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(All parts in English)

LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS

As you have heard, on my journey this year, I encountered certain points of FREUD’s work, and specifically, during our last meeting, you saw the particular recourse I was led to take to this curiously situated work known as the Entwurf. It is annexed to the correspondence with FLIESS and is not part of the “complete works.”

It was first published in a German text. You are aware of the reservations one might have about it: it is not a complete work. Yet assuredly, it is something very precious, especially the accompanying works, among which the Entwurf occupies a prominent place—also referred to as the Project for a Scientific Psychology.

It is certain that this text is highly revealing of what might be called a kind of foundation, a substratum of Freud’s reflection. The features and the evident anticipation of kinship between this work and all the formulations Freud subsequently developed from his experience make this text truly valuable.

What I said about it last time—I believe, sufficiently—outlined how it ties into my discourse this year. It is because I think that, contrary to what is commonly accepted, the opposition between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, the opposition between primary and secondary processes, belongs less to the realm of psychology and more to the realm of properly ethical experience.

By this, I mean Freud’s perception of what is, in essence, the very dimension in which human action unfolds as such. The semblance of a mechanistic ideal of reduction admitted in the Entwurf, I believe, is ultimately only the compensation or counterpart of something that, for Freud, in his discovery of the facts of neurosis, emerges from the outset as glimpsed within the ethical dimension where it indeed belongs. This is to the extent that conflict takes center stage and that, from the very beginning, this conflict is—let us say—fundamentally moral in nature.

Of course, this is not, after all, such a novel observation: we might say that all ethicists have faced the same problem. But this is precisely why it is interesting, I would say, to trace the history, the genealogy of morality. Not “morality” as NIETZSCHE expresses it, but the succession of ethics—that is, the theoretical reflection on moral experience. And in this context, we first notice the central significance of the problems as they were posed at the origin and as they have remained relatively constant.

– Why, after all, has it always been necessary for ethicists to return to this enigmatic problem of the relationship between pleasure and the definition of what might be called the ultimate good, which guides and directs human action insofar as it is moral action?
– Why always return to this same theme of pleasure?
– Why this kind of internal demand that compels the ethicist to strive to conceptualize or resolve the antinomies associated with this term, revolving around, on the one hand, the fact that pleasure often appears as the opposite of moral effort itself, and yet must ultimately serve as the final reference—the point to which this “good” orienting all human action must be reduced?

This is one example, and not the only one, of this kind of knot that emerges in resolving the problem. Thus, this first point must guide us when we encounter these knots surrounding the ethical problem as such. It is one example that shows us the consistency with which the problem of conflict arises within every theoretical elaboration.

And therefore, we can say that FREUD appears as merely one of the elements, one of the successors, in the problem of ethics. And this is where we can try to articulate something crucial. We would say that if it is true that FREUD brings us something of unparalleled significance—something that, to a degree not yet fully grasped, changes for us the problems of ethical positioning—what is it? It is precisely in the extent to which he articulated it more profoundly than anyone else.

And this is why I alluded to some references we will have to examine this year. These must be carefully chosen; we are not going to prioritize all the authors who have discussed morality. I mentioned ARISTOTLE because I believe the Nicomachean Ethics is truly the first properly articulated book centered on the ethical problem—as you know, there were many others surrounding it, both before and after, including within ARISTOTLE’s own works—which places the problem of pleasure at the forefront.

And then, we are not going to bring EPICTETUS and SENECA into play here. I have provided you with some markers. We will need to discuss utilitarian theory insofar as it is indicative of the shift that culminates in FREUD.

What I mean is that the interest in the commentary we make on certain works is something I will express today in the very terms FREUD uses within the Entwurf to designate something that, at least in my view, is very close to the process of language—the process I have taught you over these years to foreground in the functioning of the primary process. This is the term Bahnung, the term “facilitation.”

We can say that Freud’s discourse “paves the way” in the articulation of the ethical problem—something that, through its articulation, and as such, constitutes its essential merit. It allows us to truly grasp and advance further than ever before into the core of the moral problem. I believe—and this will be the inspiration for our progress this year—that it centers around the term reality, the true meaning of the word reality. This term is so often used by us in a thoughtless manner, yet its true meaning, for us, lies in the power of this conception. This must be measured by the enduring resonance of FREUD’s name within the unfolding of our analytic activity.

It is quite clear that the compelling interest we find in reading this text is not merely due to a trivial contribution to some fanciful physiology present in the Entwurf. No, that is not what constitutes its gripping relevance. Because this text—without a doubt, as anyone will tell you—is difficult, but it is also fascinating.

It is less so in French than in German. I would even say that the French translation is extraordinarily ungrateful. At every moment, it lacks the precision, the accent, the vibrancy that, here, I am forced to evoke—or to lament its absence for those who cannot read German. In German, it is a text of brilliance, of purity! Its first, still palpable draft is entirely astonishing.

But the contours of the French translation obscure it, rendering it dull to such an extent that it certainly does not facilitate reading it. Make the effort to read it, and you will see how genuine my remark is: what is at stake here is far more than the construction of a hypothesis.

It is a kind of grappling that FREUD undertakes for the first time with something that is the very pathos of the reality he encounters in his patients. At around forty years of age, he discovered the specific dimension, the deeply meaningful life of this reality. So, it is not out of a vain concern for mere textual reference—although, why not?

