CONCEPTS & Grounded Theory Projects

Author: Dr Laurent CHAINE

email: laurent.chaine@ictparis.com

Defining Efficastration

Efficastration is a neologism that was
created during our interventions as psychiatrist
and consultant in occupational health. The
development of such idea which is short for
efficiency and castration lies within the frame of
critical studies dealing with organizations and
politics. Such notion aims at naming the
mechanisms and effects of a particular culture of
the result at the neoliberal era. We particularly
state the hypothesis that the scope of the
spreading of such rationality supposes a certain
type of training and governing of the individuals
in the social and professional space which the
definition of Efficastration tries to account for.

status of concept ? Undertaking to accurately

define Efficastration, giving it a technical
consistence, using it as explanatory basis with
didactic
aim
(theoretical
articulations,
mechanisms, process, clinic, illustrations)
would presumably mean to run through different
fields of knowledge. Our starting point will be
psychoanalytic. Starting from the theory of the
discourses of Jacques Lacan, we will develop our
purpose to other fields. The text that follows is
limited to expose the first step of this
development as a transposition of the five
discourses aiming at bringing out some main
figures and subjective positions implied in the
notion of Efficastration.

Yet,
beyond
its
evocative
power
suggesting the general idea of the primacy of
some rationality and its effects on the ways of
thinking, on the social practices and on the
environment, could such notion aspire to a
ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

The dark side of competition

The 2006 International Society for

Psychoanalytical Study of Organization congress
that took place in Amsterdam was for me the
first occasion to try and work out some
interfaces between lacanian concepts and
company problematics. The dark side of
competition, such was the subject of the
congress. I saw there the occasion to make two
attempts: articulate stress and jouissance and
transpose in the words of the company the
theory of the discourses of Jacques Lacan.

We could, from my point of view, connect
the notion of jouissance to the reflection on the
question of stress at work, considering the
community of their effects (stress and
jouissance wear out and cause illness). The
idea was to outline to what extent the
introduction of this category of thought could
deflect the philosophy of intervention (what is
revealed by stress when one considers
jouissance,
from
what
such
stress
management would be the screen?), and how
it opened other perspectives on the causes of
the phenomenon (adjustment disorder or
structure effect ?). Though linked to semantic
fields with differentiated political stakes, to
some extent, stress and jouissance found
themselves neighbors in their relationship to
excess, forcing; just as there is no work
(production) without (some) jouissance, what
highlights the aforementioned theory of
discourses, which transmission is eased by a
transposition leaning on the professional and
economic words of everyday life.

Master,
University
Efficiency

account for the connections of the subject with

the signifier and the object, settling the forms of
the social link. Going beyond the opposition
between psychoanalysis of the individual subject
and that of the group, the discourses offer a
very synthetic algebraic representation of a
system of relationships between quite complex
and massive demonstrations. Practically, seen
from the point of view of communication, one
could say that a discourse represents the fact
that an agent sends a message to another,
from a truth; the other then produces
something that comes back to the agent. Seen
from the angle of relations of influence, the one
that states the message is referred to as the
master that gives an order, the slave that
receives it performs some work he is the only
one to know or to be able to do; process during
which some jouissance linked to the efforts to
carry out the aforementioned job takes place. In
such logic, the fruit of production is necessarily
unknown to the one who produces it, thus
reinforcing the master in his position yet making
him dependent on the slave.

Shareholder,

First transpositions: the four discourses

The theory of discourses specifically aims

at what produces the subject and the social
order in which it lies; it is one of the most
recent and efficient structural elaborations to
ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

The word discourse is not used here in
its usual meaning (speech or discussion), but as
a construction with its own logic, schematized
as a particular algorithm (a quadripod) which
articulates four positions and four functions, in
which four mathemes circulate representing the
subject ($), the object cause of desire (a), the
master signifier (S1) and knowledge (S2), all the
other signifiers. The four positions are: the
agent (or position of the master), the other (or
position of the slave), the production and the
truth. Eventually, the four functions are:
semblance (for master), jouissance (or work for
slave), the plus de jouir (for production) and the
work of the truth. The positions and adjoining
functions
remain
permanent,
while
the
mathemes swap in a circular way leading to four
discourses: Discourse of the Master, Discourse
of the University (S2 for agent), Discourse of the
Hysteric ($, for agent) and Discourse of the
Analyst (a, for agent).

the flexibility and control of psycho-social

risks (occupational stress and so on).

