Reading
Lacan is far away from being easy and without any serious problems. His highly
personal style is hermetic, often surrealistic. The logic of his thinking is
rather idiosyncratic, lucid and original, but not easy to follow. 

One
of the most important characteristics of Lacan’s way of doing and thinking
psychoanalysis was something that we could really name as the authentic
speculatively of his thought. Or, speaking in another words, there were no easy
(no self-evident) solutions for him. During his famous seminars he had
articulated something that today we could call his own style of reading and
understanding Freud himself and psychoanalysis in general. Historically
speaking, he was one of the most controversial figures in all history of the
psychoanalysis. Doctrinally speaking, he was one of the most productive
authors. During last decade his influence had spread all over the world. His
opus is no more just one of most bizarre and most autistic representatives of
French (surrealistic and post-surrealistic) style.

A
great many of Lacan’s theories and conceptions, his ideas and his
interpretations, for us today are problematic (or even unacceptable), but, off
course, there is also (I believe) something that is still firm, valid, and
potentially fruitful.  There are many, maybe too many, possible ways to Lacan.
But, if we really want to be honest with him, first of all we must seriously think
and re-think (as much as it is possible) all of epistemological and
heuristic extensions of classical psychoanalytic doctrine that he had made.
Just think of his starting the dialogue between psychoanalysis and philosophy,
linguistic, literature and even with the special kind of nonmetric (highly
speculative) geometry — topology.

***

Thanks
to Ellie Ragland and Dragan Milovanovic we have now a collection of texts that
are concerned with various problems of Lacanian (or generally psychoanalytic)
topology. In the last 10 years many books and articles have appeared, applying
the teaching and theories of Jacques Lacan to literature, philosophy, clinical
studies, gender studies, discourse theory, social sciences, even theology. No
book-length manuscript, however, has yet been published in English devoted to
applying Lacan’s topological speculations.

There
has been occasional articles, and some references in books regarding his
topological ideas, but no systematic no systematic explanation of Lacan’s move
from classical psychoanalytic theory to topology. Lacan: Topologically
Speaking is (as far as I know) the firs systematic book in English devoted
to this central part of Lacan’s teaching. It consists of 16 illustrative and
well balanced texts. They can be of great use for psychologists, philosophers,
psychiatrists… The main importance of this book, I believe, lays in its (nondogmatic)
courage to see things from rather different (methodological and doctrinaire)
perspectives. To think  and to re-think Lacan’s topological conceptions
and speculations. The authors collected here are world renowned Lacanian
theorists such as Jacques-Alain Miller, Jeanne Lafont, Jean-Paul Gilson, Pierre
Skriabine, Juan-David Nasio, Jean-Michel Vappereau, Luke Thurston, Veronique Voruz,
David Metzger, Bruce Arrigo, Philip Dravers, Zak Watson…

***

Lacanian
topology has much to do with  the use of spatial figures and their
manipulation, as well as their distortions, to indicate the complexities caused
by the functioning of paradoxes in human mental life. This aspect of his work
runs throughout his entire official teaching.  The relation of subject to
discourse is one of such example. Beyond his discourse theory, Lacan’s topology
demonstrates that there is another meaning system that is not grammatical, but
that operates logically and cohesively within the grammatical confines of
regular language. Lacan called this the system of jouissance. Lacan’s
topology provides a logic beyond the positivism of symbolic logic in the
analysis of subject. In another words, Lacan’s engagement  with modern logic
and mathematics took him  beyond the impasses of the positivistic
psychoanalysis.

Topological
theory is often called qualitative mathematics. It deals with how the different
shapes can be stretched, pulled, twisted, bent, deformed, ad distorted in 
space without, at the same time, changing their intristic nature. It is a study
of continuous properties of the subject within the context of object
relations.  Topology is a part of mathematics, which formalizes places and
shifts without measurement, but for psychoanalysis it is a writing of
structure. Topology continues  the project of psychoanalytic structuralism and
post-structuralism. Topology, as Lacan uses it, allows us to formalize a
rigorous theory of psychic apparatus, without any way or anywhere fixing an
objective "way" for the human subject. What is important in
psychoanalysis is that there is no material objectivity in the psychic
apparatus. What is important is to define the link that exists for any element,
between the whole and its parts, even if there are different elements; or how
they are separated from each other. There are many "wholes" possible.
The elements of any possible structure have no quality and meaning by
themselves, but only through connections and relations between them.

The
main intention of a Lacanian topology is to think the human subject as a
topological (no-Euclid) structure. The border between the inside and the
outside is subverted. Every subject becomes himself thanks to his identifications
with the other. It is impossible to understand these identifications (and all
other inter and intrapersonal relations) within the framework of
the Euclidean discourse. In Lacan’s words, we need something different. We need
topology. The psychoanalytic topology.

© 2005 Petar Jevremovic

Petar
Jevremovic: Clinical psychologist and practicing psychotherapist, author of
two books (Psychoanalysis and Ontology, Lacan and Psychoanalysis),
translator of Aristotle and Maximus the Confessor, editor of the Serbian
editions of selected works of Heintz Kohut, Jacques Lacan and Melanie Klein,
author of various texts that are concerned with psychoanalysis, philosophy,
literature and theology. He lives in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

Categories: Psychoanalysis