Helena Bissing (3:34)

Yes. And this is very interesting, this thing about it. It's an introduction, but also more, like you say, your own, a polemic. But I think it's what's really fascinating about this book is that it really is kind of both, or it holds the tension there. And by the way, Maru Ruti, you also. The book is also in memory of her.

Todd McGowan (3:54)

Right.

Helena Bissing (3:54)

And very sad that she died.

Todd McGowan (3:59)

I was just so. I mean, I don't think a day goes by that I don't think about her and what she meant to me. So. Yeah, so it's very sad. I mean, every time I wrote anything about it, I was thinking of her, but she would have hated it, I have to say. So she had a whole different list of. We do a. There's a list of concepts. And I. When she died, I just threw her. I mean, this is terrible. I just threw her list out and came up with my own list. And they're not the same. So it would have been. I think it'd have been much less controversial if she would have stayed on and people would have liked it more. Yeah.

Helena Bissing (4:36)

Well, just as a side note, on this channel, there was an interview with Mari Rooty about one of the other books she wrote with another author. I forget their name, but I was just listening to that recently, so if anyone wants to, they can go and listen to that interview with her. But. But, I mean, her. So her spirit is here in that way of.

Todd McGowan (4:57)

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Helena Bissing (5:00)

But I think. I mean, going back to this thing about, you know, is it like, introduction or a polemic? And the spirit of, like, having different perspective, like, this is what drew me to the book. And also to your work, because I think you really take on this. I mean, I want to say, and I think I'm certainly not alone here. Lots of our listeners would, you know, we all have different feelings about Lacan. Right.

Todd McGowan (5:26)

Right.

Helena Bissing (5:26)

There are those who are very, you know, the die hard Lacanians and those who are very like, not into it at all. But what I found so fascinating is that I read this book and I really did not feel like reading it was about making up my mind about whether I am into Lacan or not. Because there's something about your writing style that feels like I'm not in for being persuaded, but in for really engaging with the complexities and the contradictions too. So I don't know how, if you had something to say about that, about your. Because I think this is something that's so rare today. Books that are written without this attachment to persuading the reader.

Todd McGowan (6:12)

Right. I really intended that. So that's, I real. That really hardens me that you responded that way. Because I thought, can I expose or dig into or explicate what I think is valuable about his thought? Regardless of whether you're Lacanian or whatever, or you're attached to certain things, I didn't care about that. I just wanted to see are there these things where he makes a real contribution and that, that could be a contribution for anybody, regardless of what their persuasion is. So, yeah, I was not trying to persuade people to be Lacanian at all. So that I, I think that probably that's. So what you're saying is that kind of came through, which, that, that heartens me for sure. Yeah.

Helena Bissing (7:00)

Yeah. And, and that also speaks to how this, this, the, the classic notion of an introduction as a textbook that's kind of presenting a writer as if it's like the, the objective truth about that writer is that you kind of go in and disrupt that a bit because it's like you're also showing how that's not possible.

Todd McGowan (7:19)

Right. And, and, and to be honest, I, when I sent the version to Cambridge, I thought for sure they're just going to reject him. So I just. Luckily I had. I have some friends that run the Lack book series and one of them is my spouse and they would have just taken it. So, so I knew, okay, I'm not. It's not going to just be for not. But I, I fully expected them to reject it. And, and interestingly, Luke Thurston, I thank him in, in the acknowledgments. He. I don't know him at all, but He's a. He's invested in the part of Lacan that I'm a pretty critical of, and he was the reader, and he just, he just gushed over it. So that was really. That made me very. I was, I was just delighted about that. And I thought. And, and, but, but I think you're right. He. He liked that it wasn't a typical introduction, that it wasn't. It didn't kind of go through A, B, C, D, and then try to persuade the people that he was right, but instead had a particular take. And he thought that that was. He. He found that valuable, otherwise it just wouldn't have come to fruition at Cambridge.

Helena Bissing (8:30)

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, there's also a nice kind of a paradox going on here about you being the one writing this because. And I say this because I know. I mean, you're, You've also, in your, in your other work and in your podcast, I mean, the. Hegel is a big part of your influences and the work you focus on. And so I've been very fascinated by this, of seeing the contradictions. There's something kind of interestingly contradictory about the fact that you, you're someone who you're very openly dedicated to go getting away from jargon. And, you know, you really strive to write without jargon and make things kind of clear in that way. And, and, and Lacan is famous for wanting the jargon. Like, he invented new ways of confusing the reader. And you. You speak to that in the book. And so I, I wondered if you could speak a bit to that part about Lacan's project that you clearly don't. You don't agree with, or you don't. You don't have the. And what are your thoughts on the fact that you of all people then, are the person to write about Lacan?

