🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I left you last time with a dream. This dream, extremely simple, at least in appearance.
I told you that we would work on it, or about it, to articulate the specific meaning we attribute here to the term “the desire of the dream” and the meaning of what constitutes an interpretation. We will revisit this.

I believe that, on a theoretical level, it also has its price and its value.

Lately, I have been diving back, after countless readings, into this Science of Dreams, of which I mentioned that it would be the first text we examine this year concerning desire and its interpretation. And I must admit that, to a certain extent, I found myself indulging in a reproach—that this book, and it’s well-known—is one whose intricacies are poorly understood in the analytic community.

I would say that this reproach—like all reproaches, for that matter—has a kind of other side, a side of excuse, because, in truth, it is not enough to have gone through it a hundred or a thousand times to retain it. I think this reflects a phenomenon—this struck me particularly in recent days—that we know well. Essentially, everyone knows how everything concerning the unconscious tends to be forgotten. I mean, for example, it is very evident…

…in a manner that is quite significant and truly utterly inexplicable outside of the Freudian perspective…how much people forget jokes, good stories, what we call witticisms.

You’re in a gathering of friends, and someone makes a witty remark—not even a funny story, just a pun—at the beginning of the gathering or at the end of lunch, and as you move on to coffee, you find yourself thinking:
“What was so funny earlier, said by the person sitting to my right?” And you cannot recall it. It is almost a signature that what is precisely a witticism escapes the unconscious.

When reading or rereading The Science of Dreams, one has the impression of a book, I would say, magical—if the word “magical” did not unfortunately lend itself in our vocabulary to so much ambiguity, even error. One truly wanders through The Science of Dreams as though it were the book of the unconscious, and this is why it is so difficult—because this text is so intricately constructed—to hold it together coherently.

I believe that if there is a phenomenon here worth noting, particularly so, it is that it is compounded by the truly almost insane distortions of the French translation, which, honestly, the more I delve into it, the more I find that the gross inaccuracies are difficult to excuse.

Some of you ask me for clarifications, and I immediately refer back to the texts: in Part IV, The Dream-Work, there is a chapter titled Considerations of the Dream’s Representation, the French translation of whose first page is more than a web of inaccuracies and has no relation to the German text. This confuses and misleads. I won’t dwell on this further. Evidently, all of this does not make The Science of Dreams particularly accessible to French readers.

Returning to the dream we began deciphering last time, which perhaps did not seem very straightforward to you, though at least intelligible—I hope—to truly grasp what is at stake, to articulate it based on our graph, we will begin with a few observations.

The question is whether a dream interests us—in the sense that it interests FREUD—in the sense of desire realization.
Here, desire and its interpretation mean, first and foremost, the role of desire in the dream, insofar as the dream constitutes its realization.

How will we articulate this?
I will begin by introducing another dream—a foundational one that I have previously shared with you—whose exemplary value you will see. It is not particularly well-known and must be sought out in some obscure corner.

There is a dream which, I believe, none of you are unaware of; it appears at the beginning of Chapter III, titled The Dream as a Wish-Fulfillment. This chapter concerns children’s dreams, presented as what I would call the primary state of desire in dreams. The dream in question has been there since the first edition of The Interpretation of Dreams and is introduced, as FREUD tells us, at the beginning of its presentation to his readers at the time, as “the question of the dream.”

We must also consider the aspect of exposition, the unfolding present in The Interpretation of Dreams. This explains many things, particularly that concepts can initially be presented in a somewhat broad manner, allowing for a degree of approximation. If one does not examine this passage attentively, one may focus solely on its emphasis on the direct, undeformed nature of the dream—Entstellung referring to the general form that makes the dream appear profoundly altered in terms of its deeper content, its thought content. In the case of children, however, it is said to be simple: desire proceeds directly, in the most straightforward manner, toward what it wishes for. FREUD gives us several examples of this, and the first is worth noting because it encapsulates the principle.

“My youngest daughter—this is Anna FREUD—who at the time was nineteen months old, experienced a bout of vomiting one morning and was put on a strict diet. During the night that followed this day of famine, she was heard calling out in her dream:
– Anna F.eud, Er(d)beer (the child’s pronunciation of the word for ‘strawberries’),
– Hochbeer (another term for strawberries),
– Eier(s)peis (which roughly corresponds to custard or flan), and finally:
– Papp (porridge)!”

