by Philip Boxer
Lacan returns to Freud’s 4-part structure of the drive: a gap[1] – an experienced edge or limit to being able to give meaning; an object[2] – some structuring of behavior that is related to as if it can bridge the gap; an aim[3] – an objective through which the individual is able to provide some conscious account of what s/he intends to achieve through that structuring of behavior; and a pressure[4] – the questing trajectory towards a unity constituting a pushing towards a recovery of a lost state of being, Freud’s das Ding. In this sense, Lacan relates the Freudian drive to an experienced relation to an unconscious gap, a gap in relation to which something always remains unrealized, escaping every attempted aim with its object relating. It’s not that this gap is something that is or is not there, that exists or doesn’t exist. Rather, the relation to this gap insists. It makes itself felt as the presence of an (unconscious) absence that exerts a pressure.
The effects of the transference in analysis arise through the individual’s acting in relation to the analyst other as if s/he knows how the individual’s failure-to-realize may be resolved. Through the transference, the unconscious absence becomes manifest through the analyst other being related to as if the unconscious Other. The transference registers the effects of the individual’s subjection to the lack of an unconscious Other as a way of taking up the effects of being in relation to the drive. The analytic relation is not reducible to the social interaction between the analyst and analysand, but rather constitutes a site at which appears aspects of the individual’s relation to the lack of an unconscious Other.
In considering working with organisations within the context of their ecosystems, therefore, the question becomes: how are we to understand the organisation as constituting a site at which it is possible to work with aspects of the individual’s relation to the lack of an unconscious Other?
Notes
[1] Quelle – a structural hole or gap in the -complex. See structural gaps in the wigo/wiRgo relation.
[2] Objekt – objet petit a and the social forms it assumes. See the social object – distinguishing Kleinian, ‘real’ and Lacanian objects.
[3] Ziel – a formulation in terms of the []-system.
[4] Drang – the effects of being in relation to the originating lack of the unconscious [], which is taken up by the non-psychotic as an affirmation of .