🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I would like to try to contextualize yesterday evening’s presentation a bit. If I wanted to express in a figurative way what we are trying to do here, I would start by rejoicing that, with FREUD’s works at our disposal, I am not forced… except by an unexpected intervention of divinity… to go fetch them from some Sinai, in other words, to leave you all too quickly on your own.

Because the truth is, what we will see—and always see—repeated in the most intricate parts of FREUD’s text is still something that is not entirely the adoration of the golden calf but nonetheless, in some way, a form of idolatry. What I am trying to do here is to pull you away from this once and for all. And I hope that one day it will be sufficiently accomplished for me not to feel this danger leaning towards overly figurative formulations. In the end, that is what idolatry ultimately means.

Our dear LECLAIRE may not have veered towards such prostration, but there was still—something you all undoubtedly sensed—it is indeed from there that a few projections, a few points originated, what I later called in a conversation with him “the scaffolding,” which will need to be dismantled at a certain point. A certain way of centering his presentation, certain points where the maintenance of some of his reference terms still reflects something of that order.

The need to make things figurative… and God knows if it is legitimate, the term “model” or “pattern” has its value, its function, and it well expresses, in a way, the process in scientific exposition as well as in certain other fields—perhaps not as much as one might think… is not without its drawbacks.

There is no place where this temptation is more insidious in its effects—I mean, where it harbors more traps—than in the domain we are in, which is precisely that of subjectivity. And the difficulty, when speaking of subjectivity, is precisely not to reify the subject.

I believe that LECLAIRE, in a certain intention to uphold his construction—and it is precisely this intention to uphold it that led him to present it to us like a pyramid, firmly based on its foundation, entirely solid, and not inverted—within this need, at one point, presented to us in a dotted, evanescent form, something that is somewhat an idol of the subject.

Now, we only grasp its nearly elusive aspect, and the day we bring it into view, at that moment, it dissolves, vanishes, eludes grasp. Nonetheless, he could not help but represent it to us. I think this is an observation that inserts itself distinctly within the chain, the process, of this demonstration, which was precisely centered on this question: “What is the subject?”—this question posed both from naive apprehension and from scientific or philosophical formulation. I indicated to you that fundamentally it was [rejected?] by the ego.

And we find ourselves, in sum, with this remark, this question—concerning what we did last night—at the same crossroads, the same point where we can resume our path, at the point where I left it last time, that is, at the moment when the subject grasps its unity.

This fragmented body finds its unity in this image of the other, which is its own anticipated image. It is a dual situation where we see the outline of a polar relationship, certainly asymmetrical, and whose asymmetry already shows us in what way the theory of the ego, as psychoanalysis gives it to us, does not in any way align with the so-called scientific or philosophical conception of the ego. This conception connects to a certain naive apprehension which, as I told you, belongs to psychology, a certain psychology that is historically dateable, which is what we will call “the psychology of modern man.”

I stopped you, in sum, at the moment when showing you this subject, which I also called last time—and not just last night—at the moment when we paused on LECLAIRE’s question of the subject, which I did not call only last night but also at the end of my last lecture: “person.” I might not have emphasized or underlined it very well, but it was indeed the “person” we spoke of last night.

This subject, which is person, and which is decomposed, fragmented, comes to a halt, finds its unity, and is in some way drawn, in anticipation, towards this image that is both deceptive and realized, which is this certain unity of the subject given to it in the image of the other, also given to it in its specular image. The function of the specular image, on this occasion, as much as in place of the image of the other, clearly shows the fundamentally imaginary character of this relationship.

And, drawing upon a reference taken from the most modern of our mechanistic exercises—which are so significant in the development not only of science but of human thought—I ultimately presented this stage of the subject’s development as something that could be embodied in a model; I gave you a model.

I gave you a model that does not idolize this subject in any way. I think you have sufficiently observed this, that at the point where I left you, the subject was truly nowhere, for a good reason: precisely because it involved two small mechanical turtles, one stuck on the image of the other, not the entire energy ensemble but rather a regulatory part of these mechanisms, which can be conceived as captivated by all imaginable means.

I am not here to engage you in cybernetics, even imaginary ones: the photoelectric cell, and everything that can be used on such occasions to create machines more advanced than automata, their predecessors. This machine is, in a sense, entirely dependent on the unitary functioning of another machine, and therefore also captivated by every kind of movement of the other machine.

You can see clearly that this circle is not limited to two, yet it is the two that form the essential connection, the linkage of two machines, each being, through the mediation of the image, at the mercy of the other. In sum, it is a vast circle, where each is caught up in the totalitarian image of the other.

You can imagine the extreme disadvantages of this from the perspective of what one might call the objects of a machine’s desire: for a machine, there is hardly any other possible desire than to draw upon energy sources. A machine can hardly do more than feed itself, essentially. We have not yet managed to create—or even conceptualize—machines capable of reproducing themselves. Even the schema of its symbolism has yet to be developed. So, we are confined to this object of desire, which would be that source of replenishment.

