From the author: The article was written jointly with Lev Khaitin and Elizaveta Mironova, was published in the quarterly Almanac “Archetypal Studies” No. 6, October 2012 Vladislav Lebedko, Lev Khaitin, Elizaveta Mironova “Psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan and Magic Theater” Magic Theater arises from the metaphysical fog of philosophy in human life. At the same time, rational “knowledge” of philosophy may be completely unconscious. S. Freud's guiding idea about the role of the unconscious in our existence completely destroyed concepts based on the arrogance of the carnal mind about its superiority over all the forces of Nature, on the idea of ​​the final accession of Man in the world as a supreme being. This is not the place to describe the history of psychoanalysis, which is forever associated with the name of Freud. Let us only note that Freud’s closest students took a different path and for many years psychoanalysis remained, as it were, on the sidelines of a person’s thoughts about himself. A new powerful wave of rethinking Freud’s brilliant discoveries is associated with the name of the French philosopher of the last century, J. Lacan. Lacan's ideas opened up new facets of contact between psychoanalysis and MT. Jacques Marie Emile Lacan (1901 - 1981) - French psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, philosopher of psychoanalysis, founder of structural psychoanalysis. The creator of the school and teaching - Lacanism, which became widespread not only in France, but also beyond its borders. Lacan's work is extremely multifaceted and flexible; he preferred to present his ideas not in writing, but at seminars, the materials of which began to be published only at the end of his life. The main direction of Lacan's thought was a structuralist revision and careful rereading of Freud's texts, while Lacan never lost sight of his orientation towards psychoanalytic practice and one of his main goals was to understand what actually happens in the process of analysis. Lacan opposed the natural scientific psychological an approach in which a person is described as an object similar to other objects of the world presented to consciousness and study. The question of the subject as a subject is at the center of Lacan's work. Lacan's texts are a unique phenomenon of literature: in addition to scientific and philosophical statements, they contain a lot of humor, barbs, provocations, and deliberate mysteries. Lacan, for example, has a number of maxims that cannot be understood once and for all, but to which he himself periodically returned, interpreting them differently. Lacan sought to bring clarity to psychoanalysis, to this most complex area, which since the time of Freud has been overgrown with uncertainties and myths and almost total misunderstanding. Lacan's teaching is a kind of involvement in conflict, which brings his philosophy very close to the Magic Theater. We will touch here only on a few of Lacan's fundamental ideas, which are most relevant to the theory and practice of MT. The human unconscious (a set of mental states and processes that occur without the participation of consciousness). According to J. Lacan, human nature is radically different from the nature of animals. Man does not have instincts in the form in which they are presented in animals. He criticized the biological understanding of the unconscious: “The unconscious has nothing in common with either the innate or the instinctive.” J. Lacan argued that “Freud’s unconscious is not at all the romantic unconscious of the creative imagination.” According to J. Lacan, “the unconscious is built like a language” (cited from [1, pp. 25-30]). Freud’s unconscious consists of verbal and figurative representations representing drives. J. Lacan considered figurative and verbal representations as signifiers. The term signifier and, together with it, the signified, J. Lacan borrowed from the structural linguistics of F. de Saussure. With their help, the latter described the sign. According to F. de Saussure, a linguistic sign is a two-sided mental element: S/s, where s is a signified or concept, S is a signifier or an acoustic image of sound. Along with acoustica visual image can also be a signifying image. Lacan argued that the signifier has a constitutive role in the formation of the unconscious, and the formula S/s describes the topic or, in other words, the structure of the unconscious. This idea is expressed in his famous thesis “the unconscious is structured like a language.” Thus, the unconscious is not a mysterious creature hiding within each of us. Most often, It constantly manifests itself, most often without causing us alertness. According to J. Lacan, the unconscious does this at the level of the double meaning of words, at the level of their polysemy, or, better, at the level of polysemy of signifiers. Lacan liberated the signifier, freeing it from dependence on the signified, and