🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

The Dream of Ella SHARPE (5)

Last time, I announced that I would conclude this study of the dream we have examined particularly closely from the perspective of its interpretation, but I will have to dedicate one more session to it.

I will briefly recall that this is the dream of a lawyer patient experiencing significant difficulties in his profession.
Ella SHARPE approaches it cautiously, as the patient appears to keep himself in check, though not with any rigidity in his behavior.

Ella SHARPE emphasizes that everything he recounts is thought, not felt. At the point reached in the analysis, he has had a remarkable dream, which became a turning point in the analysis and is briefly recounted to us. It is a dream that the patient condenses into a few words, even though, as he says, it was “a huge dream,” so vast that if he could remember it, he would never finish recounting it.

What emerges is something that, to a certain degree, bears the characteristics of a repeated dream—that is, a dream he has had before.

Somewhere in this journey he has undertaken, as he says, “…with my wife round the world…”
—and I emphasized this point—at a location in Czechoslovakia…
this is the only point on which Ella SHARPE tells us she failed to obtain sufficient insight due to not questioning the patient about the significance of the word “Czechoslovakia,” a regret she expresses, as this Czechoslovakia, after all, might mean something to us…
an incident occurs: “…a sexual game with a woman in front of his wife.” [p.132]

The woman with whom the sexual game occurs is presented to him in a position of superiority. Furthermore, it does not immediately emerge in his words, but we find in his associations that her maneuver is to “to get my penis.” I noted the very particular nature of the verb to get in English.
To get means “to obtain,” in every possible sense of the verb.

It is a verb much less limited than “obtain”; it means to acquire, catch, seize, or finish with something. And to get, if the woman manages to “to get my penis,” would mean she has it. But this penis enters into action even less because the subject tells us that the dream ends with this wish that, faced with the woman’s disappointment, he thought she ought to masturbate.
And I explained to you that this is clearly the key meaning, the hidden meaning of the dream. In the dream, this is manifested by the fact that the subject says, “I thought I would masturbate her.”
[…I thought that I would masturbate her. p.133]

In fact, there is a true exploration of something interpreted—
with great care and emphasis in Ella SHARPE’s observation—
as equivalent to the hood. Upon closer examination, this deserves our attention. It is something that shows the female organ as a kind of inverted or prolapsed vagina.
It is a vagina, not a hood.

And everything unfolds as if this pseudo-masturbation by the subject were nothing other than a kind of verification of the absence of the phallus. This is why I said that the imaginary structure, the manifest articulation of the dream, should at least compel us to limit the nature of the signifier.

In sum, I pose the question of whether, through a more cautious method—
which could be considered stricter—
we might achieve greater precision in interpretation, provided that the structural elements we have chosen to familiarize ourselves with here are sufficiently taken into account to allow us to differentiate precisely what the meaning of this case is.

And we will see that by doing so, as usual, the most particular cases are those whose value is the most universal, and what this observation shows us is something not to be neglected.

For it is nothing less than clarifying on this occasion the nature of the signifier, without which the true position of the function of the phallus cannot be established—
a function that remains at once so significant, so immediate, so pivotal in analytical interpretation—
without our repeatedly encountering deadlocks in its handling. The most striking of these impasses is “translated—betrayed” by the theory of Mrs. Melanie KLEIN, who is known to make the phallic object the most important of objects.

The phallic object is introduced into Kleinian theory, and into her interpretation of experience, as something, she says, that serves as the substitute—the first substitute—that comes into the child’s experience, whether for the little girl or the boy, as a more convenient, more manageable, more satisfying sign.

This raises questions about its role and mechanism. How should we conceive of this outcome of an entirely primordial fantasy as the point around which the deeply aggressive conflict, placing the subject in a certain relationship to the mother’s bodily containment, is already organized?

Insofar as he covets or desires the contents of the mother’s body—
all the terms are used, unfortunately always juxtaposed with difficulty—
he seeks to seize those good and bad objects that are there in a sort of primitive mixture within the mother’s body.

And why is the phallic object given privilege within the mother’s body?

Certainly, all this is presented to us with great authority, with such sharply defined descriptions, with a kind of dazzling certainty in Kleinian formulations—almost “closed” to any discussion. Yet, having heard these attestations, one cannot help but repeatedly ask: what does she aim at?

Is it indeed the child who bears witness to this prevalence of the phallic object? Or is it, on the contrary, Klein herself who signals to us the nature of the signifier as having the meaning of the phallus?