You know very well that, on occasion, I allow myself liberties and distances with FREUD’s text. But if, for example, I have taught you a doctrine of the prevalence of the signifier in what we may call the unconscious chain within the subject, after all, it is there, insofar as I emphasize certain traits of our experience.

That experience, which LEONOV referred to in his presentation last night as—using a division I do not entirely agree with but which expresses something—”the experience of content,” where he contrasted it with the scaffolding of concepts. Well, what I propose to you now, this year, is not simply a matter of being faithful to FREUD’s text, of interpreting it as if it were the source of a “ne varietur” truth—a model, a framework, or a garment we would impose upon all our experience. Rather, it is because I believe that tracing the lineage of the deployment of FREUD’s concepts is essential:

– from the Entwurf,
– then through Chapter VII of the Traumdeutung, the first published organization of the opposition between primary and secondary processes, and the way he conceives the relationships between the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious,
– then “On Narcissism,” in its economic framework,
– then what is called the second topography, with its highlighting of the reciprocal functions of the ego, the superego, and the external world, which provides a completed expression of ideas that we already, not without surprise, see traces and seeds of in the Entwurf,
– and finally, those later points, always focused in his reflection on the theme “How does reality constitute itself for man?”—notably the 1925 article on Verneinung (“Negation”), which we will review.

– It also includes Civilization and Its Discontents, insofar as it concerns man’s position in the world and the meaning demanded of him by what FREUD calls “civilization”—the German term is Kultur. This is something we will perhaps need to delineate precisely and clarify here. Under FREUD’s pen, concepts never take on a neutral or banal form; they always carry an authentic and deliberately assumed weight.

If we closely follow this year what can be called the evolution of “Freudian metaphysics,” it is because there we can think to find traces of a development that reflects an ethical thought which—whatever the difficulties, perhaps, we may have in recognizing it as central to our experience—it nonetheless holds together the entire world represented by the analytic community. This community, with its peculiar kind of dispersion—one often has the impression of fragmentation—is built upon a fundamental intuition, which each analyst revisits from one of its aspects.

If we always return to FREUD, it is because FREUD began from an experience. We might just as well interpret this as stemming from an initial intuition—a central intuition: the ethical intuition present in FREUD. I believe this intuition is essential:

– to understand our entire experience,
– to animate this experience,
– to prevent ourselves from going astray in it,
– and to avoid letting it degrade.

It is for this reason that I chose to tackle this subject this year.

Last time, I had the pleasure of receiving a kind of echo, a response: two people among you who, for other purposes—perhaps for the purpose of elaborating vocabulary or out of personal interest—were re-reading the Entwurf. Afterward, they came to share with me the satisfaction they had experienced, precisely because of their engagement with the Entwurf at that moment, and the way I had spoken of it, which perhaps justified for them some of the interest they had taken in this re-reading.

I had no difficulty recalling—because it was a persistent concern—that this seminar is indeed a seminar and that it would be fitting for it not to rely solely on the signifier of “seminar” to uphold its claim to that designation. I asked one of them—since both are particularly well-versed at the moment in this Entwurf—as VALABRÉGA remarked earlier, one really needs to have it fresh in memory and experience to be able to discuss it in a meaningful way. Is this entirely true? I’m not sure, as one eventually absorbs it and realizes that it’s not all that complicated after all.

I am now going to ask Jean-Bertrand LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS to share the reflections inspired in him by the way I brought the relevance of this seminar back to FREUD’s Project in our last session. Today, you will hear LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS speak to you about it.

[Lacan writes on the board: “Not des Lebens”]

Presentation by Jean-Bertrand Lefèvre-Pontalis

There is a small misunderstanding to clear up: I am not at all a specialist in the Entwurf, and I haven’t re-read it. I am currently reading it. Dr. LACAN asked me to revisit certain points from his seminar last week, particularly regarding the relationship to reality, which he described as highly problematic, even frankly paradoxical, in this foundational text by FREUD.

A few words first about this Entwurf: the title was given by the editor, as it is an untitled manuscript. It is now often treated as a purely academic work, a minor link in the chain of a great illusion of the last century that has never been entirely dispelled—namely, the attempt to impose order and scientific laws on biology through a systematic, and often excessively forced, recourse to the notions and terminology of physics. This approach aims to give, where direct evidence is lacking, the impression of rigor. Such is the scientism that seeks to correct by excess what in reality suffers from deficiency.

It is striking to see that people whose job is to know this text well—namely, the editors of the Entwurf—ultimately adopt such a perspective. They see in it, I quote: “…merely a coherent attempt to reduce the functioning of the psychic apparatus to a system of neurons and to conceive all processes through quantitative modifications.” This is the viewpoint of the editors, who see in this text only a more or less successful synthesis between the instructions passed on to FREUD by BRÜCKE and the developing doctrine of the neuron as the functional unit of the nervous system—specific cells without continuity with adjacent ones.

I feel—and I see Dr. LACAN shares this sentiment—that such a view, while it certainly aligns with the manifest content of the text, leads to reducing the Project to an archaeological artifact. It becomes a text intended, at most, to interest historians of psychoanalytic ideals, who might pinpoint the announcement of ideas that were later developed and presented in a far more acceptable form.

