🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

So, as I conclude this difficult and risky subject, which I have chosen to explore with you this year, I believe I cannot do better than articulate the boundary of the step I intended for you to take.

Next year, I will continue with something whose title I am not necessarily providing you with today, but whose meaning revolves around articulating, in relation to one another, what can be called the ends and means of analysis. It seems essential, at the very least, that we pause for a moment to consider this ever-veiled element present in what can be termed the “moral goals of analysis.”

In the fact that we can articulate, promote, within the progress of analysis and its framework, something referred to as psychological normalization, there lies an inclusion of what we can call rationalizing moralization. The same applies to what is articulated in the sense of completing what is called the genital stage, this maturation of tendencies and objects, which would set the measure of a proper relationship to reality. Undoubtedly, a certain moral implication is included here. Does the ideal articulation of psychological harmonization show us something to which the theoretical and practical perspective of our action should ultimately be reduced?

Ultimately, should we—in this hope for access to a shadowless form of happiness—believe that the antinomy so powerfully articulated by FREUD himself could be entirely resolved? FREUD, in Civilization and Its Discontents, declares that the moral authority as it concretely manifests in humans is far from rational. He describes the superego, this authority’s form, as possessing an economy that, paradoxically, becomes more demanding the more sacrifices are made to it. Is this threat, this moral schism within human beings, something that we, in analytic doctrine and practice, are allowed to forget?

In truth, this is precisely what happens. We are all too inclined to forget it—both in the promises we believe we can make and in those we believe we can hold ourselves to—regarding various outcomes of our therapeutic approach. This is serious, and I cannot conceal from myself the fact that it becomes even more serious as we position ourselves to give analysis its full scope. By this, I mean that we face the conceivable outcome of what, in the truest sense, must be called the didactic function of analysis.

Should the conclusion of an analysis, if we are to conceive of it as fully completed, for someone who must subsequently assume a position of responsibility relative to analysis—namely, as an analyst themselves—ideally, as a matter of principle, end in this perspective of comfort? This comfort is promoted today too often in what I earlier identified as a kind of moralizing rationalization. Is this truly sustainable for us, as proponents of the analytic approach, particularly since this year we have articulated, I believe in line with Freudian experience, the dialectic of demand, need, and desire?

Can we truly reduce, if you will, the success of analysis to something we might describe as a sort of individual comfort, tied to something undeniably legitimate and justified, which we could call the service of certain goods? These goods include private goods, familial goods, domestic goods, and other goods that also solicit us: professional goods, occupational goods, civic goods. Can we, even today, so easily confine this civic dimension? Does it even matter?

It is all too apparent that the pursuit of happiness, as embodied concretely and effectively by those who come to us within our society, involves an expectation—a miracle or a promise—that some regulation we impose on their situation will leave open a space for what they perceive as an original genius or a quest for freedom. Let us caricature this: for a man, the possession of all women; for a woman, the ideal man. Surely, to suggest in good conscience that the subject might find fulfillment here would be a form of deception. Let us say there is no reason we should serve as guarantors of bourgeois fantasies. A little more rigor, a little more firmness, is required in confronting the human condition.

This is why I recalled last time:

• That the service of goods carries its own demands,
• That the pursuit of happiness on a political level has consequences,
• That the global movement within which our world is immersed—promoting the universal regulation of this service of goods to its ultimate consequences—entails sacrifices and amputations we are familiar with. This includes a form of puritanism regarding desire, historically established and now imposed in entire sectors of the world committed to this universal regulation of the service of goods.

The problem is not resolved regarding the relationship of every individual, not in terms of the happiness of future generations, but rather their relationship with themselves in that brief span of time between birth and death, and with their own desire. Here, as I believe I have shown you in the framework I outlined for you this year, this function of desire must fundamentally remain in relation to death.