I must say that, in many cases, we are left in doubt as to the interpretation we should adopt. In fact, I know that some of you wonder where this sign of the phallus should be located among the various elements of the graph we use to orient the experience of desire and its interpretation.

And I have heard echoes of the form this question has taken for some: what is the relationship of this phallus to the Other, the big Other, which we speak of as the locus of speech?

There is indeed a relationship between the phallus and the big Other, but it is certainly not a relationship of equivalence, as if the phallus were the being of the big Other—if, indeed, anyone has posed the question in these terms. If the phallus has a relationship to anything, it is rather to the being of the subject.

I believe this is the new and important point I am trying to convey in introducing the subject into this dialectic, which unfolds in the unconscious development of the various stages of identification, through the primitive relationship with the mother and then the entrance into the play of the Oedipus complex and the play of law.

What I have emphasized here is something both very evident in observations—
particularly regarding the genesis of perversions—
and often veiled in this relationship to the phallic signifier.

There are two very different situations depending on whether it concerns:
– the subject being the phallus in relation to the Other,
– or by some means, mechanisms, or pathways—those we will revisit in the subject’s later development—having a relationship to the phallus already established in the Other, in the mother.

Precisely, the mother has a certain relationship to the phallus, and it is in this relationship to the phallus that the subject must assert themselves, entering into competition with the phallus. This is where we began two years ago when I started revisiting this relationship.

The function of the phallic signifier concerning the subject—the opposition of these two possibilities for the subject regarding the phallic signifier:
– to be [the phallus],
– or to have [the phallus],
…is an essential distinction.

Essential because:
– the consequences are not the same,
– being and having do not occur at the same time in the identification process,
– there is a real dividing line between the two, a line of discernment: one cannot both be and have it,
– and for the subject to come—to have it under certain conditions—they must similarly renounce being it.

The matter becomes far less simple to articulate if we seek to follow as closely as possible the dialectic at work. If the phallus has a relationship to the subject’s being:
– it is not to the subject’s pure and simple being,
– it is not in relation to the supposed subject-of-knowledge, the noetic support of all objects,
– it is with a speaking subject, a subject insofar as they assume their identity, and as such—I would say, and this is why the phallus plays its essentially signifying role—the subject both is and is not the phallus.

I apologize for the algebraic nature the discussion will take, but it is necessary for us to clarify the concepts since questions have arisen for some.

If in the notation something is presented—and we will return to this shortly—as the barred subject in relation to the object, $◊a, that is, the subject of desire, the subject as fundamentally questioned in its relationship to the object, then this constitutes the specificity of the relationship of desire within the subject. It is insofar as the subject is, in our notation, the barred subject that it is possible, under certain conditions, to assign the phallus to it as a signifier (Φ: signifier, not ϕ: imaginary phallus). This is insofar as the subject is a speaking subject.

The subject both is and is not the phallus:
– The subject is the phallus because it is the signifier under which language designates it,
– and the subject is not the phallus insofar as language, and specifically the law of language, on another plane, takes it away.

In reality, these processes do not occur on the same plane. If the law takes it away, it is precisely to arrange things; it is because a certain choice is made at that moment. The law ultimately introduces a definition, a distribution, a change of plane. The law reminds the subject that they either have it or do not have it.

What happens, in fact, is something that plays entirely in the interval between this signifying identification and this distribution of roles: the subject is the phallus, but the subject—of course—is not the phallus. I will emphasize something that the very structure of negation in language allows us to grasp through a formula, where the shift concerning the use of the verb “to be” occurs. One could say that the decisive moment, the one around which the assumption of castration revolves, is this: yes, we can say “he is” and “he is not” the phallus… but he is not without having it.

It is within this inflection of “not being without,” around this subjective assumption that bends between being and having, that the reality of castration is played out. That is, the phallus—the subject’s penis in a certain experience—has been brought into question, assuming a certain function as an equivalent or standard in the relationship to the object. It takes on its central value, and to a certain extent, one can say that it is in proportion to a certain renunciation of its relationship to the phallus that the subject gains possession of that sort of infinity, plurality, and completeness of the world of objects that characterizes the human world.

Take note of this formulation, whose modulation and emphasis I ask you to retain. It recurs in other forms across all languages: “He is not without having it” has a clear counterpart, which we will revisit later. The relationship of the woman to the phallus and the essential function of the phallic phase in the development of female sexuality are articulated literally in a different, opposing form, which suffices to clearly distinguish the divergent trajectories of the male and female subject in relation to sexuality.

