Lacan Seminar 17 - The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (EN)

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'The Othe r Side of Psychoanalysis

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Th e Lacanian field

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of tim es over th e course ofthe d ay on e hears "this ba star d chain of fate a nd in er tia, of throws of the dice an d ast onishmen t, of false success and mis sed encou nter s, which make up the usual scr ipt of a human life " ?l D on 't expect anything more sub vers ive in my d iscourse th an that I do not claim (0 have a solution.

I ~ev~rthcl css ,

it is clear that mere is no more burni ng quest ion than what. discou rse, refers to jolJissance. Discourse is con stantly to uc hing on it, by virtue of th e fact that thi s is whe re it origina tes. And d iscou rse arouses it again ....-hen ever it att em pts to rerum to this origin. lr is in this re spect that it challenges all appeasem ent . Freud has an odd discourse, it h as to be said, 0 01: that is most contrary t o the coheren ce, to th e con siste ncy, of a discourse. The subject of discourse doe s not know himself as the sub jec t h olding the discou rse . That he d oes not kn uw wh at h e is saying d oesn't m atter too much, one ha s always found a su bstitute lsuppliulluJ for thi s. Bu t "nat Freud says is tha t the su b iect does not kn ow who it is that is saying it. Knowl edge-x-I think I h ave in sisted upon this sufficiently to get it into you r head- is some thing spo ken, someth ing that is said . Well then, knowledge tha t spea ks all by irself-c-thar's the uncon s cious. This is the point at which it sho uld ha ve be en att ac ked by wha t is more or less d iffusely called phe no menology. It was not enough, to contrad ict Freud. to remi nd us that knowl edge is kn own ineffably. The attack had to bear up on th is, which iss that F reud stresses wh at everyo ne is able 10 know- knowledge comes in bits , knowledge is en umera ble, it comes in parcel s, and- th is is what isn't self-evi dent-wha t is said, the lit any, is n ot said by anyon e, it unfolds of its own accord. With your permission, ] wante d to start with an aph orism .You will see why I he sitated . I h~ve hesitated, as I usu ally do, but fortunately I am doing it before twelve thir ty-on e and thus have not delayed the end of om seminar this ti me . If J star ted in the way I always feel like starting, I would star t abruptly. It's because I fed like doing it that I don't do it, I am spa rin g you, I am avoidin~ shocks for you . I wanted to begin with an aphorism which, I hope. wilt str ike you by its obviousness, because it's the reason that F reud has carried the Ul

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"P rcsenraricn on Psychical Causality" fuits: The First Compteu Edition in

E'lgluh (N~wYork: 'W: W, Norton, 2006), 130'.

2

William Gillespie, "Concepts of Vaginal Or gasm," Inte rnati onal J ourn al of

Psycho-Analysis 50 (1969):49 5--7.

T he Oilier Side' of Psychoanalysis

nieant in terms of the Fre udi an th ing. And final ly, wha t one quit e sim ply calls mon agrnl, "my agell[." You can see .....hat this means in general: " . pay him for tha t." N ot even, " I co mpe ns ate him for having nothing else t o do," or "I hon or him / ' f> as they say, prete nding to begin from the fact that he is Capable of doing something else . This is the ap propria te level of the term at .....hich to take both thi s " real f.lther" and this "agen t of castration." The real father ca rries out the wor k Of the m aster agency.

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\l7e are becomi ng increasing ly familiar with the functions of an age nt. We li...-e at a rime at which we kn ow what this conveys- fake stuff, advertising Stuff, things that are th ere to he sold . But we also kn ow that it wor ks thi s w'ay, at the poi nt we have come to in the expan sion, the paroxysm, of the niasrer's disco urse in a soc iety fou nded on it. It is getting late. I am go ing to be forced to leave something out here, which I will ind icat c to you in passing , because we might perhap s return to the matte r at hand, which for me is of so me valu e, an d which for me does no t see m Unworthy of our making the effor t to darify. Since I am stressing, giving a Very special m ark to, the fun ction of agent, some d ay I will h ave to show You all the elaboration s it can lend itself to by int roducing the n ot ion of a dou ble agent. Everyone is aware that in ou r da y th is notion is one of the most indispotable, th e most certain, obiects of fascination . The agent who star ts again . H e doesn 't ju xt want the master's little market , which is the role of each. H e thinks that wh at h e is in conta ct with, namely that everyth ing that has trw.' worth, I mean in th e ord er of iouissance, has nothing to d o with the web of int r igues, In his little job it's ultimately this th at he conserves. h 's a st range story, one with many implication s. The tru e dou ble agen t ill. the one who th inks that what escapes the web would also hav e to be arrang ed [agenci ]. Because if that is true, th e a rra ngem ent is going to become true, and by the same to ken the first arrangement, the on e tha t was Obviou sly fake, w ill also become true. This is m ost likely what was guiding a character who placed him self, no One knows why, in the fun ct ion of prototypal agent of this master's d isCOUTSC , insofa r as he allowed himself to keep something whose essence an (, A s in "I pay him an bunura riu m."

