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(All parts in English)

Ella SHARPE’s Dream (4)

So here we are at the moment of attempting to interpret this dream of Ella SHARPE’s subject, an undertaking we can attempt—purely theoretically, as a research exercise—only because of the exceptionally well-developed nature of this dream, which, according to Ella SHARPE (whom we credit on this point), occupies a crucial point in the analysis.

The subject, who has had “a huge dream” that would take hours to recount, says that he has forgotten it, except for the fact that it takes place on a road in Czechoslovakia, where he finds himself because he has undertaken a trip around the world with his wife. I even highlighted that he said, “a trip with my wife around the world.”

He finds himself on a road, and here’s what happens: he is, in essence, subjected to the sexual advances of a woman who, as I note, presents herself in a certain way not stated in the initial text of the dream. The subject says:

“I realize it at the very moment; she was above me, doing everything she could to get my penis.”

This is the expression to which we will return later.

“Of course,” the subject says, “this didn’t please me at all, to the point that I thought, in view of her disappointment, that I should masturbate her.”

He makes a remark here about the fundamentally intransitive nature of the verb “to masturbate” in English, which we are already interested in, alongside the author himself… even though the author has emphasized its basis less directly on the grammatical remark of the subject…to note that it is, of course, the subject’s masturbation.

Last time, we highlighted the significance of what appears even less in the associations than in the development of the dream image, namely, the form of this fold, this “hood,” in the manner of a hood’s fold, which the subject mentions.

And we showed that surely the reliance on the baggage of images…considered by classical doctrine and evidently stemming from experience, when they are treated, in a way, as so many separate objects without properly identifying their function relative to the subject…might lead to something forced.

Thus, we pointed out last time the paradoxical nature of interpreting too hastily this peculiar appendage, this protrusion of the female genital organ, as already being the sign that it concerns the mother’s phallus. Indeed, such a thing is not without leading the analyst’s thoughts to another leap, so true is it that an imprudent approach cannot be rectified…contrary to popular belief…except by another imprudent approach, that error is far less scholarly than one might think, for the only way to escape an error is to commit another one that compensates for it. We are not saying that Ella SHARPE completely erred; we are attempting to articulate better modes of direction that might have allowed for a more complete adequacy. This, of course, is subject to all reservations, as we will never have the crucial experience.

But the next leap I referred to is that what is at stake is even less the phallus of the partner—the partner imagined in the dream on this occasion—than the phallus of the subject. This, we know, is corroborated by the masturbatory nature of the dream, coordinated with many other elements from everything that appears afterward in the subject’s statements.

But this phallus of the subject, already, we are led to consider as being this instrument of destruction, of aggression, of an extremely primitive type, as it emerges from what could be called imagery. And it is in this sense that the analyst’s thoughts—Ella SHARPE’s, in this instance—are already directed, even though she is far from communicating the entirety of her interpretation to the subject.

The point on which she immediately intervenes, in the sense that she mentions it, is after pointing out to him the elements she calls omnipotence. According to her interpretation, what would appear in his words in the dream are:

– Secondly: masturbation,
– Thirdly: this masturbation is omnipotent, in the sense that it involves this piercing and biting organ, which is the subject’s own phallus.

It must be said that there is a true intrusion here, a genuine theoretical extrapolation on the part of the analyst, because, in truth, nothing—neither in the dream nor in the associations—provides any kind of basis for immediately introducing into the interpretation this notion that the phallus would intervene here as an organ of aggression and that what would be feared is, in a way, the return or retribution of aggression implied by the subject. We cannot help but underline that it is difficult to see at what moment the subject transitions from these intrusions to the analysis of what is actually in front of her, which she perceives with such detail and finesse. Clearly, this pertains to theory.

Simply reading this formulation reveals that, after all, nothing justifies it, except for something the analyst does not tell us. But she has nevertheless informed us sufficiently and with enough care about the antecedents of the dream and the general outlines of the patient’s case for us to say that there is certainly something here that constitutes a leap. That it appeared necessary to her is something we willingly concede, but whether it also appears necessary to us is the question we pose, which we will now try to explore further.

Not, in a sense, to substitute imaginary equivalents for interpretations in the proper sense of the term: “This given must be understood as that.”

It is not about understanding what each element of the dream means at this or that moment in its entirety. Overall, one can say that these elements are more than properly assessed. They are based on a tradition of analytical experience at the time when Ella SHARPE was practicing. Furthermore, they are undoubtedly perceived with great discernment and refinement.

That is not the issue. The issue is to see whether the problem might not be clarified by being formulated or articulated in a way that better connects the interpretation with something I am trying to emphasize here—namely, inter-subjective topology.