This perspective is betrayed by the notes the editors often devote to the text. Even an author like JONES, who emphasizes the importance of the Project—devoting almost a chapter of commentary to it in the first volume of his Biography—even he seeks, in a contradictory move, to diminish the text’s scope, seeing in it merely the residue of FREUD’s early interests in the microscopic study of the nervous system.

He describes the Project as a final desperate effort to cling to the “risk-free” study of cerebral anatomy. This “risk-free” claim is puzzling. One might almost think the Project was presented as a defense mechanism for FREUD, one capable of inducing repression during his analytic period. Meanwhile, the courageous, intrepid, and sublime figure would then be BREUER, who, at the exact same time—1895—writes and thinks that when speaking of psychological phenomena, it is appropriate to use psychological terminology.

For example, he says, “To speak of neurons instead of representations is a pure and simple masquerade, since within ourselves we silently replace the former term with the latter.” Yet FREUD did not collaborate on the theoretical considerations chapter of Studies on Hysteria, contrary to what JONES claimed. FREUD provides evidence for this himself, saying, “I had nothing to do with that chapter.”

Thus, FREUD, in a sense, preferred the masquerade BREUER denounced. It is worth asking why, especially considering that Studies on Hysteria, at least in terms of its publication date, is exactly contemporary with the Project (1895). This means that FREUD had already, through his therapeutic experience and reflection, discovered the elements we know as the rule of association, transference, resistance, recollection, abreaction and its limits, the power of silence, of denied speech, and the interpretation of expressed speech. Theoretically, he had also addressed the relationship between affect and representation, the symbolism of symptoms, repression, and censorship—all elements we are tempted to mention whenever reading a text by FREUD.

And what strikes the reader of the Project is this: FREUD does not discuss any of this with himself or with his friend FLIESS in this famous Project. This is the primary paradox that leaps to the eye as soon as one opens this book.

This reference to Studies on Hysteria here primarily serves to counter the thesis that relegates the Project to the prehistory of Freudian doctrine.

FREUD was at this time fully immersed in his discovery. He had in hand all the elements needed to develop a theory of psychoanalysis—although, regrettably, I haven’t had time to compare BRÜCKE’s views contemporary to the Project with those of the Project. FREUD wrote this very difficult, entirely deductive text feverishly, with the exaltation we know he felt. It contains the most discreet references to experience, often no references at all, and would almost deserve, even before worrying about its content, a structural study.

By that, I mean examining how this text itself is constructed. And we, like FREUD, find it extraordinarily difficult to situate it. It is no coincidence that it is untitled.

I believe it is essential not to dull the meaning of the Entwurf by situating it purely and simply within the lineage of contemporary psycho-physiological developments, such as those of ENZNER, one of FREUD’s professors, who published his own Entwurf in 1894.

There was, at the time, a whole realm of ideas floating in the air—much like psychoanalysis today—where everyone takes what serves them. Moreover, in the letters to FLIESS that precede the date when FREUD began the Project, there are no references to authors like ENZNER. FREUD had no reason to hide them. On the contrary, FREUD stands at the forefront of his own research, approaching it with the freshness and passionate anticipation of a child discovering something for the first time.

Before its full conception, the Project is already nicknamed within the framework of Ψ, ϕ, ω, feverishly developed as FREUD begins drafting it in pencil immediately after a meeting with FLIESS. He completes it in two weeks, sends it off unfinished, and never asks for it back. This sheds light on FREUD’s notably non-narcissistic relationship with his own productions.

This advanced and decidedly non-retrograde nature of the Project partly explains FREUD’s own remarks about the text, which seem unusually candid for him. He expresses feeling as though he has built a kind of machine: “where everything is in its place, the cogs interlock, and one has the impression of truly being inside a machine that could soon begin to function on its own.” But only a few days later, he writes: “It seems to me to be a sort of aberration.”

I do not believe there is a real contradiction between these two admissions, chosen from among many similar ones. Rather, it feels as though these are two mirrored images of the same goal. FREUD was constructing a model in the original sense of the word, not as we tend to use it today—a symbol, a system of concepts, or even references far removed from experience. If I may dare, I would say that the Project is FREUD’s own graph. At this point, it is entirely appropriate to question its use and value, as such an inquiry could bring some clarity.

There is an incidental cause here, and it becomes evident if we skim through FREUD’s letters and manuscripts. FREUD frequently sent FLIESS short manuscripts and smaller projects preceding this one. In reviewing these earlier letters and manuscripts, it becomes clear that they almost exclusively discuss the “actual neurosis” or the “anxiety neurosis,” a topic to which FREUD dedicated two articles in the same year, 1895.

In these writings, FREUD emphasizes—and we know he will never waver on this—the necessity of distinguishing anxiety neurosis from neurasthenia and hysteria. Anxiety neurosis, as FREUD explains, is a form of neurosis where there is no mediated enactment of conflict but rather the immediate presence of tension. At this stage of his reflection, FREUD identifies three mechanisms of neurosis formation:

• The conversion of affect: conversion hysteria,
• Displacement: obsessive neurosis,
• And the transformation of affect.

It is this last mechanism—the transformation of affect—that constitutes the major problem at this point in his reflection, namely: how can sexual tension so easily transform into anxiety? Why does it provoke anxiety?

