On Jouissance & Love
English editions of the works of Jacques Lacan have generally left jouissance untranslated in order to help convey its specialised usage.[4] Lacan first developed his concept of an opposition between jouissance and the pleasure principle in his Seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" (1959–1960). Lacan considered that "there is a jouissance beyond the pleasure principle"[5] linked to the partial drive; a jouissance which compels the subject to constantly attempt to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go beyond the pleasure principle.
Yet according to Lacan, the result of transgressing the pleasure principle is not more pleasure, but instead pain, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this "painful principle" is what Lacan calls jouissance.[6] Thus jouissance is suffering (ethics), something that may be linked to the influence of the erotic philosophy of Bataille, and epitomised in Lacan's remark about "the recoil imposed on everyone, in so far as it involves terrible promises, by the approach of jouissance as such".[7] Lacan also linked jouissance to the castration complex,[8] and to the aggression of the death drive.[9]
I found myself switching between English and Mandarin Chinese input repeatedly, struggling to find a language I find myself comfortable writing in. I suppose that’s a defense mechanism running its course - writing about jouissance, and my endeavor to depart from jouissance and practice love, feels vulnerable.
I may as well be creative and write in two languages -
Jouissance: 恋爱的犀牛/Rhinoceros in Love
During my undergraduate years at Fudan University, I have heard multiple times from friends about this play. I have never been a fan for plays, and never paid too much attention - until recently.
For a play that was written in 1999 Mainland China, I was surprised by its free-flow quality. One of its songs, The Woman Made of Glass, caught my attention.
It goes,
“我的爱人，你永远不知道 / 你是我渴望已久的晴天
你永远不知道 / 你是我难以忍受的饥饿
你永远不知道 / 你是我赖以呼吸的空气
我的爱人
你是那不同的唯一的柔软的干净的天空一样的
你是那不同的唯一的柔软的干净的天空一样的
你是我温暖的手套 冰冷的啤酒，带着太阳光气息的衬衫
日复一日的梦想
你是纯洁的天真的玻璃一样的，你是纯洁的天真的水流一样的
你是纯洁的天真的什么也改变不了，阳光穿过你却改变了自己的方向”
Well - it was written so elegantly in Chinese, and I can only try to translate.
“My love / You’ll never know / You are the sunny day I have been ever longing
You’ll never know / You are the desperate hunger I endure
You’ll never know / You are the air I breathe on
My love /
You are the different, you are the special, you are the soft, clean sky
You are the warm gloves, iced beer,
You are the shirt that smells like sunshine,
And you are my everlasting dream
You are pure, clean like the glass, you are pure, naive like the flowing creek
You can change nothing,
Yet the sunlight changes its direction when it crosses you”
That’s a very literate translate, and a 60-second job, too curt to my liking, however, I do think I did a good job translating the desperate, dreamy, firey vibe.
I never watched the show, and yet in psychoanalysis, I can clearly see how the character in love was idealized into “my hunger”, “my everlasting dream”, “the air I breathe on”. It reminds me of death drive - the desire to die, burn, and to seek joy upon pain.
Whether this joy is one’s own, or the joy belongs to someone else, it does not matter. The core of jouissance is the firey desire to burn, to feel pain, and to seek pleasure beyond pain. And worst of all, the desire jouissance generated does not come from a place of love, but a place of regression; it leads to failure to love the other, and leads to empty longing of an idealized image of the other.
I tend to associate jouissance with the artistic creative behaviors - and I will never forget the 48 hours I was writing the first play in my life, when I was 19. I could neither sense hunger or thirst, and I can no longer hear or sense the rest of the world. I can only see my writing partner, and the play we are co-creating. I closed my eyes and saw only Lingxi Village, the fictional town where our play was based on. I remember it was a winter break during my first year of college, and after 48 hours of non-stop writing, I finally decided to pause and we said goodnight. Not until then could I sense how exhausted I was - but even so, I was still in some kind of ecstasy, a total separation from the real world.
Then I felt fear - a fear that seen from today, was even kind of /psychotic/, or /schizoid/. I felt totally alone in that moment, that I no longer belonged to Shanghai City, I no longer was an unhappy business student, everything is unreal, nothing was real - everything was becoming blurry, and the only real thing left was the show, and my writing partner.
From what I know today, schizoid personality can be contributed to prolonged unhappiness in the real world, and thus, it’s easier to separate oneself from the real and slide into the fantasy. I totally understand myself back then as a 19-year-old, depressed girl, that would die a thousand times to stay away from my parents, and the elite business school they threw me in.
That makes me think now - where does the jouissance come from? Schizoid personality can be explained by my childhood trauma, hence the constant desire to stay as far away from the real world that I did not find too much joy in. However, even so, the jouissance I felt when I was writing, the zest using which I wanted to burn myself, destroy myself and totally forget about myself - still confused and scared me.
The topic of jouissance has stayed with me since then, however, back in the time, I did not have a good word for it. I just knew that besides the “talent” in creative writing, this fire stayed with me in a lot of other places in my life.
Such as - the sexual tension and desire, I even as an ignorant girl, was able to sense around me.