This is the topology which, in various forms, I am always trying to construct here before you, to restore as far as it is inherent to our experience: that of the subject, the little other, the big Other, insofar as their positions must always, at the moment of each phenomenon in the analysis, be marked by us if we want to avoid this sort of tangle, this tightly knotted thread that has not been properly untied and which forms, so to speak, the daily reality of our analytical explanations.

This dream, we have already examined it in several forms, and we can nonetheless begin to articulate something simple, direct, something not at all absent from the observation, which emerges from this reading we have undertaken.

I would say that at the stage of what precedes, which brings the subject and the dream itself, there is a word which—after all that we have here as shared vocabulary—seems to be the one that comes first, and which could well have come to Ella SHARPE’s mind at that time.

It is not at all about introducing a notion that was beyond her reach. We are in an English context at that time, dominated by discussions such as those taking place, for example, between Mr. JONES and Mrs. Joan RIVIERE, which we have already mentioned here in relation to her book Womanliness as a Masquerade. I have spoken to you about this in relation to the discussion concerning the phallic phase and the phallic function in female sexuality.

There is a word he uses at one point, a word truly necessary for JONES to enter into the understanding of what is indeed the most difficult point to grasp—not simply to put into play—in analysis, namely the castration complex. The word JONES uses is aphanisis [ἀϕάνισις], which he introduced interestingly into the analytical vocabulary and which we cannot at all consider absent from the English context, as it is widely referenced.

Aphanisis means disappearance, which he interprets in this way, and what he means by it, we will examine further. But for now, I will use it quite differently: in a somewhat impressionistic sense of what is really present throughout the material of the dream, its surroundings, the behavior of the subject, and everything we have already tried to articulate regarding what presents itself, what is proposed to Ella SHARPE.

This very subject—who, before presenting himself to her in a way she so charmingly describes, with that sort of profound absence that gives her the impression that there is not a single remark or gesture from the subject that is not entirely premeditated, and that nothing corresponds to anything felt—this subject: – who behaves so impeccably, – who does not announce himself, – who appears but, as soon as he appears, is more elusive than if he were not there, – this subject, who himself gave us, in the premises of what he brought concerning his dream, this question he posed about his “little cough.”

And what is this “little cough” meant to accomplish?

To make something disappear that must be there beyond the door. We don’t know what.
He himself says it: in the case of the analyst, what could there possibly be to make disappear?
He refers to this in connection with warnings given in other circumstances, in another context: that they must separate, that they must part ways, because the situation could become awkward if he himself were to enter, and so on…

In the dream, we are faced with three characters, as we must not forget that his wife is there.
The subject, after mentioning her once, no longer talks about her. But what exactly happens between him and the sexual partner, the one he essentially eludes?

Is it so certain that he eludes her? The continuation of what he states proves that he is far from being completely absent, and he says that he placed his finger into this sort of protuberant, inverted vagina, this kind of prolapsed vagina that I have emphasized.
Here, too, questions arise, and we shall pose them:
– Where is the issue at stake?
– Where is the focus of the scene?

What—
to the extent that one can pose such a question about a dream, and we can pose it only because the entire Freudian theory compels us to—
what immediately follows in the associations of the dream is something that pertains to this friend, through the mediation of a memory—
which came to him concerning the hood constituted by the female organ—
of someone who had offered him, on a golf course, something in which his clubs could be wrapped, and whom he found to be quite an odd character.

He speaks of him with a sort of amused delight, and it is clear what is happening around this real character.
It is truly this person about whom one may well wonder where, up until then, he had roamed.

That is the tone in which he speaks about him. With this face and this patter, what could he have been?
“Perhaps a butcher?” he says. God knows why, a butcher! But the style and general atmosphere, the ambiance of imitation regarding this character—
immediately, the subject amuses himself by imitating him—
show clearly that here…
This is, by the way, how the notion of imitation is introduced, along with the association with his friend “who imitates men so well, who has such talent, and a talent she exploits at the Broadcasting.”

And in this regard, the first idea that comes to the subject is that he talks too much about it, that he seems to be boasting when speaking of such a remarkable acquaintance, overdoing it. I checked the English word he uses: it is a relatively recent colloquial term, almost slang, which we have attempted to translate here as “to make a fuss.”
He uses it to say, “I feel scrupulous about making a fuss about 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 (p. 134).]

To put it plainly, he disappears, shrinks, and does not want to take up too much space on this occasion.
In short, what imposes itself at every moment, recurring as a theme, as a leitmotif throughout the subject’s discourse, is something for which the term aphanisis appears here far closer to “making disappear” than to “disappearing,” something that is a perpetual game where we feel that, in various forms, something—
call it, if you will, the interesting object—
is never there.

Last time, I emphasized this. It is never where one expects it to be, slipping from one point to another in a sort of sleight-of-hand game. I will insist on this again, and you will see where this leads us, which is the essential, the defining characteristic, at all levels, of the confrontation the analyst faces. The subject cannot assert anything without immediately, in some way, eluding its essence, so to speak.

