The document explores the dynamics of desire in lacanian psychoanalysis, particularly the distinction between the 'desire of the subject' and the 'desire of the other.' It draws parallels between psychoanalytic processes and economic practices, suggesting that the regulation of desire in patients is analogous to monetary policy interventions by central bankers. Ultimately, it emphasizes the importance of understanding these desires and their implications for individual and macroeconomic stability.

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CLINICAL NOTES SERIES
BRUCE FINK ON DESIRE
Bruce Fink (1996). ‘The Subject and the Other’s Desire,’ Reading Seminars I and II:
Lacan’s Return to Freud, edited by Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus
(Albany: State University of New York Press), The Paris Seminars in English, pp. 76-
97, SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture.
INTRODUCTION
The patient in the Lacanian clinic is situated between the ‘desire of the subject’ and
the ‘desire of the Other.’ The ‘subject’ and the ‘Other’ are not specific individuals in
Lacanian schemas; they constitute instead the empty loci of Lacanian topology. In other
words, a series of individuals can take the locus of the Other in the subject’s life.
Furthermore, the term ‘subject’ should not be conflated with the individual, the ego,
or the legal notion of a person. The ‘subject’ is, quite simply, that which speaks.1 It is
conceived to be, ironically, in Lacanian analysis shaped like an ‘object.’ Or, to put it
more simply, the subject is that which finds itself spoken by the discourse of the
symbolic Other (which is the Lacanian formula for the unconscious). This follows
from the fact that the speaking subject usually finds himself saying a ‘lot more’ or a
‘lot less’ than he consciously intends to in any interpersonal encounter. That is why
the speaking subject is not in full control of what he says though he can prepare his
comments carefully. Nonetheless, he has to exercise a lot of self-control to not depart
from the script of prepared comments. This feeling that there is a lot more or lot less
that needs to be said or should have been said on any given occasion constitutes the
1 For an elaboration of this theme, see Bruce Fink (1995). ‘The Lacanian Subject,’ in The
Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press), pp.
33-79. See also Bruce Fink (2014). ‘Lacan on Personality from the 1930s to the 1950s,’ Against
Understanding:Casesand Commentary in a Lacanian Key (London and New York: Routledge),
Vol. 2, pp. 92-104.

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Lacanian model of communication as that which is animated by a form of plus-de-
jouis (‘surplus enjoyment’). This means that the forms of enjoyment which constitute
speech in analysis; or even in everyday life, are more or less than that which is
objectively needed on any given occasion. What analysts do then is to explore this
positive or negative excess to find a point of entry into the unconscious; these forms of
excess then are what is at stake in a psychoanalytic model of stability.
REGULATING INTEREST RATES
Regulating the desire of the subject then alternates between forms of ‘libidinisation’
and ‘de-libidinisation’ through the intervention of the psychoanalyst. The former is
required when the subject experiences too little enjoyment; and the latter when the
subject enjoys too much. This does not mean that enjoyment can be objectively
measured. It is more a question of actual or perceived capacity to contain complex
affects ranging from the positive to the negative. The central banker’s equivalent of
this in monetary policy is known as ‘counter-cyclical policy.’ The regulation of
interest rates by central bankers is akin to the regulation of desire in patients by
psychoanalysts. In other words, there is an important relationship between questions
of ‘symbolic economy’ in monetary policy and those of ‘libidinal economy’ in
psychoanalysis.2 Lowering interest rates is a form of ‘libidinisation’ because it will
increase levels of economic activity in the economy. Increasing interest rates is a
form of ‘de-libidinisation’ because it will decrease the levels of economic activity and
cool down the economy when there is a danger of over-heating. If central bankers do
not tweak interest rates using a countercyclical approach; it will, needless to say,
overheat the economy. This is tantamount to a form of destabilization of the macro-
economy that monetary policy must prevent; that is why central banks were
invented. That is also why the increased levels of interaction that I argue for, in these
and other clinical notes in this series, between financial analysts and psychoanalysts
will help us to build a ‘psychoanalytically informed approach’ to questions of
stability and stabilization at individual, institutional, and macroeconomic levels without
falling prey to the ‘fallacy of composition’ in macroeconomic analysis. The fallacy of
composition occurs in economic theory when micro-economic phenomena are
treated as though they were macro-economic aggregates and vice-versa during
economic analysis. That is why stabilizing systemically important individuals will
not guarantee the stability of the banking or the financial system. The stability of
systemically important individuals is necessary, as Mark Carney recognizes, but it is
not sufficient. What actually guarantees stability in the macro-economy are
institutional safeguards provided by central banks and regulatory agencies to
2 See R. W. Hafer (2005). ‘Counter Cyclical Policy,’ The Federal Reserve System: An
Encyclopaedia (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press), pp. 69-70.

