Four discourses


Four discourses is a concept developed by French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. He argued that there were four fundamental types of discourse. He defined four discourses, which he called Master, University, Hysteric and Analyst, and suggested that these relate dynamically to one another.
Lacan's theory of the four discourses was initially developed in 1969, perhaps in response to the events of social unrest during May 1968 in France, but also through his discovery of what he believed were deficiencies in the orthodox reading of the Oedipus complex. The four discourses theory is presented in his seminar L'envers de la psychanalyse and in Radiophonie, where he starts using "discourse" as a social bond founded in intersubjectivity. He uses the term discourse to stress the transindividual nature of language: speech always implies another subject.

Necessity of formalising psychoanalysis

Prior to the development of the four discourses, the primary guideline for clinical psychoanalysis was Freud's Oedipus complex. In Lacan's Seminar of 1969–70, Lacan argues that the terrifying Oedipal father that Freud invoked was already castrated at the point of intervention. The castration was symbolic rather than physical. In an effort to stem analysts' tendency to project their own imaginary readings and neurotic fantasies onto psychoanalysis, Lacan worked to formalise psychoanalytic theory with mathematical functions with renewed focus on the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure. This would ensure only a minimum of teaching is lost when communicated and also provide the conceptual architecture to limit the associations of the analyst.

Structure

Discourse, in the first place, refers to a point where speech and language intersect. The four discourses represent the four possible formulations of the symbolic network which social bonds can take and can be expressed as the permutations of a four-term configuration showing the relative positions—the agent, the other, the product and the truth—of four terms, the subject, the master signifier, knowledge and objet petit a.
The four positions in each discourse are:
Agent = Upper left. This is the speaker of the discourse
Other = Upper right. This is what the discourse is addressed to
Product = Lower right. This is what the discourse has created
Truth = Lower left. This is what the discourse attempted to express
The four variables which occupy these positions are :
S1 = This is the dominant, ordering and sense giving signifier of a discourse as it is received by the group, community or culture.
S2 = This is what is ordered by or set in motion by S1. It is knowledge, the existing body of knowledge, the knowledge of the time.
$ = The subject, or person, for Lacan is always barred in the sense that it is incomplete, divided. Just as we can never know the world around us except in the partial refractions of language and the domination of identification, so, too, we can never know ourselves.
a = the objet petit a or surplus-jouissance. In Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, objet petit a stands for the unattainable object of desire. It is sometimes called the object cause of desire. Lacan always insisted that the term should remain untranslated, "thus acquiring the status of an algebraic sign".
S1 refers to "the marked circle of the field of the Other," it is the Master-Signifier. S2 is the "battery of signifiers, already there" at the place where "one wants to determine the status of a discourse as status of statement," that is knowledge. S1 comes into play in a signifying battery conforming the network of knowledge. $ is the subject, marked by the unbroken line which represents it and is different from the living individual who is not the locus of this subject. Add the objet petit a, the object-waste or the loss of the object that occurred when the original division of the subject took place—the object that is the cause of desire: the plus-de-jouir.
uses the theory to explain various cultural artefacts, including Don Giovanni and Parsifal.
DiscourseDon GiovanniParsifalCharacteristics
MasterDon OttavioAmfortasinauthentic, inconsistent
UniversityLeporelloKlingsorinauthentic, consistent
HystericDonna ElviraKundryauthentic, inconsistent
AnalystDonna AnnaParsifalauthentic, consistent