And I would remark that in JONES as well, this term aphanisis is subject to critique that could lead to exposing a kind of inversion of perspective. JONES noted in his subjects that, when approaching the castration complex, what he senses, understands, and observes in them is the fear of aphanisis, the disappearance of desire. And, in a way, what he tells us is that castration—it is not formulated in this way due to the lack of conceptual apparatus—is the symbolization of this loss.

We have emphasized how this presents an enormous problem: to see, in any genetic perspective, how a subject—
let’s suppose, in their development, at a certain moment, at a level that is somewhat animalistic in subjectivity—
begins to perceive the “tendency” detaching itself to become the fear of its own loss.
And JONES makes aphanisis the substance of the fear of castration.

Here, I will point out that the correct approach to this issue is precisely the opposite of what is assumed. It is because castration can occur, because there is a play of signifiers involved in castration, that this dimension develops in the subject, where he can take fright, alarm, at the possible and future disappearance of his desire.

Let us observe carefully that something like desire—
if we give it a full meaning, the sense of a tendency at the level of animal psychology—
is difficult to conceive of as something entirely accessible in human experience. The fear of the absence of desire is, nonetheless, a step that must be explained. To explain it, I tell you: the human subject, insofar as he must inscribe himself within the signifier, finds a position where he effectively calls into question his need, insofar as his need is taken up, modified, and identified within the demand.

And at this point, everything makes sense, and the function of the castration complex in this context—that is, the way in which this positioning of the subject within the signifier implies the loss, the sacrifice, of one of his signifiers among others—is something we will set aside for the moment.

What I simply want to say is that the fear of aphanisis in neurotic subjects corresponds—contrary to what JONES believes—to something that must be understood from the perspective of an insufficient formation, articulation, or a partial foreclosure of the castration complex. It is because the castration complex does not shield the subject from this kind of confusion, turmoil, or anxiety manifested in the fear of aphanisis that we indeed observe it in neurotics. And we will have the opportunity to examine this in relation to this case.

Let us continue and return to the text itself, to the dream text, and to the images we discussed last time, specifically the representation of the female sex in the form of this prolapsed vagina.
In the subject’s images, this kind of sheath, this sort of pouch or casing, forms such a strange image that, while it is not entirely exceptional or unique, it is nevertheless not commonly encountered and has not been described in a perfectly characterized way within the analytical tradition. Here, one could say that the image itself—
used in the signifying articulation of the dream, specifically in terms of its meaning among the characters present—
derives its value from what happens, from the purpose for which it is used.

In fact, what we see is that the subject is going to, as he says, “put his finger” there. He will not put his penis there, certainly not, but he will put his finger.

He re-inverts, re-cases, and re-invaginates what is there de-vaginated, and everything happens as if this were almost a conjurer’s trick. Because, ultimately, he places something in the space where he should place something else, yet he also demonstrates that something can be placed there. And insofar as something could indeed be suggested by the form presented—namely, the female phallus—everything happens as if—
this phallus, which is indeed at issue in the clearest possible way: “to get my penis”—
we were justified in asking what the subject is showing us. Because much more than an act of copulation, this is an act of exhibition. Let us not forget that this occurs in front of a third party.

The gesture—the gesture already evoked of the magician performing the trick called, in French, “le sac à l’œuf” (the egg bag)—
consists of a woolen bag in which the magician alternately makes the egg appear and disappear:
– he makes it appear at the moment when it is not expected,
– and shows it as disappeared where one would think to see it—
“the bag of the eggs,” as it is also called in English.

The gesture—if one might say, the demonstration—at issue is all the more striking because, in the subject’s associations, what we have seen is precisely the recurring tendency to signal something at the moment it appears, so that nothing of what was there before can be seen, or to make himself taken—he says in his fantasy—as a barking dog, so that people would say there was nothing but a dog there.

Yes, it is always the same sleight of hand, the same disappearing act, whose object we cannot identify, and assuredly it is above all the subject himself who is disappeared. But the dream indicates to us, and allows us to specify, that if we seek to localize within the dream what is at stake in this disappearing act, it is certainly the phallus, the phallus in question: “to get my penis” [p.133]. And we are, I would say, so accustomed to this, so hardened by analytical routine, that we scarcely linger over this element of the dream.

Nevertheless, the subject’s choice of the term “to get” to describe what the woman here claims to do is a verb with extremely versatile usage. It always carries the sense of obtaining, gaining, catching, seizing, or acquiring. It refers, in general, to something that is obtained. Of course, we hear this with the undertone and echo of [femina curam et penem devoret?], but it is not that simple.