This is indeed what they do, those brave little machines of Mr. GREY WALTER, as we suppose them, linked by this imaginary relationship with one another.

This will inevitably lead to unfortunate encounters: they are, in a sense, fundamentally fixated on a point as long as the other moves toward it; hence, there will certainly be collisions somewhere. This is where we had arrived, and I stopped there. Let us suppose they have some sort of sound recording apparatus, and let us further suppose that the Great Voice… we can very well imagine that there is someone who has guided and monitored their functioning, the legislator… wants to intervene to regulate the ballet which, until now, has been a mere round dance, potentially leading to catastrophic outcomes. The legislator can regulate the ballet and introduce symbolic regulation, which you precisely have an idea of—a model, a schema—in the underlying mathematical unconsciousness of the exchanges of elementary structures.

There must be other examples of this in human regulations. If this model is valid—the model that Mr. LÉVI-STRAUSS presented in his latest seminar—it is evident that the comparison stops there, for we are not going to reify the legislator. That would be just another idol, and we must stop there.

Serge LECLAIRE

I apologize, but I would like to respond, as I feel—I know very well which point I may have emphasized arbitrarily, perhaps, in this reification of the subject. But, to use your own expression, if in this instance I idolized it…

LACAN – I said you had a “tendency.”

Serge LECLAIRE

…if I had a tendency to idolize it, it is because I think it is necessary, that one cannot do otherwise.

LACAN – Well, then, you are a little idolater. I descend from Sinai and break the tablets of the law.

Serge LECLAIRE

Let me finish. I feel that by refusing this very conscious reification of the subject, we tend—and you tend—to transfer this idolization to another point. At that moment, it will no longer be the subject; it will be the other, the image, the mirror. I do not understand why we defend ourselves so strongly against this, but this idolization is transferred to something else.

LACAN

I am well aware of this. You are not alone. Your transcendental concerns, if you like, refer more to a certain substantialist idea of the unconscious. For others, it will be what one calls idealist, in the true sense of the word, in the sense of critical idealism. And someone present here—whose identity I have no reason to reveal—said to me after our last lecture:

“Your consciousness, there—it seems to me that after having, in a sense, mistreated it…

For I must also say that there are more than a few listeners here whose philosophical training, let’s say traditional, insofar as it establishes critical idealism, and for whom the apprehension of consciousness by itself is one of its pillars—something that cannot be treated lightly. And I must say that the last time, I warned you clearly that I was taking the step—of treating it lightly—fully aware of the arbitrary, decisive, Gordian-knot character of such an approach, which indeed presupposes a sort of profound, radical neglect of an entire perspective.

So, I was told:

“…this consciousness, you bring it back—as you say, your idol-subject, you will place it back somewhere. This consciousness, you already bring it back.”

Indeed, at the point in the presentation where I speak of this voice that restores order and allows for the regulated ballet of machines, we must know where this voice is. This voice, which is perhaps also, as Mr. VALÉRY says:

“…this august Voice
That knows itself, when it resounds,
To be no longer the voice of anyone,
So long as among waves and woods!”
[Paul Valéry: Charmes, La Pythie]

It is language he speaks of when he expresses himself in this way. It is clear that we need… until, in the final analysis, we recognize that it might indeed be the voice of no one… in our deduction of the subject, to situate it within interhuman play, and somewhere! Thus, it is not merely the voice of the legislator, the ballet master, which would indeed constitute an idolification of a particularly elevated order, but rather a characteristic idolification.

This is why I ventured last time to suggest that we are led to suppose, or more precisely to demand, that it be the machine that takes up this ordering speech. And moving a bit faster, as sometimes happens at the end of a discourse where I am forced to both conclude and initiate the next discussion, I said this: let us suppose that the machine could count itself, for ultimately that is what it comes down to. For the mathematical combinations—which govern object exchanges at the point or in the sense I defined earlier—to function, it is necessary that within this combinatory system, each machine can count itself.

It was at this point that the anonymous individual I alluded to earlier—who may now speak and reveal themselves—remarked:

“You are reintroducing consciousness here. You, who just presented consciousness to us so dismissively—this consciousness that has indeed been, for us until now, in our tradition, one of the forms of idolification of the subject, where it is truly grasped and touched—now suddenly turn it into this water’s surface that a mere breath can disturb, or more precisely, into a small piece of broken glass, ‘nothing more,’ as I was told. But, on the other hand, for the subject to count itself, you will be compelled to reintegrate consciousness here.”

Well, I must admit I am surprised by this. For, after all, how is it that the person addressing me does not at least pause before this, which is evidently where I am heading: How is it that they so little anticipate the point I am making that they fail to see that it is precisely here that I, in a way, await the traditional philosopher?