It seems almost certain that such questions motivated the writing of the Project. This does not, of course, mean that these questions exhaust its meaning. FREUD begins addressing this question in an earlier manuscript, employing concepts and distinctions that will find their full development in the 1895 Project. To summarize briefly: excitation can be exogenous, creating tension, and in such cases, there is no problem. The inertia process can function effortlessly in a general manner; the stimulus is not specific, and the response does not need to be specific either. It suffices for the tension to be discharged.

The problem begins only in cases of endogenous excitation—such as hunger, thirst, or sexual impulses. Here, things become more complex because only a specific reaction, to use FREUD’s term, is effective.

That is, for a given excitation, a corresponding specific response is required, not just any discharge. If the specific reaction occurs, the tension disappears, following this schema: physical tension reaches a certain threshold, transforms into what FREUD calls psychic libido, and connects with groups of representations capable of triggering the psychic reaction.

But if this specific reaction does not occur, what happens? The elaboration and connections with groups of representations do not take place. In other words, to use language perhaps more accessible to us: there is no mediation. And this absence of mediation is the principle of anxiety as it manifests in “actual neurosis.”

This raises several questions:

• How are these necessary mediations for transformation carried out?
• Where is their locus, their support?

I believe these are the kinds of questions that, during this period, guide and motivate FREUD’s research.

All this is, rather, to show you that the Entwurf is not at all about re-elaborating a model that FREUD would have already abandoned at the very moment of constructing it. On the contrary, we can even say that its essential contributions were never abandoned. All the theses and fundamental distinctions are present in this text.

JONES, who is somewhat inconsistent in his assessment of this text—as we all necessarily are—provides a catalog of these distinctions and theses. I will not read it in full but will give you an idea of its scope:

• The principle of inertia and constancy,
• The primary process and the secondary process,
• The preconscious and the unconscious,
• The drive toward the realization of a desire,
• The hallucinatory versus the real realization of a desire,
• The inhibitory function of the ego, and so forth.

We can say that everything is there.

It is also interesting to compare this list with the catalog I provided earlier regarding Studies on Hysteria. These two catalogs present two distinct faces of FREUD’s research. The list I just shared demonstrates that there is no sudden turn after 1895 from a so-called neurophysiological phase of FREUD to a more psychological one. Everything is already present. Here, we truly have the nucleus of what is irreducible, inexhaustible in FREUD’s work—and, by extension, in our knowledge of analytic experience, as we have yet to find a way to separate the two.

Thus, if we—as we must—wish to avoid indefinitely using “analytic concepts” (in quotation marks, with varying degrees of irony, disrespect, or simply suspension of judgment continually deferred), we must interrogate such a text. We must plainly ask ourselves: What do we think of it today?

I am absolutely not in a position to answer such a candid question. At most, I can offer, based on what Dr. LACAN said last time, a few elements of a response, drawn from my astonishment at my initial reading of the Project. First, we should ask: What role does reality play in this construction, in this first construction by FREUD? Here, I must admit, we encounter a series of assertions that are, in my view, utterly surprising. What do we find as a premise? We find the idea that all the organism’s troubles begin with internal stimulations—that is, with needs, with life itself.

As soon as the pure and simple reflex schema is no longer valid—that is, the schema of external stimulus and response, the stimulus-response circuit (and even to speak of “response” is saying too much, as the term always implies some level of adaptation)—FREUD’s schema presents simply the transmission of excitation through a relay, a passage point that exists for no reason other than this transmission. (I believe this is a reference to electricity.) Once we move beyond this schema, the principle of inertia is overturned. FREUD writes:

“The organism is not in a position to make use of the quantity of excitation it receives. To escape it, under the pressure of life’s demands, the neural system is forced to constitute reserves of quantity.”

The question arises: forced by what? It hardly needs emphasizing how peculiar this reasoning is, invoking a kind of finalism that is all the more incomprehensible because the organism, in its principle, does not appear at all oriented toward life. Life appears here as an intruder, posing questions to the organism for which it finds no means of response in its equipment or mechanisms.

In FREUD’s conception, there is no trace of a preformed structure that might guide the organism in any particular direction. And yet, it is this organism that will construct its secondary function. To my mind, this presents such a biological heresy that it can only be understood by referring to a specifically analytic field of experience. This is what Dr. LACAN hinted at earlier.

In sum, we are so far removed from ethology that we are compelled to refer to the ethical dimension—if I have understood correctly. It is evident that the question FREUD is grappling with throughout this text is: “How does it work? How does this function?”—that is, what he is ready to call “the fiction of the psychic apparatus.” From the outset, his thought is as far as possible from any genetic perspective, with its implications of instinctual maturation. This, then, is the foundational premise, stated almost verbatim.

We encounter the same paradox when considering things from another angle. As the apparatus becomes more complex—creating additional systems, since nothing is given at the outset—these systems are presented, moreover, as hypotheses. FREUD, always working within his perspective, develops these systems to make the functioning of the apparatus possible. Yet the primary function always remains predominant.

What perhaps best illuminates this is what FREUD calls the “experience of satisfaction,” or die Befriedigungserlebnis, a concept to which we must attach great importance. FREUD refers to it in quotation marks, as if it were a well-known part of his system of thought, at the end of the Traumdeutung.

