NEUROTIC SPEECH 神经症的言说
In his ‘Rome Discourse’ Lacan drew attention to a second clinical paradox in the relations between speech and language. After having categorized as psychotic those people who talk freely and fluently without really speaking, he defined people who also speak beyond the words they consciously use as neurotic. In the first (psychotic) situation, language operates without speech, whilst in the second (neurotic) case speech also functions beyond verbalized language. Whereas psychotics do not manage to speak, however articulate the sentences they produce, neurotics cannot prevent themselves from saying more than what they intend to convey (Lacan 1977e[1953]:69–70).
在他的“罗马辞说”,拉康注意到第二个临床悖论,在言说与语言之间的关系。他将那些人们归类为精神病者,那些自由地侃侃而谈而没有确实在言谈的人们。他定义那些人们,那些言说超过他们意识所使用的字词的人们,作为是神经症者。在第一个情况,精神病的情况,语言没有言说地运作。而在第二个情况,神经症的情况,言说也发挥功能,超越文词化的语言。精神病者没有成功地言说,无论他们产生的句子多么清楚。神经症者则是无法阻止他们自己言说超过他们意图要表的东西。
Twenty years later, in his seminar Encore, Lacan rephrased this insight as follows: ‘I speak without knowing it. I speak with my body and I do so unbeknownst to myself. Thus I always say more than I know’ (Lacan 1998a[1972–73]:119).
二十年后,在他的研讨班“再来”,拉康重新铨释这个洞见,如下:「我不知道言说地言说,我用我的身体言说,我这样言说,我自己却不知道。因此,我总是说出超过我知道的东西。」
Here, Lacan aimed less at a reintegration of the communicative value of non-verbal cues in psychoanalysis—he actually vilified clinicians who interpreted the patients’ bodily movements as well as their associations (Lacan 1966b[1955]:337) —than at restoring neurotic symptoms, inhibitions and anxieties as meaningful units of analysis. To Lacan, this neurotic paradox, much more than its psychotic counterpart, encompassed ‘the privileged domain of psychoanalytic discovery’ because Freud would not have developed psychoanalysis if he had not regarded neurotic symptoms (ranging from bodily disorders to slips of the tongue) as being sustained by an unconscious idea (wish, representation) that tries to express itself (Lacan 1977e[1953]:69).
在此,拉康目标并不是朝中重新融合精神病者的非文辞的线索的沟通的价值—他实际上贬低那些临床医生,当他们铨释病人的身体的动作与他们的联想。拉康的目标是要恢复神经症者的症状,压抑与焦虑,作为是精神分析的有意义的单位。对于拉康,这个神经症的悖论,远超过它的精神病的伙伴,它涵盖精神分析的发现的特权的领域。因为弗洛伊德本来不会发展精神分析,假如他当时没有将神经症的症状(范围从生理的疾病到口误),视为是由尝试表达它自己的无意识的观念(愿望,表象)所维持。
As to the nature of this neurotic economy, Freud had already cleared most of the ground in two seminal essays on the neuropsychoses of defence from the mid-1890s (Freud 1894a; 1896b). In these papers, he had argued that both hysteria and obsessional neurosis originate in an unconscious act of defence against a traumatic experience, whose nature is always sexual.23 When individuals encounter something that is incompatible with the reigning mass of representations (Vorstellungsmasse) in their ego (Ich), the latter tries to maintain its integrity by driving the event out of consciousness. Freud believed that this defence (or repression) takes place via a withdrawal of the affect (a quantum of energy) from the event’s psychic representation, through which the event itself is transformed into an unconscious memory trace, while its affect is displaced to another representation.
