Topology of Fear

Psychoanalysis, Urban Theory, and the Space of Phobia

In the preface to his much acclaimed Warped Spaces: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture (2001), urban theorist Anthony Vidler emphasizes that "the intersection of spatial thought with psychoanalytical thought ... has been a preoccupation of social and aesthetic discourse since the turn of the [twentieth] century." Unfortunately, his laudable attempt to rethink such an intersection by means of the notion of a psychologically "warped" space relies on the mistaken assumption that psychoanalysis understands space as a mere "projection of the subject." According to this simplistic reading, Freud's and Lacan's notion of projected space would be nothing other than a "repository of all the ... phobias of [the] subject" and, as such, "full of disturbing objects and forms, among which the forms of architecture and the city take their place."

With a naive pre-Kantian move that completely ignores the complex dialectic of the subject-object relation in psychoanalytic theory, Vidler intends to oppose Freud's and Lacan's supposed privileging of the desiring subject as a generator of phobic spaces and to stress "the active role of objects and spaces in anxiety and phobia." In other words, as Vidler programmatically states with reference to the phobia of Little Hans, he is as interested in the warehouses and horse-infested streets of Vienna, the alleged phobic object, as in the sexual origins of Hans's phobic disorder, the alleged phobic subject. Vidler believes that, by giving space its due and focusing on its inherent "invasive and boundary-breaking properties," he finally obviates a persistent failure of psychoanalytic theory.

In addition to ignoring some of the most basic distinctions of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, such as, first and foremost, that between phobia and anxiety, Vidler's confusing critique also falls short with regard to his own incorrect premises. In the end, the only intersection of spatial and psychoanalytic thought he can concretely delineate is confined to the barren field of analogies. On the one hand, his ambitious aim is to promote the independent status of the phobic objects of architecture and, in his own words, reinscribe such objects as the "mirror" of a psychoanalytic theory that would rely excessively on the subject. On the other hand, his investigations often do not go beyond a paradoxical praise of the innocent spatial images contained in Lacan's early paper on the mirror stage and his related theory of the ego as an object. Thus, according to Vidler, we should pay special attention to the fact that the "I" is conceived by Lacan as a fortress, a "fortified camp."

Having said this, if we take into account the intersection between psychoanalysis and the theory of space from the standpoint of the former, could we not raise a similar objection to Freud? Does he not usually make a purely analogical use of architectural and urban references? For instance, in Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Freud describes the hysterical symptom as a monument: "Symptoms are residues and mnemic symbols of particular (traumatic) experiences. ... The monuments and memorials with which large cities are adorned are also mnemic symbols." In another passage of the same work, he compares neurosis with a monastery: "To-day neurosis takes the place of the monasteries which used to be the refuge of all whom life had disappointed." These admittedly pedagogic similes are extraordinarily effective in explaining a difficult concept in an accessible way, yet they do not surpass the level of the analogy.

In this chapter, it is my intention to show how Lacan's theory of phobia as exposed in his fourth seminar on object relations deals with space in terms that are far from being simply analogical. Not only does he produce in this work a topo-graphy of phobia, a description of the places of phobia, but he also proposes that phobia, as a particular form of symbolization/subjectivation, is a topo-logy, literally a signifying logos that creates space for the phobic subject. In addition to this, I also aim to sketch the outlines of a possible dialogue between Lacan's topological notion of phobia and Mike Davis's fascinating redefinition of the contemporary late-capitalist Western metropolis, especially Los Angeles, as a constellation of phobic objects. It is doubtless the case that Davis's colorful prose style indulges in an abundant use of psychoanalytic jargon: thus, the widening of Highway 126 is compared with a primal scene; the buildings of deconstructive architect Frank Gehry display a "paranoid spatiality"; and the visits paid by cougars to Californian suburban neighborhoods are a "return of the repressed." Yet Davis's remarkable investigation is far from depending on any superficial pseudo-critique of psychoanalytic theory or a compulsive need to psychologize his arguments.

The Oedipus Complex, Anxiety, and the Phobic Subject

In order to understand Lacan's theory of phobia properly, it is necessary to set it against the background of his account of the Oedipus complex and the role that anxiety plays in it. According to Lacan, the onset and resolution of the Oedipus complex provides the child with the necessary key to enter the symbolic order understood as the Law of culture, and, in this way, subjectivize himself. This is only possible if, in parallel, the child is sexuated, if he or she assumes his or her symbolic position as man or woman. More specifically, the child is introduced to the three logically sequential "stages" of the Oedipus complex, which work retroactively, by means of three different "crises." Each crisis is based on the subject's confrontation with a distinctive lack of the object. The child's chances of successfully subjectivizing — and sexuating — himself depend on the way in which he reacts to the encounter with the three forms of the lack of the object.

