🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

What am I going to tell you today? I left you last time with a somewhat strange question, perhaps, but one that undoubtedly followed directly from what I had said to you, since that was essentially where I had placed the final period…
And it is precisely here that I apologize to those who were not there last time;
it will seem surprising to them in a place concerned with psychoanalysis…
I asked you, all in all, why do planets not speak?

You cannot imagine how satisfied I was to have arrived at that point. Indeed, one must stop somewhere, if only to see what places us in an extremely differential relationship with the planets.
Obviously, we can grasp this at any moment; yet, at every moment, we forget it, precisely because there is always a slight tendency to reason about humans and the human world as if they were moons.
In essence, it’s the calculation of their masses, their relationships, and their gravitation that ultimately seems to be the final word on the matter.
It should not be believed that this illusion is particular to us scholars: it is very tempting, and even especially tempting for politicians.

There are forgotten works, like that, a work that was not particularly unreadable, because it was probably not written by the author who signed it, titled “Mein Kampf”, which has lost much of its relevance.
Throughout “Mein Kampf”—I think you remember—it was written by a man named HITLER, and it spoke of relationships between men as if they were relationships between moons.
And we are still always tempted to make a psychology, a psychoanalysis of moons.

Yet it is enough to refer immediately to experience to see the difference.
I am rarely satisfied. But still, I was not particularly satisfied at all that day, because I had undoubtedly attempted to fly too high, and I realized that my wingbeats were perhaps not quite what I would have wished to deliver to you had everything been perfectly prepared in what I was bringing you.

Some kind people, those who accompany me as I leave, told me that everyone was satisfied, a position I imagine to be very exaggerated! No matter, I was told so! It did not convince me at the moment, by the way.
But so what! I ultimately told myself this: if others were satisfied, that was obviously the main thing.
This is precisely where I differ from a planet. It is not simply that I make this observation, but that it is true: if you were satisfied, that was essential.

And I will say more: insofar as confirmations came to me from the fact that you were satisfied, well, my God, I became satisfied too. But, still, with a slight margin. Not entirely satisfied-satisfied.
There was still a space between the two, the time it took for me to realize that the essential thing was that the other was satisfied, and I remained, for a certain time, with my dissatisfaction.
In other words: at what moment am I truly myself?
Namely: the moment when I am not satisfied, or the moment when I am satisfied because others are satisfied?

This relationship between the subject’s satisfaction and the satisfaction of the other—understood in its most radical form—is precisely what is always at stake when it comes to human relationships.
And I would very much like that the fact that this occasion concerns my fellow humans does not mislead you.
I chose this example because I had sworn to take the first example that came to hand in the continuation of the question I left you with last time.

But you will see—I hope to show you today—you would be wrong to believe that this is the same other as the other I sometimes speak to you about, namely, the other who is the self, more precisely who is its image, with which it is in a specular relationship.
In other words, there is indeed a radical difference between my dissatisfaction and the supposed satisfaction of the other, and the fact that my satisfaction depends on that of the other.

It is not at all a question of an image of identity, of reflexivity on this occasion, but of a relationship of fundamental otherness.
But it is not down this path that I will approach the questions today, nor do I ever do so.
I cannot, for reasons intrinsic to the very nature of the space in which we move—namely, the psychoanalytic field—exhaust a question, address it as such, as the question of the other.
Nevertheless, I have already indicated to you on several occasions just how essential it is and how it is the source of all kinds of ambiguities in analysis.
Simply know that there are two “others” to distinguish, at least two:
– One Other, with a capital O/A,
– and one other, with a lowercase o/a, which is the self.
And the Other is precisely what is at stake when it comes to the function of speech.

This deserves to be elaborated, demonstrated, and supported, what I am telling you here.
I can, as usual, only demonstrate it to you at the level of observations from our experience.
Nevertheless, for those who wish to practice a few mental exercises to loosen up their articulations, I cannot recommend enough, for all practical purposes, the reading of Parmenides.

It is precisely there that the question of the One and the other was tackled in the most rigorous and sustained manner.
This is undoubtedly also why it is one of the most misunderstood works and is considered, I don’t know why, one of the most difficult.
Whereas, after all, the average abilities—but that is not saying little—of a crossword puzzle solver (do not forget that in a text, which must still have some familiarity, I very formally advised you to do crossword puzzles [cf. “Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” in Écrits, p. 266]) should suffice.

The only essential thing is to sustain your attention to the end through the development of the nine hypotheses in Parmenides. That is all it’s about: paying attention. This is the most difficult thing in the world to obtain from the average reader, due to the conditions under which this sport of reading is practiced. Any one of my students who could devote themselves to a psychoanalytic commentary on Parmenides would render a very useful service to everyone and, moreover, would allow the community to find clarity on quite a few problems.