The only accurate formula that resolves the impasses, contradictions, and ambiguities surrounding female sexuality is that “she is it without having it.” The relationship of the female subject to the phallus is to “be it without having it.” And this grants her the transcendence of her position, which we will explore further. We will articulate, regarding female sexuality, this particular and enduring relationship, which FREUD emphasized for its irreducible character and which is psychologically expressed in the form of Penisneid.

In essence, we could say—
to push the point to its extreme and make it fully understood—
that for a man, his penis is returned to him through a certain act that, at the limit, one could say deprives him of it. This is not entirely accurate; it is intended to open your ears, so that those who have already heard the previous formulation do not degrade its meaning with this secondary emphasis. Yet this secondary emphasis is important because it is here that the connection with the developmental element begins—the one typically used as a starting point, which I will now attempt to revise with you by asking:

– How can we articulate, using the algebraic elements at our disposal, what is at stake in these initial relationships of the child with the object, specifically the maternal object?
– And how can we conceive of the connection to this privileged signifier, whose function I am attempting to situate here?

The child—in what is articulated by psychiatrists, notably Mrs. Melanie KLEIN—has an entire series of early relationships with the mother’s body, conceived here and represented in a primitive experience that we struggle to grasp from Kleinian accounts: the relationship of the symbol and the image. And it is well known that this is the focus of Kleinian texts, the relationship of form to symbol, even though it is always an imaginary content that is elevated here.

Nevertheless, we can say that, to a certain extent, something symbolic or imagistic—
but assuredly a kind of Oneness—
emerges, almost reflecting the philosophical oppositions found in Parmenides between the One and Being. We can say that the experience of the relationship to the mother is entirely centered around an apprehension of unity or totality. All primitive progress, as articulated by Melanie KLEIN as essential to the child’s development, concerns a movement from fragmentation toward something representing, outside of the child:

– both the entirety of these fragmented, scattered objects that seem to exist in a kind of primitive disorder,
– and, progressively, the ability to apprehend the relationships among these diverse objects and this plurality within the unity of the privileged maternal object, grasping the aspiration, the progress, the path toward its own unity.

The child, I repeat, apprehends the primordial objects as being contained within the mother’s body—this universal container presented to the child as the ideal locus, so to speak, of its initial imaginary relationships.

How can we articulate this? Evidently, there are not two terms but four. The child’s relationship to the mother’s body, so primordial, provides the framework within which the child’s relationship to their own body is inscribed—relationships I have long sought to articulate for you around the notion of the specular affect, insofar as it is the term that gives structure to what we call narcissistic affect.

It is at a certain moment that the subject recognizes themselves in an original experience:
– as separated from their own image,
– as having a certain elective relationship with the image of their own body.

This specular relationship is established either through the specular experience itself or through a certain transitive castration dynamic in interactions with another of a very close—almost identical—age, oscillating within a limit of motor maturation that must not be exceeded. This experience, these games of presence and posturing, cannot occur with just any type of small other—
the term “small” here referring to young companions.
Age plays a role here that I have emphasized in the past.

The relationship of this to Ἔρως [Eros], libido, plays a special role. What is articulated here is the extent to which the child’s dyadic relationship with the other, who represents their own image, becomes juxtaposed with, interferes with, and becomes dependent upon a broader and more obscure relationship between the child, in their primitive attempts—the tendencies derived from their need—and the mother’s body, which is effectively the object of the image and the site of primitive identification.

What occurs and becomes established lies entirely in the fact that what transpires within the primitive dyad—
that is, the unconstituted form in which the child’s first wailing, the cry, the appeal of their need, is presented—
and the way relationships are formed between this unconstituted primitive state of the subject and something that then presents itself as a One at the level of the Other, namely the maternal body as the universal container, is what will fundamentally regulate the subject’s relationship, as constituted specularly—
that is, as an ego, with the ego being the image of the other—
with a certain other who must be distinct from the mother: in the specular relationship, this is the small other.

But, as you will see, it concerns something entirely different, given that it is within this initial quadripartite relationship that the subject’s first adjustments to their own identity occur.
Do not forget that it is at this moment, in this most radical relationship, that all authors, in unanimous agreement, situate the locus of psychotic or para-psychotic anomalies regarding what can be called the integration of specific terms of the subject’s auto-erotic relationships with themselves, within the boundaries of the body image.

The small schema I once used and recently recalled—the one involving the famous concave mirror—
illustrates this process. It allows us to conceive that it is possible to produce—
provided one positions oneself at a favorable point, specifically within a structure extending the limits of the concave mirror, by projecting them through the center of the spherical mirror—
something represented in the experiment I once described, which provokes the appearance—
not of a fantasy, but of a real image, which can be produced under certain conditions that are not particularly difficult to create—
of a real image of a flower inside a perfectly existing vase, thanks to the presence of the spherical mirror, provided the apparatus is viewed from a specific point.

