Psychotherapy, Postmodernity & Ethics: A Slightly Lacanian Perspective.

The very fabric of society is breaking down around us. What the hell is there left to believe in? You can't move for toppling institutions. Television, the economy, the police, the House of Commons, and, most recently, the press ... all revealed to be jam-packed with liars and bastards and graspers and bullies and turds. The very fabric of society is breaking down around us. We knew all this stuff. We just didn't have the details. This is an ongoing, almighty detox of everything. There's been such an immense purge, such an exhaustive ethical audit, no one's come out clean. There's muck round every arse. The internet. Can we trust in that? Of course not. Give it six months and we'll probably discover Google's sewn together by orphans in sweatshops. What about each other? Society? Can we trust us? Doubt it. We're probably not even real, as was revealed in the popular documentary The Matrix. That bloke next door? Made of pixels. Your co-workers? Pixels. You? One pixel. One measly pixel. As the very fabric of life breaks down around us, even language itself seems unreliable. These words don't make sense. The vowels and consonants you're hearing in your mind's ear right now are being generated by mere squiggles on a page or screen. Pointless hieroglyphics. Shapes. You're staring at shapes and hearing them in your head. When you see the word "trust", can you even trust that? Why? It's just shapes! Right now, all our faith has poured out of the old institutions, and there's nowhere left to put it. We need new institutions to believe in, and fast. Doesn't matter what they're made of. Knit them out of string, wool, anything. Quickly, quickly. Before we start worshipping insects.

Charlie Brooker. The Guardian, Monday 13 July 2009

Introduction This essay will discuss psychotherapy, ethics and the movement, postmodernism. To do this, it will draw on the work of Lacanian psychoanalyst and philosopher, Slavoj Zizek (Zizek). It will show Zizek characterises the postmodern age, as a movement from the Symbolic to the Real, and it will demonstrate how different ages can be understood to have different Symbolic authorities. It will draw on the work of Anthony Giddens (Giddens) notion of risk-society and increased reexivity, explaining these may increase anxiety. Finally, it will show that psychotherapy is part of the postmodern project. Using the work of sociologist Alvin Gouldner (Gouldner), it will ask if psychotherapy is a new system of authority. It will ask if psychotherapy and postmodernity share vested interests, arguing psychotherapists need to use their insights to understand their position within society, and consider a re-engagement with radical roots.

Demise of the big Other: Part 1 Zizek proposes postmodernity is not in opposition to late capitalism. In fact, postmodernity is the philosophy permitting late capitalism, offering a specic organisation of enjoyment. He argues that traditional forms of symbolic authority are under threat. The monotheistic religions have been replaced with a numerous beliefs. Social cohesion is no longer governed by any totalizing meta-narrative. As Lyotard (1979) writes the grand narrative has lost its credibility, regardless of what mode of unication it uses, regardless of speculative narrative or narrative of emancipation (page 37). Zizek sees this as the disintegration of the big Other, the big Other, the translation of Lacans term Autre. Lacan once remarked it is not just that God is dead today, rather, He was always dead, He just didnt know it (Myers 2003, page 49). In similar fashion, Zizek explains that the big Other was always dead in that it was never actually in existence in material sense. The big Other is a ctional, or more precisely, a symbolic order. Here, a brief examination of Lacans orders of the Imaginary, Symbolic and Real is called for. To do this, I will use Zizeks illuminating illustration of Lacans complex theory, using the game of chess.