For if there is one thing that analytic experience has shown us, and which is the most surprising aspect of this experience, it is this phenomenon of the subject as structured in this way, as the individual… the individual that we have thus far allowed ourselves to conceive of, to elaborate as a pure and simple machine… that is where FREUD began. You need only look at his theory of the psyche as he formulated it in the time of the Letters to Fliess and the Drafts, the sketches he provided—very clever—of the psychic structure: it is a machine simply bound to the demands of the inertia principle and a certain number of homeostatic formulas.

In this individual, we see manifestations of a characteristic whose essential sign is not only that they are unconscious but that they are a forced unconsciousness, which cannot, without special treatment, be reintegrated into consciousness. One possible definition of the Freudian unconscious is this: that in a completely unconscious way, the individual in their unconscious activities—this individual proud of their ego—believes they grasp being in total conscious transparency. It is in their unconscious that they count themselves. Everything FREUD presents to us, in The Interpretation of Dreams, in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, shows this: the individual counts themselves.

As soon as this sort of divinatory trial that is the dream operates, we see this: the completely unconscious activity of the subject suddenly releasing, so to speak, their own image along with those of all others. But with all these images, a symbolic relationship emerges, the most elaborate of all symbolic relationships, which is a whole calculus in which the subject, in their imaginary being, in this double that is identical and occupies the same place as this self-image we discussed last night—this specular image I refer to, this image of the other, which is also the point we reached in the relationships between the two machines—all of this manifests in the dream.

Likewise, in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, and also in what we are capable of exploring when we engage in certain divinatory games, FREUD shows us surprising results that merit attention, even though the practice has been somewhat abandoned. I am referring precisely to what appears at the end of The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, a very curious game, which consists of saying to the subject: “Speak random numbers.”

The subject speaks random numbers, and yet what we manage to extract, through associations with these supposedly random numbers—and the subject genuinely tries to choose random numbers, often high ones—what emerges in terms of meanings, responses, resonances in the subject’s life, memory, and destiny far exceeds, from the perspective of probabilities, anything one might expect from pure chance. If there is something, one of the most evident phenomena revealed to us by Freudian experience, it is precisely this: that it is in the unconscious that the individual, in their subjective functioning, counts themselves.

To sum up, and to provide an image of sorts, I would say: – Does it seem to you in advance an activity involving an element of intuition, this “consciousness grasping itself in its own transparency”? – Does it strike you as something reintroducing, in another form, the same reflexivity as, for example, imagining a machine we are beginning to animate, as if aiming somewhere at a creator capable of saying “eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” and deducing from it the extraction of a subject?

We are already in the domain of the machine counting itself.

And to put it plainly, if philosophers caution me against a certain way of materializing this phenomenon of consciousness and thereby losing a crucial foothold for apprehending the radical originality of the subject as such… in a world structured in the manner of KANT, even of HEGEL, for HEGEL did not entirely abandon the central function of consciousness, although he enables us to free ourselves from it… I would caution philosophers against an illusion closely tied to our question. This illusion, after all, may not be so different from that of the test, highly significant, amusing, and emblematic of its era, called the BINET-SIMON test.

We identify the mental age—indeed, not such an ephemeral mental age, but certainly significant—in our subject, to whom we propose, under the title “Absurd Sentences,” a sentence such as: “I have three brothers: Paul, Ernest, and me.”

There is an age when one might believe they have “three brothers: Paul, Ernest, and me.” There is undoubtedly an illusion of this kind in the belief that if the subject counts themselves, it means at the same time that this is an operation of consciousness—in other words, an operation closely tied to a certain intuition of the object that we have at the level of this self-grasping of consciousness. The model of this self-grasping can be variously evaluated; it is not unequivocal, and not all philosophers have described it in the same way.

For example, I do not claim to criticize the way it is handled in DESCARTES, because it is, after all, governed by a certain goal situated within a dialectic ultimately leading to a demonstration of the existence of God. Therefore, it is only by isolating it arbitrarily that one might assign it a fundamental, existential, decisive value.

On the other hand, it would not be difficult for those who are interested—who, I think, are not unfamiliar with it—to see that, from the perspective that can be called “existentialist,” with sufficient deepening of this consciousness, in its thetic and non-thetic positions, I would not be alone in thinking that, in the end, the self-grasping of consciousness is, in a sense, entirely unanchored from any existential apprehension of the ego.

And it becomes clear, upon close examination, that the ego appears there only as a particular experience, tied to entirely objectifiable conditions within the inspection that is thought to be simply this reflection of consciousness upon itself. The phenomenon of consciousness has no privileged status in such a grasping, which instead has certain advantages that you will see later.

