There are four agencies of the psyche: ideal ego, ego ideal, superego and the law of desire [1].

The ego is constituted by the mirror stage, in which the child’s reflected mirror image is observed and symbolically validated by the parent. In this scene:
1) The ideal that conditions the child’s image is the ideal ego.
2) The ideal that conditions the parent’s validation is the ego ideal.
The ego is conditioned by an imaginary component (ideal ego) and a symbolic component (ego ideal). The ideal ego is the imaginary embodiment of the ego, whereas the ego ideal is the symbolic authorization of the ego. Since the symbolic authority is primary and the egoic body is just its imaginary extension, the formula for the ego is ‘authority plus body’ [2]:

Ego = A + B

Thus the ego is a symbol supported by an image (authority with body). The imaginary support tames the ego and steers it into a symbolic cage. But this convenient arrangement is affordable only until the real of drives intervenes and breaks the articulation of the image with the symbol (this is why breaking a mirror is supposed to bring bad luck). This real that threatens to fragment the body by negating its image is the superego. The formula of the superego is ‘authority minus body’:

Superego = A – B

In contrast to the tame authority of the ego, the superegoic authority goes wild and drowns the ego in guilt and shame. The ego naturally defends itself by attempting to avoid the superego by giving in to its power.

In a defensive effort against the superego, the ego:
1) Disguises itself as an individual who is objectively dissatisfied.
2) Projects its own subjective frustration onto the other.
The frustration truly belongs to the ego (“My father is beating me”) but it’s projected onto the other in an effort to veil the superegoic hatred with a semblance of love (“My father is beating the child / my sibling whom I hate, because he loves me”) while the individual feigns a dissatisfaction regarding the wrongs of the world (“A child is being beaten”) [3]. This particular arrangement of the dissatisfaction repressing (or disavowing) the frustration constitutes the symbolic castration.

One can exit symbolic castration by acknowledging the reality of the symptom, by perceiving that:
1) There is no essential difference between “dissatisfaction vs. frustration” other than “having vs. not having” the imaginary phallus.
2) The real embodiment of the phallus is the symbolic bar that distributes the imaginary into two portions: dissatisfaction (signifier) and frustration (signified).
3) Dissatisfaction confers an enviable coolness on the signifier whereas frustration emanates the gravity of the signified [4].
It is difficult to endure the symptom because perceiving the sameness of dissatisfaction and frustration (call it “dissatisfrust” or “faction-ration”) comes with a significant mental cost. The symptom is experienced as either privation (of poor rabble) or out-of-jointness (of rich rabble). This endurance comprises the law of desire insofar as it materializes the lack as a hole in the real, which can initiate the traversal of the fantasy.

Since the symptom emphasizes the real embodiment of the signifier (the bar itself) and negates its authority (phallic distribution/portioning of the imaginary) it is formulated as ‘body minus authority’:

Symptom = B – A

Enduring the symptom causes alienation (positnegation) to collapse into separation (internegation) [5]. This collapse is experienced as a temporary disorientation that “passes the ball” from one’s consciousness to one’s unconscious. This disorientation functions like a sleep even though one remains awake, it’s a pseudo-nap whose symbol would be the hourglass icon [6].

After some unconscious preparation that might cause a little headache for a limited duration, the symptom will eventually enact a reorientation that causes the separation (internegation) to collapse into another alienation (positnegation) that is unexpected and surprising.

It’s like (1) failing to remember something important, (2) consciously struggling to remember it at first, (2) but then accepting defeat and leaving the work of remembrance to one’s unconscious.

The pseudo-nap that prepares a remembrance is a “demembrance”. Since this demembrance (Hegel: torn asunder, dismemberment) overlaps with the Reason of the world-symptom Neurope, its apparent disorientation is better called an “occidentation” [7]. Let two Hegels conclude:

the life of mind is not one that shuns death, and keeps clear of destruction [entropy [8]]; it endures death and in death maintains its being. It only wins to its truth when it finds itself utterly torn asunder. It is this mighty power, not by being a positive which turns away from the negative, as when we say of anything it is nothing or it is false, and, being then done with it, pass off to something else: on the contrary, mind is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and dwelling with it. This dwelling beside it is the magic power that converts the negative into being. (The Phenomenology of Mind, trans. J. B. Baillie)

the life of Spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation [entropy [8]], but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative, as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then, having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, Spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. (The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller)

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] This is based on Slavoj Žižek’s short summary of psychic agencies in In Defense of Lost Causes (2008). Read it here before reading this text.

[2] About these formulas: “Scare Quotes and Stress Quotes: Ego, Superego, Symptom of Words”

[3] About frustration and dissatisfaction: “Frustration and Dissatisfaction, Privation and Castration”, “The Complex Plane of Symptom”, “Castrated: Cast & Rated”; about the child being beaten: “An account is being blocked”

[4] Hegel’s term for this gravity is “universal attraction”. See “The self-repulsion ($) of the selfsame (S1) and the self-attraction (S2) of the unlike (a)”

[5] See “Internegation and Positnegation”

[6] See “Turing Machine and Lacan: Writing and Stopping”

[7] When a church is oriented 180° opposite to the usual architectural arrangement, it’s called occidentation (See Wikipedia). Let’s adopt this term as follows: The master’s discourse orients, whereas the analytic discourse occidents. Compare: “Orientation. Induction. Introduction. Occidentation” (Conrad Brunstrom); about the world-symptom Neurope, see “The latcher from the world-symptom Neurope”

[8] See Entropy (special page)