Todd McGowan (9:41)

Yeah, it's a great question. Not only do I agree with it, I hate it. So, yeah, I hate it. And there's a whole book. I don't think it's translated in English, but it's in French about all the words that Lacan invented. And I hate the idea of inventing words. I really am totally against it. And you mentioned Hegel. Hegel never invented a single word, which I really appreciate. Hegel was a bad writer, but it wasn't because he was jargony. He was just a bad writer. And so, you know, God forgive him. But Lacan, you're. You're absolutely right. Like, he, He. He intentionally tried to be obscurantist. And I just think. I don't understand the point of that, frankly. And I. I have no patience for it. And so I guess I felt an imperative to really cut through that. And I thought, okay, you're right. And people say to me, you're a simplifier. And okay, that's. It's. That's a. I think it's a fair critique, even. But I think Lacan maybe needs a simplifier. So I felt. Yeah, I. So I did feel. You're. It's such a penetrating question because I did feel a little bit at odds with Lacan's own project because he's trying. He doesn't want to be understood. In fact, he upbraids his students several times for understanding too quickly. And when I teach, I never do that. I try to be and write. I try to be as clear as I can and try to use examples that just make something seem like, oh, so here's how I think. Here's what I think the task of theory is. It's trying to make the thing that just happens every day be understood in a new way, in a new light, not take you into some other kind of realm. And I think that's. So I just tried to do that. I tried to show how Lacan can really help in that way. But it did force me to go against, like, I don't even translate. There's a whole controversy. I mentioned it briefly, maybe in a footnote. I can't remember about translating the word jouissance.

Helena Bissing (11:51)

Yeah.

Todd McGowan (11:51)

And I just say, like, you know, sorry, I'm just not going to. Okay, sometimes I'll use it, but sometimes I'll just translate it as enjoyment. And I don't. Okay, it's slightly inaccurate. I just don't care. I just think all we. Like, the last thing we need is another jargony term that is. Is it makes it. Because then it just puts up a bear. It means that, okay, there's this. In group that has access to a thing, and then everybody else is an outsider, doesn't know what they're talk. Talking about. And I just think that's no way to. I'm just a. I'm very much of an egalitarian and I just think thought should try to be. Have access to everybody. And if it doesn't, then what's the point? I really. I really, really feel that way.

Helena Bissing (12:35)

And, And. But I'm fascinated by this because I. It's. What I think is the most fascinating thing with psychoanalysis is when we can kind of read it towards itself or read it against itself. So it's like there's something. There's some of. Some bit of an enactment in the making. The jargony of, like, you want to be. We. We want to be understood, and we don't want to be understood. Right. Like that. Like an epistemophilic ambivalence, so to say. And. And we can fantasize about whatever Lacan's ambivalence was about that I certainly have had that towards Lacan. Like, I've always, like, I want to understand him, and I don't want to understand him. So it was interesting to confront that ambivalence through reading your book, to realize, okay, what are the things that I could understand and what are the things that still, you know. But it's. It's good to have a text where you don't fully complete your understanding. There's something left there. But. But I think there is a value in understanding, because I. Reading this book made me realize, okay, what are the things that I find valuable around about Lacan? And also, I've understood better the parts that I disagree with.

Todd McGowan (13:47)

Right, right, right. And I hope that that is true for everyone that reads it. Right. That they feel like, okay, I know this is something, because I'm pretty upfront, I think about what I don't agree with in Lacan's trajectory and what I agree with, and even where I. Sometimes I'm talking about. I don't say that they're friends of mine. Sometimes I talk about friends of mine that I don't. That I have little quarrels with, and then I kind of play out in the book. But, yeah, I think that that's. But you're. I think you raised this really interesting point that there is. There always has to be something you don't quite understand or you're not going to be driven to desire to. To. To engage that thinker, I think. Right. And that. And that's. I think Lacan is right on that note. But he takes it so far that he becomes obscuritist. And. And. And then. And then that just turns so many people off, including people that I think could be convinced about some of the basics of what he's talking about. Yeah. And. And that really saddens me. And I think. And I really, really, really think prior to 1989, when Slavoj wrote this sublime object of ideology, that really was a sea change in the way. In just the approachability of Lacan that people could. Right. There you go. I think that. That really, all of a sudden people were like, oh, this isn't so inaccessible. This kind of makes sense. And same charge. He gets that I get, that he's simplifying, he's. Whatever. Right. But I think it's. Again, I think that's worth it because he's showing how there's really something there that you can. You can sink your teeth into without totally making it just like. Like ABC simplistic.

Helena Bissing (15:43)

Yeah. Well, I love that we're getting into this whole thing of desire being structured around lack, which I think is a big. Which I actually think is something that's come up that. That I'm. That I feel is actually the more accessible concept of Lacan, that. That. Because I feel like you can. You can really find examples from daily life that I think resonates. But I. I hope we'll get. We'll talk much more about that. More and more. There are lots of things about that. But. But there's something also about, like you say with Lacan that how he took the making it all so obscure. He took it to the extreme. I'm just reminded of. And you know, Jameson Webster, who I believe. I don't know if she calls herself a Lacanian. I think she does, but I think she does.

Todd McGowan (16:30)

Yeah.

Helena Bissing (16:30)

She's. She's called him a. He was the biggest. He was a hysteric.

Todd McGowan (16:34)

Right.

Helena Bissing (16:34)

He was like the most. He was a very hysteric analyst. So, you know, coming from a Lacanian. Yeah, he was a hyster.

Todd McGowan (16:42)

Yeah.

