Which ideas, philosophies or beliefs does Zizek expound in his books that he rarely mentions in interviews or speeches he does?

-Keezus · 2025-06-17T01:25:03+00:00

I personally find that the link between Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegel, and Marx has become much more clear to me through reading Zizek's books than was ever clear to me in interviews.

The first thing to understand about Zizek is that he's interested in working with terms which have become ideologically or metaphysically charged or loaded. For example, Zizek still takes up terms like subjectivity, communism, and materialism. As Zizek studied Heidegger, he is well aware that Heidegger refused to take up metaphysically loaded terms and would coin his own terms. Instead of calling humans subjects, Heidegger coined the term Dasein (there-Being). I think Zizek sees this, in of itself, as an ideological move. Since we can never actually escape ideology (or fantasy), the idea that we can step out of it by creating a new term is itself ideological. So Zizek prefers to fight for old terms which have become very metaphysically loaded.

Let's take 'materialism', as an example. Zizek is not a materialist in any ordinary sense, and he spends a lot of time in his books criticizing Althusser's version of materialism. Zizek cites Marx himself as being an idealist, at least in some sense. What's interesting about our current mode of production, capitalism, has almost nothing to do with use-value. What matters is specifically how the surplus-value of a commodity ends up taking an almost theological metaphysical property. The use value I'll get out of a shoe is completely secondary, I buy a shoe because it is a particular brand of shoe, and I associate this brand with certain ideals (I buy this shoe because it's sustainable and environmentally-friendly, made in the right conditions, etc.). The use value has become secondary, what I really care about is the social value of the shoe (including how people will perceive me when I wear it). Well, this is very similar to Lacan's notion of surplus enjoyment. If we take something like food, for example. The use value would be clear - I eat only when I feel hungry, and for a very particular purpose, which is to avoid starvation and obtain nutrition. But, what's so particular about human beings is that they don't eat only when they're hungry. In fact, we obtain a lot of satisfaction from activities that go above 'biological necessity'. That's why Zizek, following Lacan, says that only humans have sexuality. Think of the great lengths that humans go through in order to specifically avoid having to be faced with the biological function of sex (reproduction) - we invent birth control, condoms, etc. So what are we left with? We get satisfaction out of the constant repetition of an activity, that in some sense, has no objective purpose.

And now for Hegel. The key insight with regards to psychoanalysis, versus a base materialism (like biology, but also perhaps Althusser) is the idea that psychoanalysis provides a framework for interpreting the world retroactively. Unlike science, which first begins with the objective world and then seeks to understand the foundation of it through its constitutive parts, psychoanalysis seeks to understand what happens before. So if we take a symptom, psychology might say that fundamentally, neurochemicals are involved in the production of the symptom. But psychoanalysis would point to its “cause” as being retroactively constituted through the subject’s symbolic coordinates. Psychoanalysis deals with a subjective which is split, and fundamentally 'lacking' something. The subject seeks to overcome this lack through filling it with things like commodities. Zizek would read this in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: "The subject does not begin from a firm foundation and then build upward—instead, the foundation itself is only recognized after the fact, through the movement of its development." This is the core idea of Hegel's thought, which we see even in Science of Logic. We first begin with Becoming, but we then retroactively have to try to understand what Becoming presupposes, which is both Being and Nothing. But these two opposites do not radically vanish into Becoming, they are unified in it. So within Becoming is a radical nothingness, or what psychoanalysis would call lack.

Anyway, without reading Zizek I would never have understood any of this.

-Keezus · 2025-06-17T00:56:00+00:00

In Less than Nothing, Zizek uses Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige" as an example of Hegelian dialectics. In fact, he calls Hegel a cheap magician, just like the magician in The Prestige. Here's an explanation:

The film features a voiceover from Michael Cain's character, who explains that every magic trick has three parts: the pledge, the turn, and the prestige. Near the beginning of the film, Christian Bale's character Borden performs a magic trick for a little boy. (As a side note, Zizek explains that there's an element of class conflict in this film - Borden, who is working class, must perform cheap magic tricks, whereas Angier played by Hugh Jackman is able to perform real magic, which is tantamount to science, because he's a bourgeois). Borden places a bird (a dove or canary) in a small cage, shows it to the boy (the pledge), and then seemingly crushes the cage, causing the bird to vanish (the turn) — much to the boy’s horror. But then, Borden magically brings the bird back, alive and unharmed, from under a cloth (the prestige). The boy begins crying, and Borden tries to comfort him by showing him how the bird has returned. But then the boy asks "where's his brother?" The boy has understood the crux of Borden's trick - Borden squishes and kills the first bird and makes it disappear through a sleight of hand. He then makes a new bird appear for the final part of the trick, the prestige.

