🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I believe that, all things considered, I am not in the state of excitement this morning which, according to my own criteria, seems sufficient for me to present my seminar to you as usual. This applies particularly to the point we have reached, where I wish to present to you formulas that are entirely precise.

Therefore, you will permit me to defer this to the next session. The interruption of my absence for fifteen days is undoubtedly ill-timed since I would have liked to address, following the topic I announced last time, what I described as an exemplary form, a paradigm of the function of courtly love as an exemplary form of sublimation closely linked to art. This is because, ultimately, we only have documentary evidence of it essentially through art. Nonetheless, it has the merit of being something whose ethical resonances we can still perceive today.

If we only have artistic documentary evidence of courtly love, in a form that is almost extinct, apart from the vivid, archaeological interest it may hold for us, it is quite certain—and indeed evident, as I will demonstrate to you in a visible and tangible way—that the ethical resonances in relationships between the sexes are still perceptible. This is the interest of this example: the far-reaching effects of a phenomenon that could be thought to be confined to a problem almost of aesthetics, but whose effects are of a nature that makes us acutely aware of what psychoanalysis has foregrounded as essential in sublimation. This, therefore, is the point we will try to formulate, for which I desire to be in full form, so that I can show you how the problem arises historically and methodologically.

Here again, we find ourselves in a position to shed light on difficulties that are manifest and acknowledged by historians, Romanists, philologists, and specialists who have studied this problem. By common agreement, they acknowledge that the phenomenon of courtly love appears as something they have in no way been able to reduce, in its historical emergence, to any identifiable conditioning.

This acknowledgment is genuinely common and, I would say, almost unanimous. There is here a phenomenon that is paradoxical. And, as is often the case when faced with such a phenomenon, this has frequently led researchers to explore the influences involved, which, in many cases, is merely a way of deferring the problem. The issue is rooted in the communication of something that occurred “beside” the main context. Still, we must understand how this “beside” occurred. However, precisely in this case, that is what eludes us. The notion of resorting to influences—to which we will allude—is also something that has far from clarified the problem. We will attempt to address it at its core, and we will see that Freudian theory is capable of shedding some light. For this reason, I am examining it not only for its value as an example but also for its methodological significance.

This very localized point does not mean that, concerning sublimation, everything should be considered along the lines opened here, namely the sublimation properly speaking of something that lies within the dynamics of the man-woman relationship, the couple relationship. This is not something I claim to reduce the problem of sublimation to, nor even to center it upon. I believe that from this example, it is crucial to arrive at a general formula that we already find in FREUD, and we know where to read it—I am not saying to seek out this or that detail.

If I sometimes proceed by emphasizing almost a single phrase or an isolated formula from FREUD, and I would almost say a gnomic element, I am well aware that I am trying to put this gnomic element into action. When I offer you formulas such as “Man’s desire is the desire of the Other,” it is, properly speaking, a gnomic formula, even though FREUD did not intentionally frame it as such. Yet he occasionally did so unintentionally.

For instance, a very concise formula I once presented to you, which relates the respective mechanisms of hysteria, obsessive neurosis, and paranoia to the three terms of sublimation—art, religion, and science—will illustrate, in its full generality, the formula we will ultimately use to define the function of sublimation. This will include my attempt to structure it with reference to the Thing. This Thing was exemplified last time using elementary, almost classically philosophical demonstrations with a blackboard and a piece of chalk, as in the example of the vase.

This was to illustrate something schematically, enabling you to grasp where the Thing is situated in the relationship that positions man as a medium, so to speak, between the real and the signifier. This Thing, all of whose forms created by man fall within the domain of sublimation, will always, in some sense, be represented by a void, precisely because it cannot be represented by anything else. Or more accurately, it can only be represented by something else. But in all forms of sublimation, the void will be determinant. Already, I point out to you three distinct modes through which art, religion, and scientific discourse engage with this.

We might say that, in a certain way, all art… and after all, I do not believe this is a vain formula, regardless of its generality, for guiding those interested in elucidating the problems of art… is characterized, ultimately, by a particular manner, a specific mode of organization around this void. I believe I have the means to illustrate this for you in multiple, very tangible ways.

