🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I am continuing my attempt to articulate for you what must govern our action in analysis, insofar as we are dealing with the unconscious within the subject. I am aware that this is no easy task, and indeed, I do not permit myself complete freedom in the kind of formulation I would like to guide you toward.

At times, my detours are tied to my sense of the need to make you sensitive to the approach at hand.
It is not necessarily the case that I always succeed in ensuring that you do not lose track of the path. Nevertheless, I ask you to follow me and to trust me.

To pick up from the point where we left off last time, I will articulate more simply what I have—
obviously not without precautions, not without efforts to avoid ambiguities—
formulated by putting the term “being” at the forefront.

And to proceed with a hammer stroke, I ask for the restitution, the reintegration into our everyday concepts of terms so weighty that, for centuries, they have only been approached with a kind of reverent trembling, however hazardous such a formulation may seem to you.

I am speaking of “being” and the “One.” Let us say—of course, it is their usage that must prove their coherence—that what I call “being,” and which to some extent I described last time as “pure being” at a certain level of its emergence, is something that corresponds to the terms by which we orient ourselves, namely, the real and the symbolic.

And here, “being” is quite simply this:
– that we are not idealists,
– that for us—as philosophy books often state—we are among those who believe that being precedes thought. Yet, to orient ourselves in our work as analysts, we need nothing less than this.

I regret having to stir the heavens of philosophy for you, but I must say that I do so only out of necessity, and ultimately because I find nothing better with which to operate. Being, we shall say, is precisely the real insofar as it manifests at the level of the symbolic, but let us be clear that this occurs at the level of the symbolic.

In any case, for us, we have no need to consider it elsewhere, this seemingly simple thing, namely, that there is something added when we say “it is that,” and that this refers to the real, insofar as the real is affirmed, rejected, or denied within the symbolic. This “being” exists nowhere else—let this be well understood—than in the intervals, in the gaps, and precisely where it is the least significant of signifiers, namely, the cut.

It is the same as the cut that presents it in the symbolic. And we speak of “pure being”…
Let me put it more bluntly, since it seems that last time, as I am willing to admit, some of the formulas I advanced appeared circumlocutory, if not confusing, to certain individuals. This “pure being” in question is the very being I have just defined in general terms, insofar as under the name of the unconscious, the symbolic, a chain of signifiers persists according to a formula I will now propose: every subject is One.

Here, I must ask for your indulgence, meaning that I ask you to follow me. This simply means that you should not imagine that what I am presenting now is advanced with less care than what I have said about “being.” I ask you to trust that, before speaking to you, I have already realized that what I am now presenting, namely the One, is not an unequivocal notion, and that the philosophy dictionaries will tell you that there are multiple uses of this term. That is to say, the One—which is the whole—does not coincide in all its usages with the numerical 1, which presupposes the succession and order of numbers that emerges as such.

For indeed, it seems quite clear that this One is secondary to the institution of number as such, and that for a correct deduction… at least empirical approaches leave no doubt in this regard:
English psychology attempts to establish the empirical entry of number into our experience, and it is not without reason that I refer here to the most “ground-level” argumentation.

I have already pointed out that it is impossible to structure human experience—by which I mean the most common affective experience—without starting from the fact that the human being counts and counts themselves. I will say—briefly, for to proceed further, I must assume a certain period of reflection on what I have already said—that desire is closely linked to what happens insofar as the human being must articulate themselves within the signifier.

And as a being, it is in the intervals that they appear at a level we may attempt to articulate further, perhaps a bit later, in a manner that I will deliberately make more ambiguous than that of the One I have just introduced. For the latter, I do not believe anyone has yet fully articulated it in its very ambiguity. This is the notion of the “not-One.” It is insofar as this S appears here as this “not-One” that we will revisit and examine it, as it is with this that we shall concern ourselves today.

Let us return to the level of experience, specifically to the level of desire. If desire plays this role of serving as an index for the subject, to the point where it cannot designate itself without vanishing, we shall say that at the level of desire, the subject “counts itself.”

“It counts itself”… To play on ambiguities and language, this is where I want to direct your attention first. I mean, to the tendency we always have to forget what we are dealing with in experience—namely, the experience of our patients, those whom we dare to take on—and this is why I refer you back to yourselves.
…In desire, we count ourselves as counting.