That said, since we are dealing with the problem of the other—and this will dominate, through the lens by which I can grasp it, our session today—let us return to our planets. I asked you the most serious question:
why don’t planets speak? Has anyone here felt even a slight tremor of thought revolving around this problem, attempting to articulate something?

There are, after all, many things to say. What is curious is not that you haven’t said any, but that you have shown no indication of realizing that there are so many to say. If only you dared to think that there are plenty and picked any one, because it’s clear that it’s not very important to know what the ultimate reason is.

But what is certain is that if we try to enumerate them—and I had no preconceived idea about how this might be presented when I asked you—it’s curious, and instructive, that the reasons that emerge appear structured in exactly the same way as those famous reasons we have already encountered repeatedly in Freud’s work, namely those he speaks of in Irma’s Injection Dream, regarding the cauldron that was returned with a hole in it. It’s somewhat of the same order:
– firstly, because they have nothing to say,
– secondly, because they don’t have the time,
– thirdly, because they have been silenced.

All three points are valid and would allow us to develop important connections regarding what we call a planet—precisely that which I have taken as a reference point to show what we are not.

I posed the question to an eminent philosopher, one of those who came here this year to give us a lecture, someone deeply engaged with the value of the history of science, and more specifically Newtonianism—something that cannot fail to be evoked when speaking of planets—and who has made the most pertinent and profound reflections on the subject [Alexandre Koyré]. But one is always disappointed when addressing—though you will see that I was not actually disappointed—those who seem to be specialists, if I may say so.

The question did not seem, at first glance, to present him with much difficulty. He said, “Because they don’t have a mouth.”
Which does not seem to be a fully sufficient reason. But still, at first, I was a bit disappointed.
And, as always, I was wrong. One must never be disappointed by the answers one receives, because what is wonderful is precisely that it is an answer—in other words, exactly what one did not expect.

This point is equally important, always in relation to the question of the other, because we have too much of a tendency to be hypnotized by the so-called system of moons, to model our idea of a response on what we imagine when we speak of stimulus-response—that is to say, precisely, we get the answer we expected.
But is it truly an answer? That’s yet another question one could pose, and I will not get sidetracked by this small diversion. We will tackle it later.

In the end, the answer he gave me, very quickly, did not disappoint me. Because I am not forced to enter the labyrinth of the question of why planets do not speak through any of the three reasons I mentioned earlier, although we will inevitably encounter them again, as they are the three true reasons. But one also enters through any response, and this one, in particular, is extremely illuminating—provided one knows how to hear it.
And I had completely forgotten that I was in particularly good conditions to hear it, precisely because I am a psychiatrist.

“Because they don’t have a mouth”… We have heard this before: “I don’t have a mouth.” We hear this at the start of our psychiatric careers in the first psychiatric wards we arrive at, lost and disoriented, and falling into this miraculous world, we encounter very old women, very old maids, whose first declaration to us, the first sign we receive, is: “I don’t have a mouth.”

At the same time, they teach us that they don’t have a stomach either. Yet, for someone without a mouth, this seems like a minor inconvenience. But in addition, they also claim that they will never die, that they are immortal.
In short, we can see that they have a very close connection with the world of moons, which are also immortal. The only difference is that, in a certain way, for these old maids, these old women suffering from what is called Cotard’s syndrome, or delusion of negation, in the end, it’s true, for certain reasons, it’s true.

That is to say, the image with which they have identified themselves is precisely that image in which every opening, every aspiration, every void of desire is absent—namely, what properly constitutes the property of the oral orifice.

And to the extent that the identification of being with its pure and simple image occurs, there is, of course, no more room for change—that is, death—and indeed, this is precisely what their theme involves:
– that they are dead,
– that they can no longer die,
– that ultimately, they are immortal.

Desire indeed has this property. This is what distinguishes it from many other things. One must not lump everything together when it comes to madness, when it comes to representing the structure of the imaginary. To the extent that the subject purely and simply assumes it, identifies symbolically with the imaginary, they realize what is called desire.

That the stars also have no mouth and are immortal, which is indeed certain, is, of course, of another order. One cannot possibly say that this is true. If we said so, we would say something absurd. There is no question of stars having a mouth. And the term immortal, at least for us, over time, has become purely metaphorical.

But here we see that this is something other than truth: it is real. Undeniably, it is real that a star has no mouth.
But no one would even think about it—in the literal sense of the word think—if there were no people equipped with an apparatus to articulate the symbolic—namely: human beings—to point it out.

That they are real, I believe, is the first reason:
– that they are entirely real,
– that there is, in principle, absolutely nothing in them that belongs to the order of an otherness to themselves,
– that they are purely and simply what they are,
– and that they are always found, ultimately, in the same place.

This is one of the first essential points for which the stars do not speak.