I pose the question as to whether the end of analysis—by which I mean a true analysis, one that prepares someone to become an analyst—should not, at its conclusion, confront the analysand with the reality of the human condition. This reality is precisely what FREUD, when speaking of anxiety, identified as the foundation where its signal emerges: Hilflosigkeit, that distress articulated so specifically in German by this term. It reflects the fact that at this level, in their relationship with themselves, which is tied to their own death—but understood in the doubled sense I have taught you this year—a person can expect no help from anyone. That is to say, at the end of this didactic analysis, one must ultimately reach and comprehend the domain, the level of experience, of this absolute disarray. This disarray goes beyond the level where anxiety is already a form of protection—not Abwartung (waiting for something to happen), but Erwartung (expectation).

Anxiety unfolds by casting the shadow of danger. However, in this ultimate experience of Hilflosigkeit, there is not even danger. The limit of this realm, as I have told you, is expressed in these final terms for humanity: reaching the boundary of what one is and what one is not. This is precisely why the myth of OEDIPUS takes on its full significance here. Once more, I will guide you through this intermediate region by recalling the period in OEDIPUS’s story that cannot be neglected—the time that elapses between the moment he blinds himself and the moment of his unique, privileged death, an enigma I have already drawn your attention to in SOPHOCLES.

Let us not forget, though, that while OEDIPUS, in a certain sense, did not experience an Oedipus complex, we must remember this: What is OEDIPUS?

By punishing himself for a crime he did not commit, he kills a father he did not know was his father. Moreover, he encounters this father on the road—in the plausible fashion presented in his myth—precisely because, having caught wind of something grim prophesied about his father, he flees those he believes to be his parents, who raised him. On the road, trying to escape this crime, he meets his fate.

Nor does he realize that in achieving happiness—conjugal happiness, the happiness of being king, the happiness of leading a thriving city—he is sleeping with his mother. We can therefore question the meaning of the punishment he inflicts upon himself. The punishment OEDIPUS imposes on himself signifies precisely his renunciation of that which captivated him—namely, that he was played, duped, by his very pursuit of happiness. Beyond the service of goods, and even beyond the complete success of those services, he steps into the realm where he seeks his desire.

Consider OEDIPUS’s disposition: At the brink of death, he does not falter. The irony of the phrase “sound in body and spirit” could scarcely be more pointed in his case, as “the man with swollen feet” at that moment has gouged out his eyes. Yet this does not prevent him from demanding everything, including, let us not forget, the honors due to his rank.

The memory of the legend allows us to glimpse something emphasized by the most modern ethnography: After the sacrifice, because he is sent the thigh of the victim instead of the shoulder—or perhaps the reverse—he takes this as an intolerable insult. He breaks with those to whom he had relinquished power—his sons. In the end, his curse upon his sons is absolute.

It is essential to recognize and explore the meaning of this moment:

• Where OEDIPUS, having renounced the service of goods, nevertheless abandons nothing of the supremacy of his dignity over those goods themselves.
• Where, in this tragic freedom, he confronts the continuation of the desire that drove him to cross this boundary, which in OEDIPUS is the desire to know. He knew, and he wants to know even further.

To clarify, must I evoke another tragic figure, perhaps closer to us? That figure is King LEAR. I cannot delve deeply here into the significance of King LEAR, but I wish simply to illustrate what I mean by OEDIPUS’s crossing.

In King LEAR, we witness this crossing in a derisive form. He too renounces the service of goods, the royal duties, believing himself to be loved. This old fool hands over the service of goods to his daughters. Yet he does not truly renounce anything. Freedom begins—a life of revelry with fifty knights, a carnival existence until the end. He is alternately received by the two shrews to whom he entrusted power.

In the meantime, he is left with only the guarantee of fidelity to the pact of honor. It is freely that he has passed on what ensured his strength. Here, the formidable irony of Shakespeare is required, and you know that this irony permeates the entire proliferation of intertwined fates that devour one another in King Lear. It is not only at Lear’s level, but at the level of all those in the play who are “good people,” that we see the absolute condemnation to unhappiness of all those who base their lives solely on fidelity and the pact of honor. I do not need to insist; reopen the play. The important point is this: Lear, like Oedipus, shows us that everything advancing into this zone—whether it advances through Lear’s derisive path or Oedipus’s tragic path—will advance alone and betrayed.