The Imaginary, Symbolic and Real In Zizeks (2006) chess example, The imaginary, is illustrated through the way which different pieces are shaped and characterised by their names (king, queen, knight), and its easy to imagine a game with the same rules, but with a different imaginaryin which the gures would have a different name (page 8) but perform the same function. For the Imaginary, says Myers (2003), Lacanreserves an unaffected scorn (page 22). Lacans Imaginary is illustrated in his simply stunning paper, The Mirror Stage. The rules required in order to play the game, represent the symbolic; from the purely formal symbolic standpoint knight is only dened by the moves it can make (Zizek 2006, page 8). The symbolic order is the realm of the big Other. It is the realm of language and also the realm of the Law. Lacan says (1977) psychoanalysts are practitioners of the symbolic function (page 72). Fink (1997) explains that, Lacans stated a goal of analysis was to encourage movement away from imaginary relations towards the symbolic, to pierce through The Imaginary dimension which veils the symbolic and confront the analysands relations to the Other head on (page 35). Next in Zizeks chess illustration (2006), the Real, an entire complex set of contingent circumstancesthe intelligence of the players, the unpredictable intrusions that may disconnect one playeror cut the game short (page 9). The Real is all that is resistant of incorporation into the Symbolic and the Imaginary. Loewenthal and Snell (2003) suggest There is always a residue that is unrepresentable (page 160). Because something is happening here.

But you dont know what it is. Do you, Mister Jones? to quote Bob Dylan from Ballad of a Thin Man. The Real is a void; it is what language cannot speak. We aim to ll it with what Lacan calls petit objet a the object cause of desire. Zizek suggests that when we get to close to the Real is when we go to therapy. Additionally, as we shall see, Zizek characterises postmodernism, as over-proximity to the Real. We are all too aware of the possible unpredictable intrusions in our game of chess, in fact the unpredictable intrusions, the edges, the periphery, become more important than the totalizing meta-narrative of our chess game.

Demise of the big Other: Part 2 How are Lacans registers relevant to the big Other and this essay? The belief in the big Other, means that there is always a degree of idealisation; we disavow the Real, thus accessing the Symbolic order. For Zizek, this disavow of the Real, is what he terms an as if: in order to coexist with one another, we choose not experience the other in his totality, we choose not to see him as he appears to us phenomenologically; perhaps fragmented, sweating, smelling bad, looking ugly. We act as if the emperor really is wearing no clothes and not parading through the streets naked (Myers 2003, page 50), thus we can remain loyal subjects. We are fully aware the emperor is naked, in the Real, however we choose to perceive the emperor as if he is wearing splendid new clothes, in the symbolic. Thus, as we disavow the big Other, a collective lie is maintained. This example demonstrates not just the tension of idealisation (the Imaginary), as if (the Symbolic) and the emperors nakedness 6

(the Real), but also Lacan and Zizeks Freudianism: the tension between civilisation and discontent. Although, Zizek (1991) states postmoderns by removing idealisation intend to get rid of unnecessary hypocrisy and pretence, there is a catch: we get more than we bargained for that very community of which we were a member has disintegrated (page 11-12), the fabric of organisation disappears: the emperor has no clothes! Zizek calls this a demise of symbolic efficiency. He explains: [in]domains as diverse as cyberspace, medicine and bioenergetics on the one hand, and the rules of sexual conduct and the protection of human rights on the other[we are confronted]with the need to invent the basic rules of proper ethical conduct, since we lack any form of big Other, any symbolic point of reference that would serve as a safe and unproblematic moral anchor (Zizek 1999, page 322). What is so significant about the movement from Symbolic to Real, is that Lacan associates this movement with trauma. Trauma is a permanent dislocation at the heart of the subject[it]arrests of the movement of symbolisation, and fixes the subject at an earlier phase of development (Homer 2005, page 84). Thus, for Zizek, (1999) the postmodern subjects over-proximity to the Real, leaves him in a state of arrested development, in narcissistic regression (334).