Religion—I am not saying that these are the formulas I will settle on ultimately, after we have traversed and explored this path together—consists, in all its forms, if we emphasize the perspective of Freudian analysis, of avoiding this void. Inasmuch as FREUD highlighted the obsessive traits of religious behavior, we can assert this. It is clear that, while indeed an entire ceremonial phase of what constitutes the body of religious behaviors fits into this framework, we cannot be entirely satisfied with this. A term such as “respecting” this void seems perhaps to go further. You see that, in any case, the void remains at the center, and it is precisely in this that sublimation is involved.

For the third term, namely, the discourse of science, originating in the discourse of wisdom, the discourse of philosophy within our tradition, this term used by FREUD regarding the function of paranoia in relation to psychic reality takes its full value. This term, which I emphasized for you in passing during one of my recent seminars, is Unglauben. Unglauben is not the negation of the phenomenology of Glauben, of belief, nor is it something that FREUD revisited in any comprehensive or definitive way.

Nevertheless, this concept permeates his entire work. We observe the extreme importance he places on this function at the level of the Entwurf. Ultimately, the phenomenology of belief is what remained, to the end, an obsession for him. Similarly, Moses and Monotheism is entirely constructed to explain to us the fundamental phenomena of belief.

What is more profound and dynamically significant for us is the phenomenon of unbelief—which is not the suppression of the dimension of belief but is instead a distinct mode of man’s relationship to his world and to truth, in which he subsists.

On this point, you would be mistaken to rely on simplistic oppositions and to think that history has undergone sensational turns—that the transition from the theocratic age to this so-called “humanist form,” as it is often expressed, or to the so-called “liberation of the individual” and of reality—represents something decisive regarding worldview. This is not, in this context, anything resembling a Weltanschauung of my own that I am trying to convey to you. My role here is merely that of a guide and bibliographer, helping you locate the most serious and relevant references from specialists who, each within their field, possess a certain capacity for reflection.

To help you clarify these matters, I recommend you refer to the work of a historian, Lucien FEBVRE, who, in a very accessible collection, wrote under the title The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, a work that demonstrates how a sound application of historical methods allows us to address, in a more nuanced way than usual, the evolution of thought concerning issues of faith.

Additionally, if you have the time—and if you wish to read something that is, all in all, quite engaging—you may also read a sort of companion book, which, while not a secondary thesis, accompanies the first like a small boat tethered to a ship. It is titled Around the Heptameron, by the same author.

The subject here is Marguerite de NAVARRE—who, I hope, none of you confuses with Queen Margot, though this sometimes happens—who is not merely a libertine author but also someone who happened to write certain mystical treatises, a fact that, of course, does not astonish historians. Yet the historian delves into this problem, seeking to demonstrate within the context of her time and her psychological framework what exactly these collections of tales, known as The Heptameron, might signify.

This, too, allows us to read it not, let us say, with a more enlightened perspective, but rather with an unprejudiced eye, one that does not censor what is literally in The Heptameron: namely, the reflections of each character after each tale, which are purported to be true—and are indeed, for the most part, likely true. The way these interlocutors discuss them, in a register of moral and even formally religious reflection, is often dismissed as mere embellishment. But precisely this is what should not be misunderstood: that the embellishment is always the essence of the dish. Lucien FEBVRE teaches us how to read The Heptameron. In truth, if we knew how to read, we would not need him.

This problem of unbelief—meaning the very functions it represents in our perspective—is illuminated by the fact that it presents a discursive position conceived very precisely in relation to the Thing as we have defined it, precisely insofar as the Thing is rejected in the strict sense of Verwerfung. Similarly:

• In art, there is a form of Verdrängung, a repression of the Thing.
• In religion, we might say there is perhaps a Verschiebung, a displacement.
• And, strictly speaking, in the discourse of science, Verwerfung is at play, as it rejects the perspective and presence of the Thing.

The discourse of science, ultimately, profiles for us the ideal of “absolute knowledge”—that is, of something that still posits the Thing while failing to account for it, something which, as we all know, ultimately reveals itself in history as representing a failure.

This discourse of science may be shaped by this Verwerfung. It is likely this which relates to the formula I have provided: “What is rejected in the symbolic reappears in the real.” Science ends up leading to a perspective where something as enigmatic as the Thing manifests itself, appearing at the terminus of physics. Therefore, I defer until next time to begin with my paradigm concerning courtly love as an example of a sublimation in art that is manifest.

