Editor's Column: Lacan's “Civilization and its Discontents”

A casual glance at the title of the lead article in this issue, Lacan's previously untranslated paper on psychoanalysis and criminology, might leave one with the impression that this is a rather narrowly focused piece likely to be of interest only to criminologists. In fact, however, Lacan's paper might well be titled “Civilization and Its Discontents,” for it functions to clarify, elaborate, or critique many of the formulations of Freud's book concerning the most fundamental psychological consequences of civilization, as well as the psychological roots of the most serious problems facing civilization. Crime, as a manifestation of the most severe discontent with civilization, serves Lacan as the royal road to what we might call the social unconscious. “The reality of the criminal,” Lacan says, “indicates the fundamental social province of psychoanalysis” (19).

Lacan's paper makes three general points concerning the relation of psychoanalysis to culture and society:

1. Psychoanalytic discoveries provide the basis for a general model of subjectivity that can help us understand both the psychological roots of social and cultural phenomena—that is, the motives that cause humans to produce these phenomena—and the basic psychological consequences that social and cultural formations can have.

2. Psychoanalysis offers us a method for investigating the specific psychological roots or consequences of a specific social or cultural phenomenon.

3. Psychoanalysis offers us a technique for intervening in social problems through addressing their psychological roots or consequences.

In my comments here, I want to focus on the first of these points, and specifically on how, according to Lacan, psychoanalysis can help us understand and intervene in the problem that Freud described as the most serious concern facing civilization: human aggression.

Early in his paper Lacan indicates—in typically laconic fashion—the fundamental insights into subjectivity