F rom mylh

til

str uctu re

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a uthor , Henri Mas sis, has profiled by spea king these pro ph et ic words, "Walls are good ." Wen, someone called Sorgue, with thi s so H eideggeria n na me, found a way to be with the N azi agents, an d t o make himself a double agent- for whose benefit? For the benefit of the Father of the Peop le, who everyone hop es, as you know, wi.1l bring it about th at th e true will al so be a rranged {agm cel .7 The refer ence I evo ke concern ing the Father of the People has many links with th at of the real fathe r as th e agent of castra tion . As the Freu dian statement canner do otherwise than set out from the master's discour se, if only be cause it speaks of the unconscious, all Freu d can make of this famou s real father is the im possible. But then we actu ally do know thi s real fath er- he is something of a complet ely different order. First , in gene ral, everybody ack nowled ges that he is (he one who works, and does so in order to feed his lit tle fam ily. If he is the agent of something, in a society th ai obviously does not give him a big role. it nevertheless remains the case tha t he ha s some exceedingly nice aspe cts. H e works. And also he would very much like to b e loved . T h ere is something that shows that th e mystagogy (hat m akes him int o a tyrant is obviously lod ged somew here quite d ifferent. It 's at the level of the real father as a cons tructi on of langu age, as Freud always po in ted oUI moreover. The real fath er is nothing other than an effect of language and has no ot her real. I am no t saying, " other reality," sin ce reality is somethin g quite different, it 's what I was talking about a moment ago. I can even im medi ately go a little bit further and point out that the notion of real father is scientifically un sus ta inable. T here is on ly on e real fa th er, which is the spe r mato zoon , an d at least up till now, nobody has ever though t to say tha t he was the son of this or tha t sperma tozoon . N atural ly. one can lodge objecti on s, aided by a number of examin ation s of blood groups, of rhesu s factor s. But this is quite recent, and it ha s absolutely nothin g t o do with anythin g that up till now ha s been said to be the fu nction of the fath er. J sense that I am ente ring d ange rous territory, but too bad - it is, after all, not only in the Aru ntas tribes that one could raise the qu estion ofwha t me father really is on an occasion whe n a wo ma n rinds she is pregn ant .S If th ere is on e qu estion that a nalysis co uld raise, it's that one. Why , in a psychoan alysis, wou ld it not be-one susp ect s that this is th e case from time to time-the psychoanalyst who is the real fath er even if he is in no w ay the on e who has done it, there, on the level of the spe rm atozoo n? 7 Henri M assis (1 886---1970 ) was a right-wing inrcllcc rual who, de spite his support for Pctain during the war, was elect ed to the Acedemie franl; aise in IQ60. T he " Fath er nf th e People" referre d t il is Marsh all Petain. . " An allmion 10 Erne-Sf Jon es, ",Mother-Right and th e Sexual Ignorance of Savages:' l mern ati onai J ..,urn.J of Pty..'}w-Anab·Jis 6 ( I n s): I09-30.

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Yahw eh's ferocious ignoran ce