We can still find its living effects. We will trace them, after my return, through their subsequent forms. We will attempt to sample what remains as traces, as undeniable effects, as consequences of the primitive signifying construction that is decisive in the phenomenon of courtly love. We will endeavor to recognize, in fact, something that cannot be explained in any other way than by referring to this origin.

This, at the very least, will provide you with some outlined markers for the direction of our progress. I note in passing—since I am indulging in a kind of marginal commentary—that this notion of the Thing, which I am presenting to you this year as a new elaboration, should not be mistaken as something absent in the work we began addressing in previous years.

Moreover, since some of you occasionally wonder about certain aspects of what is called my style, I must point out, for example, that the term The Freudian Thing—which I used as the title of something I wrote and to which it would not hurt for you to refer—surprised many. Understandably so, as when people begin philosophically commenting on my intentions, they sometimes incorporate them into something that was, for a time, quite fashionable: namely, “combating reification.”

In truth, I never said anything of the sort. In any case, one can always weave intentions around a discourse. It is clear, however, that if I did so, it was deliberate. And if you reread that text, you will realize that it very essentially concerns this Thing, which is, evidently, the source of the undeniable discomfort that text caused at the time. Specifically, the discomfort stemmed from the fact that the Thing, at several moments in that text, is made to speak.

I would now like for our session to serve a bit more for those of you who have traveled here from varying distances. It seems possible—indeed, likely—that some of you, at this stage in my seminar, may have questions to pose to me, or responses to offer. I mean, you may wish to convey to me what certain points of my exposition signify for you.

I understand well that it is never easy to break the silence of a gathering, to speak up and “ring the bell,” so to speak. Therefore, I propose the option of submitting a written question. The only drawback to this is that I will be free to interpret it however I wish, but this might provide an opportunity to “dot the i’s” regarding certain terms.

At the same time, we will address something unexpected, which does not seem like a bad idea to me. Some of you attended yesterday’s “scientific session,” and I am not sure how it concluded. I had to leave after extensively responding to the speakers—individuals for whom I have great affection—and after expressing my sincere interest in their work. They are here today, and I would like to ask SMIRNOFF for some clarification. Why, having spoken to us about “No and Yes,” did you put the “Yes” entirely in your pocket?

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Victor SMIRNOFF

It is titled No and Yes, but it should not be called that because I think the formulation of the “Yes” in the text is so poorly developed that it was not even worth discussing. It truly did not serve the argument. I do not know why he let himself be drawn into creating a book called No and Yes when he had absolutely nothing to say about the “Yes.” When he seeks the mechanism of the “Yes,” he forces the issue. He states: “It is because there is a motor pattern of the ‘No’.” He sought it in the reactivations of affect at the moment of the drive, isolating it, in my opinion, very artificially.

If I did not discuss it, it is because I find it both unnecessary and detrimental to the value of what he did say. I do not believe you were particularly gentle with SPITZ. In fact, I think you were quite harsh, because, after all, there may be a perspective. He struggles with the “Yes,” stating that everything seems to begin as a gesture, that even his “rooting affect” involves a movement of appetite and a search for a “Yes,” a drive he interprets as a form of “initial Yes,” while the “No” emerges secondarily.

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LACAN

For those unfamiliar with this text, it concerns this: SPITZ, who authored a book situated within the framework of a series of works based on direct observation of newborns—in particular, infants up to the threshold of articulated language—claimed to trace the pattern of the “No” as a gesture, in its semantic form, across a variety of manifestations. Specifically, he identified it in the rooting behavior:

• Rooting refers to the oscillatory movement a child makes in approaching the breast. Rooting is quite difficult to translate; finding an equivalent term is challenging. In the text, there is a related term, snot (snout), placed alongside rooting, which gives a clearer idea of what is meant.

This gesture, then, is invoked in its full range of significant possibilities.

Yesterday, SMIRNOFF sought to show us that SPITZ attempts to integrate certain functions—functions discussed elsewhere in relation to the frustration associated with the adult’s “No”—but what emerges is something far from presenting an intrinsic meaning. Ultimately (I will skip the other forms in which this lateral head movement manifests), it comes down to being an approach gesture, an expectation of satisfaction that is here brought under scrutiny.

