🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

This year, we will talk about desire and its interpretation. An analysis is a therapeutic process, it is said—let us call it a treatment, a psychic treatment that operates at various levels of the psyche concerning:

– First, and this was the initial scientific object of its study, what we shall call marginal or residual phenomena: dreams, slips of the tongue, witticisms—I emphasized this last year.
– Secondly, symptoms, if we delve into this curative aspect of the treatment—symptoms in the broad sense, insofar as they manifest in the subject through inhibitions, as they are constituted as symptoms and sustained by these symptoms.
– Furthermore, this treatment modifies structures, specifically those structures termed neuroses or neuro-psychoses, which Freud initially structured and defined as defense neuro-psychoses.

Psychoanalysis intervenes to address various levels of these diverse phenomenal realities as they engage desire. It is specifically under this heading of desire—as phenomena significant of desire—that the marginal and residual phenomena I mentioned earlier were first apprehended by Freud. These are the symptoms we find described throughout Freud’s thought. It is the intervention of anxiety, if we take it as the key point of symptom determination, but only insofar as certain activities that enter into the symptoms’ dynamic are eroticized—or better stated—captured within the mechanism of desire.

Finally, what does the term “defense” even mean regarding neuro-psychoses if not defense—against what?—against something that is still nothing other than desire. And yet, this analytic theory, at the center of which lies the notion of libido (situated as nothing other than the psychic energy of desire), requires certain conjunctions of the symbolic and the real for even the concept of energy to persist. I’ve already hinted at this in passing; recall, for instance, the metaphor of the factory. But I do not wish to linger on this point now.

This analytic theory, then, rests entirely on the notion of libido, on the energy of desire. Yet for some time now, we have seen it increasingly oriented toward something that even those supporting this new orientation consciously articulate—or at least the most conscious among them, borrowing from Fairbairn. Fairbairn articulates this repeatedly and explicitly in his collection titled Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality. He states that modern analytic theory has shifted something in the axis originally established by Freud, moving away from the idea of libido as “pleasure-seeking,” as Fairbairn puts it, to “object-seeking.”

This makes Mr. Fairbairn the most representative figure of this modern tendency. What this trend signifies, orienting the function of the libido toward an object seemingly predestined for it, is something we have alluded to countless times. I have shown you its implications in analytic technique and theory in myriad forms, along with the practical deviations I believe this tendency introduces—some of which carry not insignificant dangers.

The importance of what I want to draw your attention to, as we approach today’s problem, lies in this veiling of the very word “desire” that emerges in the handling of the analytic experience. It creates, so to speak, an impression—not of renewal but of disorientation—when we reintroduce it.

What I mean is that instead of speaking of libido or genital object, if we talk about genital desire, it may immediately seem far more challenging to take for granted that genital desire and its maturation inherently entail this kind of possibility, opening, or plenitude of realization in love—something that appears to have become doctrinal within a particular perspective on the maturation of libido.

Tendency and realization—and the implications regarding the maturation of libido—appear all the more surprising as they arise within a doctrine that was precisely the first not only to highlight but even to account for what Freud categorized under the title of the “debasement of love life.”

This refers to the fact that, while desire indeed seems to carry with it a certain quantum of love, it is often specifically and precisely a love that presents itself to the personality as conflictual, a love that does not acknowledge itself, a love that even refuses to admit itself.

Moreover, if we reintroduce the term “desire”…
in places where terms like “affectivity” or “positive or negative sentiment” are commonly used in a sort of hesitant approach—so to speak—to still effective forces, notably through the analytic relationship and the transference… it seems to me that the mere use of this word introduces a division that itself will carry some enlightening significance.

The question is whether transference is constituted not by an affectivity or “positive or negative sentiments,” with all the vagueness and obscurity these terms entail, but instead—if we name it outright—by a desire experienced by one party: sexual desire, aggressive desire toward the analyst. This will appear to us immediately and at first glance. These desires, however, do not constitute the entirety of transference, and thus transference must necessarily be defined by something other than vague references to a positive or negative notion of affectivity. And finally, the ultimate benefit of using this term “desire” fully is that it prompts us to ask: “What is desire?”

This will not be a question we can, or even will, answer. Simply put, if I were not constrained here by what I might call the urgent appointment I have with my “practical experiential needs,” I might indulge in an inquiry into the meaning of the term “desire” with those most qualified to appreciate its usage—namely poets and philosophers. However, I will not do so, primarily because:
– The use of the word “desire,”
– The transmission of the term,
– And the function of desire in poetry…

…are things that, I would say, we will rediscover retrospectively if we pursue our investigation far enough.

