It’s funny that empire and empiricism sound alike (and they are both mainly British) although they are etymologically unrelated –empire means “on command” (in-parare) whereas empiric means “in trial” (en-peîra)– which does not stop us from relating them: Empire is S₁, empiricism is S₂. The shift from empire to empiricism is the historical shift from the master’s discourse to the university discourse. Just as S₁ remains below S₂ in the university discourse, one can still hear imperial echoes within empiricism, as in scientific terms like “animal kingdom”. Empirical data collection belongs to the same lineage with imperial tax collection.

Scientific truth is mainly empirical since its ultimate idea of validation is to observe the same thing repeatedly in a certain location under certain conditions. Psychoanalysis does not fit this accepted yardstick of scientific truth. Although a dream text is interpreted precisely to the letter, it’s not “empirical data”. This is because the logic of significance is inverted in psychoanalysis: The most significant parts of a dream text are not the ones that are identically repeated in the retellings, but the ones that inadvertently change in the retellings. The source of information is not what is identically repeated, but what resists and disturbs this repetition; in other words, the symptom.

The psychoanalytic symptom constitutes the less obvious underside of the official lineages of tax and data collection that still serve as the yardstick for scientific objectivity. The symptom has two sides: (1) the hysterical questioning of the imperial signifiers, (2) the analytic bracketing of the empirical data in order to intervene in the hysterical questioning.

To have words like empire and empirical, let’s coin “emprick” and “emprickle”. Emprickle designates the hysteric’s discourse since the symptom prickles the soul. Emprick designates the analytic discourse since the meanings of “prick” stage a dialectical progression:
1) Phallus.
2) Hole in the real.
3) Being annoying.
4) Feeling remorse.

As you can see:
— 2 and 4 designate what remains after 1 and 3 respectively: The phallus opens a hole in the real; you feel remorse after being annoying.
— 3-4 is the reflection of 1-2 on one’s psychology: What truly annoys is the phallus itself; what truly gives remorse is the hole in the real opened by the phallus.

Since psychoanalysis is about the symptom and its interpretation, we are justified in calling it an emprickle science. It works by (1) bracketing the identically repeating empirical data, (2) focusing on what disturbs (prickles) this repetition, (3) intervening in a differentiating manner, and thereby (4) producing new signifiers that will surely tax the soul with imperial force.

In Turkish we have a proverb: “The one who loves the rose must endure its prickle.” This prickle is the symptom that concerns psychoanalysis, namely the Lacanian real:

The real is the difference between what works and what doesn’t work. What works is the world. The real is what doesn’t work. (Lacan, Triumph of Religion)

Every rose has its neurose.

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

Image source.