For it is precisely in this “always in the same place” that the essence of everything that will develop subsequently resides. That is to say, in the end, it was enough to notice it, if I may say so, to give full rigor to the fact that these are realities.
Obviously, it was not noticed immediately. And you may have observed that I oscillate, from time to time, in my words, between planets and stars. This is not without reason. It is clear, of course, that “always in the same place” was not first shown to us by planets, but by stars, as everyone knows.

And this perfectly regular movement of the sidereal day is certainly what first gave humans the opportunity to experience the stability of the ever-changing world surrounding them, to begin to establish this dialectic of the symbolic and the real, where, of course, we apparently see the symbolic springing from the real, descending from it, if I may say so.
Naturally, this is no more founded than thinking that the so-called fixed stars actually revolve around the Earth. Just as it is nothing other than this movement of the Earth in the perfect bliss of the rotation of the heavens, similarly, one should not believe that symbols truly emerged from the real.

But it is nonetheless striking to see how captivating these singular forms have been, to put it clearly, and how they have always struck humans, despite the fact that there is, after all, nothing to ground their grouping.
Why did humans see the Big Dipper as such?
Why are the Pleiades so evident?
Why is Orion seen in this way?

I would not be able to tell you. I don’t think these luminous points have ever been grouped differently. I ask you.
It is quite certain that here we see a point that is significant enough and has played an undeniable role in the dawn—which we can hardly distinguish, by the way—of humanity, but in such a persistent manner that its signs have endured to this day and provide a rather singular example of how the symbolic attaches itself.

For even down to our famous “properties of form”, which we make such a big deal about, they do not seem entirely convincing for explaining how we grouped the constellations. That said, we would still be at a loss, knowing for a long time what it’s about: that there is no real foundation in this apparent stability of stars that are always found in the same place. That is the very definition of being found in the same place.

We obviously made a significant advancement when we realized that there were things, on the other hand, that were actually moving—first observed in the form of wandering planets—and indeed, we realized that it was not just in relation to us, to our own rotation, but in an effectively real way that some of these celestial bodies move and yet are always truly found in the same place.
This reality is one initial reason why our planets hardly speak. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to believe that they are entirely mute.

They are so little mute that, first of all, it is all too obvious since they were long confused with natural symbols. It is all too obvious that we made them speak and that, after all, it would be quite wrong not to ask how this holds together.
For a very long time—don’t forget—and until a very advanced stage of the progress we made in considering the movement of these celestial bodies, certain things remained nonetheless, the residue of not simply a reality, but of a subjective existence of these entities called planets.

And COPERNICUS himself—which will undoubtedly interest you—who had taken a decisive step in identifying the perfect regularity of these bodies’ movement, this physics I was just speaking about, still thought:
– that a body from Earth placed on the Moon would not fail to make every effort to return home, that is, to Earth,
– that conversely, a lunar body would find neither peace nor rest until it had flown back to its maternal Earth.

This shows you how, for a very long time, even for these objects that we believe we have fully understood, notions persisted that demonstrate how difficult it is not to turn realities into beings.

But finally, in the end, NEWTON came along. And it had already been a long time in preparation. Because if the history of science interests you, you will see that there is no better example than the history of science to understand just how universal human discourse is.
That is to say, one wonders why, in the end, it must be examined so closely to fully grasp why there was a final point that started with humanity—the cleverest of the clever—and ultimately delivered the definitive formula for what everyone had been circling around for a century, namely, in the end: to silence them. And NEWTON definitively achieved this.

This “eternal silence of infinite spaces”, the approach to—or rather, the definitive realization of—which so frightened DESCARTES (lapsus: Pascal), was something acquired after NEWTON.
That is to say, it became clear that the stars did not speak. The planets were mute, and they were mute for a definitive reason, the only true reason, because after all: “one never knows what might happen with a reality!”

Let me remind you of a few little things, nonetheless. I am obliged, within the circuit of my discourse, to remind you, but fleetingly, so as not to lose our way. But one never knows. And the question I asked you earlier:
“Why don’t planets speak?” is truly a question.

“One never knows what might happen with a reality” until the moment it has been definitively reduced to being inscribed in a language.
And we are only truly and definitively sure that planets do not speak from the moment they were definitively silenced—
that is to say, when Newtonian theory gave us, in its initial form (later refined, but already perfectly satisfactory for all human minds), the theory of the unified field.

The theory of the unified field is entirely summarized in the law of gravitation and essentially consists in this: there is a formula, a perfectly valid language that holds it all together, and an ultra-simple language that can be written in a small formula consisting of three letters. I am not going to write it on the board because I don’t want you to confuse what I’m telling you with a course in cosmography. But that’s the important point.

You would be wrong to believe that, in the eyes of anyone who looks at what this is about, no one has ever done anything other than believe in it right away: all contemporary minds raised every possible objection, namely:
– What is this form of gravitation?
– It’s unthinkable, we’ve never seen such a thing, action at a distance!

