Affect: It's The Real Thing

Anyone who teaches psychoanalysis will have had to attempt to answer the commonplace criticism of Lacan that he neglects the question of affect. Lacan's apparent intellectualism further compounds his crime. His emphasis on the signifier is often seen as somehow distancing analysis from some real beyond of the subject - that real that is the affective life of the subject, as though affect were a 'tip of the iceberg' hinting at some pure raw state underneath.…