There is this word that Zizek keeps using in his lectures, and I have no idea what it means. it sounds like 'celda' or 'seldo'.
In pervert's guide to ideology he says it at about 46mins when he's discussing single mothers: "in an ideological edifice you need some [celda/seldo]? concrete image like this to fixate your imagination".
Posted Jun 30, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC
Funnily enough, Zizek has a distaste for Jung and in the quote you referenced he’s merely talking about the extroversion of a content.
It’s odd because I think Lacan and Jung were perhaps closer in thinking than Lacan wanted to admit. The symbolic reality is the concentration of both of them. Lacan concentrates on it in more of a historical/externalized context and how that impacts the individual while Jung concentrated on it in more of an internal (or a priori wired) sense within each individual. I think they distanced from each other more as a competitive distancing rather than their research and thought being too different.
Would you say more on this? My impression is that Jung radically differs from Lacan starting at the point of the unconscious. What Jung means by the unconscious is not what Lacan means, which is about as fundamental a disagreement as you can get within the larger, psychoanalytically-informed field of thought.
Jung's archetypes are also an example of a reified big Other - these symbols mean these particular things regardless of the subjective experience.
All in all, Jung was interested in re-orientating the primal fantasy while Lacan was interested in traversing it. Jung was unable to come to terms with the lack of intrinsic meaning at the core of subjectivity so he turned to mysticism - which is, arguably, the reason why anyone turns to mysticism.
Good points, thanks for explaining. Your explanation makes sense that the gaps are much wider and downright opposing between them. I think as you said, Jung’s biggest weakness or where he left science to mysticism is his a priori or assumption of inherent non-subjective meaning of symbols. Lacan could/would not respect that.
Jung never left science for mysticism. See my reply to the same comment.
Gotta disagree with you on Jung being unable to come to terms with a lack of intrinsic meaning leading him to mysticism. I hate it when people accuse Jung of mysticism. He developed the concept of the individuation process which does give meaning to subjectivity because it’s really just the inner symbolic manifestations of the ontogenic development of humans and that process is detailed in mythology.
Jung continuously stressed that psychology cannot make metaphysical statements and that he was dealing only with the phenomenology of the psyche.
The big other sounds like the Self, an archetype but not the archetypes.
He developed the concept of the individuation process which does give meaning to subjectivity because it’s really just the inner symbolic manifestations of the ontogenic development of humans and that process is detailed in mythology.
This is my point. You cannot "give" meaning to the subject, that completely misses the point of analysis. And I accuse him of mysticism precisely because he does believe meaning can be given.
The big other sounds like the Self, an archetype but not the archetypes.
No, it includes all of them. The big Other is not the self, Jung's variety or otherwise.
How much attention did they pay to each other? Did they ever communicate?
u/praxis-sun: feel free to weigh in if you know something about this.
The only time I know that Lacan had any interaction with Jung was in a brief meeting about Jung and Freud coming to America - this was after Freud had passed. Lacan came out of the meeting claiming that Jung said that Freud said they were "bringing the plague [of psychoanalysis] to America." Jung never confirmed the usage of this term "plague".
Otherwise, I have no recollection of Lacan referencing Jung, nor would I expect there to be (there may be a few passing, deriding remarks). However, Lacan was kind of known for allusions to thinkers he despised without saying their names. The Freud-Jung divide was already very well established by the time Lacan came along. Just reading what Jung says on the drive, libido, and desire is enough to know they are operating with pretty different presuppositions.
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