I am continuing to paraphrase Fink's book on Lacanian clinical practice.
1. In the process of being brought up, there are certain prohibitions placed on the child's behaviour: eating and excretion are carefully managed, and autoerotic behaviour discouraged. Lacan calls castration the general loss of the possibility of the child's immediate gratification. This loss, however, is transformed by the prohibition placed on the child's behaviour such that it becomes jouissance; bodily pleasure is transformed into something enticing and erotic; the strength of the prohibition can be directly correlated with the erotic charge borne by the forbidden act.
Of course, at the time of its upbringing, the child has no choice but to accept the giving up of immediate gratification. But this relinquishment is equivocal: the jouissance sacrificed by the child plays a role in constituting the subject it becomes. In Fink's words,
the subject constitutes him- or herself as a stance adopted with respect to that loss of jouissance. Object a can be understood as the object (now lost) which provided that jouissance, as a kind of rem(a)inder of that lost jouissance.
I desire, now, what I gave up, and it appears all the more attractive for the fact that it has vanished. This is not a desire among others, to placed on a par with other demands I might have, but plays a crucial role in determining who I am. As Fink puts it, the subject constitutes him or herself with respect to the loss of jouissance, and, indeed, in relation to those who brought about this loss: parents and caregivers in the subject's early years. The 'object a' can be understood more precisely as having its origin as what is left over from that forbidden jouissance.
2. The role of the fundamental fantasy for Lacan can now come into focus: in Fink's words,
[it] stages the relationship between the subject and the lost object that provided this now prohibited satisfaction. Desire, as expressed in and propped up by the fundamental fantasy, is determined and conditioned by the satisfaction that has been prohibited and renounced.
As opposed to particular imaginary scenes or constructs, the fundamental fantasy stages the position of the subject and the missing object of jouissance. Lacan calls this the 'subject position' or the 'position as subject' of the analysand.
It is the fundamental fantasy that the analyst will attempt to uncover through analytic session. But this process cannot assume the fantasy in question is simply there unaltered, lying in wait. For the fundamental fantasy as it is constructed and reconstructed in the analytic session, says Fink. Sessions allow this fantasy to be 'distilled' out of that disparate fantasies which arise over the course of analysis, revealing itself as it has determined the stance the analysand takes towards what caused his or her behaviour.
This recalls Freud's notion of the primal scene. In his case study of the 'Wolf Man', he explores the way in which traumatising scenes may sometimes only be interpretable as experiences long after the actual event. Freud wonders whether the 18 month old who observed his parent's intercourse 'could be in a position to take in the perceptions of such a complicated process and to preserve them so accurately in his unconscious'; nevertheless, he insists that what was traumatising in the observation of parental intercourse 'was the conviction of the reality of castration'.
But he also wonders whether the primal scene need refer to an actually occurring event - a real act of witnessing. At the same time, he also appears confident that he has brought the mystery of the scene in this particular case study to a full elaboration, showing, as elsewhere, how any complex the psychoanalyst uncovers can be referred back to an older one, eventually pointing back to a lack that belongs to our originary history.
Our individual fantasies bear a structural similarity with other primal fantasies that recall this lack. And it is this structure that is important with respect to the primal scene, which otherwise could be dismissed as having to do with the patient's retrospective construction (his or her cryptomnesia) rather than any actually occurring event.
Likewise, then, with the fundamental fantasy that the Lacanian psychoanalyist builds up over the course of analysis. Fundamental fantasies bear upon the experience of castration, differing from individual to individual, and from the way in which they allow themselves to be constructed in the analytic session only as they reflect a patient's particular mode of jouissance.
3. Freud noted in frustration that analysis often came to an end when confronted with the 'rock' of castration: the patient can only be brought to the state of giving up of satisfaction made according to the desires of his or her caregiver. For Freud, analysis should push further. This is likewise Lacan's aim, for whom running up against castration means the patient remains fixed or stuck by the giving up of jouissance to the caregiving Other.
How does this manifest itself? A patient who appears to be an obedient son to his parents, taking on a job in the family firm, marrying a woman from an approved family, etc., may still harbour a resentment towards his parents. As Fink puts it, 'Every neurosis entails [...] a resentful stance toward the Other's satisfaction'. The neurotic (classified according to Lacan) views giving up his or her jouissance in terms of a reward that has never manifest itself.
For Lacan, the neurotic's position does not need to wreck analysis upon the rock of castration. It is possible in his expression to traverse the fantasy via the encounter with the desire of the analyst. In so doing, the analysand's fundamental fantasy can be reconfigured, and along with it, a new relation to the Other achieved.
This is how analysis might push further than castration. Whereas the neurotic is marked by resentment for what he or she has given up, and is therefore in a stance of resentment towards the Other's desire, the patient who has traversed the fantasy is no longer stuck; the Other's jouissance is no longer a frustration. No longer does the analysand seek recompense from his or her parents or caregivers for lost jouissance. By the end of the analysis, the analyst, who has come to occupy the position of the 'object a', will likewise no longer be blamed for what the analysand has lost.
In another book, Fink explains traversing the fantasy as 'the process by which the subject subjectifies trauma, takes the traumatic event upon him or herself, and assumes responsibility for that jouissance'. Like Nietzsche's Zarathustra, one must will what has happened without resentment, subjectifying what may seem to have happened randomly or accidentally. Hasn't child of the 'Three Metamorphorses' become its own cause?
4. Analysis ends with what Lacan calls 'precipitation', a reconfiguration of the fundamental fantasy. The analysand is now able to take responsibility towards his or her castration; the analyst as Other (and through him or her, parents and other caregivers) is no longer blamed for stealing jouissance from the patient. But something else occurs, too - all along, the analysand will have been aware of the analyst's desire for him or her to continue the process of analysis. The end of analysis is not announced by the analyst, but by the analysand, over whom the analyst's desire no longer has a hold.
But this is not a simple breaking off, both parties shaking hands and agreeing on a job well done. There is danger, says Fink, in letting the analysis come to a peaceful end, since this can suggest acquiescence to the analyst as an authority figure. The analysand must be brought to the point where the analyst's desires have no more hold upon him or her, but this requires the arduous work that analysis involves. Analysis will usually end only after a serious struggle.