It is here that the subject appears as counting, not in computation, but in the sense that it faces what constitutes, ultimately, itself. It is high time to remind analysts that nothing constitutes the ultimate presence of the subject more—inasmuch as this is what we are dealing with—than desire.

From this point, as this reckoning of “counting” begins to undergo all sorts of transactions that evaporate it into various fiduciary equivalents, it is, of course, an entire problem. Yet there is still a moment when one must pay in full. People generally come to us for this reason: because things do not work when it comes time to pay in full, whether it concerns sexual desire or action in the fullest and simplest sense.

It is within this framework that the question of the object arises. It is clear that if the object were simple, not only would it be easy for the subject to face their feelings fully, but—if you will permit the wordplay—they would be more often content with the object, whereas instead, they must make do with it, which is entirely different.

This is obviously related to the fact—
a fact worth reiterating because it is fundamental to our experience—
that at the level of desire, the object to satisfy it is not, to say the least, easily accessible. Indeed, we will even say that it is not easy to encounter it for structural reasons, precisely those we will attempt to delve into further. It may seem we are not progressing quickly, but that is because the task is arduous, though, as I repeat, it is part of our daily experience.

If the object of desire were the ripest, the most mature…
as we sometimes express in that kind of drooling intoxication called the exaltation of “genital desire”…
we would not constantly have to note the division regularly introduced into it, a division we are forced to articulate at the very moment we discuss this ever-conciliatory, albeit problematic, subject positioned between the two planes that constitute this object:
– as an object of love, or, as it is often put, tenderness, or the other to whom we offer our uniqueness;
– and the same other, considered as an instrument of desire.

It is quite clear that it is love for the other that resolves everything. Yet, even this simple remark suggests that perhaps here we are stepping beyond the limits of the framework. For in the end, it is not within our dispositions but in the tenderness of the other that it is reserved to meet, undoubtedly at the cost of a certain decentering of oneself, the exact requirements of what, on the level of desire, is for us promoted as the object.

Ultimately, it seems that we are more or less covertly reproducing old distinctions introduced by religious experience. These distinctions concern tender love in the concrete—or passionate, “carnal,” as it is said—sense of the term, and love of charity. If this is indeed the case, why not send our patients to pastors who can preach it to them much better than we can?

Moreover, we are not entirely unaware that this would be poorly tolerated language, and that, from time to time, our patients anticipate our linguistic slips on the subject and say to us:
– “After all, if these are the beautiful moral principles you have to preach, they might as well go elsewhere to hear them, for it has already irritated them enough in the past that they do not want to hear it again.”

This is an easy irony on my part. But it is not mere irony.

I will go further and say that, ultimately, there is no theory of desire—or at least no theory of desire in which we, ourselves, might recognize—if I may spell it out plainly—the very figures through which I now attempt to articulate it for you, outside of religious dogmas. It is not by chance that in religious articulation, desire—
undoubtedly confined to protected corners with restricted access, of course not open to ordinary mortals or the faithful but to areas called mysticism—
is indeed inscribed.

As such, the satisfaction of desire is linked to an entire divine organization, which—for the common man—
is presented in the form of mysteries (likely for others as well—I need not name them). One must consider what such terms as “incarnation” or “redemption,” sufficiently vibrant to a believer, might represent on a sensitive scale.

But I will go even further: I will say that the most profound of all—which is called “the Trinity”—would be gravely misunderstood if we believed it was unrelated, at least in some way, to the figure 3, with which we are always dealing. This becomes apparent when we realize that there is no proper access, no possible equilibrium for a desire we might call normal, without an experience involving a certain subjective triad.

Why not state these things, since they lie there in extreme simplicity?
And as for me, I do not hesitate; I find as much satisfaction in these references as I do in the more or less confused apprehensions of primitive ceremonies—”totemic” or otherwise—in which what we find most meaningful is not so different from these structural elements.

Of course, it is precisely because we approach it in a way that, while not exhaustive, is not veiled in mystery that I believe it is worthwhile to proceed along this path. Yet, I repeat, certain questions—questions of moral or even social horizons—are not superfluous to recall on this occasion.