This apparatus allows us to imagine the matter at hand, namely, that the child identifies themselves in a certain position of their being within the powers of the mother and thus realizes themselves. This is precisely the focus of everything we have discussed concerning the importance of the initial relationships with the mother. It is insofar as the child integrates themselves satisfactorily into this world of emblems represented by all the mother’s behaviors.

From here—provided the child situates themselves favorably—
something can emerge:
– either within themselves,
– outside themselves,
– or as something missing from them, so to speak.

This hidden aspect concerns their own tendencies, their own desires, which may, from the very first relationship, place them in a more or less distorted, diverted relationship with their own drives.

This is not so complicated to imagine. Recall the core of my explanation of narcissism: a manifest, crucial experience long described, the famous example highlighted in The Confessions of Saint Augustine, of the child observing their milk-brother in possession of the maternal breast:

“Vidi ego et expertus sum zelantem parvulum: nondum loquebatur et intuebatur pallidus amaro aspectu conlactaneum suum.”

Which I translated as:
“I saw with my own eyes and knew well a little one consumed by jealousy. He did not yet speak, but he already gazed with a bitter look…
“amaro” has a different emphasis in Latin than the French “amer” (“bitter”); one might translate it as “poisoned,” though this too is unsatisfactory.
…at his milk-brother.”

Once formalized, this experience reveals its absolutely universal significance.
This experience concerns the relationship with one’s own image. The subject sees their counterpart in a certain relationship with the mother, as the primitive ideal identification, as the first form of the One, the totality from which—
following explorations of this primitive experience—
analysts have developed such notions of totality that discourse focuses solely on totality, as if, leaning toward this perspective, we were to forget in the most persistent way that what experience shows us, pursued to the extremes of all phenomena we observe, is precisely that the human being cannot access this experience of totality.
The human being is divided, torn, and no analysis can restore this totality to them.

Because precisely something else is introduced into this dialectic, which is the one we are attempting to articulate because it is literally imposed upon us by experience, and above all, by the fact that the human being, in any case, can ultimately regard themselves as nothing more than a being in whom something is missing—a being, whether male or female, who is castrated. This is why the phallus essentially pertains to the dialectic of being within this experience of the One.

Here we have the image of the small other, the image of the similar, in a relationship with this totality that the subject has finally assumed, though not without delay.

It is precisely around this notion that Melanie KLEIN centers the development of the child. This is the so-called “depressive phase,” the crucial moment when the mother, as a totality, is realized. It concerns this initial ideal identification.

And what do we have in response to this? We have the recognition of the desired object as such, namely, that the other is in possession of the maternal breast. It takes on this elective value that makes this experience a crucial one, and I urge you to consider it as essential for our formalization. In this relationship with the object—which, in this instance, is the maternal breast—the subject becomes aware of themselves as deprived.

Contrary to what JONES articulates: “All deprivation,” he says somewhere—
and this is always framed around discussions of the phallic phase—
“engenders the feeling of frustration.” It is exactly the opposite: it is to the extent that the subject is imaginatively frustrated, that they have their first experience of something before them, occupying their place, usurping their position, in this relationship with the mother that should be theirs. Here, they feel this imaginary gap as frustration—
I say imaginary because, after all, nothing proves that they are truly deprived.
Someone else might be deprived, or their turn may come.

It is from this that the first awareness of the object emerges, in the sense that the subject is deprived of it. It is here that something opens up, enabling this object to enter into a certain relationship with a subject—though at this point, we are unsure whether it is an S to which we should assign the subscript i (Si).

A kind of passionate self-destruction adheres entirely to the pallor, to the decomposition evoked here by the literary brush of Saint AUGUSTINE, who recounts it. Or, it may already be something we can conceive of as an apprehension belonging properly to the symbolic order. What does this mean?

Namely:
– That already, in this experience, the object is symbolized, taking on a certain signifying value;
– That the object in question—namely, the maternal breast—can already be conceived as either present or absent, and can also be placed in relation to something else that could substitute for it,

…this is where it becomes a signifying element.

Melanie KLEIN, without knowing the full extent of her assertion, leans in this direction by saying that there could be something better—namely, the phallus. But she does not explain why; this remains a mysterious point. Everything hinges on this moment, where the activity of a metaphor arises, a phenomenon I have pointed out as crucial to understanding the child’s development.

