times by some inconsequential aspect of the present which always accompanied their love-making, etc.

23. So far, we have said little about fantasy, but consider this:- Fantasy is usually conceived as a scenario that realises the subject’s desire. This elementary definition is quite adequate, on condition that we take it literally: what the fantasy stages is not a scene in which our desire is fulfilled, fully satisfied, but on the contrary, a scene that realises, stages, the desire as such. The fundamental point of psychoanalysis is that desire is not something given in advance, but something that has to be constructed – and it is precisely the role of fantasy to give the co-ordinates of the subject’s desire, to specify its object, to locate the position the subject assumes in it. It is only through fantasy that the subject is constituted as desiring: through fantasy we learn how to desire (Zizek, S. (1992) Looking Awry: an introduction to Jacques Lacan through popular culture Cam., Mass.: MIT Press, p. 6). (D.M.B. 2011.)