Specifically, to articulate something that appears quite evident in contemporary experience: that there can be no satisfaction for one without satisfaction for all. This principle is at the root of a movement that—
even if we are not as powerfully engaged as others—
presses upon us from all sides, assuredly enough to threaten many of our conveniences.

Still, it is worth recalling that the satisfaction in question perhaps deserves scrutiny.
For is it purely and simply the satisfaction of needs?

Those very individuals I am speaking of…
let us place them under the heading of the movement inscribed within the Marxist perspective, which has nothing other as its principle than the one I have just expressed: “There is no satisfaction for each unless there is satisfaction for all.”
…would not dare to claim otherwise, since the ultimate goal of this movement and the revolutions it entails is to bring these “all” to a freedom that is undoubtedly distant and posed as being post-revolutionary.

But this freedom, then, what other content can we give it than the free disposition for each of their desire? Nonetheless, it remains that the satisfaction of desire, within this perspective, is a post-revolutionary question, and this is something we see every day!

This does not solve anything. We cannot postpone the desire we are dealing with to a post-revolutionary stage. Moreover, everyone knows I am not here maligning one lifestyle or another, whether it is on this side or the other of a certain boundary [i.e., the “Iron Curtain”]. The question of desire remains at the forefront of the concerns of power, meaning that there must be some social and collective manner to “manage” it.

This is no easier on one side of a certain “curtain” than on the other. It is always about tempering a certain unease—the malaise in culture, as FREUD called it. There is no other “malaise in culture” than the malaise of desire.

To drive home the final nail in what I am trying to say, I will ask you to consider this question for yourselves, each one…
not as analysts too inclined—less here than elsewhere—to believe yourselves destined to govern the desires of others…
but to reflect on what the phrase means in each of your lives, at the core of your existence:
What does it mean to “realize one’s desire”?

It does exist after all!

Things do come to fruition—albeit slightly veered to the right, slightly veered to the left, twisted, botched, and more or less messy. Still, they are things that, at certain moments, we can gather under the heading: “This was in the direction of realizing my desire.”

But if I ask you to articulate what it means to “realize one’s desire,” I wager that you will not find it easy to articulate.
And yet, if I may…
cross this with the religious reference I ventured into earlier today…
to highlight that formidable creation of dark humor that religion—specifically Christianity, which remains very much alive—has promoted under the name of the “Last Judgment.”

I pose the question to you:
– Simply to consider whether it is not one of the questions we ought to project as being most fittingly placed in the space of the “Last Judgment”:
– The question of whether, on that day of the “Last Judgment,” what we will be able to say about this matter—what in our unique existence we will have done in the direction of realizing our desire—will not weigh as heavily as the question—one that does not refute it in the least, nor counterbalance it in any way—of whether we will have done what is called “good.”

But let us return to our formula, to our structure of desire, to examine what makes it not merely the function of the object, as I tried to articulate two years ago, nor merely the function of the subject, as I tried to show you, which is distinguished at this key point of desire by the vanishing of the subject insofar as it must name itself as such, but in the correlation that binds the two together.

This correlation makes the object precisely function as the point where the subject cannot name itself, where modesty, I might say, becomes the royal form of what manifests in symptoms as shame and disgust.

And I ask you for a little more time, before delving into this articulation, to point out something I must leave here as a marker—a point I was unable to develop as I would have wished, due to program constraints—namely, that of comedy.

Comedy, contrary to what a vain populace may believe, is the deepest mechanism of the stage in its capacity to allow the human being the spectral decomposition of their situation in the world. Comedy transcends modesty.

Tragedy ends with “the name of the hero” and the total identification of the hero: HAMLET is HAMLET; he is that name. It is even because his father was already HAMLET that, in the end, everything resolves into this: that HAMLET is definitively abolished in his desire. I believe I have said enough about HAMLET for now.

But comedy is a very peculiar trap for desire, which is why every time a trap for desire functions, we find ourselves in comedy. Desire appears where it was least expected:
the ridiculous father, the hypocritical devotee, the virtuous individual caught in an adulterous venture—these are the materials of comedy.

But there must also be this element that ensures desire does not confess itself: it is masked and unmasked, ridiculed, and occasionally punished, but only for show. For in true comedies, punishment does not even graze the raven’s wing of desire, which remains completely intact:
– TARTUFFE is exactly the same after the constable places a hand on his shoulder.
– ARNOLPHE exclaims “Oof!”—meaning he is still ARNOLPHE, with no reason why he wouldn’t try again with a new AGNÈS.
– HARPAGON is not cured by the more or less contrived resolution of Molière’s comedy.