Recall what I said the other day:
– About these particular forms of activity in children that leave adults so disconcerted and clumsy,
– About the child who, not content with calling “woof-woof”—that is, using a signifier they have invoked themselves—what you insist on calling a dog, decides to decree that the dog says “meow” and the cat says “woof-woof.”

It is in this activity of substitution that the entire mechanism and engine of symbolic progress lie. And this is precisely—albeit far more primitively—what the child articulates.

What is at stake here exceeds this passionate experience of the child feeling frustrated—that is, precisely what we can formalize as follows: this image of the other can be substituted for the subject,
…within their annihilating passion, their jealous passion in the given instance,
…and finds itself in a certain relationship with the object, in turn, situated within a certain relationship to the totality that may or may not involve the subject.

But it is to the extent that the object is substitutable for this totality, to the extent that the image of the other is substitutable for the subject, that we truly enter into symbolic activity—the activity that makes the human being a speaking being, defining their entire subsequent relationship to the object.

With this in mind, in the case at hand, how can such fundamental distinctions—remaining as primitive as they are—help us orient ourselves? How can they allow us to create discriminations that enable us to derive the maximum benefit from the data provided in the dream experience and in the particular subject whose case we are analyzing?

Let us examine whether this relationship to desire—this so-called relationship of desire—
this relationship to the object as a relationship of human desire,
…must always be grasped closely, and whether it is always necessary for us to find in it the relationship to an object in which the subject ultimately appears to be annihilated.

If S is in relation to a, which is the formula of desire, and if all of this is inscribed in the quadruple relationship that makes the subject, within the image of the other [i(a)]—namely, in the successive identifications that will be called “ego” [i(a→ego→I(A))]—find a form to substitute for something fundamentally pale, fundamentally anxious, that is the subject’s relationship to desire [$◊a].

What do we find among the various symptomatic elements presented in this observation? We can approach the material provided by the patient from many angles. Let us take it from the most prominent and symptomatic points possible.

There is a moment when he tells us that he cut the straps, the buckles of his sister’s sandals. This emerges during the analysis of the dream, following a number of interventions—minimal, no doubt, but not nonexistent—by Ella SHARPE, the analyst. A series of prompts gradually brought the following elements into view:
– after the hood…
the fact that the hood takes the shape of the female genital organ in the dream’s context,
– after the car’s hood,
– the straps used to secure and fasten this hood,
– and then the straps that he cut at one point on his sister’s sandals, without being able even now to explain the goal he undoubtedly pursued, which seemed to him quite useful but for which he could not, in any way, demonstrate necessity.

He uses almost exactly the same terms concerning his own car, which, in a later session following the dream interpretation, he tells the analyst that the mechanic has not yet returned to him…
and which he does not think of making an issue with this excellent, good man…
and although he has no need of the car, he would like to have it, even though it is unnecessary. He says he “loves it.”

Here we see two forms, it seems, of the object with which the subject clearly has a relationship, which he himself articulates as peculiar—namely, that in both cases it satisfies no need. It is not us who say it; we do not claim: “Modern man has no need of his car,” though anyone observing closely realizes it is all too evident. Here, it is the subject who says:

– “I don’t need my car, but I love it, I desire it.”

And as you know, it is at this point that Ella SHARPE,
seized by the hunter’s instinct before the prey, the object of the search,
tells us she intervened with utmost energy—though, curiously, she does not tell us in what terms.

Let us begin to describe some of these things at hand. Since I wished to start with what is simplest and most identifiable, let us note this old equation: if she is 8 years older than him, she was 11 years old when he, the subject, was 3, at the time of losing his father.

A certain penchant for the signifier has the advantage of occasionally leading us into arithmetic. This is not unwarranted, as there is no doubt that, at a very young age, children are constantly performing such calculations concerning their age and their age relations. We, thank God, tend to forget once we pass fifty—for obvious reasons—but children are very keen to know their age. And when we perform this little calculation, we notice something striking: the subject tells us that he does not begin to have memories until the age of 10 or 11. This detail appears in the observation. No great significance is drawn from it, but it is not merely a random finding I am presenting here. If you now reread the observation, you will see it goes much further.

That is to say, it is precisely when this is brought to our attention by the subject—
I mean when he states he has poor memory for everything before age 11—
that he immediately begins talking about his girlfriend, who is remarkably talented, an exceptionally clever girl when it comes to “impersonations,” that is, imitating everyone, particularly men, so impressively that she is employed by the BBC.

