🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

In our last interview, I elaborated on the structure of fantasy as it exists in the subject, what we call the support of their desire. Fantasy, where we can grasp it within a sufficiently complete structure to serve as a kind of pivotal element for relating it to various structures—that is, to the relationship between the subject’s desire and what I have long referred to for you as being more than its reference point: its essence in the analytic perspective, namely the desire of the Other.

Today, as I announced, I will attempt to situate the position of desire within the different structures—let us say nosological, or experiential structures—with the neurotic structure at the forefront.

The perverse fantasy, as it is the one I chose last time to highlight for you:

• that which corresponds to the function of the subject and the function of the object in fantasy, insofar as it is the support, the index of a certain position of the subject,
• as well as the image of the other, which serves as the origin and the support—at least at the point where the subject is defined as desire.

There is this more complex structure called fantasy, where paradoxically, last time I was led…
…to take a particular, specifically exemplary form—not without profound reasons—that of the exhibitionist and the voyeur,
…and to show you that, contrary to what is too often said, these are not two reciprocal positions, as a hasty formulation of thought might suggest: one showing, the other seeing, complementing one another.

On the contrary, as I explained, these two positions are strictly parallel. In both cases, the subject, within the fantasy, is marked by something we called the fissure, the gap—something that, in the real, is both a hole and a flash. This occurs when the voyeur peers from behind their blind, or the exhibitionist slightly opens their screen:

• they are thereby indicated in their position within the act,
• and they are nothing other than this flash of the object, spoken of and experienced, perceived by the subject through the opening of this gap in something that situates them as open. Open to what?

To a desire other than their own—their own, which is profoundly affected, shaken, struck by what is glimpsed in this flash:

• it is the emotion of the other, beyond their modesty,
• it is the opening of the other, the virtual anticipation, insofar as they do not feel themselves seen, yet are perceived as offering themselves to view.

This is what characterizes, in both cases, the position of the object in this structure, which is so fundamental since, ultimately, analytic experience identifies it at the starting point of what it initially discovered on the path of causes and generative stigmas of the neurotic position—namely, the observed scene, the so-called primal scene.

This scene participates in this structure—that is, undoubtedly through a reversal of this structure, whereby:

• the subject sees something open, which is this gap suddenly glimpsed,
• something that, obviously, in its traumatic value, relates to the desire of the Other, perceived as such, remaining as an enigmatic core until, retrospectively, they can reintegrate the lived moment into a chain that will not necessarily be the correct one but will, in any case, be the chain generative of an entire unconscious modulation, one anchored in neurosis.

I urge you to pause at this structure of fantasy. It is clear that it is a suspended moment, as I emphasized, which gives it its value. What gives it its value is precisely this: a moment of pause.

This moment of pause, which has the value of an index, corresponds to a moment of action in which the subject cannot establish themselves in a certain way X—
…which is precisely what we designate as desire here, what we attempt to isolate in its function as desire—
…except on the condition that this subject loses the sense of this position, for this is the essence of it: the fantasy is opaque to them.

We can designate their position within the fantasy, and perhaps they can glimpse it themselves, but the sense of the position—what it reveals of their being—this, the subject cannot articulate.

This is the essential point: aphanisis [ἀϕάνισις]. Without a doubt, the term is felicitous and serves us, but unlike the function ascribed to it by JONES in the interpretation of the castration complex, its form is enigmatic.
We see in fantasy that aphanisis—at least in the sense where the term disappearance (or fading, as I have also said) is usable—is not the disappearance of desire. It is rather that, at the apex of desire, there is the disappearance of the subject. The subject:

• insofar as they situate themselves in their position, articulate themselves as “I” where “It speaks” in the unconscious chain,
• insofar as they can only indicate themselves there by disappearing from their position as subject. [$]

From there, we see what is at stake…
…insofar as we have defined this extreme point, this imaginary point where the being of the subject resides in its maximum density—
…these are merely images to help your mind grasp a metaphor—
…from the moment we see, we define this imaginary point where the being of the subject…
…as the one to be articulated, to be named in the unconscious…
…can never, ultimately, be named, but can only be indicated by something that reveals itself as a rupture, as a fissure, as a structure of rupture within fantasy.

