The Fan(addict): The Sinthome of Believing in the Multiples of ONE

Abstract

In a post-Oedipal world the Freudian identification, which theorized the psyche as being a split entity, has been replaced by one of division; a decentered ego subject to hysterical doubt (Verhaeghe, 1999b, 117–118). During Freud’s time models of identification were rather limited; besides parents and possibly grandparents, there were a small number of reference figures, for example, teacher, doctor, and lawyer that a middle-class adolescent could look up to. Such a “relatively” sable social order led to the theorization of a divided psyche based on identification and repression; positive traits were internalized while external traits were expelled. This was not a simple either-or process, as Lacan was to show; rather this love/hate relationship was a paradoxically complex structure. What is pleasurable outside is internalized inside. Hence, the inside is the pleasurable outside. While, what is unpleasant inside is placed outside. Hence, what is outside is the unpleasant inside—a “stranger” in us, to use Kristeva’s formulation. During Freud’s time identity remained rather stable, its duality conflicted between the unconscious and conscious by opposing desires, as in Winnicott’s “true self” as opposed to a “false self,” for instance.