introduced the concept of the “sliding” or “floating signifier”. He put forward the idea of ​​the continuous escaping of the signifier from the signified, which in fact implies only interaction, the play of signifiers alone in their separation from the signified. According to J. Lacan, signifiers play a dominant role in the life of the subject, which is subordinate to them and formed by them. Language and its constituent elements is primary in relation to the subject. He wrote: “A language with its structure appears before a specific subject enters it at a certain stage of his mental development” (quoted from [2, p. 56]). According to J. Lacan, the subject is born into language, he is immediately included in it. And social human relations are linguistic relations. All spheres of human relations are permeated by language and function thanks to the presence of language. Social relations are formed and organized by signifiers and the connections between them: “There are connections that are predetermined even before any relationships that are actually human in nature arise between people. These connections originate in what they can rely on in nature... Nature, therefore, is the supplier of signifiers. These signifiers are the fundamental factor that organizes human relations, sets their structure, models them” (quoted from [1, p. 26]). The organization of signifiers is discourse. Discourse is a multi-valued concept. J. Lacan described discourse as a structure that goes far beyond speech, which, unlike discourse, is more or less random, situational in nature. For J. Lacan, discourse is a certain form of social connections. He identified four such forms or discourses: university, master's discourse, hysterical discourse and analytical discourse. Discourse implies the dialectic of human relations; this is what underlies relationships and determines them. J. Lacan wrote: “in fact, discourse can do without words. It persists in a certain kind of basic relationship. It is impossible, strictly speaking, to support these latter without language” (quoted from [2, p. 9]). J. Lacan argued that the subject is subordinate to discourse, and therefore is subordinate to another, who takes the position of a mediator in “relationships with oneself as one’s own kind.” According to J. Lacan, the unconscious is a discourse, but the discourse is not of the subject, but of the Other. J. Lacan wrote: “The subject may seem, of course, a slave of language, but he is even more a slave to discourse, in whose all-encompassing movement his place - even if only in the form of his own name - is destined from birth” (quoted from [3; p. .81]). The subject is subordinate to this discourse and it is formed by it. For MT, which begins with the presentation of the hero’s request, the topic of the unconscious, understood as the interaction of the signified with the sliding signifier in the form of discourse, opens the way for identifying the “true” request of the hero, which inevitably appears at the beginning of the theater in clothes of lies. There is a rule in the MT methodology: don’t deal with the first request, hang it on the wall. Instead of the well-known maxim: look for a woman, J. Lacan discovered a new one for us: look for the Other. Without outlining the discourse to which the hero is enslaved, without identifying the Other, who is the mediator in the hero’s relationship with himself, it is not possible to understand the hero’s request. Aif you have not received the “correct” impulse from the hero, who will become a guiding star for the leader, the fire of the MT mystery is unlikely to become fertile. The drama of desire. Desire is one of the central concepts of Freudian and Lacanian thought. It is important to understand the difference between the conventional understanding of “Desire” and the psychoanalytic one. For Lacan, “Desire” is an unexpected disturbance, a kind of “out of the blue,” a kind of scandal and temptation. Where there is no conflict, repression, guilt and denial, there is no desire. The usual concept of “desire” appears in a completely neutral, harmless form. Psychoanalysis approaches the understanding of desire in a completely different way. Desire is not a phenomenon, but a function. The subject today, according to Lacan, can never expect that he will be able to get rid of the drama of desire. Since the subject took the entire burden of responsibility upon himself, because after the death of God there was no longer a buffer of divinity, and the subject was left alone with himself. If a person says that he has no desire, he presents its repression in its pure form. Lacan - “desire” is the desire of another, what the subject receives from another. The distinction between internal and external is completely blurred. The “true” desire turns out to be hidden from the subject. But only this, in fact, allows the subject to “really” exist. Let us once again note Lacan’s thought: where there