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hypothesis that M oses had b een killed . The note is ver y brief, and gives a reference to the work that we have a pho tocopy of, nothing more ." I p ointed out just befo re that Jo nes mentions that, in a wo rk of 1935, which is later than we have been able to verify o urs elves, Sellin maintained h is position.s If, really, I have not up till now a lrea dy overabused th e effort that I have Jed yo u t o m ak e , fo r which I thank you , it would b e interesting, fo r what I will su bseq uently have to say, if yo u co uld give us so me ide a of how H osea has a meaning ,,:h ich has nothing to d o with th ese m inu tiae. The important point is th e use of th e 'ich we were talking a bou t the o th er day. The novelty of H osea, if I ha ve und ers tood co rrectly, is in sum thi s appea l of a ve ry special kind . I h ope th at everyo ne will ge t o ut a little Bible to o btain so m e idea of the tone of H os ea. It h as a rype of invect ive feroci ty, really te rrifying, which is th at of Yahweh speaking to his peopl e in a lengthy discourse. \Vh en I spoke of H os ea before obtaining Se llin 's book, I said, " I have read n oth ing in H osea th at is d ose to resembling wha t Sellin fin ds," but on the oth er hand I pointed OUt in passing the importance of invective, of the imputation of a rite of sacr ed prostitution {hat extends from stan to finis h, and, in op pos it ion . advance s of some kind wherebyYah weh declares himself to be the sp ouse. It is possible to say that th is is th e beginning of the long trad iti on -ci n itse lf q uite myst erio us. and it d oe s n ot seem to m e to be obvious that we ca n rea lly locate its rnea ning .v- which makes Christ the spouse of the C h u rch and th e C h urch the spo use of Ch rist . It begins here, th ere is no tr ace of it p rio r to H os ea. The te rm used for spouse. 'i,h, is th e very one whic h, in th e seco nd chapter of Genesis, is used to name Adam's par tner. The first tim e that anyone spea kss, that is to say, in vers e 27 of th e first cha pte r in which God creates them man and wo m an , is, if I re ad it pro pe rly, zahhar and nekeoah, The sec o nd time--since things a re a lways re peated twice in th e Bible- ',ch is the n am e for being, o b ject, th e rib, in th e for m 'ichd. As if by chance, on e only need s to add a little a to it. If vou could testify to its us age to designate th e term where it concerns som ething even m ore divested of sexuality.

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Something astounds m e in Sellin 's thought. N aturall y, we are unable to penetrat e Se llin's thought , but if we assume th at what is wr ~tte n has ~e meaning he decipher s in it when he recon stitutes a text with a certain se nse , th er e 's no guarantee anywhere that thi s text, if one can ca ll it a text, or this voca lizat ion co uld be understood by anyone. In saying, for instance, that N um bers cha pter 25 hides th e event of M oses' murder, o ne is righ t in

the midst of amb iguity. 161

In the register of Se llin's th ought, wh ich I do not bel ieve brings th e ca tegories of the unconscio us inrc play, the fact of hid ing the eve nt of Shiuim by such an absurd stor y is altogethe r uns ustaina bl e. This is obviously wh ere it gets interesting -the extraord inary laten cy th at such a way of proceed ing co mprises. O ne ca n understand, up to a point, how Freud derives re inforcement here for the idea that it is. a question of a memory, supposed in hi s register, that sta nds OUt despite all the intentio ns, desp ite a strong resistance . It remains ver y ud d nevertheles s that it is su pported by writings, and that it is with the aid of writings mat it can be red ec iphcred . jones att ests that Freud would have had, ap parently, according to Sellin himself co m m unicated to him that he was not so co nfide nt ali alt that .? . . . M o reover , as yo u indicated just before, he take" the q uesuon u p agam In th e seco nd ed itio n.

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M onsieur Oaquoc In the second edition Seain left the exegesis of 1921 filr chap5 and 9. HQWc!1'Cr. 0'1 the other hand, he gave up pmmoh'ng his hYPOlhcs# of M( ~'l!.f · death in his works on the [amaus dead savant of the Th.'Ult7'O-lsaiah." He perll.:lPS retained the idea of M oses' death, bw he abandoned the idea of using it to interpret the chapter on the servant. I wonder whether Freud didn'l fall vu tim to S elli" 's academic pmtig/'. ter'S

T he qu estio n I wo nder about is whether Freud read very closely.

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M onsieur Caquou I think he did. The book is clear and ri!:orous. It 's fl.llsc, bill clear. 5

That 's true. But Freud do esn't build anything on this construct ion . He sim ply in d icates that a cer tain Sellin has recently expressed as defensible the 3 Sec Erne~t Jon es, S'l!» llm d Freud: Life and WOrks 3:400- 1 (London : H ogarth Pr ess, 1957) . . . . h 4 Caq uo t seems to be referring to Sellin, Das Rossel des dcuteNj e,'iJJam sc en

Buches (Leipzig, 190R) .

Fr eud actually makes several refer ence, to Sellin, and in one place qu otes

him at length. See Mos es an d Mon otheilln, SE 23:51- 2.

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6 Jones, S igmund Freud: Life and l\Vrh 3:400. The book IS Geschichte des israclitisch-ju disch en Vofkes (Leipzig: Q udlo;l & M eyer, .193 5); sec pp. 7 ~;-8: Jon es sa~s he was told by Jewish scho lars of th e day that Sellin su bsequently Withdrew his suggestion and apologized fo r havin g made it." H ()weve ~, Jones goes on to say t?at he could never find any sup port for this In any of Sellm.s l a te~ wnungs. H e claim s that in a work published s(J~t: thir~ ee n. years 131e~ Se llll~ m amtame he h~s found " fur th er co nfirmation " for hie thesis "in the wrrnngs ot oth er proph ets Oa nes, 3:400).

