🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

The Dream of Ella SHARPE(3)

This inquiry, this exercise of ours, aims to demonstrate how…
in the way we already use, practically, in our experience, the notion of desire…
we unknowingly presuppose a certain number of relationships, coordinates that I am attempting to delineate for you, showing you that they are always the same. Recognizing them is therefore beneficial, for failing to do so, thought always shifts slightly to the right, slightly to the left, clinging to poorly defined coordinates—and this is not always without consequences for the conduct of interpretation. Today, I will continue analyzing the dream I selected from Ella SHARPE’s work, precisely because it is exceptionally well elucidated.

And we will view things from this dual perspective: how, in what she says…
and in what she articulates most acutely, most subtly, and most remarkably in this observation of the session where the dream is analyzed and the two sessions that follow…
the most remarkable aspect is how it fits so seamlessly into the categories whose usage I am trying to teach you, allowing us to fully appreciate these elements. However, by failing to distinguish the originality of these elements, she ultimately:

• Reduces their significance to some extent,
• Diminishes their vividness and distinctiveness,
• Blends and reduces them to cruder, more rudimentary notions, preventing her from fully exploiting what she holds in her grasp.

But already, to establish in your minds something that is intended to take clearer and better shape, I think you are beginning to discern what the double level of the graph signifies. In essence, this trajectory, which loops back on itself, of analytical enunciation, as I might say, “liberated” by the principle, the rule of free association, tends toward what? To highlight, as much as possible, what is embedded in every discourse: a chain of signifiers fragmented from what each person knows, that is, elements that are interpretable.

And these interpretable elements, as fragmented, emerge precisely to the extent that the subject attempts to reclaim their originality, to transcend what demand has solidified and imprisoned of their needs. And insofar as the subject, in the expression of their needs, is initially caught, molded by the necessities intrinsic to demand—which are fundamentally based on the fact that the very form of demand is already altered, alienated by the requirement to think in this form of language—it is already within the register of the Other as such, within the code of the Other, that it must be inscribed.

At this level, the initial gap arises, the primal distance of the subject in relation to something that, in its root, is their need, but which cannot, upon arrival, remain the same. It will only be reclaimed—but conquered beyond demand—through a realization in language, in the form of the speaking subject.

And that something called “what the subject wants” refers to what the subject will constitute themselves as, in a relationship no longer, in some sense, immanent or entirely embedded in their vital participation, but rather as “declaring,” as “being,” and thus in a certain relationship to being.

In this interval, it is between:

• Language that is purely and simply inquisitive,
• And the articulated language where the subject responds to the question of what they want, where the subject constitutes themselves in relation to what they are,

…it is in this interval that something emerges, which is explicitly called desire. And this desire, in the double inscription of the graph, is something…

That there exists a certain homology between this desire…
insofar as it is located somewhere in the upper part of these coordinates…
and the function of the ego insofar as this discourse of the Other takes itself up again, and the appeal to the other for the satisfaction of a need is established in relation to the Other in what I have sometimes called “full speech,” the speech of commitment. In a relationship of this nature, where the subject constitutes themselves in relation to the other, where they say to the other, “You are my master,” “You are my wife,” this relationship engages the ego and situates it in relation to an object to return here in the form of a message.

There is a certain homology between this relationship, where the ego is caught in the discourse of the Other, and the simple fact that someone speaks of me as “me,” of oneself as “oneself.” There is something, articulated in a fragmented manner, that requires a special kind of deciphering in the order of desire.

Just as the ego is constituted in a certain imaginary relationship with the other, so too is desire established and fixed somewhere in the discourse of the Other, midway through this discourse where the subject, throughout their life, tends to fulfill themselves in something where their being declares itself halfway. Desire is a reflection, a return within this effort by which a subject situates themselves somewhere opposite what I describe to you as the fantasy—that is, the relationship of the subject as vanishing, as it fades in a certain relation to an elective object.

– The fantasy always has this structure; it is not simply a relation to an object.
– The fantasy is something that cuts through, a certain vanishing, a certain significant syncope of the subject in the presence of an object.
– The fantasy satisfies a certain accommodation, a certain fixation of the subject, something that holds elective value.

The elective nature of this value is what I have been attempting to demonstrate to you this year using several examples. Already, this opposition of the subject with a certain object is something that, within the fantasy, is implicit, as it forms the preface, the prelude to the dream articulated by the subject.

I believe I have already conveyed this to you last time: the subject arrives and begins to speak of their cough—a message within the message—of their cough, which seems mysteriously designed to warn, before entering a room where two others might be, two others who might be engaged in loving one another, to warn them that it is time to separate.

On the other hand, in associations, we see that this cough is something very close to a fantasy that the subject immediately provides: namely, that in a past fantasy, they imagined that, being somewhere… and not wanting to be found there because they should not have been there… they might bark like a dog, and everyone would think, “Ah, it’s just a dog!”

The barking reveals itself as the signal by which the subject profoundly absents themselves from where they are, signaling themselves as being other. The correlation of the cough with this scenario—where a couple of others are involved, within which a third association shows us that the subject is also included—is significant. For this dog they imagined barking to become other than they are now appears in a third memory of something real. The subject tells us that this dog is one that came to masturbate against their leg, and wonders what would have happened had they been caught together.