It is around this imaginary point—and this is, in every domain, legitimate if we can articulate its structure starting from it—that we will try to situate what effectively occurs in the different forms of the subject, which are by no means necessarily homogeneous forms, comprehensible from one side to the person on the other side.

We are all too aware of what can mislead us in the comprehension of a psychosis. For example, we must refrain from “understanding” if we aim to reconstruct, to articulate within the structure, which is precisely what we are attempting here.

From this basis, from this structure where the subject, at the moment of their disappearance—and I repeat, this is a notion you can trace back to Freud when he speaks of the “navel of the dream,” the point where all associations converge to disappear, becoming no longer connectable to anything but what he calls the unerkannt [the unrecognized]. This is the matter at hand.

In relation to this, the subject sees opening before them—what? Nothing other than another gap, which, at the limit, would generate an infinite deferral of desire toward another desire.

As we observe in the fantasy of the voyeur and the exhibitionist, it is the desire of the Other upon which the subject depends. They find themselves at the mercy of the desire of the Other, offered to it. This is concrete; we find it in experience. That we do not articulate it does not mean that we cannot commonly grasp it, that it is not very easy to perceive.

When I spoke to you at length two years ago about the neurosis of Little Hans, it was about nothing else. It is because, at a moment in his development, Little Hans is confronted with something that goes far beyond the critical moment of rivalry over the new arrival, his little sister, and far more grave than this novelty—the budding of sexual maturation that makes him capable of erections or even, as specialists debate, of orgasms.

This crisis does not open at the level of “inter-psychological” dynamics, strictly speaking, nor at the level of the integration of a new tendency. As I emphasized, articulated, and even hammered home at the time, it is because, at this conjuncture, a closure arises, and Hans finds himself directly and explicitly confronted with the desire of his mother, without any recourse.

Freud’s Hilflosigkeit (helplessness), discussed in his 1917 article on “The Unconscious,” refers to this position of being without recourse, more primitive than anything else, and with respect to which anxiety is already an initial form of organization insofar as it is already an expectation—if of what is unknown, if not articulated immediately, it is in any case, Freud tells us, first and foremost Erwartung (expectation). But preceding this, there is this: Hilflosigkeit, the absence of recourse. An absence of recourse before what?

Something that cannot be defined or centered in any other way than as the desire of the Other. It is this relationship between the subject’s desire and the desire of the Other—which, despite literally absorbing them, leaves them without recourse—that constitutes the essential structure not only of neurosis but of any analytically defined structure.

We begin with neurosis, having come a long way from perversion, so you may glimpse that perversion is also linked to it.

Nevertheless, let us underline that we have only brought perversion into play in this instantaneous moment of fantasy—for as much as the passage to the act in perversion, and in perversion alone, reveals it.

In neurosis, which is currently our focus, in relation to this structure I am articulating before you, the fertile moment of neurosis is what I aim to highlight in the case of Little Hans. There, we are dealing with a phobia, the simplest form of neurosis, where we can tangibly grasp the nature of the solution. I have already explained this at length regarding Little Hans, showing you the role of the object, the phobic object, as a signifier with universal applicability.

It is there to occupy this space between the subject’s desire and the desire of the Other, fulfilling a protective or defensive function. Freud’s formulation is unambiguous on this: the fear of the phobic object is meant to protect the subject from what? Freud is explicit: from the approach of their desire.

And it is upon closer examination that we see what this concerns: their desire insofar as it is defenseless in relation to what, in the Other—in this case, the mother—opens up to Hans as a sign of absolute dependency. She will take him to the ends of the earth. She will take him even further, as far and as often as:

• she herself disappears, eclipses herself,
• she is the person who, at that moment, may no longer appear to him as the one who could fulfill all his demands.

She now appears to him with the additional mystery of being herself open to a lack, the meaning of which becomes apparent to Hans at this point—of being in a certain relationship to the phallus, which, for Hans, he does not possess.