And FREUD tells us:

“She used her own name to express her possession of these items, and the enumeration of all these prestigious—or, to her, desirable—dishes reflects a food worthy of her longing. The appearance of strawberries in two forms, Erdbeer and Hochbeer…I have not been able to locate the exact meaning of Hochbeer, though FREUD comments on the presence of two varieties…serves as a protest, a response to the household’s sanitary regime, based on the observation—shrewdly noted by her—that the nurse had attributed her earlier indisposition to a slight overindulgence in strawberries. This unwelcome remark provoked her immediate revenge, expressed in the dream.”

I will set aside the dream of her nephew Hermann, which presents other issues. However, I will readily mention a small note that does not appear in the first edition because it was developed later in discussions (in school reports, so to speak) to which FERENCZI contributed by introducing a proverb as an illustrative aid:

“The pig dreams of acorns; the goose dreams of corn.”

And in the text, FREUD also references another proverb—one I believe he does not borrow entirely from the German context, given the form corn takes there:

“What does the goose dream of? Corn.”

And finally, the Jewish proverb:

“What does the hen dream of? Millet.”

Let us pause here. We will even begin with a brief parenthesis, for ultimately, it is at this level that we must address the problem I mentioned last evening concerning GRANOFF’s communication on the essential issue: the distinction between the directive of pleasure and the directive of desire.

Let us revisit the directive of pleasure, and, once and for all, let us clarify this point as succinctly as possible. This has, of course, the closest relevance to the questions raised regarding the function I attribute—in what FREUD calls “the primary process”—to Vorstellung (representation), to put it simply. This is but a detour.

It is essential to understand this: in addressing the problem of Vorstellung’s function within the pleasure principle, FREUD cuts to the core. Essentially, we could say that he requires an element to reconstruct what he discerned through his intuition. Indeed, it must be acknowledged that it is the hallmark of genius intuition to introduce into thought something that had hitherto been entirely unrecognized: the distinction between the primary process as something separate from the secondary process.

Without this, we would not grasp its originality at all. One might be tempted to think of it as something akin to the notion of an anterior moment. However, this would miss the profound nature of FREUD’s insight.

In their synthesis, in their composition, these elements have absolutely no direct connection. The primary process signifies the presence of desire, but not just any desire—desire as it appears in its most fragmented form. The perceptual element involved is precisely what FREUD explains to us to clarify its nature.

Recall the early schematics FREUD provides to illustrate what happens when the primary process alone is at play. The primary process, when operating by itself, leads to hallucination, and this hallucination occurs through a process of regression, which FREUD specifically identifies as topical regression.

FREUD created several schematics to explain what drives and structures the primary process, but they all share one common foundation: they are based on the reflex arc pathway:

• Afferent pathways: the input of something called sensation.
• Efferent pathways: the output of something called motility.

In these schematics, perception—somewhat controversially—is depicted as something accumulating somewhere on the sensory side, at the influx of excitations from external stimuli. Originating from this point, various other processes are assumed to unfold. Specifically, it is here that FREUD inserts the successive layers—from the unconscious, through the preconscious, and so on—culminating in something that either passes through to motility or does not.

Let us carefully consider what happens each time FREUD describes the primary process. A regressive movement occurs. It is always when the outlet to motility for the excitation is blocked for some reason that a regressive phenomenon takes place, and it is here that a Vorstellung (representation) appears—something that provides the excitation in question with a hallucinatory satisfaction, strictly speaking.

This is the innovation FREUD introduces. This is particularly significant when we think about the quality of articulation in these schematics. These are schematics provided for their functional value—that is, to establish, as FREUD explicitly states, a sequence or chain, one which he emphasizes is more important to consider as a temporal sequence than as a spatial one.

This sequence derives its value, I would say, from its insertion into a circuit. If I were to summarize what FREUD describes as the result of the primary process, it is that something, as it were, lights up along this circuit. This is not a metaphor but a direct description of what FREUD derives from his explanation. It demonstrates how, on a homeostatic circuit, the notion of reflexivity is implicitly embedded, allowing us to distinguish this series of relays. The occurrence of something at the level of one of these relays—something that takes on a terminal effect under certain conditions—is akin to what we observe in any machine equipped with a series of indicator lights. In such a machine, the activation of one of these lights signifies not the phenomenon of light itself, but rather a particular tension or condition at a specific point in the overall circuit.

Let us be clear: this process does not adhere to the principle of need. No need is satisfied by hallucinatory satisfaction. For a need to be satisfied, the intervention of the secondary process is required. In fact, multiple secondary processes may be involved, as these processes—true to their name—operate in accordance with the reality principle and derive their outcomes exclusively from reality.