In short, we see something structural emerge, which is essential.

When the two individuals, within a certain enclosure, are there facing each other in a properly imaginary relationship, this situation is sufficiently marked by the fact that the dog masturbates against the subject’s leg… this dog, in the context and even through the fantasy that brings it into focus, is also itself imaginary. It reveals itself to be masturbating, and at the same time, it is not absent from the couple of lovers.

But what is essential is not simply to describe that the identification of the subject, as one might expect, is everywhere. The subject is just as present with the one who is outside, announcing themselves, as they are with the one inside, caught in the relationship of the couple, with all the common imaginary fascination this entails.

The point is this:

– Either the two elements of the imaginary couple, the dual relationship, remain conjoined in the shared fascination—here, in the act, between the embrace, the coupling, and the specular fascination—or they remain conjoined, and the Other must not appear.
– Or the Other shows themselves, and then the others separate and dissolve.

It is the structure that is important to highlight. This is what distorts the issue, because ultimately, what is the subject telling us?

– That they had a “small cough” before entering their analyst’s office, even though it is clear that, if they were let in, it is because there was no one else; the analyst was entirely alone.
– That, besides, “these are not the kind of things,” they say, “that I would allow myself to think about you.” Yet, this is precisely the issue…

The subject, by coughing…
that is to say, on the one hand, performing an act whose meaning they do not themselves understand,
since they question its significance…
…by presenting themselves through this cough—just as the dog, through its barking, presents itself as other than it is—they do not know themselves what this message means, yet they announce themselves through this cough. And in announcing themselves, what do they imagine?
What do they imagine is inside that room such that this cough, which they indicate as an impulse, a compulsion, something irritating because it has overflowed, becomes a signal?

It is the subject themselves who signals this, and I have emphasized in this context how striking it is that Ella SHARPE thought it necessary not to speak of it, that the subject was unaware of it and should not be made aware, even though it is the subject themselves who brings up these questions, saying, “It is a message—I do not know what it means, but it is very clear.”

What do they imagine is inside? What is the object present there while they, standing outside, announce themselves in this alienating manner, through this message they do not understand? This message, linked to the dog’s barking in the associations, demonstrates that it is a way of announcing oneself as other, as someone other than oneself, and that this condition is what manifests.

And I draw your attention, after completing this loop:
– A first pass where the subject initially spoke of their cough as a message,
– Then a second stage in which they took pleasure in imagining themselves as a dog, signaling to us the coupling of themselves with a dog in reality, ambiguously sketching this progression. They move successively through something that reflects their desire and then embodies their fantasy.

…The subject returns after completing this loop. For at this point, the discourse shifts registers.

“At that moment—where my last lesson ended—the subject coughs again,” the analyst tells us.
They perform a “small cough,” as if punctuating. After this “small cough,” they recount the dream, which I have already read aloud.

What I wish to convey to you now is the goal we will pursue—starting from this point and through this dream, regarding this dream.
I have told you that what is manifested in the dream about the relationship of desire to fantasy appears with an emphasis that is the exact opposite of what was expressed in the fantasy brought forth in the associations.
There, the emphasis was on the subject barking. The barking is a message, an announcement.
The subject announces themselves as other, essentially.

This occurs on the plane of a relationship that disguises them, insofar as:
– They bark like a dog,
– They do not understand why they do this,
– They place themselves in the position of either not being there, or, if present, announcing themselves as someone else, and in such a way that the others at that moment—meaning what is to be seen—separate, disappear, and no longer reveal what is there to be shown.

The enigma lies in what the subject imagines. The enigmatic nature is underscored by the fact that, indeed, what could they possibly need to announce, or wish to announce, that compels them to cough at the moment of entering the analyst’s office? What remains veiled is that aspect of the relationship with this object X, which, on this occasion, I will not call their analyst, but rather what is in the room.

In the dream, what will be brought entirely to the forefront is this:
It is an imaginary element—we will see this—that is not just any element.
And, as you might expect, being part of a dream, it is marked by a specific function.

What I have taught you about the dream would have no meaning
if this function were not that of a signifier. We are well aware that the aspect of the relationship with the subject’s fantasy must also hold a complex function, one that is not merely an image but something signifying. Yet this remains veiled and enigmatic to us. We cannot articulate it as such.

All we know is that on the other side of the relationship, the subject has announced themselves:
as other—that is, as a subject marked by the signifier, as a barred subject.

In the dream, this is the image we have. What we do not know is what lies on the other side; namely: What is the subject within this dream? That is to say, what Madame Ella SHARPE will attempt to articulate for them in her interpretation of the dream.

We now take the associations regarding the dream, immediately after the subject made this remark concluding the dream, concerning the use of the verb “to masturbate,” which they had employed in the transitive sense. They noted that it should have been used in the intransitive sense to be correct. They had said, “She was so disappointed that I had the idea to masturbate her,” clearly referring to something else.

The matter might be that the subject masturbates—this is indeed what the analyst thinks, and it is what she immediately suggests by highlighting what the subject themselves just remarked: that the verb should have been used in the intransitive sense.

