1042059

research-article2021
APAXXX10.1177/00030651211042059John Dall’AglioSex And Prediction Error, Part 3

ja Pa

John Dall’Aglio 69/4

Sex and prediction error, part 3:

Provoking Prediction Error

In parts 1 and 2 of this Lacanian neuropsychoanalytic series, surplus pre-

diction error was presented as a neural correlate of the Lacanian con-
cept of jouissance. Affective consciousness (a key source of prediction
error in the brain) impels the work of cognition, the predictive work of
explaining what is foreign and surprising. Yet this arousal is the necessary
bedrock of all consciousness. Although the brain’s predictive model
strives for homeostatic explanation of prediction error, jouissance “drives
a hole” in the work of homeostasis. Some residual prediction error
always remains. Lacanian clinical technique attends to this surplus and
the failed predictions to which this jouissance “sticks.” Rather than striv-
ing to eliminate prediction error, clinical practice seeks its metaboliza-
tion. Analysis targets one’s mode of jouissance to create a space for the
subject to enjoy in some other way. This entails working with prediction
error, not removing or tolerating it. Analysis aims to shake the very core
of the subject by provoking prediction error—this drives clinical change.
Brief clinical examples illustrate this view.

Keywords: neuroscience, surprise, jokes, jouissance, technique, Lacan

A patient had repeatedly spoken to his analyst about a woman he loved.

He struggled with having to make a decision regarding their future.
For months with his analyst, he spoke about this relationship. His “object-
choice” had been exhaustively analyzed. Finally, he arrived at a session and
declared: “I’m getting married next week.” His analyst responded: “To
whom?” (Allouch 2009, p. 81, quoted in Hafner 2015, p. 99).
It may not surprise the reader that this analyst was Lacan. The techni-
cal intent behind Lacan’s response will become apparent over the course
of this paper. For now I will say it is provocative.

Department of Psychology, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal

Arts, Duquesne University.
Submitted for publication January 2, 2020.

DOI: 10.1177/00030651211042059 743

 John Dall’Aglio

I have argued that a Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis takes the struc-

tural impossibility of the brain (and of the subject) as its starting point1
(Dall’Aglio 2019). In part 2 of this series I outlined how the real and the
symbolic can be linked with neuropsychoanalytic predictive coding, how
one can inscribe impossibility (i.e., the real) into prediction (i.e., the sym-
bolic). But what does taking this impossibility as one’s starting point
entail?
Although the brain aims to eliminate prediction error, psychoanalysis
recognizes that some affect will always be left in excess, which must thus
be tolerated and made manageable by the subject. That is, the clinician
aims to help the subject face the complexities of life, not striving for per-
fection but seeking a position where one can experience frustration. While
achieving this position is a necessary step, I believe that a Lacanian view
goes further, recommending that we take prediction error head on, enjoy
its use, and metabolize it.
“Metabolization”—which I contrast with resolving, explaining, or
understanding—is central to this discussion. Explanation removes pre-
diction error—it makes the foreign arousal into something familiar and
tame (Fink 2011). This is the definition of a prediction: an inference of the
cause of an input. It follows the homeostatic logic of need. Metabolization,
by contrast, keeps the excess open and enjoys its ongoing use. It deals
with the logic of drive.
My argument proceeds from my conclusion in part 2. The subject is
faced with the structural problem of predictions that fail to achieve
homeostasis (i.e., the originally lost prediction) but are paradoxically the
site of enjoyment. These predictions metabolize prediction error. They do
not remove it—they fail to achieve homeostasis—but instead use it and
are “charged” with incentive sensitization, a surplus excitation. Analysis
works with how the subject fails—how the subject metabolizes the jouis-
sance at the site of negativity.
Here I am applying Lacan’s definition (1964) of analytic praxis: “a
concerted human action, whatever it may be, which places man in a posi-
tion to treat the real by the symbolic” (p. 6). To “treat the real by the
symbolic” may be understood as affecting the real (i.e., jouissance, sur-
plus prediction error) by way of the symbolic (i.e., speech, prediction). A
modulation in the symbolic network and its failed predictions allows a
1One should not simply draw a symmetry between the impossibility of the brain and of

the subject, although both should be considered with a core antagonism (Dall’Aglio 2020).

744
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

different stance toward the real. Paradoxically, this modulation is possible

only because of the real, the immanent instability within the symbolic that
leaves it open to change and to slippages (see part 1). In neuropsychoana-
lytic terms, because prediction is incomplete, affective consciousness
drives ongoing reconsolidation (see part 2).
Analysis therefore works with failed predictions, insofar as the excess
within prediction allows one to have effects beyond it. Here, in part 3, I
will illustrate how Lacanian technique aims to affect one’s “mode of
enjoyment,” one’s enjoyed predictions that fail to achieve homeostasis.
These approaches could be subsumed under the rubric provoking predic-
tion error. But first I will discuss the clinical line of Solms’s neuropsy-
choanalytic model.

A N e u r o p s yc h o a n a ly t i c C l i n i c a l A p p r o a c h

Solms (2018) gives an overview of his clinical interpretation of neuropsy-

choanalytic predictive coding. First one must identify the conscious affects
the patient is suffering from. These are the unmet emotional needs. Then
one must determine the unconscious (i.e., prematurely automatized) predic-
tions (i.e., action plans) that cause those affects. By problematizing these
predictions and their derivatives, clinical treatment aims to help the patient
eventually develop predictions that better meet those emotional needs.
For Solms, the unconscious is the main challenge to treatment. Recall
that unconscious (repressed) predictions are automatized motor traces,
action plans that do not meet one’s emotional needs (and thus cause
affect). As nondeclarative, they operate outside of self-reflective control
and cannot be recalled to declarative consciousness for reconsolidation in
working memory. Thus, these automatized motor traces repeat—they
cannot be remembered (see Freud 1914).
On this issue, Solms (2018) writes that what

patients can think about . . . are the repetitive derivatives of the repressed, which
involve cortical representations (of current experiences), which can therefore
enter working memory and declarative . . . thinking. This in turn allows their
(derivative) predictions to be reconnected with the affects that belong to them,
which enables the ego to come up with better predictions [via reconsolidation],
with more realistic action plans, with the help of the adult brain (and that of the
analyst) in adult circumstances [p. 10].