Helena Bissing (16:44)

So. But, you know, let's. This thing about the desire being structured around lack, I'm thinking, you know, we might as well go into that one, because this is. I've been dying to ask you this. I recognize it not just from Lacan, but also other Lacanian inspired reader writers and thinkers. And there, like, there's, like, if there needs to be a piece there that we don't understand, that we don't grasp that that is what desire and the drive is connected to. Right. It makes a lot of sense. I'm sure you have lots of good. You could bring lots of good examples of that from everyday life. But I also am struggling with the Hegelian dialectics because you often say Lacan, say others say desire is structured around lack. But how is that the Hegelian dialectics of if you're in for one, you're in for the other? Because I feel like desire is structured around the tension and the contrast between lack and fulfillment.

Todd McGowan (17:52)

Right, right, right. Yeah. So here's how I would answer that. But I just want to point out to people how really, like sophisticated. That question is. It's really, I think, gets to it real. Because what you're. Because I think typically Hegel is understood just in Lacanian. His notion of desire is under. Because people focus so much on the master servant dialectic, as Lacan himself did. He basically takes that as the roadmap for all of Hegel, because he's the influence of Alexander Kozhev, which I think is a terrible mistake. And I think it's a really minor part of Hegel's thought that gets wildly blown up. But if you take Hegel's entire project and the role that desire plays in it, what you're saying is exactly correct, that, yeah, the subject is a. Is a negating being and thus a desiring being. But it finds itself. And this is the key thing that finds its identity in its. In what is other to it. Right. And so that does seem like there's some kind of fulfillment of desire in Hegel's thinking. Right? Like, if. If you. If you see that the other. That I am only realized outside of myself in the other and that. That, that and that. And there's in this, like, kind of identity of. Of difference. Well, isn't that mean that there's no more desire? But I think. Here's how I would answer that question. That for Hegel. No, actually that is true. There is this identity of identity indifference. But it remains. I think this is where the link to Lacan is evident. There remains difference in that identity. So that identity of identity indifference is not the end of desire. That is the fuel of desire, in a sense, because that is contradiction. That is negation. That is, you're never fully. It's kind of like we were talking about earlier. You never fully. At that point of total identity because there still is this difference or otherness involved in it. And I think you can read, at least I would, Lacan's conception of desire in the same way that. What he. When he says so in seminar 12, he says desire is lack. He just says it like le desire, c' est la monk. So he just. It's absolutely, totally clear. And I think it's the same thing. Because what he's getting at is that even when desire finds its. Finds its object, there's still something in that object. That's. That's. That's. That's that it is identified with it. Like if, If. If I encounter. The example I think is most obvious is the. Some kind of moment of encountering the gaze where I. I see an. A moment in the film and let's say a film or a picture where I see my own desire realized externally. Right. But there's still this moment of. So it's a moment of identity, but there's still a moment of difference as well. And so that's why the lack is constantly sustained. And so I think there is an almost direct parallel in that conception of desire between Lacan and Hegel. At least that would be. That would be my argument. And I don't think it's an idiosyncratic reading of Lacan. I think it's more. The reading of Hegel would be more what certain Hegelians would question. I mean, some would like it, I mean, agree with it, but I think more liberal American Pittsburgh school Hegelians would. Would not agree with that. But, but, but, but, yeah, I think as a reading of Lacan, I think that that is pretty standard. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom 60th, and never miss.

Helena Bissing (22:09)

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Todd McGowan (23:29)

Yeah, but I don't think, I don't think that that whole way of thinking, I think is foreign to Lacon. Like, I think that he, he doesn't. He never. So that's why he invents this notion of the big other. Like, he thinks that all of our interactions with other subjects occur. So when you say, so when someone says, oh, that person was just objectifying me, well, the comments said, yeah, okay, that's what, that's what you do. So he doesn't, he never talks about. Well, I shouldn't say never. Very early on he does. And then he drops it about inner subjective relationships. Right? Because for him, every relationship occurs through this mediation of the big other. And then that, that, that deforms the relation. So there's no, it's not like I can recognize another subject. Just. And again, I think that's. And I don't think Hegel thinks that either. I think that Hegel thinks you're always, you're never relating to the other as a subject. You're always relating through this, as a, through this, this vehicle of mediation. And so that's, you don't have a sense of. I mean, of course, you know, there's thoughts behind what they're thinking and et cetera, but they're still within that. You're never really grasping them. I mean, you do confront a lack in the other, but you're never grasping them as a subject. I don't think there's this subject, subject relation in Lacan or in Hegel. And I think that's an interesting parallel between the two of them.

Helena Bissing (25:19)

I mean, I, I assume someone who would have a very harsh reading of Debt would accuse that for being a solid solipsistic.

Todd McGowan (25:28)

For sure. For sure. Right? No, no, Helena, that's right. That. And it also cuts against a whole lot of other psychoanalytic theory, which is about, which is about relations, right? Like, it's about inner subjective relations. And, and, yeah, and it, it cuts against that. But it's not that. It's, it's, it's. I understand that criticism, solicism, but it's almost the opposite because it's saying without that mediating force of the other, there is no subjectivity. At all. Right? Like, so it's. So it's, it's. It sees the depend. Like Lacan's whole initial point is, first, the subject is dependent upon the other to even come into being. It's a subject of the signifier. Right? So it can't, it doesn't just, it's not just a self. Generative thing. So it's. So it. I, I think that's where the charge of solipsism really runs aground in the, in a critique of Lacan. Because his point is. No, I have, I First emerge as a subject through the other. So it's. But, but his point is really about how you, how that interaction goes. And it doesn't mean that it's not. Both sides are governed by the other, by the big other, and, and by the, you know, the social authority, whatever you want to call it. But it's not, but it's not. There's not access directly to the, to the subjectivity of the other. That's what he would. That's what he would say.