The subject comments that, in fact, it is exceedingly rare for them to have masturbated anyone. They had done it only once, with another boy. “That is the only time I can remember.”

And they continue:
“The dream is vividly present in my memory. There was no orgasm.
[…] I see the front of her genitalia, the end of the vulva,”
and they describe:
“Something large protruding forward and hanging downward like a fold on a hood. It was exactly like a hood, and it was this that the woman used, maneuvering it […],”
as they had expressed in the dream.
“…The vagina seemed to tighten around my finger. The hood seemed very strange.”

The analyst follows up:
“What else do you think? Let what is in your mind come out.”

The patient responds:
“I think of a lair, a cave. There was something like that—a lair, a cave—on the hillside where I lived as a child. I often went there with my mother. It was visible from the road along which we walked. Its most remarkable feature was that the top was overhanging, and it appeared like a huge lip.”

They associate it with something like “the Cyclops’ grotto” at Capri, whose coast is dotted with similar formations—a cave with a part protruding forward.

They then make a very remarkable association:
“There’s ‘a joke’ about lips—in the genital sense—running transversely rather than longitudinally. But I don’t remember how the joke was structured, some comparison to Chinese writing and its relationship to our own, one running vertically and the other transversely. Of course, the labia are side by side, while the vaginal walls are one anterior, the other posterior—that is, one longitudinal and the other transverse. I’m still thinking about the hood.”

These jokes—which, in English, are part of a kind of cultural heritage—are well-known, generally in the form of limericks. The limerick is something very important and revealing. I will only note it briefly. I searched in a fairly extensive collection of some 3,000 limericks. This particular limerick surely exists; I’ve seen others that are similar. I don’t even know why the theme of China seems to be invoked here.

There was this sort of inversion of the writing line, mentioned whenever something approaches an assimilation—and at the same time, an opposition—of the line of the genital slit with that of the mouth, transverse, and also with what is presumed behind the line of the genital slit: the transverse nature of the vagina.

In other words, all this is extremely ambiguous. The closest example—and one that is amusing because it is unclear why China specifically features in this association—is the following, “limerick 1381” from a book on limericks:

There was a young lady from China
Who mistook for her mouth her vagina.
Her clitoris huge
She covered with rouge
And lipsticked her labia minor.

There was a young woman from China
Who one day mistook her mouth for her vagina.
Her enormous clitoris
She covered with rouge,
And she put lipstick on her labia minora.

Translated, it loses some of its sharpness, but it is quite remarkable that it nonetheless remains something closely tied to the matter at hand. The author underscores that the superposition of two images:
– one being an image of a mouth,
– the other being an image of genitals,
…is highly significant.

What should we take from this? It concerns something over which analytical thought often slides quickly towards imaginary elements—namely, the assimilation of the mouth to the vagina, the mother’s breast considered as the primal element of engulfment or devouring. We have a variety of ethnological, folkloric, and psychological evidence that portrays this primal relationship as one of container to content, representing the child’s relationship to what might be called the maternal image.

Does it not seem that something at this level deserves to be retained—something that resonates with the same tone as the point where I previously stopped you, regarding the large and the small giraffe? It wasn’t merely about the elements of small and large, mother and phallus. Those elements were what Little Hans interpreted. He could sit on them, crumple them; they were symbols. They were, within the fantasy, already things transformed into paper, or we could say rendered with more nuance, open to questioning, and subject to confirmation. But to underscore the issue, it was not insignificant that something imaginary, represented and already remarkably defined, entered through the element in the dream described so precisely as the fold of a hood.

This is not trivial! It is something already structured—a covering, a hood, something to be feared as well. And the finger introduced, “to close round” [“The vagina seemed to close round my finger… p.133]—into this element, along with the associated sweat—offers us a precise image, something not to be drowned in a simplistic general framework of engulfment, devouring, or swallowing.

It is already placed within a specific relationship, precisely with the subject’s finger.
And I would even say the entire question hinges on this: “Does he put his finger there or not?”
It is certain that he does place his finger there, and nothing else—not his penis, which is nonetheless present. This relationship with something that envelops, or gloves, the hand is something entirely prevalent, emphasized, and brought to the fore in the outlet of representability, as Freud calls it in describing the third element at work: the Traumarbeit, the dream-work.

The question is what we should do with this.
Should we immediately resolve it into a series of pre-formed, redeemed meanings—everything we might project onto it and stuff into this kind of “magician’s bag,” filled with familiar elements—or should we pause, respecting it as something of specific value in this context?

You must understand when I say “specific value”…
…for those who have more than merely bookish notions of what a fantasy like this might entail…
…that there is indeed a reason we should not drown this in overly generalized concepts like “the inside of the mother’s belly,” which is so often invoked in fantasies.

Something as elaborately rendered in a dream as this deserves attention. What we have before us is certainly not the inside of a uterus. It is overhanging, this edge that protrudes. Moreover—and Ella Sharpe, being remarkably perceptive, notes this further along in a passage we may later encounter—there is something noteworthy here: “It is a projection,” she says. And immediately following this, she states, “It is the equivalent of a penis.” [“The projection which is equivalent to a penis, p.144]

That is possible, but why rush?