If it is true…
and this will form the continuation of my development this year…
that the situation is profoundly marked, anchored, riveted to a certain function of language, to a specific relationship between the subject and the signifier, then the analytic experience will lead us—at least I hope it will—far enough in this exploration that we will find ample opportunities:
– To assist ourselves, perhaps, with the purely poetic evocation that may arise from it,
– And just as well to understand more deeply, in the end, the nature of poetic creation in its relationship to desire.

I will simply point out that the difficulties…
at the very heart of the interplay of concealment, which you will see lies at the core of what our experience will reveal…
already appear, for instance, in the fact that poetry clearly demonstrates how poorly the poetic relationship to desire accommodates, so to speak, the depiction of its object. I would say:

– In this regard, figurative poetry—invoking, for instance, “the roses and lilies of beauty”—always possesses something that expresses desire only within the register of a peculiar coldness.
– Conversely, the law of this problem of evoking desire belongs to poetry that curiously presents itself as what is called “metaphysical poetry.”

For those who read English, I will refer here only to the most eminent example of the metaphysical poets in English literature: John Donne. I encourage you to revisit his work to observe how precisely it is the problem of the structure of the relationships of desire that is evoked there in a famous poem, for instance, The Ecstasy. The title alone sufficiently indicates the initial gestures and the direction in which, at least lyrically, the poetic treatment of desire unfolds when it is directly pursued or targeted.

I will set aside something that undoubtedly goes much further in presenting desire: the poet’s use of dramatic action. This is precisely the dimension we will revisit this year.

I am announcing it now because we approached this subject last year: it is the direction of comedy.

But let us leave aside the poets. I have mentioned them here only as a preliminary indication, to tell you that we will return to them later, in a more or less diffuse way.

I would like to focus, more or less, on what has been, at this juncture, the position of the philosophers, because I believe it has been highly illustrative of the problem as it is posed for us. I took care to write above those three terms: “pleasure-seeking,” “object-seeking.”

This question—of seeking pleasure and seeking the object—has always been central to philosophical reflection and morality, by which I mean theoretical morality, the kind that is formulated in precepts and rules, in philosophical operations, especially, as is often said, by ethicists. I have already indicated this to you.

Note, in passing, the foundation of all morality that one could call physicalist—a term that may, in this context, align with its sense in medieval philosophy, where one speaks of “the physical theory of love” as opposed to “the ecstatic theory of love.”

The foundation of all morality—
which has been expressed up to now, to some extent, in the philosophical tradition—
ultimately boils down to what could be called the hedonist tradition. This tradition seeks to establish a sort of equivalence between these two terms: pleasure and object:

• In the sense that the object is the natural object of the libido,
• In the sense that it is a benefit.

This ultimately leads to the admission of pleasure among the “goods” sought by the subject, or even to its rejection when assessed by the same criteria, placing it on par with the supreme good.

This hedonist tradition in morality is something that can cease to surprise only when one is so deeply immersed in scholastic dialogue that one no longer perceives its paradoxes. For, ultimately, what could be more contrary to what we might call the experience of practical reason than this supposed convergence of pleasure and good?

If we examine this closely, for example in Aristotle, what do we see developing? It is very clear: things are pure in Aristotle.

This identification of pleasure and good is something achieved only within what I would call an “ethics of mastery” or an ideal that flatters certain terms—such as temperance or intemperance—that depend on the subject’s mastery over their own habits.

However, the inconsistency of this theorization is striking. If you reread those famous passages concerning the use of pleasures, you will see that nothing in this moralizing perspective falls outside the framework of a master’s morality, that is, a discipline imposed by the master over many things, primarily concerning their habits, which relate to the management and use of the self.

But when it comes to “desire,” you will see how Aristotle himself must acknowledge—
and he is very lucid and highly aware of this—that the result of this moral theorization, both practical and theoretical, is that ἐπιθυμία (epithymia, desires) very quickly present themselves…
beyond a certain limit, which is precisely the boundary of mastery and the self…
in the domain of what he explicitly calls bestiality.

Desires are exiled from the proper domain of humanity—
insofar as humanity identifies with the reality of the master.
Occasionally, they even fall into the realm of perversions. In this regard, Aristotle has a notably modern conception, suggesting something akin to what we might express today: that the master cannot be judged on this account. This idea would almost translate into our modern vocabulary as saying that the master could not be considered responsible.

These texts are worth revisiting. You will gain clarity by referring to them.

In contrast to this philosophical tradition, there is someone I would like to name here—
to name as, in my view, the precursor of something I believe to be new, something we must consider as new in what we might call the progress or evolution of certain relations of man to himself, as is the case in the analysis Freud established.
That figure is Spinoza, for after all, I believe it is in his work, with a particularly exceptional emphasis, that we can find a formula like the following:

“Desire is the very essence of man.”