Oh Father, where art thou? Is all this sounding terribly Freudian? A desire/demand for paternal authority? Well, perhaps thats the idea! Zizek, proposes that Western society has a new father. Before this essay can examine its own paternity, it must briefly look at two fathers relived of duty. The first is the Oedipal father, God of the Calvinistic reformation (Kay 2003, page 140). A dark God, a capricious abyss that lays beyond any global rational order of logos, a God who does not have to account for anything he does (Zizek 1999, page 319). It is the form of Law derived from this father, that would come to condition the subject of modernity. Second, is the father of modernity, the father of will. It is the fall of this father, of this God that Zizek (like Lacan, both thinkers have enlightenment roots in the work of Hegel) takes so seriously. Zizek states So when one speaks today of the decline of paternal authority, it is this father, the father of the uncompromising "No! who seems effectively to be in retreat; in his absence, in the absence of his prohibitory "No!" (Zizek 1999, page 322). Zizek (1994) contends in post-liberal societies, the agency of social repression does not act as and internalised law or prohibition requiring selfcontrol. Instead, says Zizek, there exists a hypnotic command, an injunction, Enjoy yourself! (page 16). This injunction to enjoy is representative of the superego, more precisely, the Lacanian superego, the return of the primal father from Freuds Totem and Taboo: the father outside the law, who feeds on exactly what the law prohibits.

What Lacan did, was highlight a link between the law and the superego undeveloped by Freud. In Totem and Taboo, Freud suggests the incest prohibition was the foundation of all social law. Thus the prohibition of, but the desire for incest, is representative of the paradoxical governing principal of every society. This means, as Homer (2005) puts it The law, in other words is founded upon that which it seeks to excludethe desire to break and transgress the law is the very precondition for the existence of law itself (page 58). Hence, the superego is both the law and paradoxically, its own destruction; that which undermines the law. At this exact point of paradox, there exists a compulsion to search for support in illegal enjoyment (Zizek 1994, page 58). This tension existing between the law and the desire to transgress it, manifests as guilt. In this sense, there is something of original sin, a Catholic echo also located in the work of Heidegger and within Sartres conception of Bad/Good Faith. For Lacan, guilt of desire for incest. And this, Zizek (1994) sees as the key paradox of the superego: the more we submit ourselves to the superego imperative, the greater its pressure, the more we feel guilty (page 67). I think here it is interesting to contrast Zizeks view with that of Herbert Marcuses (1964) hypothesis of repressive desublimation. Marcuse proposes social control can be aided through the manipulation of desire, encouraging the id to overwhelm the ego. Extending Freuds notion of sublimation (where a prohibited desire or action is substituted into socially acceptable behaviour) Marcuse suggests the inner-directed process of sublimation can be re-directed or desublimated toward the agenda of political

or economic forces. Repressive desublimation contradicts Zizeks theory, as Marcuse focuses on the id rather than the superego. Returning to our Lacanian superego, Zizek (1991) is arguing the postmodern subject is subject to a new patriarchy that demands enjoyment. In late capitalism permitted enjoyment, freedom to enjoy, is reversed into obligation to enjoy (page 237). This, argues Zizek, is the ideology of contemporary Western culture1. The problem today is that the commandment of the ruling ideology is enjoy, in different ways. It can be sexual enjoyment, consumption, commodity enjoyment, up to spiritual enjoyment to realise yourself, or

One of the characteristics of postmodern thought is its dismissal of ideology, or the

suggestion that our contemporary age is post-ideological. As Taylor & Winquist (2001) explain, since the rise of postmodern theory, the concept of ideology has been discredited, it is bound up with the epistemological distinction between truth and appearance on the one hand, and the construction of metadiscourses on the other (page 185). Thus, in our contemporary age, Marxs conception of ideology as false consciousness: they do not know it, but they are doing it, seems to carry a constitutive naivet: the misrecognition of its own presuppositions (Zizek 1989, page 28). However, Zizek proposes that the very function of ideology in contemporary society is the proposition that our age is post-ideological. Zizek argues nothing could suggest ideology more than the belief that one could identify a place outside ideology from which to critique it (Kay 2003, page 134). Indeed contemporary culture carries within it a cynical distance...[as]part of the game (Zizek 1989, page 28), this cynical distance, that we believe we take toward ideology is exactly what constitutes the space of ideology (Kay 2003, page 134). The cynical distance of postmodernity, the language of negation is just one wayto blind ourselves to the structuring power of ideological fantasy: even if we do not take things seriously, even if we keep an ironical distance, we are still doing them (Zizek 1989, page 33). Thus, the ruling hegemony of postmodern ideology attempts to appropriate any detraction or subversion.