Why did you not highlight that SPITZ—whom I do not critique harshly, since I am actually defending him—makes a bold and compelling articulation (I am not saying he is correct, but it is very striking and well-defined)? He goes so far as to consider the phenomenon within the context of a traumatic neurosis. He tells us that it is the final memory before the catastrophic reaction emerges. I have put you on the spot to evoke SPITZ’s other works, including his concept of the Primal cavity, as well as his reference to the screen of the dream.

You also raised—unless it was LAPLANCHE—the question of the idea SPITZ had, which is indeed imprecise. I mean that nothing is articulated regarding the utilization of a reaction mode from an earlier stage in a critical situation. Yet this seems to me a very fruitful idea and one that should always be emphasized.

Instead of articulating it in such general terms, he appears reduced to invoking a mechanism as passive as that of traumatic neurosis. This necessarily implies, antecedently, a feeding-related frustration. One wonders how, in an isolated instance, this memory of the immediately preceding reaction relates to something presumed to be rejection—a withdrawal from the breast—and to what immediately precedes it: the act of rooting, which thus remains inscribed as a trace. This is how he formulates it.

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Victor SMIRNOFF

Regarding the “no,” he approaches it from another angle. He says that rooting alone is insufficient to explain the “no,” and it is at this point that he introduces an intermediate stage. It occurs later, around six months, during weaning, which takes on a traumatic character. This introduces a pattern through something already charged with a return affect—a deflection, if not voluntary, then intentional, in the act. On the other hand, he does not speak of regression.

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LACAN

The mechanism of traumatic neurosis is specifically characterized by the fact that, in a fundamental sequence of traumatic neurosis as such, it is the final living memory of the chain that persists. At what point, in your view, does he integrate this into his dialectic, particularly when it concerns the “no” at this level?

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Jean LAPLANCHE

If my memory serves me correctly, it is not in the acquisition of the “no” but rather of the “yes,” the “gesture of yes.” He provides two examples, two precursors, of the “gesture of yes”: on the one hand, the suckling motion at the moment of consumption—this kind of backward-to-forward movement—and on the other, when the nipple is withdrawn. Around the age of three months, he also observes a forward-backward head motion. This relates to the acquisition of the “yes.” For the transition from the first to the second of these gestures, he invokes this mechanism of return, referring to the image immediately preceding frustration.

For the “no,” he does not invoke regression at all. Regression only comes into play in the lateral motion—the head movements signifying negation—in the context of something pathological. The reuse of rooting in the gesture of “no” is a reactivation of a mechanism already present, but it is not regression. It is the utilization of an existing pattern, reactivated through identification with the mother’s “no.” However, it is not regression.

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Xavier AUDOUARD

Das Ding has the nature of being forgotten, of simultaneously being a factor of forgetting and a factor of reminiscence in the Platonic sense of the term. Do you not think that this emerges through a kind of reification of this pure origin, this “either…or…” of all mediation and all culture?

The question I ask myself is this: why not, then, speak instead of all the forms of mediation, the forms found in genesis, in the experience of consciousness, as you have done so far, it seems? Why, in other words, are you now speaking to us about das Ding as if it were something, whereas until now, you have consistently referred to das Ding as the inevitable, necessary factor in any analytic experience?

This year, you are privileging the Thing, yet you speak of it while having always spoken of it indirectly. My fundamental question, then, is to understand: first, why do you speak to us of das Ding instead of simply discussing mediation? Or, why do you speak of das Ding instead of discussing the forms of mediation it assumes in our experience? This brings us to the issue of reification.

Could one not, in a way, reproach you—not in the simplistic sense mentioned earlier—of reifying what is precisely the driving force of all experience, which is simultaneously the factor of all reminiscence and something that cannot itself be spoken of?

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LACAN

To answer you briefly, and everything I say subsequently will merely expand on this response, I think it is important to consider how, particularly for you, who have always been attuned to what might be called “Hegelian reinterpretations of analytic experience,” it is evident that at this juncture, where we approach the Freudian experience as ethical—that is, in its essential dimension, ultimately—it leads us to an action which, being therapeutic, is included, whether we wish it or not, in the realm and terms of ethics. Whether we wish it or not!