This experience of satisfaction, which is entirely original though real, has an almost mythical value. It is lived by the infant when it is completely dependent on external factors to relieve the tension created by internal needs.

This experience, then, arises from the human being’s original helplessness. The organism is incapable of producing the specific reaction that would allow it to eliminate the tension. This action requires recourse to external help—for example, the provision of food by a person alerted by the infant’s cries. Hence, incidentally, the value FREUD assigns to this means of communication. Beyond the immediate outcome, however, the experience has the lasting consequences we know: the image of the object that provided satisfaction is strongly invested, as is the reflex movement that enabled the final discharge. When the state of tension reappears, the images of both the movement and the desired object are reactivated, resulting in something analogous to a perception—in other words, a hallucination.

If a stimulus prompts the reflex action, it leads to disappointment: the real object is absent.

Such an experience seems to have always held a prototypical function for FREUD, as the subject continually seeks to reproduce it. Desire finds its model and principle in this experience. The primary process seeks to reproduce it immediately through perceptual identity, while the secondary process seeks to do so mediately through thought identity.

I believe FREUD refers to this experience in his text On Negation, where he highlights the irreducible nature of this original satisfaction and its decisive role in the subsequent search for all objects. Reality testing occurs only because the objects that once provided real satisfaction have been lost. This passage is often cited, though it is somewhat enigmatic, as it relates to this original experience of satisfaction—a real, lived experience with a mythic function in later development.

Thus, originally—and this is striking—there is truly only one principle at play: the pleasure principle. FREUD never speaks of the reality principle as complementary to the pleasure principle, but rather only of the reality indicator. This distinction is significant because it underscores the absolute predominance of the pleasure principle—a predominance that is never surpassed, even when neuronal facilitation allows for the retention of quantities, the constitution of the secondary system, the Ψ system. These facilitations still serve the primary function.

They never allow the primary process to be exceeded. In fact, they even encourage hallucinatory deception. This demonstrates that the filtering performed by the Ψ system still lacks biological value. The repeated actual satisfaction—the lived experience of satisfaction—models human desire and leads to hallucination. Put differently, to clarify: desire ignores the principle of its effective satisfaction. In its essence as desire, it makes no distinction between hallucinatory satisfaction and real satisfaction. This represents a final, almost humorous variation on hedonism.

If it is true that the organism seeks only its own good, in FREUD’s perspective, this “good” can entirely coincide with its destruction. The primary process remains absolutely predominant.

This reminds me of a story recently brought back to memory: “The dialogue between the scorpion and the frog.” The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across a river, and the frog replies:

• “No way. If I take you on my back, you’ll sting me.”
• To which the scorpion responds: “That would be foolish; if I sting you, I’ll drown too.”
• Convinced by this logic—the reality indicator functioning—the frog agrees. They begin to cross, and in the middle of the river, the scorpion stings the frog.
• The frog says, “What? What’s going on?”
• The scorpion replies: “I know, but I can’t help myself.”

We all know this story by heart, and because we know it, we think analysis must not be good or bad—that is, it must not take on the frog’s role. Thus, you see the extremely limited function of the reality indicator that Dr. LACAN pointed out as a reminder of order, an extremely precarious return. This is because the reality indicator is presented to desire, but desire does not encounter it in its own movement. Desire encounters only appeasement. Its entire field is governed by the pleasure principle.

Thus, it is not at all the case, as is often written, that the pleasure principle submits to the reality principle—or here, to the reality indicator. On the contrary, it is the reality indicator that is presented to desire.

How does the instance that presents this reality indicator operate? Here, I cannot delve into the details, as they are complex. In broad terms, it is formed within the Ψ system as an instance that obstructs the flow of quantity and becomes the ego. This instance has a threefold function:

1. First, it represents and coordinates the totality of Ψ investments, these retained quantities.
2. Second, it plays an inhibitory role, preventing quantities from flowing along the path of least resistance, as dictated by the principle of inertia. Through lateral investments, it avoids what could be called the natural slope of quantity—that is, the immediate tendency toward appeasement in response to internal tension.
3. Finally, its third function—this distinction, I believe, is crucial—is often misunderstood. It is said that the ego represents the reality indicator. This is incorrect. The ego uses the reality indicator, but it does not provide it.

And how could it be otherwise, given that the Ψ system merely performs a filtering operation aimed at maintaining, insofar as possible, homeostasis—a state of constancy. Yet the system is entirely linked to desire; that is its ultimate reference point. It is not connected to external reality and, once again, provides no biological functional value derived from it.

This is why FREUD is compelled to posit, beyond the Ψ system, a third system: the perception system, ω. This system provides the reality indicator and is as neutral and independent as possible from any displacement of energy, tending thereby to escape considerations of energetics.

Thus, one of the paradoxes of this strange construction emerges—a paradox which, if my memory serves me, was explored in a previous year’s seminar. It demonstrates that this construction leads to a heightened autonomy—not of the ego (Ψ system)—but of consciousness, which is posited as absolutely necessary to reflect the external world. Until this point, the external world had been entirely bracketed—not as a source of stimulation, but as something with a certain objective structure providing quality indicators. The system responsible for quality, according to FREUD, resides in ω.