All the more so because she also emphasizes at this point the difficulty of linking this projection to the presence of the vagina.

This is quite accentuated in the dream, and in the very maneuver the subject performs—or substitutes for themselves—by inserting their finger rather than their penis. How can we fail to see:

– That this something is precisely localized within the fantasy, as articulated by the subject, as having the closest connection to the anterior and posterior walls of the vagina?

– That, to put it bluntly, for a physician whose profession is medicine—unlike Ella Sharpe, who was a literature professor, a background that gave her broad insight into psychology—this is a prolapse. It is something occurring in the vaginal wall, involving the protrusion of the anterior wall, often followed by protrusions of the posterior wall, and in a more advanced stage, revealing at the genital orifice the extremity of the cervix.

This is an extremely common occurrence that poses all sorts of problems for the surgeon. But this is not the issue at hand. Of course, there is something here that immediately raises the question and fantasy of the phallic woman.

It is so true that I recalled something for your reference—I couldn’t verify the passage, but it’s a well-known fact, I believe, and probably not new to some of you—about Queen Christina of Sweden, the friend of Descartes. She was a tough woman, like all the women of that era. One cannot overstate the influence of that remarkable mid-17th century on women’s history.

One day, Queen Christina of Sweden herself saw, at the orifice of her vulva, the tip of a uterus which, for reasons unknown to us, at that stage of her life, prolapsed entirely in a most characteristic case of uterine prolapse. At that moment, succumbing to a grandiose flattery, her physician fell to his knees before her, exclaiming, “A miracle! Jupiter has finally restored you to your true sex!”

This proves that the fantasy of the phallic woman has a long history in both medicine and philosophy. However, this is not what appears in the dream, nor should we interpret—as the analyst later notes in the observation—that, for instance, the subject’s mother suffered from prolapse. Although, why not?

In articulating her understanding of what occurred, the analyst suggests that it is very likely the subject saw many things from below, and some of his imaginings suggest that he might have seen such occurrences. To maintain coherence in her interpretation, she posits that there must even be something analogous—namely, a certain perception of the genital organ from underneath, possibly even that of his mother.

Why not pursue this line of thought? Yet this is not the crux of the matter. We are much more justified in following this direction than the analyst herself, as she necessarily relies on this assumption later. For now, we are not there. I simply point out that as soon as references to bodily images come into play, they must be incorporated into the interpretation.

Would it not be more precise to distinguish between the obsession, desire, or fear of returning to the maternal womb and the specific relationship with the vagina, which, after all, is not something that—as evidenced in this simple explanation—the subject could not have some direct or indirect apprehension of?

What I want to emphasize here, after marking the special focus of this dream image, is that, in any case, something should hold our attention. It is the fact that the subject immediately associates it with something of a completely different order—this poetic and verbal game, for which I provided an example not just for amusement but to convey a sense of its extreme literary rigor.

This genre has strict rules—whether a joke or a limerick, it matters little—that are grounded in a clearly defined literary narrative and revolve around a game involving writing.

What we could not retrieve from the limerick we uncovered, the subject claims to have heard: referring to the differing directions of writing lines in Western and Chinese scripts, he evokes something at that moment that does not necessarily fit the association—namely, the connection between the orifice of the labia majora and the lips of the mouth.

Let us assign this comparison, as such, to the symbolic order.
What might carry more symbolic significance are the lines of Chinese characters, as they indicate that this dream element has signifying value. This kind of adaptation, alignment, and accommodation of desire, relative to a fantasy [S◊a] that exists between the signifier of the Other [S(A)] and the signified of the Other [s(A)], is the very definition of the fantasy as the accommodation of desire to it.

What am I saying here if not expressing in more articulated terms what our experience tells us when we seek to center the subject’s desire? It is a certain position of the subject relative to a specific object, which he places somewhere, between:

– A pure and simple meaning [s(A)], something assumed, clear, and transparent to him,
– And something else that is not at all a fantasy, not a need, not a drive, not a feeling, but something that always belongs to the order of the signifier as signifier—something closed, enigmatic [S(A)].

Between these two lies what here appears as an extremely precise, imagistic representation. Through the very associations, the subject warns us: this is what is significant.

What should I do now? Shall I delve into the way the analyst interprets this?
First, I must present all the material we have. What does the analyst say at this point?

The subject returns, after coughing, to the hood:

– “I’m still thinking of the hood.” [p.134]
– “Yes, how now?” the analyst asks.
– “A funny man,” he replies, “at one of my earliest golf courses, I remember. He ran after me and said he could get me a golf bag cheaply, and the material would be the kind used for motor hoods.”

[A funny man at one of the earliest golf courses I remember. He said he could get me a golf bag cheaply, and the material would be “motor hood cloth.”]

Thereupon, he imitates after saying:

– “It’s the accent I remember. Imitating him like this… (speaking of himself)… reminds me of a friend whose radio impersonations (broadcast is the key word here) are extremely clever and witty. But still, telling you something like this is as swanky as saying I have the most marvelous wireless set one could have. It picks up every station without the slightest difficulty. My friend has a splendid memory, he says. She remembers her childhood just as well, but my memory is terribly poor below the age of eleven. However, I do remember one of the earliest songs we heard at the theatre, and she imitated the man afterward.”