Desire in comedy is unmasked but not refuted. This is merely an indication.

Now I would like to introduce what will serve to situate our behavior regarding desire, as we, through analysis, have learned to observe it. For…
as one of our great poets said—even greater as a painter…
this desire, we can grab it by the tail, that is to say, within the fantasy.

The subject, therefore, insofar as they desire, does not know where they stand in relation to the unconscious articulation—that is, to this sign, this scansion that they repeat as unconscious. Where is this subject as such? Are they at the point where they desire? This is the point of my articulation today:
– They are not at the point where they desire.
– They are somewhere within the fantasy.

And this is what I want to articulate today, because everything in our conduct of interpretation depends on it.

I have previously referred here to an observation that appeared in a sort of small bulletin in Belgium concerning the appearance of a “transitory perversion” during the course of treatment, something improperly labeled as a form of phobia. In fact, it was quite clearly—and as the author himself undoubtedly recognized in his questioning… I must say, this text is valuable; it is very conscientious and highly usable for the inquiries the author himself raises. Namely, the woman who conducted this treatment and who, undoubtedly, if she herself had been better guided, possessed all the necessary qualities to see much more clearly and to go much further.

It is clear that this observation, in which one might say, in the name of certain principles—specifically, the reality principle in this case—the analyst allowed themselves to manipulate the subject’s desire as if this were the point in need of reorientation. The subject—undoubtedly not by chance—began to fantasize that their recovery would coincide with sleeping with the analyst. Without a doubt, it is no coincidence that something so stark and raw comes to the forefront of an analytical experience. It is a consequence of the general orientation given to the treatment and something that the author himself clearly identified as the critical point.

Namely, the moment when it became a matter of interpreting a fantasy and identifying or not identifying an element of that fantasy.
Which—fortunately and quite magnificently—at that moment was, I will not say a man in armor, but rather armor itself advancing behind the subject, armor armed with something easily recognizable, as it was a Fly-Tox syringe—that is, the most comical yet striking representation of the phallic apparatus as a destructive force.

And this caused the author considerable retrospective embarrassment. It is precisely from this point that many subsequent developments depended, and the author sensed that the entire trigger for the “artificial perversion” was tied to this.

Everything hinged on the fact that this was interpreted in terms of reality—undeniably, the real experience of the phallic mother—and not, as is entirely evident from a closer view of the observation, something related to the subject themselves. From the moment the observation is properly considered, it becomes clear that the subject is bringing forth the necessary and missing image of the father as such, insofar as this image is required for the stabilization of their desire.

And nothing could be more satisfying than the fact that this missing figure appears at that moment in the form of a construction—something that offers the living image of the subject as reconstituted through a series of cuts and articulations of the armor, inasmuch as these are joints, pure and simple joints as such.
In this sense, and quite concretely, one could have reformulated the type of intervention that would have been necessary, and perhaps what is called “healing” in this context could have been achieved at a lower cost than through the detour of a transitory perversion—likely enacted in the real—which undeniably allows us to touch upon, in a certain practice, how reference to reality represents a regression in treatment.

Now I will clarify precisely what I intend to make you feel concerning these relations of $ and a.

I will first provide a model, which is only a model: the “fort-da”—something that I need not comment on further, namely, that moment we may theoretically consider the first introduction of the subject into the symbolic. This introduction resides in the alternation of a pair of signifiers, in relation to a small object of any kind: say, a ball, or just as well, a little bit of string, something frayed at the end of a blanket, as long as it can be thrown and retrieved.

Here, then, is the element in question, within which something is expressed just before the appearance of the $—that is, the moment where the $ questions itself in relation to the Other as present or absent.

It is thus the locus by which the subject, at this level, enters the symbolic and brings forth at the outset something that WINNICOTT, driven by the necessity of a thought entirely focused on the primary experiences of frustration, introduced with the term—essential for him in the genesis of any human development as such—of the “transitional object.” The transitional object is the little ball of the “fort-da.”

