🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

The pivot around which I revolve—because I believe it necessary—is the context in which we are advancing this year. It is, quite evidently, das Ding, which, naturally, is not without its problems, even raising some doubts about its Freudian legitimacy for those—understandably—who reflect and maintain, as they should, their critical faculties in the face of what I am formulating for you.

It is clear that I fully assume the responsibility for this das Ding, the exact scope of which you must be able to measure and conceive precisely to the extent that it proves necessary for our progress in this exposition. It is in its function and its handling that you will be able to appreciate its justification. I mention it again, designating it as something that some might say or think I have sought in a minor detail of Freud’s text, where I “fished” it out from the Entwurf.

But precisely, I first believe that in texts like Freud’s—which is what experience teaches us—nothing appears there as obsolete in the sense that it might be something borrowed, something arriving in the guise of scholastic parroting, without being marked by that powerful articulatory necessity distinguishing his discourse. This necessity renders it crucial for us to notice the points, for instance, where it remains open, where it remains gaping. They nevertheless imply a necessity, which, on several occasions, I believe I have been able to convey to you. And das Ding, I believe—as I try to make you feel its place and scope—is something absolutely essential, and as we progress, you will recognize it concerning Freudian thought.

This excluded interior, to use the exact terms of the Entwurf, is thus excluded within, articulated at that moment—and very precisely at that moment—as this Real-Ich, which means the ultimate real of psychic organization. It is conceived and articulated there as hypothetical, in the sense that it is necessarily assumed in the Lust-Ich, where the first outlines of psychic organization manifest, that is, this ψ-organism, the continuation of which shows us that it is dominated by the function of these Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen—not merely representations but representatives of representation.

This is precisely what corresponds to and outlines the path into which all so-called “psychological” knowledge ventured before Freud, insofar as it has taken shape in this atomism that is, in essence, the truth of said atomism. This ideational elementarity—all stems from humanity, and before humanity, from a sort of essential necessity—psychological knowledge and, consequently, all the effort of psychology we discussed the other day has attempted to escape from it. However, psychology cannot free itself from it; it cannot rebel against atomism without misapprehending—if it does not borrow Freudian paths—the flocculation inherent in its matter. And this matter—psychism—is subjected to the texture upon which thought scaffolds itself, in other words, the texture of discourse insofar as the signifying chain, as I teach you to practice it here, is the framework upon which logic builds itself. Logic brings something superadded and essential, which is negation, splitting, Spaltung, division, the tear introduced by the subject’s immixture.

Well, psychology, insofar as it is subjected to this atomic condition of having to handle Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen, precisely in structuring them, in that their psychic material is flocculated, psychology’s attempts to liberate itself from this so far have been, essentially, one could say, clumsy.

I need not do more than remind you of the confused nature of these references and recourses to affectivity—this most confused register, this most ambiguous category—to the point that, even within analysis, whenever this reference is made, it invariably leads us to an impasse, to something we sense is not the direction in which our research can genuinely progress.

In fact, of course, it is not a question of denying the importance of affects here. Rather, it is about not confusing them with the point, the substance of what we are seeking in the Real-Ich, beyond this signifying articulation, as we, practitioners of the analytic word, can handle it.

It is enough, in passing, to point out how Freud’s psychology of affects, though providing always meaningful and indicative touches in passing, insists in the end on its conventional and artificial character, not as signifier but as signal, to which it can ultimately be reduced. This characteristic renders it relocatable, as well as giving it, of course, a certain economic necessity, irreducibility, for instance.

It is not the essence that is at stake here. It is not the economic essence, nor even the dynamic one, which is often fundamentally sought at the horizon, at the limit, in the perspective of analytic research. It is not affect that provides the key. It is something more opaque, more obscure, that refines all the notions into which analytic metapsychology ultimately converges—that is, these energetic notions, with the strangely qualitative categories into which it now manages to organize itself.

Let us be content here to indicate the function, in the recent paths taken by metapsychology, of the term sexual energy or libido in its desexualized form. This refers, properly speaking, to qualitative notions that are increasingly difficult to correlate with any specific experience, and even less so, of course, with an experience that could be called affective.

This psychology of affects is something we might one day address together. I simply want—incidentally, in passing—to highlight the inadequacy of what has been done in this area, particularly in analysis to date, and to propose, incidentally, a few topics for meditation. For example, consider what has been said about an affect such as anger.