[It was the accent I remember. I shall never forget it. (Imitates it.) Imitating him like that reminds me of a friend who broadcasts impersonations which are very clever, but it sounds “swank” to tell you, as swanky as telling you what a marvelous wireless set I have. It picks up all stations with no difficulty. My friend has a splendid memory. She remembers her childhood too, but mine is so bad below eleven years. I do remember, however, one of the earliest songs we heard at the theatre, and she imitated the man afterward. p.134]

It’s a typical English music-hall song that could roughly be translated as: “Where did you fish out that hat, where did you fish out that tile?” The “tile” specifically refers here to what is colloquially called a “topper”: a top hat. It can also mean “hat” or “cap.”

“My mind has returned to the hood again, and I remember a first ‘car’ I rode in at the beginning. But at that time, of course, it wasn’t called a ‘car’ but a ‘motor-car’ (the subject is rather old) […] The hood of this motor-car had very distinctive features. It was strapped back with belts when not folded down. The interior was lined with scarlet.”

[My mind has gone to the hood again and I am remembering the first car I was ever in, but of course, they were called motors then when they were new. […] The hood of this motor was one of its most obvious features. It was strapped back when not in use. The inside of it was lined with scarlet. p.134-135]

And he continues:
“The top speed of that car was about sixty miles per hour […] Strange how one speaks of the life of a ‘car’ as if it were human. I remember being sick in that car, and that reminds me of the time I had to urinate into a paper bag as a child when I was on a train. I am still thinking of the hood.”

[The peak of speed for that car was about sixty. […] Strange how one speaks of the life of a car as if it were human. I remember I was sick in that car, and that reminds me of the time I had to urinate into a paper bag when I was in a railway train as a child. Still, I think of the hood. p.135]

We will stop here with the associations. They don’t go very far yet, but I still want to counterpoint what I present here with how the analyst begins to interpret it.

– “The first thing of importance is to find the cardinal clue to the significance of the dream.
We can do that,” she rightly says, “by noting just the moment when it came to the patient’s mind.”

[The first thing of importance is to find the cardinal clue to the significance of the dream. We can do that by noting just the moment when it came to the patient’s mind. p.138]

And on this point, she begins to talk about the dog masturbating against his leg at the moment when just before, he spoke about the dog, saying he himself imitated the dog, then about the cough, and then about the dream from which he woke up sweating.

– “The deduction concerning the significance of the whole dream is, therefore, for her, that it is a masturbation phantasy.”

[The deduction concerning the significance of the whole dream is that it is a masturbation phantasy. p.138]

Here, I fully agree; this is of primary importance, and we are in agreement with her.

“The next thing to note is, in connection with this masturbation phantasy, the theme of potency.”
[The next thing to notice in connection with this masturbation phantasy is the theme of potency. p.138]

She understands this not in the sense of sexual potency but in the most universal sense of the term, as she later says, omnipotence.

– “He takes a journey around the world. It is the longest dream he has ever had—this is what the subject says—it would take a whole hour to tell. With this, we can relate his excuse for boasting when speaking of his friend’s impersonations on the radio. And these impersonations are broadcast worldwide, the analyst adds, along with his own wireless set that catches every station. Note also his own imitation of the man whose accent amused him so much, a strongly Cockney accent, and incidentally what he said about this man.”

[He is traveling around the world. It is the longest dream he has ever had. It would take a whole hour to relate. Correlate with that his deprecation of “swank” regarding his friend’s impersonations which are broadcast to the world, and his own wireless set which picks up every station. Note his own imitation of the man whose accent attracted him, a strong colloquial accent, and incidentally he said with regard to this man. p.138-139]

– “The impersonations, whether by his friend’s voice or his own, signify imitations of a stronger person.”
[Impersonation here, whether via friend or himself, has the significance of imitating a stronger or better-known person. p.139]

Is she mistaken?

– “This is another clue to the meaning of the masturbation phantasy, that is, a phantasy in which he impersonates another person. It signifies immense power and potency.”

[This is again a further clue to the meaning of the masturbation phantasy, that is, a phantasy in which he is impersonating another person, one of immense power and potency. p.139]

Here, then, is what is taken for granted by the analyst: namely, the mere fact of these mimed incarnations intervening more or less alongside…
the masturbatory phantasy presumed to underlie what is happening…
the mere fact that the subject excused himself for going too far, for boasting, for pushing himself a bit too much, signifies that we are dealing with a phantasy of omnipotence that must be placed at the forefront.

Is this something we can immediately accept? Once again, I ask you to note here that, at the very least, one could say there is perhaps some confusion in asserting that this involves a wished-for omnipotence, or one more or less secretly assumed by the subject, when it seems that, if we stick to the initial dream and its manifest content on this occasion, the subject’s tendency is rather the opposite: to diminish, to minimize.

The analyst herself emphasizes this in another reference to the hood. The analyst is, in fact, far beyond her own interpretation, caught by a certain apprehension of this, of the reduced presence of the subject in this phantasy. She continually asserts, “He saw or glimpsed this when he was a tiny child.”