To avoid isolating the beginning of this statement from its continuation, we must add:

“Insofar as it is conceived from one of his affections, conceived as determined and dominated by any one of his affections to do something.”

Much could already be done to articulate what remains, so to speak, unrevealed in this formula. I say “unrevealed” because, of course, Spinoza cannot be translated through Freud. Yet it is still quite striking—
and I offer this as a very singular, perhaps personal, observation: I may have a greater inclination toward Spinoza than others, and in earlier times I extensively engaged with his works.
Still, I do not think it is solely for this reason that, when rereading Spinoza in light of my own experience, it seems to me that someone familiar with the Freudian experience might find themselves equally at ease in the texts of the author of De Servitute Humana, who structured and organized all human reality according to the attributes of divine substance.
But let us set aside, for now—though we may return to it—this initial line of thought.

I want to provide you with a much more accessible example, on which I will conclude this philosophical reference in connection with our problem. I have taken this example at the most accessible, even the most vulgar, level of entry you might have to it.

Open the dictionary of the charming late Lalande, Vocabulaire Philosophique, which is still, I must say—
in any endeavor of this nature, that of creating a “Vocabulary”—
one of the most perilous and yet most fruitful tasks, given how dominant language is in all problems.
It is certain that in organizing a “Vocabulary,” one will always create something suggestive. Here, we find the following:

“Desire (Begerang, Begehrung)…
It is not useless to recall how desire is articulated in the German philosophical framework:
spontaneous and conscious inclination toward an end that you imagine.”

“Desire, therefore, rests on inclination, of which it is a particular and more complex case. It opposes, on the other hand, will or volition in that the latter involves:

• The coordination, at least momentary, of inclinations,
• The opposition of subject and object,
• Awareness of one’s own efficacy,
• The consideration of the means by which the desired end will be achieved.”

These points are quite useful reminders, but it is noteworthy that, in an article aiming to define desire, only two lines are dedicated to situating it in relation to inclination, while the entire discussion pertains to will. Indeed, this is what discourse on desire in this vocabulary reduces to, except for the additional note:

“Finally, according to some philosophers, there is in will a fiat of a special nature, irreducible to inclinations, which constitutes freedom.”

I sense an air of irony in these last lines, strikingly emerging from this philosophical author. A note adds:

“Desire is the inclination to procure an emotion already experienced or imagined; it is the natural will for a pleasure” (quote from Roque).

This term, “natural will,” has significant referential value. Lalande personally adds:

“This definition appears too narrow in that it does not sufficiently account for the precedence of certain inclinations over the corresponding emotions. Desire seems to be essentially the desire for an act or a state, without it being necessary in all cases to represent the affective character of that end.”

I think this pertains to pleasure, or perhaps to something else. In any case, it certainly raises the problem of determining what it involves: whether it is the representation of pleasure or pleasure itself.

Certainly, I do not believe the task of narrowing down the meaning of desire through vocabulary is a simple one. This difficulty is compounded by the possibility that tradition itself has not adequately prepared us for it. After all, is desire the psychological reality that resists all organization? And in the end, can we approach the reality of desire only by subtracting the characteristics attributed to will?

In such a case, we would be left with the opposite: the absence of coordination—even momentary—among tendencies, with the opposition between subject and object entirely removed. Similarly, we would find ourselves in “a presence,” “a tendency” lacking awareness of its own efficacy and without considering the means by which it will achieve the desired end.

In short, we find ourselves in a field where, at the very least, psychoanalysis has provided more precise articulations. Within these negative determinations, psychoanalysis delineates with precision, at various levels, “the drive” insofar as it embodies:

• The absence of coordination—even momentary—among tendencies,
• The fantasy, which introduces an essential articulation or, more accurately, a distinctly characterized element within this vague determination of the absence of opposition between subject and object.

This year, our objective will be to attempt to define what fantasy is, perhaps even more precisely than the analytic tradition has managed to define it so far. As for the remaining terms of pragmatic idealism implicated here, we will for now retain only this: precisely how difficult it seems to situate desire and analyze it solely through object-related references.

We will pause here to delve properly into the terms in which I believe I can articulate for you this year the problem of our experience, specifically in terms of desire and its interpretation. Already, the internal coherence, the interconnection within the analytic experience of desire and its interpretation, presents something inherently suggestive. Even without external additions, the interpretation of desire alone appears to be intimately linked, as if inherently, to the manifestation of desire itself.

You are aware of the perspective from which we are proceeding—not starting, but continuing—because we have been working together for some time. It has been five years since we began attempting to outline the framework for understanding our experience through certain articulations. You know that this year, these outlines converge on a problem that might serve as a focal point, a meeting place for all these separate points. Some are quite distant from one another, and I aim to prepare the ground for addressing them first.