However, a new difficulty arises: perception does not, in itself, act upon the secondary processes. For the reality indicator to function as a criterion—that is, to allow an effective distinction between perception and representation—certain conditions must be met. At first reading, one might not distinguish between an indicator and a criterion. They are different, and, in my opinion, the entire theory of reality in this text hinges on that distinction. It is not a principle; it is an indicator. And the indicator must still be retained as a criterion. It may very well be presented but fail to function as a criterion—that is, it may lack operational value and fail to distinguish, crucially, between perception and memory representation.

For the indicator to function as a criterion, and thus have operational value, certain conditions must be met. Specifically, the Ψ system must have already carried out its regulation, performed its filtering function—in short, inhibition must have occurred. FREUD explicitly writes:

“This inhibition, due to the ego, makes possible the formation of a criterion that allows the distinction between perception and memory.”

However, if the Ψ system—its regulation, its inhibition—has not been able to function, and if the desired object is fully invested in such a way that it may take on a hallucinatory form, i.e., if it is completely governed by the primary process, then the reality indicator may still be presented, but it will serve exactly the same function as if it were an external perception. In other words, it will fail to operate as a criterion, and the hallucinatory deception will persist.

Thus, one can see how this construction makes access to reality an exceedingly problematic process. FREUD, here and there, makes extremely cautious references to biological experience, which suggests that discharge should not occur until the reality indicator is present, and broadly speaking, that excessive investment in memories of satisfaction should be avoided, as this leads to hallucination. However, these references seem to me to fall outside his construction entirely. They are supplemental.

This is the complement I wished to bring to what Dr. LACAN has taught us about the relationship to reality. One can see that there is nothing here that could constitute an objection to the notions he has developed. On the contrary, they seem to be reinforced.

However, I must admit—and here I introduce a final set of remarks—that I struggled to grasp the significance of a passage from the Project which, if I understood correctly, was used to justify the idea that the unconscious has no other structure than that of language. This passage was not cited, but I believe it is the following, as you seemed to hint:

“Our own cries confer character upon the object; otherwise, due to suffering, we could not have any clear qualitative notion.”

Here is my question: What, at this moment, is FREUD’s explicit intention? His intention is to highlight the value of what he calls verbal associations in the knowledge of the perceived object.

He uses the example of a case where the object is a human being, stating broadly that two categories come into play in the perception of the object. First, there is something new—something incomparable to the perceptions that belong to the original experiences of satisfaction and displeasure. This new, incomparable element establishes the object as non-subject, as something with a permanent structure, a coherent whole.

Second, the early perception of the human object includes recognition, judgment, identification—functions shaped by the subject’s own experience. FREUD describes this aspect of perception as something that “can be understood through mnemonic activity—that is, attributed to a signal the subject’s own body sends to itself.” It is this dimension of the relationship to the object that FREUD links to verbal expression.

In other words, the mediation of words—which, let us note in passing, is secondary to that of the body itself, the attribution of a signal the subject’s body sends to itself—this mediation inaugurates our relationship to the object. It undeniably provides a means of grasping the object but remains only a secondary mediation. Neither as support nor as a qualifier—as presenting such-and-such a quality—is the object defined by language. Fundamentally, the relationship to the object lies outside the domain of verbal signs.

There is, on the one hand, the object of pure quality, and on the other, the object marked with the sign (+) or (-), good or bad. Language merely provides the mediation.

I admit that I was personally inclined—if I have correctly understood the text—to connect it to a later text that is certainly not the most “Lacanian” of FREUD’s works. This, however, is no reason to neglect it. I am referring to the final section of the 1915 article On the Unconscious. In that section, FREUD states in the most formal terms, drawing upon a very old distinction of his (dating back, I believe, to his work on aphasia) between word-representations and thing-representations, two points:

1. Unconscious representation is solely object-representation.
2. What repression denies to the rejected representation is its translation into words, which are meant to remain bound to the object. Repression is non-translation.

Here, we are very close to what I believe is the major difficulty FREUD encountered in conceptualizing the unconscious—a difficulty that resurfaced at every decisive stage of his reflection.

Let me explain. FREUD unquestionably developed very early on the idea of a series of recordings of representations, a stratified succession of sign inscriptions. This idea is clearly formulated in the final chapter of his contribution to Studies on Hysteria, titled “Psychotherapy.”

The image of a file-folder in relation to resistance is also found in the letter you cited, Letter 52. But one might ask—and here I introduce a question that goes beyond the commentary of last week’s seminar—whether this conception of a series of recordings in distinct locations is coextensive with the conception of the unconscious as being entirely constituted by repression. This is what I mean: One cannot help but notice that immediately after his research on hysteria, which led to the discovery of repression, FREUD posed the question, the enigma, of “actual neurosis,” where, precisely, the mediation of signs is absent.

Incidentally, FREUD did not write Chapter IV of the Project, which, according to the editors, was meant to focus on repression, even though at that same time he wrote that all his theories converged on the clinical field of repression. It is as if he could not resolve this aporia: on the one hand, there is repression; on the other, there is actual neurosis. Could this text—if my hypothesis is correct, and its incidental cause was the question of actual neurosis—find its resolution in a solution to the problem of repression that accounts for both?