745
 John Dall’Aglio

Given the nondeclarative core of the unconscious and the symbolic effects
of displacement and condensation, derivatives are not obviously related
to their ancestors. Even the particular affect may be misleading, as one
affect may take center stage while obscuring another (see, e.g., Smith and
Solms 2018; and, on “misfelt feelings,” Johnston 2013). What does
remain riveted to the derivatives—as Solms points out—is the fact of
prediction error. Thus, Solms’s call for a focus on affect parallels the
Lacanian call for a focus on jouissance as it “sticks” to its associated (and
derivative) predictions. Moreover, connecting affect to prediction should
not aim at removing that affect, since the prediction error is needed to
drive reconsolidation (Solms 2015).
Because deeply automatized nondeclarative predictions cannot be
remembered, the subject is at constant risk for regression, even when bet-
ter predictions have been learned (Smith and Solms 2018). However,
even though nondeclarative action plans are exempt from working mem-
ory reconsolidation, this
does not mean that non-declarative memories are not subject to reconsolidation.
. . . they are only subject to reconsolidation through action. Non-declarative
memories can only be activated (and thereby consolidated/reconsolidated)
through embodied enactment [Solms 2018, p. 8].

For Solms, this involves the embodied repetition of new predictions,

in the analytic relationship and beyond. This suggests that nondeclarative
memories can be reconsolidated at the level of the motoric body. While
the repressed may indeed pose a constant risk of regression, Solms (2018)
suggests that, at the very least, a certain distance can be gained from the
automaticity of the repressed. This is the aim of analytic technique.

A Prelude to Lacanian Engagement with Clinical Neuropsychoanalysis

It is beyond my scope here to compare Lacanian and non-Lacanian

neuropsychoanalytic perspectives. It would also be simplistic to derive a
detailed clinical theory from Solms’s papers here, since they operate
mostly at the “broad brush-stroke” level of theory and neurobiology
(Solms 2018). Moreover, there is no single “clinical neuropsychoanaly-
sis.” Neuropsychoanalysis is a discourse between neuroscience and psy-
choanalysis, in both of which separate schools of thought are found.
There can thus be Freudian, Kohutian, relational, Lacanian, and so on
neuropsychoanalyses. A productive discourse would require authors

746
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

well-versed in these various schools so that concepts could be developed

and compared in proper depth.2
As such, I will focus on what I see as a contribution of Lacanian
theory, rather than make comparisons. However, in the hope that dialogue
will emerge, allow me to suggest a few points for potential interdisciplin-
ary discussion.

The Grand Challenge for Neuropsychoanalysis: The Problem of the Drive

Bazan and Detandt (2017) emphasize that one of the challenges for
psychoanalysis, particularly as it interfaces with disciplines like neurosci-
ence, is to retain the concept of “drive.” As noted in parts 1 and 2, drive is
the central problem faced by the subject. For Solms (2018) there seems to
be a privileging of prediction when dealing with this problem: “come up
with better predictions” with the “adult brain” in “adult circumstances.”
Although Solms does emphasize the need to problematize repressed pre-
dictions and their derivatives, this problematization seems in the service
of eventually forming better predictions. In other words, Solms seems to
side with the reality principle (i.e., “mature” predictions) over “prema-
ture” automatized predictions that cause affect. Prediction is privileged
over prediction error: “increasing uncertainty in relation to any biological
imperative just is ‘bad’ from the (first-person) perspective of such an
organism—indeed it is an existential crisis—while decreasing uncertainty
just is ‘good’” (Solms 2019). Effective prediction that decreases predic-
tion error is regarded as good; increasing prediction error as bad.
As I have said, these are bird’s-eye view comments; detailed discus-
sion is necessary to unpack their depth. For example, Solms (2015)
equally stresses how prediction error is necessary for the reconsolidation
and problematizing of predictions, which undoubtedly is a good thing.
Thus, there seems to be a certain tension between the “good” and “bad”
of prediction error. Psychoanalysis, at the very least, complicates a
straightforward understanding of the free energy principle.

2For example, Bruce Fink’s work comparing Lacanian and non-Lacanian psychoanalysis
has been criticized for simplistic reductions of analytic schools other than the Lacanian (see Fink
2019; Bernardi and de Bernardi 2019). This is, of course, due not to poor reading on Fink’s part,
but to the difficulty of being an expert in multiple psychoanalytic schools. Moreover, dialogue
between Lacanians and non-Lacanians is especially difficult given their relatively independent
intellectual development, especially after Lacan’s “excommunication” from the International
Psychoanalytical Association (Lacan 1964).

747
 John Dall’Aglio

Consider Holmes and Nolte (2019), who provide an in-depth reading

of predictive coding alongside psychoanalytic clinical theory. They note
in their abstract that “the brain abhors informational surprise,” a senti-
ment that resonates with Solms’s comments on surprise as “bad.” Yet,
near the end of their paper, having engaged predictive coding through
psychoanalysis, they find “ambiguity and its resolution . . . both exciting
and rewarding.” If ambiguity—prediction error—is rewarding, the brain
cannot simply abhor surprise.
It is perhaps no surprise that Holmes and Nolte come to this last state-
ment when discussing sexuality: “In [free energy principle] terms, sex
‘plays’ with energy bound and unbound and their relationship to, among
others, the reward system.” Sex—that is, drive, as explained in part 1—is
what problematizes a straightforward application of the free energy prin-
ciple. So one should not just read Solms’s “better predictions” within the
logic of need-satisfaction (i.e., removing surprise). Rather, the phrase
must also be read through the problem of enjoyment of ambiguity—that
is, through the lens of jouissance. As argued in part 1, homeostatic need
must be kept distinct from desire and drive (the latter operating beyond
any failure of homeostasis). From the side of drive, surprise is not simply
“abhorred”—it is enjoyed, though this enjoyment may itself be abhorred
(traumatic jouissance). It to this question—what to do with predictions in
the context of jouissance—that I believe Lacanian clinical theory can
bring a novel perspective. Because it is concerned with drive (i.e., with
homeostatic failure), the “better prediction” must be approached as a
“failed prediction,” which is also an “enjoyed prediction.”

Choice of a Mode of Enjoyment

To address this question, I will formalize a concept that has remained

latent in parts 1 and 2: the mode of enjoyment. By “mode of enjoyment”
I refer to the subject’s way of metabolizing jouissance.3 This mode is an
ongoing principle since jouissance is never eliminated. In Freudian terms,
the mode of enjoyment is how one works to meet the demand of the drive
(Freud 1915). It can be thought of as a schema that governs libidinal life
and is revealed in dreams, symptoms, transference, and so on (Verhaeghe
3Readers familiar with Lacan may recognize aspects of the “fundamental fantasy” here. I

am reluctant to use the term, though, since the neuroscience of the fundamental fantasy is more
complex than that of automatized, marked motor plans. I hope to address this topic in another
paper.