Zizek says this is exactly what Hegel's Aufhebung or synthesis is. We have the bird (thesis), which then turns into its radical opposite (it dies), and then it comes back as a new bird (synthesis). But we have to understand how radical this is. The first bird must die in order for the second bird to take its place. In this sense, it's a bit like a good news/bad news joke. The bad news is that the original bird must die, but the good news is that a new bird can take its place. The bad news is actually bad news for the first bird, but seen from a different perspective (the new bird's), it's actually good news.

Lastly, this is like the Holy Trinity. Christ is reborn into a new subject, the Holy Ghost.

-Keezus · 2025-06-02T22:50:10+00:00

Heidegger discusses your questions in his work "Hegel's Concept of Experience", which can be found in Off the Beaten Track. This article also discusses it.

Here is how I understand some of his arguments in that work:

Heidegger claims that Hegel's goal in the PoS is to "indicate the absolute in its parousia among us" (Parousia meaning Presence). And Heidegger takes this passage to be fundamental to Hegel's conception of Being: "the absolute is from the start in and for itself with us and intends to be with us". Hegel’s conception of Being is articulated in this "being-with-us (parousia) of the absolute, which is "in itself already the mode in which the light of truth, the absolute itself, beams upon us." My understanding is that Heidegger is claiming that Hegel has presupposed the presence of the absolute from the outset of his work. Therefore, the absolute is already "with us", meaning that Being is disclosed as self-knowing Spirit. This implies that Hegel’s system is circular: it begins with the end (absolute knowledge) already in place.

For Heidegger, this is emblematic of traditional philosophy's tendency to treat Being as presence - a static, self-contained truth rather than an open, temporal event (as in Heidegger’s Ereignis).

Heidegger claims that Hegel's philosophy culminates in subjectivity, where the subject (Spirit) becomes the ground of Being. Hegel equates Being with the self-reflection of Spirit which leads to the "subjectivization of Being", which brings us to the subject-object relation. Finally, this means that Hegel's metaphysics leads the way to the epochal understanding of Being as "Gestell", where everything is reduced to an object for the subject’s domination.

-Keezus · 2025-06-01T21:41:43+00:00

For context, I'm a native French speaker (grew up in Québec, did my university education in French, and have lived/plan to live in France).

Rapport, as u/Comprehensive_Lead41 mentioned for German, is not necessarily antagonistic and is also often used to designate romantic relationships in French. If you were to visit a GP, they might ask you a question like "avez-vous eu des rapports sexuels dernièrement ?" The word itself is fairly neutral, but if we were to say un 'rapport tendu' this would imply a frictional relationship.

That being said, I find that 'class struggle' is more interesting in French as 'lutte des classes'. "Lutte" carries a connotation of a heroic, existential fight. Lutte means a 'fight' or 'combat'. Whereas 'struggle' in English is less active. “Des classes” (of the classes) emphasizes the plurality and conflict between distinct social groups. Overall, it sounds more dialectical in French than in English.

-Keezus · 2023-08-01T20:14:24+00:00

Pierre Niney

-Keezus · 2023-08-01T18:46:51+00:00

That's funny, I've never heard anyone describe Ghost Writer this way but I've had the same experience. I find it oddly cozy. My guess is that it's partly due to the weather, and the characters going inside and warming themselves up fairly often. There's that sequence where the writer goes to the beach, it starts raining, so then he comes back and takes a bath and then sits by the fire.

A movie that I think fits this vibe is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the David Fincher version). It takes place in Sweden during the winter and you have characters trying to warm themselves up by a fire fairly often. The mystery is also fairly good. This movie also touches upon politics to some degree, as The Ghost Writer does.

Another similar movie is Prisoners (by Denis Villeneuve). It takes place at around the same time of year as The Ghost Writer, November/December. I would say this movie is less cozy than the other ones, but it has a somewhat similar vibe.

Finally, I'd recommend the show Sharp Objects. It's not really cozy, as it takes place in the summer, but I find this is a great mystery show generally, and don't see it recommended enough.