Psychoanalysis, over the course of these five years, has shown us something fundamental that we will call:

• Humanity’s entanglement within the constituent structure of the signifying chain,
• That this entanglement is undoubtedly linked to the fact of being human,
• But that this entanglement is not coextensive with the fact of being human, in the sense that, while humans undoubtedly speak, to speak, they must enter into language and its pre-existing discourse.

I would say that this law of subjectivity, highlighted by psychoanalysis, is its fundamental dependence on language. This dependency is so essential that it is precisely here that all of psychology itself slips away. We could describe psychology, insofar as it is served, as the sum of studies concerning what we might broadly call “sensitivity,” defined as a function of maintaining a whole or a homeostasis—in short, the functions of sensitivity in relation to an organism.

Here, everything is implicated—not only the experimental data of psychophysics but also all that can be brought forth, in the most general sense, through the concept of “form” regarding the means of maintaining the constancy of the organism. This is a vast field of psychology, supported by its own specific experience, where research continues.

However, the subjectivity we are discussing—

• As it is implicated in language,
• As it is caught within it, whether willingly or unwillingly, and as it is captured far beyond its own knowledge of it—
  …is a subjectivity that is not immanent to sensitivity,
  Where “sensitivity” here refers to the stimulus-response pair,
  For the following reason: the stimulus is presented in terms of a code that imposes its order on the need it translates.

Here, I articulate the notion of emission, not of a sign—
as one might, in a certain perspective, describe it in the experimental framework of what I call the stimulus-response cycle. In this context, one might say that it is a sign given by the external environment to an organism, signaling it to respond, to defend itself. If you tickle the sole of a frog’s foot, it emits a sign by reacting with a certain muscular movement.

However, inasmuch as subjectivity is caught up in language, what is emitted is not a sign but a signifier—
something fundamentally different. Retain this point, which might seem simple: the signifier is something that holds value, not in the way typically described in communication theory—
as something that refers to a third element it represents.

Even recently, one can read that communication can be reduced to three basic terms:

1. There must be a receiver, the one who hears,
2. Next, a signifier suffices—there is no need even to mention a sender; a sign alone suffices,
3. This sign is said to signify a third thing, simply representing it.

This construction of communication theory is flawed, because the sign does not derive its value from referring to a third element it represents but rather from its relationship to another signifier that it is not.

As for the three diagrams I have just placed on the board:

I want to show you their origin—not their genesis, for do not imagine these as steps…
though something might occasionally correspond to such steps…
steps that the subject might effectively take. The subject certainly finds their place in this, but do not view these as steps in the sense of typical stages of evolution. Instead, they represent a generation, marking the logical precedence of each schema over the one that follows it.

What does this represent, this element we shall call D as our starting point?

This represents the signifying chain. What does that mean?

This foundational, fundamental structure imposes upon all manifestations of language the condition of being regulated by a succession—in other words, by a diachrony, by something unfolding in time. We will set aside, for now, the interesting temporal properties involved, though we may need to revisit them later. For now, let us say that the full richness of the temporal fabric, as it is often called, is not yet applied here.

At this point, the discussion is reduced to the notion of succession and what it already introduces and implies about scansion. But even this scansion is not yet fully developed. The sole discrete, or differential, element serves as the basis upon which the problem of the subject’s implication in the signifier will be established.

This implies—
given what I have just highlighted, namely, that the signifier is defined by its relationship to its sense and derives its value from its relationship to another signifier within a system of signifying opposition—
a dimension that inherently and simultaneously involves a certain synchrony of signifiers.

This synchrony of signifiers refers to the existence of a certain signifying battery, whose minimal configuration can itself be questioned. I have attempted to exercise myself with this small problem [see α, β, γ, δ in The Purloined Letter, Écrits]. It would not take you too far afield to consider whether, after all, one could construct a language with what might be considered the minimal battery, a system of four elements. I do not believe this is unthinkable, but let us leave that aside. Clearly, in the current state of affairs, we are far from being reduced to this minimal configuration.

What is important is indicated by the dotted line that cuts back across the signifying chain at two points. This line represents the manner in which the subject must enter into the play of the signifying chain.

What is represented by the dotted line indicates the first encounter [C] at the synchronic level, at the level of the simultaneity of signifiers. Here, C is what I call the point of encounter with the Code. In other words:

• It is to the extent that the child addresses a subject they recognize as speaking, a subject they have observed speaking, one who has influenced their relations from the very beginning of their awakening to the light of day,
• It is to the extent that something operates as the play of the signifier, as a “chatterbox”,

…that the subject learns very early on that this is a passage, a corridor through which their needs must essentially be funneled to be satisfied.