It is at the level of the mother’s lack of being that the drama opens for Hans, which he can only resolve by bringing forth this signifier of the phobia, whose polyvalent function I have demonstrated: a kind of universal key, serving to protect him at that moment from what all experienced analysts unequivocally recognize—the emergence of an anxiety even more formidable than the fear tied to the phobia.

This moment, insofar as it relates to desire and is something that will—within the structure of the fantasy [$◊a], in the opposition of $ to a—provide to this S:

• something that alleviates its burden, sustains its presence,
• something that the subject clings to.

This is the point where, in sum, the symptom will emerge—
the symptom at its deepest level in neurosis, insofar as it generally concerns the subject’s position.
This is what merits articulation here.

If you wish, let us proceed in this order:

• to articulate it first,
• and then to ask ourselves—if the structure of fantasy is so fatal—how something that stands at the edge of this point of loss, this point of disappearance indicated within the structure of fantasy, how something at this threshold, sustaining itself at the entrance of the vortex of fantasy, how this something is possible?

It is indeed clear that this is possible. The neurotic accesses the fantasy. They access it at certain chosen moments of satisfaction of their desire. But we all know that this is merely a functional use of the fantasy and that its relationship to their entire world, particularly their relationships with others—real others, as we now arrive at this point—is profoundly marked by what? It has always been said: by a repressed drive.

This repressed drive is the relationship we are trying to articulate a bit more clearly, a bit more precisely, and also in a way that is more clinically evident.

Let us simply observe how this is possible. Let us indicate how it presents itself. Take the obsessive subject, if you like, and the hysterical one. Let us consider them together, insofar as we will see, through a number of traits, that they illuminate each other. The object of the fantasy, insofar as it leads to this desire of the Other, must not be approached, and for this, there are obviously several solutions.

We have seen the one linked to the promotion of the phobic object, the object of prohibition. Prohibition of what? Ultimately, of a jouissance that is dangerous because it opens before the subject the abyss of desire as such. There are other solutions, which I have already indicated to you in two schematic forms during the Royaumont seminar. The subject can sustain their desire before the desire of the Other in two ways:

• As unsatisfied desire: This is the case with hysterics.
  I remind you of the example of the beautiful butcher’s wife, where this structure appears so clearly—this dream, in whose associations the form, so to speak, confessed, of the hysteric’s operation emerges. The beautiful butcher’s wife desires to eat caviar, but she does not want her husband to buy it for her, because her desire must remain unsatisfied.
  This structure, which is illustrated in a small maneuver forming, moreover, the fabric and text of the everyday lives of these subjects, goes much further in reality. It signifies—this little story—the function the hysteric assigns to herself: she is the obstacle; she is the one who does not want it.

That is to say, in this relationship of the subject to the object in the fantasy, she occupies the same third position that was earlier attributed to the phobic signifier, but in a different way. She is the obstacle; she is the real stake. And her jouissance lies precisely in preventing desire in the situations she herself orchestrates.
This is one of the fundamental functions of the hysteric subject in the situations she constructs: her function is to prevent desire from coming to fruition, so she herself remains the stake.

She takes the place of what we might call, borrowing an English term, a puppet, that is, something like a mannequin. Puppet has a broader, more general sense—it is a false semblance [a simulacrum, a marionette].

The hysteric, insofar as she is in a situation so frequently observed that it is clearly recognizable in observations (provided one has the key, which lies in her position between):

• a shadow that is her double,
• a woman who is, covertly, precisely that point where her desire is situated and inserted,
  insofar as she must not see it…

…presents herself, institutes herself, as the spring of the machine, the one who suspends them and positions them relative to one another, as marionettes of a sort, through which she sustains herself in this split relationship, characterized by the structure $◊a. The hysteric herself is nevertheless part of the game, taking the form of the one who is, ultimately, the stake.

The obsessive, on the other hand, holds a different position. The distinction of the obsessive, compared to the hysteric, is to remain outside the game. Their true desire—you will observe this… trust these formulas when dealing with clinically classifiable subjects of this type—is never truly present at the place where something might be at stake that could qualify as “their desire.” Where they appear to take a risk, they are not actually present.