748
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

2004). It is the position the subject takes in the symbolic regarding the
real of jouissance.
For Lacan, the clinical problem arises when the subject is stuck in old
modes of enjoyment that do not bring conscious pleasure. Analysis there-
fore aims to open a space outside the mode of enjoyment, to make it less
rigid (Zupančič 2017). In this space, the subject is freer to make a choice
(though not a self-reflectively conscious choice) concerning this enjoy-
ment (Verhaeghe and Declercq 2016).

Symptomatic Enjoyment

Regarding patients who come to analysis, it is presumed that their

mode of enjoyment is failing (Fink 2011). Take, for example, the melan-
cholic whose self-beratements leave him or her in an anhedonic state of
misery. As Freud (1917) points out, the melancholic’s repeated self-
denigration is surely enjoyed in some way. The same goes for the obses-
sional, who may express distress in being subjected to a series of rules.
Yet these prohibitions and compulsions have been sexualized and serve
the repetitive jouissance of the drive (Freud 1909). Any properly psycho-
analytic symptom entails some excess enjoyment (see part 1). A symptom
metabolizes jouissance—that is, it does not remove jouissance, but rather
binds it and puts it into operation. This is the logic of jouissance—it can
never be removed, so it must be bound in some form that nevertheless
produces some excess.
Thus, for Lacan, a symptom is not in itself pathological. At the end of
analysis, there will still be a symptom, but it is a symptom whose excess
the subject can enjoy (Fink 2011; Verhaeghe and Declercq 2016). Hence
Lacan’s aphorism “Enjoy your symptom!” A symptom becomes “patho-
logical” only when its excess becomes intolerable for the subject. To this
end, assessment is always singular for each analysand. In analysis, one
aims to bring the subject to a point where he or she can create new ways
of metabolizing prediction error. To do this, one must loosen the grip of
the old mode of jouissance.

A Neuropsychoanalytic View of One’s Mode of Enjoyment

Drive always demands (and finds) enjoyment (see part 1). However,
the way drive finds enjoyment is contingent on one’s history. Recall the
dynamic interplay of marking nondeclarative jouissance-filled traces when
faced with the traumatic, unbound jouissance of affective consciousness

749
 John Dall’Aglio

(see part 2). As Solms (2017) points out, in premature automatization the
subject must “cut its losses” and choose a prediction in the face of impos-
sibility. Premature automatization highlights the active role of the subject
in the foundation of his or her mode of jouissance.4 The infant must
choose certain actions in the face of the drive—one is not simply a pas-
sive recipient.
This “unconscious choice” is not a simple choice like “chocolate or
vanilla.” Rather, it is a forced choice, like “Your money or your life!”
(Lacan 1964). It is inaccurate to view this choice as a cold calculation of
which action plan will result in less prediction error—to choose the lesser
of two evils, as the computational approach of the free energy principle
might suggest (Parr and Friston 2018). Instead, to use Žižek’s provocative
paraphrasing (2018) of Stalin, “Both choices are worse.” Because of the
real, there is no “correct” or “better” prediction—something fails in either
case. The way one fails matters, for the failure is enjoyed (see part 1).
I suggest that the prematurely automatized predictions, the jouissance-
filled traces (which are historically contingent) are a potential site of the
roots of one’s mode of enjoyment. As ways of metabolizing jouissance,
these jouissance-filled traces reflect the automatized fashion in which one
deals with jouissance. The incentivized repetition of these predictions
(which are marked in response to a burst of prediction error, a “failure” of
homeostasis) highlights how these predictions transgress homeostatic
need and enter the circuit of the drive. The ongoing fashion of dealing
with surplus fits with the description of the “mode of enjoyment” I pro-
vided above. Likewise, derivatives of prematurely automatized predic-
tions correspond to the manifestation of the mode of enjoyment in
particular situations. This is a neuropsychoanalytic way to understand the
primordial choice of jouissance, the real navel of the symptom.

Provoking Prediction Error

I suggest that Lacanian technique is particularly focused on affecting

these premature automatized predictions, the mode of enjoyment.5 As
Žižek (2006) puts it,

4This is one possible way of understanding Freud’s “choice of neurosis” (1913), which is,

for Lacan (1959–1960), a position in language with respect to the symbolic and the real
(Verhaeghe 2004). This is also a fruitful lens through which to think about the Lacanian subject
structures (Verhaeghe 2004) or the formulas of sexuation (Lacan 1972–1973).
5The techniques I discuss here apply only to neurosis (Fink 2011). Psychosis, with its dif-

ferent structure, requires a different approach.

750
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

For Lacan, psychoanalysis at its most fundamental is not a theory and technique
of treating psychic disturbances, but a theory and practice that confronts indi-
viduals with the most radical dimension of human existence. It does not show an
individual the way to accommodate him- or herself to the demands of social
reality; instead it explains how something like ‘reality’ constitutes itself in the
first place [p. 3]

Psychoanalysis is not just about treating psychological disorders, resolving

symptoms, and helping patients find a better life. Of course, psychoanalysis
can minimize prediction error (Holmes and Nolte 2019). But, for Lacan
(1958), reduction of prediction error would be a “side effect” of analytic
treatment. In asking “how something like ‘reality’ constitutes itself in the
first place,” Lacanian technique questions (and provokes) the predictions
that are at the core of how the subject constitutes its reality.
Recall that the brain’s experiential reality is in fact a predictive model
(see part 2). For psychoanalysis, the most important predictions concern-
ing reality are those associated with the drive and its surplus excitation—
that is, predictions in the mode of enjoyment. In other words, what
predictions has the subject used to constitute its mode of dealing with
surplus prediction error, with jouissance?