Helena Bissing (27:01)

Yeah. So, I mean, I, I, Those are some things I think I and many others would, like, disagree with, but.

Todd McGowan (27:09)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Helena Bissing (27:11)

But I, well, maybe then we can talk about. So, so there are some things that this was very clarifying, and the parts about what, what I disagree with, but then the things that I find that I actually do agree, whatever that means. Right. But, like, I resonate with. I think you, you also really focus on, like, in the beginning, but also in the conclusion, you kind of, you kind of sum up like, look, this is something that's really the, the valuable contribution. And that is the way that, the part about the, the way Lacan really talks about subjectivity in this way of how and where the Hegelian influences the contradiction or the impossibility, if you will, of subjectivity. And that I feel like it really comes out very well in the whole question of the individual versus society. Yeah, that's not the right word.

Todd McGowan (28:12)

No, I think that, that, that works. I think. Yeah, I agree. And I think he. So it's almost like he, you know, where does the un. Where's the unconscious in that problem? Right. In the problem of the individual and the society. And his answer is really fascinating because he attacks Jung in this notion of the collective unconscious, which everybody attacks you. So that's not so. I mean, except Jungians, obviously. But his point is, the reason why you don't need to say collective is that the unconscious is actually located between the individual and the society. And I felt, I don't. That's. That I've never heard. Freud never said that. And that struck me as a really great, you know, way to think about the unconscious and how it functions, because it does. It does show. And again, I think that's part of that break from solecism. I will say, to be honest, I think that one of my critiques of the later Lacan as he goes along is that he becomes, in my mind, solipsistic. That he becomes much more. You're just caught in your own little private jouissance, and There isn't this symbolic network that you're caught in. In fact, he. He even stopped using the notion of a signifying chain in about 1970 and said. And that's when he turned to this, just started tying all these knots in his seminar and spending a lot of time doing that. But his idea was, there's no more symbolic chain holding everything together. Instead, we're just all these. Just little knots and they can come untied at any point. And so it's much more just. The connections are much more fragile and not even. They're. They're the. They're. We're less invested in the social structure. So I think, to me, it's that charge of solipsism comes much later than. Than earlier.

Helena Bissing (30:15)

The last part, like you say.

Todd McGowan (30:16)

Last part. Yeah.

Helena Bissing (30:17)

Another third, if we look at the Earth.

Todd McGowan (30:20)

Yeah. If you look at it in the thirds, which is, I understand, kind of simplistic, but that. That. Yeah, that's. That's what I would say.

Helena Bissing (30:26)

And I'm sorry if this is a cheap shot, but I'm thinking. And I know, like, the whole biography is like, you got to be careful with that, but I was just thinking that was at the end, and that was maybe where his second marriage was also falling apart.

Todd McGowan (30:41)

Yeah. Yeah. And plus, maybe his. I mean, I'm not averse to the notion that maybe his mind was going. You know. I mean, I think that, you know, he's in his 70s. Who knows? Like. Right. His. Because if you read some of these later seminars, he's basically. He'll basically just tie knots for an hour, and then he'll make some pronouncements for 20 minutes or not even. And then that's it. And so you're like, well, wait a minute. What's. Really. And some people take this as the gospel, like, because it comes at the end. It's the real thing. But I think you're right. Like, I think maybe he was in some kind of personal difficulties and disillusioned. Yeah. And that. And. Right. And the dissolution of his. And there's trouble in the school that he founded and. Yeah. I just think. Yeah. I think that the. I almost think post 1968. I think that had a real effect on him, the student revolts, and he had some trouble with the students, and his daughter was in jail, I think, and he had to, you know, get her. So. So a lot of stuff. It was an odd situation for him because he was a conservative, but he was surrounded by Maoists, so that probably affected him, too. I don't Yeah, I don't have a theory about that, but I'm not against a kind of biographical thinking about what, what went on at that time.

Helena Bissing (32:08)

Well, you also mentioned. You. You mentioned this about this. Like, it's very, it's very interesting. I like this, your. Your dry sense of humor. And in the, in the Life chapter, which is nicely short, you say that, you know, since one of Lacan's contribution to psychoanalytic theorizing was to deal a death blow to psychobiographical criticism, one should probably have skipped this section of the book if one wanted to be true to Lacan. But the chapter is good because you also say that it's not just that we should look at Lacan as, like some kind of look at him only in his context, his historical context, and he was a symptom of that. It's also that he impacted his context.

Todd McGowan (32:55)

Yeah, I don't. Don't you think that's what's important about a thinker? Right? Like how they break out of their context or how they change it? Not just. And I really am against this. How can we reduce the thinker to the expression of their context? I find that so uninteresting. Yeah, so. So, yeah, I think that's, that's kind of why I wrote that section, to say, oh, there are these ways in which he had all this pressure to think in a certain way and he kind of went a different direction. And that, that to me was really important to, to. To point out. Yeah, I, I kind of. I actually, I'm against psychobiography, just like Lacan was. But I, I actually. It's the only thing I think I've ever written where my spouse is the only person that is honest with me about what I write. She. She read it and she's like, that's actually good. So usually she's got like a list of criticisms and she's like, oh, that's pretty good. So I felt like, okay about that because I, I was trying to do this, like, to capture that sense of how he. Both. There are influences, of course, like Levi Strauss and Sartre and, and Kojev, but. But he's also kind of forging his own thing out of that.