It is precisely this disappearance of the subject—the $—at the point of approach to desire, which they use, so to speak, as both a weapon and a refuge: they have learned to use it to be elsewhere. And observe carefully: they can only achieve this… because there is no other place than the one reserved thus far for the instantaneous, relational structure of the hysteric…
they can only do this by unfolding the relation over time, by temporalizing it, by continuously postponing their engagement in the true relation to desire.

For the obsessive, the commitment to their true desire is always reserved for tomorrow. This does not mean that, in the meantime, they commit to nothing. Quite the contrary! They prove themselves. Even more so! They may go so far as to regard these proofs, their actions, as a means of acquiring merits. Merits toward what? Toward the Other’s regard for their desires.

These mechanisms—you will indeed observe them—confess themselves at every turn, even if the obsessive does not acknowledge them as such. It is important that you recognize them so you can identify them. After all, it would be a mistake to crush this mechanism under the guise of what it carries along with it—namely, all those inter-subjective relationships that can only be understood as ordered in relation to this fundamental relationship or relationships, such as I am attempting to articulate for you here.

What, in the end, does this mean? Before even asking how this is possible, what do we see emerging in this neurotic position? It is clear that what we see emerging is at least this: the subject’s cry for help to sustain their desire, to sustain it in the presence of and before the desire of the Other, to constitute themselves as desiring.

This is what I pointed out to you last time: the one thing they do not know is that, in constituting themselves as desiring, their approach is profoundly marked by something behind it—that is, the danger posed by the slope of desire.

Thus, in constituting themselves as desiring, they fail to recognize:

• that in the constitution of their desire, they are defending against something,
• that their very desire is a defense and can be nothing else.

For this to hold together, it is clear that, in every case, the subject calls upon something that presents itself in a third position relative to this desire of the Other: something in which the subject can situate themselves, so that the aspirational, vanishing relationship of the $ to the a remains tenable [$◊a].

It is in the relationship to the other—the real other—that we see sufficiently indicated the role of what enables the subject to symbolize. For it is nothing other than symbolizing their situation—maintaining in action something in which they can recognize themselves as a subject, satisfying themselves as a subject, albeit astonished to discover, upon any reflective view of their situation, that this subject they sustain is beset by all sorts of contorted and paradoxical attitudes that designate them, to themselves, as a neurotic caught in symptoms.

Here intervenes the element that analytic experience has taught us to place at a key point in the functions of signification: the phallus. If the phallus occupies the key position I just indicated, it is very evidently as a signifier—a signifier tied to something that Freud names, whose place Freud has never concealed within the economy of the unconscious itself: namely, the law.

In this regard, any attempt to reduce the phallus to something balanced or composed with some corresponding functional counterpart in the other sex holds value, of course, from the point of view of the subject’s interrelation, if one can say genetically. But such an effort can only succeed by ignoring what is absolutely essential in the valuation of the phallus as such.

It is not purely and simply an organ. Where it is an organ, it serves as an instrument of jouissance. At this level, it is not integrated into the mechanism of desire, because the mechanism of desire belongs to another level entirely. To comprehend the mechanism of desire, one must define it from the other side—namely, once the relations of culture have been established, whether or not one begins with the myth of primordial murder.

Desire, among all demands, is distinguished by the fact that it is a demand subjected to the law. This may seem almost like stating the obvious, but it is nevertheless what Freud emphasizes when distinguishing:

• demands responding to so-called species or individual preservation needs,
• and those operating on another level.

Thus, to say that those on this other level differ from the former because they can be deferred… But after all, if sexual desire can be deferred in its effects, in its passage to action in humans, it is assuredly in an ambiguous manner. Can it be deferred? Why is it more deferrable in humans than in animals, where, after all, it does not so readily admit deferral?

Undoubtedly, this stems from genetic flexibility. But more fundamentally—and this cannot be articulated in analysis unless placed at this level—it is because this sexual desire itself forms the foundation of the primordial order of exchanges that establishes the law, through which the concept of number as such enters into human inter-psychology. The so-called law of alliance and kinship reveals the following: the phallus, fundamentally, is the subject as the object of this desire, this object being subjected to what we call the law of fecundity.

