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Excellent framing of "instinct vs drive" and the relation of drive satisfaction to social vs individual interventions. https://twitter.com/4Q248/status/1276389880407429120
I especially like these paragraphs, that see @4Q248 aligning with W. Reich in terms of Communism/Socialism as being about "removing barriers to drive satisfaction".
This definition of drive as the mediation between the biophysical Outside and the internal wish is particularly important. It helps us understand the power of Lacan's separation of the "pure" Freudian "genital drive" into the "scopic" and "invocatory" drives.
In particular, the notion of the scopic drive lets us "decompose" the "desire for sex" into constituent scopic parts, using Lacan's distinction of active, passive, and reflexive voices.
The scopic active voice: "to see" (voyeurism), the fantasy of witnessing the partner's body or intimate self.
The scopic passive voice: "to be seen" (exhibitionist), being gazed at desiringly by a partner, having your interiority or intimate self or body witnessed.
The scopic reflexive voice: "to see oneself", the fantasy of being "the sort of person who" has sex, viewing oneself as attractive by way of active/passive mediation.
Our specific desires, fantasies, wishes, as they emerge from our drives, are mediated by the symbolic associations set up through our social world, our media consumption, etc.
So, if one's understanding of sex is achieved through viewing pornography, then the corresponding fantasies arising from the scopic drive will differ in comparison to a more "organic" understanding of sex through increasing levels of intimacy.
The problem with outright declaring pornography a "danger", though, is that the alternative isn't simply that "organic" understanding of sex, but an understanding achieved through an alternative set of media, in particular through the (ideological) medium of cinema.
So, if one's scopic fantasy of sex comes from pornography, its content may be something like "seeing one's partner fucked in a particular way."
But, if one's scopic fantasy of sex comes from cinema, its content may instead be the serious, "picturesque" sex depicted by Hollywood.
But, if one's scopic fantasy of sex comes from cinema, its content may instead be the serious, "picturesque" sex depicted by Hollywood.
In practice, sex as experienced never quite "reaches" the pornographic or cinematic fantasy. This distance between one's fantasy and the reality has potential to leave one dissatisfied, converting a real pleasure into a psychological displeasure.
So we keep trying over and over again, "chasing the dragon", wondering why we're never satisfied, when it is in fact the fantasy and not the reality that's responsible for our displeasure.
So, how to fix the conversion of pleasure into displeasure, as a result of fantasy? Entire schools of thought and practice exist on the topic, as far ranging as Stoicism, Buddhism, and Enlightenment philosophy.
I will say the one thing that likely _doesn't_ work, in terms of overcoming one's sexual image fantasies, is giving up pornography, or practicing nofap. By that point in time, the fantasy lives _inside you_, the media is merely a passive conduit which draws it out.
Better to watch porn, and then spend some time reflecting on why you like what you like, perhaps developing some conceptual tools to help you navigate, than to try and ignore the situation entirely.
Reflecting on one's fantasies can provide rich insight into what exactly it is that constitutes the "self", why one believes in certain ways and believes certain things (even if the sexual realm seems so far removed from "regular" life!), and I highly recommend it.
(And, if you have a therapist you actually trust, one thing that helped me was discussing these fantasies, even though it felt uncomfortable. It's amazing how the simple act of _telling somebody_ about these things can aid in reflection. "Confession" is legit.)
Excellent follow-up and companion thread, clarifies some of what I've expressed above and also puts forth a different angle. https://twitter.com/Dailan__M/status/1276561223085993984
