One of the most impressive aspects of Freud’s work has to do with what he called the “narcissistic illnesses” of man. According with his own theory, in an attempt to place his unconscious discoveries, man has suffered successive humiliations to the very foundations of his century’s long beliefs of superiority. Copernicus was the first one to throw humans off their central placement in the universe, by proving that the sun was the actual center and not earth. Following him, Darwin forever took away the pride of human beings as the centrifuge of intelligence, by proving through the evolution theory our blind emergence. Lastly, Freud himself proved that human is not even the landlord in his own house . The predominant role of the unconscious forever drove away sentimental linearity and traceable reasoning.
Now, we would like to try to investigate, how not even the solidness of our own spatial volume is a given. In the way that we accept and recognize and thus legalize our institutions, we can also admit that we accept, recognize and thus legalize the un - changeability our living or acting space.
The symbolic [S], the real [R] and the imaginary [I]. These are the main elements, according to the progressive French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan , that all things can be described with. In an attempt to spatialize this theory, we are using examples set forward for us by Slavoj Zizek , an psychoanalyst himself that is trying to investigate the depth of Lacan’s proposals .
According to Zizek’s designation there is no sound and secure way to assume a direct link between elements and signified objects or terms. Having this into mind we will try to translate as close as possible the terms and their given meaning, to the spatial context of the project.
[S]. the symbolic meaning calls for the essential rules of the game that involves every given society structure. In a game of chess, that would be the rules that comprise of the game itself.
[R]. the real. A really important element that actually includes in its definition all of the secondary but yet crucial pieces of environmental or other conditions, that may affect the subject in an immediate manner. In the chess play, the real would be the environmental conditions surrounding the game, the health of the players, their intelligence etc...
[I]. this last designator comes to cover the ground left by the other two. It is easier to understand it if somebody thinks in terms of Saussure’s signified. All the attributes that we imaginary give to an object in a completely humanisticly subjective way. In our example, it stands for the names and the proposed (designated) chess moves, the shapes of the pieces etc…
“The symbolic space acts like a yardstick against which I can measure myself. This is why the big Other can be personified or reified in a single agent : the “God” who watches over me from beyond, and over all real individuals , or the cause that involves me ( freedom , communism , nation ) and for which I am ready to give my life.
[…]
In spite of all this power , the big Other is fragile, insubstantial , properly virtual, in a sense that its status is that of a subjective presupposition. It exists only in so far that the subject acts as it exists. It is similar that of an ideological cause like Communism or the Nation: it is the substance of the individuals that recognize themselves in it, the ground of their whole existence, and the point of reference that provides the ultimate meaning , something that they are ready to give their lives for . Yet the only thing that truly exists is the individuals and their activity, so this substance is actual only in so far as individuals believe in it and act accordingly.”
Slavoj Zizek