Frustration initiates the child to the first stage of the Oedipus complex: it is defined as an imaginary lack of a real object and should be associated with the mother's neglect of the child's appeal. Here, Lacan rethinks the "pre-Oedipal" dual relation between the child and the mother in terms of the triad child-mother-imaginary phallus. The child then accedes to the second stage as soon as he realizes that the mother is "deprived," that she lacks, in the Real, a symbolic object, the symbolic phallus. At this stage, the child is involved in an aggressively imaginary rivalry with the imaginary father in order to control the mother. This stage corresponds to the doxastic idea of what the Oedipus complex is: "loving" the mother and "hating" the father. Lastly, the third stage is initiated by the real father who shows the child that he is the one who has what the mother lacks: the child realizes that he cannot compete with him. This is the child's castration proper, to be understood as the symbolic lack of an imaginary object, the imaginary phallus. The Oedipus complex is completely resolved when the child, irrespective of his sex, identifies symbolically with the father and thus both internalizes the Law and sexuates himself.

It is important to observe that frustration already establishes a productive proto-symbolic relation between the child, the mother, and the phallus — that is, what keeps her busy when she cannot answer the child's appeal. Lacan suggests that such a relation is dialectical. Why? The child demands that the mother love him unconditionally and, up to a certain point, he thinks he is loved by her without reserve. However, it is crucial to distinguish between what happens from the child's perspective and what happens from the perspective of the mother: the dialectic that unites them is asymmetrical. For what does the mother expect from the child? Does she really love him? We should emphasize that the mother is already an active part of the symbolic order, and as such, she is a desiring being. Lacan believes that, from the mother's standpoint, a dialectical relation is established with the child only insofar as he can represent for her a substitute for the missing imaginary phallus. Yet, for the mother, there is never a complete equation between the phallus and the child.

At this point, one fundamental question should be asked: when does the child realize that "it is not he who is loved but a certain image" in/of him? When does he understand that he is just the imperfect replacement of his mother's missing imaginary phallus? Lacan's answer is straightforward: this "fundamental disappointment" can occur only after the child has grasped for the first time — and in an incomplete way — the difference between the sexes. What is more, this phase is in the child strictly related to the emergence of infantile masturbation, the commencement of genital activity — both of the penis and the vagina. The initial discovery of the difference between the sexes and infantile masturbation are the two experiences that mark the child's passage from the first to the second stage of the Oedipus complex.

But how does the child effectively begin to grasp the difference between the sexes? Unsurprisingly, for Lacan, the second stage of the Oedipus complex is initiated by the intervention of the imaginary father who deprives the real mother of the child as phallus. In concomitance with this, the child enters into a narcissistic-aggressive relationship with the imaginary father to control the mother's desire, which is to say, to be her phallus. The child aggressively competes with the father by carrying out an imaginary alienating identification with his body image. Although Lacan is rather elusive on this point, the fact that the father is here considered as imaginary represents, I believe, a precise indicator that the child is relating to a Gestalt. Unlike the mother's body image and the child's own body image — as perceived through siblings and the mirror — that of the father is supplied with something supplementary that obtrudes: the phallic Gestalt. To put it simply, this is how sexual difference is initially assumed by the child.

What is certain is that the child soon realizes, by way of comparison, the utter inadequacy of his own real correlate of the imaginary phallus. Such an association between the image and the organ is facilitated by the fact that, meanwhile, the child's own genital drives have begun to manifest themselves in infantile masturbation. This sense of impotence also gives rise to anxiety before the Desire of the Mother, which is now perceived as a threatening and engulfing force precisely insofar as she is a lacking being, deprived of the phallus.

On this point, one common misunderstanding concerning the meaning of incest should be avoided: the mother considers the "totality" of the child as her imaginary phallus — it is as if she desires to devour him — but she does not want his penis, even after infantile masturbation has begun. With the latter's emergence, nothing changes for the mother. It is clear that, for Lacan, anxiety is not provoked in the child by the mother's desire for his real penis. On the contrary, in a sense, anxiety is caused precisely by the fact that the mother is not after his inadequate real penis. All changes occur in the child: "Anxiety consists in the fact that he can measure all the existing difference between that for which he is loved," his whole body as a gigantic phallic Gestalt/image, "and what he can give," his little real penis.

It should by now be clear how the imaginary competition with the father in the second stage of the Oedipus complex represents a preliminary escape from the mother. It enables the child to keep her at bay by means of the father's imaginary phallus — which, at this stage, the child literally is. Consequently, if the imaginary father, the agent of privation, fails to intervene or intervenes in an inadequate manner, the child must find alternative ways to cope with the anxiety induced by the Desire of the Mother. Phobia is one of these alternatives. Phobia is a defensive formation that compensates for the child's inability to accept and work through the mother's privation, her real lack, or desire. This inability depends on a deficiency of the function of the imaginary father. As Lacan bluntly remarks with regard to Little Hans's phobia, his father is far too tolerant, and apparently never displays any aggressivity towards him. To cut a long story short, the problem with Hans is that his father is not jealous of him.