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whatever. I think the problem today is not how to get rid of your inhibitions and be able to spontaneously enjoy, the problem today is how to get rid of this injunction to enjoy (Zeitgeist Films, 2005) Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (1997) states those that cannot or do not partake in the purity of postmodern enjoyment are cast aside as flawed consumers (page 14-15). Kay (2003) states those who can or do partake are victims of complicitous subservience to constraint[thus]external authority gives way to a self-disciplining, attentive self-regard. The reign of Oedipus has given way to that of Narcissus (page 142).

Reflexivity Zizek is inuenced by the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens (1991), and his conception of a risk society (page 28). Giddens argues the postmodern age is characterised by the difculty of making decisions in a society overloaded with information and thus predicting outcomes. Giddens (1991) writes within contemporary society we are confronted in a continuous wayLiving in a risk society means living with a calculative attitude to the open possibilities of action, positive and negative (page 28). This relentless calculating of risk says Myers (2003), wrenches the subject into a self-reexive loopthe effective diminishment of one risk results in the generation of anotherwe are caught in our own web (page 49). The world is not too complex, but too opaque. The postmodern subject becomes increasingly reexive: the absence of coherent directives in the society around us is reected back into

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us as a requirement individually to assume responsibility for our own selffashioning (Kay 2003, page 141). Although Zizek agrees; reexivity at the heart of the postmodern subject is a key-point, Zizek feels Giddens misses the psychic dimension. While it may appear that contemporary society offers unlimited choice, this freedom produces its own anxieties. Erikson noticed this as early as 1950, and wrote the patient of today suffers most under the problem of what he should believe in and who he should or indeed, might be or become; while the patient of early psychoanalysis suffered most under inhibitions which prevented him from being what and who he thought he knew he was (Childhood and society, page 242). Lacking symbolic efficiency, Kay (2003) states we turn to gurus, do-it-yourself books, agony aunts, professional shoppers, quangos and a plethora of other miniaturised substitutes for the big Other (page 140). Into this mix, sadly psychotherapy sometimes falls. Most certainly, when in the hands of those subject to a degree of hubris: to quote Emmy van Deurzen (2009) psychotherapists are the new moral guides of our time (page 44)are we really?

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Therapy: The project of postmodernity A critique of therapy is neither interesting nor original. However, where does therapy locate itself in relation to the postmodern project? I would suggest they are inextricably interconnected. As Giddens says (1991) therapy is part of the phenomenon of late modernitys 2 reflexivity. A reflexivity that is part and intrinsic to the psychotherapeutic age. Additionally, although classical psychoanalysis is regarded as a totallizing meta-narrative, Freuds project has been of paramount importance in the creation of postmodern ideology. With Freuds splitting of the subject into component parts: id, ego and superego, introspection becomes delegitimised. During the time of high modernity, introspection was straightforward. Following Freud and the valorisation of unconscious, philosophy becomes problematic and the subjects examination of self becomes uncertain. Additionally, Freuds project rests decisively on language - a key postmodern concern. Psychoanalysis is fundamentally suspicious of the manifest content. As a result, throughout the 20th century the very possibility of communication, has been called into question by philosopher, after philosopher. The difficulties and fragmentary nature of language and communication, is of paramount importance to the postmodern project. The theorist that informs the basis of this very essay, Lacan, made the study and intrinsic difficulties of language, even the language of the unconscious, primary in his work. As the subject, language and communication become fragmented, society, the symbolic structures (big Other) that had previously regulated it and the subject disappear.

2 Giddens

uses the term late modernity rather than the term postmodern

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What is important to acknowledge here, is psychotherapy, and even the grand narrative of psychoanalysis, lay the ground-work, if not are entirely the projects of postmodernism. Therapy, as Giddens (1991) states interprets the reflexive project of the self in terms of self-determination alone, thus confirming and even accentuating the separation of the lifespan from extrinsic moral considerations (page 180). In other words, therapy sees the subject as self determined and outside of moral concerns of the wider community. Not in a overtly social constructivist sense, but in the alienated subjective character of the subject that is to say: therapy sees a postmodern subject.

