Page Two-Sunday, January 22, 1978-The Michigan Daily
The Michigan. Daily--Sunday, Jc
RAMPILINGS/su san ades7
WHEN FOUR MEN and four wom-
en signed a one-year lease on
three stories of paint-chipped clap-
board house, and populated it with two
dogs, assorted lovers, six stereos, ten-
th-hand furniture and home-grown
bean sprouts, I was among them.
My parents refused to admit to their
friends that their daughter had "joined
a commune," but in their laissez faire
tradition, they made no value judgment
except to say, "If that's what makes
you happy ..." I assured them "co-
operative living" would make me very
happy.
I was very wrong.
The blissful period of this adventure
in modern habitation was short-lived. It
started with lofty discussions around an
Alice Lloyd Hall dinner table and ended
the day my seven friends fled town for
the summer, leaving me an eight-bed-
room, unfurnished house to sublet until
the fall.
The subletters who stumbled into
their $50-a-month rooms on June 1st in-
cluded a hot-rod fiend, a Michigan State
packaging major, a travelling costume
jewelry saleswoman, a reclusive guru,
an elusive=Daily reporter and a Bridge
master en route to Harvard Law. Col-
lectively, they were more easily classi-
fied as anarchists.
The phone I installed for my guests
was the victim of one disconnect, cour-
tesy of Ma Bell, and one $15 re-connect,
while I was the victim of a string of un-
paid phone calls. Ants, in alarming
numbers, seemed to have more control
over the house than did the human resi-
dents. And the shower curtain, a mar-
velous slime green, had enough life in it
to get up and do the cha-cha.
So, when my co-operative cronies and
I returned in September, we joined for-
ces in a massive effort to whip our
maligned house back into shape.
AND WHEN WE were done, we
made provisions to team up on
just about everything else, too. A work
wheel was posted, and a cooking sched-
ule. Lists went up for shopping needs -
co-op and supermarket - and before
the first month was out; bills were
tacked up in full view with notices
alongside announcing due dates and
warning of the approaching rent pay-
ment. The refrigerator sported remind-
ers that the tomatoes were getting soft
or the cottage cheese was turning sour,
and lo-and-behold, that night's sched-
uled spaghetti was speckled with the
curdled white stuff, whether you liked it
or not. Green beans found their way in-
to tuna fish; eggplant tiptoed through
four-alarm chili. By the end of every
week, our refrigerator was as hollow as
a gourd, not a cucumber seed had gone
uneaten. We owed it all to our thrifty,
nifty shopping routine, which made its
first inroads on my sanity sometime in
late October.
TUESDAY: cooking teams (2 people
per night) place menus with all neces-
sary ingredients in envelope on bulletin
board. WEDNESDAY: co-op shopper
and food store shopper compile all
menus, rummage through all cup-
boards, refrigerators and freezers, list
all items, in exact quantities, to be pur-
chased. Items divided into two lists
headed "co-op" and "groceries."
THURSDAY: D-Day. FRIDAY: Post
such notes as: "Jackie, couldn't find
slivered blanched almonds for your
Turbot with Almond Egg Puff, bought
three bananas instead." So much for
creative food gathering.
Dinner was served promptly at 6:00,
which worked nicely into everyone's
lifestyle but mine; house meetings, fre-
quent and long, were scheduled for
midnight - about the time I'd be cudd-
ling up with my chemistry book for the
night. The phone was never available
when I was, and even when that cool,
sleak receiver was finally in my grip,
there was still no peace.
When I had the phone installed, I
made the fateful mistake of opting for a
system that allows you, through an an-
noying little click, to know when
someone is trying to call in on your busy
phone. The clicking will not stop until
you have taken a message from the in-
truding caller. This can be done by
briefly depressing the phone's discon-
nect button, which puts the original
caller on hold and engages the second
caller. After the message is taken, you
depress the disconnect button again to
bring back= the original caller. Mean-
while, to the second caller, this all
sounds somewhat ridiculous: "Sorry,
you can't talk to Stuart right now, I'm
on the phone." And the fun just begins
when you're on long distance.