Such four discourses can also be
represented in a synoptic way and articulated as
a meta-discourse uniting the different logics
that exist today in organizations. If we replace
the mathemes by ordinary words, such logics
are then embodied in main figures: the Manager
(in charge of having someone produce in the
name of the Shareholder, or of any management
logic), the Expert (holder of an efficient and
performing know-how, key figure of the
Discourse of Efficiency), the Subject of
Capitalism (or coworker, key figure of the
Discourse of the Stressed Subject) and the Result
(key figure of the Discourse of the ManagerTherapist).

This first attempt of transposition of the
theory of the discourse in the key words of the
firm led me to rename the four discourses to
illustrate them in the aforementioned context:
Discourse of the Shareholder (for Discourse of
the Master), Discourse of Efficiency (for
Discourse of the University), Discourse of the
Stressed Subject (for Discourse of the Hysteric),
Discourse of the Manager-Therapist (for
Discourse of the Analyst). The last one is
somehow inferred from the co-presence of the
other three, what we will represent further in
synoptic form. The Discourse of the ManagerTherapist accounts for an evolution of
requirements linked to the exercise of the
function of foreman. It is a manager of the third
type, three times efficient who could draw the
best results from his team (the manager, with
respect to efficiency), explain change (the coach
with respect to adaptability) and take into
account the level of stress of his coworkers (the
therapist in his preventive version), in other
words, a manager responsible for the results,
ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

One
can
see
in
such
synoptic
representation of the four discourses how the
different logics can influence one another. For
instance, one can sense how media coverage of
suffering at work (severe occupational stress or
ill being) that unveils publicly an expansion of
the Discourse of the Stressed Subject can have
an impact on the contents of training (i.e.:
development of training on prevention of
psycho-social risks to include in the evolutions
of the Discourse of Efficiency) but also influence
the Discourse of the Shareholder through the
media-related and legal risks (i.e.: unforgivable
fault of the employer, change of manager,
strategic modulations).

When I was working on these first
transpositions in 2006, there was not yet
mention of making the manager an actor of
prevention. Some years later, after the crisis of
work related suicides, big companies organize
themselves to develop in massive doses
manager training programs for the prevention of
psycho-social risks. The Manager-Therapist,
in fact a Manager-Preventionist, is thus being
trained (produced) in the system under the legal
and media-related system aforementioned. As
for the Stressed Subject, it does not refer to
shareholders
themselves
but
to
their
representatives, the executive managers (who
are often shareholders as well), and calls out to
the
politicians
representing
the
State
(sometimes
shareholder
itself
as
well).
Eventually, the 2002 french law of social
modernization starts to be implemented in
some situations, in regards of its obligation of
result security in terms of occupational health
(see: acknowledgement of the professional
origin of suicides by the Administrative Court of
Social Security and the sentencing of employers
for unforgivable fault). We will comment in what
follows two transpositions of the four
discourses: the Discourse of the Shareholder
and the Discourse of Efficiency.

ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

Discourse
of
the
Shareholder,
transposition of the Discourse of the
Master:
Dialectic of the Shareholder and of the Company

The Shareholder, for agent, illustrates the

master in his function of semblance that is in
the name of whom the firm produces the result
(or in the name of who the employees work). In
this chart, the Shareholder can also be
considered as the most important customer
who as agent for master orders the firm to
produce for him a certain result (arrow from left
to right).

The firm (the organization and its agents)
thus receives the order for others where it works
and goes beyond its capabilities (jouissance)
to produce the result (down arrow). The Return
on Investment for production thus illustrates the
object of desire not reachable for the Subject of
Capitalism and has for function plus de jouir. It
solely returns to the Shareholder unless the
aforementioned Subject of Capitalism is also
shareholder thanks to stock options for instance
(arrow going from bottom on the left to top on
the right).

