🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

🤖🧠 Saikbilim Evirileri 🤖🧠

(French, German, Turkish)

Jacques Lacan, born on April 13, 1901, died on September 9, 1981.

It’s rolling.

If you want to get the gist of it, there are others anyway. You see, there’s not much room to move around because you’re quickly put in your place. Why? Because there isn’t much space in the forum. So I’ll stick to a few words, and then you’ll take it from there.

Ladies, gentlemen, I believe that in this case, it would be both too little and already too much to rely on the classic formula that consists of saying that Jacques Lacan needs no introduction. All the more so here, since, as you’ve seen, he has chosen, in his very own style, to speak without determining in advance, meaning without limiting in advance his subject and the manner—be it monologic or dialogic—he would use to address it.

About fifteen years ago, Jacques Lacan came to Louvain. At that time, he spoke in a much smaller and less crowded room at the Higher Institute of Philosophy. If he speaks today in this hall before this audience, it suffices to show, on the one hand, the definitive place he holds in the analytic movement, in the analytic discourse, a place that consists precisely in giving this discourse its contemporary and eternal meaning. It also testifies to how eager the Louvain audience was to hear him.

Everyone here knows that, in essence, the essential and perhaps the only truly adequate way to engage with Lacan’s unique teaching is by attending his seminars, far beyond his writings. These seminars, as he reminded some of you earlier, are in a much more direct style and suited to evoke and establish the very thing he speaks of. This is why we all knew we would have the great privilege today of hearing him rather than merely reading him.

I have been kindly introduced. I will now take on the difficult task of making you hear, let’s say, something tonight. I would be grateful if those on the periphery would let me know if I’m audible. Since I don’t particularly like this kind of gadget, I’ve put it under my tie. But if by chance it’s an obstacle, please kindly let me know.

Can you hear me? Oh, you can’t? How about now? That’s better? So the tie was the obstacle.

I jotted down a few notes on a small piece of paper because I just finished meeting with 25 or 30 people who were kind enough to accept my hosts’ invitation. I was so delighted because it rarely happens to me, finally, to have a chance to talk to a group of 25 beforehand to get a sense of whom I’ll be addressing. I was so pleased that I stayed with them until 6:30, even though I had been there since 4. Naturally, this does not allow for the preparation of what one would call a lecture. I never had the slightest intention of giving you a lecture. But I have a teaching. I’ve been doing this for a long time, for 17 years.

The questions, as I told them, interest me greatly because any question is never based on anything but an answer. Questions are only posed where the answer is already known, which significantly limits the scope of questions. Nevertheless, it gave me an opportunity to gauge what each person considered to be the answer. Obviously, answers differ for everyone. This is precisely what hinders what is so kindly referred to as communication.

Communication—there are some nice people. That’s amusing. Well, it’s very encouraging for me. If we’re already there, we can move forward a little.

A discourse is this kind of social link that… let’s call it an agreement, if you will. The speaking being, because they speak, because they exist—since existence only comes through language—then the speaking being you all are, at least I presume, believes themselves to exist. In many cases, in any case, in this one, it suffices to believe it to exist.

Everything that is constructed among these so-called human animals is built, manufactured, founded on language. This does not mean that other social animals—you’ve surely heard of ants, bees, and a few other distinguished examples—don’t have something that, though we don’t know what it is, we reduce to calling instinct, something that binds them together. It seems difficult not to notice that what binds humans together also has a relationship with language.

I call discourse that something which, within language, fixes, crystallizes, and uses the resources of language so that the social link between speaking beings functions.

Death belongs to the domain of faith. You are quite right to believe that you are going to die. Of course, it sustains you. If you didn’t believe it, could you bear the life you have? If you weren’t firmly supported by this certainty that it will end, could you bear this story? Nonetheless, it is only an act of faith.

The ultimate irony is that you are not even certain. Why wouldn’t there be someone who lives to be 150 years old? But still, that’s where faith regains its strength.

I’ve seen it myself. One of my patients, a long time ago, once dreamed that existence would perpetually regenerate itself, an infinity of lives succeeding one another endlessly. She woke up almost mad. That’s life. That is the solid ground on which we live.

