Totalizing Theories: Lacan, Zizek, and Stolorow

There is a fundamental tension in contemporary psychoanalytic and phenomenological theories: the challenge of theorizing the subject in its full complexity, particularly in relation to sexuality and care, without reducing it to a single axis—be it alienation, relationality, or the intersubjective field.

Lacan’s and Žižek’s theories of alienation, as articulated through the RSI (Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary), share some of the same pitfalls as Stolorow’s intersubjectivity, albeit from a different vantage point. Below, I explore how RSI relates to your critique, focusing on the similarities and divergences with Stolorow's intersubjective theory, and how both frameworks might fail in their "return to Freud" when attempting to theorize the decentered subject of sexuality and care.

1. Alienation in RSI as Totalizing

Lacan’s RSI framework emphasizes the subject’s structural alienation within language and the symbolic order. For Lacan, the subject is constituted through a radical decentering: it comes into being only by submitting to the Symbolic (language, law, culture) and is forever divided between the Real (that which resists symbolization) and the Imaginary (identifications and fantasies). Similarly, Žižek’s Lacanian-Marxist extensions frame alienation as a universal condition, rooted not only in the Symbolic but also in the antagonisms and gaps inherent to social structures.

This notion of alienation is indeed totalizing, much like Stolorow’s intersubjective field. Both theories subsume the subject under a larger structure—be it the symbolic field of language for Lacan and Žižek, or the intersubjective field of relationality for Stolorow. In both cases, the subject is seen as fundamentally determined by an external framework, with limited agency to escape or transcend it.

The problem, as you point out, is that this totalizing tendency risks erasing the subject’s concrete, embodied experiences of sexuality and care. Lacan’s focus on alienation through language often downplays the material, affective dimensions of human relationships, while Stolorow’s focus on relationality neglects the ways in which alienation and isolation shape the subject’s capacity to relate. Neither theory adequately accounts for the ways in which sexuality and care, as forms of embodied subjectivity, can resist, transform, or operate outside these totalizing structures.

2. Failure to Fully Return to Freud

Freud’s genius lay in his ability to theorize the subject as simultaneously embedded in relationships (object relations) and as driven by internal forces (the drives) that exceed or disrupt those relationships. Freud’s theory of sexuality is particularly important here, as it emphasizes the non-relational, often disruptive dimensions of desire, fantasy, and jouissance. In this sense, Freud’s subject is always “decentered,” not only by the unconscious but also by the interplay between relationality and isolation.

Both Stolorow and Lacan claim to “return to Freud,” but their returns are partial and selective:

• Stolorow: In privileging the intersubjective field, Stolorow marginalizes Freud’s insights into the drives and the ways in which sexuality disrupts relationality. His focus on relationality assumes a kind of continuity and coherence that Freud’s work—particularly in cases of neurosis or perversion—reveals as often fractured and conflictual.

• Lacan and Žižek: While Lacan famously declares his work as a return to Freud, his emphasis on language, structure, and alienation often abstracts the subject away from the embodied, affective dimensions of care and sexuality. Freud’s insistence on the ambivalence of care—the way love and aggression coexist in relationships—is often sidelined in Lacan’s focus on the symbolic and the Real.

3. Sexuality and Care: The Missing Center

Sexuality and care challenge both Stolorow’s and Lacan’s frameworks because they do not fit neatly into the relational or alienation paradigms:

• Sexuality: Freud’s theory of sexuality highlights its fundamentally disruptive nature. Desire does not simply aim to connect but often works against relationality, driven by fantasies, repetitions, and unconscious conflicts. Neither Stolorow’s intersubjective field nor Lacan’s symbolic order can fully account for this unruly dimension of human life, as both risk reducing sexuality to either relationality (Stolorow) or alienation within language (Lacan).

• Care: Care, particularly in its psychoanalytic and philosophical dimensions, resists both Stolorow’s harmonizing tendencies and Lacan’s structural alienation. Care involves relationality, but it is not reducible to it; it also involves ethical responsibility, embodied presence, and an openness to the other that cannot be fully theorized within the confines of either framework.

4. Toward a Non-Totalizing Theory of the Decentered Subject

The challenge, then, is to theorize the decentered subject of sexuality and care without falling into the traps of totalization. This requires a return to Freud that embraces the following:

• The Duality of Relationality and Isolation: Freud’s emphasis on ambivalence offers a way to think about the subject as always caught between the desire to relate and the compulsion to withdraw. Psychological health, in this sense, is not about resolving this tension but about navigating it.

• Embodiment and Affect: Any theory of the subject must account for the embodied dimensions of sexuality and care. This includes recognizing that these experiences are not fully symbolizable (Real) and often disrupt relationality or alienation as conceptual frameworks.

• Ethical Responsibility: The subject of care must also be theorized ethically, as a being capable of responding to the other not simply through relationality but through acts of responsibility, love, and even sacrifice.

Conclusion

Your critique rightly identifies a significant shortcoming in both Stolorow’s intersubjectivity theory and Lacan’s RSI: their totalizing tendencies obscure the complexities of the decentered subject, particularly as it relates to sexuality and care. Freud’s vision of the subject, with its dynamic interplay of relationality, isolation, drives, and ethics, offers a more robust framework. To "return to Freud" in a meaningful way, psychoanalysis must resist the allure of totalizing frameworks and instead embrace the contradictions and tensions at the heart of human subjectivity. Only then can it adequately theorize psychological health as the capacity to relate, care, and desire while remaining open to the profound disruptions that define our existence.