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

The Subject of Capitalism positioned for
Truth, more commonly named co-worker,
whatever his level in the company, owes his
statute of subject to the very existence of the
Shareholder to whom he refers as master (up
arrow). His unconscious productions and
symptoms wont fail to return to the field of the
firm (arrow going from bottom right to top left).

Discourse of Efficiency, transposition of

the Discourse of the University:
A first approach of Efficastration

This
discourse
schematizes
the
problematic of individual training to make them
agents of management or production with
respect to a system orientated towards the
production of results. The nature of the results
to obtain thus adjusts to that defined by the
Discourse of the Master. In this case, if the
master is the Shareholder, the whole knowledge
taught must lead to the constitution of the
Return on Investment. The Expert holding the
knowledge for agent deals with Efficiency as
object of teaching, that is transmits the
principles and the methods of the culture of the
result. We will name the product of this
teaching the Efficient (as we say student). The
Shareholder for Truth is what underlies the
discourse of the Expert and defines the object of
ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

teaching, so that the Efficient can produce for

him in some state of mind.

There is a preconception in the choice of
the term leading the transposition of the
Discourse of the University to the Discourse of
Efficiency. Preconception in everyday words: had
you noted that efficiency is the ultimate
justification
of
the
transformations
of
organizations and that of oneself ? We also
frequently come across this word in the political
vocabulary that increasingly copies that of the
managers. Some would speak of results or
performance, efficiency is by the way a central
notion of the culture of result and of the cult
of performance. Some thorough studies of the
evolutions of language towards some sort of
managing newspeak, referring to the works of
the philologist Victor Klemperer, also account
for the primacy of efficiency in the spirit of
times. Eventually, the choice of this term owes
also greatly to the works of compared
philosophy that highlights, in contrast with the
thinking of Chinese antiquity, our categories of
thinking inherited from the Greeks and their
effects on our way of considering the
achievement of results.

To sum up, such transposition enables to
give an account of the production of the
Efficient through an Expert holding the
Knowledge with respect to results for the
Shareholder (generic term that we use having no
other to name the final beneficiary of the
operation and represented by his backer).
That is a first approach of Efficastration in which
the Efficient is the product of a mode of
subjectivation through the teaching of the
culture of the result. $ the Efficient who is here
the product of a teaching is nevertheless to be
distinguished from a Subject of Efficiency,
term we will use in a later step of our
transpositions where the result (a) will indeed be
placed in position of master.

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

One can legitimately wonder though to what

extent one can be the product of a teaching
without being as well subject of the signifiers
that he dispenses and of the language it
spreads. If the notion of symbolic castration
refers to the passage of the subject through
language, one could distinguish a particular
form: in this case the progression of the subject
through the language of efficiency.

Efficastration is thus to be seen, first, in
the Discourse of Efficiency through the
production of the Efficient. As we will see later
on, it could second develop its full power of
alienation to the logic of the result, as well as
process of destruction, operating regardless of
what is essential in the construction of identity
and what leads an organization to succeed in
producing
something
that
is
valuable
(competent collaborative network, quality).
The representation of the Discourse of Efficiency
leads us to anticipate strong ethic stakes of a
great number of current practices of everyday
life of the economic war; the implementation,
often blind and deaf, by Efficients of the logic
of the result has obvious consequences on the
modalities of transformation of organizations
and on the judgment of the work of others, not
to mention social and environmental effects

Efficastration and Subject of the Result

Transpositions of the Discourse of the Capitalist

Some years later, I once again undertook

the exercise of transposition of the discourses,
but this time from the fifth: the Discourse of the
Capitalist (at that time we witnessed the climax
of the crisis conducted through the media of the
suicides of employees of France Telecom during
the fall of 2009). In this chart, the subject has
become master of the words and things by
torsion of the Discourse of the Master and is
directly subjected to the object. We also note
that the location of Truth is no longer protected,
which would have for effect to make his
denunciation a lever of reinforcement of the
process (just as the pruritus keeps the
ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

inflammation going). In other words, no term

being isolated and each of them fueling the
others, the Discourse of the Capitalist sets the
scene of a chain reaction which tendency is the
boom.