Because, after all, what is at stake on this occasion is something that, in the end, is far removed from this register. And the question—
if indeed it involves obtaining the penis, in any form, real or imagined—
the first question to ask is: where is this penis? Because it seems self-evident that it is there.
That is, simply because it was stated, because the subject in the account of the dream said that she made maneuvers “to get my penis,” there is an assumption that it must be present somewhere in the dream. But literally, if one looks closely at the text, there is absolutely nothing that indicates this.

It is not enough for the imputation of the partner to be given for us to deduce that the subject’s penis is there, as if that would suffice to satisfy the question: where is it? It may very well be entirely elsewhere than where this need we have to complete the scene, assuming that the subject is evading it, would place it.
It is not that simple.

And from the moment we pose this question, we see indeed that this is where the entire question arises, and it is from this point that we can grasp the peculiar discordance, the strangeness presented by the enigmatic sign offered to us in this dream.
Because it is certain that there is a relationship between what is happening and masturbation.

What does this mean? What does it highlight for us on this occasion?
It is worth noting in passing because—even though it is not fully elucidated—it is highly instructive.
I mean that, even though it is not articulated by the analyst in her statements, the idea is that the masturbation of the other and the masturbation of the subject are one and the same. We could even go so far as to say:

– That everything about the other’s grasp on the subject himself, which resembles masturbation, indeed presupposes a secret narcissistic identification, which is less body-to-body than the body of the other to the penis.

– That a whole portion of caressing activities—and this becomes all the more evident as it takes on a more detached, more autonomous, more insistent pleasure, even bordering on something one might more or less aptly call a certain sadism in this context—is something that engages the phallus, insofar as, as I have shown you, it is imagined beyond the natural partner.

The fact that the phallus is engaged as a signifier in the subject’s relationship with the other means that it emerges as something that can be sought beyond the other’s embrace, taking on all kinds of archetypal forms, more or less accentuated in the direction of perversion.

In fact, what we see here is that precisely this masturbation of the other differs entirely from the grasping of the phallus in the other’s embrace, preventing us from equating the other’s masturbation strictly with the subject’s own masturbation.

This gesture, whose meaning I have shown you—a gesture almost of verification, indicating that what is there in front of the subject is indeed something of great importance to him—is something closely related to the phallus. But it also demonstrates that the phallus is not there, that the “to get my penis” the partner seeks is something elusive, something that slips away, not simply by the subject’s will but because of a structural accident, which is truly what is at issue.

This structural accident gives its style to everything that recurs in the associations, namely:

– This woman, about whom he tells us, who behaves so remarkably by perfectly imitating men,

– And that sort of incredible magician, whom he recalls after many years, who proposes with unbelievable bravado something—singularly, one thing for another—to make a covering for something using fabric meant for something else, namely the material intended for a car hood, and for what purpose? To allow him to store his golf clubs. This deceitful fellow—there, then, is what recurs.

Everything always has this characteristic—regardless of the element in question—that it is never entirely about what is presented. It is never about the real thing; it is always in a problematic form that things appear.

Let us take what immediately follows, which will play its role. The problematic nature of what persists before the subject continues at once, and through a question that arises for him, emerging from memories of his childhood. Why on earth, at another moment, did he have another compulsion—different from the cough he experienced at the beginning of the session—to cut his sister’s sandal straps?

– “I didn’t think it was a real compulsion. It’s for the same reason that the cough annoyed me. I suppose I cut my sister’s sandals in the same way. I have a rather vague memory of doing it. I don’t know why or what I wanted from the leather that made me do it, from those strips.”

[I dislike thinking it was a compulsion; that’s why the cough annoys me. I suppose I cut up my sister’s sandals in the same way. I have only the dimmest memory of doing it. I don’t know why nor what I wanted the leather for when I had done it. p.135]

– “But still, I must believe that I wanted to make something useful out of it, but I think, something quite unnecessary. It seemed very useful in my mind, but it had no serious necessity.”

[I thought I wanted the strips to make something useful but I expect something quite unnecessary. p.135]

Here, too, we find ourselves before a kind of evasion, which is followed by yet another evasion. Namely, the remark that he suddenly thinks of the straps that fastened the hood of the car—or rather, that it reminds him of the straps on a pram, a baby carriage. And at that moment, in a curious way, in a negative manner, he introduces the notion of the pram. He thinks that there wasn’t a pram at his home. And yet:

– “…there’s nothing sillier,” he says himself, “than saying there wasn’t a pram at our house. There surely was one since there were two children.”

[…and I then thought how silly you are, you must have had a ‘pram.’ p.135]

Always the same style of things appears, in the form of something missing, which dominates the entire style of the subject’s associations. What is the next step, directly linked to this?