If secondary processes occur, it is only because primary processes have preceded them. However, this distinction renders the concept of instinct, in any conceivable form, utterly untenable. Instinct is effectively dissolved, for if we examine what modern research into instinct—especially the most sophisticated and intelligent studies—aims to explain, what do we find?

The goal is to account for how a structure that is not purely preformed—this is no longer the view of instinct as held by figures like M. FABRE—functions as a structure that generates and sustains its own chain of actions. These structures map out, in reality, pathways toward objects not yet encountered.

This is the problem of instinct. It is explained to us as involving an appetitive stage and a phase of behavior and search. The animal, at one of these stages, enters a certain state, where its motility manifests as activity directed in various ways.

At the second stage, in the second phase, there is a stage of specialized triggering. But even if this specialized triggering ultimately leads to behavior that deceives them—if, for instance, they seize a few colored scraps of cloth—it remains that these scraps have been detected in reality. What I want to emphasize here is that hallucinatory behavior differs in the most radical way from self-guided behavior derived from regressive investment, something that could be described as the activation of a lamp within the conductive circuits.

This process might, in extreme cases, illuminate an already familiar object—if that object happens to be present. However, it in no way reveals the path to it, and certainly not—if it were to reveal it—even when the object is absent, as occurs in the hallucinatory phenomenon. At best, this mechanism may initiate a search process, which is precisely what happens.

FREUD articulates this dynamic starting from the secondary process, which essentially fulfills the role of instinctual behavior. Yet it differs entirely in another respect, as this secondary process, due to the existence of the primary process, becomes—FREUD articulates this! I am merely reiterating FREUD’s reasoning—a behavior of testing reality. This reality-testing behavior is first organized as the effect of a “lamp” on the circuit. FREUD explicitly uses the term “judgment” when explaining the matter at this level.

Ultimately, according to FREUD, human reality is constructed against a background of prior hallucination, which constitutes the illusory universe of pleasure in its essence. This entire process is openly acknowledged—not betrayed, not even concealed—and clearly articulated in the terminology FREUD uses whenever he explains the sequence of impressions into which the term breaks down.

In The Interpretation of Dreams, when discussing the workings of the psychic apparatus, FREUD illustrates this sequence of layers where impressions are inscribed—not merely impressed but inscribed. He uses terms such as niederschreiben (“writing down”), which appear consistently in his texts, including this one and others, and which refer to the succession of layers where impressions are regulated.

He articulates these impressions differently depending on the phases of his thought:

• In a primary layer, for instance, impressions may be related through simultaneity.
• In others, they are stacked one upon the other.
• In yet others, they are organized sequentially.

These “impressions,” through various relationships, form a schema of successive inscriptions—Niederschriften—layered atop one another, in a manner that cannot easily be translated. It is as if these processes must be conceived in a typographic space, encompassing everything that transpires originally before reaching another form of articulation—specifically, that of the preconscious, and more precisely, the unconscious.

This genuine topology of signifiers—one cannot escape this notion when following FREUD’s articulation—is the central concern. In “Letter 52” to FLIESS, FREUD is necessarily led to posit, at the origin, a kind of ideal that cannot be equated with a simple Wahrnehmung (perception or apprehension of truth). If we translate it literally, this topology of signifiers leads to begreifen—a term FREUD frequently uses—which means grasping reality.

This grasping does not occur through an eliminative or selective sorting process akin to what has been proposed in instinct theories as the initial approximate behavior guiding an organism toward successful instinctual action.

Instead, it involves a kind of genuine critique—a recursive critique—of the signifiers invoked within the primary process. This critique, like all critiques, does not eliminate what precedes it but complicates it. It complicates it by imbuing it with what? Indications of reality, which themselves belong to the order of the signifier. There is absolutely no way to avoid emphasizing this point, which I articulate as FREUD’s conception and presentation of the primary process.

If you refer to any of FREUD’s texts, you will find that at different stages of his doctrine, he articulated and repeated this point whenever addressing this issue. This applies to The Interpretation of Dreams, to Introduction to The Science of Dreams, and later to the works in which he introduced the second mode of exposition of his topography, specifically the articles surrounding The Ego and the Id (1923) and Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920).

Allow me for a moment to use imagery, playing with etymologies, to illustrate what this “grasping of truth” (prise de vrai) means—a process that would lead a kind of ideal subject to reality, through alternatives by which the subject induces reality into its propositions (Vorstellungen). Here, I break this term down in articulation: these Vorstellungen possess a meaningful organization.