Helena Bissing (34:10)

Yeah. And. And it is. He. He was very unique in that way. For example, the way he was conservative and. And also he, he had this very interesting position of not wanting to fall into either kind of leftist resistance or collaborator, like.

Todd McGowan (34:27)

Right, right, right.

Helena Bissing (34:28)

Not want to take. Pick sides, so to say.

Todd McGowan (34:32)

I know. I. Yeah, I mean, I would be critical of that, like, I would. I would hope that I would have been part of the French Resistance, but I think Elizabeth Rudenescu says something like he was against collaboration in the heroism. He said he hated the heroism of resistance. Okay. I mean, but I, I guess when it comes to act, how different intellectuals acted during the Second World War, he doesn't come across the worst. I mean, you know, there, there were better, of course, but there were. Even Sartre kind of was worse. I mean, he, he, he, he. Even though he claimed to be a Resistant, he wasn't really Heidegger.

Helena Bissing (35:16)

He. He was also. He connected with Heidegger.

Todd McGowan (35:19)

Right, right, right, right. That's it. That's. Well, but so did Lacan. I mean, that's the, like, all. So after the war, I don't think I mentioned this at all, but after the war, Heidegger came to France, it's maybe 1955, and. And Jean Beaufrey arranged a conference for Heidegger and Merleau Ponty and Sartre boycotted it because Heidegger was a Nazi, and Lacan had him over to his country house and drove him around and everything. So I, you know, I. I don't know what I think about that. I mean, I'm not sure that. I don't know if I would be that critical of that.

Helena Bissing (35:55)

I'm. I'm. And I am sorry to turn it into a whole kind of like, gossip sex session, but I, That's. I live for. I live for. Go.

Todd McGowan (36:03)

I love gossip, too. I have to tell you that when I get together with my friends, that instead of talking. Their theoretical friends. Of course. But the first half hour is devoted just to academic gossip.

Helena Bissing (36:15)

Well, I think. I mean, you should write a book about that, because I think there's really something about this drive to gossip of knowing. Like, I'm so curious about. You mentioned this encounter with Heidegger and Lacan, but as I understand it, Heidegger only spoke German.

Todd McGowan (36:34)

That's right. So Lacan did. Lacan, he spoke German. He spoke German, in fact, well enough that he didn't speak it well enough to give a talk in German, but he translated an article of Heidegger's into French. So his German was that good, but not good enough. I don't think he felt like it was good enough. I think his English was good enough. So when he came to the U.S. he did. He gave a talk in English.

Helena Bissing (37:03)

But I thought that. That Lacan famously, was not very strong in English.

Todd McGowan (37:08)

Yeah, but he insisted that he give the talk in English. So it's Very interesting. I mean, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't know how great he was, but. But he, he, you know, he's critical of Strachey's translation of the Freud at certain points. So I don't know. I. And he was learning Chinese late in his life. I think he was. Had a pretty good facility with language. Yeah. But, yeah, he talked to Heidegger and, and he talked in German. So.

Helena Bissing (37:39)

Yeah, well, I mean, I think these. It's. I mean, gossip is not just gossip. It's really interesting with these different influences where the language and the different kind of cultural context really play a role. So you also have a very thorough but clear overview of how the. The different influences. Like you mentioned Alexander. What's his name?

Todd McGowan (38:03)

Kozhev.

Helena Bissing (38:03)

Kozhev. That played a really important role in. In what Lacan then took. And also maybe did you want to talk a bit about how there's this. With the influence from both Kant and then Hegel and how you see that play into the development of Lacan's thinking?

Todd McGowan (38:22)

Yeah, I think that's the main, probably controversial and most distinct part of the book, probably that I try to say it's really Kant. I think to say that Lacan is Hegelian has become a commonplace probably since Slavoj's book in 1989. But. But I think to link him to Kant like that is a little more unusual. But he had read Kant very well and had a lot of interaction with him. And I think one of the things that I try to claim is that early on he lays out a kind of. That you can line up Lacan's three famous categories of imaginary, symbolic and real with. With Kant's sensibility, understanding and reason. And I think that's a really interesting way to think of it. And then you could say early on, Lacan is working out his own. So in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant has a transcendental aesthetic where he talks about what it is that shapes our intuitions and the form of our intuitions, which he says are time and space. And then he gives a list of. And then he moves on to what he calls the transcendental analytic, which is an analysis of the understanding or the symbolic. And he gives a list of the categories and how that shape and the same as one is causality, that we have to think in terms of causality. Right. And so Lacan is basically doing the same thing. And he. In the early time and up until, I think what I say is a seminar six, and he's Laying out this basic imaginary structure and symbolic structure that he sees is that we get deceived by the image and we should instead look at how the symbolic is actually structuring our existence. And so that's the link to me. And then the break to Hegel is after that, basically in seminar eight. And this is on transference in seminar nine, which is on identification, which is where he invents the notion of the obje. And Abjay is really interesting to me because Lacan later will say, that's the only thing I ever invented. Which is. And it's the one jargon term that I do keep in the book totally. And I think he's right. And his idea is that it's what drive. It's the cause of our desire, but not the object of our desire. So as I describe it in the book, I think it's the thing that. That slightly mars our access or bars our access to the object, and that's what pushes us even more to desire it. So it's just a slight. Oftentimes it can be the slight flaw in a person that we think, oh, if it wasn't for that flaw, then they would be perfect and that then, you know, but it's actually that flaw that makes them desirable. I remember so well, I was in sixth, this is a little sexist example, but I was in sixth grade and there was a girl in the school who was just perfect. Everyone thought she's perfect looking and no one wanted to, no one would even think about dating her. And all these other girls were dated and they had all different normal flaws that people have. And I thought I always came back to that as such a great example of this, that you need some kind of flawless to even be considered desirable, even though the flaw does make you in some sense less desirable. And that seems to me like the perfect example of Lacan's objea, that it's something that bars our access or mars the object, but it actually makes it more desirable, like someone that has some slight problem with them.