The transposition of the Discourse of the
Master in Discourse of the Shareholder seems to
go without saying (at least in the context of the
business), yet the transposition of the Discourse
of the Capitalist opens to more alternatives and
hesitations. The very interpretation of the fifth
discourse raises question since it refers to a
systemic much larger and less territorialized
frame. Elaborated in 1972 (the same year than
the famous Deleuze and Guattari book
Antioedipus, Capitalism and Shizophrenia) does
this representation aim at accounting for an
extrapolation in the continuity of the capitalism
of the time, or a much deeper breaking that will
express itself shortly after in the neoliberal turn
of the eighties? In other words, must we put on
this
structure
the
four
pillars
of
modernity (individual, democracy, techno
sciences, market) and think about their mutual
reinforcements until growth on the model of
hypermodernity?

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

Or must we integrate the key notions of
neoliberalism? That is, a transfer of liberalism
(and not a simple continuity with amplification
of this one) displaying a rationality that deeply
structures and transforms the action of
governors and the existence of governed
people, adapting itself to the entrepreneurial
model, a rationality that lies on the instauration
of competition as standard and of the market as
principal of government of men and of oneself.
In such set up and if we follow the chart below:
individuals and institutions, State included, ($)
adapt themselves to the models of the
entrepreneur and of the company. The
implemented standard, the word of order (S1) is
then competition that is the principle of
accumulation of strategic advantages that
amplify inequalities. And this, through tools of
management
technologies
and
selftechnologies (S2) which aim is to give a strategic
advantage on the market (a), this one
concentrating the group of the offer of goods,
services and competences generated by
technologies. The buckle goes on its way
through the incitation the market operated on
the entrepreneur, leading him to maintain and
develop his competitiveness etc

ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

Variations from the Discourse of the

Capitalist
After these attempts of transposition of the
Discourse of the Capitalist, through a variation
of this one we were able to highlight another
figure of Efficastration that displays the liability
to the logic of result. Just as the Discourse of
the Master leads through rotation to three other
discourses, we can do the same from the
Discourse of the Capitalist by circulating the
elements counterclockwise, what from the first
rotation of a quarter of a turn positions (a), the
object of the cause of desire, for the agent and
($) under it.

Having the function of plus de jouir in the
first forms of both series of discourses, object
(a) represents what cannot be held for the one
who works, but is aimed at, counted, calculated,
to return to the location of the master. It can
thus be understood also generally as any
superior result to reach, limit always postponed
that can only be neared by the one who works
by going beyond his limits, and even putting
himself in danger, what leads us to the idea of
jouissance.

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

We will transpose object (a) in result to
be reached. From this master location, (a) the
result to reach will produce a certain number of
structure effects that first concern the subject
($). We will this time speak of a subject and not
of a simple individual produced; ($) being under
(a) in position of absolute master of the game:
the result to be reached placed in master
determines the subject ($), submitting it to the
logic of the result. This new chart enables us
this time to define Efficastration as operation of
creation of the Subject of Result.

Thus
reappears
the
question
of
effectiveness, as early as the first rotation of the
Discourse of the Capitalist, in which object (a)
considered as the result to reach is in master
position of activator of the system. The logic of
the result then develops itself in what we will
call from now the Discourse of Efficacy.

While in the Discourse of the Master, the
subject was determined by S1 (the master
signifier) according to the symbolic castration
order, in the Discourse of Efficacy the subject is
determined by the result to be reached
considered both as a goal and as an absolute
index of measure of effectiveness. Such
operation lies in a particular form of castration

ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

that we will call the order of Efficastration. We

thus display the process of Efficastration as first
effect of structure of the Discourse of Efficacy,
with for corollary a subject that could be
described as efficastrated: all his thoughts,
acts and decisions, his possibilities and
impossibilities will be exclusively dictated par
the
necessity
to
reach
the
result
aforementioned, what signs its Efficastration.