By freeing consciousness from any form of encumbrance in this essential self-grasping of the subject, and by considering it a phenomenon—I would not say contingent with respect to our entire deduction of the subject, but something occurring at extremely diverse levels—I amused myself by offering you a model of it within the physical world itself. You will always see it manifest with great irregularity in the subjective phenomena, tied to conditions that are undoubtedly very specific but appear in experience, through the reversal of perspectives characteristic of analysis, as conditions far more physical—and I mean material—than psychic.

From this perspective, many of the problems continually posed about the intervention of consciousness, the ambiguity of conscious phenomena, can be reframed. Can we say, for instance, that the phenomenon of dreaming concerns—and through what means, in what way?—what we might call the domain of consciousness? A dream occurs on the level of consciousness; it is conscious: this shimmering imaginary, these moving images, is entirely on the same plane, in the same order, as the illusory aspect of the image on which we insist so much when discussing the formation of the ego. It is of the same order.

Indeed, something occurs that makes dreaming resemble a reading in the mirror. As you know, this is not only one of the oldest divination methods, but it can also be employed in hypnotic techniques, yielding results in certain applications of hypnosis. The subject might perceive or glimpse within a mirror—preferably one akin to the mirrors used from humanity’s beginning until relatively recent times, that is, something darker than clear, a mirror of polished metal—and by fixating on this surface, reveal to themselves numerous elements of their imaginary fixations.

Where is consciousness? In what sense should we find it, seek it? Where does it reside? These questions, if framed in terms of psychic tension—and this is precisely what FREUD attempts in multiple passages of his work—to determine how the system of consciousness is invested and divested, lead FREUD to an intriguing conclusion that should guide us. FREUD speculates—and this is the point we might eventually reach—that it is necessary for coherent discourse to consider, as he formally states:

Even in the sketches of an organized psychic system found in The Origins of Psychoanalysis, published by Imago in London and New York, FREUD repeatedly revisits this in Metapsychology. He is led to assign the system of consciousness not only a privileged place but also a position that, in some way, must be considered excluded from the dynamics of the three psychic systems.

This represents something that plays a role but, from a dynamic standpoint, behaves in a completely unique manner. FREUD consistently approaches this problem as unresolved, leaving its clarification to the future, stuck as he is in an impasse.

Here we find ourselves faced with the necessity of a third pole, the very one our friend LECLAIRE attempted to maintain last night in his triangular schema. Indeed, we need a triangle. But there are a thousand ways to construct a triangle. A triangle is by no means necessarily the solid figure resting on an intuition that renders it incontestable.

First of all, and this is what makes its value so striking, expressive, and significant, a triangle is also a system of relationships. And one does not truly begin to handle the triangle, even in geometry or mathematics, until, for instance, none of its sides is given a privileged status. Indeed, this is precisely what it is about.

We now find ourselves in search of this subject, and insofar as it counts itself, the problem is determining where it resides. That it is manifestly in the unconscious, at least for us analysts, is the point I believe I have led you to, and where I have now arrived.

Jean-Bertrand PONTALIS

A quick word, as he believes he recognized himself as the anonymous interlocutor who remarked that perhaps you dismissed consciousness at the start only to better recover it at the end:

– I never claimed that the cogito was an untouchable truth or that the subject could be defined by this experience, that is, by an experience of total transparency of the self to itself. I never said that consciousness exhausted all subjectivity—which, moreover, would indeed be difficult to argue with phenomenology and psychoanalysis—but simply that the cogito represents a kind of model of subjectivity. In other words, it makes very tangible the idea that there must be someone for whom the word “as” has meaning.

And this seemed to be omitted by you because when you used your parable of reflection and the disappearance of humans, you forgot one thing: humans had to return to grasp that there was indeed a relationship between the reflection and the reflected thing. Otherwise, if one considers the object in itself and the film recorded by the camera, it is nothing more than an object—it is not even a witness; it is nothing.

Similarly, in the example you gave of numbers spoken at random, for the subject to realize that these numbers, spoken at random, were not so random after all, a phenomenon is required—call it what you will—that seems to me to be precisely consciousness, and not simply the reflection of what the other tells them. That is all I wanted to say. And I did not quite understand why it was so important to demolish consciousness if it was only to bring it back, nonetheless, in the form of an intention or a relational position, as you did at the end.

LACAN

What is important is not to “demolish consciousness,” my goodness! Setting aside all metaphors about broken shards of glass, we are not here to stage dramatic glass-shattering events, though why not, after all? There are theoretical reasons for this, as I have indicated to you. Namely, the extreme difficulty of defining the system of consciousness itself, as such, within analytic experience. I will demonstrate this to you later, as we return to the passage from FREUD I cited, to formulate it in the framework of what FREUD calls “energetic reference,” the interplay of the different psychic systems.