Helena Bissing (42:30)

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Helena Bissing (43:30)

And I know we're talking about your, your book here on Lacan, but I mean, this, this reminds me of one of your other books that I find really fascinating, Capitalism and Desire, where you bring this in in the context of capitalism and consumerism. Because I think this is the, the most obvious example that we should all, should all resonate with because that's what we experience in daily, everyday life all the time about how these dynamics come up all the time. And I think it's so helpful to not think of capitalism as this external thing, this abstract external system, but something that really lives in our psyches.

Todd McGowan (44:08)

Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't be more. I mean, I wrote that book to try to convince people of that, but I really think it's true. And I think it's so easy to be against capitalism when you think it's this external system that you want to struggle against. But when you see that it's actually part of the way that I desire, then it becomes a whole different ballgame, I think. And so, yeah, I think that's really true. And the way that just to give example of what you're talking about, like the way that planned obsolescence works with computers, like I'm talking to you on a computer that I'm about to replace, but it's only three years old. Right. It's like it's brand new. And so, but the. I can already. There's already the flaws in it, but that, but that then drives even more consumption. Right? And that's the, that's the way it works.

Helena Bissing (44:58)

Yeah, well. Well, I wanted to maybe, and I think it still is a little bit on this topic because going back to the thing about what the, the subjectivity and, and how to make what Lacan really contributed around, around our thinking of subjectivity is, is this, this, this conflict. I see. And I have an example of something and, and also I see that connect to capitalism too. So I might. I specialize in maternal perinatal mental health, and obviously I'VE studied a lot of like, feminism, matro centric feminism and the feminist iterations of psychoanalysis and things like that, and also somatic psychology. And I've always felt like, you know, that Lacan is like, yeah, it's interesting, but I don't hear him talk a lot about the maternal body, babies, all of that stuff. Right. I mean, that's fine, but like, I, I would not be so impressed by, you know, his thoughts when I'm like, what about this whole huge field, I mean, the big, big revolution of mother infant studies and, and neuroscience for that matter, also kind of came after his time. I would be curious to hear what, what he would have said about all the advances we've seen in that field. But, but when I was reading about his, this thing of like, there, it's, it's not like humans are either like biology or culture. It's like we're neither. Like, there is no way that you are just purely in your biology or purely in the culture or in alignment with culture. It's, it's impossible. And this is where the unconscious come in, right? Like the unconscious, this, this impossibility of this subject as a, as a biological being versus culture. And, and it occurred to me, I had this moment that was like, he, he doesn't talk about this, but in my experience, my whole career around postpartum mental health, this is exactly the problem with maternal subjectivity. There is no way you can be in perfect alignment with your mammalian biology and then culture. And what I see so often happen is happening is that different forms of ideology, like discourses, lifestyle waves, capitalism, consumerism, is always, always trying to hijack and, and try to sell us this idea that it is possible to find a way to be in perfect alignment with either your biology or culture. And, and it's like, certainly there are ways where you can maybe not be working so aggressively against biology versus, you know, there are ways to do that. Right?

Todd McGowan (47:43)

Yeah. Yeah.

Helena Bissing (47:44)

But it's not like natural attachment parenting is going to solve this big conflict.

Todd McGowan (47:52)

Right.

Helena Bissing (47:53)

So I don't know your thoughts. I know it's a very different kind of specialization.

Todd McGowan (47:58)