I mean to emphasize how these are minor issues, small, practical, lateral exercises that I offer you. Perhaps the use of the precise categories I invite you to refer to could help us explain why, in the history of psychology and ethics, so much attention has been given to anger, and why, in analysis, we are so relatively uninterested in it.

DESCARTES, for example, articulates something about anger that could fully satisfy you. I could, in passing, point out the line in which I believe we could say something or determine precisely whether this working hypothesis I suggest fits or does not fit—that is, the idea that anger is a passion, but one that manifests itself purely and simply:

• through certain organic or physiological correlations,
• through certain more or less hypertonic or even elated feelings,
• perhaps through the necessity of some sort of subject reaction,
• and fundamentally through an element of disappointment, a failure in an expected correlation between a symbolic order and the response of reality.

In other words, anger is essentially something linked to this formula I would borrow from PÉGUY, who expressed it humorously: “It’s when the little pegs don’t fit into the little holes.”

Reflect on this, and see if it serves you. It has all sorts of possible applications, including perhaps providing a hint of a possible outline of symbolic organization in the world, even among the rare animal species where something resembling anger can actually be observed. For it is still quite surprising that anger is something remarkably absent in the animal kingdom across its broader spectrum.

The direction in which Freudian thought unquestionably moves is always to place affect under the category of signal. That Freud, by the end of his articulation of his thought, placed even anxiety under the category of signal is something that must already serve as a sufficiently indicative point for us. It is beyond this, then, that we are searching—beyond the organization of the Lust-Ich, insofar as it is entirely tied, for us, in its phenomenal character, to the more or less significant investment in this system of Vorstellungsrepräsentanzen—in other words, the signifying elements in the psyche. This system, indeed, is designed precisely to allow us, at least operationally, to define the field of das Ding, and operationally, in that we attempt to advance on the terrain of ethics.

And I assert—as Freudian thought advanced from a therapeutic starting point—that this system enables us to define the field of the subject not merely as the intersubjective subject, the subject submitted to the mediation of the signifier, but what lies behind this subject.

We are projected…
into this field that I call “the field of das Ding,” onto something far beyond this vague, confused, poorly mapped domain—due to insufficient organization of its register—of affectivity.
We are projected onto something much more fundamental, which is, properly speaking, what I was already trying to designate for you in our previous discussions this year—not simply Wille, in the Schopenhauerian sense of the term, insofar as it is, in opposition to representation, the essence of life that Schopenhauer sought to make it the support of.

It is that something which contains both good will and ill will, this volens nolens, the true sense of the ambivalence that is often poorly understood when approached at the level of love and hate. It is at the level of good and ill will, even the preference for ill will, as seen in the phenomenon of the negative therapeutic reaction, that Freud, by the end of his thought, revisits the field of das Ding and designates for us the framework of the Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

It is as an ethical paradox that “the field of das Ding” is rediscovered at the end, and Freud directs us there, to that something which, in life, may prefer death. As such, it approaches more closely than anything else the problem of evil, more precisely the project of evil as such.

If this, which is shown to us through what we observed at the beginning, could be relegated to a corner, treated as contingent, or even obsolete, I believe everything in Freud’s thought demonstrates that, far from being so, he designates its field in the end as the one that truly polarizes, that organizes, and around which the field of the pleasure principle gravitates. This is to say, the field of the pleasure principle is, in fact, the field beyond the pleasure principle, insofar as neither pleasure, nor the tendencies of life as such, nor the organizing, unifying, erotic tendencies of life are sufficient to purely and simply make the living organism itself, the necessities and needs of life, the center of psychic development.

Undoubtedly, the term “operational” in this context, as in any intellectual process, has its value. Das Ding is not fully elucidated, even though we nonetheless use it. We must, however, feel that there is something here for which the term “operational”—by which I mean the label “operational”—may still leave you with a certain humorous dissatisfaction. After all, what we are attempting to designate in this direction is precisely what we all, individually and collectively, deal with in the least operational manner.

I do not wish to indulge in a sort of dramatization. One would be mistaken to think this is something unique to our era; every era has believed itself to have reached the peak of confrontation with some terminal, otherworldly reality, where the world—or a sense of the world—feels under threat.

And yet, given that the noise of the world and society brings us the restless shadow of a certain incredible weapon, an absolute weapon, which, after all, has ended up being wielded before our eyes [a reference to the first French nuclear test on February 13, 1960], and which, in a way, becomes truly worthy of the Muses—do not think that this portends an immediate apocalypse. Even in Leibniz’s time, one could believe, in less precise terms, that the end of the world was near.