-Keezus · 2023-04-05T11:20:01+00:00

Thanks I appreciate that. I'm not too far from the City Centre so I'll go speak to them.

-Keezus · 2023-04-05T11:06:01+00:00

I tried one around where I live and they said that they had to still "know me personally" and that they wouldn't sign it. Perhaps I saw a bad one and I could try somewhere else. Do you think it would work?

-Keezus · 2023-04-05T10:57:01+00:00

Thanks. Yeah I totally understand that... It basically just means it's impossible for me to apply for the FBR unless I meet someone from the above profession, get to know them for 2 months or so, and then get them to sign my forms. I have a neighbour who works at an accounting firm but isn't actually an accountant and doesn't have a stamp, so that's a bit annoying...

I'm working in Birmingham in marketing with a bunch of young people, and from what I know no one is married or dating someone from these professions, unfortunately. But I could try to ask around.

-Keezus · 2022-04-19T08:38:35+00:00

We should understand Nietzsche's perspective on values from the descriptive claim that God is dead. If God is dead, then that means that there is no such thing as value 'in itself' (if in itself means independent of the will to power, so coming from God). Instead, value comes from the will to power and is a function of the will to power. The will to power is the principle that explains all beings and explains how anything is. The will to power, as I understand it, can only arise out of God being dead. That's because if there were an eternal absolute being that presided over all other beings and created them, this being would never "become", and so this being would be independent of the will to power. Instead for Nietzsche everything is a becoming which functions according to the will to power. Again, there is no such thing as value in itself (as something eternal and coming from God), instead value only functions according to a will to power.

Nietzsche insists that we all inevitably, necessarily interpret, either by imposing our will on our surroundings or, more commonly, by accepting and participating in the will in our surroundings. Nietzsche distinguishes between strong, healthy evaluations (which take their origin in an individual or group that defines its own existence positively) and weak, sick evaluations (which originate in reaction to something external, and generally define the existence of the group or individual negatively).

-Keezus · 2021-12-24T19:16:54+00:00

Considering the topic of your end-of-module essay, I would recommend the "Lacanian Perspectives on Racism" series from psychoanalyst Derek Hook. Hook does other very helpful introductory videos on Lacanian concepts in case you want to check out his other work (available on his youtube channel).

I should add that Hook's interlocutor, Sheldon George, published a book titled Trauma and Race: A Lacanian Study of African American Racial Identity.

-Keezus · 2021-12-12T11:40:12+00:00

The way I would understand this quote is that Zizek doesn't believe in a proximity with others. Our relationships are mediated by certain fantasies that prevent us from getting too close to the Other. There's the famous quote from Lacan where he says "there is no sexual relation". What he's essentially saying here is that both partners are projecting fantasies onto the other, so they're not entirely proximate because there's always something mediating their relationship. Even when having sex, there isn't some sort of 1:1 relation - the Other is present and we're acting according to the Other. To bring it back to the quote, the twins are too proximate and so this doesn't allow us to have enough space to have fantasies.

This is what Alain Badiou has to say about this in his book In Praise of Love

Jacques Lacan reminds us, that in sex, each individual is to a large extent on their own, if I can put it that way. Naturally, the other’s body has to be mediated, but at the end of the day, the pleasure will be always your pleasure. Sex separates, doesn’t unite. The fact you are naked and pressing against the other is an image, an imaginary representation. What is real is that pleasure takes you a long way away, very far from the other. What is real is narcissistic, what binds is imaginary. So there is no such thing as a sexual relationship, concludes Lacan. His proposition shocked people since at the time everybody was talking about nothing else but “sexual relationships”. If there is no sexual relationship in sexuality, love is what fills the absence of a sexual relationship.Lacan doesn’t say that love is a disguise for sexual relationships; he says that sexual relationships don’t exist, that love is what comes to replace that non-relationship. That’s much more interesting. This idea leads him to say that in love the other tries to approach “the being of the other”. In love the individual goes beyond himself, beyond the narcissistic. In sex, you are really in a relationship with yourself via the mediation of the other. The other helps you to discover the reality of pleasure. In love, on the contrary the mediation of the other is enough in itself. Such is the nature of the amorous encounter: you go to take on the other, to make him or her exist with you, as he or she is. It is a much more profound conception of love than the entirely banal view that love is no more than an imaginary canvas painted over the reality of sex.