– “Ah, I just remembered, right now, that I was supposed to send two letters to two members who are to be admitted to our club. And I was boasting about being a better secretary than the previous one; and yet here I am, having just forgotten to give these people permission to enter the club.”

[I’ve suddenly remembered I meant to send off letters admitting two members to the Club. I boasted of being a better secretary than the last and yet here I am forgetting to give people permission to enter the Club. p.135-136]

In other words, I didn’t write to them. And immediately connected, and quoted in quotation marks in Ella SHARPE’s text, though she does not emphasize it because for an English reader these lines hardly need to be in quotation marks, is a phrase from the General Confession, one of the prayers in the Book of Common Prayer, the foundational religious text for individual duties in the Church of England.

I must say that my relationship with the Book of Common Prayer is not recent, and I will only mention here the very charming object created some twenty or twenty-five years ago in the surrealist community by my friend Roland PENROSE, who made a special use of the Book of Common Prayer for the initiated within his circle. When opened, there were mirrors on either side of the inner covers.

This is very instructive, as it is the only criticism that could be made of Ella SHARPE, for whom this text was surely much more familiar than it is to us. The text of the Book of Common Prayer is not quite the same as the subject’s citation:

“We have left undone…,” “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done…”
instead of:
“We have not done those things we ought to do” (subject’s citation).
[Ah well, we have undone those things we ought to have done.]

It is a small difference, but an entire phrase, which is its counterpart in the General Confession prayer, is missing: “And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”

The subject feels no need to confess this at all, for a good reason: in the end, it is truly only about “not doing things.” But “doing things” is not his concern. That is indeed the issue, as he adds that he is entirely incapable of doing anything for fear of succeeding too well, as the analyst pointed out to us. And then, which is no small matter and is where I want to lead, the subject continues the phrase: “And there is no good thing in us.”

[…and there is no good thing in us. p.136]

This is a pure invention of the subject, as there is nothing like this in the Book of Common Prayer. There, it reads: “There is no health in us.” I believe that this “good thing” he inserted instead is precisely what the issue is about. I would say that this “good object” that is not there is indeed what is at stake, and it confirms for us once again that it concerns the phallus. It is very important for the subject to say that this good object is not there. We find again the term: it is not there, it is never where one expects it to be. And it is certainly a “good thing” that is of utmost importance to him. But it is equally clear that what he tends to show, to demonstrate, is always one and the same thing: that it is never there. Where? Where one could “get it,” seize it, take it.

And this is precisely what dominates the entirety of the material at hand.

In light of what we have just advanced here, the connection between the two compulsions:
– the coughing,
– and likewise, cutting the leather straps of his sister’s sandals,
…seems less surprising. For this is truly one of the most common analytical interpretations: the act of cutting the leather straps that hold his sister’s sandals has a connection that we, like everyone else, only approximate globally with the theme of castration. If you refer to Mr. FENICHEL, you will see that those who cut braids do so as a function of their castration complex.

But how can one say, except with the most exact weighing of a case, whether it is:
– the retribution of castration,
– the application of castration to another subject rather than to themselves,
– or, on the contrary, the taming of castration,
– the enactment upon the other of a castration that is not a true castration, and thus does not manifest as so dangerous: domestication, one might say, or the devaluation of castration during this act. Especially since, by cutting the braids, it is always possible, conceivable, that the said braids might grow back, which is to say, a re-assurance against castration.

This is, of course, everything that the totality of analytical experience allows to be connected to this subject, but which, on this occasion, appears to us only as concealing. But that there is a connection to castration is beyond any doubt. But then, what is at issue, if we oblige ourselves not to go too quickly and to maintain matters at the level we have sufficiently indicated—namely, that here castration is something that is part of, so to speak, the context, the relationship, but that nothing so far allows us to introduce it as precisely as the analyst has done, by postulating the subject’s indication on this occasion to articulate something like an originally aggressive intention turned back upon himself.

But what do we know about this, after all? Would it not be far more interesting to pose, to continuously renew the question: where is this phallus? Where is it indeed, where should it be conceived?

What we can say is that the analyst goes very far, goes very strongly in saying to the subject:
– it is somewhere very deep within you,
– it is part of an old rivalry with your father,
– it lies at the root of all your primordial wishes for omnipotence,
– it is at the source of an aggression whose retribution you are experiencing on this occasion.

And yet, nothing in the text, strictly speaking, allows us to identify anything articulated in this way.

Let us try, for our part, after all, to pose the question perhaps even a little more boldly than we might naturally be inclined. It seems that we cannot propose, concerning an observation presented in print as such, something that we would demand of a student. If this were a student, I would speak far more severely and ask, “What on earth possessed you to say such a thing?”