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prevent the negative fallout that might ensue if an important stakeholder has a bad
day at work; or acts-out, through the automatic activation of regulatory safeguards
like circuit breakers in stock exchanges.3 Central bankers and financial regulators
are more likely to stabilize the economy if they are armed with a theory of the
subject like psychoanalysis since it will prevent them from succumbing to the fallacy
of composition while making their interventions. It will help them to recognize the
ontological differences between stability at the levels of the individual, the institution, and the
macro-economy as a whole. This, briefly put, is the sum of my intellectual exchanges,
for instance, with eminent central bankers like Ben Bernanke, Mark Carney, and
Janet Yellen. That is also why questions of ‘mental health,’ in the context of stability
policies, have moved to the forefront of Mark Carney’s consciousness in an
unprecedented way at the Bank of England.4
‘REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY’ AS AN ANALYTIC INTERVENTION
Here, again, the term ‘enjoyment’ is not to be conflated with sexual ‘pleasure.’
Enjoyment is the translation of the French term ‘jouissance’ which means ‘pleasure in
pain’ or ‘pain in pleasure.’5 Jouissance is that which is ‘beyond’ the homeostatic
principle which regulates the functioning of the psyche; that is why any form of
excessive affect is experienced as traumatic by the subject.6 De-libidinisation is a Lacanian
intervention that can help a patient or larger social entities work through the fear of
success or the fear of happiness by invoking ‘reverse psychology.’7 This removes the
3 The analytic theory of acting out is explained in Charles Rycroft (1968, 1995). ‘Acting Out,’
A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (London: Penguin Books), pp. 1-2; and Jean Laplanche
and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973, 1988). ‘Acting Out,’ The Language of Psychoanalysis,
translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel Lagache (London: Karnac
Books), pp. 4-6. See also Robert J. Shiller (2012). ‘Policy Makers in Charge of Stabilizing the
Economy,’ Finance and the Good Society (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press),
pp. 111-118. For essays on the forms of regulation that will be appropriate in the financial
system, see Stephanie Griffith-Jones et al (2010). Timefor a Visible Hand: Lessons from the 2008
Financial Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
4 See, for instance, H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. and Stuart F. Spicker (1978). Mental Health:
Philosophical Perspectives (Dordecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company).
5 See Dylan Evans (1996, 1997). ‘Jouissance,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian
Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 91-92.
6 See Sigmund Freud (1920, 1991). ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle,’ On Metapsychology:The
Theory of Psychoanalysis, translated by James Strachey, edited by Angela Richards (London:
Penguin Books), Vol.11, pp. 269-338.
7 A lucid account of the basic scope of psychology is available in Gillian Butler and Freda
McManus (1998, 2006). Psychology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press).

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burden of excessive affects from the locus of the patient, or the speaking subject, and
lets him get on with his life.8 The speech of the patient is however not innocuous. It
is animated either by the desire of the speaking subject or by the desire of the Other.
An important goal of Lacanian topology then is to articulate the main differences
between the ‘desire of the subject’ and the ‘desire of the Other’ within a model of
analytic subjectivity.9 The initial Lacanian formulation was that desire is ‘always’ the
desire of the Other. This however does not mean that the subject has no desire of his
own. The whole point of analysis is to figure out when the subject is propelled by the
desire of the Other; and when he is acting on his own desire. The Lacanian
formulation which states that ‘desire is always desire of the Other’ means that in the
ultimate analysis desire always comes from others; the world which pre-exists us, our
parents, friends, and loved ones, who serve as libidinal prototypes in the unconscious.
That however does not mean that the subject cannot domesticate the desire of the
Other as his own. An important ethical imperative in Lacanian analysis is that this is
precisely what is expected through the process of ‘subjectification’ or ‘working-
through’ in analysis.10 When the subject works-through, he accepts as his own the
aspirations, desires, and thoughts which stem from the locus of the Other. He admits
to his analyst that he lets himself be affected by the locus of the symbolic Other.
ALIENATION AND SEPARATION
The main burden of Bruce Fink’s intervention in these seminars, then, is to help us to
differentiate between the ‘desire of the subject’ and the ‘desire of the Other’ by
invoking three important Lacanian mechanisms in contention: they are ‘alienation,
separation, and traversing the fantasy’ at the end of the analysis.11 The first of these
8 For essays on the history of happiness, see Stuart McCready (2001). The Discovery of
Happiness (London: MQ Publications Ltd), passim.
9 For a history of this theme, see Donald E. Hall (2004). Subjectivity (New York and London:
Routledge), the New Critical Idiom Series.
10 See, for instance, Ellie Ragland (1995). ‘Lacan and the Ethics of Desire,’ Essays on the
Pleasures of Death: From Freud to Lacan (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 144-181;
Bruce Fink (1997, 1999). ‘Desire and Psychoanalytic Technique,’ A Clinical Introduction to
Lacanian Psychoanalysis:Theory and Technique (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), pp. 1-
71. See also Jean-Laplanche and Jean-Bertrand Pontalis (1973, 1988). ‘Working-Through,’
translated by Donald-Nicholson-Smith, introduction by Daniel Lagache (London: Karnac
Books), pp. 488-489.
11 See Dylan Evans (1996, 1997). ‘End of Analysis,’ An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian
Psychoanalysis (London and New York: Routledge), pp. 53-55. The main point here is that the
end of analysis is not about approaching the last analytic session in a chronological series,