Mining Down to the Navel of Jouissance

Recall that certain signifiers bind the jouissance arising at the nega-
tivity of the real (see part 1). As symbolic, these signifiers are linked to
other signifiers, part of an ongoing (failed) attempt to craft a meaning
which resolves the gap of the real (Žižek 2020). One could envision this
as the narrative formed around the symptom, the symptom’s link to the
subject’s history of social encounters.
Verhaeghe and Declercq (2016) describe a twofold structure of the
symptom. An outer “shell” involves the subject’s social (symbolic) his-
tory, whereas the real navel refers to its link to jouissance, one’s enjoy-
ment of the symptom. Bazan (2011) describes the signifier in comparable
terms: its semantic network and its purely motor articulatory pattern. The
latter is the aspect of the signifier that is originally jouissance-filled, con-
stituting the basis of the mode of enjoyment. Insofar as these signifiers
are taken up in a symbolic network, the symptom is inserted into the
subject’s representational and semantic system.
Solms (2018) describes a somewhat parallel formulation of psycho-
pathology. First comes the prematurely automatized repressed. However,

751
 John Dall’Aglio

Table 1. Comparison of Lacanian theory (Verhaeghe & Declercq

2016), Solms’s NPSA model (Smith & Solms 2018), and my
Lacanian NPSA model of the mode of enjoyment
Lacanian Theory Solms’s NPSA Model Lacanian NPSA Model

Real navel; choice of Choice of prematurely Jouissance-filled traces

jouissance automatized predictions sticking to affective
(repression) consciousness
Symbolic superstructure Derivatives Development of subsequent
neural systems shaped by
the predictions which
metabolize surplus affective
consciousness

Note: NPSA = neuropsychoanalytic.

because affect continues to arise, the subject must construct ongoing

defenses against the affect. These defenses (and derivatives) can be
declarative, part of the brain’s semantic network. Notably, what is
defended is not affect per se, but unexplained affect, surplus prediction
error (for evidence of unconscious defense against ambiguity, see Bazan
et al. 2019). Table 1 presents the parallels between Lacanian theory,
Solms’s model, and my neuropsychoanalytic integration regarding the
symptom and the mode of enjoyment.
Lacanian treatment aims at the isolation of these special signifiers in
their motor form, not their semantic meaning (Bazan 2011; Verhaeghe
and Declercq 2016; Zupančič 2017). Such signifiers “resonate” (Faye
2016); they ring with a beyond of understanding—the jouissance of the
real that has stuck to them. In this way, these signifiers keep prediction
error open (i.e., they do not remove it) such that there is space for some-
thing new.
I propose that isolating the “sticky,” “resonating” signifiers aims to
hit the jouissance-filled predictions at the disjuncture of nondeclarative
predictions and affective consciousness (see part 2). To do so, one must
strip the symptom of its symbolic properties. In other words, one must
mine through the layers of knowledge and understanding to reach the real
of the symptom, its navel of jouissance (Verhaeghe and Declercq 2016).
In neuropsychoanalytic terms, this involves exploring the layers of
declarative derivatives to isolate nondeclarative predictions as they
metabolize prediction error (Solms 2018). Importantly, isolating these

752
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

signifiers—the nondeclarative predictions that fail to achieve homeostasis—

implies a radical confrontation with surplus prediction error (i.e.,
jouissance).

Lacanian Technique Aims at Surprise

A patient had been seeking treatment for ongoing vaginal bleeding.

An entire world of medical treatments was built around this bleeding. The
patient sought doctor after doctor for help with her bodily horror.
Eventually, she saw an analyst. She told the analyst her saga of medical
journeys, the pain of her bleeding, and her fear of dying. The analyst said
he could help her. At the next session, the patient said, “Doctor, I am bled
dry.” The analyst calmly responded: “Those are psychosomatic disorders.
That doesn’t interest me. Speak about something else.” Shocked, the
patient experienced these words as a slap in the face, and tears began to
pour. Yet the effect was remarkable. The bleeding stopped, and the patient
became more attached to the treatment, though not in a straightforward
fashion (Cardinal 1975; quoted in Cauwe and Vanheule 2018, p. 697).
This example—from Marie Cardinal’s autobiography of her analysis—
illustrates the productive effect provocation can have. Indeed, Lacanian
technique aims at surprising the analysand (Fink 2011). Surprise con-
fronts analysands with unexpectedness, putting them in an uncertain
space from which to speak. In Cardinal’s case, her bleeding organized her
social world in a medical fashion (Cauwe and Vanheule 2018). Her symp-
tom entered and dominated her symbolic narrative. The analyst’s dis-
missal of her symptom “cut” it off from the medical narrative. Not only
did this intervention put the analyst in a different position from the medi-
cal discourse of other doctors—it resolved the symptom itself. I add that
the patient’s specific words preceding this—“Doctor, I am bled dry”—
may have betrayed the metaphorical structure of the symptom in the nar-
rative.6 In other words, the intervention hit the symptom as a signifier that
metabolized jouissance.
In Lacanian technique, highlighting the signifier is not achieved
through explanation. Instead, the analyst might “punctuate” the patient’s
speech by repeating a certain word, part of a word, or by leaving a heavy
silence. Or the analyst might abruptly end the session at the emergence of
6In this sense, the symptom may not actually have been psychosomatic. For it to be

affected by a symbolic intervention, it must have been an hysterical symptom, imbued with
meaning and demand (Verhaeghe 2004).

753
 John Dall’Aglio

something new in the patient’s discourse: the infamous “variable-length

session.” This sudden ending of a session emphasizes a certain aspect of
the patient’s speech without introducing layers of understanding (Fink
2011). In neuropsychoanalytic terms, these interventions highlight the
ambiguities and excesses within the patient’s predictions via prediction
error, a sudden surprise. This occurs without taming that prediction error
with understanding. In Solms’s neuropsychoanalytic clinical terms
(2018), the accent falls more on the “problematizing” of predictions than
on creating better predictions. One is provoking prediction error instead
of offering alternative, explanatory predictions in a metacognitive
fashion.
I suggest that these interventions can affect the jouissance-filled,
nondeclarative automatized predictions at the site of the subject’s homeo-
static failure. This requires understanding speech principally as speech
acts, the signifier as a motor pattern (Bazan 2011). Affecting motoric
speech impacts embodied predictions. Insofar as language is an ambigu-
ous system, full of homophonies and equivocations (Hafner 2015), affect-
ing speech by surprise attempts to hit these excesses (i.e., surplus
prediction error as it sticks to predictions). By playing on the ambiguities
in speech, one may provoke a change in the subject’s position toward
jouissance.7
Of course, working with uncertainty and surprise is not unique to
Lacanian psychoanalysis. Moreover, psychoanalytic applications of the
free energy principle attend to prediction error insofar as it can “loosen”
or “decouple” predictive structures (Holmes and Nolte 2019). Likewise,
Solms consistently emphasizes affect and its role in reconsolidation.
However, the technical role of the analyst as a provocative, “clown-
ish” figure (Cauwe, Vanheule, and Desmet 2017) seems especially char-
acteristic of Lacanian practice (though not exclusively so). For this
reason, I have restricted my focus to provocation. Of course, Lacanian
analysts do not surprise their patients every moment of every session. Use
of surprise is tailored to the analysand’s speech, to points where surprise
has the potential to shake it up (Fink 2011).