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Interview on the steps of the Pantheon

Someone whose intentions I don't need to describe is doing an entire report, to be published in two days time, so as to denounce in a note the fact that I put affect in the background, that I ignore it. It's a mistake to think I neglect affects-c-as if already everyone's behavior was not enough to affect me. My entire seminar that year was, on the contrary, structured around anxiety, insofar as it is the central affect, the one around which everything is organized. Since I was able to introduce anxiety as the fundamental affect, it was a good thing all the same that already, for a good length of time, I had not been neglecting affects. I have simply given its full importance, in the determinism of die Verneinung [negation], to what Freud has explicitly stated, that it's not affect that is repressed. Freud has recourse to this famous Reprasentane which I translate as representant de la representation, and which others, and moreover not without some basis, persist in calling represemant-representauf, which absolutely does not mean the same thing.? In one case the representative is not a representation, in the other case the representative is just one representation among others. These translations are radically different from one another. My translation implies that affect, through the fact of displacement, is effectively displaced, unidentified, broken off from its roots-it dudes us. This is what is essential in repression. It's not that the affect is suppressed, it's that it is displaced and unrecognizable.

the emergence, the coming into being, not of anxiety but of the concept of anxiety, as Kierkegaard himself explicitly calls one of his works. It's not for nothing that historically this concept emerged at a certain moment. This is what I was counting on expounding for you this morning. I am not alone in making this comparison with Kierkcgaard. Yesterday I received a book by Manuel de Dieguez.> Well, the things he says about me! As I had to prepare my stuff for you and because it is all done at the very last minute-what I have to tell you is never ready until the final hour, everything I write down and recount to you is generally noted down between five and eleven in the morning-I haven't had the time to locate myself in all this great to-do I am inserted into, in relation not only to Kicrkcgaard, but to Ockham and Gorgias too. It's all there, as are huge chunks of what I recount. It's fairly extraordinary, because without quoting me half of the book is called "Lacan and"-I'll give you three guessee-v'transcendental psychoanalysis." Read it. To me it seems to be pretty overwhelming. I hadn't thought of myself as all that transcendental, but then, you can never be very certain. Someone once said to me, concerning books that were published about him, "Ah! We do have ideas, my friend, we do have ideas!" Let's move on.

X: lOn the relations between existentialism and structuralism.]

Yes, it's as if existential thought was the only guarantee of a recourse to affects. X: What do you thine of the relations that exist between you and Kierkegaard concerning anxiety?

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No one can yet imagine the extent to which people attribute thoughts to me. I only have to mention someone and I am said to be condescending. It's the very model of academic vertigo. Why in fact wouldn't I speak about Kierkegaard? It's clear that if I place all this emphasis on anxiety in the economy, for it's a question of economy, it's obviously not in order to neglect the fact that at a certain moment there was someone who represents Lucan has in mind Freud's term "Vorste!lungsrepriiwlIlanz,"whieh Strachey renders as "ideational representative" in SE. Lacan's translation, representant de fa representation, comes out as the "representation's representative," while the alternative rendering, represenumt-represeniarf, would give,in English, the equally awkward "representative representative." See Jean Laplanehe and Serge Leclaire, "The Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Study," Yale French. Studies 48 (1972):118-75; and also Michel Tort, "A propos du concept freudien de 'Representant'{Reprasentam:)," Gahiers pour l'anaiyse 5 (1966):41-67. 2

X: Do you think, then, that the ideas you get from the practice of psychoanalysis give you something that cannot be found outside it?

It's precisely because I do think that that I have gone to all this effort for the past eighteen or nineteen years. Otherwise I can't see why I would do it. And I can't see what would lead to my name's being added precisely to a list of philosophers, which doesn't seem to me to be entirely judicious. X: Can you go back to what you started saying about Hegel?

I certainly won't be giving this morning's seminar here. This is not why I am here. I am using the occasion to learn a bit about what some of you might have to say to me, which doesn't easily occur when we are in a lecture theater.

X: You spoke about the Other as the treasure trove of signifiers, and you said that there was no confronting it. Might it include incoherent things? The signifier is not necessarily coherent.

