Jacques-Alain Miller's Perversion
JOSEFINA A YERZA
The Uses of the Fantasm
ERIC LAURENT
The Weight of Words
YASMINE GRASSER
Believe It or Not
MICHAEL TURNHEIM
Psychoanalysis and Literature
GERMÁN GARCÍA
Solo (Prelude)
LYNN CRAWFORD
I must first account for my title "The Uses of the Fantasm." I used it to stress that it seems to me that Lacan's teachings in regard to perverse eroticism are best approached through that concept: the uses of the Fantasm in contradistinction to the uses of drive, for instance, whether aggressive or death drives. Actually, for Lacan, drives were discovered and are best found in neurosis. They were first isolated by Freud in neurosis and then extended to perversions and not the reverse. The uses of drives, I could say, are best found in neurotic eroticisms. Nor can perversion best be approached through the concept of the use or abuse of an object, or through the choice of the object as negative theology of object relations can be stressed through the destruction of the object.
Beyond the question marks, what exists are answers, and if someone has an absolute answer to his orgasm reward, if he has an absolute definition and certainty about it, he would have nothing to ask for from the psychoanalyst. So it is not our business anymore, we don't have to cure him, we are not the envoys of society as such. But if someone is uncertain I can say that in my practice, people who have certain sexual practices which are the answer to their way of obtaining rewarding orgasm, but at the same time have neurotic symptoms, that is to say question marks, marked in the body and the flesh if this symptom intrigues them sufficiently, it can lead to a cure. A modification of the practice is not then the main issue.
* Paris-New York Psychoanalytic Workshop, April 2, 1989.
Illustration: Luis Felipe Noé "One Passion...", 1982
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