I'm glad that you brought this up, actually. Yeah. Because I, you know, especially because here in the United States we've had just like, there's a catastrophe going on with this whole, like, if you take any painkiller during your pregnancy, you're, you're, you're, you're giving your kid autism. And that's just the least of the catastrophes. So, yeah, I think that that's I think that that idea is. Is. Is. It's implicit in Freud, but I don't think it's explicit because I think he was so, as a science, as beginning as a scientist, was so invested in biology that he thought, well, someday we're going to be able to say the unconscious is this biological thing. And I think Lacan just doesn't think that. And I think he sees it exactly like you're talking about. About this way in which culture and biology don't mesh and out of that emerges the unconscious. And I. I just think it's such a valuable thing because. So it seems like to me we're divided in the world between. There's the biological thinkers, right, who just say it's all biology, it's all determined or whatever. And then mostly in the humanities, they're just culturalists. They just think everything is just culturally whatever. And that's why we have whatever values we have. And I just think both of those are wrong. And I think it provides a nice way to think of them together. And I also think it's really. Can be comforting for a woman in that position to say, okay, why do I. I remember a friend of mine gave. Before she gave birth, she's like, I have an alien inside of me, and I would. And. And she's a psychoanalytic friendly theorist. And. And I thought, well, that. That seems like the proper response. But she couldn't. She could say that to me and my spouse, but she couldn't say it to a lot of people because they would think she's a horrible. And she, of course, loves her son and whatever. But. And I think that's like. That seems to me to capture. To be able to come to grips or recognize the importance of that unconscious space and reaction is just really important for how you then just the psychic, not to put it into flowery of terms, but just the psychic, well, being of the. Of the mother, right. Like it. Just like then you're. Then your. Your failure to fit into either thing to the culture or the biology becomes not a anomalous, it becomes the reaction. It's like the only reaction possible really, if you think of the unconscious in this way. So, yeah, I think that that's really. I think whether Lacan himself would have said that, I don't even care, because I think it really is implicit in what he has to say about the unconscious. And I think it's just so important, especially in our time. It just seems like it's a time when people are. And it's interesting because I Think what's happening is there's an attempt to ground the culture in the biology. Right. Like to say, okay, you're a mother. And so that becomes this cultural imperative that's grounded in your biological impulses as a mother. But why. I mean, the whole point of psychoanalysis is you don't have biological impulses directly, right. You have drives that emerge out of the way. Those biological impulses get deformed by the encounter with society. And those. So whatever those original biological impulses are, God only knows, because they're gone for good. Like you're, you're all. You have different kinds of desires and drives because you've been, You're a subject. And I think that's just forgotten. Just real repressed and, and oppressed. But, but forgotten.

Helena Bissing (52:00)

Well, I mean, we, we won't, we'll, we'll have to have another talk about like. But. Because I think that topic of drives is really difficult and it's still such a mystery to me because I, I mean, what, what does that mean? That. I mean, and maybe I'm being harsh here, but how, how is that term of the drives not just another kind of, you know, the pineal gland of the mind body problem?

Todd McGowan (52:22)

Yeah. I think it's not. Because it's, it's not about a mind. I don't think it's about the mind body problem. It's just about the way in which an instinct gets distorted. Right. Like, it's just, that's all it is. It's just like what happens when, like you were just saying there's this misalignment between biology and culture, biology and society. Well, just the name for that is a drive. That's. I don't think it's any kind of mystery like, oh, how does this come about? It's just what happens when. And I think it, it then it, it, it becomes. I think that it. What happens, the change is that it no longer is satisfied in the same way. Like, I think an instinct is satisfied by, like you have an instinct to eat and you eat and it's satisfied. But the whole point of a. Both a desire. I'm not, I don't really care about this distinction between desire and drive. But the whole point about a drive or a desire is that, isn't it never. It's satisfied just by its movement, not by getting something.

Helena Bissing (53:33)

And that's why someone would be satisfied if they're hungry, by eating. And then you have someone who has anorexia and they will be going against the bodily need to eat because that.

Todd McGowan (53:42)

But they're satisfied and they're not eating. Exactly.

Helena Bissing (53:45)

And, but then, and that also will bring up, obviously it begs the question of the death drive. Right.

Todd McGowan (53:50)

Yeah, yeah.

Helena Bissing (53:51)

That's where our drives become like you say twisted or some or.

Todd McGowan (53:55)

Right. I mean, but I think what, I mean this is, I'm working on a book on Death Drive right now, but it, yeah, but it to me, yeah. Twisted in a. It's so, it's bad. Obviously. Anorexia, we don't think is a great thing, but it also is the source of what's best about us. Right. Like our greatest achievements are done for that. So it's a, it's a, it's a tough thing, I think, to how to mediate our relationship to that is I think really difficult, which I don't really deal with in this book at all.

Helena Bissing (54:26)

So I think this is a good, good link to my, my kind of, my wrapping up question, which is what are some of the next projects you're, you're working on?

Todd McGowan (54:39)

Yeah. So I, I, I just finished a book called. So I'm. My, my main thing is, is Death Drive, as I just said. So I was working on a book on Death Drive and then Polity contacted me and said, oh, would you work on a book? And I said, okay. And they said, well, it can only be 25,000 words, which is not very long at all. It's like a little essay. And they said it can't be called Death Drive, so it's just called Self Sabotage. But then I still have this longer, more theoretical death drive book that I'm going to work on too. But my main thing actually, and those both will come out sometime. But my main thing is to try to think about psychoanalysis and existentialism together because I guess I think that even kind of comes through in this book a little bit because just because I grew up as an ex, you know, Sardin Beauvoir were really important for me and I think, I think. Do I recount this anecdote in there that Simone de Beauvoir wanted. Lacan. Yeah. To tell her about.

Helena Bissing (55:39)

She was going, she wanted to do kind of a short little series and he was like, it's going to take us months and years.