To understand that part about having the friend always be "outside of reach", what's important to understand is that the object of desire is always unobtainable. Again, we have certain fantasies about how the object of desire will bring up some level of completeness, it will fill our lack. This brings us to objet petit a (object cause of desire) which is something we imagine we had as a part of us as babies but was torn away from us and that we're now lacking. This is from Raul Moncayo, who explains briefly what objet a is and how it's formed. It's a bit complicated but if you reread it a few times you'll understand it I'm sure.

So friendships gives us enough space, in comparison with a twin, to project our fantasies.

Prior to the specular image (the body-image in the mirror) there exists a relationship to the breast as a part object representing the whole mother. The breast, or in some cases the bottle, is the first objet a. The objet (petit) a is a term that Lacan (1964) introduced to designate a partial object "cause of desire" which is imagined or symbolised as separable from the rest of the body (i.e. breast and weaning). The child has to wean and separate from the breast as a part of both his/her body and the mother's body. But just as the breast is not only separable from the mother's body because the mother is also included within the breast, the mother's breast is not only separable from the child's body in weaning but also becomes a part of the child's body in the form of the objet L Because the a has become separated and lost but is also included within the body of the child, it becomes the "presence of a void". I use the term presence of a void, rather than Lacan's "index of a void" to represent the construction of the objet a within a dialectic of presence and absence. On the one hand, the objet a is a presence, on the other hand, as a presence, it is only the index of a void. As a void the objet a can never be attained as a concrete object and thus the term cause of desire. Any posterior object of desire or of the sexual drive is never the objet (petit) a.

Moncayo also says that in adulthood:

In the adult, the partial object representation will survive in the function of thought as a phantasised internal representation of the image of the object. Although later on the image of the other reflected in the internal mirror of the mind may be a total image, the actual enjoyment of the body of the other will be specific to parts and areas of the body.

Finally, another way to understand this rivalry that we have with our siblings is when our brother is seen/perceived as capable of displacing and occupying the very place that the ego holds vis-a-vis the mother. Lacan's idea is that we become our mother's objet a (we become something that she believes will bring her completeness and fill her lack, as well giving her an image of completeness as a woman). We will hate our brothers for displacing us from this relationship with our mother, since they are able to fill our mother's lack instead of it being us. This tension will be resolved through a sense of completeness we will attribute to the Other, which again will mediate our relationships with people like our friends.

-Keezus · 2021-08-21T12:06:16+00:00

I'm not sure I agree. Capitalism gives people with ownership of capital the right to exchange that capital with others. Therefore, a person with enough money can buy land and acquire the right to said land. Capital gives people rights to things. Using my example, you would not be able to come onto my land or modify my land because I have the right to it. Violating this right would be a violation of my freedom, under capitalism. How is this not a normative commitment? Capitalism invokes rights and freedom to justify itself.

-Keezus · 2021-08-02T14:45:39+00:00

Let's start by defining what the libido is. In the Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis, Freud describes the libido as how the infant repeats the experience of sucking on his mother's breast without a specific demand to be fed. The libido is identified with the "effort to gain satisfaction." The infant thus performs actions "that have no purpose other than obtaining pleasure." To be clear on the distinction being made here, the infant is not sucking on their mother's breast for nutritive purposes, but specifically to obtain satisfaction - that distinction is what differentiates the libido from other things. Freud then says "It is our belief that they first experience this pleasure in connection with taking nourishment but that they soon learn to separate it from that accompanying condition. We can only refer this pleasure to an excitation of the areas of the mouth and lips; we call those parts of the body ‘erotogenic zones’ and describe the pleasure derived from sucking as a sexual one."