At what point can we consider this game as promoted to its function within desire? At the moment it becomes fantasy—that is, when the subject no longer enters the game but anticipates themselves within it, short-circuits it, becomes entirely contained within the fantasy. I mean, when they grasp themselves within their disappearance.

They will, of course, never grasp this without difficulty, but what is required for what I call fantasy as the support of desire is that the subject be represented within the fantasy at this moment of disappearance.

And I would note that I am not saying anything extraordinary here. I am simply articulating this angle, this flash, this moment where JONES stopped when he sought to give concrete meaning to the terms of the castration complex and, for reasons tied to the demands of his personal understanding, went no further, as this was how things appeared to him phenomenologically.

People are still stopped by the limits of comprehension when they insist on understanding at all costs! What I am trying to help you move beyond, ever so slightly, is the notion that one can go a little further by stopping the attempt to understand. This is precisely why I am not a phenomenologist.

JONES identifies the “castration complex” with the fear of the disappearance of desire. This is exactly what I am telling you now, albeit in a different form. Since the subject fears the disappearance of their desire, this must mean something—that somewhere, they desire themselves as desiring. This is what constitutes the structure of desire—pay close attention—of the neurotic.

This is why I will not start with the neurotic, because this seems all too easily to be a simple doubling: “I desire myself as desiring,” “I desire myself as desiring to be desired,” and so on.

That is not at all the issue, which is why the perverse fantasy is useful to re-spell. And if I cannot delve further today, I will try to do so by taking one of the most accessible fantasies—closely related to what I alluded to earlier in the observation I mentioned—namely, the fantasy of the exhibitionist, and likewise, the voyeur.

Because, as you will see, perhaps it is worth reconsidering how the structure in question is commonly reported.

We are accustomed to being told: “This perverse fantasy is very simple, very pretty: the scopophilic drive.”
Of course, people love to look; they love to be looked at—these delightful vital impulses, as Paul ÉLUARD somewhere puts it.

There is, in short, something here, the drive, which takes pleasure in what ÉLUARD’s poem so charmingly expresses with the phrase “giving to be seen”—the manifestation of form offering itself to the other.

In sum, let me draw your attention to this: it is no small thing to say that. It no longer seems so simple to us. This implies, since yesterday we were at this level of considering what implicit subjectivity might exist in animal life, it still implies a certain subjectivity.

It is scarcely possible to conceive of this “giving to be seen” without granting the word “giving” the full richness of the act of giving—even an innocent, unwitting reference of this form to its own abundance.

Indeed, we find entirely concrete indications of this in the luxury animals exhibit in captivating displays, particularly sexual displays. I will not return to making the stickleback twitch before you; I think I have spoken at length enough for what I am saying to make sense.

This is simply to point out that in the curve of certain behaviors—no matter how instinctual we suppose them to be—something may be implied that corresponds to the same small movement of return and, simultaneously, of anticipation that we find in the curve of speech. I mean a temporal projection of something in the exuberance of the drive to display, as we observe it at the natural level.

Here, I can only tangentially encourage—particularly for those who attended yesterday’s scientific session—the individual who spoke on this topic to notice that within this temporal anticipation, there is a need to modulate what might be expectation, no doubt, in the animal under certain circumstances, with that something which allows us to articulate the disappointment of that expectation as deception. And the medium—until proven otherwise, I would say—appears to be constituted by a promise.

Whether the animal makes a promise to itself about the success of its behaviors is the whole question that allows us to talk about deception instead of disappointment of expectation.

Now, let us return to our exhibitionist. Do they, in any way, fit within this dialectic of the “shown”—even insofar as the “shown” is connected to the pathways of the other?

I can at least point out, regarding the exhibitionist’s relation to the other—
I will use clumsy terms to make myself understood; they are certainly not the best or most literary—that the other is struck in their complicit desire (and God knows the other really is, on occasion) by what takes place there, and by what takes place—as what?—as a rupture.

Observe that this rupture is no ordinary one. This rupture is essential as a trap for desire. It is a rupture that goes unnoticed by what we might call, for the occasion, “the majority,” and it is perceived by its intended target, precisely because it is unnoticed elsewhere.

And indeed, everyone knows there is no true exhibitionist—except with additional refinements, of course—in private. For it to truly be an exhibitionist act, for there to be pleasure, it must occur in a public space.