Still, imagine this weapon, suspended above our heads, truly bearing down on us from the depths of space—a satellite carrying a weapon a hundred thousand times more destructive than one already measured in hundreds of thousands of times more destructive than its predecessors. And I am not inventing this; every day, we are presented with a weapon that could indeed jeopardize the very planet as a support for humanity.

In short, it suffices that you confront this reality—perhaps a bit more vividly actualized for us by the progress of knowledge than it could ever have been in the imagination of men, which has never lacked for dramatizing such scenarios. Confront, then, this moment when a single individual, or a group of individuals, could make the entire question of existence for the human species precarious, and you will see within yourselves that at that moment, das Ding lies on the side of the subject.

You will see that you will plead for the subject of knowledge—who will have engendered this other thing, the absolute weapon—to take responsibility, and for the true Thing to reside within him at that moment. In other words, that he not simply let the other thing loose, as if to say, “Let it explode, or at least let us know why!”

Well, with this little digression—which, as I told you, was suggested to me by the term “operational”—and since, given the very precise materialization these things now assume, one no longer dares to use the term “eschatological,” let us try to return to the proper level, the level at which we truly encounter it: the essence of das Ding, or more precisely, how we encounter it in the ethical domain.

In other words, this involves not only questions of its approach but also of its effects and its presence at the very heart of human conduct—namely, the daily survival amidst the forest of desires and the compromises these desires make with a certain reality that is certainly not as confusing as one might imagine. Its laws, its demands—and precisely in the form of the demands called “society’s demands,” demands which Freud cannot but treat as seriously as they warrant, but which, nonetheless, he approaches in a distinct way that allows him, in a sense, to transcend the pure and simple antinomy—by which I mean the antinomy of society versus the individual, with the individual already posited as the potential locus of disorder.

Well, the sick individual, as Freud approaches him, reveals a dimension other than the disorders of society—or, more precisely, to speak as we must in our time, the disorders of the state. For it is entirely inconceivable, in our era, to speak abstractly of society. Historically, this is inconceivable, and it is philosophically inconceivable as well, insofar as a certain Hegel has demonstrated its perfect coherence—that is, the linkage of an entire Phenomenology of Spirit with the necessity that renders entirely coherent a legality, a whole philosophy of right which, starting from the state, encompasses all human existence, including, as its point of departure, the monogamous couple.

It is quite evident, since I am presenting to you the ethics of psychoanalysis here, that I cannot at the same time present to you Hegelian ethics. What I want to underscore on this occasion is precisely that they do not overlap. In other words, this kind of divergence becomes evident at the endpoint of a certain phenomenology of the relationships between the individual and the city, or the State. In Plato, for instance, the disorders of the soul are insistently referred to the same dimension as in the State, as a reproduction on the psychic scale of the disorders of the city.

The sick individual, as Freud approaches him, reveals a different dimension from that of the disorders of the State or the disruptions of hierarchy. This is because, as such, the “sick individual”—I mean the neurotic, the psychotic—deals directly with “the powers of life” insofar as they lead, on the one hand, to those of death, and also directly with the powers that stem from the knowledge of good and evil.

Thus, here we are with das Ding, and here we are, tasked with managing it. What I am telling you, truly, is hardly something that should surprise you. I simply want to point out what has happened. That is to say, analysts are so thoroughly possessed by this field of das Ding, it is so much an internal necessity of their experience, that we must consider the evolution of analytic theory insofar as it is currently dominated by the existence, somewhere within the analytic community, of a school known as the “Kleinian school.”

What is quite striking is that, regardless of the distances, reservations, or even contempt that certain other segments of the analytic community may express toward it, it remains the school that—until the efforts made here by our group—polarizes and orients the entire evolution of analytic thought.

Well, I believe that in the perspective I am presenting to you, this means nothing other than the following: with this key, I ask you to reconsider all the Kleinian articulations. The Kleinian articulation consists essentially in this: having placed at the central position of das Ding the mythical body of the mother, insofar as it is to her—to this figure, addressing her—that the most primordial aggressive and transgressive tendencies manifest themselves, including primitive aggressions and retaliatory aggressions.