I would pose the question in a similar case: where is the element of countertransference?
It may seem daring to pose such a question about the text of an author who, all things considered, is someone in whom, at that time, we have every reason to place the utmost trust—namely, Ella SHARPE.
I smiled to myself as I posed this question because, strictly speaking, it seemed a little exorbitant. Well, one is never wrong, in the end, to be a little too audacious in this way. It happens that this is how one finds what one is looking for.

And in this case, I searched before finding. That is, I had read the first pages of this book almost distractedly. I mean that, as always, one never reads properly, and yet there was something extremely lovely.

Immediately after speaking of the dead father, of that father she cannot awaken in the subject’s memory, though she has managed to stir it a little in recent times…
you recall that the subject marveled that his father had, at one time, spoken…
right afterward, she notes that the same difficulty exists with her, namely:

– “He has no thoughts about me, this patient.”
[He has no thoughts about me. p.126]

There was already something there that could have drawn our attention.

– “He feels nothing about me. He cannot believe in that.”
[He feels nothing about me. He cannot believe in the theory of transference.]

This is troubling, to say the least. That the subject is not conscious of it as such does not mean that there are no manifestations of it, because, after all, there is a kind of obscure stirring of anxiety on certain occasions. This is where I had missed something expressed here. But when one reads it, one thinks it is a general dissertation, as analysts often make:

“I think,” she says—this is indeed what it is—”that analysis could be compared to a long-drawn-out game of chess that must continue here until I cease to be the unconscious avenging father who is bent on ‘cornering him,’ checkmating him, after which there is no alternative but death.”

[I think the analysis might be compared to a long-drawn-out game of chess and that it will continue to be so until I cease to be the unconscious avenging father who is bent on cornering him, checkmating him, after which there is no alternative to death. p.127]

This curious reference to the game of chess on this occasion, which in truth nothing necessitates, nonetheless deserves our attention. I would say that when I read this page, I indeed found it very charming, though I did not immediately pause to consider its value within the order of transference. I mean that, during the reading, what resonated in me was: this is very beautiful!

The entire unfolding of an analysis should be compared to the game of chess. And why? Because the most striking and beautiful aspect of chess is that it is a game describable as follows: there are a certain number of elements that we will characterize as signifying elements, each piece being a signifying element.

And essentially, in a game played through a series of moves and counter-moves based on the nature of these signifiers, each having its own movement determined by its position as a signifier, what happens is the progressive reduction of the number of signifiers in play.

One could, after all, describe an analysis in this way: it involves eliminating a sufficient number of signifiers so that only a small enough number remain in play for the subject’s position among them to be clearly discerned. Having revisited this idea later, I believe that, indeed, it can take us quite far. But what is important is this: Ella SHARPE—
indeed, everything I know or could know elsewhere about her work indicates—
has this conception of analysis, where her interpretation of analytical theory emphasizes the signifying nature of things.

She placed particular emphasis on metaphor in a way that is entirely consistent with the ideas I have been explaining to you. Consistently, she is able to highlight this element of linguistic substitution, strictly speaking, in symptoms, which has carried through to her analyses of literary themes that form a significant part of her work. And everything she provides as technical rules also participates in something deeply marked by a kind of experience, an apprehension of the play of signifiers as such.

Thus, in this instance, one might say that what she misunderstands is, I would say, her own intentions as expressed within this register—
on the plane of speech that is the focus of this observation—
of “cornering.” The “cornering him” is introduced first by her. It is only in sessions following the interpretation she gave of this dream that we will see the same word appear in the patient’s discourse, and I will tell you shortly in what context.

This is why, as you already know, I have pointed out what happens two sessions later. Namely, his inability to “corner” his opponent in a game as well—the game of tennis—failing to corner him to deliver the final shot, the one the opponent cannot recover. It is indeed about this, that it is on this plane that the analyst makes herself apparent. And I am not at all suggesting that the subject becomes aware of it.

It is, of course, clear that she is a good analyst. She says it in every way: this is a case where you could notice—she tells her students—that I make only the smallest remarks, or I remain silent. Why?—she says—because there is absolutely nothing in this subject that does not indicate to me, in every way, that his pretense of wanting to be helped means exactly the opposite: namely, that above all, he wants to remain sheltered, with his little blanket, his car hood over him.

The “hood” is truly a fundamental position. She senses this; everything that arises regarding the erased memory of the “pram” is nonetheless about this: that he was “pinned in bed.” That is to say, “pinned.” Moreover, it appears that he has very precise notions about what being more or less tied up might provoke in a child, though there is nothing particular in his memory that allows him to evoke it, but assuredly, he clings strongly to this tied position.

Thus, she is far from allowing this element of countertransference to surface—that is, anything overly interventionist in the game. An aggressive play within this chess game. But what I am saying is that it is precisely because she so fully grasps the importance of this notion, this aggressive exercise in the analytical game, that she does not see its exact significance: namely, that what is at stake is something closely tied to the signifiers.