On this structure, we then arrive clumsily and tell them:
“My friend, if you show yourself from so far away, it’s because you’re afraid to approach your object. Come closer, come closer!”
I ask, what does this joke even mean? Do you believe exhibitionists do not have sex? Clinical evidence strongly suggests otherwise. They can be quite good spouses with their partners, but their desire in this context lies elsewhere.

It requires, of course, other conditions, and it is on these conditions that we must now focus.

It becomes evident that this manifestation, this selective communication that occurs with the other, satisfies a certain desire only insofar as a specific relation is established between a certain manifestation of being and the real, as it engages with the symbolic framework as such.

This is why the public space is necessary: to ensure that the event is situated within the symbolic framework.
That is to say—allow me to point this out, for those who reproach the exhibitionist for not daring to approach the object, for yielding to some fear—that I have made the maximum danger a condition of their satisfaction.

Yet here again, people will argue the opposite, disregarding the contradiction, and claim that it is this danger they seek.

This is not impossible. But before going so far, let us first notice a structure. Namely, on the side of what constitutes the object here—the girl, or girls, or other involved parties—let us shed, in passing, a tear for the compassionate souls.

It happens that the little girls, especially if there are several of them, often have great fun during such moments. This even becomes part of the exhibitionist’s pleasure; it is a variation. The desire of the other, then, is present as an essential element, insofar as it is surprised, engaged beyond modesty, and occasionally complicit. All variations are possible.

On the other side, what is there? There is something whose structure I have already pointed out and reiterated just now, I believe sufficiently. There is undoubtedly what they show, you will say.

But I will respond that:
– What they show in this context is rather variable.
– What they show is more or less glorious.
– But what they show is a redundancy that conceals more than it reveals about what is truly at stake.

We must not misunderstand what the exhibitionist reveals as a testimony of the erection of their desire, nor confuse it with the apparatus of their desire. The apparatus is essentially constituted by what I emphasized earlier: the glimpse within the unnoticed, which I bluntly referred to as a pair of trousers that opens and closes, or, to put it plainly, what we might call the split in desire.

This is what is essential. No erection, however successful it may be presumed, can substitute for the essential element in the structure of the situation, namely, this split as such. It is also here that the subject as such is designated. This is what must be grasped to understand what is at stake and, most probably, what is to be filled.

We will return to this later, as I want to correlate it with the phenomenology of the voyeur. I believe I can proceed more quickly now. Nevertheless, going too fast, as always, risks glossing over the substance of the matter. This is why I approach it here with the same caution: what is essential and what is omitted in the scopophilic drive is that it, too, begins with the split.

For the voyeur, this split is an absolutely indispensable element of the structure. The relationship between the seen and the unseen, though distributed differently here, is no less distinct.

Furthermore, I want to delve into the details. Since the focus is on reliance upon the object—in this case, the other—for voyeuristic satisfaction, the critical point is that what is seen is implicated in the affair; this is part of the fantasy. Without question, what is seen can often be viewed without the subject’s awareness.

The object—let us say, feminine, as it appears that this is the preferred direction of this search—is likely unaware that it is being watched. Yet in the voyeur’s satisfaction, that is, in what sustains their desire, there is this: even while innocently complying, so to speak, something in the object lends itself to this function of spectacle. It is open to this, participating potentially in the dimension of indiscretion. And it is to the extent that something in their gestures suggests, through some subtle sign, that they might be offering themselves, that the voyeur’s enjoyment reaches its exact and true level.

The more a surprised creature can be eroticized, I would say, the more their gestures reveal them as offering themselves to what I might call the invisible hosts of the air. It is not for nothing that I invoke them here. These are the “angels of Christianity,” whom Anatole FRANCE had the audacity to involve in this matter. Read The Revolt of the Angels, and you will see at least the precise connection between the dialectic of desire and this sort of virtuality of an eye—elusive but always imaginable.

References to the Count DE CABANIS’s book concerning the mystical marriages of men with sylphs and undines are not out of place in this text, which is focused on its goals, as seen in certain works of Anatole FRANCE. Thus, it is in this activity where the creature appears in this relationship of secrecy with itself, in these gestures that betray the permanence of a witness before whom one does not confess, that the voyeur’s pleasure, as such, reaches its peak.