In the field where we must now advance—the field of articulating what the notion of sublimation is within Freudian economics—the Kleinian school as such, namely Melanie Klein herself, Ella Sharpe, insofar as she fully follows Klein on this point… and recently, an American author has written, specifically on the subject of sublimation as it relates to the principles of creation in the fine arts… even though he is not at all Kleinian: Mr. Lee, whose article, Theory Concerning the Creation in the Fine Arts, I will revisit later. Through the critique of Freud’s formulations—whether this critique has been exhaustive or merely partial—and through the attempts within Klein’s school to give sublimation its full meaning, this notion has ultimately led to the concept of sublimation as having an essential restitutive function, always involving, more or less, an effort of symbolic repair for the imaginary damages inflicted on this field, on this fundamental image of the maternal body.

This is something we will return to, and which I am already pointing out to you as something you must consider. I will bring you the texts, if you have not already encountered them in your studies. This culmination of the notion of sublimation, this reduction of the concept to an effort of restitution by the subject concerning the damaged fantasy of the maternal body, is something that already indicates to us that it is certainly not the best solution to the problem of sublimation, nor to the topological or metapsychological problem itself.

The relationships between the subject and something primordial in his attachment to the most fundamental, most archaic object allow you, at this point in our inquiry, to consider that my operationally defined field of das Ding is, at any rate, something that provides its framework, explains it, and allows us to conceive the necessity and the conditions offered for the flourishing of what we might, in this case, call an analytic myth—the Kleinian myth as such.

But this may also enable us to locate it and reestablish a broader function than the one necessarily reached if one follows the Kleinian categories, especially regarding sublimation. Indeed, I will later revisit, by presenting the relevant texts, how the notion, function, and use of sublimation culminate for clinicians who are more or less influenced by, or aligned with, Kleinian functions as such.

They arrive—let me point this out immediately, as I believe I will have time to justify it later—at what I would call a somewhat reduced, somewhat childish notion of what might be termed “art therapy.” By art therapy, I mean functions loosely tied to the arts, or more precisely to the broader category of the fine arts, encompassing a range of gymnastic, dance, and other exercises presumed to provide satisfaction to the subject, serving as an element of problem-solving or even as a means of equilibrium. These observations, when properly made, always retain their enriching value as observations.

I will guide you to focus with me on articles, particularly those by Ella Sharpe, which I regard with high consideration. These include “Certain Aspects of Sublimation and Delusion” and another article, “Similar and Divergent Unconscious Determinants Underlying Sublimations in Pure Art and Pure Science.” These are certainly not articles that will leave you unrewarded upon reading, but I believe they confirm the kind of reduction to which the problem of sublimation as such is brought in this direction, in this perspective, and what I have called a certain puerility in the so-called results obtained through this approach.

You will see that this approach consists in assigning to the signs of art a function, a valid activity, in activities that seem to fall within the domain of more or less transient explosions of elements or gifts, which, in the cases considered, appear highly debatable. Furthermore, it completely overlooks what, it seems to me, must always be emphasized concerning what can be called artistic production. This is especially relevant when such production would fall under the rubric of devaluation, a rubric that should not be dismissed since Freud paradoxically—and this is what surprises the authors—promotes it. This rubric entails that such works are socially recognized, play an essential role in something that Freud does not push as far as we might wish, but which is undeniably linked to the promotion of a certain “social progress.” God knows that Freud’s notion of this is far from unilinear, and it involves a certain elevation of something socially acknowledged as such. I will not elaborate further for now.

It is sufficient to note how Freud articulates this concept in a manner that might seem entirely foreign to the metapsychological register. For this occasion, however, it is worth observing that no proper evaluation of sublimation in art is possible unless we consider this: every artistic production, especially in the fine arts, is historically dated. By this, I mean that painting in Picasso’s time is not like painting in Velázquez’s time, nor are novels written in 1930 as they were in Stendhal’s era. This is an absolutely essential element, and for the moment, we do not need to classify it under the collective, the individual, or something else. Let us simply place it under the cultural register. Its relationship with society—specifically, what society finds satisfying in it—is precisely what is now under our scrutiny.

This, I mean, is where the problem of sublimation lies, insofar as it is creative of certain forms, of which art is not the only one. We need to situate the others as well. However, among these forms, art—and particularly one art among others, so close to the ethical domain as we will see: literary art—is something in whose field we must advance.