ONE HELLISH week in February,
when I couldn't find a convenient
night to cook, missed four consecutive
6:00 dinners, perfunctorily hopskotched
through the supermarket, and was
interrupted six times during a three-
minute phone conversation (no kid-
ding), I blew the whistle. I called an
See RAMBLINGS, Page 7
sundav mdmadgzine ACESTIC PUZZLE
A. Instruments designed to
illustrate the dynamics
of rotating bodies
B. Costs; financial outlcys
C. Solitary; withdrawn;
hermit-like
D. Science of the construction
and operation of vehicles
far travel in
interplanetary or
interstellar space
E. Practice or principle of
submitting a question at
issue to the whole
body of voters
F. A certain type of
pre-me d student can
be found in abundance
here (2 words)
G. Alert
(3 words)
H. Occasionally; once in
a while (3 words)
I. Thrilling; exciting
J. Offends; affronts
K. State of being balanced
or in equipoise
L "-cake" Rousseau Les
Confessions, later
attributed to Marie
'A'nfondtfe( tWbrds)
71 85 161 101 174 192 115 6 210 217
2 77 90 99 105 38 185 199
37 80 8 177 88 111 141 14 156
- -
7 32 46 114 125 131 139 67 72 86 92 154
42 63 103 113 166 135 142 171 36 157
- - - - - - - - - --
66 74 81 93 110 149 152 167 191 195 200 209
33 55 78 62 91 98 165 178 212
23 39 94 59 75 1 133145164196
3 64 106 11 172 184 30 50
13 120 5 130 97 20 45
27 54 208 189 176 144 132 148 201,
M. Growing of plants in nutrient
solutions with or without
an inert medium to
provide mechanical support
N. 2nd most popular religion
in terms of number
of adherents
0. Dissection of the tongue
P. Customs; practices
0. Scientist who suggested
sphere completely
around a star (Full name)
R. Pertaining to the
measurement of
infrared light
S. Yellowish or grayish fade
(comp)
T. Urban draw;
evening activity
U. Lightweight metal used
in areospace industry
V. Beginning to be
apparent; commencing
W. Demands and compels
X. Deserves; estimates
21 44 117 151 159 4 51 70 95 100 136
15 43 96 169 128 119 61 175
123 60 109 147 163 138 206 173 48 153
25 188 204 134 16 49
- - -_ - - - _- -
34 137 47 56 118 150 170 183 17 186 193 214
68 10 107 116 127 140 146- 155 160 180 190
BY
STEPHEN J.
POZSGA I
Copyright 1977
INSTRUCTIONS
Guess the words defined at the
left and write them in over
their numbered dashes. Then,
transfer each letter to the cor-
responding numbered square
in the grid above. The letters
printed in the upper-right-hand
corners of the squares indi-
cate from what clue-word a
particular square's letter
comes from. The grid, when
filled in, should read as a
quotation from a published
work. The darkened squares
are the spaces between words.
Some words may carry over
to the next line. Meanwhile,
the first letter of each guessed-
word at the left, reading down,
forms an acrostic,"giving the
author's name and the title of
the work-from which the quote
is extracted. As words and
phrases begin to form in the
grid, you can work back and
forth from clues to grid until
the puzzle is complete.
Answer to Last Week's Puzzle
"The only way to destroy
art is to destroy society and
this is one reason why
avant-garde artists have so
often seemed to campaign
not merely against the ex-
isting social order but also
against the continuing ex-
istence of the social organ-
ism."
Edward Lucie-Smith Art Now
(Continued from Page 3) .
Forties, Fifties and Sixties. It's ma-
terial is almost totally unfamiliar
this side of the Atlantic.
. If it seems curious a psychoanalyst
could have such a major impact in
France and yet draw practically no
attention here, one has to consider
the history of psychoanalysis in
Europe, and, specifically, in France.
George Rosenwald, a professor of
psychology at the University and a
psychotherapist, explains: "It's not
only that Lacan is not accepted here.