There is something important here, but it is somewhat sidelined. I will return to it later. What is targeted in this point, where I began the demonstration last time, is the central object of our study this year: namely, the ego. It is precisely about showing this ego, stripping it of the privilege it receives from a certain evidentness—an evidentness that I try to underscore for you in myriad ways as being nothing more than a historical contingency. Its place in philosophical deduction is merely one of its clearest manifestations, for we are, after all, in a time of philosophy and enlightenment.

It is about distinguishing this evidentness in the historical process, but it is also about grasping the evidentness that the notion of the ego derives from a certain prestige granted to consciousness as unique, as an individual and irreducible experience. The ego, despite everything, retains this power of attraction, this mirage, which causes it to be spoken of uncritically, in ways I hope to show you are very different from one another, as it assumes its “synthetic function.” For example, over the course of this year, I will attempt to show you the extremely diverse meanings that the term “synthetic function” of the ego takes—not only among analysts but in one or two successive passages in FREUD’s work or those of certain analysts.

This captivating character of the intuition of the ego, centered in a consciousness experience relative to our conception of the subject, is what I aim to dismantle through a series of questions, some of which indeed appear destructive. This dismantling seems to me an absolutely indispensable step in finally grasping where FREUD places the reality of the subject.

Ultimately, if you will, to avoid leaving you today without a sense of a different intention—and to show how this situation, which at times may seem far removed from the field of our concrete, experimental, and clinical concerns, is nonetheless essential—I will point it out to you. I will bring it back to what constitutes the flaw of the subject. It is a matter of knowing whether the ego—of course, we are not reducing the privilege of consciousness, or of the unconscious—has the meaning we pursue here.

Let me remind you of something like this: It is not only to remind you of the function of the unconscious that I draw you to the level of the third pole in the subject. We find ourselves here within the phenomenon of consciousness. I assume you must suspect this: in this unconscious… if one can express it this way, under this unconscious aspect—not only unconscious but excluded from the ego system—the subject speaks.

This is indeed what it is about. The question at hand now is whether, between these two systems:

• the ego system, about which not much can be definitively stated during this process regarding how it should be conceptualized—the organization of the ego, which FREUD once claimed to be the only structured entity within the psyche,
• and the other system, the system of the unconscious,

…there is any equivalence. For ultimately, that is what this year’s study is about.

When I speak to you about the ego in Freudian theory and psychoanalytic technique, the question is whether their opposition is something that is merely a matter of:

• a yes or no,
• a “it is something” or “it is not…”,
• or a reversal of a simple negation.

Without a doubt, the ego tells us much through Verneinung (denial), and so, after all, why not simply read the unconscious by reversing the sign of everything it says while we’re at it? We have not yet gone that far, although the experience has often been close enough to that; but something analogous has occurred.

Let me assure you, I can point to texts—by the best analysts—where, from the moment FREUD introduced his new topology, one feels something akin to what can even be seen in Anna FREUD’s work a decade later on defense mechanisms: a genuine sense of explosion, of liberation:

“Ah! We’re rediscovering that good old ego. Now we can deal with it again! We’re allowed to now.”

As though it had been forbidden before! It’s curious how focusing on something other than the ego was perceived by analysts—so strange was the experience—as if focusing on the ego was somehow prohibited. This sentiment is clearly expressed in a specific text at the beginning of The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense by Miss Anna FREUD: “Now, we are allowed to concern ourselves with the ego.” Of course, there was no actual prohibition. FREUD always spoke of the ego, and it always deeply interested him—the function of the external ego of the subject. The question is merely whether, at the moment when what we crudely call “material analysis” is substituted—only from that point onward—with the analysis of resistances, we are in fact substituting something equivalent.

In the analysis of resistances, there is something that, on its own, is the equivalent of material analysis—namely, that one approaches it from the reverse. It is no longer a mere change of sign, but something one might call the mold, the framework, so to speak, which outlines and impedes the manifestation or revelation of the contents of the unconscious.

It is clear that if the two systems are, in a sense, complementary, then the principle introduced at that point by one analyst, Eldorado, who dared to call it an egology, becomes relevant. This egology governs analytic technique, serving as its secret, its driving force, and its essence.

The question is whether they are right in this approach: whether a certain way, undoubtedly renewed, of addressing the operations of the ego provides an equivalent of what was sought thus far in exploring the unconscious. In other words, whether the two registers, the two levels of the subject, are of the same order—whether one is the reverse, the complement, or the symmetrical counterpart of the other, or if they are fundamentally the same.

This egology already… I am referencing a specific article in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Volume VIII, 1938 or 1939. It is a delightful read and deserves to be regarded as foundational, the essential pivot of this egology—the Rid Principle. This is a new principle in analytic theory, and you will see it in countless forms. This principle always reappears and currently authentically guides the activity of most analysts. To “rid” means to get rid of something, to avoid. That is the purpose of an ego organization we have come to regard as entirely objective!