is no conflict, repression, guilt and denial, there is no desire. That is, desire always appears in the garb of lies. It appears so in order not to be solved and not to be realized. This is where the “fateful choice” arises: either to go into the realm of the unknown, into the world of the unconscious, where “truth” exists in the form of an unexpressed desire, or to remain in the visible world, in the world of social, public existence, simply muffling the painful symptom to alleviate the suffering of the subject. MT, thanks to its fundamental orientation towards renouncing the “right” of the presenter to define something as necessary or useful, allows the hero, figures, and chorus to “look” into places where everyday consciousness never allows them to look. Obviously, on this path, participants inevitably have to abandon their usual masks, exposing conflict, guilt, denial, because if the subject is happy with everything and does not recognize “desire” in himself, desire as an energy impulse, then he thereby demonstrates a complete lack of life potential . It is clear that such an experience can sometimes be very painful. This is truly an extreme journey, not accessible to everyone. So, according to Lacan, desire, unlike need, has a constantly shifting, wandering, eccentric and even scandalous character. One of his paradoxes is that, by appealing to the real, desire is content with hallucinatory satisfaction. It is the source of phantasm as such. However, at the same time, it affects not only the imaginary order of the subject, but also sets in motion the symbolic chain of signifiers. Desire triggers all speech acts, including silence. It drives all conscious and unconscious ideas. Another paradox of desire: an object becomes desired only if it is prohibited. Desire is awakened by the Law that prohibits it. It needs an obstacle to overcome. There is no, for example, incestuous desire before the prohibition of incest. Lacan argues: any object becomes an object of desire only if it is prohibited. Desire is supported by the prohibiting Law, which not only contrasts the Law and desire, but also speaks of the Law of desire itself. Lacan's commandment: do not betray your desire! His Law is the only imperative. Its manifestation is in desire. Lacan says that the subject cannot follow the call of pleasure for long. The subject's desire goes against nature. Psychoanalysis asserts that if a subject does not achieve something, it means that he himself refuses it, he does not allow himself. The subject tries to avoid pleasure (what is intended to attract a person, on the contrary, causes him irritation). Lacan's views on the nature of desire, understoodas a drama of the subject, from which he will never be able to get rid of, are very close to the practice of MT. Each presenter directly feels the endless difficulty of exposing the “true” desire of the hero, which, perhaps, is the eternally sought “I”. After all, real life begins there and then when desire is not given up. But before that, it appears in the form of a prohibiting law. And almost every time MT is faced with a situation of conflict, repression, guilt, denial, up to the renunciation of “any” desire, which clearly indicates its total repression. To free, to liberate the desire, which, as it were, does not exist, this is the super task of MT. Real, Symbolic and Imaginary. The structure of the human psyche in Lacan looks like a sphere of complex and contradictory interaction of three components: the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. These “instances”, “orders” or “registers” of the psychoanalytic field were initially interpreted by Lacan as a stage-by-stage process of the child’s linguistic development and only subsequently were rethought by him as “perspectives” or “plans”, as the main “dimensions” in which a person exists regardless of of his age. In the most general terms, the Imaginary is that complex of illusory ideas that a person creates about himself and which plays an important role in his mental defense, or, rather, self-defense. The Imaginary is not a veil of Maya, not an illusion, but, on the contrary , a purely theoretical assumption from my everyday experience. The subject is inclined to think of his existence, starting with his body, as the dominance of good form. It’s the same in actions - they must also have good form. But according to Lacan, there can be no integrity of man, no ideal form. What Leonardo da Vinci proposes - a man of ideal form and beauty inscribed in a circle - is all just a repression of the knowledge of the failure of the Real. Lacan believes that any idea of ​​beautiful form, perfection and the like cannot be taken seriously. Just as there are cracks and breaks in the universe, so the structure of the subject is torn. In order to cope with the trauma of Reality, on the basis of the Imaginary, the subject understands himself as a whole. If the Imaginary is characterized by