We thus have at our disposal two distinct
charts dealing with effectiveness and displaying
Efficastration. The Discourse of Efficiency
(transposition of the Discourse of the University)
sets a holder of the knowledge in position of
agent and produces the Efficient. Efficastration
appears in this first stage as a mode of
subjectivation through transmission of the
culture of the result. It is within a teaching
disposal (school, university and training session)
where the key methods and signifiers of
effectiveness
(strategy,
running
of
performance, key performance indicators)
are necessarily spread that the Discourse of
Efficiency is displayed.

The Discourse of Efficacy (first rotation
and transposition of the Discourse of the
Capitalist) highlights a subject under domination
of the result: the Subject of Result, also called
the Efficastrated. Efficastration thus appears as a
mode of subjection implied in the development
of the logic of the result. It is in this area, in
professional situation, each time an organization
places the individuals in a function where the
question of the result to reach is essential that
the Discourse of Efficacy is displayed (generally
speaking, any type of function lead by the
results: sales function, head of production,
general management). One can infer from
above that the ends will most certainly justify
the means, what necessarily leads us to the
question of ethics and subject of the result.

www.ictparis.org

DEFINING EFFICASTRATION

Thus do we state the hypothesis that
Efficastration gives its full effects, Discourse of
Efficiency and Discourse of Efficacy must
combine, with a regular switch from mode of
subjectivation and mode of subjection. From
what precedes, we can sum up the Discourse of
the Efficacy likewise: the Result to reach (a)
determines the Subject of the Result ($). The
Subject of the Result will put the rules, laws,
methods and the signifiers to work (S1) what will
lead to a production of new knowledge (S2):
counting of the results in the shape of numbers
(multiplication of reporting and of indicators),
new practices (management techniques, terms
of appraisal and of management of human
resources, position of work station) and new
wording (managerial newspeak, technocratic
euphemisms); all of which with respect to the
result to reach.

Conclusion

These first steps to define Efficastration

lean on a method of using of the five discourses
of Jacques Lacan, going from transposition and
extension of the initials formulas. Such step
underlines the ability of this establishment of a
pattern to integrate and articulate so that it
makes sense, the key notions being used in the
systems lead by a managing logic. These
structures also enable a compact synoptic
representation of the systemic functioning while
including subjective and ethical stakes.

Thus, at this stage, do we have two
subjective positions: the Efficient, coming from
a process of training of the actors to the
efficient referential with respect to the
performance of the system, and the Subject of
Result (the Efficastated) submitted in context to
the necessity of the result to reach. At a society
scale, the spreading of these different modes of
subjectivation and subjection seem to lead to
the active implication of some of them and to
the passive collaboration of most of them, so as
ICT PROJECT PAPERS!

to directly or indirectly obtain results, most of

the time considered on a short term basis. The
achievement of these results, mostly qualitative
and referring to a calculable production
politically, economically or technically defined,
is most often justified in the name of an
external threat (level of performance considered
poor, organizational configuration considered
inefficient, social group considered as resisting
to change).

A system of complex constraints with
powerful effects, the implemented mode of
governing of individuals implies a strong
division
of
work,
a
fractioning
of
responsibilities, a focalization of people on
individual objectives and a form of manipulation
of fright. From that disposal all types of actions,
omissions and practices result aiming at
reaching the objective. The collective and
individual mechanisms of defense enabling to
overcome
frights
and
moral
conflicts
encountered on the path to the realization of
the result are taken in the effects of structure
that prevent individuals from representing
themselves the effects of their action or the
entire action in which they take part. This state
of fact poses the ethic limits proper to certain
political,
economic
and
social
contexts
potentially generators of disasters of different
natures. The illustration of some collateral
effects of Efficastration would imply to develop
some of the structures outlined in this text and
to extend them in particular to the critical
theory of the Frankfurt School that accounts for
the social pathologies of the present time and to
some written works of political and moral
philosophy.

Laurent Chaine
31 August 2010
Paris

www.ictparis.org