至于这个神经症的经济活力的特性,弗洛伊德已经清理出大部分的场域,在两篇影响巨大的论文“论神经症这与精神病者的防卫机制”,在1950年代中叶。在这些论文里,他曾经主张,癔症与妄想神经症起源于无意识的防卫行动,抵挡创伤的经验。创伤的经验总是性。当个人遭遇某件不相和谐的东西,跟他们的自我的统辖的表象集团不相和谐的东西。自我的统辖集团尝试维持它的尊严,凭借将事件从意识驱赶出去。弗洛伊德相信,这个防卫机制(或压抑),发生,凭借将情感(能源的量子)撤退,从事件的心灵的表象。通过事件的心灵表象,事件本身被转化成为无意识的记忆的痕迹。虽然它的情感被替换成为另外一个表象。
Since repression entails the dismantling and eradication of sexual representations that are impossible to handle, neurotics can only recount their experiences in a lacunary fashion, whereby the gaps can be either exceedingly manifest—some patients say they have no memories at all of what happened to them—or smoothed over by so-called ‘screenmemories’, which generally serve to make the story coherent. Until the 1910s, Freud was convinced that neurotics had simply ‘forgotten’ the awkward representations and that one of the analyst’s tasks consisted in helping them to recover their lost memories.
因为压抑涵盖拆解与抹除那些不可能处理的性的表象,神经症者仅能够描述他们的经验,用有空隙的方式。这次差距要就是过分的明显—有些病人说,他们根本就没有记忆,对于发生在他们身上的事情。要不然,就是他们被所谓的“屏隔回忆”。“屏隔回忆”通常用来让故事前后一致。直到1910年,弗洛伊德相信,神经者就是“忘记”那些笨拙的表象。精神分析家的其中一个工作就是在于帮助他们恢复他们失去的记忆。
Yet clinical and theoretical considerations led him to think that instead of suffering from a straightforward forgetting, patients were animated by a powerful ‘not wanting to know’ (Freud 1913c:141–142). Therefore he considered it pointless for analysts to imbue their patients with the knowledge they are ostensibly lacking, because this is unlikely to bring about change in the patient’s situation—on the contrary, he might immediately erect a protective shield against the analyst’s suggestions.24
可是,临床与理论的考虑引导他认为,病人病没有遭受直接遗忘的痛苦。相反地,病人受的强烈的“不想要知的”所触动。因此,弗洛伊德认为这是没有意义的,对于精神分析家要让病人充满他们明显欠缺的这些知识。因为这并不可能导致病人的情况的改变。相反地,他可能立即竖立起保护的盔甲,对抗精神分析家的建议。
In Seminar I, Lacan reformulated this neurotic ‘not wanting to know’ as the passion of ignorance, a dimension superseding the dualism of knowing and not-knowing (Lacan 1988b[1953–54]:277–278). Simple ignorance does not equal a lack of conscious knowledge and, vice versa, a huge amount of conscious knowledge can perfectly coincide with radical ignorance. As mentioned on pp. 20–21, Lacan maintained that ignorance underpins the patient’s capacity for symbolic transference, because it enables him to regard the analyst as a supposed subject of knowing. By contrast, the ‘passion of ignorance’ is a psychic power which urges patients to prefer the deleterious status quo of their symptomatic condition over the even more painful encounter with that which caused it. The passion of ignorance thus coincides with the unconscious jouissance (enjoyment) the patient derives from his symptom.
在第一研讨班,拉康重新铨释神经症“不想要知道”,作为是无知的激情。这一个维度取代知道与不知道的双重论。单纯的无知并不相等于欠缺意识的知道,反过来说,也是一样。巨大数量的意识的知识能够完美地巧合于强烈的无知。如同在20-21页所提到,拉康主张,无知强调病人接受象征移情的能力。因为它让他能够将精神分析家视为是被认为知道的主体。对照起来,“无知的激情”是一种心灵的力量,建议病人比较喜欢他们症状的情况的巧妙的现状,胜过于那甚至更加令人痛苦的遭遇,跟引起症状的东西。无知的激情因此巧合于无意识的欢爽,病人从他的症状获得的欢爽。
In Freud’s theory repression not only causes the sexual representation to fall into the unconscious, the original affect also reconnects itself to a relatively innocuous substitute representation. Freud regarded this ‘false connection’ as the nucleus of the neurotic symptom. Whether a bodily disorder or a compulsive thought process, the neurotic symptom is a compromise between a component of the repressed event (the affect) and an element of the repressive structure (the substitute representation), and thus also an insidious ‘return of the repressed’.