More specifically, in what sense can we understand phobia as a compensatory defensive formation? For Lacan, the phobic object is essentially an imaginary element that can function as a "crude [brut] signifier"; it is around this element that the child can (re)construct symbolically his world after the devastating encounter with the Desire of the Mother. In other words, the phobic signifier is that empty signifier for which the subject is represented by every possible signifying element in his world. In this way, the subject is anchored to a new production of signification that protects him from anxiety. This is the reason why, expanding on a Freudian argument, Lacan can state that phobia is a "little crystallisation of anxiety." While anxiety does not have an object — "[anxiety] is the subject's confrontation with the lack [absence] of object, in which he is swallowed up" — phobia has an object. Yet, Lacan specifies that this object is "the least objectal [objectal] of all objects"; phobia is the "fear of an [objectified] absence," or, also, an abyss turned into an empty, "crude" signifier.

Three important issues follow from this. First, the phobic object does not have a "univocal meaning": Hans's phobic object, the horse, can be related — or better, relates Hans — to the mother, the father, the little sister, Hans himself, and many other things. As Lacan has it, crude signifiers such as the horse are therefore after all "obscure signifiers": they are somehow "in-significant" in that they never refer to a single signified. Being a radically "new" signifier that is exposed to and objectifies an otherwise irreducible lack, the horse allows Hans to carry out "a number of successive attempts to apply to his world a consistent signifying system that is able to restructure ... the principal elements of his world."

Second, in opposition to what is generally proposed by Lacanian doxa, the phobic signifier is more a substitute for the phallic Gestalt that orchestrates the competition with the imaginary father and keeps the mother at bay during the second stage of the Oedipus complex than it is a substitute for the real father, the agent of castration, during the third and final stage of the complex. For Lacan, the logical time of the real father's intervention follows that of the imaginary father: phobia is a possible reaction to the revelation of privation that marks the passage between the first and second stages of the Oedipus complex.

Third, phobic subjects do not strictly speaking undergo castration, even when, like Hans, they manage to overcome their phobia. This does not necessarily entail that phobic subjects are prevented from assuming their sexuality, for they might eventually be able to give a roundabout answer to the question "What does it mean to have the sex I have?" According to Lacan, Hans indeed ultimately signifies himself as a generator who controls the mother by being the one who — supplementing a deficient father — takes care of her children. However, for this very reason, Hans assumes his sexuality without activating the symbolic paternal function, the Name of the Father that allows the constitution of a lineage, which can only emerge after castration has taken place. Thus the question phobic subjects cannot answer is "What is a father?"

Phobia as Topology

In lesson XV of Seminar IV, Lacan introduces his reading of the Little Hans case by comparing it to an "unusual walk" that, in spite of its accelerated pace, still follows Freud's tracks. Lacan specifies that it is possible to take a walk only when we already find ourselves in an "established space." On the other hand, when we are in a "field outside of the routes we have already covered," strolling simply does not work: we run the risk of "going back to the starting point, without even realising it." Lacan claims that what we need in these instances is a topography. After the disorientating encounter with the Desire of the Mother, and a series of anxiety-inducing returns to the point where he got lost, Hans finds his way again thanks to the topographical, or even topological, configuration of his phobia. Thus, a phobic topography is that which allows Hans to construct a new space. Lacan's Freudian walk intends to retrace such a topography.

Let us briefly recall the context in which Hans's anxiety and the subsequent fear of horses make their sudden appearance. Hans is an inquisitive five-year-old boy. His wealthy Viennese parents have an extremely liberal approach to his education. He is very much loved by them. Hans's father is a follower of Freud and benevolently uses his son as a sample to test the accuracy of Freudian psychoanalysis in the field of infantile sexuality. Hans's mother finds it very difficult to say "No!" to the child: for instance, she allows him to follow her into the toilet and be present when she changes her underwear, not to mention the fact that, when Hans wants to sleep in her bed, she gets wohl gereitzt, Freud says, "all excited." Hans has recently begun inquiring about what he names the Wiwimacher (i.e., widdler): he knows horses have a huge Wiwimacher and he believes his mother has one too. One day, Little Hans asks his mother to touch his Wiwimacher; as Lacan has it, she is "taken by a blue funk," abruptly refuses his offer, and tells him that "that is filthy." Hans's anxiety emerges immediately after this episode: he does not want to leave his home, or more precisely, as Lacan observes, he is not able to go "beyond a certain circle," a move that would entail "leaving the sight of his home." Both Freud and Lacan emphasize that it is only at a later stage, during a conversation with his father, that Hans focuses his fear on horses.