That is, if we ask ourselves where the phallus is, it is in this sense that we must seek it. In other words, if you like, within the quadrangle of the schema—of the subject, the other, the ego as the image of the other, and the big Other—this is what it concerns: the point where the signifier can appear as such.

This phallus, which is never where we expect it to be, is nonetheless there. It is there, like the stolen letter, where we least expect it and yet where everything points to it. To express it in terms that the metaphor of the chess game allows us to articulate, I would say that the subject does not want to lose his queen, and I will explain myself.

In the dream, the phallus is not the subject who is there watching it. That is not where the phallus is.
For this subject, in fact—
as the analyst perceives obscurely, through a veil, in her interpretation—
the subject has a certain relationship to omnipotence, to “potency,” simply put, to power.

His power—in this instance, the phallus—is something he must preserve at all costs, something he keeps out of play because this phallus could be lost in the game. In the dream, it is represented, quite simply, by the person one would least expect to represent it, namely, his wife, who is far from being the apparent witness she seems to be. For, in truth, with regard to this function of seeing, there is nothing to suggest that it is something essential.

In this subject, as in many subjects—
and I ask you to retain this point because it is such an obvious clinical fact that one is absolutely astonished it is not a commonplace in psychoanalysis—
the female partner as Other represents, for the subject, what is, in some sense, most taboo in his power and, at the same time, dominates the entire economy of his desire.

It is because his wife is his phallus that I would say he made that small slip I pointed out earlier, namely: saying, “a journey with my wife round the world,”—”un voyage avec ma femme autour du monde” [p. 132]—and not “round the world with my wife.” The emphasis on omnipotence is placed on “round the world” by our analyst.

I believe that the secret of omnipotence for this subject lies in “with my wife,” and that the issue is for him not to lose that—namely, not to realize precisely that this is what is at stake, that his wife, on this occasion, is the analyst.

For, ultimately, this is the issue. The subject does not want to “lose his queen,” as we might say, like poor chess players who imagine that losing their queen means losing the game. Whereas, in chess, winning ultimately means achieving what is called an endgame—that is, with the subject possessing the simplest and most reduced capacity for movement and the minimum of rights…
I mean, he cannot occupy a square that is in check from another…
and with that, finding the advantage of the position. In contrast, one often has every advantage in sacrificing one’s queen. This is what the subject absolutely refuses to do because the signifier phallus is, for him, identical to everything that occurred in his relationship with his mother.

And this is where, as the observation clearly reveals, the deficient, limping nature of the father’s contribution in this instance becomes apparent. And, of course, we fall back into something—a familiar aspect of the subject’s relationship to the parental couple. But that is not the important part.

What is important is to emphasize this very hidden, very secret relationship of the subject to his partner, because it is the most crucial thing to highlight when it emerges in analysis.

In the analysis, where, in essence, the subject, through his discreet coughing, warns—of what is happening inside—his analyst, in case she had, as in the dream, so to speak, turned her bag or her game inside out, of needing to put it away before he arrives. Because, in seeing it, in seeing that there is nothing but a bag, he has everything to lose.

This is the caution the subject demonstrates, which, in a sense, maintains him in a tightly bound connection—
with all the “pram pinned” position of his childhood—
keeping the subject in a relationship to his desire that can only be phantasmatic. That is to say, he must remain tied up himself, in a pram or elsewhere, tightly bound and wrapped, so that the signifier—the image of a dreamed omnipotence—can exist elsewhere.

And this is also how we must understand the crucial role of omnipotence for him, this entire story and this observation about the automobile. The automobile, this problematic instrument of our civilization, is something everyone instinctively connects to power: horsepower, speed, the “pin of speed.”

And everyone, of course, says, “phallic equivalent,” an equivalent of the “auxiliary power” for the impotent.

But, on the other hand, everyone is also aware of its infinitely coupled, feminine nature. It is no coincidence that we refer to automobiles in the feminine and occasionally give them affectionate nicknames that carry the qualities of a partner of the opposite sex. Well, this automobile, on this occasion, about which he makes such problematic remarks, such as: “It’s strange how people speak of it as if it were alive,”

[Strange how one speaks of the life of a car as if it were human. p. 135]

These are, of course, banalities. Yet this automobile is, curiously enough, clearly where this kind of significant ambiguity arises, making it simultaneously what protects him, what binds and envelops him, and what, relative to him, occupies exactly the same position as, in the dream, the protruding hood—
incidentally, it is the same word used in both cases—
and, in the dream, this bizarre sexual protuberance upon which he places his finger. Furthermore—
I have emphasized this poorly translated phrase—
it should not be read as “striated with red,” but as “lined with red.”