If we were to discuss this in terms other than Freudian ones—in Pavlovian terms—we might say that they belong, from the outset, not to a primary system of meanings, not to something connected to the drive of need, but rather to a secondary system of meanings.

They resemble something like the activation of a lamp in a slot machine when the ball falls into the correct slot. The sign that the ball has indeed fallen into the correct slot—FREUD articulates this as “the correct slot”—means the same slot into which the ball fell previously.

The primary process does not aim at the search for a new object but rather the rediscovery of a familiar one. This is achieved via a Vorstellung re-evoked because it corresponds to a prior pathway, while the activation of the lamp signals a reward. This, without doubt, is what constitutes the pleasure principle.

However, for this reward to be redeemed, there must be a reserve of coins in the machine. This reserve of coins corresponds, in this instance, to the secondary system of processes known as secondary processes. In other words, the activation of the lamp is satisfying only within the total framework of the machine, insofar as this machine belongs to the player, starting from the moment they play.

From here, let us return to Anna’s dream. This dream of Anna’s is presented to us as the dream of the nakedness of desire. It seems entirely impossible, in revealing this nakedness, to evade or omit the very mechanism by which this nakedness is revealed. In other words, the mode of this revelation cannot be separated from the nakedness itself. I have the impression that this so-called naked dream is known to us in this instance only through hearsay.

And when I say “hearsay,” I do not mean what some have accused me of implying—that we only ever know that someone dreams because they tell us about it, and that everything concerning dreams should, therefore, be framed within the parentheses of their narration.

It is certainly not insignificant that FREUD places so much importance on the Niederschrift (the written residue of the dream), but it is clear that this Niederschrift relates to an experience that the subject reports to us. It is important to recognize that FREUD is far from entertaining, even momentarily, the obvious objections that arise from the fact that:

• A spoken account is one thing,
• And a lived experience is another.

It is from this starting point that we can connect the observation that FREUD dismisses such objections so vigorously, and even explicitly bases his entire analysis on this dismissal—going so far as to recommend it as a technique of Niederschrift, of the written account of the dream. This shows us precisely what FREUD thinks of this lived experience: that it is better approached in this way. For, of course, he did not attempt to articulate it; it is already structured as a series of Niederschriften, in a kind of palimpsest. If we could imagine a palimpsest where the various superimposed texts had some kind of relationship—though it remains to be determined what kind—among themselves, this would be the case.

But if you were to seek what this relationship might be, you would find it more likely to reside in the form of the letters than in the meaning of the text. I am not asserting this definitively. What I am saying is that, in this instance, what we know about the dream is precisely what we know of it now, as it occurs as an articulated dream. In other words, the degree of certainty we have about this dream is tied to the fact that we would be just as certain about what pigs and geese dream if they were to recount their dreams to us themselves.

But in this original example, we have more. That is to say, the dream recorded by FREUD has exemplary value because it is articulated aloud during sleep. This leaves no ambiguity regarding the presence of the signifier in its current textual form. There is no room for doubt about whether speech might add extraneous information to the dream.

We know that Anna FREUD dreams because she articulates: “Anna F.eud, Er(d)beer, Hochbeer, Eier(s)peis, Papp!”

The images of the dream, about which we know nothing in this instance, here find an affix—if I may borrow a term from complex number theory—a symbolic affix in these words, where we see, in a sense, the signifier presented in a “flocculated” state, that is, in a series of nominations. This nomination constitutes a sequence whose selection is not incidental.

As FREUD tells us, this choice is precisely of everything that was forbidden to her—inter-dit—everything for which she was told, “No! You must not have that.” This common denominator introduces a unity within their diversity, and one cannot help but notice that, inversely, this diversity reinforces and even designates that unity.

In essence, this unity, represented by the series, stands in stark opposition to the electivity of need satisfaction, as illustrated by the proverbial desires attributed to the pig and the goose. Desire, moreover—consider what effect it would have if, instead of saying in the proverb, “The pig dreams of sweet corn,” we were to provide an enumeration of everything the pig might be supposed to dream of. You would see that it creates an entirely different impression.

Even if one were to argue that only the pig’s or the goose’s insufficient education of the glottis prevents them from telling us just as much as Anna FREUD does, and even if one were to claim that we might compensate for this lack by perceiving equivalent articulations—detectable, say, in the trembling of their jaws—this would still not lead to the possibility of the following occurrence: namely, that these animals would name themselves as Anna FREUD does in her sequence.