By definition, any kind of action is action that operates step by step. This action at a distance through the void…
this action that is exerted at a distance, as distance…
there is something here that is heterogeneous with the rest of the system.

For Newton’s system to have its value, a certain number of realities must exist. Well, there is matter, there is motion. Alas, let us not get into that. If you knew to what extent Newtonian motion is an unfathomable thing when examined closely, you would shudder! I am not here to drag you into the abysses of Newtonianism. You would see that it is not the privilege of psychoanalysis to operate on contradictory notions. Newtonian motion uses time. The time of physics, no one worries about it because it has absolutely nothing to do with realities. It’s about proper language, and one cannot absolutely consider the unified field as anything other than a well-made language, as a syntax. In short, it is the only case in what we know… in what we apprehend as the domain of science, and only in the sum of physics that enters into the theory of the unified field—that is to say, it has expanded considerably since Mr. Einstein—where we can apply the term, for us, in human experience, entirely contradictory, of “true reality.”

On this side, we are at ease: the planets, and everything that concerns them, everything that falls within the unified field, will never speak again, because they are realities completely reduced to language. I think you can see here quite clearly the contradiction, or the opposition, between speech and language. Do not believe that our stance towards all realities is of the same order, has arrived at this point of definitive reduction, which is nonetheless quite satisfying. Because still, if planets and all sorts of other things of the same order did speak, it would make for quite a strange conversation, and Pascal’s dread might turn into terror.

In fact, every time we deal with a world where there remains a residue of the notion of action—true, authentic action—of that something new that emerges from a subject (and it doesn’t need to be an animated subject for this), every time it’s a matter of action as such, we find ourselves before something that only our unconscious can avoid being frightened by.

For at the point where the progress of physics currently stands, it would be wrong to imagine that it’s a done deal, that for the very small, the atom, the electron, they’ve already been nailed down. Not at all! And it’s quite clear that we are not here to follow the dreams to which people constantly surrender themselves—of freedom! That’s not what it’s about.

But it is clear that it is on the side of language that something odd is happening. This is what Heisenberg’s principle boils down to. It’s that when one point in the system can be specified, the others cannot be formulated.
When we talk about the position of electrons, when we say to them, “Stay there, remain always in the same place,” we no longer know at all where what we commonly call their speed stands.

Conversely, if we say to them, “Well then, you move in the same way all the time,” we no longer know at all where they are.
Of course, I am not saying that we will remain forever in this rather ironic position. But it is perhaps what, for now, gives us the idea that since we cannot unify the field of language, well, for now, we can say only one thing: they do not answer where we question them.
More precisely, that as a result of questioning them somewhere, there is at that moment the impossibility of capturing them as a whole.

Of course, the question is not settled simply because they do not answer. It may even be that, precisely, there might be what is called a true answer, something that—there’s no doubt: we are not at ease—one day might surprise us. So in the end, not to speak of mysticism, I am not going to tell you that atoms and electrons speak.

But why not? Everything happens as if. It is very certain, in any case, that the matter would be completely demonstrated from the moment they began to lie to us. If atoms could lie to us—that is to say, play the cleverest game with us—we would be absolutely convinced, and rightly so.

You are touching here on the very essence of the matter: the “others” as such, and not simply as they reflect our a priori category [Kant] and all the more or less transcendental forms of our intuition.
But finally—thank God!—these are things we prefer not to think about.

If one day they started down that path—that is, if they deceived us—do you see where we would end up? We would no longer know, truly, where we are! That is the expression!

And this is precisely what I was alluding to last time, what Einstein was constantly thinking about, and which, in truth, never ceased to amaze him.

It’s a sentence to which we would be wrong not to give all its importance. He constantly reminded the world that:

“The Almighty is a bit sly, but he is certainly not dishonest.”

And it is, moreover, the only thing that makes it possible—precisely because this concerns the Almighty not in the physical sense—to do science, that is to say, ultimately, to silence the Almighty.

This is precisely what Mr. EINSTEIN continued to meditate on—not until his final moments, but for a very long time.
And he felt the need to remind everyone of it. This can be illuminated in countless ways. I have tried to show you these primary truths by the shortest path, but the question remains whether, when it comes to this most human of sciences called psychoanalysis, our goal and our end is to arrive at the unified field, to turn man and men into moons, and whether we make them speak so much only to finally silence them.

This question is absolutely essential. It is not one that I invented. Everyone—of course, this is a manner of speaking—will tell you that this is the most accurate interpretation of “the end of history” so often evoked by Mr. HEGEL, the moment when men will have nothing left to do but close it.

Which amounts to a return, fully accomplished, to an animal life. I don’t know if I wouldn’t argue this point of view with him, namely whether a man—or more precisely, men (because there is no man at that level; there is also a man, but elsewhere)—whether men who have reached the point of no longer needing language are animals.