I assure you, at this point, references to consciousness are entirely abandoned, for the method I propose is ultimately intended for heuristic purposes. There is no fundamental difference across the manifestations of the subject, from the simplest stimulus-response process to the frog retracting its leg in response to a drop of acid applied to it—a spinal reflex easily demonstrated by severing the frog’s head.

Under this principle, everything functions from top to bottom; the function of the ego is deduced in precisely the same way. This drive, insofar as it is unintegrated, reduces the ego to something that is pure and simple incitation, pure internal stimulus. Its rigorous, consistent observation informs us adequately of both how it should be recognized and how it should be integrated.

This is an extreme position, and we must always be grateful for positions that coherently express what has not always been articulated. It allows us to dispel misunderstandings, which are fully exposed here.

Now, if there is something FREUD wishes to convey when introducing the new topology, the new organization of psychic agencies—ego, superego, id—it is precisely the opposite of this. It is to remind us that not only is there absolute asymmetry, but also that between the subject of the unconscious and the organization of the ego, there is a radical difference. This difference is not merely asymmetry. To emphasize further what I mean: they are not just asymmetrical but of a different degree.

Read, please. You will have three weeks. And while worshiping the golden calf, keep a small book of the Law in your hand, and read what FREUD wrote in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. With this simple key, this introduction I am giving you, read it from this perspective and see:

• Either it has no meaning at all,
• or consider whether the meaning of Beyond the Pleasure Principle is not precisely this.

There is a principle, says FREUD, that we have adhered to so far without question: this particular conception of the psychic apparatus as organized, which posits that the psychic apparatus is something—something we have accepted thus far—that exists between the pleasure principle and the reality principle.

FREUD, of course, was not a mind limited to idolification. He never believed there was no pleasure principle within the reality principle. For if one follows reality, it is because the reality principle is, in fact, a deferred pleasure principle. Conversely, if the pleasure principle exists, it is in accordance with some reality. This reality is psychic reality.

In other words, the positioning of these two registers is based on this apprehension of experience: that if the psyche has meaning, if there is a reality called psychic reality—or, in other terms, if there are living beings—they manifest in the fact that they possess an internal organization that tends, to a certain extent, to oppose the free and unlimited passage of forces and energetic discharges, which we might theoretically assume to intersect within an inanimate reality.

There is something enclosed here, within which a certain balance is maintained: an organism equipped with certain capacities, now clearly defined as “homeostatic.” These capacities serve to dampen and temper the effects of unmoderated intrusions of forces or quantities of energy, as FREUD explicitly describes them, originating from the external world into the confines of the organism. Within this boundary, there is therefore regulation—a regulation that we might call, if you will, to provide clarity and introduce a term that begins to answer LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS’s subtle questions during his participation in our dialogue, a dialogue with far more significance than mere contradiction. LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS raised this issue in reference to what he called the ambiguity of the repetition compulsion.

Let us call it “the restorative function of psychic organization,” namely that something occurs called a stimulus. Either it discharges immediately—we know this kind of short circuit, akin to the example I mentioned earlier of the frog’s leg reacting—or it does so in a way that, though primitive, is already somewhat organized. This discharge has a certain purpose: not only to release the result of the excitation but also to cause a withdrawal movement in response to the burn. There is a principle of restitution, a rebalancing mechanism within the organism.

Ultimately, regardless of the disengagement we might assume, due to analytic experience, in the duplicity of the system…

…it cannot be entirely disengaged, of course, since that is precisely what the investigation of analytic experience focuses on…

…how these two systems—one easily recognizable to us and the other, whose elusive nature alone proves its particularity at their point of junction—function. This distinctiveness allows us to phenomenologically and experimentally regard them as two systems. So, what regulates their relations? FREUD poses the problem as I describe it.

He recognizes quite clearly that the use he made of the pleasure principle, considered in this way as a homeostatic principle (though he did not have this term), involved what he called the principle of inertia. I believe I am not mistaken in saying that the term “inertia” is also used in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. I am not certain, but it appears as it does in the passages I am referencing.

However, it is certain that what FREUD was aiming for—although the term “inertia” creates an unfortunate ambiguity with physical inertia—is an echo of Fechnerism. We will see how he utilizes FECHNER because there are two sides to FECHNER:

• The psycho-physicist’s perspective, asserting that no formulation beyond physical principles can explain or symbolize physical regulations.
• The lesser-known, unique perspective, which ventures far into “universal subjectivation,” sometimes attributing realism to ideas far beyond FREUD’s intent. For example, one might find in FECHNER an interpretation that would take my earlier analogy of the mountain’s reflection in the lake as the cosmos dreaming—a notion far from my intentions.