I mean that the less we wish it, the more it will—as experience shows us—become a form of analysis that, while claiming a specifically scientific status, leads to normative notions. These are, properly speaking, what I sometimes enjoy highlighting by reminding you of the curse from the Gospel of Saint Matthew: those who bind even heavier burdens to place them on the shoulders of others. Such practices reinforce categories of affective normativity in formulations that produce effects which may well be troubling.

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Therefore, it is much better for us to recognize that we are attempting to explore this ethical dimension.

It is entirely clear that what remains emphasized is precisely that irreducible element within the tendency—something that positions itself on the horizon of mediation as what reification cannot encompass.

But in outlining this empty image, this “something” that we circle around, this is the exact point on which you pose your question to me. The response lies in the deliberate intention of emphasizing this notion, which has never been absent from what I have said thus far. If you refer back to the texts I have provided on this subject, you will see there is no ambiguity and that I certainly cannot be accused of the kind of Hegelian radicalism that a certain imprudent person attributed to me somewhere in Les Temps Modernes.

I believe you understand precisely what is at stake. It is from this that the entire dialectic of desire I have developed before you has sharply diverged—beginning precisely at the time when this imprudent person wrote that statement—and even more strongly emphasized in the way I am framing it for you this year. Its inevitable nature seems to me particularly evident in the effect of sublimation.

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X

The formula for sublimation that you provided is to “elevate the object to the dignity of the Thing.” One can also understand what the Thing is, given that the object is not the Thing. In the same seminar, there was also an allusion in your discourse to the atomic bomb, to disaster, to a threat from the real. It therefore concerns this Thing, which does not seem to exist initially, since sublimation will lead us there. Personally, I wonder to what extent you are bypassing the relationship between the symbolic and the real as you are currently presenting it.

And regarding the Thing, in particular, the example you developed—the story of the vase and the void within it—I pose this question: is das Ding, the Thing in question, the Thing itself? It does not exist initially, since sublimation will lead us there. To what extent, initially, is this Thing not precisely the void of the Thing, the absence of the Thing, or the non-Thing—the void within the pot, the one that asks to be filled, as you said?

I ask whether this Thing is not entirely a Thing but rather, on the contrary, the non-Thing that, through sublimation, we come to perceive as a Thing. And to what extent is there here a fundamental knot that is the symbolic par excellence, located precisely in the void of the Thing—a void that is not merely a notion but something more radical than a symbolic notion of the relationship between the signifier and the Thing?

I also draw on other formulations. The “hole in the real” that you mentioned when commenting on the text of SHAKESPEARE. At certain points, the void is always full, and there are holes in the real. The hole in the real is truly a symbolic notion here. There was the relationship between the symbolic and reality, precisely where one can see that there are holes in the real. I wonder to what extent the non-Thing, or this void of the primordial Thing, is precisely what would properly define rejection or foreclosure.

I also pose the question of whether we are not, at this level, reaching a more universal grasp or understanding of the adequate way to apprehend the relationship between the symbolic and the real and between the Thing and the non-Thing as being primordial in thought.

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LACAN

All this seems well-directed to me. It is clear that you are consistently following very well the things I say. What must be identified and understood is that, ultimately, there is something offered to us, as analysts, if we follow the sum of our experience and know how to value it: that this effort of sublimation, which you say tends ultimately to realize or save the Thing, is both true and untrue.

I mean that there is an illusion. Neither science nor religion is capable of saving or giving us the Thing. Nevertheless, it is precisely and specifically because the encirclement of the Thing—the enchanted circle that separates us from it—is precisely established by our relationship to the signifier.

It is insofar as the Thing is—as I have told you—what in the real suffers from this fundamental, initial relationship that engages man in the paths of the signifier, by virtue of the fact that he is subjected to what FREUD calls the pleasure principle. It should now be entirely clear in your mind that this is nothing other than the dominance of the signifier and the true pleasure principle as it functions and is organized in FREUD.

It is precisely because, ultimately, the effect of the incidence of the signifier on the psychic real is at stake that the sublimatory enterprise, in all its forms, is not purely and simply senseless. It is because we respond with what is at stake.

I wanted to show you today—toward the end of the seminar—an object from art history that demands extensive commentary to be understood, not merely to be described.