At the end of what Oedipus reveals to us, his final words are— as you know—the me phunai (μὴϕῦναι), which I have so often repeated before you. This phrase carries with it an entire exegesis of negation. I have attempted to show you the nuances of this expression in French, particularly in that little ne, which is so difficult to interpret, the so-called expletive ne, hanging there in the expression: “Je crains qu’il ne vienne” (“I fear he may come”). This ne could just as easily not be there, as if it were a particle idly wandering between fear and arrival, with no reason for its presence except that it represents the subject itself. It is the remnant in French of what the Greek me (μὴ) signifies, which is not strictly negation.

I could revisit any text with you to demonstrate its manifestations:

“ἀλλ᾽ἄσημος ὁ ὑργάτης τις ἦν” (253), says the guard in Antigone. “He left without leaving any trace.”

This indeed refers to the one they do not yet know to be Antigone.

They render it as ἀλλ᾽ἔϕευγε μὴ εἰδέναι. In principle, this means avoiding knowledge that it is him, τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι. If one were to take it literally, two negations would imply avoiding not knowing that it is him. But that is not what it means. The me (μὴ) signifies something that pertains precisely to the splitting (Spaltung) between the enunciation and the enunciated, which I have already explained to you. The me phunai (μὴϕῦναι) means “rather not to be born.” Yes, rather not to be born.

This is the preference upon which a perfectly completed human existence must end. Oedipus’s existence is so complete that he does not die the death of everyone—an accidental death—but the true death, the one in which he mocks his very being. This is what I would call a willingly embraced curse, a true subsistence that is the subsistence of the human being, a subsistence in withdrawing oneself from the order of the world. This attitude is beautiful, as the madrigal says, twice beautiful for being beautiful. It is here that Oedipus shows us where the inner boundary of the relationship to desire lies, the limit for all human experience, which is always deferred beyond death. For most of what governs common human conduct revolves around simply doing what is necessary to avoid the “other death,” the one that involves simply dropping dead.

Primum vivere. Questions of being are always deferred to later, which does not mean they are absent from the horizon. These are the topological notions that must be recalled because it is otherwise impossible to make sense of the undoubtedly fundamental relationships in our experience and to articulate anything that is not mere circular reasoning and confusion, even under eminent pens.

For instance, when you read that remarkable article by Jones on “Hate, Guilt, and Fear,” which illustrates their circular arrangement—not an absolute circularity, but still—it contains many elements that… I urge you to study it with pen in hand, as, without a doubt, we will address it next year. Much could be illuminated by foregrounding the principles we are attempting to articulate here. Let us revisit these principles at the level of the common human being we deal with and endeavor to see what they entail.

Jones, for example, has sensed—as have many others, though perhaps he expressed it better than most—what can be called the moral alibi. He named it moralisches Entgegenkommen, the complacency of moral demand. He demonstrates, in fact, that very often, in the duties individuals impose upon themselves, there lies only the alibi of fear of the risks they would face if they did not impose those duties. Things must be called by their proper names, after all. Triple-veiled analytic formulations do not alter their essence. In other words, analysis articulates that, fundamentally, it is more convenient to endure the prohibition than to risk castration.

And let us, for a moment, cleanse our minds. What does it mean in Freud—before delving deeply, as they say, into the question (which often serves as a way to avoid it)—what does it mean that the superego emerges at the decline of the Oedipus complex?

Ultimately, this is about the turning point where the subject simply realizes, as everyone knows, that their father is an idiot—or a thief, depending on the case—or simply a poor soul, or usually an old fool, as in FREUD’s case. FREUD’s father was certainly a kindly and decent old man, but like all fathers, he must have inadvertently passed on the tumultuous movements of what are called the antinomies of capitalism. For example, he left Freiberg, where there was nothing more to be done, to settle in Vienna.

Such a thing does not go unnoticed in a child’s mind, even at the age of three. It is precisely because FREUD loved his father that he had to restore stature to him and, ultimately, grant him the size of the giant of the primal horde. But of course, this does not resolve the fundamental questions.

In truth, for OEDIPUS, as I have told you—and this is what proves he is a complete man—he shows us at the same time that this is not the essential question. This is precisely why OEDIPUS does not have an Oedipus complex: in his story, notice it well, there is no father at all.