Here, the second crossing point, M, is the point where the Message is produced, constituted as follows: It is always through a retroactive interplay of the sequence of signifiers that meaning emerges and becomes precise. That is to say, the message takes shape after the fact, drawing from the signifier that precedes it, the code that precedes it, and which, conversely, the message anticipates and engages with as it is being formulated at any given moment.

I have already indicated to you the consequences of this process. In any case, what results, and what is notable on this schema, is the following: What is initially presented in the form of the emergence of need—or tendency, as psychologists call it—
…is represented in my schema at the level of the Id, which does not know what it is, which, being caught in language, does not reflect upon this innocent contribution of language where the subject is initially constituted as discourse.

As a result, even when reduced to its most primitive forms of apprehension by the subject—
the realization that they are in a relationship with other speaking subjects—something occurs at the end of the intentional chain. This is what I have referred to here as the first primary identification [I], the first realization of an ideal, which at this stage of the schema cannot even be called an ego ideal, but which undoubtedly marks the subject’s first seal (signum) of their relationship with the Other.

The second stage of the schema may, in a certain way, correspond to an evolutionary stage, on the simple condition that you do not consider them sharply delineated. There are indeed distinct breaks in evolution, but they are not located at the stages of this schema. These breaks—as Freud remarked somewhere—are marked at the level of judgment of attribution compared to simple naming. This is not what I am addressing here; I will return to it later.

In both the first and second parts of the schema, we are dealing with the difference between an infantile level of discourse. The child may not even need to speak yet for this mark, this imprint placed on their need by demand, to already function—manifested as alternating wails, for instance. That is sufficient.

The second part of the schema implies that even if the child does not yet know how to hold a discourse, they nonetheless already know how to speak, and this comes very early. When I say “know how to speak,” I mean that at the level of the second stage of the schema, we are dealing with something that goes beyond mere integration into language.

There is, properly speaking, a relationship in so far as there is an appeal to the Other as presence—this appeal to the Other as presence, as a presence against a backdrop of absence, exemplified in the moment marked by the fort-da game, which so profoundly impressed Freud around 1915 when he observed it in one of his grandsons—who himself later became a psychoanalyst. I am referring to the child who was the subject of Freud’s observation.

This observation brings us to the second stage of the schema’s realization. At this stage, beyond what the chain of discourse articulates as existing independently of the subject and imposing its form upon them, whether they like it or not—beyond this innocent apprehension of linguistic form by the subject—something else occurs.

This something else is tied to the fact that it is within this linguistic experience that the subject’s apprehension of the Other as such is founded. It is this Other who can provide an answer—an answer to their appeal. It is this Other to whom, fundamentally, they pose the question, the one we encounter in Cazotte’s The Devil in Love as the roar of the terrifying form that represents the superego‘s appearance in response to the one who invoked it in a Neapolitan cave:

• “Che vuoi?” What do you want?

The question posed to the Other, concerning what the Other wants—
in other words, the point where the subject first encounters desire,
desire as it is initially the desire of the Other, the desire through which the subject realizes that it constitutes this beyond, around which revolves the following:

• That the Other determines whether one signifier or another will be present in speech,
• That the Other provides the subject not only with the experience of its desire but also with an essential experience.

Until this moment, the battery of signifiers existed in itself, offering a framework for choice. But now, this choice is revealed through experience as commutative—the Other has the power to determine which of the signifiers will be present. At this level of experience, two new principles are introduced, complementing what was initially the pure and simple principle of succession by introducing this principle of choice.

We now encounter the principle of substitution, which is essential because this commutativity establishes for the subject what I call the bar between the signifier and the signified. This bar signifies the coexistence, the simultaneity between the signifier and the signified, while maintaining their separation, their impenetrability—a difference and distance marked as S/s. Curiously, group theory, as studied in abstract set theory, reveals the absolutely essential connection between commutativity and the possibility of using what I call here the bar, which is employed in the representation of fractions. Let us set that aside for now, as it is merely a lateral indication of what is at stake.

The structure of the signifying chain, from the moment it invokes the Other—that is, when enunciation, the process of enunciation, superimposes itself upon and distinguishes itself from the formulation of the statement—demands, as such, something that specifically involves the grasp of the subject. This grasp, initially innocent, becomes—while still retaining a crucial nuance—unconscious within the articulation of speech. From the moment commutativity among signifiers becomes an essential dimension for the production of the signified, it follows, effectively and resonating within the subject’s consciousness, that the substitution of one signifier for another becomes the origin of the multiplication of meanings, a characteristic of the enrichment of the human world.