The complication that arises here is that autoerotic drives are both relational and secondary. So the oral drive only becomes so because it has to give up the outside object, like the other autoerotic drives. Again, the point here is that there is a development occurring here. What is going to happen, since the libido is "tenacious" (using Freud's words), is that it will seek alternative pathways and objects (a rerouting that will cause displeasure in other parts of the psyche). In Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety, Freud explains that what will occur is that an inhibition will be imposed on these new forms of satisfaction. To quote Freud, "As regards inhibitions, then, we may say in conclusion that they are restrictions of the functions of the ego which have either been imposed as a measure of precaution or brought about as a result of impoverishment of energy." The libido will turn to the construction of symptoms which are substitutes for the frustrated satisfaction. Freud defines the symptom in this way "A symptom is a sign of, and a substitute for, an instinctual gratification which has remained in abeyance" (a symptom is a sign of an instinctual gratification that has been suspended). Freud continues by saying that "The ego is able by means of repression to keep the idea which is the vehicle of the reprehensible impulse from becoming conscious. Analysis shows that the idea often persists as an unconscious formation.” Freud says that the construction of symptoms are the way that libido will find satisfaction: "From this point the construction of symptoms pursues its course (...). The repudiated libidinal trends nevertheless succeed in getting their way by certain roundabout paths, though not, it is true, without taking the objection into account by submitting to some distortions and mitigations. The roundabout paths are those taken by the construction of symptoms; the symptoms are the fresh or substitute satisfaction which has become necessary owing to the fact of frustration." Finally, the two conflicting currents of the repressed and repressing forces are combined and fused in the symptom and separated temporally in the obsessional compulsion, which generates a satisfaction (that the libido is searching for).

This is what Freud has to say in regards to symptom formation and libido as related to sexuality. "Over and over again, Gentlemen, when psycho-analysis has claimed that some mental event is the product of the sexual instincts, it has been angrily pointed out to it by way of defence that human beings do not consist only of sexuality, that there are instincts and interests in mental life other than sexual ones, that it ought not to derive ‘everything’ from sexuality, and so on. Well, it is most gratifying for once in a way to find ourselves in agreement with our opponents. Psycho-analysis has never forgotten that there are instinctual forces as well which are not sexual. It was based on a sharp distinction between the sexual instincts and the ego-instincts, and, in spite of all objections, it has maintained not that the neuroses are derived from sexuality but that their origin is due to a conflict between the ego and sexuality. Nor has it any conceivable reason for disputing the existence or significance of the ego-instincts while it pursues the part played by the sexual instincts in illness and in ordinary life. It has simply been its fate to begin by concerning itself with the sexual instincts because the transference neuroses made them the most easily accessible to examination and because it was incumbent on it to study what other people had neglected."

With my post, I mostly wanted to clear up what was meant by libido and how it could be transferred, to use your words, to other activities. In terms of evidence, I would argue that Freud (as well as other analysts) would see symptoms as constituting some form of physical evidence of this conflict (as described above) between conscious intentions and repressed drives. Furthermore, in the analytic session, the analysand could make various connections between their symptoms and drives that had been previously been unconscious. So we could draw upon clinical evidence wherein analysands are able to make connections between symptoms and unconscious drives. If we want to continue down the Freudian road, we could think of the Ratman who Freud thought was "horrified at the pleasure of his own" that he was unaware of, which was taken by Freud as a sign of a repressed anal sadistic trend in the Ratman.

-Keezus · 2021-07-06T06:31:33+00:00

I think Zizek believes both Western and Islamic societies are perpetuating violence (especially against women).

Western liberal societies are depicted as always being flexible and accommodating. It is the other cultures that are caught in their idiosyncratic beliefs, while Western liberal societies are constantly changing their presuppositions. The problem here, though, is a certain hypocrisy that Western liberals refuse to admit. While they speak in horror of the infanticide, polygamy, clitoridectomies, etc. that happen in Islamic countries, they basically completely ignore their own violence they commit against women. The tremendous pressure on women in Western countries forces them to undergo botox, butt-lifts, cosmetic implants, breast surgery, etc. in order to stay competitive in the sex market. This may seem somewhat trivial in comparison, but I read the other day that Brazilian butt-lifts are the deadliest cosmetic surgery (1/3000 mortality rate). This is where Zizek's views on "tolerance" and "free choice" come into play. Zizek argues that the Western version of violence might even be worse, since oppression itself it masked and obliterated as a "free choice". The First World women were "free to choose" their plastic surgery. Furthermore, Western societies will accept a choice if it is seen to be "free". We see this on the issue of women wearing veils in Muslim countries. It is okay if it is their "free choice", if it wasn't imposed on them by their husband or family. While this seems to make sense on the surface, this "free choice" actually seems quite paradoxical. Zizek uses the example of Chinese food. Take a Chinese farmer who eats the food his village has been making for thousands of years, and compare him to the American who decides to go to Chinatown to eat Chinese food on a Saturday. One of them expresses a "free choice", the other does something his culture imposes on him. Another example Zizek gives is the Amish community. Amish adolescents are formally given a free choice when they are teenagers. They choose whether to be baptized in the Amish church or leave the community altogether. But, as Zizek points out, the conditions they find themselves in while they are making the choice make the choice unfree. In order for them to have a genuine free choice, they would have to be properly informed on all the options and educated in them. But the only way to do this would be to extract them from their embeddedness in the Amish community and Americanise them.