It is striking that he speaks of this just as he mentions something seemingly from another register: namely, that everything before age 11 is a black hole.

It must be believed that this is not unrelated to a certain imaginary alienation of himself in this sororal figure: i(a), it is indeed his sister, and this can explain many things, including his subsequent elision of the existence of a pram—a “baby carriage”—in his family.

On this level, it is the past; it is his sister’s domain. Finally, there is a moment when he seems to have caught up with her, so to speak—that is, he encounters her at the same point where he had left her, surrounding an event that is crucial. Ella SHARPE is correct in saying that the father’s death is crucial. The father’s death left him confronting all kinds of elements, except one that would have likely been very precious to him in overcoming the various captivations at play.

Here, in any case, is the point that will naturally remain somewhat mysterious to us because the subject himself highlights it: why the straps? He doesn’t know. Thankfully, we are analysts, and we can well guess that this is what lies at the level of $. I mean that we are required to form a small idea of what is there because we know other observations.

It is something that is obviously related, not to castration…
if it were well-assimilated, well-registered castration, assumed by the subject, this little transitory symptom wouldn’t exist…
but at this moment, it undoubtedly revolves around castration. Yet we do not have the right, for the time being, to extrapolate further, as it pertains to I, that is, something we can, for now, afford to suspend somewhat in our conclusions.

If we are engaged in analysis, it is precisely to try to understand a little, to understand what is at stake—namely, what the I of the subject is, his ideal, this extremely particular identification to which I already indicated last time we should pay attention.

We will now see how we can specify it in a relationship he has concerning his first [identification], something more evolutionary. It must be something tied to the current situation in analysis, concerning the relationship with the analyst.

Well, let us begin again to ask questions about what is currently at play. There are indeed many ways to pose this problem because, in this instance, one might say that all roads lead to Rome! We could start from the dream and the wealth of material that the subject brings forth in reaction to the interpretations offered by the analyst.

We agree with the subject that the essential thing is the car, the car and the straps—these are obviously not the same, as something has evolved in the meantime. The subject has taken positions; he himself has made reflections regarding this car, reflections not without a trace of irony:
“It’s strange how one speaks of the life of a car as if it were human…” [Strange how one speaks of the life of a car as if it were human. p.135]

On this point, I need not insist. As I already pointed out last time, the car’s obviously symbolic character is significant. It is certain that, in his life, the subject has found in this car an object seemingly more satisfying than the straps. For the simple reason that—regarding the straps—he still doesn’t understand them, while he is, nonetheless, capable of saying that the car obviously doesn’t serve much to satisfy a need, but that he is very attached to it! And then he plays with it; he controls it; he feels entirely at home within his car.

What will we find here at the level of the image? At the level of the image of a, i(a), we find things that are clearly different depending on whether we consider them at the level of the fantasy and the dream or at the level of what we might call the fantasies of the dream and waking dream. In the waking dream, which also has its value, we know what the image of the other is: it is something in relation to which he has taken very particular stances.

The image of the other is this pair of lovers whom, under the pretext of not disturbing, note well, he never fails to disturb in the most effective way—that is, by demanding they separate.

The image of the other is this other for whom everyone will say… remember this rather striking fantasy he claims to have had not so long ago: oh, there’s no need to check what’s in that room; “it’s just a dog.”

In short, the image of the other is something that, in any case, leaves very little room for sexual conjunction, demanding either separation or, conversely, something entirely outside the game—a phallic dog, a phallus completely out of play. If there is a phallus, it is a dog’s phallus.

This situation, as you see, seems to have progressed in the direction of disintegration.
That is, if for a long time the subject supported himself through a feminine identification, we find that his relationship with the possibilities of conjunction—the fact of embrace, of genital satisfaction—presents itself in a way that, in any case, leaves the issue of the phallus unresolved, open. It is quite certain, in any case, that the subject is not at ease. The question of double or single arises here:
– if it’s double, it’s separated,
– if it’s single, it’s not human.

In any case, it doesn’t resolve well. And regarding the subject in this instance, one thing is entirely clear. We do not need to ask, as in the other case, what he is and where he is. It is quite clear: no one is there; it is truly the οὔτις [outis], the “nobody,” that we have referenced in other circumstances.

Whether it is the dream, in which the woman does everything to “get my penis”, or the fantasy, where literally nothing happens—you can do whatever you want with your hand, even show that there’s nothing up your sleeves, but as for him, “nobody”!
And as for his fantasy, the question is: what’s in that place where he shouldn’t be? Indeed, there is no one. There is no one, because if there is a phallus, it is the phallus of a dog masturbating in a place where he would be thoroughly embarrassed if someone entered—certainly not him!

