She began by telling us that while she was chatting with a group of friends about the recent death of a well known singer in Argentina, her three year old daughter had come into the room and asked "Mummy, why are you crying?" Tamara explained to her daughter that a singer whom she had been very fond of, had died. She told her daughter that one particular song made her happy whenever she heard it, and that it brought back happy memories of her own childhood. Her daughter had been satisfied with the answer and left the room.
Then a few weeks later while Tamara was out with all her three children, they had become loud, moany and generally difficult to handle. So she thought "I know what I'll do, I'll sing my favourite song that always makes me feel happy so if I am happy then my children will also be happy." She began to sing. Her three year old daughter turned to her and said "Mummy, who has died?" Tamara realised in that instant that something had happened. The song, which to her had conveyed great joy and happiness, had had the extreme opposite effect on her daughter. Tamara associated the song with happiness, but her daughter associated the song with crying and death.
Jacques Lacan (1901 - 1981) said "The unconscious is structured like a language"
This is an example of SUBJECTIVITY. It relates to how a subject can have different meanings to different people. There is an association with a person and what that person represents. The association is split between consciousness and the unconscious. The association is relative to what the person has learned through language.
Jacqes Lacan returned to the fundamental concepts of Freud although this made him very unpopular. But his idea was that the subject is an effect of language, and as such is articulated outside himself. What we envy is the Loving Gaze, that the subject outside ourselves desires. He said "Man's desire is the desire of the Other."
The example given in the lecture was that a baby, when he/she is born, has absolutely no control over who looks at him/her. The baby is dressed as his/her mother or guardian wants him to be dressed. The baby has no control over what he eats, when he has a bath etc. To explain further the meaning of "man's desire is the desire of the other," we have to understand that it is the mother or guardian who will impose her desires on the baby, and will dress the baby in a way that is pleasing to the mother.
Anther example would be that there are two brothers. The first brother appears by the second brother to be favoured by the mother. The second brother feels that he gets no attention, and cannot do anything right. In order for the second brother to gain the attention that he seeks, he will deliberately try to find a way to get the first brother into trouble. What this second brother really wants is his mother to look upon him with the "Loving Gaze" that he feels is denied him. He wants to be loved in the same way has his first brother.
This is obviously only a small part of the theory of Psychoanalysis, but this lecture was very clearly articulated and helped me to understand the concept of the "loving gaze."
Theorists of Psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, Paul Sartre, Jacques Lacan.
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