Did He Testify and Exhort

Pleasure, says Lacan, is a reduction of tension in the psychic system. For example, pleasure is the satisfaction I get when I eat a great meal when I’m very hungry. Jouissance, by contrast, is when you compulsively eat and eat and eat, despite the fact that your continued consumption causes you a great deal of pain and discomfort. You can’t stop yourself. Pleasure is sneezing after a build-up of your nose itching. Jouissance is cutting yourself with razor blades. Pleasure is making love. Jouissance is fucking fifteen or twenty times in a single day– or doing the masturbatory equivalent –even though it’s no longer pleasurable and has even become painful. Evoking Lacan’s example from Seminar 7, jouissance is going through the door to be with the forbidden woman even though you know you’ll be punished for all eternity for doing so (i.e., you destroy yourself).

Lacan often talks about jouissance as something that’s traumatic, and speaks of desire as an attempt to defend against jouissance.

Jouissance is caused by a trace or remainder of a thing desired. A word represents a platonic ideal of a thing, and no signified thing can ever live up to the desire for the signifier