But we remain somewhat distanced from the core problem: the ethical problem. It is in relation to the ethical problem that sublimation must be judged. It is to the extent that it creates values—what kind of values, after all?—in any case, socially recognized values, that we must evaluate it. I will therefore attempt to refocus the discussion on the ethical plane. And as I pointed out, there is no better way to do this than by referring to what has provided a kind of pivotal expression in this domain, no matter how paradoxical it may be: the Kantian perspective.

In the face of what I earlier referred to as das Ding—insofar as we hope it tips the scale on the right side—we find, opposed to it, what I articulated the other day as Kant’s formula of duty. In other words, another way of tipping the scale. For Kant, defining duty involves nothing but the universal rule of conduct—purely and simply, the weight of reason. What is striking is, of course, the question of how reason can exert weight. There is always value in reading authors in the original text. The other day, I pointed out an instance in Kant’s work where Schmerz (pain), as such, appears on the horizon, as correlative to the ethical act. I noticed this had gone unnoticed—even by some of you who I imagine are very familiar with these texts.

If you open The Critique of Practical Reason, you will find that, to convince us of the weight of reason, Kant offers an example of extraordinary vividness. He invents for our use a double apologue, a story to make us feel the weight of the pure and simple ethical principle. Here is the double apologue.

Kant wants to demonstrate the possible precedence of duty as such over and against everything—over and against every good conceived as vitally desirable. The crux of the proof lies in comparing two situations. Kant says:

“Suppose that, to curb the excesses of a licentious man, the following situation is devised. There is a lady in a room toward whom his desires are currently directed. He is free to enter the room to satisfy his desire or need, but at the door, upon exiting, he will find the gallows where he will be hanged.”

This, for Kant, is not the foundation of morality. You will see where the core of the proof lies. For Kant, there is no doubt that the gallows will serve as sufficient inhibition: no one, according to Kant, would satisfy their desire while thinking they will be executed upon leaving.

Next, consider a similar situation involving the presence of a tragic ending: a tyrant offers someone a choice between the gallows and his favor, on the condition that he bears false witness against his friend. Here, Kant rightly emphasizes that one can conceive of someone weighing their own life against the act of giving false testimony, especially—of course—if we consider that, in this situation, the false testimony would have fatal consequences for the person against whom it is directed.

Thus, the power of proof here—this is the interesting and striking point—relies on reality, by which I mean the actual behavior of the subject. It is in reality that Kant asks us to observe the impact of what I have called, in this context, “the weight of reason,” insofar as Kant identifies it here with “the weight of duty.”

However, one thing seems to elude Kant when following him on this terrain: it is that, after all, it is not excluded that, under certain conditions, the subject, in the first case, might not just offer himself for punishment—since, ultimately, at no point does the apologue take the scenario that far—but may indeed consider doing so.

That is to say, no matter how evident it may seem, our philosopher from Königsberg—
a remarkably sympathetic figure, it must be said, and I am not suggesting here that he was of small intellect or limited emotional capacity—
does not seem to consider that there is also a problem posed by the fact that, under sufficient conditions of what Freud would call Überbewertung, overvaluation of the object, and what I will here and now call the sublimation of the object—in the condition where the object of amorous passion takes on a particular significance—
and it is in this sense that I intend to introduce the dialectic I propose to teach you, to situate what sublimation truly is—
under certain conditions of sublimation of the female object, in other words, exaltation of love, historically datable exaltation…

Freud even hints at this in the little note I mentioned the other day, where he states that “for the modern individual, the accent of the libido is placed more on the object than on the drive.”

This poses an immense question, and it is the one I intend to introduce you to, provided, of course, that this is agreeable to you.

As I mentioned, this should lead us to spend several sessions on something I brought up the other day in connection with Hamlet: the Germanic tradition of Minne, that is, a certain theory and practice of what love must be. Why should we refuse this exploration? After all, we devote plenty of time to ethnographic investigations; I see no reason why we should not take an interest in Minne, especially if I assert that it is highly relevant to certain traces in us regarding our relationship with the object, which are inconceivable without these historical antecedents.

Thus, under certain conditions of sublimation, one can—
and the literature of tales, which represents a fantasized, if not strictly historical, perspective, though even historical events may contain elements of this—
say that it is not impossible for a man to sleep with a woman fully aware that, upon exiting—whether by the gallows or some other means—he will be executed.

This, of course, somewhat alters the premises, at least the demonstrative value of Kant’s example. It remains, naturally, within the rubric of excessive passion, raising further questions for us:
it is not impossible that the same man might coldly consider the same fatal outcome, this time for the pleasure of cutting the woman into pieces, for example.