Another term also emerges—a principle of similarity. This principle introduces the fact that within the chain, the similarity or dissimilarity between signifiers in the sequence of the chain also generates effects. This constitutes, properly speaking, the metonymic dimension. I will demonstrate later that it is within this dimension—essentially within this dimension—that the effects characteristic and fundamental to what we may call poetic discourse occur, the effects of poetry itself.

Thus, it is at the level of the second stage of the schema that this occurs, enabling us to position alongside the message—that is, on the left side of the schema, where the message appeared in the first schema—the emergence of what is signified by the Other, s(A), as opposed to the signifier provided by the Other, S(Ⱥ), which itself is produced along the chain. This chain is dotted, as it represents a chain that is only partially articulated, only implicit, and represents here the subject as the support of speech.

As I have mentioned, it is within the experience of the Other, as an Other possessing desire, that this second stage of experience occurs. Desire [d], from its very inception, manifests itself within the interval, the gap that separates the pure and simple linguistic articulation of speech from what marks the subject’s realization of something about itself. This realization has significance only in relation to the emission of speech and constitutes, properly speaking, what language refers to as the subject’s being.

The subject exists in the space between:

• The avatars of their demand and what these avatars have caused them to become,
• And, on the other hand, the exigence of recognition by the Other, which may occasionally be called a demand for love.

Within this interval, this gap, lies the experience of desire, initially apprehended as the desire of the Other, within which the subject must locate their own desire. The subject’s own desire, as such, can exist nowhere else but in this space.

This constitutes the third stage, the third form, the third phase of the schema. It is characterized by this: in the primitive presence of the desire of the Other, which appears opaque and obscure, the subject is without recourse. The subject is in a state of Hilflosigkeit—a term Freud uses, which in French translates to the distress of the subject. This is the foundation of what analysis has explored, experimented with, and situated as the traumatic experience.

What Freud has taught us, through the progression that allowed him to situate the experience of anxiety in its proper place, is something that lacks the diffuse, vague nature of what is often referred to as the existential experience of anxiety.

While it has been said, in philosophical references, that anxiety is something that confronts us with nothingness, such formulas are undoubtedly justifiable within a certain reflective perspective. However, know this: on the subject of anxiety, Freud provides a structured, positive teaching. He situates anxiety squarely within a theory of communication. Anxiety is a signal. It does not occur at the level of desire—
even if desire arises from the same place where distress originates and is experienced—
anxiety does not occur at the level of desire.

This year, we will carefully revisit Freud’s Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, line by line. Today, in this first lecture, I can only begin by introducing a few major points to return to later, including this one in particular.

Freud tells us that anxiety arises as a signal in the ego, rooted in the Hilflosigkeit it is called upon to address. I know I am moving quickly and that this topic warrants an entire seminar, but I cannot discuss anything else without first outlining the path we are about to follow.

It is at this third stage that the specular experience comes into play—the experience of the relationship to the image of the Other, insofar as it is foundational to the Urbild of the ego. In other words, this year we will revisit and use—
within a context that will give it an entirely different resonance—
what we articulated at the end of our first year regarding the relationships between the ideal ego and the ego ideal.

We will rethink all of this in the context of what I present to you here as symbolic action, which is essential. You will see what use this will finally serve. I am not referring solely to what I have previously articulated about the specular relationship, namely the confrontation of the subject with their own image in the mirror.

I am also referring to the optical schema, the use of the concave mirror that enables us to conceptualize the function of a real image that is itself reflected. This image can only be seen as reflected from a specific position—a symbolic position, which corresponds to the ego ideal.

What is at stake here is this: in the third stage of the schema, the imaginary element of the relationship between the ego (m) and the other i(a) intervenes as a means for the subject to manage their distress in relation to the desire of the Other.

How does this occur? Through something derived from the mastery game that the child, at an elective age, has learned to engage in, specifically in relation to their similar other. The experience of the similar other, in the sense of one who is a gaze, one who looks at you, plays out within a set of imaginary relationships—foremost among them, relationships of prestige, as well as those of submission and defeat.

Through these relationships, in other words, as Aristotle says that man thinks—not the soul thinks, but man thinks with his soul—we must also say that the subject defends itself. This is what our experience demonstrates.

The subject defends itself with their ego, using the tools provided by the imaginary experience of the relationship with the Other. They construct something distinct from the specular experience of the flexible interplay with the Other. What the subject reflects upon is not merely prestige games, not merely their opposition to the Other in terms of prestige and feint; it is themselves as a speaking subject.

This is why I designate [$◊a] as the place of resolution, the point of reference through which desire learns to locate itself: this is the fantasy.