Do you not see that, in both cases, the subject reduces themselves to the artifice of the split as such? This artifice occupies its place and effectively reveals the subject reduced to their miserable function. Yet it is indeed about them, insofar as they are within the fantasy—they are the split. The question of the relationship between this split and what is symbolically the most unbearable in our experience—namely, the form that corresponds to it in the place of the feminine sex—is another question, which we leave open for the future.

But now let us review the whole and begin with the poetic metaphor “I saw myself seeing myself” from La Jeune Parque. It is clear that this dream of perfect closure, of accomplished self-sufficiency, is realized in no desire other than the superhuman desire of the poetic virgin. It is insofar as the voyeur and the exhibitionist place themselves in the position of “I saw myself seeing myself” that they insert themselves into the situation, which is—what? Precisely a situation where the other does not see the “I saw myself…”—a situation of the other’s unconscious enjoyment.

The other, in some sense, is decapitated of the third-party awareness; they do not know that they are in the potentiality of being seen, nor do they comprehend the significance of being shaken by what they see—namely, the unusual object presented to them by the exhibitionist. This object affects the other only insofar as it is indeed the object of their desire, but they do not recognize it at that moment.

Thus, a double ignorance is established. For if the other does not, at this level, realize as the other what is presumed to be realized in the mind of the one exhibiting or watching themselves as a possible manifestation of desire, conversely, in their desire, the one exhibiting or watching themselves does not realize the function of the cut that abolishes them in a clandestine automatism. This automatism crushes them in a moment whose spontaneity they do not recognize in the least, even as it designates what is spoken there as such, and which is present in its acme—known yet suspended. They know only this maneuver of the shamed animal, this oblique maneuver, this maneuver that exposes them to blows.

Yet this split, in whatever form it appears—shutter, telescope, or any screen—is what introduces them into the desire of the other. This split is the symbolic split of a deeper mystery to be elucidated—namely, their place at a certain level of the unconscious, which allows us to situate the pervert, at this level, within a specific relationship to the very structure of desire.

For it is the desire of the other as such, reproducing the structure of their own, that they aim for.

The perverse solution to the problem of the subject’s situation in the fantasy is precisely this: to target the desire of the other and believe they see an object there.

The hour is late enough for me to stop here.

This, too, is a cut, though it has the disadvantage of being arbitrary—I mean, it does not allow me to show you the originality of this solution compared to the neurotic solution.

Know simply that it is worth bringing them closer together, and starting from this fundamental fantasy of the pervert, to help you see the function that the neurotic subject plays in their own fantasy.

I have already fortunately pointed this out to you earlier. I told you, the neurotic desires themselves as desiring.

And why so? Why can they not simply desire—why must they desire so intensely?

Everyone knows that there is something inherently interested in this, and that is, quite specifically, the phallus. After all, you may have noticed that I have so far kept the intervention of the phallus reserved in this economy—this good old phallus of bygone days.

On two occasions—in last year’s discussion of the Oedipus complex and in my article on psychoses—I demonstrated it to you as being linked to the paternal metaphor, meaning as giving the subject a signified.

However, it was impossible to reintroduce it into the dialectic at hand without first presenting this structural element through which the fantasy is constituted—something that I now ask you, as a final effort before we part today, to accept in its symbolic nature.

What I mean is that from now on, the $ in the fantasy, as confronted and opposed to the (a)—which you now understand I have shown to be far more complex than the three forms I initially provided as an introduction, since here the (a) represents the desire of the Other in the case I am presenting—
you can see, therefore, that all forms of the cut, including those reflecting the cut of the subject, are indicated.

I ask you to accept the following notion: I even allow myself the absurdity of referring to a notation of √–1 concerning the imaginary.

I left you at the edge of the “not-One” in the vanishing of the subject. It is to this “not-One”, and even to this “as if not one”, insofar as it gives us the opening to the uniqueness of the subject, that I will return next time. However, if I ask you to note it in this way, it is precisely so that you do not see it as the most general, and consequently most confused, form of negation.

The difficulty in speaking of negation is that no one knows what it is. Yet, at the beginning of this year, I pointed out the differentiation between foreclosure and discordance.

For now, I present to you, in a closed, contained, symbolic form—precisely because of that, decisive—another form of negation. It is something that situates the subject within a different order of magnitude.