Therapists as moral guides. This being the case, a Nietzschean reading of two linked projects (therapy and postmodernism) would suggest they share a vested interest. A will to power, in ensuring each others continuation. Why is this a concern? Firstly, if therapists adopt an approach drenched in the preoccupation with individualism and additionally assume their work adopts a position outside ideology (i.e. exactly following the ideology of the our age) are they not effectively serving the same adaptive function, so intrinsic, and so criticised, in ego psychology? As Pilgrim (1991) states

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The dual introversion (of professional self-preoccupation and individualism) may simply have been a logical consequence of psychotherapy maturing over time. However, the market ideology of our contemporary culture has probably quickened and amplied the process. When prime ministers focus their attention on the responsibilities of individuals and their families, and deny the existence of society on the one hand and psychotherapists are prone to similar reductionist thinking on the other (page 53). For our second reading we must turn to sociologist Alvin Gouldner, and his caustic, Marxist/Nietzschean analysis of postmodernism. Gouldner argues he is member of class not often discussed: the intellectual class. He also points out, in late capitalism there are only two possible ruling elites: the wealthy high bourgeoisie and the intellectual elite that own the conceptual means of production. Like any other class, the intellectual class, pertain and pursue their own class interests. To do this, the intellectual class developed a discourse that delegitimises all other claims towards authority, toward certainty, toward reality and toward knowledge. This discourse is called postmodernism, and it can be read as the gratification of the will to power of the intellectual class. As Gouldner (1975) puts it The intellectuals careful and critical discourse, means it is now possible for anyone, however rich and powerful, to speak wrongly (page 20). Gouldner asks who gains from this systematic delegitimisation of all other discourses? In the ironic void thats left, is there anyone to light the way? Who is kind enough demonstrate that we can no longer take totalizing

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discourses seriously? Can anybody help us cope with our risk society and make moral and political judgments? What Gouldner observes, is that it will be the same class that cultivated such uncertainty: intellectuals. Likewise, ethics demands the question: who gains from the project of guiding the subject through a terminally insecure world? In an era where simply being a person has apparently become problematic, does anyone benefit from cultivating vulnerability in an age of uncertain age? (Furedi 2004) Who, might graciously serve as the new moral guides of our time (Emmy van Deurzen, page 44)? Again: the intellectual class, a division of which is psychotherapeutically trained. (see appendix) I wish to make clear, that I am not proposing that therapists have a wish to cultivate unhappiness in their clients. But I am proposing that by applying Zizeks understanding of postmodern ideology, it is possible, if not probable that therapy has a great deal to gain from postmodern unease. Just as the 1960s counter culture eventually benefited from Thatcherism and Reaganomics.

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The ActBriefly So (to be reflexive for a moment) is this essay ultimately mourning the collapse of traditional patriarchal power structures? Effectively, another moan about hoodies, so prevalent on BBC Radio 4, Panorama or the in editorial pages of daily newspapers? Raising the height of its brow, by utility of a Lacanian twist? No, it is not, I am arguing the opposite. Psychotherapy is a radical discourse, but as therapy becomes normalised and terms slip into the vernacular of our society (see appendix) it becomes easy to forget many of the great theoreticians were radicals: Freud, Lacan, Laing, Sartre, Fromm, Horney, Jung, Reich, the list could go on and on. Linking these people, and informing their work, is an awareness of their relationship to the society in which they worked and lived. Perhaps Zizek is continuing this tradition? Zizek argues the subject requires what he terms The Act. Sadly, due to the remit of this essay, his term can only be sketched. The Act, Zizek sees as a re-birth. I wish to suggest it is not just the subject that needs an Act, but therapy itself, so it can reflect on its own assumed role within the Symbolic order. Zizek (2001) states The act proper is the only one which restructures the very symbolic co-ordinates of the agents situation: it is an intervention in the course of which, the agents identity itself is radically changed (page 85). The Act is the major focus of Lacans conception of psychoanalysis: to treat the Real [by means] of the Symbolic (Seminar XI, page 50. Cited from Kay 2003, page 154). The Act, or acte to use Lacans terminology, involves a

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rejection of the current Symbolic order, and therefore says Myers (2003) of the Symbolic mandate, or role assumed by the subject (page 59). I am suggesting psychotherapy may require an act so it can examine its confused, unacknowledged, perhaps complicitous relationship to the hegemony of postmodernity; the ideology of late capitalism.