This is another conceivable case, for which criminological annals provide us with far more accessible examples. What I am pointing to by juxtaposing these two forms of transgression—
beyond the limits ordinarily assigned by the pleasure principle when confronted with the reality principle considered as its criterion, namely the excessive sublimation of the object and what is commonly called perversion in the latter case, that is, the man who accepts the fatal outcome at the exit for the pleasure of dismembering the woman—
is that this allows us to bring sublimation and perversion closer together, insofar as both involve a certain relationship to desire that captures our attention as a question mark.

The question is whether, in such instances, we are dealing precisely with what allows us, in the face of the reality principle, to find another criterion for morality—either an alternative or the same morality. That is, a morality that ultimately makes the subject hesitate when it comes to bearing false witness against das Ding, which is to say, the locus of his desire, whether perverse or sublimated. In other words, a register of morality oriented toward what exists at the level of das Ding.

It seems, after all, that we are progressing here only in broad strokes and along paths of common sense that, as analysts, are not so different from everyday common sense. What exists at the level of das Ding, once it is revealed, is that it represents the locus of the Triebe—drives—insofar as we recognize that drives, as emergences revealed by Freudian doctrine, have nothing to do with any tempered terminology that neatly organizes the human being in his relations with his fellow, within that harmonious construction that allows him to find the various hierarchical levels of society, from the couple to the State.

Now we must return to the question of what sublimation means, as Freud attempts to formulate it for us. Sublimation, according to him, is linked to the Triebe, to the drives as such. This is, in fact, what makes its theorization so challenging for analysts and disciples alike.

Freud’s sublimation involves—
I ask you to excuse me today from reading specific passages from Freud, which might feel tedious at this stage. These passages will come in due time when you will see the value in resolving, one way or another, whether we are indeed in alignment with Freud’s true articulation. For now, I think the general interest in this matter is insufficient among this assembly unless I first show you where I am headed, that is, where I want to lead you—
a certain form, Freud tells us in the most precise way, of satisfaction of the Triebe.

What is improperly translated as instincts should strictly be translated as drives or impulses. This would mean that the Trieb is diverted from what Freud calls its “Ziel,” its goal. Sublimation is essentially presented to us as distinct from the kind of substitution economy in which the drive is typically satisfied when repressed.

The symptom, in this context, represents the return, through a pathway of signifying substitution, of what lies at the endpoint of the Trieb, of the drive, as its goal.

Here, the notion and function of the signifier gain their full weight and scope: it becomes impossible to distinguish what Freud considers the return of the repressed from what differentiates it as a possible mode of drive satisfaction. This leads to the paradox that a drive can achieve its aim elsewhere than in its original goal, without this involving the kind of signifying substitution that constitutes the overdetermined structure, the ambiguity, and the fundamental dual causality of what we call the “symptomatic compromise.”

This notion continues to pose difficulties for analysts and theorists. What does this change of goal mean? What can it represent? Since it pertains to the goal, not properly speaking to the object, although—as I emphasized last time, and as I can only hint at again today—the object quickly comes into play. Yet, let us not forget here that Freud also warns us early on against conflating too closely, far from it, the notion of goal with that of object.

There is a specific passage—
I will read it to you when appropriate, though I can already provide a reference—
where Freud—
precisely, if memory serves, in Einführung des Narzissmus (On Narcissism)—
emphasizes the difference, regarding the function of the object, between what properly constitutes sublimation and what constitutes idealization. Idealization has an entirely different function, as it involves the subject’s identification with an object.

Sublimation is something entirely distinct. The questions analysts have raised on this subject remain the same at their core. For those who know German, I recommend a short article, well-dated to 1930, by Richard Sterba, titled Zur Problematik der Sublimierungslehre (On the Problematic Nature of the Theory of Sublimation), published in Internationale Zeitschrift, Volume VII.

This article effectively highlights the difficulties posed at the time, particularly following a seminal article by Bernfeld, foundational in the field, and another by Glover in the International Journal of Psychoanalysis from 1931. Though I say “following,” it was in fact “preceding,” as these works were published around the same time. Glover could not reference Sterba’s article due to publication timing, which prevented him from accessing it before completing his own piece. Glover’s article, titled Sublimation, Substitution, and Social Anxiety, is an English text that presents even greater challenges due to its considerable length and difficulty in following its arguments. Glover methodically examines sublimation across all known psychoanalytic notions to see how the concept might align with each level of the theory.

