Notes to ZIZEK: How ro read Lacan
Chapter: Ego Ideal and Superego: Lacan as viewer of Casablanca
KEY WORDS: juissance, enjoyment, pleasure, ethichally, superego, ideal ego, ego-ideal, Imaginary-Symbolic-Real, guilty, vengeful, agency, law of desire, Casablanca, ambiguous, 3 1/2 second shot, yes and no, fantasies, Hollywood, fundamental prohibition, Enjoy!, Hays Production Code, censorship, Realpolitik, Ulisses, inherent transgression, power, Guatanamo prisoners, homo sacer, living dead.
In this chapter Zizek deals with the triad structure model of personality: ego, id and superego. Freud was the one to introduced how the psyche is divided into these three agencies which later Lacan will revisit: ideal ego, ego-ideal and superego
or Id, Ego, Superego.
In order to simplify these terms we could say that Id is related to our desires; it contains the basic primitive impulses that demand satisfaction. It is the seat of our impulses. Something like the Mr. Hyde emerging from the restrained Dr. Jekyll.
The Ego negotiates with the id. Thus, its main function is to mediate between the id’s demands and the external world around us ;what we call reality. So, the ego tries to get what it wants without the risk to dissapoint the big Other.The ego functions in both the conscious, preconscious and unconscious mind. So, according Freud, the Psyche develops an Ego to assume the role of mediator , negotiating betwwen the Id and the Supere ego.
The Superego, internalizes moral standards and ideals based on right and wrong and provides guidelines for making judgments. It has a “vengeful, sadistic and punishing aspect”. It enjoys to observe out failure to meet our inner demands. It is insatiable, tries to make the subject to suppress its striving and desires. It is at one and the same time the law and its destruction. The law as such a symbolic structure regulates subjectivity but the Superego is more like the manifestation of a tyrannic law. The includes the rules and standards for good behaviors. These behaviors include those which are approved of by parental and other authority figures. Obeying these rules leads to feelings of pride, value and accomplishment.
From Lacan’s perspective, the ideal ego is located to the Imaginary. It stands for the idealized mirror image of the ego that Lacan calls also “small other”. The ideal ego is a modification of infantile narcissism and the omnipotence that accompanies it. The Ego -Ideal is located to the Symbolic and it stands for the a symbolic identification that seeks to impress the big Other who watch over the subject. And for last the Superego lies in the realm of the Real and it is the cruel anti -ethical agency that judge my desires ad actions.
Zizek in the documentary film, The Perverts Guide To Cinema, will try to elucidate the function of the trio Id, Ego, Superego and Superego through the paradigms that the cinema offers. For example he uses the example of the MARX BROTHERS where Hyper Groucho is the super-ego; rational Chico, the ego; and mute Harpo, the id.
Another example is the “Psycho” of Hitchcock where the Ego is at the ground floor of the Bates house where Norman always seems to behave perfectly normal;in the basement is located the Id where Norman psychically take over the role as his mother; and the top floor is the super-ego where Norman talks to his mothers corpse, she yells at him and behave in a very rude fashion.
Of course there are other examples of movies dealing with the same topic. One of this is the “Fight Club” in which Norton comes to realize that Tyler is actually him. He is figment of his imagination that he made up that represents everything he had always wanted to be himself; tough, good looking, carefree. Although both being the same person, are both representatives of these different theories of the mind and the constant conflict between the different forces.
The trio of Star Treck functions as a picture of a tripartite man. James Tiberius Kirk is the lion-like leader, stately and usually calm (Ego). Spock is his supremely rational, but somehow melancholy right-hand man (Super-ego). Then there was the volatile, emotional Doctor Leonard McCoy (Id).
Going back to Lacan, he will add also a forth ethical agency under the name of “law of desire”. The crucial point is that the Ego Ideal forces us to betray our desires and adapt what the big Other wants. Under this mechanism we don’t speak anymore about desires that will bring an enjoyment to the subject but desires that lead to the juissance, the traumatic and excessive pleasure that is more painful than joyful because it will never be fulfilled. For Lacan, superego is the vehicle of juissance. In fact there is a strong link between (unfulfilled) desires, sense of guilty and big Other in which the superego plays an important role.
Zizek refers to the 3 1/2 second shot in Casablanca in order to highlight the the ambiguity in which Hollywood relies on. He claims that the critical 3 1/2 seconds shot plays with the moral codes established by the big Other and opens the gate of spectator’s dirty phantasmatic imagination. So for the big Other the two protagonists “did not do it” but because of the ambiguous elements of the next scene the spectator is guided to fantasize that “they did it”. The fantasmatic supplement has the structure of the inherent transgression that Hollywood needs in order to function.
Fundamental Prohibition is another topic related to superego that Zizek brings into discussion. Prohibition can take the form of censorship which has an ambiguous role, like Hays Production Code of 1930s. For example, in accordance with the general principles of this Code :
1) No plot or theme should definitely side with evil and against good.
2) Comedies and farces should not make fun of good, innocence, morality or justice.
3) No plot should be constructed as to leave the question of right or wrong in doubt or fogged.
4) No plot should by its treatment throw the sympathy of the audience with sin, crime, wrong-doing or evil.
5) No plot should present evil alluringly.
(source: http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/ProductionCode.htm)
The fundamental prohibition, Zizek explains, is responsible for the excessive sexualization of the most common everyday events. Through the prohibition certain rules are created within the society. The individual tendency is to find ways to violate these oppressive rules.
Is it all this a game of power.
Zizek will speak at the end of this chapter about the power that the social system operates in ambiguous ways like in the case of the Gautanamo prison where the prisoners are in the position of “living dead”; they are alive but, in the eyes of the law, are already dead. Giorgio Agamben’s term is homo sacer.
LINKS: http://www.answers.com/topic/ego-ideal-ideal-ego#ixzz2bHGlZ4XI
http://www.academia.edu/531503/Lacans_Formation_of_the_Subject_and_Freuds_Development_of_the_Ego
Never fear, the Super ego is here! An interesting post about the Jesus’s Superego, in the following blog :
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ARTIST
FRANZ WEST.
colorful sculpture called THE EGO AND THE ID
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