For this reason, I symbolize and formulate fantasy with these symbols: $◊a. The $ here—later I will explain why it is barred—represents the subject as speaking, as referring to the Other as gaze, to the imaginary Other.

Every time you encounter something that is, properly speaking, a fantasy, you will find it can be articulated in these terms: the subject as speaking, referring to the imaginary Other. This defines fantasy and the function of fantasy as the mechanism by which the subject’s desire is accommodated and situated. This is why human desire is characterized by its attachment—not to an object, but always, essentially, to a fantasy. This fact, derived from experience, has long remained mysterious.

However, let us not forget that this is a fact introduced into the flow of knowledge by psychoanalysis. It is only through psychoanalysis that this phenomenon ceases to be an anomaly, something opaque or perceived as a deviation, distortion, or perversion of desire. It is psychoanalysis that articulates all of this—
even what might, on occasion, be labeled distortion, perversion, or delusion—
within a dialectic capable of reconciling the imaginary with the symbolic, as I have just demonstrated.

I know I am not leading you down an easy path to start, but if I do not immediately establish our terms of reference, how will we proceed? Should I move step by step, slowly suggesting the necessity of reference? If I do not present to you now what I call the graph, then, as I did last year, I will have to introduce it gradually, which will only make it even more obscure.

This is why I began here. I do not claim to have made the experience any easier for you, but now, to ease this difficulty, I would like to immediately offer some illustrations. These illustrations will start at the simplest level, since they concern the relationship of the subject to the signifier. The least and first expectation of a schema is that it should demonstrate its use concerning commutations.

I recall something I once read in Darwin’s book. The passage in question, cited here, refers to Charles Darwin’s autobiography on The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, and, I must say, it amused me greatly. Darwin recounts the story of a man named Sidney Smith, who, I assume, must have been a member of English society in his time. Darwin notes:

“I once heard Sidney Smith, at a party, calmly remark the following:
‘It has reached my ears that dear old Lady Cock was overlooked.’”

The phrase “overlook” originally means that the overseer did not notice something—a sense rooted in its etymology. In English, “overlook” is commonly used. There is no equivalent term in our everyday usage. This illustrates how the use of languages can be both so useful and so harmful—it spares us the effort of substituting signifiers in our own language to aim at a certain signified, for doing so would require altering the entire context to achieve the same effect in a comparable social setting.

Here, it might mean: “the eye passed over her”—and Darwin marvels that this was absolutely and perfectly clear to everyone. Undoubtedly, the phrase conveyed that the devil had forgotten her—that he had failed to carry her to the grave, which, at that moment, seemed to be her natural or even desired place in the listener’s mind. Darwin leaves the question open:

“How did he achieve this effect?” says Darwin. “Honestly, I am at a loss to say.”

Notice how we can be grateful to Darwin for marking this experience in a particularly meaningful and exemplary way, highlighting his own limitations in addressing this problem. He approached the issue of emotions and noted that the expression of emotions was significant here precisely because the subject manifested none whatsoever. To suggest that this placidity itself carries meaning might be taking things too far. Darwin does not make such a claim, remaining genuinely astonished at this phenomenon, which must be taken literally, because, as always, when we study a case, we must not reduce it to vagueness.

Darwin notes: “Everyone understood that the speaker referred to the devil, even though the devil was nowhere to be found.”

This is what is interesting—Darwin tells us that “the chill of the devil passed over the audience.”
Let us try to understand this a little. We will not dwell too long on Darwin’s intellectual limitations; though we will eventually address them, now is not the time.

What is certain is that, at first glance, there is something strikingly intuitive about this knowledge. One does not need to have formulated the principles of the metaphorical effect—
that is, the substitution of one signifier for another—
nor does one need Darwin to have intuited this effect to immediately perceive that it hinges on something quite specific.

For instance, consider how a sentence beginning with “Lady Cock” would typically end with “ill”—
“I heard that something is wrong,” suggesting concern for the health of the elderly woman. Substitution occurs here. Instead of expected news about her health—since the health of elderly women is generally the first topic of inquiry—
the phrase shifts to something else, perhaps even irreverent.

The speaker does not say she is dying, nor does he say she is in good health. Instead, he remarks that she has been forgotten. What intervenes here to create this metaphorical effect—something distinct from what “overlook” might conventionally suggest? It is precisely because it was unexpected, substituted for another signifier, that it produces a new signified. This signified is neither in line with expectations nor entirely unanticipated.

Had this unexpected turn not been characterized as unexpected, it would remain something original that must, in a way, be realized uniquely in each person’s mind, according to their individual interpretations.

In any case, the outcome is clear: a new signified emerges. This explains why Sidney Smith is regarded as a man of wit—someone who does not rely on clichés in his expression. But why the devil?