Thus, the principle of inertia, or rather the principle of homeostasis, frames FREUD’s question: Are the two systems related simply in this way: that what is pleasure in one is displeasure in the other, and vice versa? FREUD bases this on the law of discharge, the return to equilibrium, which he described without disrupting the laws of the other system. These laws, however, belong to a different structure; he referred to them as primary processes compared to secondary processes.

Ultimately, however, the same regulatory principle governs both systems. FREUD realizes this at a critical juncture. Believe me, this is not mere abstract theorizing. He emphasizes it because it propels us further. It is here that he pauses, surprised by the emergence of a new phase in the dynamic relationship between the two systems.

I will describe this new phase in familiar terms to clarify it: If these systems are simply coupled systems—though it is not stated exactly this way—you will discern this idea if you know how to read. FREUD articulates it cautiously, revealing not a generalization but an essential articulation.

If these two systems are related in such a way that what is pleasure in one is displeasure in the other, this produces a structured relationship that must ultimately adhere to a general law of equilibrium. This is, theoretically and abstractly, the same issue I raised earlier: Is ego analysis simply a reverse approach to the analysis of the unconscious?

Here, FREUD realizes something does not conform to the pleasure principle as it had been formulated thus far. He notices that what emerges from one system—the system of the unconscious, for instance—exhibits a peculiar insistence. This is not limited to a single indication. Allow me to explain this insistence in very simple terms. What is this insistence?

I say “insistence” because, in a certain familiar way, it expresses the meaning well. Do not forget that this has been translated into French as “automatisme de répétition” and in German as Wiederholungszwang. It is very striking, and this is where the subject lingers at the edge of our discussion today. Here, we touch on something that shows us why this homonymy, this Zwang, borrowed from automatism, resonates for us with an entire neurological lineage.

In German, there is a connection—not coincidentally—precisely in the register of phenomenology; it is a compulsion to repetition. This is why I believe it is concrete to introduce this familiar notion of insistence. This system possesses something clearly unsettling—it is asymmetrical, it doesn’t fit, it raises questions. And so, the entire essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle becomes a kind of search for traces.

Suddenly, one realizes that there is something that eludes the system of equations, something captured in accordance with a certain set of elements that I would not call categories but rather evidences borrowed from the modes of thought within the energetic register, as they were established in the mid-19th century. This cannot be neglected.

Last night, Professor LAGACHE briefly presented to you—too briefly, as we only glimpsed it—the statue of CONDILLAC. I cannot recommend enough, should the opportunity arise, that you reread The Treatise on Sensations. First, because it is an utterly delightful read, in an inimitable period style. This statue, which is the odor of a rose, is something… you will see that, ultimately, my primitive state of a subject who finds themselves everywhere, and is in some way the visual image, has a certain ancestor. You will see how CONDILLAC—though it appears at first to be a solid, obvious, self-transparent starting point—manages to conjure, seemingly without difficulty, the entire edifice of psychic constructs, as if pulling a rabbit from a hat, without a series of leaps that leave us absolutely astonished. These leaps, however, were not so jarring to his contemporaries, as CONDILLAC was not a delirious thinker.

In the interval, what happened? One senses within this that the pleasure principle ought to have been introduced somewhere. He does not articulate it. Why? Simply, as LA PALICE would say, because he did not yet have the formula, as this was before the era of the steam engine. It took the time of the steam engine, its industrial exploitation, and serious people with administrative projects and balance sheets asking:

What does a machine yield?

In other words, does it produce more than what is input? These were metaphysicians. The rabbit and the hat have their eternal value. And, whatever one may think, and although my discourse is generally not tinged with progressive tendencies, there are moments of symbolic emergence—moments when one realizes that to pull a rabbit out of a hat, one must have first placed it there. This is also the principle of energetics, which is why energetics is also a metaphysics.

So, FREUD realized that the principle of homeostasis, inscribed in this framework of mechanical balance—relying on an energetic background that necessitates framing in terms of investment, charge, discharge, and energetic relationships between different systems—ultimately comes under the rubric of this principle of equilibrium. However, he also realized that something in this framework does not function.

This is what Beyond the Pleasure Principle is about, no more and no less. FREUD poses this question in relation to something that, up until then, had not been a question for him. He addresses it in connection with certain phenomena, including—but not limited to—the well-known phenomenon of the repetition of dreams in cases of traumatic neurosis.

This phenomenon alone seems to contradict the pleasure principle, which, in the context of dreams, is embodied in the principle of the imaginary realization of desire. But this is just a localized point—a manifestation. Why, in this case, is there an exception?

However, it is not due to an exception within the function or theory of dreams that something as fundamental as the pleasure principle could be questioned—particularly something that was not deduced from its discovery but serves as the foundation of his thinking. In FREUD’s era, thinking occurred within this framework, and that is all this implies. Naturally, all of this is very grounded. Ultimately, the principle at stake in the other system, as FREUD states explicitly, is sexual pleasure. That is clear.

