Table Of ContentLacanian Affects
Affect is a high-stakes topic in psychoanalysis, but there has long been a
misperception that Lacan neglected affect in his writings. We encounter
affect at the beginning of any analysis in the form of subjective suffering
that the patient hopes to alleviate. How can psychoanalysis alleviate such
suffering when analytic practice itself gives rise to a wide range of affects in
the patient’s relationship to the analyst?
Lacanian Affects: The Function of Affect in Lacan’s Work is the fi rst book
to explore Lacan’s theory of affect and its implications for contemporary
psychoanalytic practice. In it, Colette Soler discusses affects as diverse as
the pain of existence, hatred, ignorance, mourning, sadness, “joyful know-
ledge,” boredom, moroseness, anger, shame, and enthusiasm. Soler’s dis-
cussion culminates in a highlighting of so-called enigmatic affects: anguish,
love, and the satisfaction related to the end of an analysis.
Lacanian Affects provides a unique and compelling account of affect that
will prove to be an essential text for psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, psycho-
therapists, psychologists, and social workers.
Colette Soler’s encounter with the teaching of Jacques Lacan led her to
undergo analytic training, and she has been practicing and teaching psy-
choanalysis since 1975, most recently in the context of the School of the
Forums of the Lacanian Field, which she founded. Her primary fi elds of
study were philosophy and psychopathology, and she has taught both of
these at the university level.
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Lacanian Affects
The function of affect in Lacan’s work
by Colette Soler
Translated by
Bruce Fink
First published in English as L acanian Affects: The Function of Affect in
Lacan’s Work 2016
by Routledge
27 Church Road, Hove, East Sussex, BN3 2FA
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
© 2016 Colette Soler
The right of Colette Soler to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
This work is a translation of a work previously published in French as: Les affects
Lacaniens 2011
by Presses Universitaires de France
Translation into English by Bruce Fink
Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
Soler, Colette.
[Affects lacaniens. English]
Lacanian affects : the function of affect in Lacan’s work / Colette Soler;
translated by Bruce Fink. – 1 Edition.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Lacan, Jacques, 1901–1981. 2. Affect (Psychology) 3. Emotions.
4. Psychoanalysis–France. I. Title.
BF175.5.A35S6513 2016
150.19'5092–dc23 2015017528
ISBN: 978-0-415-71591-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-71592-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-73179-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times
by Out of House Publishing
Contents
Introduction 1
1 In the beginning was Freud 8
2 Anguish reconsidered from the other side 18
3 Lacan’s theory of affects 51
4 The Lacanian series of affects 67
5 Enigmatic affects 101
6 Analytic affects 117
7 After affects 149
Conclusion 160
References 168
Index 1 73
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Introduction
The stakes
A ffects are a high-stakes topic in psychoanalysis. Isn’t it owing to
disturbing symptoms that people call upon analysts, so that the lat-
ter may help them explore and assuage those symptoms? And who
would want to get well if their symptoms – whether hysterical, obses-
sional, or involving impotence or some more vague malaise – were
not accompanied by painful affects such as sorrow, discouragement,
dejection, or even a distaste for life? At the root of any request to
begin an analysis, there is always affective suffering that is hard to
bear and that is looking for a cure.
Psychoanalysts do not recoil at the expectation of such a cure. In
their approach to treating symptoms, their primary goal is to attenu-
ate the affects that make up “neurotic misery,” as Freud called it.1
Yet this does not mean that they seek to produce in patients the
detached imperturbability the general public ascribes to psychoana-
lysts. Indeed, as Lacan ( 1970a ) noted, even after an analysis, each of
us remains “subject to unpredictable affects” (p. 26). We must thus
indicate what Lacanian psychoanalysis does with affects.
The term “affect” – in German, Affekt with a k – was popularized
in psychoanalysis by Freud who borrowed it from the German philo-
sophical tradition. He used it to designate a state that is pleasant or
unpleasant along the pleasure–unpleasure axis, which is linked to
manifestations of the drives. The ambiguity of the term “affect” is
interesting, for it applies both to the body and to the subject (or psy-
che). We speak of bodies as affected by sensations or illness, and of
2 Introduction
subjects as affected by moods, whether good or bad. The Scholastics,
St. Thomas Aquinas in particular, distinguished between affections
( affectio ) of the soul and affections of the body. In contemporary
usage, to be affected means to be impacted, usually in an unpleasant
way, by some bad news, for example.
