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"[[materialism]]" ([[Fr]]. ''[[matérialisme]]'')
By addressing the issues of psychogenesis, the mind/body problem, etc. [[psychoanalysis]] necessarily raises ontological questions.
The questions of whether [[Freud]]'s views can be considered materialistic or not is difficult to answer.
On the one hand, he insisted on the importance of the physical substratum of all mental events, in keeping with the materialist axioms of the [[science|scientists]] whom he had mos trespected during his studies (principally Hermann Helmholtz and Ernst Brücke).
On th eother hand, he opposed Charcot's attempts to explain all [[hysterical]] [[symptoms]] by reference to lesions in the brain, distinguished psychical reality from material reality, and constantly emphasized the role of experience rather than hereditary in the aetiology of nervous illness.
THese two trends often converge in his writings in an uneasy alliance, as in the following sentence:
<blockquote>Analysts are at bottom incorrigble mechanists and materialists, even though they seek to avoid robbing the mind and spirit of their still unrecognized characteristics.<ref>Freud. 1941d. (1921). SE XVIII p.179</ref></blockquote>
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[[Lacan]] too presents himself as a [[materialism|materialist]]; in 1936 he criticizes associationist psychology for not living up to its purported materialism, and in 1964 he argues that [[psychoanalysis]] is opposed to any form of [[philosophical]] [[idealism]].
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However, as with [[Freud]], [[Lacan]]'s declaratiosn of [[materialism]] are highly complex.
THus it is clear even in [[Lacan]]'s earliest statements on the subject that he conceives of [[materialism]] in a very particular way.
In 1936, for example, he argues that [[materialism]] does not imply a rejection of the categories of intentionality and meaning,<ref>{{Ec}} p.76-8</ref>, and rejects the simplistic idea of 'matter' as "a naive form which has been left behind by authentic materialism."<ref>{{Ec}} p.90</ref>
In 1946 he repeatedly criticizes the crude form of [[materialism]] which regards thought as a mere "epiphenomenon."<ref>{{Ec}} p.159</ref>
And in 1956 he distinguishes between a "naturalist materialism" and a "Freudian materialism".<ref>{{Ec}} p.465-6</ref>
It is clear, then, that [[Lacan]] does not subscribe to that kind of [[materialism]] which reduces all [[cause|causation]] to a crude economic determinism, and which regards all cultural phenomena (including [[language]]) as a mere superstructure,"<ref>{{E}} p.125</ref> and argues that [[language]] "is something material."<ref>{{S2}} p.82</ref>
On these grounds he declares that the importance he attributes to [[language]] is perfectly compatible with historical [[materialism]].<ref>{{Ec}} p.875-6</ref>
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[[Lacan]]'s [[materialism]] is thus a [[materialism]] of the [[signifier]]:
<blockquote>"the point of view I am trying to maintian before you involves a certain materialism of the elements in question, in the sense that the signifiers are well and truly embodied, and materialized."<ref>{{S3}} p.289</ref></blockquote>
However, the materiality of the [[signifier]] does not refer to a tangible inscription but to its indivisibility:
<blockquote>"But if we have insisted firstly on the materiality of the signifier, this materiality is singular in many ways, the first of which is that the signifier does not withstand partition."<ref>{{Ec}} p.24</ref></blockquote>
The [[singifier]] in its material dimension, the real aspect of the [[signifier]], is the [[letter]].
It is [[Lacan]]'s "[[materialism|materialism of the signifier]]" which leads him to give "a materialist definition of the phenomenon of consciousness."<ref>{{S2}} p.40-52</ref>
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[[Lacan]]'s claims that his theory of the [[signifier]] is a materialist thoery are disputed by [[Derrida]], who argues that [[Lacan]]'s concept of the [[letter]] betrays an implicit idealism.<ref>Derrida. 1975.</ref>
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Dictionary]]
[[Category:Concepts]]
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