7Approaching speech as act opens a link to speech act theory. A speech act accomplishes

what it describes (e.g., saying “I declare this meeting adjourned” is what ends the meeting). It
changes the symbolic world. The psychoanalytic twist is that speech acts simultaneously change
the subject (Hook 2013; Žižek 2006). This resonates with my proposal that affecting predictive
(motoric) speech modulates the subject’s external world, as well as the ego (since both are
constituted on the basis of the predictive model).

754
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

Jokes as a Model of Provoking Prediction Error

I am a clown. Take that as an example, and don’t imitate me!

—Lacan (quoted in Nobus 2016, p. 37)

Lacan emphasized not taking oneself too seriously. The analyst

should not operate from a position of assured knowledge. Rather, the ana-
lyst is a sort of clown, interpreting not in an explanatory, but in an unex-
pected, provocative fashion. One thus engages with the unique spontaneity
of each analytic situation (hence the warning “don’t imitate me!”).
Moreover, a good clown knows how to play with jokes.
Jokes are quintessential examples of the provocative metabolization
of jouissance where the predictions (i.e., the signifiers) involve ambiguity
and excess. Consider the following example from Philip Bromberg’s
practice. This excerpt is discussed in the context of standing in an “uncer-
tain” space of not-knowing in analysis, either as patient or as analyst.

Kate, a female patient just back from a vacation, was marvelling at how free she
felt to do things that she couldn’t do freely here, because in New York she has
to tell me about them and she’s afraid of what I will feel. She said that she didn’t
know why this should be so, because she knew I liked her, and wondered
whether that fact could actually be the reason—that she was afraid to let herself
fully experience my liking her, because then she would want too much of it. She
compared this possibility with how her allergy to chocolate seemed also not to
be in effect when she was on vacation, and she ate chocolate for every dessert
without feeling guilty and without getting pimples. “So,” said Kate, “maybe the
truth is that you are like chocolate to me. No matter what you say about me I
can’t take it in without getting pimples, because when I start to realize how
attached I am to you, the pimples remind me not to trust you too much—to be
careful of how much of me I show you—you could suddenly hurt me if I’m not
who you expect me to be.”
“And yet,” I replied earnestly, “you seem to be trusting me enough right
now to at least let me in on the fact that there’s more to you than meets the eye.”
“I think you’re saying that,” Kate retorted, “because you are trying to get
me to trust you more than I do. But I don’t know if what I’m feeling right now
is trust, or just a new feeling of ‘I don’t care what you think.’ Right now, I really
don’t trust why you just said what you said. If I trust you instead of trusting me,
I get pimples, and that’s zit” [Bromberg 1996, pp. 527–528].

Upon hearing the pun in Kate’s speech—“that’s zit” and “that’s it” are
near homophones—Bromberg burst into laughter. Kate eventually joined
in but had not intended on making a pun. While Bromberg recognizes that

755
 John Dall’Aglio

his own bias toward parapraxes may have led him to hear “that’s zit”
instead of “that’s it,” he still highlighted the ambiguity in speech via
laughter. Bromberg interprets this moment as opening a playful “potential
space” where previously disavowed issues could be explored.
This is consistent with the approach I have described, where the ana-
lyst’s response hits the ambiguities within speech to open a new space.
Highlighting the signifier “that’s zit” is the interpretation in the Lacanian
sense—Bromberg’s laughter is, in fact, the interpretation. It highlights the
signifier in its motor form (where “that’s zit” and “that’s it” are all but iden-
tical). Punctuating this point draws attention to the (surprising) excess to
open a space for a reconsolidation of the symbolic organization.
Note that this approach did not use understanding to resolve uncer-
tainty—Bromberg admits he did not “know what to expect moment to
moment” (p. 529) in this session. Rather than filling the gap of ambiguity,
the laughter-interpretation highlights how the patient metabolizes the pre-
diction error, and they both enter a playful space.8
To be precise, I am not claiming that one must be a Lacanian to attend
to jokes and humor (indeed, Bromberg is not a Lacanian). This example
is, however, illustrative of a Lacanian interpretation. It does not offer an
explanation—this would explain away the prediction error, rather than
provoke the open space of reconsolidation (what Bromberg calls a “poten-
tial space”). Reconsolidation requires surprise. Bromberg’s understand-
ing of this space as playful points to the enjoyment of jouissance when
metabolized in humor (e.g., PLAY in fort-da; see part 2). It is the enjoy-
ment of an increase of tension, rather than a satisfaction in its reduction or
explanation (see part 1). Whatever understanding might follow from this
moment would be the patient’s own—indeed, it may lead to new material
that may not have revealed itself had the analyst provided his or her own
explanatory interpretation (Fink 2011).9 The analyst only highlighted (via
surprise) the prediction error (the ambiguity) within the subject’s predic-
tion (her speech).

8Incidentally, one might suggest that “pimple” and “zit” operate like objet a here, the

excess in the relationship between Kate and Bromberg that disrupts their harmonious relation,
problematizes trust, and so on. The laughter-interpretation detoxifies the relation to objet a by
creating a comic stance toward it.
9This is not to say that alternative techniques could not achieve this.