But what do we actually see?

We see, rather, the subject making himself quite small in the presence of this kind of vaguely tentacular appendage toward which, at most, he dares to extend a finger. It is unclear whether this finger is to be capped, covered, protected by the appendage or whether the appendage distances itself from him and from the exercise of his power, particularly sexual power. This object remains signifying, in any case.

Perhaps it goes a bit far—yet it’s the same recurring confusion—to conflate the omnipotence attributed to the subject, even if more or less denied, with what is entirely clear on this occasion: the omnipotence of speech.

But there is a world of difference between the two, for it is precisely in relation to speech that the subject encounters difficulty. He is a lawyer, full of talent, yet he experiences the most severe phobias whenever he must appear and speak. We are told at the outset that his father died when he was three years old and that the subject had the greatest difficulty reviving any memory of him. But what is the one memory that remains absolutely clear? It is that within his family, it was passed down that his father’s final words were: “Robert must take my place.”

What does this mean? Is the father’s death feared? Is it inasmuch as the father is dead, or because the dying father spoke, saying, “He must take my place”—that is, “where I am, where I die”?

The subject’s difficulty with speech, this distance that causes him to use speech precisely to be elsewhere, and, conversely, his extraordinary difficulty not only in speaking but in making his father speak:

“This step was only recently crossed, and it was a kind of marvel for him to realize that his father spoke.”
[It was a startling moment when one day he thought that his father had also lived, and still more startling when he thought that he must have heard his father speak.]

Is this not something that, at the very least, should lead us to accentuate—for him more than for anyone else—this division between the Other as speaking and the other as imaginary? Because, all in all, does a certain caution not impose itself at this level?

The analyst will find confirmation of the subject’s omnipotence in the enormity of the dream. Yet the enormity of the dream can only be known to us through the subject.

It is he who tells us:
– that he had an enormous dream,
– that there was an enormous story before it,
– that there was an entire trip around the world,
– a hundred thousand adventures that would take an enormous amount of time to recount,
– and that he would not bore the analyst with them.

But in the end, the mountain gives birth to a tiny story, to a mouse. If there is indeed here a notion of something indicated as a horizon of omnipotence, it is a narrative… but a narrative that remains untold. Omnipotence always lies on the side of the Other, on the side of the world of speech as such.

Should we immediately see, on this occasion, as the analyst supposes—and as everything that follows will imply—a structure in the subject not only of omnipotence in the phantasy but also of the aggression it entails?

This is where we must pause initially to pinpoint what I am trying to highlight: what sometimes seems to occur as a partiality in interpretations, particularly where a difference of levels in the structure, if sufficiently marked, must be respected. Only under this condition can we recognize that such a difference of levels exists.

– “What is the next question that immediately arises?
It is: why this phantasy of extreme power? The answer is given in the dream. He is going around the world. I would associate this with the real memory that surfaced when he described the hood in the dream, which was so strange. For this brought out not only the fact that he was describing a projection, a fold of the hood, but also that the hood was overhanging like the lip of a cave. Thus, we directly connect the hood and the vulvar lips to the great cave on the hillside, where he walked with his mother. Hence, the masturbation phantasy is one associated with immense potency because he dreams of embracing Mother Earth, of being equal to the huge cave beneath its protruding lips. This is the second thing of importance.”

[The next question that arises from that is why this phantasy of extreme power? The answer is given in the dream. He is going around the world. I would put as commensurate with this idea the actual memory that came to him when he was describing the hood in the dream which was so strange, for it brought out not only the fact that he was describing a projection, a fold of a hood, but that the hood was also overhanging like a lip of a cave. So that we get directly the hood and lips of the vulva compared with the great cave on the hillside to which he went with his mother. Hence, the masturbation phantasy is one associated with immense potency because he is dreaming of compassing Mother Earth, of being adequate to the huge cave beneath the protruding lips. That is the second thing of importance. p.139]

You see how the analyst’s thought process unfolds on this occasion. Undeniably, you cannot fail to sense here a leap. That there is a connection, demonstrated through association, between this childhood memory—where he himself is, as we say, “covered”—and the signifying value of the phantasy I would call the “prolapse phantasy” cannot, of course, be dismissed.

However, the notion that this establishes the subject as the classical figure of the Oedipal relationship—that is, the subject who elevates himself to the level of the mother’s embrace, which here becomes the embrace of Mother Earth, of the entire world—seems to me to be a step taken perhaps a little too hastily.

Especially when we know how, alongside this grandiose classical schema of the Oedipal hero, who rises to meet the mother, we can observe something quite different—something Freud so effectively distinguished in a phase of childhood development: the moment when, very precisely, the integration of the child’s own organ as such is tied to a feeling of inadequacy. This runs counter to what the analyst suggests regarding an endeavor as ambitious as the conquest or embrace of the mother.