Life, that’s what we lean on, precisely. Life. So as soon as we start talking about it as such—life, of course, we live. That’s beyond doubt; we notice it at every moment.

Now let’s turn to thought. To take life as a concept. For a while, one might have thought psychoanalysts knew something. But that belief is no longer widespread. The pinnacle is that even they no longer believe it themselves. And they are wrong because they actually do know something, just as they do about the unconscious, whose true definition is: they don’t know that they know it.

That transference is love, plain and simple. So why do we love such a being? For now, I leave the question unanswered. I’ve formulated it and discussed transference in terms that are full of traps, as always, as in everything I say, of course.

Why would I say anything other than what concerns the unconscious, namely, that language never, ever, allows or permits the formulation of anything with only one meaning? Language always conveys three, four, five, ten, twenty-five meanings.

The subject supposed to know. Me, I… Oh yes, you’ll criticize me. But I express myself in my way.

Like this gentleman. Do you understand me? Yes, I understand you.

I’d like to add that I intervene when I feel like intervening, and, let’s say, what was, until about 50 years ago, called culture—meaning the expression of individuals in fragmented channels expressing what they could feel—can now only be called a lie.

And it can only be called a spectacle. This is, essentially, the backdrop connecting and serving as a link between all alienated personal activities.

Essentially, if people here now gather authentically from themselves and want to communicate, it will be on entirely different bases and with entirely different perspectives.

It is evident that this is not something to expect from students who, by definition, are preparing to become the cadres of the system with all their justifications, precisely the audience that, with bad conscience, consumes the remnants of the avant-garde and the decaying spectacle.

That’s why I chose this moment to have some fun. Because if I see, for example, people genuinely expressing themselves somewhere, I’m not going to bother them. But I chose this moment specifically.

Let me try to explain further. What next, regarding what I’ve just said? I’d like you to respond. But of course, I’ll respond to you. Please sit there, where you were. I might have something to answer. Why not, right? Would you like that? Yes, it’s a very good idea.

So I invoke language. If you’ve expressed yourselves, finally, in front of this audience ready to hear such insurrectional declarations… But what… what do you want to do? Where am I going with this? Yes, that’s the question the parents, priests, ideologues, bureaucrats, and police regularly ask people like me, who are multiplying.

I can answer: I want to do one thing—the revolution.

You see. It’s clear that at the moment we are in, one of our preferred targets will be those moments when people like you essentially become the carriers and providers of justification for the daily misery of all those here. That’s what you’re doing, right?

Absolutely not!

For a new organization. This organization is not entirely excluded. It’s not at all excluded that we might see it emerge. We see it in the form of regimes that are staggering, faltering even, as they aspire, indeed, to their supreme vision. Isn’t it that totality—what you were told a moment ago? Not that we are all together, that we huddle closer together to be those who seek what? Organization—what does that mean if not a new order?

A new order, my God, is the return to something that, if you’ve followed what I’ve been telling you and where I started, is something that belongs to what? Simply to the master’s discourse, isn’t it? That’s the only term that hasn’t been mentioned in all this but which the very notion of organization implies.

To a certain extent, it’s entirely conceivable that there could be much progress in this direction, if it can be called progress. What we’re revealed by approaching what’s happening—what’s happening nonetheless across several subjects—is this:

Something eminently valuable, which was referred to earlier as will, and subjective will. This subjective will, if we see it in a truly permanent way, can only manifest itself through its own division. This surely suggests something to us.

Namely, that it is not, after all, the image of a collective harmony fully realized. It’s a call you’ve heard—a touching one, one I’m well acquainted with—that leads to certain inconveniences, such as with my tie.

Yes, it’s love—love that preaches to you. If only we were all like that, all together, loving each other… My God! That’s the heavenly Jerusalem, isn’t it, coming to announce itself to you.

Such things have been glimpsed at certain points in history, never at insignificant moments. It’s precisely because something manifests itself, which still strictly adheres to the order of discourse.

It’s because a discourse is proliferating, generating innumerable offspring that become, for each of you—and for me, too—terribly inconvenient. I mean the scientific discourse.

Increasingly, it looms imminently, threateningly, with its presence and the idea that everything will eventually be settled in terms of mechanics, ballistics, or the equilibrium of currents.