And here, what is present at the level of I? One could say, one is sure, that there is Mrs. Ella SHARPE, and that Mrs. Ella SHARPE is not unrelated to all this. Mrs. Ella SHARPE is preemptively warned with “a little cough” to reverse the formula, to not insert her finger, either, between the tree and the bark.

That is to say, if she is in the process of performing on herself in some more or less suspect manner, she must stop this before the subject arrives. In short, Mrs. Ella SHARPE must remain entirely out of the subject’s range of blows. This is what I called last time—
referring to Mrs. Ella SHARPE’s own comparison, which considers analysis as a chess game—
that the subject does not want to lose his “queen.”

He does not want to lose his “queen” because, without a doubt, his “queen” is the key to all this, and everything can only hold together because:
– nothing on the “queen’s” side must change,
– it is on the “queen’s” side that omnipotence resides.

The strange thing is that Ella Sharpe detects and recognizes this idea of omnipotence everywhere.
To the point of telling the subject that he considers himself omnipotent, under the pretext that he had an “enormous dream,” for instance, even though he is unable to recount more than this little snippet of an adventure that takes place on a road in Czechoslovakia.

But it is not the subject who is omnipotent. What is omnipotent is the Other, and it is precisely for this reason that the situation is especially perilous! Let us not forget that this is a subject who cannot manage to plead, he simply cannot, and that is striking in itself.

The key to the question is this: is it true or not that the subject cannot plead because the Other—on behalf of whom we always place ourselves if we are to plead—must not, in his eyes, be touched? In other words, for him, the Other—in this case, the woman—must under no circumstances be castrated. I mean that the Other carries within itself this signifier that holds all value.

And this is where the phallus must be considered. I am not the only one to think so: read page 272 of Melanie Klein’s work. Concerning the development of the little girl, she very clearly states that the phallus as a signifier initially concentrates within itself all the impulses the subject may have across all domains—oral, anal, urethral—and that even before one can speak of the genital phase, the phallus as a signifier already concentrates all values, particularly the instinctual values, and the aggressive tendencies the subject may have developed. It is precisely to the extent that:
– the phallus as a signifier cannot be mobilized by the subject,
– the phallus as a signifier remains inherent to the Other as such,
…that the subject finds himself in the stagnant posture we observe.

But what is most striking is that, as in all cases where we encounter resistance in the subject, this resistance is that of the analyst. Indeed, if there is one thing that Ella Sharpe strictly forbids herself in this instance—though she does not realize why, it is certain she acknowledges it as such—it is to plead.

In this instance, where a barrier presents itself that she could cross, she forbids herself from crossing it. She refuses because she does not realize that what the subject is holding himself back against is:
– not, as she believes, something concerning an alleged paternal aggression…
The father, after all, has been dead for quite some time—well and truly dead—and they had to work extremely hard to give him even a slight resuscitation within the analysis,
– not incitement for the subject to wield the phallus as a weapon,
– not his homosexual conflict,
– not his proving himself more or less courageous or aggressive when people mock him on the tennis court for not being able to make the final shot.

This is not the issue at all. The subject has yet to reach the point where he can consent to recognize that the woman is castrated. I am not saying that the woman does not have the phallus—this he ironically demonstrates in his dream fantasy—but rather that the Other as such, by virtue of being within the Other of language, is subject to this: for the woman, “she is without having it.” This is precisely what cannot, under any circumstances, be admitted by him.

For him, she must not “be without having it,” and this is why he does not want her to risk it at any cost. In the dream, his wife is out of the game—do not forget this. She is present but apparently plays no role. It is not even emphasized that she is watching. This is where, so to speak, the phallus is kept safe.

The subject does not even have to risk it himself, the phallus, because it is entirely hidden away in a corner where no one would think to look for it. The subject does not go so far as to say that it is within the woman, and yet it is indeed within the woman.
I mean that it is because Ella Sharpe is there. It is not particularly inconvenient that she is a woman.

It could be entirely appropriate if she realized what needed to be said to the subject, namely, that she is there as a woman, and that this raises questions, that the subject might dare to plead his case before her. But this is precisely what he does not do. This is precisely what she realizes he does not do, and this is what the critical moment of the analysis revolves around.

At this point, she encourages him to wield the phallus as a weapon. She says: this phallus is something that has always been exceedingly dangerous—don’t be afraid; that is indeed what it is, “boring and biting.”

