THE UNCONSCIOUS IS ETHICAL

RINALDI Doris

Freud affirmed many times his lack of interest in the field of ethics, which he assimilated to morality. He would say that issues of good and evil did not afflict him and would refuse to pose as a prophet solving problems faced by human beings in their mutual relationships (Rinaldi,1996). Therefore, nothing is more alien to his position than the idea that psychoanalysis could put forward a proposal for a new ethics.

However, we cannot forget that Freud dealt at length with morality in his writings, in a critical perspective, ranging from formulations about its origin and articulation with desire to his establishment of the existence of a basic conflict between impulsive drives and civilized moral restrictions. In "Civilization and Its Discontents" ((1930)1976), he admits that ethic should be considered a "therapeutic attempt", at the superego level, to restrain aggressiveness amongst human beings.

Also, we cannot ignore the ethical position built into the very formulations presented in "Civilization and Its Discontents", when Freud affirms that psychoanalysis does not promise happiness, because nothing in the microcosm or the macrocosm has been arranged for this. By acknowledging that there is something unconquerable in our own psychic makeup, which denies us full satisfaction and urges us to explore new paths, he is, on the one hand, reaffirming the indestructibility of human desire; and on the other, the inadequacy principle governing it, presented since his "Project for a Scientific Psychology" (1895) as the split experience of the object, where das Ding is situated.

Lacan picks up this thread to open up the field of psychoanalysis to the ethics discussion and to formulate an ethic of psychoanalysis. Starting from the "Project", he finds in das Ding the foundation of an ethic that places desire at the center of human action. This radically separates it from the moral, insofar as there is no good to be achieved at its threshold. In the Seminar "The ethics of psychoanalysis" (1959-60), he deepens his dialogue with philosophy, from Aristotle to Kant, permeated by Spinoza’s Ethics, to emphasize the absence of an ontology in Freud’s works and to propose an ethic of desire, in which human action would be guided by a reference to the real, a concept that assimilates the Freudian notion of das Ding, this "convergence point that it's possible to reach in escape from all reality" (Lacan,1988:31) , responsible for the insatiability of human desire.

During the 1964 Seminar on "The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis", he made the statement which is the object of this paper: "the status of the unconscious, that I indicate to be so fragile on the ontic level, is ethical" (Lacan, 1979:37). By presenting this formulation, Lacan refuses any attempt at assigning to the unconscious a consistency that would support an ontology, explaining that the concern here is not with any being, but with "wherever the unconscious reveals itself" (op.cit.:37).

This certainty drove Freud in his research, which led him to defend faith in the unconscious as the analyst’s ethical attitude in directing treatment. This insistence, clearly recognized in 1920 when he stated that the unconscious doesn’t resist; on the contrary, it’s always forcing its way, providing indications for us to reflect on the status of the unconscious as ethical.

How does this shift take place? How does the unconscious reveal itself? Freud teaches us that the dream is the real path of access to the unconscious, revealing that this is not only the field par excellence of desire, but also the basic mechanisms through which the latter is articulated to the dream-work. Lacan, looking at signifying games and resorting to linguistics, presented his formula: "the unconscious is structured as a language", thus inserting, following Freud, the unconscious in the symbolic field. To this extent, the unconscious is a knowledge.

In turn, by demonstrating the existence of another rationality that escapes consciousness, Freud reveals the existence of thought in dreams, opening the way for one to assume a subject of this thinking. That is what Lacan introduces through a theory of the subject of the unconscious, tantamount to subverting the concept of subject in the philosophical tradition.

These important advances made by Lacan, following a path opened up by Freud, have promoted a renewal of the concept of the unconscious, particularly in the wake of the psychologizing suffered by Freud’s theory at the hands of post-Freudians.

However, what is the most effective contribution of his assertion that the unconscious is ethical? If it achieves some consistence through signifying games in a language structure, in which the unconscious is said to be knowledge, Lacan points exactly toward radical inconsistency when he upholds the ethical status of the unconscious.

Lacan asserts the evasive, inconsistent character of the unconscious, starting from Freud’s contribution in the forms of the psychopathology of everyday life, in faulty actions, slips of the tongue, and jokes, and in the limit placed on interpretation by the dream’s navel. This character emerges in cuts, in discontinuities in ordinary talk, in the other scene evoked by the dream, where desire appears in the form of enigma. In this articulation, the real dimension of the unconscious is highlighted, where it starts to be defined as the unrealized, the unborn, "lingering in the area" (Lacan, op.cit.:25), hoping for self-realization. If the real is what ex-ists regarding the symbolic, it, however, insists on calling for symbolization in the sense that "it doesn't stop writing itself".

We are dealing with the cause function, with the real as the cause of unconscious movement, where desire weaves its thread, strange and intimate, in this place that Lacan denominated ex-timacy. This is the enigma that motivated Freud to listen to hysteric women at the dawn of psychoanalysis, and that supported his interest throughout his writings, in which he maintains open a non-knowledge about the feminine. To this extent, Lacan was right when he said that, beyond the search for a truth finally revealed, Freud’s passion was aimed at real.

Thus, the assertion that the status of the unconscious is ethical fundamentally references the real. That’s why he clearly distinguishes what belongs to the order of combinatory games, operating in a pre-subjective manner and allowing something accessible to be perceived from the order of knowledge, that which the Freudian experience most genuinely brings forth regarding the cause function, as it implies desire and, to this extent, the subject.

However, the real can’t be separated from the symbolic; what interests us, as analysts, is the subject that emerges when a truth, as a trace of desire, begins to appear. The emphasis is on the trace, as mark, scar, where the encounter with the unconscious assumes the form of a finding, provoking surprise, awe. The signifier, emptied of any meaning, appears as a "passer of the real", interrupting knowledge and displacing the subject. The definition of the unconscious as ethical, points towards this limit point, this littoral, the junction between the real and the symbolic, a contribution by Lacan that can’t be ignored by anyone who wishes to defend the ethics of psychoanalysis.

Bibliographical references:

FREUD, S. "Projeto para uma psicologia científica" (1895), Obras Psicológicas Completas, Ed. Standard Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, Imago Ed., 1976.

_________ "O mal-estar na cultura" (1930), Obras Psicológicas Completas, Ed. Standard Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, Imago Ed., 1976.

LACAN, J. Séminaire VII: L’éthique de la psychanalyse (1959-60), Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1986.

_________ Séminaire XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la Psychanalyse (1964), Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1973.

RINALDI, D. A ética da diferença: um debate entre psicanálise e antropologia, Rio de Janeiro, Jorge Zahar Eds., 1996.