The more we know, the better it will be. Soon, we’ll know how to produce individuals who can function smoothly with everyone else.

But isn’t it clear that experience shows us something entirely different? What experience shows us is that this language I’ve mentioned, the one in which you all believed and grew up, which you each received, down to the word in your family, isn’t something transmitted to you without simultaneously carrying within it a trembling, wavering reality.

This reality is shaped by your parents’ desires. It is through the formation of each individual, through the mother’s influence—through the maternal tongue—that we find the principle of what love turns toward, this trembling call for union in something so evidently connected to being.

What’s absolutely incredible is imagining that by beating our fists against the heavens, this alienation—which is precisely this: that after all, what was said to you was a call—a call toward what? Toward more truth.

His speech seemed identical to this truth, making him its instrument, its messenger, even its angel, tasked with awakening you from your slumber.

If we turn to psychoanalysis, it’s because we believe it is one of the most prestigious figures of contemporary psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is something whose existence is increasingly known to many.

The analytic experience wasn’t invented by me, certainly. It’s something that has taken shape through its own paths. These paths may not always have been the most aligned with their goals. Nonetheless, there are certain forms in which it has established itself.

These forms, however artificial—common to any type of experience—have enabled some elucidation concerning certain aspects. It cannot be said, whether concerning trouble or malaise, that they are insignificant.

It is clearly something significant, as evidenced by analytic experience itself. At this point, the fact that an increasingly large audience is aware of the possibility of such an experience forms the foundation from which I find myself with something to say.

Jacques Lacan followed an independent and original trajectory. Initially trained as a psychiatrist, his thesis, published in 1932, On Paranoid Psychosis in Its Relations with Personality, led him to psychoanalysis. Delusion, like neurosis, reveals the unconscious.

Quickly, he began teaching at home and speaking to those who wanted to listen. More and more people came. His analysis of paranoia delighted the Surrealists. Dalí enthralled both psychiatrists and psychoanalysts.

Soon, the salon became too small to accommodate those fascinated by his speech, which disrupted complacent concepts.

Because analysis is a practice of language, Freud’s discovery of the unconscious is evident in his fundamental books. There is no other apprehension of the unconscious in Freud than through language.

This is confirmed by analytic experience: nothing is conveyed but through speech, whether that of the analysand or the analyst. It would be extravagant, given this practical fact, to seek an alibi in some accessory construction.

How do you define the unconscious? I have defined the unconscious as structured like a language. Certainly, this is not the place to elaborate on that. It’s clear that this is where questions begin.

How is it that beings, this language, inhabits them? How is it, in my view, that through language, everything revealed by analysis resides in this fact?

How is it transmitted to them under such dramatic conditions? This is where exploration begins. However, using affect—more or less pretentious, opportunistically evoked—only arises in the context of such declarations.

This is where analytic experience begins. But failing to premise it on the fact that it is indeed at the level of language that the problem arises seemed difficult to avoid. This isn’t a theoretical issue but one that carries the entire effectiveness of analytic practice.

At Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris, madness was confined. Dr. Lacan took an interest in its discourse. The alienated lead us to where things are taken seriously.

From 1953, in the chapel, Jacques Lacan gave weekly seminars. Then, after Benjamin H., in the Meignant pavilion. In each session, he presented patients to his audience, making them hear the discourse of delusion and its signifier.

It wasn’t about directing the patient but about letting their desire speak, whatever it may be. This was a return to Freud. Already, rumors circulated about this speech that disrupted the relationship between caregiver and patient. Ten years later, Dr. Lacan was expelled from Sainte-Anne.

What is the analyst’s role? Is it, as you said last night, the role of “I won’t put words in your mouth”? Yes. Last night, I said that to highlight a dimension.

I said structured like a language. A specific language. We know only that. It isn’t a role of ambiguity but one that makes use of equivocation.

In Rue de Lille, number 5, at the back of the courtyard, up the right staircase to the first floor: the office of Dr. Lacan. How many famous or unknown people entered weekly for analysis? No one knows.

The analysis itself elicited various rumors and criticisms: the floating schedule, often minimal sessions, the significant payment. Yet, according to those who experienced it, this analysis was always unique.