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mechanisms is a consequence of the fact that the subject’s ego is constituted in the
mirror stage. The main emphasis here is on the fact that the formative dimension of
the ego is the consequence of the identification with an image in the mirror; this is
the most important source of alienation in Lacanian theory. This moment of
alienation cannot be wished away. It is not contingent but essential to the Lacanian
theory of subjectivity. In addition to the imaginary form of alienation there is also
the symbolic form. This is a consequence of the fact that the Lacanian subject arises
through immersion in language. The subject is therefore structured by the attributes
of both the imaginary and the symbolic which constitute, as it were, its ‘conditions of
possibility.’ The Lacanian approach to alienation then is structural. It is not a
consequence of being raised in a particular type of society. In other words, we
cannot in the Lacanian model conceive of a theory of the subject without invoking
the structural effects of alienation as well. Separation involves coming to terms with
the fact that the birth of the subject is an enactment of the desire of his or her parents.
In the moment of separation, the patient tries to subjectify why he should have come
into the world at all. This is tantamount to asking in the oedipal matrix whose desire,
if any, he should pursue as his own. This is another way of saying, for Lacan, that all
desire is mediated by the parental Other. Irrespective of which parent takes the locus
of importance, mediation is an inescapable part of the subject’s existence. Alienation
and separation then are the psychic mechanisms whereby the subject seeks to work-
through the desire of the Other. Alienation is the attempt to find out what that desire
is. Separation is the attempt to come to terms with that desire whatever its contents
might be. The logical form of alienation is ‘either/or’ while that of separation is
‘neither/nor.’ The Lacanian concepts of desire and lack are implicated in the theory
of separation. So, for instance, the analytic theory of anxiety can be understood
either as premature separation from the mother in Freud; or as the seeming
impossibility of being separated from the mother in Lacan. Both of these situations
can engender anxiety in the neurotic subject. This follows, needless to say, from the
analytic definition of the neurotic subject as somebody who cannot individuate in
the oedipal matrix like the normative subject can.
THE END OF ANALYSIS
The final phase of the analytic trajectory is known as ‘traversing the phantasy.’ This
involves the realization that the unconscious cannot be made fully conscious. The
attempt to do so in analysis is neither necessary nor even desirable. In this phase, the
subject assumes existential responsibility for his contingent traumas and
unconscious phantasies. The process of doing so, within the analytic trajectory, is
known as ‘subjectification.’ It is related to the retroactive model of causation that
but about ‘traversing the fantasy’ that Evans describes in his lexical entry on the end of
analysis.

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constitutes the analytic approach to trauma. What this means is that traumas become
traumatic only later in time and not when they occur. So the subject of analysis has a
choice in how he chooses to think about events that affect his sense of well-being.
This moment of choice constitutes the existential approach that is favoured by the
patient. It is possible to differentiate between hysteria, obsessional neurosis, and the
phobias on the basis of how the patient reacts to the core trauma that is being
worked-through in analysis. So, irrespective of the forms of psychoneurosis in
contention, the patient has to work-through the mechanisms of alienation,
separation, and then traverse the phantasy that constitutes the end of his analysis.
An important question that characterizes the end of analysis, for Lacan, is whether
the patient is expected to identify with the analyst. Lacanian analysts do not insist
that patients should identify with them because identification can become yet
another source of alienation for the patient. In ego psychology, however, it is
acceptable to bolster the weak ego of the patient by letting him identify with the
strong ego of the analyst. The importance of this decision relates to the fact that
Lacanian analysis, unlike ego psychology, is not a form of adaptation to a pre-
existing social order. Lacanians therefore find it ideologically unacceptable to end
the analysis through forms of adaptation, identification, or even by promising
unrealistic levels of happiness to the patient. This follows from the Lacanian
contention that the existence of the unconscious makes the attainment of happiness
much more problematic than is commonly realized.12 Furthermore, the transference
cannot be worked-through in its entirety. What is actually possible then is to
displace the patient’s transference from a particular analyst to the discourse of
psychoanalysis.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN
12 See Jacques Lacan (1986, 1992). ‘The Demand for Happiness and the Promise of Analysis,’
The Ethics of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques-Lacan, 1959-1960, translated by Dennis
Porter, edited by Jacques-Alain Miller (London: Tavistock/Routledge), pp. 291-301.