Conclusion The the last century witnessed huge changes in the political and social climate of western society. However, Zizek highlights power always rests someplace and western liberal democracy is far from post-ideological. Furthermore, if postmodernity is the ideology of late capitalism, and if therapists are the moral guides of our postmodern age, does this imbue us with an unacknowledged adaptive element, as enforcers of the injunction to enjoy? Therapy walks with the postmodern project, and it would benefit ethical practice for therapists remember to look outside of a critique of other therapeutic approaches, and reflect on their role, and their own vested interests in the society where they practice. I may not have agreed with Sartres extreme Marxist stance, or Heideggers Nazi allegiances, but I certainly knew where they stood, because they took the time to consider where they stood. State regulation is on the cards for psychotherapy and politics is knocking on the door. Psychotherapists need to engage ideologically.

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I hope this essay does not read anti-therapy. I love the work, theory and (although not mentioned in this paper) the practice of psychotherapy. Whether working with the worried well or with those in immediate and dire psychological circumstance, amazing changes can take place. The author of this essay is mindful, but in no sense dismissing the therapeutic project. I have taken (and hopefully given) so much from my own therapeutic journey, through the ideas Ive encountered and the people Ive met along the way, and would be the first to acknowledge, I may not even be alive without it.

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REFERENCES Bauman, Z. (1997). Postmodernity and its Discontents. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fink, B. (1997 [1999]). A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis Theory and Technique. Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Furedi,F. (2004). Therapy Culture, Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age. London: Routledge. Giddens, A. (!991 [2008]) Modernity and Self Identity. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gouldner, A (1975). For Sociology: Renewal and Critique in Sociology Today. London: Penguin Books. Homer, S. (2005 [2006]). Jacques Lacan. Oxon: Routledge. Kay, S. (2003). Zizek. Cambridge: Polity Press. Loewenthal, D & Snell, R. (2003). Post-Modernism for Psychotherapists. East Sussex: Routledge. Lyotard, J (1979 [2005]). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Marcuse, H (1964 [2007]) One-Dimensional Man. Oxon: Routledge. Myers,T. (2003 [2007]). Slavoj Zizek. Oxon: Routledge. Pilgrim, D. (1991) Psychotherapy and social blinkers (Vol.2 52-55). the british psychological society, the psychologist: bulletin of the british psychological society. van Deurzen, E (2009) Psychotherapy and the Quest for Happiness. London: Sage. Zizek!, Dir. Astra Taylor. Zeitgeist Films. Ica Films. The Documentary Campaign. 2005. Zizek, S. (1989 [1999]). The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso. Zizek, S. (1991 [2008]). For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political Factor. London: Verso. Zizek, S. (1994 [2005]). The Metastases of Enjoyment: On Women and Causality. London: Verso. Zizek, S. (1999). The Ticklish Subject. London: Verso. Zizek, S. (2001). On Belief. Oxon: Routledge.

BIBLIOGRAPHY The Century of the Self. Dir. Adam Curtis. BBC Four. 2002. Evans, D. (1996 [1997]). An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Analysis. London: Routledge. The Pervert's Guide to Cinema. Dir. Sophie Fiennes. Amoeba Film. Lone Star Productions. Mischief Films. 2006. Lacan, J. (1977) crits: A Selection. (Trans.) Sheridan, A. London: Tavistock Publications. Lacan, J. (1977 [2004]). The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac. Zizek, S. (1992 [2008]). Enjoy Your Symptom!. Oxon: Routledge. Zizek, S. (2006). How to Read Lacan. London: Granta.

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