Later, in his second major attempt at metapsychology—if we count the Traumdeutung as the first—in the series of articles gathered under the title Metapsychology (beginning with narcissism), FREUD demonstrates his struggle to articulate the repression of affect. He begins by speaking solely of the repression of representations. Then, suddenly, he introduces affect, questioning whether affect can indeed be repressed. Ultimately, in the text On the Unconscious, he concludes:

“A superficial examination might suggest that conscious and unconscious representations are separate recordings.”

Here, FREUD challenges his earlier thesis, where they are topically separated yet share the same content. Reflection immediately shows that the patient’s realization and the repressed memory—the act of hearing and experiencing something—are of entirely different psychological natures.

One cannot simply take a passage at face value and declare, “He was wrong before,” as FREUD sometimes does when stating, “Until now, I did not understand.” Instead, this demonstrates a dialectical relationship between these two perspectives. It seems to me that later on, the paradox resurfaces again with the repetition of trauma, which inaugurates Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Trauma, even if it can retroactively acquire symbolic value, is initially experienced as escaping all forms of symbolization.

Thus, I believe this provides a testimony for FREUD. There truly is something irreducible to repression—even to primary repression, the primordial repression whose theory FREUD developed in a section of On the Unconscious and which, I believe, began with the case of SCHREBER in 1911. These instances reveal traces of a dualism present in different registers and within entirely different clinical contexts.

One could more precisely trace this dualism at various stages of FREUD’s reflections, finding evidence that he did not manage to overcome it. Perhaps, however, it could be overcome, as Dr. LACAN seems to suggest, by showing the subject in what could be called a kind of generalized topology—not so much as a bearer of the signifier, but as borne by it, entirely exposed to its laws. Only then would it be possible to take the unconscious—or even FREUD himself—at his word.

LACAN

I thank you for what you have done today. Perhaps this will allow us to inaugurate a new rhythm this year, one that, while offering me some relief and pauses, will, I believe, serve a much greater purpose. It seems to me that you have presented with particular elegance the sharp edges of a question where, after all, there was a risk of losing oneself in detail—a detail that, I must say, is extraordinarily tempting.

At certain moments, I myself regretted that you did not delve into the details of the position of Bahnung on the one hand, and of the Befriedigungserlebnis on the other, or provide us with a reminder of the topology underlying the systems ϕ, Ψ, and ω. Perhaps such an exploration would have clarified matters. Yet it is evident that this would take an entire term, if not a year, especially when we must correct the distortions introduced by the English translation of the Entwurf into FREUD’s original intuitions.

An example that comes to mind almost at random illustrates this issue. In English, Bahnung is translated as “facilitation.” Clearly, this translation carries a strictly opposite meaning. Bahnung evokes the establishment of a pathway, a chain of continuity. I would even suggest that it could be related to the signifying chain, insofar as FREUD indicates that, with the evolution of the Ψ apparatus, we see the replacement of simple quantities with quantities plus Bahnung—that is, their articulation. This entire nuance is lost in the English translation as “facilitation.” Moreover, since the French translation was based on the English text, all the errors of the English version were compounded.

There are indeed cases where the French text becomes entirely unintelligible compared to the straightforward German of the Entwurf. Nonetheless, I believe you have highlighted the key points that will guide the continuation of our discussions. These points must bring us back to the relationship between the reality principle and the pleasure principle. You have aptly demonstrated the paradox here: that the pleasure principle cannot be inscribed within any framework conceivable in terms of a biologically grounded relationship.

But ultimately—my goodness—the mystery is not so great if we observe this: the foundation of this state of affairs lies in the fact that the subject’s experience of satisfaction is entirely contingent upon the Other. What I regret you did not articulate here is FREUD’s beautiful term Nebenmensch in this text. I will provide some citations later to show how profoundly it is through this Nebenmensch—the neighboring human, as a speaking subject—that everything related to the thought process can take shape within the subject’s subjectivity.

This thought process, I ask you to recall, corresponds to the dual column I laid out before you last time, with its double decussation. This structure will guide us throughout our exposition; it is crucial. It enables us to conceive, within a relationship, a deeper connection between the function of pleasure and the function of reality. Otherwise, as you may have overemphasized today, we are left with the paradox that there would be no plausible reason for reality to make itself heard and, ultimately—experience overwhelmingly demonstrates this for the human species, which, as of now, shows no signs of extinction—to prevail.

It is essentially because pleasure, within the human economy, is something that cannot be conceived or articulated except in a specific relationship to that point—left perpetually empty and enigmatic yet maintaining a certain connection to what reality is for humanity—that we approach more closely this intuition, this apprehension of reality as it functions in practice. This intuition animates the entire development of FREUD’s thought.

Let us not forget—and this is something the translation entirely fails to convey—when FREUD announces what must function for the Ψ system to retain a certain level of quantity Qή. This quantity plays an essential role throughout. It is not reduced to the zero level of complete discharge, where the entire psychic apparatus would reach a final state of rest—a state that is neither the aim nor the plausible endpoint of the pleasure principle. FREUD explicitly questions how to justify maintaining this quantity Qή at a particular level within the Ψ system, given its role as the regulator of everything.

