Lacan, Rhetoric, Dreams

(Article in progress; Copyright 2009 by Christine M. Skolnik)


Lacan’s humanist sympathies are explicitly stated in his respect for the rhetorical and other liberal arts as opposed to various instantiations of “scientism” (Speech 91). His focus on unconscious processes, however, seems at odds with traditional humanist views of the rhetor as a superlatively self-conscious, and self-mastering ethical being. Nevertheless, like Burke (and in advance of Butler), Lacan strongly asserts various types of identification between rhetor and audience, analyst and analysand, the “I” and “the other,” which not only conflate the difference between speaking subjects, but also create irreducible points of empathic and rhetorical contact, congruent with a broad concept of humanism (Speech 51). Lacan’s conception of the psychoanalytic scene as a scene of seduction, and his articulation of the relationship between logos and eros further emphasizes the rhetorical and humanistic character of analytic discourse.

In general, Lacan, focuses on the role of language in the dialogic relationship between the analyst and analysand, as well as the conscious and unconscious processes of both parties. This dialogic view of analysis is partly connected to his interest in dialectic and partly to his interest in the concept of “the other.” The opening page of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis articulates both the dialectical and relational nature of psychoanalytic discourse: “I shall show that there is no Word without a reply, even if it meets no more than silence, provided that it has an auditor: this is the heart of its function in psychoanalysis” (9). Lacan goes on to charge the discipline of psychoanalysis with a responsibility to be acutely aware of the role of language in its practice, and to urge analysts to reflect on the relationship of language to their own desires (9).

The role of rhetoric in psychoanalysis is also clearly asserted in Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis when Lacan adds rhetoric, dialectic, grammar, and poetics to Freud’s “accessory disciplines” which include literary history and literary criticism. Lacan is fully cognizant of the historical roots of this configuration of disciplines: “And if these subject headings tended to evoke somewhat outmoded echoes for some people, I would not be unwilling to accept them as constituting a return to our sources” (51). He goes on to defend the relationship of psychoanalysis to “what was called in the Middle ages, ‘the liberal arts,’” by contrasting the humanities with early twentieth-century scientism: “Let this aspect of the early development of psychoanalysis not be disdained; it expresses in fact no less that the re-creation of the sense of man during the arid years of scientism” (51). This is not to say that Lacan is uninterested in the scientific status of psychoanalysis; on the contrary he repeatedly voices a desire for this status (30, 47, 51). His rhetorical/dialectic turn is both a return to “the study of symbols” at the heart of the development of psychoanalysis as well as a forward-looking call for the discipline to “lay down a scientific grounding” by formalizing “intersubjective logic and the temporality of the subject” (51).

Lacan’s knowledge of classical rhetoric is clearly illustrated when he comments on the unique communicative value of ordinary language in the psychoanalytic context. The following passage characterizes the analyst as a master of rhetorical interpretation (a reflection of Lacan’s own ethos):
"Moreover, it is the analyst who knows better than anyone else that the question is to understand which 'part' of this speech carries the significative term, and this is exactly how he proceeds in the ideal case: taking the recital of any everyday event for an apologue addressed to him who hath ears to hear, a long prosopopoeia for a direct interjection, or on the other hand taking a simple lapsus for a highly complex statement, or even the sigh of a momentary silence for the whole lyrical development it makes up for" (13).

Similarly in his discussion of the “rhetoric” of dreams which refers to the motives of the dream communication, he includes a long list of classical rhetorical figures (31). These figures, discussed in a reading of Freud, are related to the “syntactical displacements” and “semantic condensations” that reveal the “intentions—ostentatious or demonstrative, dissimulating or persuasive, retaliatory or seductive—out of which the subject modulates his oneiric discourse” (31). Of course all of these intentions can be understood as rhetorical or persuasive on some level, as can the communicative processes of the dream in general, which—as Burke also argues—is always figured in order to be accepted (Burke, Rhetoric of Motives 37-38). In this sense the dream might be seen as a master-trope of psychoanalytic discourse and possibly rhetoric in general, especially in the quasi-religious/quasi-mystical context of Burke’s sublime “Logos” and Lacan’s ubiquitous “Word” (Burke, Language as Symbolic Action 55; Lacan, Speech).

A clearly dialogic paradigm is articulated when Lacan connects dreams with desire and desire to “the other.” The rhetoric of the dream represents not only a communication between the unconscious and the conscious, but also an address to the other. Likewise the process of interpretation is addressed to “the other.” The context of the following passage refers to both the desire of the analysand and the analyst: “nowhere does it appear more clearly that man’s desire finds its meaning in the desire of the other, not so much because the other holds the key to the object desired, as because the first object of desire is to be recognized by the other” (Speech 31). Thus Lacan understands the dream as a contextualized response to “the other,” rather than a self-contained, unidirectional expression of desire.
As the relationship between analyst and patient evolves, dreams tend to become even more explicitly dialogic. During the transference process, “each dream of the patient requires to be interpreted as a provocation, a masked avowal, or a diversion, by its relation to the analytic discourse; and that in proportion to the progress of analysis his dreams invariably become more and more reduced to the function of elements of the dialogue being realized in the analysis [my emphasis]” (Speech 31). Thus, the dialogue between the unconscious and the conscious responds to the dialogue between the analyst and the patient—a four-way conversation, if we assume that the analyst’s unconscious also comes into play. This dynamic is obviously related to Burke’s comment that patients typically adapt their dreams to the methods and expectations of the analyst (Language 45-46). In one way or another (either through content or terminology) the dream, as symbolic action, adapts itself to the rhetorical context of the analysis. Similarly, in his comments on Freud’s success rate, Lacan notes that Freud’s patients were always primed by his explanation of his methodology (Speech 53). Their conscious and unconscious responses were in dialogue with the analyst’s expectations before the analysis (proper) began, as is the case with patients in most contemporary therapeutic contexts.