756
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

The Neurodynamics of Jokes Highlight Prediction Error

Neuroscientific research on jokes supports the positive effect of

metabolizing prediction error, rather than removing it. The structure of a
joke can be broken down into surprise (an expectancy violation), detec-
tion of incongruity, resolution of incongruity, and humorous pleasure
(Bihrle, Brownell, and Powelson 1986; Brownell et al. 1983; Chan et al.
2013). In Bromberg’s clinical pun, the surprise requires that the reader/
patient initially believe that Kate is making an emphatic ending (“that’s
it”), but the pun (unexpectedly) plays on the metaphorical structure of her
associations to trust, attachment, chocolate allergy, and pimples (“that’s
zit”). Importantly, the structural ambiguity within language (here,
homophony) enables this intervention (Hafner 2015).
Enjoyment of jokes, as researched in neuroscience, is related to how
unpredictable the punchline is (Shibata, Terasawa, and Umeda 2014). It is
important to discern two aspects of enjoyment here: the surprise and the
humorous satisfaction of the incongruity resolution. The latter refers to the
standard reduction of tension; the former reflects an increase of tension.
That the joke’s enjoyment is related to its unpredictability signals the
importance of jouissance. One cannot have the joke without prediction
error. The mesolimbic dopamine system (i.e., SEEKING10) is activated in
verbal and visual jokes (Campbell et al. 2015; Mobbs et al. 2003; Shibata,
Terasawa, and Umeda 2014; Taber, Redden, and Hurley 2007), pointing to
the active participation of prediction error in jokes (see part 2). Moreover,
jokes intuitively reveal the superiority of not giving full explanations—we
all know that explaining a joke can kill the humor.
This research supports a clinical technique that metabolizes prediction
error—it provokes surprise through the isolation of certain jouissance-
filled signifiers (i.e., the nodal point or pun) that resonate with prediction
error (i.e., ambiguity or excess). The joke (whether a shift in meaning, a
slapstick action, or absurd humor11) metabolizes surplus prediction error
in a way the subject can enjoy.

10One might also suggest that PLAY is involved in these humorous and enjoyable metabo-

lizations of prediction error (see part 2). This is a potential neuropsychoanalytic bridge between
Lacan and Winnicott (for a general interface between the two, see Kirshner 2011).
11For example, in schizophrenic patients, there is not an impairment or lack of humor per

se. Rather, there is a different organization (often absurd, rather than punning) of humor
(Adamczyk et al. 2017, 2018). Thus, jouissance is metabolized in both neurosis and psychosis,
but its structure of metabolization can differ (Dieter De Grave, personal communication).

757
 John Dall’Aglio

Jokes do not remove the surprise; in fact, without the surprise the
joke cannot function. Importantly, jokes entail the dissolution of a previ-
ous mode of understanding. For our purposes, this involves a dissolution
of old modes of making sense of the world and old modes of enjoyment.
Indeed, the excess within the symptomatic predictions that handle jouis-
sance is clinically salient. Hitting this excess via surprise can open the
space for something new. It aims at the real.
Use of humor is obviously not unique to Lacanian psychoanalysis.
For instance, Bryan (2014) neuropsychoanalytically discusses a case
where she used humor to effect reconsolidation. However, Lacanian tech-
nique goes a step further, where the analyst occupies a position that can
provoke these ambiguities within language to drive change.
Of course, jokes are not the solution to every clinical problem.
However, one should not downplay the exemplary structure and function
of the joke. To paraphrase Mark Epstein (2019) on the Buddhist notion of
“ego-lessness” (which may be similar to the dissolution of old predic-
tions, old modes of understanding and enjoyment) in relation to psych-
analysis: To reach the Buddhist aim of ego-lessness is not to have
absolutely no self. It is to realize that your ego—your sense of self, your
sense of who you are—is a bit of a joke.

M o d u l at i n g T h e S u b j e c t ’ s P r e d i c t i o n s :
Fail Better

I have shown how provocative interpretations, insofar as they surprise

and disrupt the analysand’s predictive structure, can open the space for
new speech and can remetabolize prediction error in an enjoyable fash-
ion. By not covering the ambiguity with understanding and instead hitting
the jouissance-filled predictions, one can modulate the subject’s stance
toward the real.
Recall that the originally lost prediction is an ontological negativity
within prediction (see part 2). In this view, there will always be surplus
prediction error (i.e., jouissance). One will thus fail and fail again.12
12Wilson (2005) highlights the need to attend to failures within the analytic field. While he

focuses primarily on the subject’s failure (e.g., failed predictions), Wilson also attends to the
analyst’s failure. The analyst must not be wedded to certainty (of theory, of interventions) and
must confront instances of “missing the patient.” A link might be drawn here with the clownish
analyst as a “failed (i.e., lacking) analyst,” one adept at surprise (especially the surprise of his
or her failure).

758
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

However, modulating these failed predictions might allow the subject to

“fail better,” to use Žižek’s oft cited quotation of Samuel Beckett (Žižek
2020). This is how I would respond to my earlier comment regarding
Solms’s “better predictions” as “failed predictions.” Analytic effects on
prediction allow it to “fail better.”
In other words, hitting these predictions can modulate how the sub-
ject repeats this failure. Jouissance is then hopefully metabolized in such
a way that the subject is not left in a deadlock. This entails a change in the
fundamental coordinates of whatever possibilities of metabolization exist
that would allow new possibilities to emerge (Copjec 2004; Verhaeghe
and Declercq 2016).
It is important to note that this Lacanian call for a focus on jouissance
does not call for a total opening up of free energy. As discussed regarding
das Ding, jouissance is lethal when unmanaged (see part 1). Lacanian
analysts recognize the dangers of traumatic jouissance (e.g., panic attacks,
PTSD, disorganized schizophrenia; see Verhaeghe 2004). Instead,
Lacanian treatment takes impossibility as its starting point and aims to
open the space for a reorganization of jouissance by confronting predic-
tion error head on. Rather than a focus on need-satisfaction, this view puts
prediction error at the site of an other (sexual) enjoyment that the subject
must metabolize.

An Example from Lacan’s Practice

A final example, from Gérard Miller’s film Rendez-vous chez Lacan,

will illustrate this. A former patient of Lacan’s, who had lived through the
Nazi occupation, recounts a session:

One day . . . I was telling Lacan about a dream I had. And I told him, “I wake
up every morning at 5 o’clock,” and I added “It’s at 5 o’clock that the Gestapo
came to get the Jews in their houses.” At that moment Lacan jumped up from his
chair, came towards me, and gave me an extremely gentle caress on my cheek.
I understood it as ‘geste à peau,’13 the gesture. . . . A very tender gesture, it has
to be said—an extraordinarily tender gesture. And that surprise, it didn’t dimin-
ish the pain but it made it something else. The proof now, 40 years later, when I
recall that gesture, I can still feel it on my cheek. It was a gesture as well which
was an appeal to humanity, something like that [lacanonline 2012, interview in
French with English subtitles; emphasis added].

13“Gestapo” and geste à peau (which might be translated as “gesture to the skin”) are

homophones in French.