You have to remember also that
Freud had a very obscure history in
France. Freud never caught on in
France the way he caught on in
England or the United States. The
great market for Freud has been in
the United States, and, to some
extent, in England, especially in the
last 30 years, since the war."
Freud just didn't take hold in
France befor World War II, or during
the immediate post-war years. And
when in the late Forties and early
Fifties, France became ready to
begin institutionalizing psychoanaly-
sis, it was Lacan who presided.
THE IMPETUS BEHIND La-
can's work is the idea that the
"classical" Freudians, who
carried the torch for psychoanalysis
in Freud's later years and after his
death in 1939, misrepresented Freud,
trying to make his theories seem
clear-cut when they originally were
ambiguous.
Of course, it's difficult to make ob-
jective judgments on whether it's
Lacan's school or some other school
which is most loyal to what Freud ac-
tually said. Notes Rosenwald, Lacan
and his rivals constantly trade
punches over that issue: "Lacan's
concept is that he is returning us to
Freud. Other people dispute this, and
say that he is simply cancelling the
advances that psychoanalysis has
made since 1940. He thinks that he's
in the tradition of Freud, but the
people whom he is opposing - and
sometimes quite venomously - they
also think they're in the tradition. So,
can everybody be in the tradition?"
What Lacan has done is create a
map of the human psyche, using
Freud's concepts as signposts. He
makes his formulations with the aim
of keeping people from viewing psy-
chology as a cut-and-dried affair; he
feels that the classical Freudians
have tried to make psychology too
much like a biological science,
burying the ambiguities which were
prominent in Freud's theories. And
Lacan adds principles of linguistics
to the psychological picture, seeing
the organization of language as
parallel to the organization of the
unconscious.
Before looking at the unconscious
as Lacan sketches it, consider, for
comparison, the psyche as it comes
across in Freud's own writings. It
takes many bookshelves to hold all
the volumes written by Freud, and to
summarize them in a few sentences
is to oversimplify them. But if we
must oversimplify, it's necessary to
go directly to the essential nugget at
the core of Freudianism, the Oedipus
complex - the attraction we feel as
children for the parent of the opposite
sex, and the resultant guilt is fear
that this attraction will be severely
punished. Freud held that the Oedi-
pal complex is d turning point in our
sexual devlopmen t iukttir iorr and
socialization. In Freud's view, the
degree of our success in getting
through the obstacle course of Oedi-
pal family conflicts determines the
degree to which we are psychologic-
ally well-adjusted. In other words,
the more trapped an individual is by
Oedipal guilt, the greater the psycho-
logical problems awaiting that indi-
vidual in later life.
HOW DOES THE complex work?
Take the example of fear of
flying, which at first glance
seems quite remote from a child-
hood wish to kill one parent and
marry the other. Freud would say
that when someone is afraid of trav-
elling by air, the fear involved is the
combination of fear of heights, fear
of high speeds, and fear of crashing.
Heights, speed, and crashing - they
all suggest exhilaration, or the
release of lots of energy. The connec-
tion between exhilaration and sexual
feelings is apparent. Thus, it is
clear why Freud would call the fear
of flying an expression of anxiety
over the issue of sex. By subcon-
sciously connecting air travel with
sex, and expressing anxiety toward
it, a person who fears flying is able to
release tension over a sexual conflict
without being forced to recognize its
sexual significance. And where does
the sexual conflict come from?
Freud would say that it originates
from inadequate resolution of ten-
sions arising from the childhood
family situation. And that brings us
around to Oedipus.
Lacan re-arranges the Freudian
picture. He takes the Oedipus com-
plex off center stage - in fact, he
starts from scratch and builds a new
model of the unconscious. Dominat-
ing that structure is something
Lacan calls the phallus, or the
"signification of the phallus.''
When Lacan speaks of the phallus,
he isn't referring to the anatomical
organ. For Lacan, the phallus is a
symbol which encompasses many
things. It represents sexuality, or-at
least heterosexual sexuality, be-
cause, Lacan writes, "it is the most
tangible element in the realm of
sexual copulation." It also repre-
sents for Lacan the Oedipal threat of
castration or punishment, a threat
which,according to Freud, is exper-
ienced by women as well as by men.