Todd McGowan (55:45)

Yeah, yeah. And she's like, okay, I don't have time for that. And so I think I kind of blame him because he's prickish and she was pretty cool. But that made me very sad because Sec. Second sex on psychoanalysis is not great. Second sex is great on the whole, but on that it's not great. And I think it would have been pretty. It potentially could have been pretty great. And I have friends who are working on. A couple of friends are working on a psychoanalysis and feminism book that I'm kind of.

Helena Bissing (56:16)

I think, I think I know. It's your spouse, right?

Todd McGowan (56:19)

It's my spouse. Yeah.

Helena Bissing (56:21)

I have a hidden agenda that I want you to put a good word in for me. I really want to interview her when that book comes out.

Todd McGowan (56:28)

Okay. Yeah, I will definitely put in a good word for you. Yeah. Hopefully she can hear right now and here feels the pressure for that book to come out.

Helena Bissing (56:40)

That's in Hillary Neroney, by the way.

Todd McGowan (56:41)

It's Hilary Neroney. Yes. Sorry, I should have said her name. Yeah. So. So I think it's really. That's a really important project, but I think that. So that's my next project is to try to think existentialism a kind. And I don't know what I'm going to call it, like psychoanalytic existentialism or something, but.

Helena Bissing (56:59)

Okay.

Todd McGowan (56:59)

But yeah, fascinating.

Helena Bissing (57:00)

We look forward to that. And yeah, I mean, there's also. I mean, this is not the only example of missed encounters. I wonder if one day you might write a book about the most important missed encounters.

Todd McGowan (57:12)

Oh, that's good. What are you thinking of? Tell me what you're thinking of.

Helena Bissing (57:15)

Well, there was also. There was another one. The missed encounter of. Was it. Wasn't it with Heidegger or. Oh, Merleau Ponty, I feel like. And Derrida too.

Todd McGowan (57:27)

Yeah, yeah.

Helena Bissing (57:27)

So these French.

Todd McGowan (57:29)

Oh, right, right, right.

Helena Bissing (57:31)

Arbitrarily lumped together. But you talk about how they're actually not at all the same. You can't lump them together. And some of them had encounters, but there were lots of like, missed encounters. I don't understand why Lacan and Merleau Ponty did not have more of an interaction. They were contemporaries. They. I feel like they need each other. And that would really solve my disagreements with Lacan.

Todd McGowan (57:51)

Oh, well, that's interesting. And you know, the thing is, I think none of them respected Lacan. It's a fascinating. I mean, I do say that there was a total one way street he, they, he was borrowed thinking from, you know, talking about them, but they were never talking. Sartre never mentions Lacan one dime in anything. Heidegger says one line about him that the psychiatrist needs a psychiatrist. There's just nothing. So I think that's part of it. But yeah, I like that idea a lot. And he had that. I think I recount this that he came to when they met in Baltimore at the Structural Zone Conference. Lacan came up to Derrida and said, so we had to come all this way just to meet. And then they didn't really have much of a conversation at all. And Paul Racourt came to Lacan seminar for two years. I don't think I tell this story because it's from Elizabeth Frodenescu came for two years. And after Lacan felt like, oh, it didn't go that well. Today he calls Rakur on the phone and he says, what'd you think about how it went? And Rakur says, you know what? I've been going for two years. I don't really understand anything that you're saying. And Lacan hung up on him. So that was it. And they never talked after that.

Helena Bissing (58:59)

So that's hilarious. I feel like there's going to be a book someday about all the missed encounters.

Todd McGowan (59:06)

Yeah.

Helena Bissing (59:06)

Obviously, Lacan and Freud also famously never met.

Todd McGowan (59:09)

Right, right. That's more on Freud, I think.

Helena Bissing (59:12)

Yeah.

Todd McGowan (59:12)

Yeah. Although, to be fair, everyone's like, oh, Lacan sent him his thesis and Freud just. But how many theses must Freud have gotten? I mean, he must have gotten bombarded by so much stuff. So I. I don't. I don't know. But. But then when Freud was passing through France to go to England, Lacan could have. He knew Marie Bonaparte. He could have met him, and he just didn't. He was pissed, I think, because of that.

Helena Bissing (59:37)

Yeah, probably. Response, I think. I wonder. Also, like, the trauma was very real. Like, he was probably scared for it. I mean, like, rightfully so. He was really scared, for sure.

Todd McGowan (59:49)

Right.

Helena Bissing (59:49)

It was very. It was really. It must have been some crazy times to, like. And he got out, like, last minute and.

Todd McGowan (59:57)

Right, right. And just because of Marie Bonaparte's money, basically. I mean, she basically paid the. And it's interesting question, because would the Nazis. Would it had been. I mean, I don't know how much they cared about the press and popularity, but would putting this, like, one of the most famous people in the world in a concentration camp, would that have been. I don't know. I just. I wonder if they would have done it. I mean, I think they were kind of happy that she paid.

Helena Bissing (60:23)

His sisters ended up in the concentration camp.

Todd McGowan (60:25)

That's right. That's right. They didn't care about them, so. Yeah. And they all died. Yeah.

Helena Bissing (60:28)

Yeah. Well, they were also. Yeah. Women.

Todd McGowan (60:30)

Yeah.

Helena Bissing (60:31)

Well, thank you so much for your time.

Todd McGowan (60:34)

Oh, it's so great talking to you, Lena. Yeah. Yeah. I really appreciate it.