759
 John Dall’Aglio

This provocative example illustrates many of the concepts I have dis-

cussed. It is an intervention at the site of a signifier (“Gestapo”) that
marks the jouissance but is also a key signifier in the subject’s painful
narrative. The interpretation hinges on the ambiguity within “Gestapo”
(as a motor pattern, not its semantic meaning), which Lacan provokes
with his gentle geste à peau. Lacan’s highly unorthodox interpretation14
hits the negativity (“that surprise”), creating a space for the reorganiza-
tion of jouissance. This is why the gesture does “not remove the pain”
(i.e., the jouissance)—it made it “something else.” It made it something
other, allowing the subject’s relationship to it to be something other than
a relation to the Gestapo.
Note how the jouissance-filled prediction (the motor pattern
“Gestapo”) remains intact. It is still jouissance-filled; one might specu-
late that it is still sensitized. However, it has been modulated, cut off from
the nightmarish Nazi narrative and transformed into “something else.” In
a sense, it still fails, insofar as the affective significance has not been
reduced to zero tension. Nevertheless, the affect is not trapped in painful
suffering. Although one is stuck with one’s prematurely automatized pre-
dictions, this does not mean one cannot play with them15 and modulate
them.
One can debate the appropriateness of Lacan’s intervention here.
Lacan was not known for obeying rules. A critical reading would dismiss
this act as highly inappropriate—one should never touch a patient. A
more generous reading would presume that this was a singular interven-
tion. In this specific case, with this specific patient, Lacan recognized the
potential to affect the real via the signifier with what was experienced as
an “appeal to humanity.”

Subjective Destitution

In sum, Lacanian technique does not work to strengthen how well

predictions can satisfy one’s emotional needs. Rather, it aims to hit the
surplus within the patient’s failed predictions. By hitting this excess pre-
diction error, one can loosen the grip of these predictions, unhooking
14This interpretation, an action, is interesting to consider alongside Solms’s point (2018)

that nondeclarative predictions (automatized action plans) cannot be reconsolidated through

thinking, but can be reconsolidated through enactments. Lacan’s interpretation is an action at
the level of the signifier.
15I owe the genesis of this idea of playing with automatized predictions to a conversation

with Elizabeth Winship.

760
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

them from painful narrative structures or modulating one’s stance toward

them. Provoking these predictions allows a shift in one’s position toward
jouissance, one’s mode of enjoyment.
This is why Lacanian analysis aims at subjective “destitution”
(Verhaeghe 1998). By uprooting one’s most basic ways of dealing with
jouissance, one must give up the support of the old predictive network
with which one has always managed enjoyment. This is what it means to
confront the “most radical dimension of human existence” in which one
questions “how something like [one’s predictive] ‘reality’ constitutes
itself in the first place” (Žižek 2006, p. 3). It is a deep recognition that the
subject is not all-determined by a predictive network. One’s old mode of
metabolizing jouissance must be deprived of its power, made “destitute,”
for new possibilities to emerge. To approach this, one technique open to
the analyst is the provocation of prediction error.

A moment of concluding:
e n j oy yo u r p r e d i c t i o n e r r o r !

These papers have contributed to Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis (see

Bazan and Detandt 2013; Dall’Aglio 2019; Johnston 2019) with a focus
on sex and jouissance. Jouissance can be dynamically localized to sur-
plus prediction error within the brain. This excess arises at the originally
lost prediction, the immanent failure within prediction where the subject
paradoxically enjoys (see part 2). Lacanian technique targets the subject’s
failed predictions, which metabolize jouissance. This entails an opening
up of one’s mode of enjoyment to allow one to enjoy one’s jouissance in
some other fashion. Rather than eliminating or mastering prediction error,
this approach entails a radical confrontation with surplus prediction error.
One still fails (to eliminate prediction error), but one fails better. One
enjoys the failure. Enjoy your symptom! Enjoy your prediction error!

ORCID iD

John Dall’Aglio https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4620-743X

References

Adamczyk, P., Domagalik, A., Cepuch, K., Daren, A., & Marek, T. (2018).
Diminished activation of the right inferior parietal lobule as a neural

761
 John Dall’Aglio

substrate of impaired cartoon-jokes comprehension in schizophrenia

outpatients. Schizophrenia Research 197:593–595.
Adamczyk, P., Myczesany, M., Domagalik, A., Daren, A., Cepuch, K., Bładziski,
P., Cechnicki, A., & Marek, T. (2017). Neural circuit of verbal humor com-
prehension in schizophrenia: An fMRI study. NeuroImage 15:525–540.
Allouch, J. (2009). 543 impromptus de Jacques Lacan. Paris: Mille et une
nuits.
Bazan, A. (2011). Phantoms in the voice: A neuropsychoanalytic hypothesis
on the structure of the unconscious. Neuropsychoanalysis 13:161–176.
Bazan, A., & Detandt, S. (2013). On the physiology of jouissance: Interpreting
the mesolimbic dopaminergic reward functions from a psychoanalytic
perspective. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7:709.
Bazan, A., & Detandt, S. (2017). The grand challenge for psychoanalysis and
neuropsychoanalysis: A science of the subject. Frontiers in Psychology
8:1259.
Bazan, A., Kushwaha, R., Winer, E., Snodgrass, J., Brakel, L., & Shevrin, H.
(2019). Phonological ambiguity detection outside of consciousness and
its defensive avoidance. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 13:77.
Bernardi, R., & de Bernardi, B. (2019). Commentary on Bruce Fink’s “On the
value of the Lacanian approach to analytic practice.” International
Journal of Psychoanalysis 100:333–340.
Bihrle, A., Brownell, H., & Powelson, J. (1986). Comprehension of humorous
and nonhumorous materials by left and right brain-damaged patients.
Brain & Cognition 5:399–411.
Bromberg, P. (1996). Standing in the spaces: The multiplicity of self and the
psychoanalytic relationship. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 32:509–535.
Brownell, H., Michel, D., Powelson, J., & Gardner, H. (1983). Surprise but
not coherence: Sensitivity to verbal humor in right-hemisphere patients.
Brain & Language 18:20–27.
Bryan, J. (2014). The relevance of neurobiology in the analytic dyad: A clini-
cal moment with the girl who cries wolf in analysis. Neuropsychoanalysis
16:69–75.
Campbell, D., Wallace, M., Modirrousta, M., Polimeni, J., McKeen, N., &
Reiss, J. (2015). The neural basis of humour comprehension and humour
appreciation: The roles of the temporoparietal junction and superior
frontal gyrus. Neuropsychologia 79:10–20.
Cardinal, M. (1975). The Words to Say It, transl. P. Goodheart. Cambridge,
MA: Van Vactor & Goodheart, 2003.
Cauwe, J., & Vanheule, S. (2018). On beginning the treatment: Lacanian per-
spectives. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 87:695–727.