To have arrived at the construction of such an object, and to derive pleasure from it, is nonetheless something that requires some detours. Let me describe it for you. It is an object referred to as an anamorphic object. I believe many of you know what anamorphosis is. It is any type of construction designed in such a way that, through a specific optical transposition, a certain form, initially imperceptible, comes together as an image, becoming legible and satisfying to the viewer’s experience. This results in the pleasure of seeing it emerge from what, at first glance, appears as an indecipherable form.

This phenomenon is extremely widespread in the history of art. Simply visit the Louvre, and you will see HOLBEIN’s painting The Ambassadors. At the feet of the ambassador—well-formed like you and me—you will notice on the floor a kind of elongated shape resembling fried eggs, presented with an enigmatic appearance.

If you do not know that by positioning yourself at a particular angle—where the painting itself vanishes into its relief due to the vanishing lines of perspective—you will see these forms come together into shapes. I cannot precisely recall which shapes they are, but it involves a skull and a few other emblems of Vanitas, a classic theme.

This occurs in an otherwise perfectly conventional painting, a commissioned work for the English ambassadors, who must have been very pleased with HOLBEIN’s artwork. The elements at the bottom of the painting must also have greatly amused them.

You might think this phenomenon is dated. It was during the 16th and 17th centuries that these kinds of constructions acquired interest and even fascination, reaching such a level of prominence that, for instance, a chapel was built—I am not sure if it still exists—on the orders of the Jesuits during DESCARTES’ time. One wall, 18 meters long, depicts a scene of saints’ lives or a nativity. This wall is entirely illegible if viewed from any random point in the room. It only comes together, becoming legible, from a specific corridor that grants access to the correct viewing spot. For a fleeting moment, as you walk, the extraordinarily dispersed lines coalesce, presenting you with the body of the scene.

The anamorphosis I wanted to present to you here is far less voluminous. It belongs to the collector I previously mentioned. It consists of a polished cylinder that appears to be a mirror and functions as such. Around it, you place a kind of surround, a flat surface encircling it, upon which similarly unintelligible lines are drawn. When viewed from a specific angle, the image emerges in the cylindrical mirror. This particular anamorphosis depicts a beautiful image of the crucifixion, inspired by RUBENS, which materializes from the lines encircling the cylinder.

This object, as I mentioned, required significant prior evolution to be forged and hold its necessary meaning. I would say that behind it lies the entire history of architecture, followed by painting, their interplay, and the influence of something inherent in this interplay. To put it briefly, one could define primitive architecture as something organized around a void. This is the true essence of all architecture, and it is the authentic impression conveyed by the forms of primitive architecture—for instance, the cathedral of Saint Mark in Venice.

Later, for entirely economic reasons, people settled for producing images of this architecture. They essentially learned to paint architecture onto the walls of actual architecture. Initially, painting was also something organized around a void. Since painting, using less pronounced means, sought to recreate the sacred void of architecture, efforts were made to make it increasingly resemble this sacred void. This is when perspective was discovered.

The next stage is paradoxical and rather amusing, demonstrating how one can entangle oneself in one’s own knots. From the moment perspective was discovered in painting, architecture began conforming to the perspective of painting. The art of PALLADIO, for instance, makes this phenomenon very apparent.

You only need to visit PALLADIO’s theater in Vicenza, a small masterpiece in its own right.

This art is instructive; it is exemplary. Neoclassical architecture consists of creating architecture that submits to the laws of perspective, playing with them, making them its own rules—in other words, incorporating something created in painting to rediscover the void of primitive architecture.

From that moment, one becomes entangled in a knot that seems increasingly to elude the sense of this void. I believe the Baroque return to all these formal games—grouped under a set of techniques, anamorphosis being one of them—is precisely an effort by artists to restore the true sense of artistic exploration. They do so by using the discovered laws and properties of lines to bring forth something that emerges, as it were, from nowhere, from a point where one, quite literally, “doesn’t know where to turn” (atopia).

In the realm of illusion, RUBENS’ painting, which emerges in place of the image within the cylindrical anamorphic mirror, provides a perfect example of what is at stake.

It represents an analogical, anamorphic way of rediscovering, of signaling anew, that what we seek in illusion is something where illusion itself, in a sense, transcends itself. It destroys itself by revealing that it exists only as signifying. This is what gives—and restores—the primacy of the domain of language as such, where we are exclusively and definitively dealing with the signifier. This is what restores the primacy, in the order of the arts, to poetry.