And even if we were to assume that the pig calls itself “Toto” and the goose “Bel Azor,” if something of this nature were to occur, it would become apparent that they would name themselves in a language that, in this case, would clearly—and just as obviously as in humans, though less apparent in humans—have nothing to do with satisfying their needs. This is because the name they use would derive from the context of the barnyard—that is, from the needs of humans, not their own.

In other words, we wish to emphasize, as we mentioned earlier, that:

1. Anna FREUD articulates. There is a mechanism of motility at work, and indeed it is not absent from this dream. It is through this that we know the dream.

But the dream also reveals, through the meaningful structuring of its sequence, that:

2. We must focus on the fact that within this sequence, there is literally a message at its head, as you might see illustrated in the way communication occurs within one of those complex machines of the modern era—for example, from the cockpit to the tail of an airplane. When one phones from one cabin to another, what is the first thing one does? One announces oneself; one identifies the speaker. Anna FREUD, at nineteen months old, announces herself during her dream. She says, “Anna F.eud,” and then proceeds with her sequence. One might almost expect, after hearing her articulate her dream, that she would conclude by saying, “Over and out!”

We are thus introduced to what I call the clearest, most formal, and most articulated topology of repression, which FREUD emphasizes cannot under any circumstances—if it is the topology of an “other place,” as FREUD was so struck by when reading FECHNER that it seemed like a flash of insight or revelation—be understood as referring to a neurological location. Indeed, FREUD repeatedly underlines—at least twice in The Interpretation of Dreams—when discussing the andere Schauplatz (“another scene”), that it is not about another neurological location. Instead, we say that this “other place” must be sought within the structure of the signifier itself.

What I am attempting to demonstrate here is the structure of the signifier itself, once the subject engages with it. I mean, with the minimal assumptions required by the fact that a subject enters into its framework. I argue that, once the signifier is given and the subject is defined as that which enters into the signifier—nothing more—then things necessarily organize themselves.

From this necessity, a host of consequences emerges from the idea that there exists a topology which can and must be conceived as consisting of two superimposed chains. This is the framework within which we proceed.

At the level of Anna FREUD’s dream, how do things appear? It is true that they present themselves in a problematic and ambiguous manner, allowing FREUD—legitimately, to a certain extent—to distinguish between the dreams of children and those of adults.

Where does the chain of nominations that constitutes Anna FREUD’s dream fall? Is it on the upper chain or the lower chain?

This is a question where you may have noticed that the upper part of the graph represents the chain as dotted, emphasizing the discontinuity of the signifier, while the lower chain of the graph is represented as continuous.

Moreover, I have told you that, naturally, in every process, both chains are involved. At the level where we pose the question, what does the lower chain signify?

The lower chain, at the level of demand, and insofar as I have told you that the subject, as speaking, derives its solidity from the synchronic solidarity of the signifier, it is clear that it is something that participates in the unity of the sentence—this something that has given rise to so much ink being spilled about the function of the “holophrase,” the sentence as a “whole.”

And there is no doubt that the holophrase exists. The holophrase has a name: it is the interjection. If you want an illustration at the level of demand of what the function of the lower chain represents, it is: “Bread!” or “Help!” I am speaking here of universal discourse, not the discourse of the child at the moment. This form of sentence exists; I would even say that in some cases, it takes on a value that is utterly pressing and demanding.

This is what is at stake—the articulation of the sentence, the subject insofar as this need…
which must, of course, pass through the corridors of the signifier…
is expressed in a distorted yet monolithic manner, except that the monolith in question is the subject itself, at this level, which constitutes it.

What happens in the other line, however, is entirely different. What can be said about it is not easy to express, and for good reason: it is precisely what underpins what occurs in the first line, the lower one.

But certainly, what we observe is that even in something presented to us as primitive as this child’s dream—the dream of Anna FREUD—there is something that shows us that, here, the subject is not simply constituted in and by the sentence. For instance, when an individual, or a crowd, or a riot shouts, “Bread!” we know very well that the entire weight of the message lies on the emitter.

That is to say, the emitter is the dominant element, and we even know that this cry alone suffices, in the forms I have just evoked, to constitute the emitter—even if it comes from a hundred mouths, a thousand mouths—as a subject that is entirely singular. There is no need for the subject to announce itself; the sentence announces it well enough.