762
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

Cauwe, J., Vanheule, S., & Desmet, M. (2017). The presence of the analyst in
Lacanian treatment. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
65:609–638.
Chan, Y.-C., Chou, T.-L., Chen, H.-C., Yeh, Y.-C., Lavallee, J., Liang, K.-C.,
& Chang, K.-E. (2013). Towards a neural circuit model of verbal humor
processing: An fMRI study of the neural substrates of incongruity detec-
tion and resolution. NeuroImage 66:169–176.
Copjec, J. (2004). Imagine There’s No Woman: Ethics and Sublimation. 2nd
ed. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Dall’Aglio, J. (2019). Of brains and Borromean knots: A Lacanian meta-
neuropsychology. Neuropsychoanalysis 21:23–38.
Dall’Aglio, J. (2020). No-Thing in common between the unconscious and the
brain: On the (im)possibility of Lacanian neuropsychoanalysis.
Psychoanalysis Lacan 4.
Epstein, M. (2019). Buddhism and psychoanalysis: Implications for the psy-
chotherapeutic treatment of trauma. Paper presented to the Rhode Island
Association for Psychoanalytic Psychologies, Providence, April.
Faye, E. (2016). Psychoanalytic desire and the speaking body. Paper pre-
sented to the LCM/ACP Colloquium, Melbourne, Australia, September.
Fink, B. (2011). Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic Technique: A Lacanian
Approach for Practitioners. New York: Norton.
Fink, B. (2019). On the value of the Lacanian approach to analytic practice.
International Journal of Psychoanalysis 100:315–332.
Freud, S. (1909). Notes upon a case of obsessional neurosis. Standard
Edition 10:151–318.
Freud, S. (1913). The disposition to obsessional neurosis: A contribution to
the problem of choice of neurosis. Standard Edition 12:317–326.
Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, repeating and working-through. Standard
Edition 12:147–156.
Freud, S. (1915). Instincts and their vicissitudes. Standard Edition 14:117–140.
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and melancholia. Standard Edition 14:243–258.
Hafner, D. (2015). Ambiguity, equivocity, unconscious. Language &
Psychoanalysis 4:75–103.
Holmes, J., & Nolte, T. (2019). “Surprise” and the Bayesian brain: Implications
for psychotherapy theory and practice. Frontiers in Psychology 10:592.
Hook, D. (2013). Discourse analysis: Terminable or interminable? Qualitative
Research in Psychology 10:249–253.
Johnston, A. (2013). Misfelt feelings: Unconscious affect between psycho-
analysis, neuroscience, and philosophy. In Self and Emotional Life:
Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and Neuroscience. New York: Columbia
University Press, pp. 73–210.

763
 John Dall’Aglio

Johnston, A. (2019). Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism: Vol.2. A Weak

Nature Alone. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Kirshner, L.A., ed. (2011). Between Winnicott and Lacan: A Clinical
Engagement. New York: Routledge.
Lacan, J. (1958). Intervention, in G. Favez: “Le rendez-vous avec la psych-
analyste.” La Psychanalyse 4:305–314.
Lacan, J. (1959–1960). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Ethics of
Psychoanalysis, ed. J.-A. Miller, transl. D. Porter. New York: Norton,
1992.
Lacan, J. (1964). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Four Fundamental
Concepts of Psychoanalysis, ed. J.-A. Miller, transl. A. Sheridan. New
York: Norton, 1978.
Lacan, J. (1972–1973). The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine
Sexuality, the Limits of Love and Knowledge, ed. J.-A. Miller, transl. B.
Fink. New York: Norton, 2000.
lacanonline (2012). A story from Lacan’s practice, August 12.
Mobbs, D., Greicius, M., Abdel-Azim, E., Menon, V., & Reiss, A. (2003). Humor
modulates the mesolimbic reward centers. Neuron 40:1041–1048.
Nobus, D. (2016). Psychoanalysis as gai saber: Toward a new episteme of
laughter. In Lacan, Psychoanalysis, and Comedy, ed. P. Gherovici & M.
Steinkoler. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 36–59.
Parr, T., & Friston, K. (2018). The anatomy of inference: Generative models
and brain structure. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 12:90.
Shibata, M., Terasawa, Y., & Umeda, S. (2014). Integration of cognitive and
affective networks in humor comprehension. Neuropsychologia 65:137–
145.
Smith, R., & Solms, M. (2018). Examination of the hypothesis that repression
is premature automatization: A psychoanalytic case report and discus-
sion. Neuropsychoanalysis 20:47–61.
Solms, M. (2015). Reconsolidation: Turning consciousness into memory.
Behavioral & Brain Sciences 38.
Solms, M. (2017). What is “the unconscious,” and where is it located in the
brain? A neuropsychoanalytic perspective. Annals of the New York
Academy of Sciences 1406:90–97.
Solms, M. (2018). The neurobiological underpinnings of psychoanalytic
theory and therapy. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 12:294.
Solms, M. (2019). The hard problem of consciousness and the free energy
principle. Frontiers in Psychology 9:2714.
Taber, K., Redden, M., & Hurley, R. (2007). Functional anatomy of humor:
Positive affect and chronic mental illness. Journal of Neuropsychiatry &
Clinical Neurosciences 19:358–362.

764
 Sex And Prediction Error, Part 3

Verhaeghe, P. (1998). Causation and destitution of a pre-ontological non-

entity. In Key Concepts of Lacanian Psychoanalysis, ed. D. Nobus. New
York: Other Press, pp. 164–189.
Verhaeghe, P. (2004). On Being Normal and Other Disorders: A Manual for
Clinical Psychodiagnostics, transl. S. Jottkandt. New York: Other Press.
Verhaeghe, P., & Declercq, F. (2016). Lacan’s analytic goal: Le sinthome or
the feminine way. Psychoanalytische Perspectieven 34:1–21.
Wilson, M. (2005). “Nothing could be further from the truth”: The role of
lack in the analytic process. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic
Association 54:397–422.
Žižek, S. (2006). How to Read Lacan. New York: Norton.
Žižek, S. (2018). The Courage of Hopelessness: A Year of Acting Dangerously.
London: Melville House.
Žižek, S. (2020). Sex and the Failed Absolute. London: Bloomsbury.
Zupančič , A. (2017). What IS sex? Cambridge: MIT Press.

Duquesne University
Department of Psychology
211 Rockwell Hall
Pittsburgh, PA 15282
Email: dallagliojohn@gmail.com

765