Perhaps you moved too quickly over the relationship between the Ψ system and the ϕ system, as it relates to exogenous excitations in one case, and, in the other, to endogenous excitations. But this relationship is not merely about such a distinction. Within the Ψ system, there is an important component that relates to and is structured by the transformation of raw, pure quantities from the external world into forms that are utterly incomparable to the characteristics of the Ψ system itself. In this process, the Ψ system organizes what comes from the external system, structuring it in a way FREUD articulates quite clearly, aligning with the elaborations of FECHNER.

What FREUD describes is the transformation of pure, simple quantities into complexities—what he even refers to in Latin as complicationes.

We are thus presented with roughly the following schema: If we represent the reference of a certain ϕ system in relation to something that constitutes itself as the highly complex network of the Ψ system, which is capable of both contraction and Aufbau (that is, expansion), we encounter something that first tends to demonstrate that, between the two, there is a crossing-over at this stage of elaboration.

This is indicated even in the small diagram FREUD provides when illustrating the relationships or terminations of what originates from the ϕ system. The trajectory of what arrives here as a quantity, once it crosses a certain threshold, becomes something that entirely transforms its quantitative structure. FREUD identifies this notion of structure, of Aufbau, as essential.

He distinguishes this Ψ apparatus as having two functions:

• In its Aufbau, to retain the quantity,
• And in its Abfuhr, as it discharges.

These are two distinct aspects: on one hand, structure, and on the other, the function of discharge.

At this level, the function of this apparatus appears profoundly split—it is no longer simply a matter of circuitry and flow. It is worth noting that FREUD primarily presents it as something isolated within the living being: the nervous system, studied as such. It is not the entirety of the organism that FREUD is addressing here.

This distinction is extremely important. The translation of this concept into our terms is quite evident, insofar as what can be sustained and layered differently than as one of the hypotheses FREUD himself discusses—when one enjoys constructing hypotheses, one must approach them with a certain method, avoiding arbitrariness (Willkürlichkeit der Konstruction).

It is clear that this apparatus is essentially a topology of subjectivity. It is a topology of subjectivity insofar as it is built and constructed upon the surface of an organism, but it remains fundamentally a topology. Within the Ψ system, there is a significant component distinct from what FREUD calls the “nucleus,” or Spinalneuronen. These neurons are open to endogenous excitation—on the side where no apparatus transforms the quantities.

There are many rich elements here that you, understandably aiming to simplify the paths and problems, have not mentioned. However, as a bridge to what I will return to next time, it is nonetheless important to bring them up. For example, the concept of Schlüsselneuronen (key neurons), which play a particular role in relation to the part of Ψ that is oriented toward the endogenous and receives these quantities. These Schlüsselneuronen serve as a specific mode of response and discharge within the Ψ system. Paradoxically, however, this discharge functions only to increase the load. FREUD also refers to them as motorische Neuronen (motor neurons)—not, I believe, as a slip of the tongue. These neurons generate a series of movements originating from within the Ψ system that further increase tension. Consequently, they underpin something of great interest to us: the problem of “actual neuroses,” a subject that has been somewhat neglected. But let us set that aside.

The important point is that all the processes occurring here exhibit the paradox of being located precisely where the principle of articulation through Bahnung operates. It is also the locus of the hallucinatory phenomena of perception and the false reality to which the human organism is, in a sense, predisposed. In this same locus, unconsciously oriented processes dominated by reality take form, particularly in the sense that these processes must help the subject rediscover the path to satisfaction.

Satisfaction, in this context, cannot be conflated with the pleasure principle. This distinction becomes strikingly clear at the end of the third section of FREUD’s text.

You could not, of course, fully analyze or cover this exceptionally rich text. When FREUD sketches out what might represent the normal functioning of the apparatus, he speaks not of spezifische Reaktion (specific reaction) but of Aktion (action), corresponding to satisfaction. There is a profound mystery surrounding this spezifische Aktion because it pertains exclusively to the rediscovery of the object. You have referenced this at the appropriate moment, as it underpins FREUD’s principle of repetition, which we will revisit. This spezifische Aktion always lacks something, and what FREUD describes at the end of the third section is what occurs at the moment of motor reaction—a pure act, the discharge of an action.

There is a long passage here that I plan to return to and elaborate upon. It provides one of the most vivid commentaries on an aspect so inherent to human experience: the gap between the articulation of a wish in humans and the processes through which their desire takes the path toward realization.

The emphasis with which FREUD articulates why, under what principle, we can grasp how everything that occurs within this theme—one that inevitably brings to mind the notion of something yet to emerge—contains something that will always remain far removed from satisfaction, something that will not possess the characteristics sought in specific action. He concludes with the term—I believe it is the last word of his essay—monotonous quality, signifying the reduced character, compared to everything pursued in the subject’s quest, of all that may occur within the domain of motor discharge.

Here, we find something that we cannot help but recognize as carrying the sanction of the deepest moral experience. Ultimately, to indicate it today and conclude on this note, I will direct your thoughts toward something that I believe goes beyond mere analogy. It reaches a depth that, perhaps until now, has never been articulated as such. This is the analogy between the search for an archaic quality—almost regressive, undoubtedly indefinable pleasure—and the animating force of all unconscious tendencies. There is an analogy between this and the fact that nothing can ever be fully realized or satisfying in the accomplished sense—satisfying in the properly moral sense of the term.