Thus, whenever the phallus is invoked—whether more or less overtly or through more or less initiatory means—it is unveiled to those participating in this initiation. If the function of the father for the subject, as the “author of their days,” as the saying goes, is merely the signifier of what I here call the law of fecundity…
…insofar as it regulates and binds desire to a law…
then indeed this fundamental signification of the phallus is the origin of the entire dialectic of desire. Desire, as it expresses the being of the subject at the point of their loss, interposes itself along the trajectory of the subject’s functionalization as the phallus—of that by which the subject presents themselves within the law of exchange defined by the fundamental relations governing the inter-reactions of desire within culture. It is to the extent that the subject is, and that from a certain moment they are no longer, that they lack being and can no longer grasp themselves.

It is at the intersection of this with the subject’s phallic function…
their phallic function in the real ties of relationships with real others, in the real generation of lineage…
that the equilibrium point occurs, the very point at which we left off in the dream of Ella Sharpe’s patient.

If I extended this great digression on Hamlet to this level, it was because this subject presented in their dream, in the purest form, the alternation of “To be or not…” which I have discussed so extensively.
It is this subject, self-qualified as “nobody”…
this subject at the moment when they approach their desire, where they just barely touch it, where they must choose between being nobody or being entirely consumed by the devouring desire of the woman…
that immediately afterward, they are confronted with the command “to be or not to be”—to bring forth the “to be” of the second part, which does not hold the same meaning as in the first part, and the “not to be” of the primordial structure of desire.

This subject is offered an alternative: to be, meaning to be the phallus, they must be the phallus for the Other, the marked phallus. To be what they can be as a subject, they face the threat of not having it.

If you permit me to use a logical symbol—the V [vel], which denotes the “either… or…” distinction—the subject is presented with a choice between:

• “not being”—not being the phallus,
• or, if they are, “not having it”—that is, being the phallus for the Other, the phallus in the intersubjective dialectic.

This is the crux of the matter. And it is within this dynamic that the neurotic experiences the approach, the integration of their desire, as a threat of loss. The “not One” that designates the $ in the fundamental structure of desire transforms into:

• a “1 too many” or “something in excess”,
• or “something lacking”—manifesting as the threat of castration for the man, or the phallus felt as absence for the woman.

This is why it can be said that at the conclusion of the analytic demystification of the neurotic’s position, something seems to remain in the structure—at least, as Freud’s own experience attests—something that presents itself as a residue, as something that, for the subject, in all cases, leaves them in an inadequate position: for men, the peril of the phallus; for women, the absence of the phallus. But perhaps this is so because:

• In the approach initially adopted to solve the neurotic problem, the transversal dimension—in which the subject, in their desire, engages with the manifestation of their being as such, as a possible author of the cut—is neglected.
• In other words, the analyst’s aim is the reduction of the neurotic position of desire rather than the emergence of desire’s position as such, independent of the entanglement of the neurotic’s peculiar dialectic.

How can we revisit these points to help you better grasp their articulation? Certainly, I have taken them to their sharpest edge. It is clear that this involves not only the entire anecdotal history of the subject but also other structural elements from their past.

I mean what we have revealed and highlighted at the appropriate moment: what pertains to the narcissistic drama, the subject’s relationship to their own image. Indeed, ultimately, it is here that, for the subject—Freud emphasized this repeatedly in his time and in his own terms—the fear of losing the phallus and the feeling of lacking the phallus are inserted. In other words, the ego is implicated.

But let us note at this level that if the ego intervenes, if it can intervene in this place where the subject must sustain themselves in this complex dialectic where they fear losing their privilege in relation to the other, it is certainly not because the narcissistic relationship to the other’s image intervenes due to some so-called weakness of the ego. After all, in every case where such weakness is observed, what we witness is, on the contrary, a scattering or even a blocking of the situation.