In analytic experience, there is transference. How do you, as an analyst, experience it?

As an analyst, yes, I have experienced it. It is always, even in the most charged analyses, an ever-new surprise.

I cannot even testify here about those who have confessed it to me, nor do I see why I should highlight them myself. What I can add to their testimony is that, for me too, it is a source of wonder.

But this says nothing about where each person can situate this manifestation—so sensitive, so astonishing to observe in an experience that I have just defined as something not to be misunderstood. It is not to diminish it to say that it is marked by a certain number of artifices.

That is not a reason to think that transference itself is an artifice. Many analysts, I would say, shelter themselves behind the idea of the artificial motivation of transference to conclude that, after all, it is merely an artifice. This is a way of shielding themselves from something that, understandably, can seem daunting.

For, as Freud himself did not fail to confront, there is no distinction between transference and love. From there begins the question: how can an artificial situation determine an order of sentiment as high in the natural order as love?

I must add, for transference doesn’t only take this form—it also takes the form of help. Yet, if analysis demonstrates anything, it is the profound and intricate entanglement of love and hate.

I believe I was the first to attempt to define transference in a way that justifies the elevated order of its phenomenon. I have situated it under the rubric of the analyst’s position within analytic experience.

I have termed it, despite the ambiguity I mentioned earlier, the “subject supposed to know.”

What is the relationship between a feeling like love and a formula such as the “subject supposed to know”?

That is undoubtedly impossible not only to explain but even to convey in such a short conversation.

Near the Panthéon, Jacques Lacan moved from Sainte-Anne. The École Normale Supérieure welcomed him. Althusser admired him. Lacan’s reading of Freud guided his reading of Marx.

The prestige of the great school added to the reputation of the seminar Jacques Lacan held there for five years.

The spirit reigned, and Lacan introduced the body. The audience was always full. Often, at first, he seemed to seek his thoughts. He asked for questions. Silence prevailed, then his words took flight.

One experienced extraordinary moments with the feeling of having participated in something unique.

In 1969, the Faculty of Law hosted this nomad, unrecognized by any university authority. The spirit of 1968 marked the intellectual world.

All of Paris crowded into the seminars. Jacques Lacan’s allure worked. People were either for or against him—always passionately, but also respectfully.

Philippe Sollers: A room where Lacan speaks quickly resembles an assembly of sleepers. Once they realize they don’t understand, they bring their tape recorders.

Microphones dangle. Speakers serve as crutches. They hope that, one day, their bread will open. For security, they lean over their notes.

The objet petit a, the grand Other, the barred S, the torus, the thread of phallic jouissance, the master signifier all crowd into their notebooks.

“There is no sexual relationship,” “the woman does not exist,” “the woman is not all”: the negative formulas verbalized correspond to the written affirmative schemas.

It’s an art of repetition, of treading water, of mimicking effort, of exhaustion, of returning with force. Lacan is slow, punctuated by sighs, tortuous passion, flights of fancy, anecdotes, slang, mockery, thunderous interjections, endless nitpicking, massive boredom, wit, puns, and sublimity.

The astonishing thing is that it produces the precise texture of a gai savoir.

Some psychoanalysts claim to hold the key to normalcy. Isn’t that dangerous?

Yes, well, that’s an opinion, but entirely misplaced. No analyst can authorize themselves to speak of normalcy or abnormality.

The analyst is faced with a request for analysis. They must determine if this request is in a form conducive to engaging the analytic process.

On what grounds would the analyst speak of any norm?

You said death was an act of faith, that one must believe in it. Must one also believe in analysis?

Yes, I spoke of death as an act of faith to underscore its fundamental character.

The sense of death, as far as we can testify, is unique to humans.

This illustrates how unbearable life would be without such an horizon.

To enter analysis, one must believe, at least a little. This belief is not of the same nature as that concerning death.

Once established, the analytic experience is gripping.

Written word, spoken word, filmed word: Lacan didn’t like these. Yet he authorized recordings to make psychoanalysis accessible to a broader public.

Psychoanalysis is not a repression of freedom.

Those terms make me laugh.

I never speak of freedom.

[Music]