The Dislocations of the Real
3.1 Tuche and automaton
by an unconscious knowledge and wanting-to-say ( vouloir-dire ) (Lacan, 1953–54, p. 242). According to Lacan, the determination in free associa- tion is orchestrated by the signifier, and the seemingly senseless elements traversing conscious discourse in fact express unconscious desire. The signifiers that return time and again owe this promotion to the specifici- ties of the life of the particular subject in question. They are the signi- fiers of the Other in which the subject is alienated, the signifiers that structured the drives of the subject (Declercq, 2000). In his later work, Lacan (1972–73) arrived at the idea that signifiers are laden with the drive ( jouissance ), apart from the meaning they entail. Each signifier thus
‘carries both structure and drive’ (Vanheule, 2011a, p. 152). However, jouissance is not distributed equitably across the signifying chain: some signifiers are charged with jouissance more than others, and this quality is what drives their incessant recurrence throughout the productions of the unconscious. The surprising elements that surface during free association are thus not without a logic: in the symbolic process of concatenating signifiers, what can and cannot appear is bound to certain laws or rules.
There is some sort of determination at work in the unconscious, some kind of ‘action of the structure’ as Miller (2012b) calls it. Nevertheless, the real driving force behind these movements is something ‘beyond’ the chain itself. In this way, determination is distinguished from causality.
The result of a coin flip is uncontrollable, since it is determined by ‘so many variables that no feasible, finite list of conditions can be singled out as the cause’ (Dennett, 2003, p. 85). Hence, it is a randomizing device, used in Lacan’s graph to simulate the pure contingency of the real. A second series Y is created by grouping the chance outcomes in overlapping pairs, assigning to the pair ++ the value 1, to + – or – + the value 2, and to – – the value 3. 5 If we write these codes underneath the heads/tails chain, we get the following series, in which each number refers to the plus or minus sign directly above it, in conjunction with the plus or minus immediately to that sign’s left:
From this small example, it becomes clear that a category 1 set of tosses (++) cannot be immediately followed by a category 3 set (– –). Likewise, whereas a category 2 can be followed by either a 1, 2 or 3 category, a category 3 cannot be followed by a category 1. Thus, within the series Y, an order emerges that prohibits certain possibilities while allowing for others. Although series Y is constructed over a strictly coincidental series, and furthermore, although the series Y has no impact on the results of the associated coin toss, it nevertheless introduces a set of rules and laws. One more example: if we start the series of tosses off with a 1 (++) followed by a 2 (+ –), we can only find a 1 again in the chain after an even number of 2 s (see Fink (1995, p. 18)). In this way, we could say that the series Y keeps track of, remembers or even counts its previous components. Arguably, the emergent order thus signals the function of some sort of (cybernetic) memory that remembers what can and cannot follow a specific combination (Verhaeghe, 1989). Lacan’s (1960) subject of the unconscious is the afterwards effect of this march of the signifiers.
Thus, although the first, encoded series of pluses and minuses is estab- lished contingently, the coding of this series installs a syntax, an order with clearly defined possibilities and limitations that is not inherent to the ‘pre-existing reality’. As such, within the second, coded series Y (the symbolic level of representation), a deterministic effect is produced that apparently transcends the original coincidence. The chain itself ‘sponta- neously’ produces its own determination: the possibilities and impossi- bilities derive from ‘the way in which the symbolic matrix is constructed, that is, the way it ciphers the event in question’ (Fink, 1995, p. 19).
Series X: + + + – + + – – + – S e r i e s Y: 1 1 2 2 1 2 3 2 2
Hence, the term automaton : that which moves out of itself (Lacan, 1964, pp. 53–54). When applied to free association in the psychoanalytic cure, the automaton model indicates that it rather concerns a type of ‘auto- matic association’ (Verhaeghe, 1989).
One clinically significant consequence of this model is that once a form of symbolic knowledge is introduced into the real (by means of a ciphering or counting), pure coincidence ceases to exist (Lacan, 1964, pp. 54–55). An unexpected encounter, determined solely by external factors that seem accidental from the perspective of the victim of circumstance, is immediately caught within the pre-established symbol- ical determination of the subject in question, the ‘matrix of uncon- scious significance’ as Adrian Johnston calls it (2005, p. 26). The valence and potential effects of such a contingent encounter derive from this symbolical background. Obviously, this has important repercussions for the way in which we think traumatic etiology: the impact of an external event similarly depends on the manners in which it interacts with this pre-existing matrix. Ergo, it is impossible to predict beforehand whether or not a particular event will cause traumatic effects or not, based on a set of a priori event characteristics (see Part I).
The model of the automaton is located within Lacan’s structuralist project, in which he attributes unilateral causal power to the signifier.
Signification or meaning, which we experience at the level of conscious- ness, is not primary for Lacan. The question is not what the productions of the unconscious (symptom, lapsus, dream, and so on) mean in them- selves, nor what their nature or essence is. Lacan aims to show that their meaning is a derivative effect of the structure imposed by the signifier, of the ciphering of the unconscious (for instance, Lacan, 1953–54, 1956a).
Psychoanalysis attempts to reveal the primacy and causal power of the signifier in its stupidity; to reveal the subject’s submission to that which lies beyond meaning. What distinguishes Lacan’s project from others that focus on the structuring forces of the symbolic is his sustained attention to those aspects of experience that remain un- or understruc- tured, to ‘absence, lack, displacement, exception, indetermination, and so on’ (Hallward, 2012, p. 3), which is why he is often associated with post-structuralism. In Seminar XI , this underdetermined aspect is called tuche . With reference to the determination of the automaton, the tuche denotes what is excluded from appearance, what cannot be said, the impossible. In its movement, the automaton produces this impossible that lies beyond the chain. In a sense, the chain behaves as if what is excluded were the ‘truth of everything that the chain produces as it beats around the bush’ (Fink, 1995, p. 27). What remains outside the
chain can therefore be said to cause what is on the inside. Structurally speaking, something must always be pushed outside for there to even be an inside.
Tuche is thus associated with the notion of causality. Lacan’s account of tuche and automaton sharpens a dichotomy, and the question is how both poles are connected with each other. On the one hand, we have structure: the automatic functioning of the signifying chain. On the other, we have something that causes the automaton while at the same time interrupting its smooth functioning: tuche. The symbolic chain automatically leads to an encounter with the tuche, albeit one that is always missed. The chain leads to a place where it does not bump up against something substantial, but against a point where the expected final signifier, the point de capiton that would reveal the full truth of the subject, is lacking. The automaton describes a circular path that always arrives at this destination, the point of rendez-vous with the real. However, the nature of this encounter is such that ‘nobody ever shows up’, so to speak. The final signifier is lacking, and this lack is ordinarily covered over through the workings of fantasy. The return of the signifier, deter- mined as it is by the machinations of the symbolic, thus denotes a kind of repetition that simultaneously serves as an avoidance of and an appeal to an encounter with the real. The signifying chain of the automaton both eludes and designates the central place of the real. The crux is that this real beyond the chain is what drives the process forward. The cause, in Lacan’s (1964, p. 22) account, always concerns something indeter- minate, something anticonceptual or indefinite. Instead of finding the solidity of a determinate cause at the endpoint of the chain, some sort of substantial prime mover, we only find a hole or a gap.