[I then affirmed my conviction of his actual sight of his mother’s genitals and the projection onto them of revenge fantasies, which were to be correlated with the fantasies of aggression associated with his own penis as a biting and boring thing, and with the power of his water. p.146]

There is nothing in the material that gives us an indication of the phallus’s aggressive nature, and yet it is in this direction that she intervenes through speech. I do not think this is the best course of action. Why? Because the subject’s position—which, by all appearances, he has maintained and will likely continue to maintain even more strongly after Ella Sharpe’s intervention—is precisely the one he held during a particular moment of his childhood. This is what we are trying to clarify through the fantasy of the cut straps and all the identifications linked to his sister and the absence of prams. This is something that appears—you will see if you reread his associations carefully—something he is certain to have experienced: it is himself, bound, “pinned up” in his bed.

It is himself as someone who was undoubtedly contained, held in positions not unrelated to what we might presume to involve some repression of masturbation, in any case with experiences that were, for him, linked to his earliest approaches to erotic emotions, and which everything suggests were traumatic.

This is how Ella Sharpe interprets it. Everything the subject produces, she says, must have played a role in some primal scene, in the coupling of the parents. This coupling, without a doubt, he interrupted either by crying or through some intestinal disturbance. This is where she even finds proof that the “little colic” replacing the cough at the moment of knocking is a confirmation of her interpretation. But this is not certain!

The subject, whether as a child or in response to something echoing as a transitory symptom during analysis, releases what he holds within his body. That is what “a little colic” signifies—it does not necessarily settle the question of the function of this incontinence. This incontinence, as you know, will reappear at the urethral level, undoubtedly with a different function.

I have already pointed out how significant it is to note the echoing presence of the parents engaging in the sexual act in relation to any kind of enuresis manifestation. Here, let us exercise caution; it is essential not to always assign a single meaning to something that can indeed have certain effects and may later be secondarily used by the subject as a full intervention in interparental relations.

But now, more recently, that is, at a time not far removed from this analysis-related dream, the subject experienced a very peculiar fantasy, one that Ella Sharpe highlights significantly in confirming the notion of this relation to parental conjunction: he feared one day having a minor breakdown in his famous car, which is increasingly identified with himself, and blocking the road where the royal couple, no less, was meant to pass! As if he were there to echo the game of chess. But whenever you encounter the king, think less of the father and more of the subject.

In any case, this fantasy, this little anxiety that the subject manifests—what if, while heading to this small inauguration event where the royal couple… We are in 1934, and the English crown is not a queen with a consort; there is indeed a king and a queen who would find themselves blocked by the subject’s car. What we must content ourselves with saying, purely and simply, is that this is something that imaginatively and fantastically renews an aggressive attitude in the subject, an attitude of rivalry roughly comparable to that which could be attributed to wetting the bed. But this is not certain!

If this is meant to evoke an echo in us, it remains that the royal couple is not just any couple: they would find themselves in their car, stopped and exposed to view. It seems that, in this instance, the issue is something much closer to the frantic search for the phallus, the elusive object that is nowhere to be found and must be sought, though we know it will never be found.

That is to say, if this subject is wrapped in this hood, in this protection constructed over time around his ego by the roof of the car, it is also the possibility of evading with a “pin of speed,” a “burst of speed.” The subject finds himself in the same position as when we once heard the laughter of the Olympians: it is Vulcan who catches Mars and Venus under a shared net. And everyone knows that the laughter of the assembled gods on that occasion still resonates in our ears and in Homer’s verses. Where is the phallus?

This remains the central mechanism of comedy, and after all, let us not forget that this fantasy is above all one revolving around an idea of incongruity more than anything else. It is most closely connected to the same fundamental situation that gives unity to this dream and everything around it: namely, that of ἀϕάνισις (aphanisis), not in the sense of “disappearance of desire” but in the proper sense the word deserves if we substantiate it as ἀϕάνισoς (aphanisos), which is less about “disappearing” than about “making disappear.”

Recently, a talented man, Raymond Queneau, used as the epigraph to a delightful book, Zazie in the Metro:
‘Ο πλάσας ἠϕάνισεν (O plasas ephánisen): “The one who created this carefully concealed its workings.”

This is ultimately what it is about. The ἀϕάνισις (aphanisis) in question here is the vanishing act of the object in question, namely the phallus. It is precisely because the phallus is not put into play, because the phallus is reserved and preserved, that the subject cannot access the world of the Other.

And you will see, there is nothing more neurotic—not the fear of losing the phallus or the fear of castration (this is indeed the absolutely fundamental mechanism)—but the refusal to allow the Other to be castrated.