Indeed, this element can and does play a role—an undeniable one—manifested emphatically in numerous observations concerning the narcissistic relationship of the subject to his penis. Through it, he considers himself more or less insufficient, too small. This isn’t merely about the relationship with male rivals. Clinical experience instead shows us that the inadequacy of the penis compared to the female organ—assumed to be enormous in comparison—is too significant a factor for us to proceed so quickly here. The analyst continues:

– “Now, I would draw your attention to the association concerning lips and labia. The woman who stimulated this dream had full, red, passionate lips. In the dream, he vividly pictured the labia and the hood. The cave had an overhanging lip. He thinks of things longitudinal […] and others crosswise—which now suggests the mouth compared with the vulva.”

[Next, I would draw your attention to the associations concerning lips and labia. The woman who was a stimulus for the dream had full red passionate lips. In the dream, he had a vivid picture of the labia and the hood. The cave had an overhanging lip. He thinks of things longitudinal, like labia, and then of crosswise things—where I would now suggest the mouth as compared with the vulva. p.139]

Here, without further commentary:

– “He also thinks of the first motorcar he rode in, its hood strapped back with belts when not in use, and the scarlet lining of that hood. He then immediately thinks of the car’s speed, describing ‘the peak of its speed,’ which was so many miles per hour. He speaks of ‘the life of the car’ and notes how he talks about the car as if it were a living being. From the description […] I deduce that the memory of the actual cave he visited with his mother serves as a screen memory. I deduce that this is projected onto the motorcar with its scarlet-lined hood and that the peak of speed has the same significance as the projection of the genitals in the dream—it is the peak of the hood. I infer that this represents a repressed memory of seeing the genitals of someone much older than him when he was very small. The car, the cave, and the idea of going around the world are all linked with the immense potency required. The peak and the hood, I interpret as the clitoris.”

[He thinks, moreover, of the first motor he was in and of its hood and of the scarlet lining in that motor. He then thinks immediately of the speed of the car, and says “the peak of its speed” was so many miles an hour, and then speaks of “the life of the car” and notices that he talks of a car as if it were human. From the fact of the dream picture of the vulva and the hood, with the wealth of other associations that give the picture of “red inside” and projecting lips and hood I should deduce that the memory of the actual cave which he visited with his mother also acts as a cover memory. I would deduce that there is projected onto the motor with its scarlet-lined hood this same forgotten memory and that the peak of speed has the same significance as the projection in the genitals in the dream—it is the peak of the hood. I infer there is an actual repressed memory of seeing the genitals of someone much older than himself; of seeing them when he was very tiny, and I infer this from both the car and the cave and going round the world in conjunction with the immense potency required. The peak, the hood, I interpret as the clitoris. p.140]

Still, here, much like what I mentioned earlier about the mountain of the dream delivering a mouse, there is something analogous detectable in what I might almost call “the stammerings of the analyst.” I can accept that this “peak of speed” can be identified with the hood, but if it is truly something so pointed, so immense, how can it be associated with a real, lived childhood memory? There is, after all, some excess in concluding so boldly that the subject’s screen memory concerns an actual experience of the female genital organ, specifically the clitoris. Yet this is indeed the conclusion the analyst reaches, presenting as a key element the fact that:

“His sister is eight years older than him. From his references to the woman’s voice and the imitated man’s voice, which are similar in imitation, I deduce that at least when he was very small, he saw his sister’s genitals, noticed the clitoris, and heard her urinate […] lying on the carpet.”

[The patient’s sister is eight years older than himself. Considering the references made to his woman friend’s voice, that is, to sound, accent, sound of a man’s voice, and considering that the reference to her is in connection with male impersonation, I deduce that at least when very tiny he saw her genitals, noticed the clitoris, and heard her urinate […] laid on the floor on a blanket. p.140–141]

She immediately follows this with:

– “Considering all the prior work in analysis, I believe that, in addition, there was some infantile situation in which he had a definite opportunity to see his mother’s genitals.”

[But considering all the work in analysis we have done so far I believe in addition there was some babyhood situation in which he had a quite definite opportunity of seeing his mother’s genitals. p.140–141]

All these details imply in these memories, in these images:
– that he was lying on the carpet at that moment,
– that he saw this or that.

I will nevertheless highlight something here to indicate, at the very least, where I am headed with these critiques, in which I aim to teach you how to observe and parse, so to speak, the direction certain inflections take in the understanding of what is presented to us. This approach is not, I believe, intended to increase its clarity or, especially, to grant it its proper interpretation, as you will see when we reach that point.

I must nevertheless shed some light here, to show you where I am leading and what I mean to say, in opposition to the path the analyst’s thought takes. You will see that these interpretations will be, in this respect, extremely active—even brutal—suggesting that the core issue lies in the aggressive nature of the subject’s own penis.

You will see that it is his penis, as an aggressive organ, as an organ bringing into play the harmful and deleterious nature of the liquid it emits—namely, urination, which has been evoked at certain points and to which we will need to return—that leads the analyst to obtain a result that is not entirely surprising: an adult subject of considerable age urinates during the night that follows. But let us set that aside.

Here is what I mean: I believe that this dream…
to anticipate somewhat what I think I can demonstrate to you by continuing this painstaking and slow work of line-by-line analysis of what is presented to us…
Where does the question arise in what can be called the fundamental fantasy of the subject insofar as it is made present?

