Acephalous Drive
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#01
Against Understanding, Volume 1: Commentary and Critique in a Lacanian Key · Bruce Fink · p.76
<span id="page-74-0"></span>COMPULSIVE EATING [AND THE DEATH DRIVE](#page-7-0)
Theoretical move: By reading compulsive eating/vomiting as acephalous drive-processes that precede subjective positioning, Fink argues that hysteric symptoms are not "eating disorders" but expressions of the drive operating below the level of desire and fantasy, with Lacan's matheme of fantasy marking the two-level structure (pleasure-experience / subjective stance) that compulsion precisely short-circuits.
Lacan refers to such processes as headless or 'acephalous' (or 'acephalic'), implying the drives, first and foremost, desire coming in only secondarily