在弗洛伊德的理论,压抑不但引起性的表象,掉落于无意识里。原初的情感也重新连接它自己跟比较无害的替换的表象。弗洛伊德将这个“虚假的连接”视为是神经症的症状的核心。无论是生理的疾病或是强迫性的思想的过程,神经症者的症状都是一种妥协,处于被压抑的事件(情感)的成分,与压抑的结构(替换的表象)的元素之间。因此,这也是“被压抑的东西的潜在的回转”。
Via the neurotic symptom, an aspect of the event which had been driven out of consciousness tries to express itself again, although the individual can no longer understand this. For Lacan, this part of Freud’s theory implied that the neurotic symptom conveys a hidden meaning, which the patient can only understand once she has found the laws according to which its constitutive components have been bound up with each other.
经由神经症的症状,从意识里被驱赶出来的事件的一个层面,尝试要再次表达它自己。虽然个人不再能够理解这个。对于拉康,弗洛伊德的这个部分暗示着:神经症的症状传递一个隐藏的意义。仅有当病人已经找到这些法则,她才能够理解这个隐藏的意义。依照这个法则,它的组成的成分彼此互相连接一块。
Put differently, the neurotic symptom means something, but it is impossible to grasp that meaning until the language system governing its combinations has been discovered. Whilst being generally ‘silent’, neurotic symptoms continue to speak in a language that is unknown to the individual, prompting Lacan to compare them to blazons, enigmas, hieroglyphics, oracles, seals, etc. (Lacan 1977e[1953]:69–70) and to identify them eventually as metaphors (Lacan 1977g[1957]:175). All of these figures include a message, but its exact nature remains a mystery as long as one has not found the proper code to decipher them.25
换句话说,神经症者具有某个意义。但是我们不可能理解那个意义,直到统辖它的组合的语言系统已经被发现。神经症的症状通常都是“沉默”,它们却继续言说,用个人自己并不知道的语言。这引起拉康要将它们比喻为盾章,谜团,象形文字,预言,封印,等等。并且最后将它们辨认为隐喻。所有的这些东西都包含一个讯息。但是这个讯息的确实的特性始终处于神秘当中,只有我们还没有找到合适的符码来解答它们。
Now it becomes clear how the neurotic’s speech differs from the psychotic communication detailed above. Unlike psychotic individuals, neurotics have no privileged access to the true meaning of their words and their general living conditions. They are continuously under the impression that the words they use do not capture exactly what they want to say or, conversely, that these words express much more than they have intended to. Whereas psychotics engage in a stereotypical form of communication which is unmarked by redundancies and ambiguities, neurotics are incessantly aware of the inadequacy of language for conveying their experiences.
现在,显而易见的是,神经症者的言说,不同于以上详述的精神病的沟通。不像精神病的个人,神经症者对于他们的字词的真实意义与他们的通常的生活情况,并没有任何特权的接近。他们继续拥有这个印象:他们使用的字词并没有确是捕捉到他们想要说出的东西。或许反过来说,这些字词表达远超过他们意图要说出的东西。精神病者参与沟通的典型化的形式,这些沟通仍然是沟通,尽管充满累赘语与模糊嗳昧。神经症者则是持续地知的语言的不能胜任,来传递他们的表达。
Sometimes they feel that they simply lack or cannot find the words to say something; at other times they are surprised by the fact that they have said something they did not want to say at all. Moreover, whilst psychotics are being pervaded by an infallible, full knowledge about themselves and others, neurotics are troubled time and again by the realization that their knowledge is incomplete, inconsistent and incoherent.