This is a serious question, which does not seem to me to have been settled in any direction. I am neither certain of what I would bring to [Koyré?], nor of what he would reply, because I have not yet brought it to him. In any case, the question I am raising—how we must consider our work—lies at the heart of analytic technique and, more precisely, of the scandalous errors into which one falls when approaching things in a certain way.

For the first time, I read a very sympathetic article about “the standard cure,” what is called…
(and one must not confuse the standard cure with a certain way of revealing the type of the cure)…
“The necessity of maintaining the ego’s observational capacities intact.” I see this written in bold letters [Cf. trimethylamine]. And then—my God—after all, since this is not the first time I have read this author, I know very well where the important points are.

There is mention of a mirror, which is the analyst—this is not bad! The notion of the mirror is never a bad one, whatever one might say. But then, this mirror is supposed to be “alive.” It’s like the “true reality”: a living mirror. I wonder what that means. Clearly, there is a difficulty here.

The poor fellow who speaks of a living mirror does so because he feels that there is something amiss in this story of the mirror. I would like someone to explain it to me! Above all, I would like someone to explain where the essence of analysis lies.
Could someone explain whether analysis should consist of imaginary realization?

If one arrives at this boisterous operation, it is because one speaks of it:
– that is, to the extent that one makes the ego a reality,
– that is, to the extent that one makes the ego something that is, as they say, “integrative,”
– that is, what holds the planet together.

But not only does this planet not speak:
– because it is real,
– but because it does not have time, in the literal sense of the word: it does not have time.

Why? It does not have time because it is round. And integration is precisely that. It is that the circular body can do whatever it wants, but it always remains perfectly equal to itself.

And ultimately, it is about rounding it off, this ego. And what is presented to us as the essential goal of this analysis is indeed, through a kind of confusion in which the ego is conflated with the subject, to give this ego the spherical form where it will have definitively integrated all its disjointed, fragmentary states, its scattered members, to which we now give full attention under the names of pre-genital stages, partial drives, and countless egos.

This race towards the triumphant ego: as many egos as objects. I do not mean to suggest that all of this is ego; there are degrees. Of course, all of this is not without reason, and the object libido is indeed not something without interest. It is certainly something embedded in the structure of the imaginary field. But this also rests on all sorts of ambiguities, and primarily on essential ambiguities in language.

Everyone—I pointed this out to you last night in passing—does not at all mean the same thing under the term “object relation.”

But it is certain that psychoanalytic theory—because things must be delineated—as soon as it takes shape, as soon as it becomes fixed (in my opinion prematurely) in someone who once seemed to start off on a better footing… I mean by approaching things from this angle, through the recent (not less dignified, for us) interest in object relation, partial drive in psychoanalysis… which seemed capable of situating it, placing it, centering the entire psychoanalytic operation on this plane of the imaginary, ultimately achieves nothing less than this kind of perversion I spoke of earlier, which consists of placing all its progress in this imaginary relationship of the subject at its most primitive level, which can show its effects in experience.

Thank God, experience is never pushed to its ultimate term in analysis. In other words:
– Thank God, we do not do what we say we do,
– Thank God, we remain far short of our goals,
– Thank God, we fail our cures, and this is why the subject escapes.

For along the path taken by the author [Bouvier] I mentioned just now, I believe one can demonstrate with the greatest rigor that his way of conceiving the cure of obsessional neurosis would have no other end and no other result than to paranoize the subject.

And this is already very easy to perceive in this: for him, the entire question of analysis revolves around the boundary of its indications at the frontier between neuroses and psychoses, and what seems to him the danger, the abyss perpetually approached in the cure of obsessional neurosis, is the emergence of psychosis.

In other words, for the author I am speaking of, the obsessive neurotic is, in reality, a madman.
Let us try to clarify this point. What kind of madman is this? It is a madman who maintains a distance from his madness, that is to say, from the greatest imaginary disturbance there is: he is a paranoid madman. I say “the greatest imaginary disturbance” as such; I am not claiming that this defines all forms of madness. I am speaking of delusion and paranoia.

The way the author I mentioned conceives of this management, which must always be maintained on a kind of fragile boundary—precisely the one below which the subject holds himself together, only and strictly speaking insofar as he clings to social language—is such that everything he tells you has nothing to do with his lived experience. That is the interpretation he gives of the obsessive neurotic.

Namely, that it is in a kind of purely verbal conformism that this seemingly solid equilibrium is precariously sustained, for what is harder to knock over than an obsessive neurotic? Yet, everything hinges on this.

