Living in the Jungle of the Unconscious: The Birthday Party as the Borromean Knot

This study is wholly devoted to psychoanalytical account of Jacques Lacan’s Borromean Knot theory based on the mathematical and psychological construction in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party (2010). Actually, Stanley Webber’s fear as the main character from outdoor, lack of stable identity, existentialist, and contradictory way of thinking is going to be analyzed. There also exist some main features of the Borromean Knot that can be found in Stanley, who suffers from psychosis and mental complexities. Stanley lives in a different world. His fear makes him different to the other characters. The Lacanian descriptions on this theory are shown directly from Jacques Lacan’s viewpoint who has elaborated on his definitions and statements about the theory. Borromean Knot is considered as the three inseparable rings that are named as the Imaginary order, the Symbolic order and the Real order. Imaginary order is the unlimited searching in the man’s mind that results his narcissism. Symbolic order is made of a chain of different signifiers. Real order cannot be discussed through the signs. Actually, through the interference of the language from Symbolic order to Real order the reality of man’s life will be discussed. If anyone of the rings severed, all three become separated, and the knot is formed by a single thread. The interference of the three rings and their common points will be analyzed, too. They are named as the meaning, phallic jouissance, and jouissance of the Other. Jouissance is the pleasure principle functions as a limit to enjoyment. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain. Language has an important role to support the concept of Borromean Knot and the characters’ unconscious. The concept of the Objet a, is his most original contribution to psychoanalytic theory. The brokenness of the subject and the gap in the Symbolic order appears in it. It strangely suspended between the three orders and belongs exclusively to none of them. So, it is going to interpret the man’s unconscious. Actually, unconscious is a discourse and a hidden concept in the depth of the mind that can be helpful in the process of the psychoanalysis.

Keywords:

Imaginary order , Jouissance , Objet a , Other , Real order , Symbolic order , Unconscious