On Anxiety (Thinking in Action) [Paperback]

It seems that both Freud and Lacan had a change of mind regarding anxiety. Freud's first theory was that anxiety has to do with the repressed libido. He particularly focused on coitus interruptus, claiming that the repeated prevention to discharge sexual energy leads to anxiety neurosis. Anxiety also seems to be linked to the fear of impotence: men are anxious that they might not be able to do it, that their organ might deceive them at the time they will need it most. With this early theory, Freud appeared to be very oriented towards the body. He also pointed out that affect and neurosis are firmly related, although the first is a quick reaction to an external stimulus, and the later is the result of dealing long-term with an internal one.

Thirty years later, Freud decided to radically change his theory on anxiety in his study on Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety. The most important point about Freud's second theory on anxiety is that anxiety ceased to be regarded as a result of repression but rather as a cause of it. Often, the subject develops various inhibitions or symptoms as processes of defense against his feeling of anxiety. Neurotic anxiety is not simply an objectless fear, but rather a particular reaction to the loss of an object.

The nature of this libidinal object of satisfaction which the subject experiences as lost varies along particular life periods. Freud noted that birth and the loss of the secure shelter of the womb represents the first great anxiety state. But he argued strongly against Otto Rank, who considered that all subject's later attacks of anxiety to be an attempt to deal with the trauma of birth. In infancy, anxiety is linked to the subject's inability to process all the excitation, which is coming from the outside and the inside of his or her body. In childhood, the subject is anxious the people on whom he or she depends might withdraw their loving care. In boyhood, the son is afraid of his rival--his father--since he has sexual inclinations towards the mother. Freud concluded that, for all men at least, anxiety is always related to the threat of castration, and that in the final instance one shall also regard fear of death as analogous to the fear of castration. This contrasts with Melanie Klein's thesis that the first cause of anxiety always arise from the death instinct.

When Jacques Lacan engaged with Freud's theory on anxiety, he made a number of crucial further observations. For Lacan, the subject's relationship with what he calls the 'big Other', the social, symbolic network that the subject is born into, generates a particular kind of anxiety. This Other does not concern only the institutions and rituals that our society is organized around, but also the very language that marks the subject as a speaking being. The Other is a source of anxiety for the subject since it constantly forces the subject to ask 'Who am I?', and especially 'Who am I for the Other' and 'What does the Other want from me?' The encounter with the Other of language causes a particular kind of trauma for the subject which Lacan names 'troumatisme'. The word 'trou' in French contains the notions of gap, lack and hole. The subject in his or her encounter with the Other therefore has a problem precisely with the lack in the Other, i.e. with the fact that the Other is not whole, but is split, non-whole, and inconsistent. A motif often found in Lacan is that of the gaping hole, whose bottom is hidden but whose outline can be discerned, by which the Real manifests itself to the subject. To the lack of the Other, the subject can thus only answer with his or her own lack. Hence Lacan's definition of love as giving something one doesn't have to somebody who doesn't want it.

In dealing with his or her lack, as well as with the lack in the Other, the subject encounters anxiety. However, for Lacan, and this is a departure from Freud's thinking, the source of anxiety for the subject is not the lack, but rather the absence of the lack, i.e. the fact that where there is supposed to be a lack, some object is present. Lacan exemplifies this by pointing out how what provokes anxiety for the child is not the absence of the mother, but rather her being constantly close by. In this context, what is horrifying is not the loss of the object of desire, but the presence of the fact that the lack is lacking. In our example, when the mother has been suffocating the child with her presence, the child has no chance to develop desire; the mother's continuous presence thus incites anxiety precisely because the child experiences no lack.