The result is a surprising overview and reexamination of the entirety of psychoanalytic theory, demonstrating quite clearly the extraordinary difficulty of using the concept of sublimation in practice without encountering contradictions, the proliferation of which this text will vividly illustrate.

For our purposes, I would like to immediately attempt to show you the direction in which we will approach sublimation, if only to enable us to later evaluate its functioning and significance.

This satisfaction of the Trieb, paradoxical as it appears to occur— as I have explicitly articulated to you—somewhere other than its intended goal, is it something we will, like Sterba, content ourselves to explain by simply stating that indeed the goal has changed, that it was sexual before, and now it is no longer so? This is, in fact, how Freud articulates it. From this, it must be concluded that sexual libido has become desexualized. And there you have it: “That is why your daughter is mute.”

Should we, then, settle for this term that lies outside the Kleinian register, which frames sublimation as the imaginary resolution of a need for substitution or repair in relation to the mother’s body—a perspective that contains a certain partial truth? Can we accept this formula of desexualized libidinal energy? I believe that for anyone unwilling to settle for formulas of a purely verbal nature—empty of meaning within a certain register—this will at least provoke a closer inquiry into what is at stake in sublimation.

You must already begin to sense the direction I intend to take our discussion. Sublimation as such, and insofar as it provides the Triebe with a satisfaction distinct from its goal—a goal that is ultimately always defined as its natural goal—precisely reveals, in practice, the true nature of the Trieb insofar as it is not purely instinct.

In other words, the Trieb relates to das Ding, to the Thing, as such, distinct from the object. This will lead us to distinguish—easily, given the entirety of Freudian theory, including the narcissistic foundations of the object and the integration of the object into the imaginary register—the object:

• Insofar as it specifies the directions, the points of attraction for the human being in his openness to the world,
• Insofar as the object interests him as it is, more or less, his image, his reflection.

This object, precisely, is not the Thing, is not das Ding, insofar as it lies at the heart of the libidinal economy. The most general formula I offer you for sublimation is this: that it elevates an object—and here I will not shy away from the puns that may arise from the term I am about to introduce—to the dignity of the Thing.

You must immediately grasp the implications of this, for instance, regarding what I have alluded to in the broader horizon of our discourse, which I will return to next time: the sublimation of the feminine object. The entire theory of Minne, or courtly love—a certain mode of relating that was, in sum, decisive but has been entirely erased in its sociological extensions today—still leaves traces in an unconscious that, notably, does not require the term “collective” to describe it. It is a traditional unconscious carried forward through literature and imagery that shapes our relations with women.

This is why I showed you, quite consciously and precisely—something I will prove further—that this was a deliberate creation…
it is not at all a product of the popular soul, of the so-called “great spirit of the blessed Middle Ages,” as Gustave Cohen called it. Rather, it was a deliberate articulation by a circle of literati, who formulated the rules, the ethics, the moral code through which this displacement, this elevation of the object, was achieved. I will demonstrate that, despite its absurdity— as described by a German scholar specializing in this medieval Germanic literature, who used the term “absurd Minne“—the details of this absurd code instituted and constituted, at the heart of a certain society, something with a peculiar function: an object that, despite everything, remained a natural object. Do not think that people loved any less in that era than in ours.

It is precisely because the object here is elevated to the dignity of the Thing as such—and as we can define it in our Freudian topology, in which it is not assimilated but, in a way, circumscribed by the network of Ziele (goals)—that this new object, promoted at a particular historical moment to the function of the Thing, allows us to explain this sociologically paradoxical phenomenon. It is a phenomenon that has always appeared paradoxical to those who have studied it: the elevation of every sign, every ritual, every thematic exchange—especially literary themes—which constituted the substance and actual incidence of this human relationship. This relationship, defined differently across times and places, has been known by various terms: courtly love, Minne, and others. We certainly cannot exhaust them all.

Know, however, that the circle of Précieux and Précieuses in the early 17th century marks the last manifestation of this phenomenon in our cultural cycle. Yet, I would like to add that this is not the final word. It is not enough to say, “This was done, and that’s just how it is,” to resolve everything or to understand how the object could play this role. You will see that such an explanation will not provide the key to this historical episode.