dual relationships based on the connections of one’s own self with an image, reflection, another, then the Symbolic is described by tripartite relationships: I - the other - the Other. Moreover, while the imaginary in these relations is marked by visible alienation, the symbolic introduces alienation from itself in the signifier. A signifier is something that represents a subject to another signifier. It always refers only to another signifier and never refers to the meaning. Here, first of all, it is important what other signifiers we associate this signifier with. There is no need to look for meaning in words, because a word is only a signifier and always refers to other signifiers. The real is hidden through the symbolic. When the subject deals with the Symbolic, the Real does not bother him too much. Speaking about the Symbolic, we should emphasize the opposition of “symbol” in Jung and Lacan. A Lacanian symbol is a signifier that is not permanently connected to the signified, while in the Jungian tradition a symbol is a transcendental, stable sign. Lacan's symbolic does not coincide with language in general. The symbolic relates to the space of signifiers, while the realm of signifieds belongs, at least in part, to the order of the imaginary. Lacan arrives at the symbolic from the “symbolic function” that structures kinship relations, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Marcel Mauss’s theory of gift exchange. Since the main form of exchange in human society is the exchange of words, that is, the use of the gift of speech, law and structure are unthinkable outside of language, which means that the symbolic has a linguistic dimension. The symbolic precedes the birth of the subject. The subject is born into the symbolic. Despite the fact that the symbolic, like the order of language, precedes the appearance of the imaginary, despite the fact that it appears inIn the “mirror stage”, together with the imaginary, in the strict sense of the word, the subject enters the symbolic through the Oedipus stage. Entry into the strictly human register is associated with Oedipus, the Law, the Other, Castration, the Father, the Name of the Father. This position of Lacan very clearly calls us to a more careful reading of Freud. The Real is the most problematic category of Lacan - this is the sphere of biologically generated and psychically sublimated needs and impulses that are not given to the individual’s consciousness in any rationalized form accessible to him. Everything that was said above is only a diagram in a first approximation, since each of these instances is considered by Lacan in two aspects: firstly, as one of the stages in the development of the child’s self-awareness; and secondly, as a specific sphere of functioning of the psyche of an adult. An important category for working with the concept of “Real” is for Lacan the category of “repetition”, discovered by Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard speaks of repetition with the reproduction of failure. Referring to Freud, Lacan shows that the subject always strives to repeat the situation in which he hurts himself, punishes himself. And due to the existence of the unconscious, the subject is doomed to repeat. It is in failure, failure, repetition that one must look for the contours of the Real. The most difficult thing here is the inability to realize that the unconscious exists. This cannot be realized in the realm of life experience. Failure seems to be present from the very beginning and takes place at the level of the unconscious. The real explodes both the imaginary and the symbolic. It is not the unknown that looms ahead, but the subject is initially placed in a situation of failure. Lacan believes that we need to work with the field where failure occurs. This is a twisted field - all things are connected with the fact that a person is not able to learn anything about himself. To illustrate the concept of the "Real", Lacan takes Klein's Bottle - a figure in which the neck of a bottle is inserted into the bottom, which is displayed in the 4th dimension. Klein's bottle is different in that in the third dimension it has a flaw in the form of a sharp boundary. This figure corresponds to the Mobius Strip, which has no internal and no external. Everything is an illusion. These figures reproduce the paradox characteristic of the Real - each side is neither external nor internal. Therefore, every gesture of the psychoanalyst causes conflict around itself. Psychoanalytic is an “injection of the impossible.” Speaking of repression, the psychoanalyst causes even greater repression. Where the Real is vividly touched, there a person deals with the Real. In the practice of MT we constantly encounter these three registers of the structure of the human psyche. MT seeks to release the Real through an “injection of the impossible.” “Injection of the Impossible” takes on a variety of different, unusual, and