And if the obsessive neurotic resists and clings so tightly, it is precisely because—in the words of the author I am referring to—psychosis is lurking behind, always imminent, that is to say, the state of imaginary disintegration of the ego.
Here lies the pandemonium and the variously separated, fragmented, distinct egos we mentioned earlier. The author, however, has no proof of this other than the mere appearance of it because he cannot… I think he would hesitate to do so, but I believe he has no way of doing so—alas for him, and for the solidity of his demonstration—to show an obsessive neurotic whom he has truly driven mad.

There are strong reasons for this. Let us say that in wanting to protect the neurotic from his supposedly threatening madness, if he succeeds—but, as I said earlier: thank God, he does not succeed—he would end up producing something that, to a certain extent, would not be very far from it.

The question of post-analytic paranoia is far from being a mythical question. There is absolutely no need for an analysis to have been pushed extremely far for analysis to produce a perfectly consistent paranoia. I have seen it myself in my career, in this very ward. And it is in this ward that one can best observe it because patients are gradually shifted toward open wards and, from there, eventually integrated into closed wards.

It happens! There is no need for an exceptionally skilled psychoanalyst. It is enough to have an unshakable belief in psychoanalysis.

I have seen paranoias that could be called post-analytic, which might simply be described as spontaneous.
In an appropriate environment—namely, with an intense preoccupation with psychological facts—a subject who has a slight inclination in this direction can end up surrounding himself with problems, undoubtedly fictitious in nature, but problems to which he gives such consistency, and with a language already fully prepared—the language of psychoanalysis, which is readily available in the streets—to provide himself with all the necessary material.

And it must be said: it is very important to assist in the birth of a delusion. It usually takes a very long time for a chronic delusion to form. A subject typically spends a third of his life becoming delusional. But I must say that analytic literature, in a certain way, constitutes a ready-made delusion. It is not uncommon to see subjects dressed up in it, wearing it as if it were their skin.

Let us say, then, that a certain way of approaching ego analysis can indeed lead straight to a form of paralysis. After all, much of the style represented by individuals in the immediate surroundings, who hold a certain attachment to “a closed-mouth reverence for the ineffable mystery of the analytic experience,” represents, I believe, merely an attenuated form of what I just called paranoia.

Today, I would like to propose to you something I said last year about something else…
but it’s the same thing, I always tell the same story!
…a small diagram, to try to illustrate, to begin illustrating for you the problems I am raising concerning this ego, this other, and ultimately language and speech. Naturally, this diagram would not be a diagram if it presented a solution. But, after all, it is not even a model. It is an infirmity of our discursive mind and a way of fixing ideas.

I have not revisited—because I believe you are already quite familiar with it—the distinction between the imaginary and the symbolic. If I had to do it again, I would. I assume that, for everyone here, this is considered understood? Now then, what is it about?

What do we know concerning the ego? We start from the idea…
– because we are here, and I have repeated it to you long enough,
– because ultimately, this is where the entire discussion lies…

…of whether the ego is real: whether it is a moon or an imaginary construction.

We are among those—though we are not, but by definition, we speak of it—who say that there is no way to grasp anything of analytic dialectic if we do not first know that the ego is an imaginary construction.

This does not take anything away from this poor ego; I would even say that this is its redeeming feature. If it were not imaginary, we would not be human beings; we would be moons.

This does not mean that it is sufficient for us to have this imaginary ego to be human.
We can still be that intermediate thing called “a madman.”
A madman is precisely someone who adheres completely to this imaginary dimension, purely and simply, and as such.

Here, at the top, the letter S: it is the letter S, but it might be something else as well. It represents the subject, the analytic subject as we take it—not in its totality…
as people endlessly annoy us by insisting on its totality! Because why would it be total? We know nothing about it. Have you ever encountered a total being? It might be an ideal, but I’ve never seen one. I am not total. You are not total either. If we were total, each of us would be on our own, complete in ourselves, and we would not be here together trying to organize ourselves, as they say…

It is the subject, not in its totality, but in its openness. It is the subject, the one who aspires to this, and it is indeed him.

But, as usual, he does not know what he is saying. If he knew what he was saying, he wouldn’t be here trying to explain himself to us.
He is there (a’). Of course, that is not where he sees himself. That has never been seen, not even at the end of analysis, and it will never be seen. It is precisely because he sees himself there (a) somewhere on the other side of something that he has an ego, that is to say, he can believe that this (a) is him. And everyone is stuck there, and there is no way out!

Naturally, you will recognize the symmetry of what is called the specular plane, but you would be wrong to think that this is what I want to talk about today. I assume this is already established and known. What analysis teaches us is that it is this ego that represents the subject in another form—a form that is entirely fundamental, so fundamental for the constitution of its objects—that it is precisely in the form of this specular other (a) that he will begin, within this frame, under this form first, to see the one whom we, justifiably and for structural reasons, call his fellow.

In other words, it is at this level, in a way essentially superimposable on it, that he will have to deal with a certain form of the other (a), the one most closely related to his ego as such.