By this, I mean that the one who served as his father was his adoptive father. And we are all in the same situation, my good friends, because, after all, pater is est quem iustae nuptiae demonstrant—that is, “the father is the one who has acknowledged us.” Fundamentally, we are in the same position as OEDIPUS, even if we do not know it. And as for the father OEDIPUS knew, he is, quite precisely—as FREUD’s myth indicates—only the father once he is dead.

This, as I have pointed out to you countless times, is the function of the father. The only function of the father, in our articulation of being a myth, is precisely—and only—the Name-of-the-Father, which, as FREUD explains in Totem and Taboo, is nothing other than the dead father.

However, for this to be fully developed, the human adventure must at least be sketched out to its conclusion. That is, the zone into which OEDIPUS ventures after gouging out his eyes must be explored. It is always through some beneficial crossing of a boundary that man experiences his desire. And indeed, as others before me have articulated, this is the essence of what JONES describes when he speaks of ἀϕάνιςις (aphanisis), which is fundamentally linked to the major risk of simply not desiring.

OEDIPUS’s desire is the desire to know the ultimate truth about desire. When I tell you that “man’s desire is the desire of the Other,” something resonates in my mind that I believe echoes in Paul ÉLUARD’s phrase le dur désir de durer (“the hard desire to endure”). This hard desire to endure is nothing other than the desire to desire.

For the common man, then, insofar as the mourning of OEDIPUS is at the origin of the superego, the double boundary beyond real death—toward preferred, assumed death, toward Being-for-death—appears only through a veil. This veil is precisely what JONES describes as hatred. It is this ambivalence of love and hatred in which every conscious analytic author places the ultimate reality of the psyche that we address.

The external boundary that holds man in the service of goods is primum vivere (the need to live). It is indeed fear, as we are told. But you see how superficial its influence is. It is between the two boundaries, in the intermediate zone, that the common man’s guilt operates—a reflection of this hatred for the Creator, for man is inherently creationist, whatever Creator that may be, who made him such a weak and insufficient creature.

Of course, this nonsense means nothing to the hero. For the hero—such as OEDIPUS, who has truly ventured into this zone—it is different. For OEDIPUS, who goes as far as the μὴϕῦναι (me phunai) of true Being-for-death, this marriage with annihilation becomes the ultimate goal of his wish, of this willingly embraced curse of μὴϕῦναι. Here, there is nothing but the true and invisible disappearance that is his own. Entering this zone signifies his renunciation of goods and power, constituting a punishment that is not a punishment. The act of tearing himself away from the world—symbolized by the act of blinding himself—is the only act, as the ancients knew, that escapes appearances and can lead to truth.

Great HOMER is blind, as is TIRÉSIAS. It is between these two figures that OEDIPUS’s absolute reign over his desire plays out. This is sufficiently emphasized by the fact that he is shown, up to the end, as irreducible, demanding everything, having renounced nothing, and remaining absolutely unreconciled.

This topology—tragic in this instance—I have shown you its underside and its derision because it is illusory. Poor LEAR understands none of it. Entering this same region with benevolent intent and universal agreement, LEAR shakes the ocean and the world, only to appear to us as having understood nothing, holding in his arms the dead object of his love, of course unrecognized by him.

These are the terms around which this region is defined, enabling us to establish boundaries that finally allow us to shed light on a number of enigmas and problems posed by our own theory and experience, particularly the following: the internalization of the Law—which we often simply state—has nothing to do with the Law.

It is necessary, however, to explain why. It is possible that the superego serves as a support for moral conscience, but everyone knows well that the superego has nothing to do with moral conscience regarding its most binding demands. What it demands has nothing to do with what we would be justified in making the universal rule of our action. This is truly the ABC of analytic truth. But merely observing it is not enough; we must account for it. I believe the framework I am proposing is capable of doing so and that if you adhere to it firmly, it will provide you with a way not to lose yourself in this labyrinth.

This is what I wanted to convey to you today. Next time, I will focus on something that will ultimately pave the way toward which all of this is directed—namely, a more secure grasp of what can be considered katharsis (κάθαρσις) and the consequences of this relationship between man and desire.