sometimes exotic techniques in MT. But only in this way, in an atmosphere of sincere spontaneous living of the images of the Symbolic, overcoming the dichotomy of the Imaginary in interpersonal relationships, can one break through into the Real, for it hides through the Symbolic, displacing all its failures from consciousness. "Knowledge". Dialectic of Master and Slave. Jacques Lacan quotes Hegel: “There remains no other master than the absolute—death. But to see this, the slave needs a certain time. After all, he, like everyone else, is glad to be a slave.” Lacan asks the question of how the state of the social field of knowledge came to be. He noticed that any public scene never gives itself a full account of some things. There are things that the audience cannot allow. Each subject is equipped with a structure in which its knowledge operates. Most of the knowledge the subject possesses remains completely unconscious. Since we do not know where this knowledge comes from and what is paid for it, a situation of neurosis arises in which a huge amount of the subject’s energy is spent on repression, spent on not knowing. Lacan’s goal is a break with the knowledge that we receive in the form structured packagea break with a whole group of psychological concepts. With many things, Lacan believes, we encounter only through imposed knowledge, through placing knowledge at the center, managing through it. It turns out that someone who has not gone through “knowledge” and has not absorbed it is not fully human. Lacan talks about the University discourse - in this discourse everyone knows about everything. This knowledge is necessary for adaptation. Regarding the concept of knowledge, Lacan believes, it is necessary to get rid of the adaptation theory that is put into the head. Invisibly, knowledge builds ideas about the world, about adequacy, about correctness. For all actions there are reasons, a person thinks, in the field of reaction there is nothing other than the obvious cause, and nothing else interferes. Freud and Lacan believe that, on the contrary, desire interferes all the time, and what Freud called the “death drive.” Lacan believes that we are faced with heterogeneity, adaptation is impossible, the subject’s relationship with reality is uncoordinated. Our entire idea of ​​knowledge is exhausted by the adaptation theory. Lacan thinks differently - knowledge is not adaptive. For Lacan, the concept of knowledge is closely connected with the concepts of Master and slave. Interest in knowledge, starting from antiquity, Lacan notes, has been of interest to administrators. Knowledge is what the ruling class is interested in, Master. Knowledge is what the ruling class is trying to give us. There is reality, and there is truth. These are two different things. The knowledge they have is mostly useless. Here lies the gap that Lacan emphasizes. Knowledge of the world around us is considered the most important in our time. Lacan is interested in the question: why does knowledge act as a plug, a diversion of public indignation? Obviously, there is a policy of educating the subject. Lacan shows that until knowledge becomes the property of the Master, it will not become the property of the public. All politics regarding knowledge, since knowledge is the property of the ruling class, receives a repressive perspective. It turns out that there is no harmless knowledge, it is not for everyone. Everything is an illusion thrown like a veil over knowledge. The illusion is cast by the Master, striving for the eternal good to which knowledge should lead. In our time, Lacan believes, there is an imaginary openness, which speaks of the true closedness of knowledge. Now a situation arises of “the death or disappearance of the Master.” The master is much more alienated than the slave. The situation gets worse when the master dies. But God, as Nietzsche noted, is already dead. Freud’s myth about the murder of the primitive father, the guardian of morality, also speaks about this. As soon as the sons kill their father, they begin to feel shame, and the ban becomes even stricter. The field of pleasure is open - but one cannot take advantage of it. If there is no God or father, then there is no pleasure. The myth seems to speak about the past, but characterizes today. Today every subject is neurotic. He is unable to enjoy without experiencing shame. The subject believes that he is not entitled to this. People behave as if they themselves killed the master. The place of the Master has become vacant. A series of displacements arise and the situation worsens, Lacan believes. There is a hard structure around the edges, around the void that formed around the deceased Master. The President is not a Master, but simply an official. Any revolution is possible when the Master is killed and there is no respect for authority. The discourse of the Master, Lacan believes, goes into the unconscious - it is very important