For what I ultimately aim to show you—through multiple angles—is that this distant situation allows us to better grasp, in detail, what becomes of other themes in our time. For instance, how we behave regarding sublimation in the domain of collective formations, particularly in art, which is a domain of collective appreciation, in its relationship to the Thing.

This definition does not exhaust the subject, nor does it close the debate. First, because I must affirm it to you, confirm it, and illustrate it, and then because I must show you the term. For an object to become thus available, something must have occurred at the level of the relationship between the object and desire, for this is, of course, what interests us.

It is entirely impossible to articulate this correctly without referring to what we discussed last year about desire and its behavior. Today, I would like to conclude with an example—not more than an example, but a paradoxical and somewhat trivial one, though still significant in illustrating what is at stake in sublimation. Since today we have remained at the level of the object and the Thing, I want to show you what it means to invent an object in a special function that society esteems, values, and approves.

As yet, you may not even see why. I will take this small example from a memory of mine, which you may categorize under “the psychology of collection.” Someone who recently published a book about collectors and auctions—where collectors are assumed to profit—once begged me for insights into the meaning of collecting. I was careful to decline because I would first have needed to tell him to attend my seminar for five or six years.

The psychology of collecting, of course, offers much to discuss. I myself am a bit of a collector, and if some among you think this is an imitation of Freud, I leave you the benefit of that assumption. I believe my reasons are entirely different from his. Freud’s collections, or the fragments I saw on Anna Freud’s shelves, seemed more to stem from a fascination he had—at the level of the signifier—with the coexistence of art and Egyptian civilization, rather than from any refined taste for what one would call an object.

What we call an object, the foundation of a collection, is precisely something whose meaning you must strictly distinguish from the object as we use the term in analysis, insofar as the object serves as an imaginary fixation point that, in any register, provides satisfaction to a drive.

The collection object is something entirely different, and I wish to illustrate this with an example where collecting is reduced to its most rudimentary form. We often imagine a collection as a diversity of gathered items. Well, that is not necessarily the case, and the memory I evoke is as follows: during the great penitential era that our country experienced under the Pétain regime—during the time of “Work-Family-Fatherland” and belt-tightening—I visited my friend Jacques Prévert in Saint-Paul-de-Vence and saw something that, for reasons unknown, has resurfaced in my memory: a collection of matchboxes.

This was, as you can imagine, a collection that could be easily afforded at that time. I mean, perhaps it was all one had to collect.

The matchboxes were identical and arranged in a remarkably pleasing way. Each was slightly displaced, with its inner drawer slid open just enough so that they interlocked, forming a coherent, ribbon-like strip. This strip ran along the mantelpiece, climbed the wall, traversed picture rails, and descended along the edge of a door. I do not claim it went on infinitely, but it was exceedingly satisfying from an ornamental perspective. However, I do not think this was the main point, nor the essence of what was surprising about this collection, nor the particular satisfaction it provided to its creator.

I believe the shock, the novelty, the effect achieved by this assembly of empty matchboxes—this is absolutely essential—lay in revealing something we may often overlook: a matchbox is not merely an object. In this arrangement, it appeared as an Erscheinung, an apparition, proposed in its imposing multiplicity to be a Thing. In other words, it held itself together. A matchbox is not merely something with a particular use, nor even, in the Platonic sense, an abstract type of matchbox.

The individual matchbox is a Thing, with its coherence of being, and in this gratuitous, proliferating, superfluous, quasi-absurd quality, its “Thingness” as a matchbox was indeed the focus. It was this “Thingness” that, in the absurdity of the moment, certainly gave the collector his reason for engaging with it—not so much as a matchbox, but as this Thing which persists within a matchbox, something that, no matter what happens, cannot be found equally in any other object.

Reflect on this: a matchbox presents itself to us in the wandering form of what we hold so significant—something that can even take on moral meaning—and that is the drawer. A matchbox is certainly not unworthy of fulfilling this function.

Moreover, in this context, one might notice that this liberated drawer—no longer enclosed in the ample belly of a chest of drawers—is something that comes with a copulatory power, which was rendered vividly perceptible in the arrangement created by Prévert. Its composition was deliberately designed to make this power evident to our eyes.

Well, this little apologue about the revelation of the Thing beyond the object clearly demonstrates one of the forms—certainly the most innocent—of sublimation.

Perhaps you can see emerging here, in any case, and in a form that might not be what one initially expects, how, indeed, society can derive satisfaction from it. If it is a satisfaction, in this particular case, it is a satisfaction that demands nothing from anyone.