I was an expert of desiring the other person’s desire, as well as obtaining other person’s desire.
It’s amazing, come to think of it today, that none of my girlfriends was disgusted by me, no one shamed me, disciplined me, and told me to be better. Maybe that’s part of the jouissance as well.…..the ability to activate the other person’s desire, or kindness, or forgiveness.
I have never put into words before, however, I do feel deeply ashamed about what I did to those young men. By idealizing them, and acting almost infantile, consciously or unconsciously, I “manipulated” them into doing all kinds of weird and crazy things - from jumping into a train without telling their family to see me, to abandoning their girlfriends and flying to see me on Valentie's Day, to climb a dumb tree, to start a fight, to booking a trip to Europe to see me... Good lord, I AM deeply ashamed of myself.
And all I needed to do was creating an image, an image that does not belong to me, an image during which they are desired, they are seen as perfect, they are also assigned to qualities that had nothing to do with them.
In simpler words - I just needed to make them believe that “You are the different, you are the special, you are the soft, clean sky”.
And they will then jump onto a train, abandon their girlfriend, climb a dumb tree, start a fight, they would have done everything and anything.
I did try to explain these things in many narratives - that I was a young, beautiful, fragile, privileged, and worst of all, an “artistically depressed” girl, and such girls were always desired by ignorant young men. However, I always knew that’s not the case - triggering jouissance was the key.
(Of course, the 19-year-old thought she were so in love, too, and she picked one of the unfortunate boys. She dumped a lot of qualities the boy did not entail at all to him, and one of them was an elegant taste of art. When she finally seduced the boy to run to her, and he was so excited…and at the end of the day, they were snuggling so cozily in a five-star hotel room, trying to do all kinds of young people’s things… and he turned on his laptop, and started to watch some random poorly-made soap operas. Her fantasy popped. And she ran.)
Jouissance did not bring me anywhere in love, it made me stay in pain, although it also left me with abundant sources of creative inspiration, a mixture of pain and joy. I have learned to stay away from it, to fight it if necessary, to be a different person, to be loving, kind, and to be good. And I also started to acknowledge that jouissance, as well as my death drive, will always be there, and somehow, I need to get along with it.
Awareness is the first step.
I transcribed the lyrics (Chinese) to my journal, to remind myself of the power of jouissance.
Love: love is apart from all things
The Great Fires, BY JACK GILBERT
Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.
Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.
Love to me, unlike jouissance, is not a feeling - it’s an act. As a Gestalt thinker, I feel unbearable tension and excitement in my chest when I feel jouissance, but I feel lots of peace and calmness when I feel love.
Love is based on constant evaluation of the other, that the other is a worthy person, that I am loving the real person, but not the image, the ideal, the fantasy I assigned to the person.
Love is an effort to constantly get to know the other, to understand the other, to think and act at the best interest of the other.
Love is a self-discipline, that I practice on a daily basis, that I commit myself to improve, to learn, to try, to be better, to empathize more, to understand more, to be there for the other more.
Love to me, also is a constant battle against jouissance - it’s my conscious choice that jouissance does not lead to love but destroys it.
I appreciate the opportunity of becoming a post-graduate Clinical Fellow at Gestalt Associates, that the training program mandates every clinical fellow to participate in strict personal analysis. I have felt broken many times in my own analysis, to deeply understand the seductive nature, and my desire to jouissance, and my decision of departure.
Practicing love is becoming easier these days, but it really started hard. The boundary was blurred, I was struggling, and worst of all, I was a horribly under-experienced, and under-supervised new-bee therapist, trying to help the most underserved population in NYC.
Well, that might have helped - my folks back then usually suffered from severe mental illness, and oftenly they were unfortunate enough to involve themselves into court cases, probation, homelessness, and juvenile system. Some of them did not smell good, some of them carried weapons, some of them were constantly drunk, and some of them did not speak any language, including English, that well. And fortunately, my schedule was fully scheduled for ACS calls, court attendings, letter writings and case management - boring enough to stop ANYONE from jouissance fantasies.
It’s also during that time, I started to practice love, instead of act on jouissance.
I found my folks did not want to, or was not available to, associate with me emotionally, usually by the hardship of their life. And by practicing strict social work, I learned to associate with them, to trust them, to understand the most different people from who I am, and learned to advocate on their behalf - instead of on my own.
I will never forget the day I found myself successfully getting an elderly lady into a housing project. The elderly lady only spoke Cantonese (and I know nothing of it). I would have never had interest of working with her if I was never assigned to her, and yet, we spent hours together, and I tried my best, using words, writing, gestures, and finally wrote her a full psychosocial evaluation. I will never forget her telling me that no one ever has tried so hard to understand her.
I am also thinking of someone who was radically different from me. We believer in radically different things, and shared radically life experiences… and yet, I want to be better for them, to understand them, to be there for them, to LOVE them.
Therapy at the end of the day is about love - and I have been too proud for too long, I thought that therapy was merely a practice of techniques and theories, and they can triumph life experiences, or the practice of love.
I was wrong - and I know better what to do now.
I will end this blog here: love is about walking out of my narcissism, to reach the others, and if I can’t reach yet, I will try my best.