Yet, we find ourselves facing this: the human subject, when it operates with language, counts itself, and this is so much its primitive position that I wonder if you recall a particular test by Mr. BINET. This test highlights the difficulty the subject has in crossing a developmental threshold, which I find far more suggestive than any stage proposed by Mr. PIAGET. This stage—which I won’t elaborate on because I do not wish to digress—is marked by the subject’s realization that something is amiss in the sentence: “I have three brothers: Paul, Ernest, and me.”

Until a relatively advanced stage, this sentence seems perfectly natural to the subject, for an excellent reason: it encapsulates the entirety of the human subject’s implication in the act of speech. The subject counts itself within it, names itself, and consequently, this is the most natural, coordinated expression—if I may put it that way.

Simply put, the child has not yet discovered the correct formula, which would obviously be:
“We are three brothers: Paul, Ernest, and me.”

However, this does not mean we can accuse the subject of failing to grasp the ambiguities of the functions of being and having. It is clear that a step must be taken for the distinction between the “I” as the subject of the statement and the “I” as the subject of enunciation to be made, as this is precisely what is at stake.

What is articulated on the first line when we take the next step is the process of the statement. In our earlier example, the dream contained the phrase “He is dead.” When you announce something like this—which, I should point out in passing, already implies the entire novelty of the dimension that speech introduces into the world—it is significant to note that to say “He is dead” can only be done in the realm of speech. Outside of the framework of speaking, the phrase “He is dead” is completely meaningless.

“He is dead” implies “He is no more,” and thus he cannot say it himself—he is no longer there. To say “He is dead” requires that the subject already be supported by language. However, this recognition is not something anyone is asked to consciously notice. What matters instead is the recognition that the act of enunciation, “He is dead,” requires within discourse various markers distinct from those derived from the content of the statement itself.

If this were not self-evident, all grammar would dissolve. What I am drawing your attention to here is the necessity of using the future perfect tense, insofar as it involves two temporal markers. One marker concerns the act in question: “At such a time, I will have become his husband.” For example, this involves situating the transformation through marriage within the statement. But on the other hand, because you are expressing it in the future perfect, it is marked from the current point of enunciation—the act of speaking—which serves as your reference point.

There are therefore two subjects, two “I”s, and the step the child must take in BINET’s test—namely, distinguishing between these two “I”s—seems to me to have literally nothing to do with PIAGET’s concept of “reduction to reciprocity,” which he posits as central to the understanding of personal pronouns.

Let us set this aside for now. Where does that leave us? It brings us to the apprehension of these two lines as representing:

• One relates to the process of enunciation,
• The other to the process of the statement.

The fact that there are two lines does not mean that each represents a separate function. Instead, this duality is something we must always encounter when dealing with the functions of language. Moreover, not only are there always two, but they will also always have opposing structures: discontinuous in one case when the other is continuous, and vice versa. Where, then, does Anna FREUD’s articulation fall?

The purpose of this topology is not for me to give you an answer outright—to declare, “Here it is,” because that suits me, or even because I can see a bit further ahead since I devised this framework and know where I am going. The purpose is to ensure the question arises.

The question arises concerning what this articulation represents in this context, which is the aspect under which the reality of Anna FREUD’s dream presents itself to us. This is the child who was quite capable of perceiving the meaning of her nurse’s phrase…

True or false, FREUD implies it and supposes it, and rightly so, as a nineteen-month-old child can certainly understand that her nurse is about to “make her miserable”…

…and this articulation appears in the form I have called flocculated:

• This succession of signifiers in a specific order,
• This arrangement, taking shape from its stacking or layering, as if in a column, substituting one for another,
• These elements, each serving as a metaphor for the other.

What must be brought to light here is the reality of satisfaction as inter-dite (forbidden), and we will go no further with Anna FREUD’s dream. Nevertheless, we will take the next step.

Once we have begun to sufficiently unravel this matter, we can now ask, since we are dealing with the topology of repression, how we might use what we are starting to articulate in the case of adult dreams. Specifically, we ask: what is the fundamental difference between:

• A certain form of desire evident in a child’s dream, as in this case, and
• A more complex form, which assuredly causes much greater difficulty, at least in its interpretation, as seen in the dreams of adults.

On this matter, FREUD leaves no ambiguity. There is no difficulty here: one has only to read. The use and function of what intervenes is within the realm of censorship. Censorship operates in precisely the manner I have illustrated in my previous seminars. Do you recall the famous story that amused us so much, the one about:

“If the King of England is an idiot, then anything is allowed.”

