Freud simplifies the task of psychoanalysis in a formula: “The task consists in making the unconscious accessible to consciousness, which is done by overcoming the resistances.” The crucial aspect of this formula is that analysis does not overcome the opacity of the unconscious, it merely makes the unconscious somehow permeable to consciousness. But the conscious accessibility of the unconscious shouldn’t be imagined to be a door or passage that opens up to another world or space of which the analysand was unaware. The spatiality of any world, including the most surreal dreamworld, can only emerge in consciousness; whereas the unconscious proper is a combinatorial underworld or unworld beyond all spatiality [2]. Psychoanalysis, consciously based in the space of the consulting room, reaches for the combinatorial unworld of the unconscious; and language is the symbolic medium of this reaching that makes the unworld permeable.

Here is another formula to describe the same conversion: Turning unknown-knowns into known-unknowns [3]. The crucial aspect of this formula is that the unconscious becomes even more opaque as it becomes more permeable. This process is also called hystericization: The unknown-known is a shaky positive knowledge, a false truth, an obsessive fantasy of ‘reality’; whereas one reaches for the known-unknown through a true encounter with real negativity, a true falsity, an hysteric symptom [4]. This is a move from a more masculine stance towards a more feminine stance. The field of unknown-known fantasies contain one’s symbolic authorizations, which are all imposture (‘bullshit’), the most prominent one being the ego [5]. Whereas the field of known-unknown symptoms contains the embodiments that the subject is dependent upon, which are modeled on the mother’s breast, voice or gaze.

Another related formula is this one: Turning hatred of ignorance into ignorance of hatred. Since masculine unknown-known fantasies can only work via symbolic authorizations by shaky positive knowledge, they necessarily produce a hatred of ignorance. Wise men hate ignorant dupes and that’s why they take the ‘red pill’ and constantly ‘mansplain’ to people about their (false) truth (this is why the word ‘ignorance’ is derogatory in commonsense) [6]. The process of hystericization dissolves such shaky masculine fantasies and generates feminine known-unknown symptoms in their stead. When symptoms manifest, the masculine hatred of ignorance also dissolves, and the person begins to reconcile themselves to their ignorance. The hatred thereby withdraws into the background and we get a feminine ignorance of hatred.

The psychoanalytic conversion produces love; because hatred of ignorance (called ‘reality’) absorbs love, whereas ignorance of hatred (called ‘truth’) exudes love [7].

(Turkish)

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] “Freud’s Psycho-Analytic Procedure” (1904)

[2] See “Spatial and Combinatorial” and “The Paradox of the Phallus”

[3] Recall the Rumsfeldian categories: The known knowns, the known unknowns, the unknown unknowns; and Žižek’s addition to this list: The unknown knowns.

[4] See “False Truth, True Falsity, False Falsity”

[5] See “Imaginary Alienation (Posturing Wholeness) and Symbolic Alienation (Posturing Allness)”, “Bullshit jobs are structured like a language”, “Shit rolls downhill”

[6] See “Social Media Turns Cursors Into Cursers”

[7] See “Masculine and Feminine: Truth, Reality and Semblances” and “Love is substantiated by an ignorance of hatred”