who gets the knowledge. What is emerging now is the Discourse of the University - oppression is moving into new forms. Everywhere knowledge that is ratified, censorship rules everywhere, starting with children's books. Knowledge is considered a tool, it must work and be useful - this is the case with humanitarian knowledge. In our time, only that which is immediately understandable is most valuable. Lacan ridicules this approach. Slaves serve and do not protest. Knowledge is marked by an unconscious feeling of guilt. The liberal theory does not notice that there is a hole in the place of the Master. Guilt, says Lacan, is a tribute paid to a dead Master. This is the onean internal stimulus that the subject cannot cope with. Guilt without guilt. It has always been the reason for very weak social protest. Conscience is a feeling of guilt that does not explain the guilt by any visible reasons. The government is weak, the products of the University are weak - they do not stand up to criticism. That which performs a repressive function is characterized by weakness, stupidity and idiocy. And revolution arises precisely when the uncertainty and guilt of the authorities reaches a maximum. Ancient Eastern wisdom says: “Life relies on hope and dreams, but hope and dreams do not stand up to life.” Isn’t it the same as a person, it’s impossible to live without society, but it’s impossible to live in society. MT cannot exist outside the social matrix of the current time. Social tension sets the dimensionality of the entire space of the subject’s existence. That is why the loneliness of the subject, which arose as a result of the death of the Master, poisons his existence. MT allows you to look beyond the horizons of social loneliness, to feel freedom, right and responsibility for your own life. The mysteries of MT “deliberately” introduce participants into spaces where the relationship between Master and slave can be viewed from completely different positions than those historically formed in postmodern culture. Concluding the excursion into the philosophy of J. Lacan, we note his amazing relevance for the theory and practice of MT. The depth, honesty, social rigidity of Lacan's statement encourages all participants in MT, both those who develop theory and those who develop practical techniques, to search for a perfect form, which, as Lacan claims, does not actually exist. PS Lacan's Gifts to the Magic Theater. MT is open to all winds, but psychoanalysis in Lacan's interpretation is something that is now impossible to do without. Let us conclude with a short list of concepts from the philosophy of Lacan that are firmly woven into the language of MT. Unconscious. - the unconscious has nothing in common with either the innate or the instinctive - the signifier and the signified - the sliding signifier - nature is the provider of signifiers - the signifier has a constitutive role in formation of the unconscious - the unconscious is structured like a language - the unconscious manifests itself at the level of polysemy of signifiers - the organization of signifiers is discourse. - the unconscious is discourse - the subject is born in language - the subject is subordinate to discourse, the subject is a slave of discourse - the unconscious is the discourse of the Other Desire. - desire is awakened by the Law that prohibits it - do not betray your desire! - manifestation of desire - in desire - desire triggers all speech acts, including silence - desire drives all conscious and unconscious ideas. - appealing to the real, desire is content with hallucinatory satisfaction - desire needs an obstacle that must be overcome - desire of the subject goes against nature - the subject tries to evade the pleasure of the Real, Symbolic and Imaginary. - there is no integrity of a person, there is no ideal form - The imaginary is a complex of illusory ideas for self-defense. - the word is only a signifier, and always refers to other signifiers - the symbolic correlates with the space of signifiers - the symbolic precedes the birth of the subject - the subject enters the symbolic through the Oedipus stage - the subject is doomed to repeat - the real - explodes both the imaginary and the symbolic - every gesture of the psychoanalyst causes a conflict - the psychoanalytic is an “injection of the impossible” “Knowledge”. Dialectic of Master and Slave. - the slave is glad to be a slave - most of the knowledge is in the unconscious - imposed knowledge, placed at the center of the personality, serves to control a person - the knowledge that is possessed is mostly useless - there is an imaginary openness that speaks of the true closedness of knowledge - the subject is not able to enjoy, without experiencing shame - people behave as if they themselves killed the Master - there is a rigid structure around the edges, around the void formed by the deceased Master - today every subject is neurotic - knowledge is marked. 81