[The inside of it was lined with scarlet. p. 135]

But what does the analyst tell us? The analyst here is not mistaken. The moment, she tells us, when she delivers her decisive intervention is not when she begins to lead the subject toward his aggression. This results, in the subject, in that curious manifestation we might call psychosomatic, whose nature she does not fully highlight—namely, that instead of the cough, the next day he experiences a slight colic before entering.

God knows he tightened his game because of this, for—as I mentioned earlier—he has everything to lose at the moment he enters the analyst’s office for the next session. But the interpretation that Ella SHARPE herself finds most illuminating comes during the second session after this interpretation, when the subject tells her that he again had colic upon leaving the previous session. Then what does he talk about? He says:

– “I couldn’t get my car; the mechanic hadn’t finished. I couldn’t scold him because he’s so kind that one can’t hold it against him, he’s such a decent man […] and anyway, I don’t really need that car.”
And he adds, with an irritated tone: “But still, I really want it, I like it, I want it.”

[he had been unable to use his car because certain repairs had not been finished. The garage man was so very good, so very kind; it was impossible to be angry with him […] Not that the car was imperative for him at the moment; it was not a necessity, but he wanted it, he liked it. p.146]

And she is not mistaken.

– “For the first time, I was dealing with libidinal wishes.”
[Then for once I was able to deal with the libidinal wishes. p.147]

Here, it is about libido, so we are entirely in agreement with her.

If I am offering this critique of Ella SHARPE, it is because I find her, in every respect, admirably perceptive in this observation. She understands the importance of this—namely, what is present in a subject’s life properly as desire. Desire, characterized by its unmotivated nature, does not require that car. The fact that he declares his desire to her, that it is the first time she hears such a statement, is something that appears unreasonably within the subject’s discourse.

She tells us that she seizes upon it, highlighting it to him. Curiously, here we have a sort of vagueness in the apparatus of projection: while she has always so clearly stated what she says to the subject—even the boldest and riskiest remarks—here, we do not know exactly what she told him.

It’s very frustrating! What she tells us is that she was truly overjoyed at the opportunity to say to him: there, you admit that you desire something. But what could she have said to him? We won’t find out. We only know that she was able to say something sufficiently aligned with what she had told him earlier that, following her remark, the subject came to her the next day, half-pleased, half-irritated, and told her that he wet his bed that night.

We cannot consider this, as I have already mentioned, to be in itself a symptom—even if transitory and meaningful—that definitively confirms what I might call “the sense of the correct direction of speech,” assuming there is indeed such a “speech.”

It must be understood that if we have the notion of what enuresis represents, it is certainly a personal activation of the penis. But, after all, it is not a genital activation. It is precisely the penis as real that intervenes as an echo—very frequently—
this is what clinical observation shows us in children—
of the parents’ sexual activity.

It is insofar as male or female children are in a period when they are deeply interested in the sexual relations of their parents that these enuretic manifestations occur, which, on such occasions, are the deployment on the real plane of the organ as such.

But the organ as such, as real, no longer as a signifier, is indeed something that shows us that, on this occasion, Ella SHARPE’s intervention had a certain impact. Was this impact appropriate? This, of course, remains to be seen more closely. It is clear that what follows—namely, the emergence of certain reactions that the subject then exhibits—
apparently with a certain sense of satisfaction—
in his behavior, such as the fact that during a game, he no longer allowed himself to be mocked by his companions—
that is, he grabbed one by the collar and choked him in a corner forcefully enough to ensure he wouldn’t want to try again—
cannot in any way be considered truly aligned with the desired outcome.

Let us not forget that if there is something to enable the subject to do—namely, to “corner the other in a game”—this is absolutely not the same as “cornering him by the throat” in connection with the game.

This is precisely the inadequate reaction, the one that does not render him any more capable, even momentarily, of “cornering him in the game”—that is, in the domain where relationships with the Other occur. The Other:
– as the locus of speech,
– as the locus of law,
– as the locus of the conventions of the game—
it is precisely this that, through this slight deviation of the analytical intervention, is missed.

I believe we have pushed matters far enough today. Next time, I will deliver the final seminar of what revolves here around literary analysis concerning desire and its interpretation.

And I will try to summarize for you, in a few formulations, how we must conceive the function of the phallic signifier in all its generality concerning the relationship […] and the way the subject situates himself in desire.

I will attempt to consolidate, around the notions I am articulating here with the help of the graph, the precise function we must attribute to the phallic signifier.

I will also aim to show you exactly where and how, as a reference point in your analytical practice, you can attempt to locate the phallic signifier within this schema.

To put it plainly, and to draw upon the work of an author I have already referenced here, Lewis CARROLL, I will show you something that Lewis CARROLL says somewhere, roughly as follows:

“He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
“And all its mystery,” he said,
“Is clear as day to me!”

Next time, I will show you what this “Rule of Three” is.