What is jouissance theory?

n. in the theory of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), enjoyment or pleasure that goes beyond mere satisfaction of an instinct. Such pleasure is seen as a subversive and destabilizing force.

What does jouissance mean in Lacan?

2. Jouissance as an enjoyment beyond the pleasure principle. As an ‘excess of life’ Lacan describes it in Seminar VII as a “superabundant vitality” (Seminar VII, 18th May 1960). It cannot be correlated to affect, or to an emotion.

What is the difference between jouissance and pleasure?

But jouissance is not pleasure. The enjoyment, the jouissance, that’s found in the tortures of the superego is crushing guilt, depression, and anxiety. There is a rise of tension here within the psychic system and it is a rise in tension that the psychic system pursues without realizing it.

How do you use jouissance in a sentence?

‘He looks just exploding with jouissance, wouldn’t you say. ‘ ‘And I had a stab of sheer jouissance because I knew what I was about to do. ‘

What is feminine jouissance?

Lacan most famously speaks of feminine jouissance as an ‘Other enjoyment’ that lies ‘beyond the phallus’ and the symbolic order of language as fundamentally phallic.

What does joviality mean?

good-humored cheerfulness
1 : characterized by good-humored cheerfulness and conviviality : jolly a jovial host a jovial welcome spent a jovial evening together.

Why is the unconscious structured like a language?

Language, for Lacan, designates not simply verbal speech or written text but any signifying system that is based upon differential relations. The unconscious is structured like a language in the sense that it is a signifying process that involves coding and decoding, or ciphering and deciphering.

What is Lacan symbolic order?

SYMBOLIC ORDER (Lacan): The social world of linguistic communication, intersubjective relations, knowledge of ideological conventions, and the acceptance of the law (also called the “big Other”). Once a child enters into language and accepts the rules and dictates of society, it is able to deal with others.