But there are two aspects: this concrete resonance is also the pleasure principle as a regulatory principle, enabling the coherent integration of all concrete and energetic functioning within a system of symbolic formulations. This includes considering man as a machine. FREUD approaches this question from a much broader perspective than a few exceptions.

Indeed, if you read this text, you will see that none of the specific points he invokes seems entirely sufficient to question the whole. Yet their combination—precisely as a collection—realizes quite effectively the issue you raised earlier. That is, whether, in the end, one would inevitably encounter the subject as an idol at some point.

Are we playing hide and seek? You will see FREUD play hide and seek here, for what appears essential to him is the very phenomenon upon which analysis is founded. Namely, that while our aim is recollection, what we encounter—whether or not we reach it—is something reproduced in the form of transference, something that clearly belongs to the other system.

Serge LECLAIRE

I would like to respond, if I may, in a general way, because, after all, I feel somewhat targeted here. I believe you reproach me quite a bit for pulling the rabbit out of the hat in which I had placed it. But, ultimately, I am not so sure that I was the one who put it there. I pulled it out, certainly! But I was not the one who put it in. That is the first thing I wanted to say, though it is not everything.

The second point is this: I believe I mentioned that if this ego system, which you consider in opposition to the system of the unconscious, I indeed situated it as triangulated and insisted on the fact that none of its elements could be separated, and that none of them were predominant.

As for the system of the subject of the unconscious, for which you accused me of idolification, I will respond with this: I presented it in that way. I wonder whether it can still be called idolification. This is why I call it such when we know what it is. In other words, I said I represented it, even though, strictly speaking, like JEHOVAH, it should neither be represented nor named. However, I did represent it, knowing exactly what I was doing and never being restricted. I am thinking of that circle that I indeed later made solid. But I believe I have always kept in mind the possibility of this abusive idolification. Now, it is precisely on the point of this idolification that I feel, not that you reject it, nor that you play a game of hide and seek to search for the subject, but that this idolification is displaced onto the Other.

LACAN

Dear LECLAIRE, I want, nonetheless, at the end of this discussion, where perhaps many have felt you—perhaps less so than you yourself—implicated, to say that, of course, I recognize, and even pay tribute to the fact that you have done things as you said, knowing what you were doing. That was undoubtedly the great merit of what you did last night—it was something very controlled; you knew perfectly well what you were doing. For example, you did not do it innocently.

That said, let us now consider whether what you currently propose is true, whether I have indeed displaced it onto the Other. Perhaps today, with the intention of not exhausting you, and because I am about to leave, I have moved too slowly for you to see how what you describe as a stumbling block is not only avoidable but already avoided?

Serge LECLAIRE

I simply feel, precisely, that this phenomenon of avoidance occurs whenever one speaks of the subject. Each time, it is like a kind of reaction, whenever the subject is discussed.

LACAN – This phenomenon of “avoidance,” what do you mean by that?

Serge LECLAIRE – That very slippage, evasion.

LACAN

Now, please, let us not get sidetracked… This is not the same kind of avoidance. I simply want to tell you: this is where I have brought you—to what distinguishes this repetitive function from the restitutive function of the pleasure principle. What does it mean for the subject to endlessly reproduce something that is an experience, for example, endowed with certain recognizable qualities, to the extent that it is later rediscovered through recollection? And God knows what effort you must exert, I believe, to assign to this recollection all the characteristics required for the subject’s satisfaction. That is the entire story of the Wolf Man, which I commented on for you several years ago.

This insistence of the subject—what does it reproduce? How? Is it in their behavior? In their fantasies? In their character? Is it even in their ego? The mere fact that I can pose this question already shows you all the questions we must address regarding the nature of this reproduction. What is it?

From the way I point it out to you, you can already see that we are immediately very close to something that could be called, if you wish, a temporary modulation. All sorts of things, registers, and levels, extremely varied, can serve as material and elements, once this vocabulary has been adopted—namely, this reproduction within the transfer in treatment. This is, of course, merely a particular case of a far more diffuse reproduction, the kind pursued in fields like “character analysis,” “total personality analysis,” and other absurdities.

FREUD poses the question: What does this mean? This reproduction, with its inexhaustible nature, poses a problem to the pleasure principle: Is something malfunctioning, or does it belong to a different principle, a more fundamental one?

I will leave matters with this open question: What is the nature of the principle that governs what you clearly see—and this is why all of this is organized and directed—the subject, the one who is at stake and whose being at stake is crucial today. Let us pose the question today of whether the subject can be assimilated, reduced, symbolized—whether it is something, or whether it is precisely something that cannot be named or grasped but can be structured.

This will be the subject of our lessons next term.