I told you earlier that you must not simply and purely mistake the mirror plane for something that is perfectly coherent with the establishment of this world—of egos and others—homogeneous, something that exists, on which we even base ourselves, and on which, precisely, the question today is to see the way, the function, and the role we will assign to it.

And this (a’→a), we will call the wall of language. I said “the wall of language” because what needs to be understood is that… within the order defined by the wall of language, from which the imaginary has taken this false reality, it is nonetheless a verified reality:
– which is called the ego, as we use it,
– which is called the other, the fellow.

All these imaginaries are treated as objects, as objects about which we forget, about which we can forget at any moment, that they are not objects completely homogeneous with the moons, but which are nevertheless objects since they are named as such in an organized system, which is that of the wall of language.

What happens when this subject speaks with his fellows? He speaks with his fellows in common language, in the language that considers their imaginary egos not simply as ex-sistants, but as real. That is to say, even if he cannot at all know what lies within the field of the real—I mean, where concrete dialogue takes place—here, he deals with a certain number of (a’ or a’’), which are objects, and to which, through reflection on the wall of language, he addresses himself.

These characters who are there, in the real world, whom he considers real, these homogeneous ones, are the same type of characters as those who are on the other side of the wall of language. In other words, the mirror is simultaneously where one wants to place it (a→a’), and also between S and A1, A2… [all the A’s], just as it is between S and α, β… [all the a’s].

I mean, insofar as the subject relates them to his own image, those to whom he speaks are also those with whom he identifies.

That said, you can see that we must not overlook this point, for it is our fundamental assumption. We might neglect it, but if we are here as analysts, it is because we believe that there are other subjects besides ourselves, that there are authentic intersubjective relationships.

I must say, we would have no reason to think so if we did not have the test, the evidence of what characterizes intersubjectivity: that is, the subject can lie to us. This is the decisive, supreme proof. I am not saying it is the only foundation for the reality of the other subject, but it is its proof.

In other words, those to whom we address ourselves—and it is not surprising to find them in this position on the diagram—those to whom we address ourselves are these A1, A2…, who are what we do not know: true Others, Others with a capital O/A, that is to say, true subjects.

It is, of course, the symmetry of the figure that places them on the other side of where the (a’) are in relation to the wall of language, where, in principle, I never reach them. And yet, I fundamentally aim at them every time I utter a true word; I aim at them (A1, A2…) and always reach (a) through reflection unless special precautions are taken. That is to say, it is always them, the true subjects, whom I aim at, and I must always make do with shadows.

Nothing surprising, by the way, in seeing precisely on this diagram the subject separated from the Others, the true Others, by the wall of language. That is what it is there for.

Of course, we know that speech is precisely what establishes, as such, in the existence of the Other, towards the Other, and in the Other, the true Other, with a capital O/A.

We also know that language is very precisely designed to direct us back to the objectified other, to the other whom we can treat however we want, including thinking of him as an object, that is to say, that he does not know what he is saying.

It is constantly within this ambiguity that our relationship with the Other plays out when we use language. In other words, language is just as much made to establish us within the Other as it is to radically prevent us from understanding the Other. This is precisely what is perpetually at stake in the analytic experience.

What happens in what I call the perverted organization, the inflection that psychoanalytic technique has taken for some time now? What happens? This happens: there is an interest in the subject’s ego. There is a desire to allow it to gain strength, to realize itself, to integrate itself, the dear little thing! That is what it is about.

This subject, who does not know what he is saying for the best of reasons—because he does not know what he is—but who sees himself on the other side through all the imperfect ways you know, due to the fundamentally unfinished, partial, not only imaginary but illusory character of the foundation of the ego’s image, this Urbild of the specular image.

This subject is precisely about aggregating, within the imaginary, all the more or less fragmented, fragmenting forms of something that belongs to him:
– which is him,
– which is that in which he misrecognizes himself,
– which is indeed one of the fundamental problems of analytic realization.

It is entirely accurate: the subject must indeed gather his scattered members, his partial drives, everything that has been lived, in fact, in the pre-genital stage, and which is both of the subject and that in which he does not recognize himself, but which is nevertheless a lived experience, a felt reality, a succession of partial objects, which means that by focusing on this theme—fantasy, image, the realm of the imaginary and the pre-genital—we arrive at a certain type of analysis whose mechanism is explained to us in an entirely uniform way.

This does not vary, because the authors are entirely oriented in this direction by one fact—and with good reason—the only reason being that they do not know why, but they are right; it is true!
The only way for this reassembly of what I just now called the analytic series—that is to say, these authentic disjointed members—which you must imagine because they are shown to you every day, as in Carpaccio’s painting of Saint George piercing the dragon, and all around, little severed heads, arms, etc.