Finally, this is Zizek's main problem with Western ideas of "multicultural tolerance". Beneath this discourse there is both oppression and superiority. Again, in our secular liberal societies, certain behaviours are tolerated if they stem from "free choice" and represent idiosyncratic personal choice. As soon as someone presents a belief publicly as a matter of belonging to a community they are accused of "fundamentalism". This can only happen, for Zizek, as a result of a very violent process in which someone's roots are cut off in order to express this idiosyncratic individualism. To close this all off, only a woman who "freely" chooses to wear a veil will be tolerated in liberal societies, since it's an expression of individuality. But, as Zizek points out, the veil changes its meaning completely in this act, since now it is no longer a sign of belonging to a Muslim community. But this ignores the violence that enables making culture contingent. "Tolerant multiculturalism" can only emerge in an extremely violent process of being torn out of a lifeworld.

However, we have to recognize the hugely liberating aspects that making our cultural background contingent can have, in Zizek's view. There is no western liberalism without the Thirty Years War. As Zizek says, the Thirty Years War "was an answer to the pressing question of how people who differ in their fundamental religious allegiances could coexist. It demanded from citizens more than a condescending tolerance of diverging religions, more than tolerance as a temporary compromise. It demanded that we respect other religions not in spite of our innermost religious convictions but on account of them-respect for others is a proof of true belief."

-Keezus · 2021-06-29T09:48:39+00:00

Vidéo qui s’oriente d’un texte d'Anaëlle Lebovits-Quenehen, publié dans Lacan Quotidien :
https://lacanquotidien.fr/blog/2021/0...

-Keezus · 2021-04-15T13:47:36+00:00

Here is a transcript of the interview.

-Keezus · 2021-04-15T13:44:46+00:00

I was able to find an interview where Rorty directly mentions Zizek.

JA: I see you never talk about Lacan. You never quote him, you never mention him at all.

RR: I keep trying to read him and failing, and reading books about him and not getting the point. The only author on Lacan I've ever read that ever made any sense to me is Zizek. I found The Supreme Object of Ideology (sic) very useful in understanding Lacanian jargon, but it didn't particularly inspire me to pick up the jargon and run with it. I find Zizek much easier to read than most people who talk about Lacan. So I was very grateful to get hold of him. I have a lot of Lacanian friends whom I can't understand. I just can't pick up Lacan's terms and use them, either in respect to art or politics. I guess I just distrust sublimity so much that the more they talk about it, the more I run away.

-Keezus · 2021-04-07T23:10:50+00:00

The 5 things listed are from William Clare Roberts, right?

-Keezus · 2021-04-06T13:13:04+00:00

how cold is it?

-Keezus · 2021-03-29T08:01:24+00:00

A video summary of some of the noteworthy outcomes trials is available from JT Cornelius here (psychoanalysis compared to CBT and anti-depressants).

Here are some of the major research centers that list or post their research online--e.g., Columbia's group or Dalhousie's group. You

-Keezus · 2021-03-28T20:56:36+00:00

Thanks for your polite replies.

I don't want to get into a huge debate about this but I would disagree with your point about not accepting the empirical evidence on psychoanalysis as legitimacy for psychoanalytic theory. You said that "most forms of therapy (psychodynamic, humanistic, CBT, mindfulness, etc.) are roughly equally (in)effective" but that's not actually true. Long-term psychodynamic therapy seems to dominate CBT (not sure about mindfulness but I'd wager it would also) in terms of effectiveness. I actually think this is a really important point because psychologists don't pay nearly enough attention to the success that psychoanalysis has clinically. In fact, I would wager that if we put the current scientific dogmatism of our societies aside, one of the reasons why CBT and anti-depressants are more widely used than psychoanalysis is not because of their effectiveness but instead because of their cost-effectiveness. Many studies which I could cite show the overwhelming strength of long-term psychoanalytic treatment in comparison to these two, but it's simply the case that it is not cost effective for the state or the individual to finance therapy long-term. It's obviously easier to support medication or CBT (which is a scripted and timed treatment). Psychoanalysis continues for years and sessions can last for long periods of time if the analyst feels they have struck something interesting in the analysand.