This, as uttered by the typist caught up in the Irish Revolution. However, that was not the focus of the discussion. I had provided another explanation: the example FREUD gives to explain punishment dreams. Specifically, we posited the law:

“Anyone who says that the King of England is an idiot shall be beheaded.”

And I imagined: the following night, I dream that I have been beheaded! FREUD also articulates simpler forms of this mechanism. And since I have recently been introduced to Tintin, I will borrow an example from him.

I have a way of bypassing censorship when it comes to my Tintinesque qualities. I can openly articulate:

“Anyone who says in my presence that General Tapioca is no better than General Alcazar will have to answer to me.”

It is clear that if I make such a declaration, neither the supporters of General Tapioca nor those of General Alcazar will be satisfied. Moreover, what is even more surprising is that the least satisfied will likely be those who support both generals.

This is precisely what FREUD explains in the clearest terms: that the nature of what is spoken puts us before a very peculiar difficulty, which simultaneously opens up unique possibilities. What is at issue here is simply this: the child is confronted with the inter-dite, the “spoken no.”

All of education, regardless of the principles of censorship, forms this “spoken no,” for it is concerned with operations involving the signifier, turning the undiscussable into something that can be articulated. This also presupposes that the subject realizes that the “spoken no,” whether or not it is carried out, remains spoken. Hence, “not saying it” is distinct from “obeying the command not to do it”—in other words, the truth of desire in itself becomes an offense against the authority of the law.

The resolution to this new drama is to censor the truth of desire. But this censorship cannot, in any form it takes, be sustained by mere prohibition, because it targets the process of enunciation. To suppress it, some pre-knowledge of the process of the statement is necessary. Yet any discourse intended to banish such statements from the process of the statement inevitably finds itself at odds with its own aims.

This impossibility, which at this level provides us with a fundamental matrix—and there are many others to explore—appears clearly in our graph. The subject, by articulating their demand, becomes embedded in a discourse that simultaneously constructs them as the agent of enunciation. For this reason, they cannot renounce the statement without erasing themselves as a subject, knowing what is at stake.

The relationship between the two lines—the process of enunciation and the process of the statement—is simple: it is all of grammar! A rational grammar articulated in these terms. If it amuses you, I can later explain where and how, with specific terms and diagrams, this has been formulated. For now, however, we must address the fact that when repression is introduced, it becomes absolutely necessary for the subject to disappear and vanish at the level of the process of enunciation.

How, by what empirical paths, does the subject access this possibility? It is entirely impossible to articulate unless we first understand the nature of the process of enunciation.

As I have told you: all speech originates from the point of intersection we have designated as point A, meaning that all speech, insofar as the subject is implicated in it, is the discourse of the Other. This is precisely why the child initially has no doubt that all their thoughts are known. This is because the definition of thought is not, as psychologists have claimed, something akin to an initiated act.

Thought is, first and foremost, something that participates in this dimension of the unsaid, which I have just introduced through the distinction between the process of enunciation and the process of the statement. Yet this unsaid persists, of course, because for it to be unsaid, it must be spoken, at the level of the process of enunciation—in other words, as the discourse of the Other. This is why the child does not doubt for a moment that those who represent for them the locus of this discourse—namely, their parents—know all their thoughts.

This, at any rate, is their initial assumption. It is an assumption that will persist until something new is introduced, which we have not yet articulated here, concerning the relationship between the upper and lower lines, specifically what keeps them, beyond grammar, at a certain distance.

Grammar, as I need not remind you, maintains this distance. Phrases such as:

• “I do not know if he is dead.”
• “He is not dead, as far as I know.”
• “I did not know he was dead.”
• “It is the fear that he might be dead.”

All these subtle taxemes—ranging from the subjunctive to the “ne” that Mr. Le Bidois calls (quite astonishingly for a philologist writing in Le Monde) the “ne of pure supposition”—are designed to demonstrate that a significant part of grammar, the essential part, the taxemes, are structured to preserve the necessary distance between these two lines.

In the next session, I will project the articulations in question onto these two lines. For now, it is clear that, for the subject who has not yet learned these subtle forms, the distinction between the two lines is established much earlier. Certain conditions must be met, and these conditions form the foundation of the inquiry I bring to you today.

This distinction is fundamentally linked—every time, of course, we encounter something that is not a temporal marker but a tension marker. That is, it pertains to a temporal difference between these two lines. You can see the relationship between this distinction and the situation, and the topology of desire.

