Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan is well known
for his use of the Borromean ‘knot’ to illustrate
his thinking around the psyche.
After gorging himself on James Joyce’s work he added a fourth ring to his original trefoil schema which locked the rings, effectively ‘locking down’ the psyche. He named it the Sinthome, which was an archaic and hybridised way of spelling ‘symptom’.
By undergoing analysis, the analysand wishes to be ‘unlocked’, to deal with their anxiety and thereby be rid of their Sinthome.
If successful, what happens to our Sinthome?
What if we take Lacan’s topological line drawing and retro-engineer it from a line back into an object?
Okay, it is now three dimensional thing; perhaps we can see it as a bean-shaped sculpture and we can choose to call it sculpture.
Is it a bean? Perhaps a jumping bean?
Kathryn Smith writes : In ‘Cut The Bean’, founding editor of Cabinet magazine Sina Najafi describes Cabinet’s research practices and resulting product as the amplification of one fundamental principle: curiosity. Setting the terms of his case, he describes a first encounter between André Breton, Robert Caillois and a Mexican jumping bean, on the evening on December 26, 1934. Both Breton and Caillois were equally awestruck by the bean, yet Breton was deeply offended by his companion’s suggestion that they cut the bean to discover its secret. Breton’s refusal to engage in this kind of research method prompted Caillois to resign from the Surrealist movement the next day, on the grounds that he could not comply with Breton’s unwillingness to accept the possible compatibility of ‘poetry’ and ‘research’.
After gorging himself on James Joyce’s work he added a fourth ring to his original trefoil schema which locked the rings, effectively ‘locking down’ the psyche. He named it the Sinthome, which was an archaic and hybridised way of spelling ‘symptom’.
By undergoing analysis, the analysand wishes to be ‘unlocked’, to deal with their anxiety and thereby be rid of their Sinthome.
If successful, what happens to our Sinthome?
What if we take Lacan’s topological line drawing and retro-engineer it from a line back into an object?
Okay, it is now three dimensional thing; perhaps we can see it as a bean-shaped sculpture and we can choose to call it sculpture.
Is it a bean? Perhaps a jumping bean?
Kathryn Smith writes : In ‘Cut The Bean’, founding editor of Cabinet magazine Sina Najafi describes Cabinet’s research practices and resulting product as the amplification of one fundamental principle: curiosity. Setting the terms of his case, he describes a first encounter between André Breton, Robert Caillois and a Mexican jumping bean, on the evening on December 26, 1934. Both Breton and Caillois were equally awestruck by the bean, yet Breton was deeply offended by his companion’s suggestion that they cut the bean to discover its secret. Breton’s refusal to engage in this kind of research method prompted Caillois to resign from the Surrealist movement the next day, on the grounds that he could not comply with Breton’s unwillingness to accept the possible compatibility of ‘poetry’ and ‘research’.