If we refer to our small schema, it will be immensely helpful. This is the purpose of creating schemas—to use them.
While one could arrive at the same conclusion without a schema, it serves as a guide, clearly demonstrating that what occurs here in reality—what is present—is, properly speaking, a fantasy. It also reveals the mechanisms by which this fantasy operates.

This is where the schema can go further than a certain naive notion that things are made to express something—that emotions, as people say, are communicated as such, as if emotions themselves did not inherently pose so many other questions:

• Namely, what they are,
• And whether they do not already, in and of themselves, require communication.

We are told that our subject is perfectly calm—that is, they present themselves, so to speak, in a pure state, their speech being a purely metonymic effect. By this, I mean their speech as speech, in its continuity as speech.

And in this very continuity of speech, the subject introduces this: the presence of death, insofar as the subject may or may not escape it. This occurs to the extent that the subject evokes the presence of something closely tied to the emergence of the signifier itself. That is to say, if there is a dimension in which death—or the absence of anything further—can be both directly evoked and simultaneously veiled, yet in any case embodied and immanent in an act, it is in the articulation of the signifier.

Thus, for this speaking subject, who so easily speaks of death, it is clear that they harbor no particular goodwill toward the lady in question. Yet, on the other hand, the perfect placidity with which they speak of it implies that, in this respect, they have mastered their desire, insofar as that desire—much like in Volpone—could be expressed in the charming phrase: “Rot and die!”

They do not say this. They articulate, calmly and serenely, the fact of this destiny that awaits us all—each in turn, momentarily forgotten. And yet, if I may put it this way, this is not the devil, nor is it the beyond; it will come, one day or another. At the same time, the speaker positions themselves as someone unafraid to place themselves on equal footing with the person they speak of—to put themselves on the same level, subject to the same fault, to the same final leveling by the Absolute Master here made present.

In other words, the subject reveals themselves in relation to what is veiled in language, showing a kind of familiarity, a completeness, a mastery of language that suggests something. And what does it suggest?

Precisely something I want to end with, because it is the element missing from everything I have said in my development of the three stages. This element will complete the mechanism and give proper depth to what I have articulated.

At the level of the first schema, we have the innocent image.

It is unconscious, of course, but this is an unconsciousness that is poised to transition into knowledge. Let us not forget that even in unconsciousness, there exists this dimension of “awareness”—even in French, the phrase avoir conscience (to have awareness) implies this notion.

At the level of the second and third stages of the schema, I have told you that we move toward a much more conscious use of knowledge. By this, I mean the subject knows how to speak, and they do speak. This is what happens when they call upon the Other.

Yet it is precisely here that the originality of the field Freud discovered lies—the field he called the unconscious. That is, this something that always places the subject at a certain distance from their being, preventing them from ever fully reaching it.

It is for this reason that it becomes necessary—the subject has no other means—to grasp their being through the metonymy of being that exists within the subject, which is desire.

And why is this? Because, at the level where the subject is engaged—
where they have entered into speech and thereby into the relationship with the Other as such, as the locus of speech—
there is always a missing signifier. Why? Because it is a signifier, and the signifier is specifically delegated to the subject’s relationship with the signifier. This signifier has a name: the phallus.

• Desire is the metonymy of being within the subject.
• The phallus is the metonymy of the subject within being.

We will return to this.

The phallus—
insofar as it is a signifying element extracted from the chain of speech, as it mediates all relationships with the Other—
is the limit principle that causes the subject, in all speech and as long as they are implicated in speech, to fall under the dynamic clinically articulated as the castration complex.

What any kind of usage of words—
not necessarily “pure,” but perhaps more impure, as in the “words of the tribe” or any metaphorical initiation that becomes daring or challenges what language always veils—
what it always ultimately veils is death.

This always tends to evoke, to call forth, the enigmatic figure of the missing signifier: the phallus, which appears here—as it always does—under the guise of what we call the diabolical: the ear, the skin, even the phallus itself. In this context, the tradition of English wit, that contained form which nevertheless disguises the most violent desires, serves to bring forth in the imaginary, within the Other present as spectator, in the little (a), this image of the subject, marked by their relationship to the signifier, which is called the prohibition.

Here, specifically, it emerges insofar as the subject violates a prohibition, showing that beyond the prohibitions that constitute the laws of language, one does not speak in this way about elderly ladies. Yet there is a man who speaks in the most placid manner imaginable and manages to summon forth the devil. Indeed, so much so that dear Darwin wonders: “How on earth did he do that?”

I will leave you with that for today.

Next time, we will take up a dream from Freud, and we will attempt to apply our methods of analysis to it, which will also allow us to situate the different modes of interpretation.