This is, taken from my cursory reading notes, what Renata Salecl takes from Freud's and Lacan's analysis of anxiety. But there is much more in On Anxiety than a textbook approach of psychoanalysis. Salecl shares with other promoters of the Slovenian school of Lacanian studies--Mladen Dolar, Alenka Zupancic and, above all, Slavoj Zizek--a taste for social commentary and media studies. She mixes her analysis of Freud and Lacan with remarks on shell-shocked soldiers and artistic provocations on the theme of death ("Anxiety at Times of War"), with descriptions on how new feelings of insecurity stem from the nature of capitalism ("Success in Failure: How Hypercapitalism Relies on People's Feeling of Inadequacy"), with a reading of the love letters that artists such as Sophie Calle or heroes such as Cyrano de Berjerac ultimately address to themselves ("Love Anxieties"), with the legal analysis of gruesome cases of infanticide ("Anxiety of Motherhood"), and with the trauma studies of fictitious Holocaust survivors ("Can Testimony Offer a Cure for Anxiety?")

There is a marked difference however between Reanta Salecl's and Slavoj Zizek's writings, and I would rate the first well below the second. On an enjoyment scale at least, Zizek provides more bang for the buck. His constant provocations, his verbal puns, his uncovering of the obscene underside of the social order make reading his books--of which there seems to be an infinite provision--a highly entertaining experience. Salecl has much less philosophical background than Zizek, and references to Kant and Schelling, Hegel and Marx, Althusser and Badiou, are sorely missed. She substitutes philosophical musings with the analysis of legal cases--it appears that she teaches in a law faculty. It was through On Anxiety that I first learned about the 'deific decree doctrine' of Justice Benjamin Cardozo: a man who hears the voice of God ordering him to kill and who places God's command above the law shall be considered as legally irresponsible. This deific decree doctrine has rarely been claimed and when claimed, has rarely been successful, maybe because in a country like America, hearing God's voice is not considered a proof of insanity.

A central theme in the book is the idea that what really produces anxiety is the attempt to get rid of it. People are searching for all kinds of guidance to alleviate anxiety, but anxiety is the very motor of the marketing politics that dominate today's consumerist society, and the self-help manuals or pharmaceutical drugs that are supposed to cure anxiety may actually increase it. Although it appears that the new age of anxiety is linked primarily to the danger of terrorist attacks and new viruses, we should not forget that anxiety is the very condition through which people relate to the world, and that it arises from the changed perception the subject has of him- or herself as well as changes to their position in society at large. The prevalent ideology best summed up by the commercial commands 'Just do it!' and 'Don't worry, be happy!', instead of offering unlimited optimism, opened the doors to a particular anxiety. People are supposedly anxious for two contradictory reasons: first, it seems that no one is in charge in society anymore and, second, people are nonetheless constantly left with the impression that someone else is running the show behind their backs, which gives rise to all kinds of conspiracy theories.

The best chapter is when Salecl links these new feelings of insecurity and anxiety to the mutations of contemporary capitalism, resulting in the 'experience' economy in which each person's own life becomes a commercial market. What I found lacking in this chapter, however, is how management, both as a technique and as a discipline, thrives on anxiety and uses it to extend its reach into people's lives. I have been reading Zizek and Lacan in parallel with management books, and for me the connection is obvious. If Amazon readers are aware of books that take a Lacanian perspective on the corporate world, please tip me in.

Renata Salecl's book is a timely intervention in light of recent historical events. It was said that today's culture is one that no longer feels anxious--but with recent events, it is obvious that claim has to be reassessed. Salecl's book is just that timely intervention. She moves through many discourses, tackling examples of anxiety in art, popular culture, film, books on anxiety, etc. in order to elucidate the concept of anxiety. In the end she makes a very provocative and important argument for the necessity of anxiety in today's politics and culture. Lacan's seminar on anxiety (seminar 8) is not available in English, so this book is a very good resource for US Lacanians.

A lucid and elegant Lacanian reading of the related issues of anxiety in contemporay culture, covering the neurotic, psychotic, and perversive cases on topics of wide range. It doesn't offer long, detailed exposition on Lacan or Freud's theories themselves. However, the Lacanian lens casts quite insightful, thought-provoking comments on up-to-date social, cultural, clinical, legal issues.

An intellectual delight for those who are well-versed in Lacan or psychoanalysis. The reading experience is like listening to the talk of an old friend on her new refelctions