At this stage, the child is, for a time, entirely caught up in the interplay of these two lines. For repression to occur, what is required here? I would say that I hesitate before venturing into an explanation that might seem, as it indeed is, concessive.

That is to say, I hesitate to rely on notions of development strictly speaking—that everything involved in this empirical process is subject to an intervention, an empirical incident, which is undoubtedly necessary. However, the necessity in which this empirical incident, this empirical accident, resonates and takes shape is of an entirely different nature.

In any case, the child eventually realizes that these adults, who are presumed to know all their thoughts, in fact do not know them. And it is here that the child does not take the next step. In some sense, they may later reproduce the fundamental possibility of what we might briefly and broadly call the “mental” form of hallucination. It is at this point that the primitive structure of what we call the background of the process of enunciation emerges, alongside the ordinary statement of existence, which manifests as the echo of actions and the echo of expressed thoughts.

The realization of a Verwerfung—
which is a rejection of what?—of what I am about to discuss now—
has not yet occurred. And what is this realization? It is the child’s recognition that this adult, presumed to know all their thoughts, actually knows none of them. Whether it concerns the dream’s assertion of “He knows” or “He doesn’t know that he is dead,” the adult does not know.

Next time, we will explore the exemplary significance of this relationship. For now, we do not need to reconcile these two terms because we are not yet far enough along in articulating what repression targets.

But the fundamental possibility of what can only be the ultimate outcome of successful repression is this: not merely that the unsaid is marked by a “no” indicating that it remains unsaid while still being said, but rather that the unsaid becomes something entirely different. Without doubt, this negation is such a primordial form that there is no question that FREUD places Verneinung—though it seems one of the most sophisticated forms of repression—immediately after the primitive Bejahung (affirmation).

We observe this in subjects with highly developed psychological complexity, yet FREUD situates Verneinung right after Bejahung.

So, as I am explaining to you, this proceeds through a possibility, through a genesis, and even through a logical deduction—as I am doing here before you—and not through a genetic process.

This primitive Verneinung (negation) is what I am discussing in relation to the unsaid. But “he does not know” represents the next step. It is precisely through this “he does not know” that the Other—the locus of my speech, the dwelling place of my thoughts—makes possible the introduction of the Unbewusste (the unconscious), into which the content of repression enters for the subject.

Do not ask me to go further or faster than I am proceeding. If I tell you that it is by mirroring this Other that the subject inaugurates the process of repression within themselves, I am not saying that this is an easy example to follow. First of all, I have already indicated that there is more than one mode involved, as I have introduced the concept of Verwerfung (foreclosure) and have brought up once again—as I will further articulate next time—the concept of Verneinung.

Verdrängung (repression) cannot be something that is so easily applied. At its core, what it involves is the subject erasing themselves, and it is quite clear that this is something remarkably straightforward to demonstrate in this context—that adults, the Others, know nothing.

Of course, the subject entering existence does not realize that if adults know nothing, as everyone knows, it is because they have gone through all kinds of adventures—specifically, the adventures of repression.

The subject is unaware of this, and in attempting to imitate them, the task is by no means simple. For a subject to make themselves disappear as a subject is a sleight of hand far more advanced than many others I have discussed with you here. Nevertheless, it is essential and beyond any doubt that if we are to rearticulate the three modes by which the subject may proceed, we categorize them as: Verwerfung, Verneinung, and Verdrängung.

In the case of Verdrängung, the operation consists of striking, in a way that is at least possible—if not permanent—at what is to be made to disappear from the unsaid. The subject operates via the path of the signifier.

It is upon the signifier, as such, that this operation acts. This is why the dream I discussed last time—around which we continue to circle here, even though I have not fully revisited it in today’s seminar, the dream of the dead father—is relevant. FREUD articulates in this context that repression essentially involves the manipulation, the elision of two clauses, namely:

• “nach seinem Wunsch” (according to his wish), and after “he did not know” that it was “according to his wish” that things occurred as they did.

Repression, at its root, as FREUD presents it, cannot be articulated in any other way than as something that acts upon the signifier.

I have not made significant progress with you today, but it is an incremental step. It is a step that will allow us to examine the level of the type of signifier upon which the operation of repression acts.

Not all signifiers are equally susceptible, repressible, or fragile. The fact that this operation targeted what I have called two clauses is of critical importance. It is all the more essential because it positions us to identify what is truly at stake when we speak first of the desire within the dream, and subsequently of desire in general.