The symbolism of the phallus goes
further. For Lacan, because the
phallus represents the threat of
punishment, it stands for authority in
all its forms. Lacan says that the
threat of castration lurks as the
implicit force-behind all order, all
authority, all law and all tradition.
A ND THE PHALLUS also repre-
sents the fact that people
almost never feel fulfilled -
we strive for fulfillment like a donkey
chasing a carrot dangling before its
eyes, incapable of finally reaching
the mark. We strive for sexual fulfill-
ment, for physical fulfillment, for
spiritual fulfillment; we strive to
keep body and soul intact. And for
Lacan, this striving is represented by.
the phallus.
.Linked to the concept of the phallus
is the concept of the "Name-of-the-
father." What the Name-of-the-
father means is this: when, as
children, we experience the threat of
castration, the threat seems larger
than life, and consequently the threat
is perceived as coming from a larger-
than-life parent. The Name-of-the-
father is Lacan's label for this image
of the hyper-powerful parent. Institu-
tions like the law, Lacan says, draw
thei'power by 'associatixig - thern
selves in people's minds with the
Name-of-the-father.
There are many more similar con-
cepts in Lacan's lexicon. The psycho-
analyst's intention in formulating
these concepts is not to alter Freud-
ian theory, but to clarify it. He seeks
to emphasize what he considers im-
portant Freudian ideas which have
been ignored or twisted by the classi-
cal Freudians.
One of the tools Lacan uses to
clarify Freud is linguistics, which he
employs as a kind of compass in
mapping the psyche. Lacan says,
"The unconscious is structured in the
most radical way like a language."
He stresses the linguistic distinction
between the word used to convey
something, and the thing it conveys
- the distinction between the "signi-
fier" and the "signified." Lacan
says, for example, that a neurotic
symptom - such as fear of flying -
is a signifier, a symbol, a code em-
ployed by the unconscious to express
something.
Rosenwald comments that there
are many possible dimensions to the
application of linguistics to psychol-
ogy. He says, "It isn't as though each
child discovers for himself or herself
that there is, say, the threat of
annihilation, or of castration, or of
being cut off from people on whom
you depend. But these dangers
already lurk in the language itself,
and also in the social networks and
relationships which are founded on
the language. The words we have for
relationships, and the linguistic foun-
dation of social reality, have these
things built into them."
ACAN MERGES the Oedipus
complex with linguistics by as-
serting that the phallus func-
tions as a signifier in the psyche. The
following passage from Ecrits ex-
plains this point:
In Freudian doctrine, the phallus is not a
phantasa, if by thatwe mean an imaginar.v
effect. Nor is it as such an object (part-, in-
ternal, good, bad, etc.) in the sense that this
terns tends to accentuate the reality pertaining
in a relation. it is even less the organ, penis or
clrnis,t hat it symbolizes...
The phallus is the privileged sinifier of
that mark in which the role of the logos is.
joined with the advent of desire.
Why does Lacan write in a style
that's so difficult to understand?
Notes Michel Pierssens, "He does it
purposely. The traditional Freudians
have a tendency to simplify, and for
Lacan, that's a betrayal of Freudian-
ism. Because he addresses himself to
psychoanalysts (and to psychoan-
alysts in training) - people who will
have to understand the very twisted
complications of the unconscious - it
seems to him absolutely indispens-
able that these people be initiated
into subtlety, initiated into compli-
cation, into ellipsis, into condensa-
tion, into allusion, because the uncon-
scious works that way. Lacan's style
is training in the complexity of the
unconscious."
Rosenwald adds, "It isn't just an
obstacle course. He wants to make it
difficult because it is difficult. He
wants to represent within his own
style the difficulty of re-establishing
the original Freudian ambiguities.
Freud was ambiguous about what
psychoanalysis was, and as the
decades have gone by we have
contributed to making it less and less
ambiguous, and more and more
clear-cut. in order to gain one's
attention, and, in a sense, throw you
back on your own resources, knock
you- back on-your heels; 'Lacan hits
again. It isn'1
ambiguous."
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