This is precisely why, in addressing the relationship between art and sublimation, I will start with courtly love—that is, with texts that exemplify in a particularly striking way the “conventional” aspect, so to speak, in the sense that language always participates in a kind of artifice relative to anything intuitive, substantial, or lived. This is especially striking when we see it practiced in a domain like courtly love, and in an era when, after all, people were decidedly frank and unreserved in their amorous pursuits. I mean to say they were neither secretive about it nor minced their words.

This coexistence of two forms—regarding this theme—is what is most striking and exemplary in this mode. Thus, what you bring up about the Thing and the non-Thing, as you phrase it, is entirely relevant. The Thing, of course, if you insist on it, is at the same time a non-Thing. And in truth, the “non,” at this particular moment, is certainly not individualized in any signifying way.

This is precisely the difficulty presented to us here in FREUD’s concept of the Todestrieb (death drive). If there is a Todestrieb, and if FREUD simultaneously tells us there is no negation in the unconscious, this is where the difficulty lies. We are not engaging in philosophy on this point. In some sense, I will refer you to the notion I tempered the other day—to avoid seeming to shirk my responsibilities—that when I speak of the Thing, I am indeed speaking of something. Yet, of course, this is operational for us only in terms of the place it occupies within a certain logical stage of our thinking, of our conceptualization, and in what we have to accomplish.

For example, consider whether what I raised last night and criticized at the conclusion of SPITZ’s study—the true substitution of all classical FREUDIAN topology with terms like the ego—is indeed what is happening. In the end, this is what it amounts to. For someone as deeply steeped in analytic thought as SPITZ, this is how the terms of psychic organization are structured.

It is nonetheless quite difficult to recognize in this structure the essential and fundamental function from which analytic experience originally departed, which was its shock and simultaneously its immediate echo and accompaniment. Let us not forget that FREUD’s response was immediate, in forming the term das Es (the Id). The primacy of the Es is now entirely forgotten. In some sense, to recall what this Es is, it is not sufficiently emphasized in its current presentation in the texts of the second topography.

To remind us of the primordial, primitive character of this intuition, of this apprehension in our experience, this year, at the level of ethics, I have referred to a certain referential zone as the Thing.

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Jean LAPLANCHE

I would like to ask a question about the relationship between the pleasure principle and the play of the signifier.

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LACAN

The relationship between the pleasure principle and the play of signifiers, if you will, rests entirely on this: the pleasure principle fundamentally operates within the domain of what is called investment (Besetzung), within these pathways (Bahnungen), and is facilitated by what FREUD calls Vorstellungen (representations), and even more so. Now, this term appears very early in FREUD’s work—meaning it predates the article on the unconscious—where he refers to Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen (representation-representatives).

This operates in relation to a state of need. Every time a state of need arises, the pleasure principle tends to provoke a reinvestment in its “substrate,” so to speak—though at this metapsychological level, we are not dealing with clinical cases—an hallucinatory reinvestment of what was previously a satisfying hallucination. This diffuse nerve of the pleasure principle consists precisely in this. The pleasure principle aims at the reinvestment of the representation and gives Vorstellungen a satisfying form. The intervention of what is called the reality principle can therefore be entirely radical; it is always a secondary stage.

Of course, no form of adaptation to reality occurs except through this kind of “sampling” phenomenon, this testing process through which the subject can somehow control—one might almost say “taste” with their tongue—that which ensures they are not simply dreaming. This is absolutely constitutive of the novelty of Freudian thought and, moreover, has never been overlooked by anyone who recognizes the paradoxical and provocative nature of articulating the functioning of the psychic apparatus on something no one had previously dared to articulate.

The psychic apparatus, as described through FREUD’s experience of encountering something irreducible in the depths of hysterical substitutions, is as follows: the first thing that man, utterly defenseless, can do when tormented by need is to begin by hallucinating his satisfaction. He can do nothing else but check and control. Fortunately, at the same time, he has more or less made the movements necessary to approach the zone where this hallucination coincides with an approximate reality.

This miserable starting point articulates the entire dialectic of experience in Freudian terms—if we are to remain faithful to the foundational texts. This is what I conveyed when speaking about the relationship between the pleasure principle and the signifier. For Vorstellungen, from the outset, already possess the character of a signifying structure.