I need only refer to something familiar to you all, which, I believe, has been translated in the journal: the notable case of Melanie Klein. This concerns the child who was indeed introduced to the relationship between desire and the signifier but found themselves, in relation to the other—on the imaginary plane, the gestural, communicative plane—entirely suspended, as Melanie Klein describes it.

We do not know everything about this case, and after all, we cannot say that Melanie Klein did anything other than present us with a remarkable case. What this case demonstrates is that this child, who did not speak, was already so accessible and sensitive to Melanie Klein’s spoken interventions that, for us, in our framework, within the register we are trying to develop here, their behavior is truly striking. The only structures of the world accessible, sensitive, and manifest to this child in their initial interactions with Melanie Klein are structures that inherently bear all the characteristics of the relationship to the signifying chain.

Melanie Klein identifies them:

• It is the little chain of the train, that is, something composed of a certain number of elements linked to one another.
• It is a door that opens or closes—in other words, the simplest form of the alternation “yes or no” that conditions the signifier as such, as I have tried to illustrate in possible applications of a cybernetic schema to our use of the symbol: “A door must be open or closed.”

The child’s behavior is entirely limited to these structures. And yet, it is precisely through touching upon these, in words that are nonetheless phrases, something essentially verbal, that Melanie Klein obtains, from the very beginning, the child’s first reaction—a reaction, in my opinion, almost astonishing in its exemplary character. The child situates themselves—this is in the text—between two doors: between the inner door of the offices and the outer door, in a dark space. It is surprising that Melanie Klein—who, in many respects, so clearly identified structural elements such as introjection and expulsion, namely, the boundary between the external world and what one might call the inner darknesses of the subject—did not see the significance of this intermediate zone. This zone is nothing less than what we distinguish as the site of desire.

That is, this zone, neither external nor internal, articulated and constructed—albeit so reduced in this subject—can be likened to what we find in certain primitive village structures: such cleared zones between the village and the virgin wilderness, the no-man’s land, where the little subject’s desire remains stalled.

It is here that the ego may possibly intervene. And, of course, it is to the extent that this ego is not weak but strong that, as I have repeatedly emphasized, the subject’s resistances will organize. These resistances are the very forms of coherence of the neurotic construction—that is, what the subject organizes to subsist as desire:

• To avoid being the locus of that desire,
• To shelter themselves from the desire of the Other as such,
• To maintain a distance, an alibi, between their deepest manifestation as desire and the desire of the Other—constituting themselves, respectively, as phobic, hysteric, or obsessive.

I must revisit—this is necessary—a detailed example Freud gives us of a fantasy. It is not pointless to return to it after this detour. The fantasy is: “A child is being beaten.” Here, we can grasp the moments that allow us to rediscover the structural relationship we are trying to articulate today.

What do we have? The fantasy of obsessives. Both boys and girls use this fantasy to achieve—what?—masturbatory jouissance. The relationship to desire is clear. What is the function of this jouissance?

Its function, here, is that of all need satisfaction within a relationship to the beyond determined by the articulation of language for humans. That is to say, masturbatory jouissance here is not the resolution of desire but its suppression, precisely as the infant at the breast suppresses the demand for love directed at the mother through the satisfaction of nourishment. This is almost inscribed in historical testimony.

I mean, since we previously alluded to the hedonistic perspective and its insufficiency to qualify human desire as such, let us not forget, after all, the exemplary character of one of its paradoxical points, obviously left in the shadows of the lives of those who presented themselves in history as sages. These sages, belonging to a discipline whose end, labeled as philosophical, was, for ultimately valid and methodical reasons, the choice and determination of a posture toward desire—a posture that, at its origin, consisted in excluding it, rendering it obsolete.

Every properly hedonistic perspective partakes in this position of exclusion, as demonstrated by the paradoxical example I will now recall: the position of the Cynics. For the Cynics, categorically and unequivocally…
the tradition, as Chrysippus relayed—if my memory serves—provides the testimony…
…Diogenes the Cynic demonstrated, even to the point of performing publicly in a demonstrative, not exhibitionistic, manner, that the solution to the problem of sexual desire was, so to speak, “within everyone’s grasp.” He demonstrated this brilliantly through masturbation.