Are you sure that I have said what you are imputing to me?Where did I say that there was no confronting the Other? I do not think I have said that at 3

The book in question is Science et nescience (Paris: Gallimard, 1970).

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The Other Side of Psychoanalysis

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Interview on the steps of the Pantheon

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X : [Inaudible.] I will tr y to give you th e essen tial part at my next se min ar, if it ta kes place.

.Yo' linaudlble.} I am at tacki ng philooophy ?That's greatl y exaggera ted .

X: Thars an impression.

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Yesterd ay I read quite an amazing article in a review that, for person al reasons , I ha d n ever opened, which is called Illnconscienc. In the late st issue to be published a certain Cornelius Ca srori adis , no less, ha s this que stion about my discourse, supposedly with reference to scienc e." W'hat d oes he say? He says what I find myse lf rep ea ting, namely that thi s discourse ha s an extremely precise refere nce to science , What he denoun ces as the essential difficulty of this discou rse. namely- I will spell it ou t for you-th is displacement tha t never ceases, is the ver y conditi on of ana lyt ic discourse, and it's in this res pect that one ca n say that it is, I won ', say tot ally the d iscourse of science, but condi tio ned by it, in th at th e discourse of science leaves no p lace for man. I was counting on em phasizing thi s for you this morning. I won 't spoil what I am goi ng to say about it next week .

Yes, that is an impression . I was asked just a minute ago whether I believed that things I rec ount may not be: problematic. I said that I did . M y Silk

moti vation for advancing them is because of a precise experien ce. the psychoa n alytic experience . Ifit weren't for that I would con sider tha t I had ne ith er th e right nor abo ve all the desire to exten d the philosop hical discourse very much beyon d the point at which it was most properly effaced .

X: That tnJnJj.,,"U it.

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That doesn 't transform it. It's a d ifferent discourse. l ois is wha t I am trying to show you by remi nding those who have no idea about analytic CX ~­ rience , to the entire exten t that I believe it to be so, that this is, all the same, its c urrency.T his is where I stan from . O therw ise thi s discourse wo uld not have an aspect that is philosophically so problem atic, whic h was po inted out just before by the person over th ere, who spoke first , whe n he tra nslated it into sophistical terms. I don 't think this is right. The person I was talking about before places me as a kin d of po int of emphasis, locates me at the center of so me kind of mixture, of fracturing, opening up of philoso phical dis course. It's not badly done, it's done in an extremely sym pathetic manner, bu t m y initial response--perh aps I will change my views on it-I said to myself, "And yet, to place me in that heritage is quite some Emstelbmg, quite some displacement, away from the imp ort of what I am capa ble of saying ."

X: W'hat .VOIi say is always decentered in relation to sense, you shun SC1l,~e, This is perhaps precis ely why my discourse is an ana lytic discourse. It's the structure of ana lytic discourse to be like that. Le t 's say th at I adh ere to it as much as I can, without d arin g to say th at I strictly identity myself with it, if I am successful.

X : Concerning anxiety, I tho/lght it WolS the opporirc oj ;\lUissance. 'What I insist up on when I address the affects is the affec t that is different from all the others, that of anxiety, in that it's said to have no ob ject. Look at everything that ha s ever been writt en about anxiety, it 's always thi s that is ins isted upon-fear ha s a referen ce to an ob ject, wberea.. anxiety is said to have no object, I say on m e contra ry th at anx iety is not without an object. I haw already sta ted thi s, I di d so a long time ago , and it's q uite o bvious that I 'Ai U still have to explain it to you again. At the tim e I did not de signate thi s ob ject as surplus jouissance, which prove s th at there was so meth ing to construc t be fore I could name it as such. It 's very precisely the . . . I am unab le to say the name, because, precisely. it 's not a na me. II's surplus ;Quissance, but it's not nam eable, even if it 's approximat ely nameab le, tr ansla table, in th is way. This is why it h as b een translat ed by the ter m "s urplus valu e." This object withou t which anxie ty is not ca n still be addressed in some other way. It 's precisely th is that over the cour se of th e year s I have given m ore an d more for m to. 1 have in pa rticular given m any chatterb oxes the opportunity to rush ha stily int o pr im on the sub ject of what I m ay have had to say with the term "object a." X: lJnaudible.]

In th e articulation that I describ e as the un iver sity discours e the a is in the place of what? In the place, let' s say, of the exploited in the university dis4 "Epilegomena to a T heory of the Soul Wh ich Has Been Presented as a Science," p p- 3--45 in Crossroad! in In" LJ./:Iy rinth (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,

19 84).

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