The subject imagines something—we do not know what—concerning his analyst. I will tell you what the analyst herself thinks about the state of transference at this point. At this moment, the transference is of a clearly imaginary type. The analyst is perceived and centered as something essentially related to the subject in the form of another self.

All of the subject’s rigid, measured, defensive attitude—as the analyst rightly senses—in the presence of Ella Sharpe indicates a most tightly specular relationship with the analyst. Contrary to what Ella Sharpe states, this is far from indicating the absence of transference. It is a particular type of transference at its source: dual, imaginary.

This analyst, as an image of him, what is she doing?

It is already clear that what the subject guards her against with his “little cough” is that she dreams of masturbating. This is what she is supposed to be doing. But how do we know this?
We do not know it immediately, and this is very important. How can we know it?
We know it because in the dream, the matter becomes entirely clear, since it is precisely what the subject is saying: namely, that there is someone masturbating. The analyst rightly recognizes that it concerns the subject’s masturbation, that it is he who dreams.

But to claim that the dream expresses the subject’s intention to masturbate her—adding that this is an intransitive verb—puts us sufficiently on the track of the following: the significant fantasy in question is one of a close link between male and female elements, taken on the theme of a kind of enveloping. I mean that the subject is not simply contained within the other, insofar as he masturbates her or himself, but also does not masturbate.

I mean that the fundamental image involved, which is presentified by the dream, is of a kind of sheath, a glove. Incidentally, these are essentially the same words—“sheath” is the same word as “vagina.”

Here are two linguistic coincidences that are not without significance. Regarding the sheath, the glove, the scabbard, there will be much to say from a linguistic perspective. I believe there is an entire chain of images here that is extremely important to trace because they are constant—not just in this particular case but in many others.

What is at stake is that the imaginary, signifying character is something in which the subject sees all possibilities of his sexual manifestation enveloped and contained. It is in relation to this central image that he situates his desire and in which his desire is, so to speak, ensnared. I will try to demonstrate this because I must justify further this notion that follows: in the subsequent associations, an idea emerges—according to the analyst—that crossed the subject’s mind during previous associations.

The subject, in his professional duties, must go to a place where the king and queen are to arrive. He is haunted by the idea of having a car breakdown in the middle of the road and thereby blocking the passage of the royal car. The analyst sees this as yet another manifestation of the subject’s feared omnipotence and even goes so far as to interpret it—
we will examine all of this in detail next time—
as evidence that, during some primal scene, the subject had the opportunity to intervene in this manner, stopping something—the parents—during that scene.

What seems most striking, however, is the function of the car, which we will revisit. The subject is in a car, and far from separating anyone during this stop, he undoubtedly stops everything…
He stops everything; we know this well because it is precisely the issue for which he is in analysis.
Everything stops. He stops the royal, parental couple—at some point, in a car—and indeed within a single car that envelops them, like the hood of his car, which he evokes through his associations, reproducing the covering character of the cave.

We are in the period when Melanie Klein is beginning to rise within the British Society and to contribute articulated insights of high clinical quality. And is it not worth noting that, despite so much discussion of the “ambiguous parent” or the “bi-parental monster,” we fail here to recognize, in a particularly specific way, a certain ambiguity tied to a certain apprehension of the sexual relationship?

Let us emphasize further: what is at stake for the subject is precisely this—separating the parents, separating in them the male and female principles. I would say that, in a sense, what appears on the horizon of the analytic interpretation is nothing other than a sort of psychic circumcision.

Ultimately, this protruding, prolapsed vagina that is here and presents itself as something which, on the other hand, is nowhere—elusive—I mentioned earlier the magician’s bag. But in truth, we know this magician’s trick; it’s called the egg bag that is turned inside out, revealing and concealing alternately what is cleverly slipped into it.

This kind of perpetual presence and absence of the subject also has another side: it is the aspect of masturbation that already implies a certain female element being present. This is why I speak of a kind of circumcision.

This sort of protruding element is also, in some respects, the prepuce he dreams of.
And what is at stake for this subject—and which another part of his memories will undoubtedly reveal to us—is a certain connection between him and sexual conjunction.

There was such a conjunction in his childhood. But where was he?
He was in his bed, and you will see, tightly swaddled with pins securing his sheets.
Other elements also show us the subject in his childhood car with straps and belts.

The question for the subject, as presented here, is this:

– Insofar as he is bound, as he is immobilized, he can indulge in his fantasy and participate in it through this supplementary activity, this derived and displaced activity of compulsive urination.

– Insofar as he was bound, at that very moment, this kind of supplement, this false enjoyment provided by urination, which we observe so frequently in subjects in proximity to parental coitus, becomes what?

Precisely, he becomes the partner he tells us she needs so much, the one who must show her everything, do everything, and feminize himself. Insofar as he is impotent, so to speak, he is male.

And that this finds compensations on the plane of ambitious potency—of course!
We will return to this next time. But insofar as he is freed, he feminizes himself.

It is in this kind of hide-and-seek, this double game, this non-separation of the two faces within him—femininity and masculinity—in this unique, fundamentally masturbatory type of phantasmatic apprehension that his grasp of genital desire remains, and this is where the problem lies.

And I hope to demonstrate next time how justified we are in directing our interpretations in this way to enable the subject to take a step forward.