What is it that affects us? This is not an easy question to answer.
Certainly, what someone says or does not say to us – loving words,
insulting words, or nothing at all – can hardly leave us cold. Indeed, it
often gives rise to passion. But we can say the same of what impacts
our bodies, running the gamut from caresses to abuse, and from a
sense of well-being to pain. The latter reverberate in the subject as
pleasure, rage, sadness, and so on. Whether experienced as a disrup-
tion of bodily homeostasis or experienced subjectively as a feeling
that is more or less painful, affects are always so convincing to us
that we are sorely tempted to mistake them for truth. We therefore
need a theory that accounts both for affects and for how and to what
extent psychoanalysis impacts them.
The accusation
Lacan has been accused of neglecting affects and privileging lan-
guage and signifi ers instead. It is an absurd accusation, and yet it
lingers on, like some old refrain, proclaiming that Lacanians know
about nothing but wordplay and puns and fail to recognize the weight
of the instinctual. But in France in the 1950s, it was Lacan who raised
a sort of “question prior to any possible treatment of affects,” and
sparked a debate regarding how psychoanalysis should handle a spe-
cifi c affect – that of frustration in the transference. His article, “The
Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power” (Lacan,
2006a , pp. 489–542), attests to it.
Yet there was nothing new about this debate. Already in the
early years of psychoanalysis, passions had fl ared over Sandor
Ferenczi’s views, Ferenczi having demanded that Freud explain
how to handle the analysand’s frustration – whose summons the
analyst feels strongly, and which resists interpretation. It was a vio-
lent but crucial episode in analytic history. Briefl y stated, whereas
for Ferenczi, to attempt to temper the analysand’s frustration was
simply to be humane, for Freud frustration was not an emotional
Introduction 3
problem but rather an unavoidable element of the therapeutic pro-
cess itself; he viewed it, moreover, as necessary to its progress.
When Lacan raised the question anew, he formulated it in terms
of the so-called gratifi cation or non-gratifi cation of the analysand’s
demands, but it was essentially the same debate. Lacan entered the
fray in order to return to Freud’s viewpoint, formulating it as fol-
lows: it is impossible to satisfy the analysand’s demands because of
the c ause of unconscious desire. This led to a reexamination of the
status to be granted to affects in psychoanalysis: their relationship to
the unconscious, their function in analytic technique in the context
of transference, and, of course, their possible treatment.
E mblematic of Freud’s work from the outset, and crystal clear in
The Interpretation of Dreams , was the attempt to make the uncon-
scious speak by deciphering it. Whence the idea that “the uncon-
scious is structured like a language,” which, Lacan ( 1998a , p. 127)
said, means simply that the unconscious is “based on its decipher-
ing.” Questions regarding the relationship between the unconscious
and affects – the latter being experienced but inaccessible to deci-
phering – could not help but come up. Indeed, they arose very early
for Freud, who answered them fi rst by formulating the concept of
repression, and then at greater length by formulating the concepts of
trauma and repetition. Lacan followed in Freud’s footsteps, notably
with respect to repression and its consequences in analytic practice,
but he went far beyond Freud in conceptualizing affect and its func-
tion in parlêtres . 2
F ar from neglecting affects, one could ask if there were indeed any
affects that Lacan failed to comment on! A complete list of those
he did discuss would not be easy to compile: anguish (to which
he devoted a year-long seminar), grief, powerlessness, mourning,
sadness, gaiety, happiness, boredom, moroseness, anger, modesty,
shame, enthusiasm, and still more. The point, however, is that for
both Freud and Lacan, affect is an e ffect . 3 And how can one treat an
effect without dealing with what produces it – namely, libido, uncon-
scious desire, and the drives?
F reud set out to establish the list of drives from which human
passions stem, as well as to specify along what pathways they drift
owing to repression and repetition, the two generators of symp-
toms from which subjects suffer. He even glimpsed that their
Description:Affect is a high-stakes topic in psychoanalysis, but there has long been a misperception that Lacan neglected affect in his writings. We encounter affect at the beginning of any analysis in the form of subjective suffering that the patient hopes to alleviate. How can psychoanalysis alleviate such su
