Jacques Lacan

Seminar II
The Ego in Freuds Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis

Bluma Zeigarnik (1901-1988)

Zeigarnik was soviet psychologist and psychiatrist. Born into a Lithuanian Jewish family in Prienai, Kovno Governorate Zeigarnik matriculated from the Berlin University in 1927. She described the Zeigarnik effect in a diploma prepared under the supervision of Kurt Lewin. In the 1930s, she worked with Lev Vygotsky at the All-Union Institute of Experimental Medicine (AUIEM, aka VIEM). During World War II, she assisted Alexander Luria in repairing head injuries. She was a co-founder of the Moscow State University Department of Psychology and the All-Russian Seminars in Psychopathology. Died in Moscow at the age of 87.

Zeigarnik effect

In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect (less common: Ovsiankina-Effect) states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. In Gestalt psychology, the Zeigarnik effect has been used to demonstrate the general presence of Gestalt phenomena: not just appearing as perceptual effects, but also present in cognition. Zeigarnik first studied the phenomenon after her professor, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, noticed that a waiter had better recollections of still unpaid orders. However, after the completion of the task after everyone had paid he was unable to remember any more details of the orders. However, several studies attempting to replicate Zeigarnik's experiment, done later in other countries, failed to find significant differences in recall between finished and unfinished (interrupted) tasks (e.g. Van Bergen, 1968). The advantage of remembrance can be explained by looking at Lewins field theory: a task that has already been started establishes a task-specific tension, which improves cognitive accessibility of the relevant contents. This tension that has formerly been established is being relieved upon completion of the task. In case of task interruption the reduction of tension is being impeded. Through continuous tension the content is easier accessible and it can be easily remembered. The Zeigarnik effect suggests that students who suspend their study, during which they do unrelated activities (such as studying unrelated subjects or playing games), will remember material better than students who complete study sessions without a break (Zeigarnik, 1927; McKinney 1935).

Sren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)

Kierkegaard recollection vs repetition

Kirkegaardian concept of repetition arises in the context of self-development

Dillema of selfhood: How does one reconcile the fact that the self changes over time, yet maintains its apparent unity?

The idea of repetition is influenced by two Greek theories: 1.Theory of motion, actually, the impossibility of motion affirmed by Eleatics, notably Zeno and Parmenides. It was asserted that motion is impossible, because if a man wants to go from point A to point B, he must first traverse a midway pointcall it Xto get there. However, he cannot get to X unless he first gets to a midway point between A and X, and so forth. This reason is applied ad infinitum. Therefore motion is impossible, an illusion.

2. The Plato's idea of recollection, which has to do with knowledge acquisition. In the Phaedo we find Socrates discoursing on the acquisition of knowledge as a recollection of things from a previous incarnation. Ostensibly, this idea is put forth by Socrates as a way to comfort his friends. That is, if a man can learn anything he must have already known something about what he is going to learn or he would not be equipped to learn anything. And if he has known something without having been taught it (in this life), he must have learned it before his birth. And if the soul existed prior to birth it stands to reason that it survives death, and thus his friends have no cause for grief. This innate and prior knowledge is triggered into consciousness by sensory input. Plato is striving to work beyond a two-fold paradox. Namely, if a person does not know something, he cannot learn it since he knows nothing about it. If, on the other hand, he knows it, he does not need to learn it. Plato uses recollection to get beyond this problematical hurdle.

Kierkegaards contention with recollection is twofold:

1. It amounts to an avoidance of time. In recollection one sneaks back out of life into the eternal and thus recollection refuses to acknowledge our temporality as an essential constitutive of being. 2. As a Christian, Kierkegaard contests any immanent anchoring of the self in recollected truth due to sin: sin introduces a break between God and man and so the truth is obscured, hence the Christian must rely on revelation in the form of the incarnation in which God becomes man and reveals the truth. (To intuit the truth within is a pagan idea)

Kierkegaards Repetition (1843)

A venture in experimenting psychology by Constantin Constantius

Summary
Kierkegaard opposes the pagan doctrine of recollection, which implies an immanent relation to the eternal, to the Christian doctrine of repetition - a relation that relies on God breaking into time. In recollection, our contingent identity is subordinated to our unchanging and eternal nature; in repetition our unchanging nature depends precisely upon our ability to entertain change.

Lacans reworking of the Wiederholungszwang

The basis for Lacans re-reading of the repetition compulsion is language. The repetition compulsion refers to the way the subject is forced to repeat various positions or roles given in advance by the signifying chain. That is to say, the subjects position is preordained, determined by the route the signifier takes.

This discourse of the other is not the discourse of the abstract other [] it is the discourse of the circuit in which I am integrated. I am one of its links. It is the discourse of my father for instance, in so far as my father made mistakes which I am absolutely condemned to reproduce thats what we call the super-ego. I am condemned to reproduce them because I am obliged to pick up again the discourse he bequeathed to me [] because one cant stop the chain of discourse. (SII, p. 89)

Lacan reminiscence vs repetition