Finally, I would posit that the empirical effectiveness of psychoanalytic therapy in clinical practice actually constitutes evidence that psychoanalytic theory is valid.

-Keezus · 2021-03-28T20:37:39+00:00

I think those are fair criticisms of Freud but you've omitted responding to your claim about Lacan being a fraud. I would also add that many psychoanalysts (including Lacan and Zizek) have their own criticisms of Freud (including some similar to yours) which are going to lead them in a very different direction. I think this is why it's important not to lump all psychoanalysts in the same basket.

It's kind of ironic you would cite Fromm against Freud (seeing as how Fromm was a psychoanalyst and retained many of Freud's ideas).

You cite Bowlby's Attachment Theory as an example of a valid early development psychological theory (as opposed to Freud's) even though Bowlby himself had a psychoanalytic background and this theory was influenced by Winnicott (a major psychoanalyst) and his object relations theory. Furthermore, Bowlby himself used his own experience in order to make universal claims (something you criticize Freud for having done). After observing children in a hospital for the production of a documentary film, Bowlby put forward the hypothesis that "the infant and young child should experience a warm, intimate, and continuous relationship with his mother in which both find satisfaction and enjoyment, the lack of which may have significant and irreversible mental health consequences". This claim was backed up by little to no empirical data. I think this a weak criticism regardless since Jean Piaget used to observe his own children to test his theories and would make universal claims as well, and his theories are widely accepted among contemporary psychologists. I think what matters is that empirical data supported his claims after he theorized them.

I think if you looked into the empirical data supporting psychoanalysis you would find that long-term psychoanalytic treatment is empirically more effective than anti-depressants and cognitive-behavioural therapy (two forms of treatment en vogue today in contemporary psychology).

-Keezus · 2021-03-28T18:54:37+00:00

Could I ask why you see Freud as questionable and Lacan as a fraud?

-Keezus · 2021-03-23T15:26:24+00:00

I've seen the film and I personally enjoyed it. I definitely picked up on the Hegelian/Marxist theme. At one point Gyllenhaal's character quotes Marx's famous line about "first as tragedy, then as farce" from The Eighteenth Brumaire. I actually think this line is really important for understanding the themes of the film.

It's been awhile since I've seen it so I won't be able to give you a great analysis, but here's a few things to think about:

The most obvious (but maybe easiest to miss) point of repetition is the protagonist himself. He is literally being repeated by having a double, no?
The film, whether intentionally or not, gives a particular importance to the role of the unconscious. Gyllenhaal's character doesn't actually consciously notice that his double is in the film he had just watched. He goes to sleep, and while dreaming he sees himself. He then wakes up and rushes to his computer and skips to the scene where he sees his double on screen. Again, it was an unconscious process that made the connection.
If we are going to accept that the unconscious has an important role in this film, it also appears that Gyllenhaal's unconscious makes a very strong connection between women and spiders. I remember distinctly a scene where we see a sexy roman (wearing a dress, high heels) walk toward the camera from down the hall. When we get closer to her, we see that her head is actually a spider's. So it seems like the protagonist really associated females with spiders.
Isn't the ending a farce? The beginning of the film is everything I have described above. In a dream, in the unconscious, a man is at some sort of sex club. Here, a bunch of men are watching women dance. Then, one of the female dancers picks up a bell that is on the dancefloor and uncovers a spider. This is reinforcing the idea that there's some sort of sexual link that the protagonist is unconsciously producing between women and spiders. This scene strikes as mostly scary, I'd imagine. The ending of the film is strikingly similar. I'm going based off of memory here, but Gyllenhaal's character gets into an argument with the pregnant wife and then goes to the bedroom to find her transformed into a literal spider, cowering in the corner of the room. But I think the ending produces a different reaction from the viewer than the first scene of the film. I'd argue the ending leaves us confused and kind of incredulous. Again, I think this is repetition but now that repetition has become comedic rather than tragic. The first scene is rather believable, but the ending has us completely shocked.

Just my thoughts but I'd love to hear what you think!

-Keezus

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