The fantasy of the obsessive is therefore something that, clearly, relates to jouissance…
even to the remarkable extent that this fantasy may become one of its conditions…
but whose structure Freud demonstrates possesses what I describe as its indexical value. This is because what this fantasy highlights is nothing other than a feature of the subject’s history, something inscribed in their diachrony.

Specifically, the subject, in a consequently forgotten past, saw—Freud’s text tells us—a rival…
whether of the same or a different sex, it matters little…
…suffering the wrath of the beloved figure, in this case, the father, and found happiness in this original situation. How does the fantasy moment perpetuate, so to speak, this privileged moment of happiness?

This is where the intermediary phase identified by Freud gains its demonstrative significance. Freud explains that this happens in a time that can only be reconstructed—signaled by the fact that Freud’s account reveals only certain unconscious moments that are inherently inaccessible as such. Whether Freud was correct or mistaken in specific cases is irrelevant here.

Moreover, Freud is not mistaken; the important point is that he identifies this intermediary phase as something reconstructable, bridging the historical memory, which positions the subject in a moment of triumph—this historical memory, itself merely repressed at worst and recoverable—while the fantasy moment acts as an index, eternally fixing this moment as the anchor point for something entirely different: the subject’s desire.

This only happens concerning an intermediary moment that I would call here—
although it can only be reconstructed—
…a metaphorical moment. For what is at stake in this intermediary moment, this second phase Freud tells us is essential to understanding the function of this fantasy?

It concerns this: that the rival, the brother subjected to the anger and punishment inflicted by the beloved object, is replaced by the subject themselves. In this second phase, the subject is the one punished. Here, we encounter the enigma in its pure state, inherent in this metaphor, this transference. What is the subject seeking in this? What strange path is this—to follow their triumph by submitting themselves to the ordeal imposed upon the other?

Are we not confronted here with the ultimate enigma—Freud does not conceal this—of what inscribes itself in analytic dialectics as masochism, whose conjunction, presented here in pure form, becomes evident? Namely, that something within the subject perpetuates the happiness of the initial situation within a hidden, latent, unconscious state of misery.

In this hypothetical second phase, what is at stake is essentially an oscillation, an ambivalence, or more precisely, an ambiguity regarding the act of the authoritative figure—here, the father—and the recognition it entails. The jouissance the subject derives here arises as they slip from an event in their historical past into a structure where they will appear as a being, as such.

It is this: that in alienating themselves—substituting themselves for the other as the victim—the subject takes the decisive step in their jouissance, which culminates in the fantasy moment where they are more “on” than themselves. On the one hand, they become the instrument of alienation insofar as it entails devaluation: they are the beaten one. This is why, to a certain extent, I have said that they become purely and simply a phallic instrument, an instrument of their annihilation. Confronted with what?

With “a child is being beaten”—a child without a face, no longer the original child, nor the child they were in the second phase, without even any specific determination of sex. Freud’s examination of the succession of sampled fantasies shows this. The subject is confronted with what can be called a kind of distilled essence of the object. Yet, it is within this relationship, within the fantasy, that we see what constitutes for the subject the privileged moment of their jouissance.

We can say of the neurotic—and next time, we will see how we can contrast this with something very particular, not perversion in general, since here perversion plays a pivotal structural role, but something quite specific, whose common factor seems to have been overlooked until now, namely, homosexuality—
but for today, focusing on the neurotic, their most common and fundamental structure lies in this: that if they desire to be desiring, what is it they desire?

Something that, in the end, is nothing more than what allows the subject to sustain their desire in its precariousness, as such. Without knowing that the entire phantasmagoria is constructed for this purpose—namely, that it is within their very symptoms that they find their jouissance, even though these symptoms are so unsatisfying in themselves.

The subject thus presents themselves here not as a “pure being”—
which I used as a starting point to indicate to you what the relationship of this particular manifestation of the subject to the real meant—
but as a “being for.”

The ambiguity of the neurotic’s position lies entirely here, in this metonymy that makes it such that their entire “to be” resides in this “being for.”