That is what it is about, and what we are constantly being told about. The consumption of these partial objects happens—and indeed can only happen—in what way? Through the intermediary of this image of the other. This ego can rejoin itself and recompose itself as such, if this end is pursued in a direct manner, through only one intermediary—the same one you see here and there—namely through the fellow whom the subject has in front of him, or behind him; the result is the same.

It is precisely a matter of the subject recomposing, and in order to recompose, reconcentrating his own ego in the form of the ego—undoubtedly imaginary, but most essentially the ego of the analyst. This ego does not remain simply imaginary, by the way, because the intervention of the analyst, as spoken, is explicitly conceived as an encounter from ego to ego, as a projection by the analyst of specific objects.

This is formulated in countless ways, for example, in the article I mentioned earlier, which I relied on to say that analysis must always be something represented, planned, organized on the plane of objectivity, and that ultimately, what it is about—as they write—is to move the subject from a psychic reality to a true reality, that is to say, to a moon, recomposed in the imaginary without any doubt, but quite precisely—nor is it concealed from us—modeled on the analyst’s ego. They are coherent enough to realize that it is not about indoctrination, nor about representing what one must do in the world. It is indeed on the plane of the imaginary that one operates. That is why nothing will be more appreciated than, beyond what is fundamentally considered the illusion of language, and not the wall of language, this ineffable lived experience.

A rare concrete, clinical example is given. Not that they are rare…
There is a small one, which is quite charming, that of the patient who is there and who is terrified at the thought that the analyst might know what she has in her suitcase. At the same time, she knows it, and she does not know it.

This is unquestionably what appears in the session: her imaginary anxiety that the analyst, as they say, might know—on the imaginary plane—what she has in her belly, in the belly of this suitcase, which is her extension, and which is her, and everything she can say will be negligible and neglected compared to this apprehension.

Suddenly, it becomes clear that this is the only important thing, the only thing she does not speak about: what is in that suitcase. The only important thing in this session is her fear that the analyst will take away everything she has in her belly, that is, everything symbolized by her partial object, the content in question of the suitcase.

This notion of the imaginary assumption of partial objects through the figure of the analyst is essential enough for you to know that it leads to a sort of comulgatorio—to use the term Baltasar Gracián gave to a Treatise on the Holy Eucharist—an imaginary consumption of the analyst, which ultimately gives us the idea of a singular communion, of a market stall, a display: a head with parsley up its nose.

One could choose the piece cut from the pants, and—as Mr. Apollinaire said in Les Mamelles de Tirésias—eat your analyst’s feet with the same sauce. This is the fundamental theory of analysis. It is about knowing whether there is not another conception of analysis that allows one to conclude that it is something other than the reassembly of a fundamentally imaginary partialization of the subject, which indeed exists and is one of the dimensions in which analysis allows us to advance according to the model, through the identification of the analyst operating as such to give the subject his own ego in the image of his.

It is, of course, understood that everything the analyst manages to project here, through a certain type of interpretation of resistance, through a certain direction, a certain reduction of the total experience of analysis to its purely imaginary elements, consists of projecting the various characteristics of the analyst’s ego, and God knows they can differ in ways that become characteristic of the result of an analysis!

It is about knowing whether what Freud taught us does not consist, on the contrary, of telling us that analysis must, ideally, consist of precisely this: that there is absolutely nothing here. That is to say, the mirror is not—as someone puts it—“alive,” but rather that the mirror is. And to a certain extent, this is precisely what constitutes the formation of the analyst: the analyst’s ego as such must be absent.

Naturally, it never fully is. Naturally, the ideal of the analyst—a subject without ego, a fully realized subject—is something ideal, virtual. Yet, it is not so virtual, since it is precisely this that we must always seek to obtain from the subject in analysis.

In other words, if what happens in analysis is something that must aim at the emergence of true speech, that is, at something that must truly connect the subject (S) to another subject, to A1 and A2, on the other side of the wall of language, if this is, at the very least, an important part—the crowning part—
(this does not, of course, exclude the initial identification of the imaginary, as I have shown you)
if this is the foundation of analysis, it is clear that it is here, in A, in this ultimate relationship of the subject to an Other as such, to a true Other, to the Other who is a real Other, to the Other who gives the unexpected answer,
that the terminal point of analysis is defined.

And see what advantage we have in conceiving the movement of analysis in this way. We immediately understand a number of things. It is clear that this will neither be attained immediately, nor perhaps ever attained. The question is whether this is indeed the end, the termination of analysis.

Throughout the entire duration of analysis, on the sole condition that the analyst’s ego consents not to be there (a=Ø), on the sole condition that the analyst is not, as they say, “a living mirror,” but rather an empty mirror, well, what happens will happen between the subject’s ego (a’)—I do not need to pinpoint it for us to know this; it is always the subject’s ego that speaks, in appearance—and the fact that the subject’s ego will have a relationship with the Others (S→a’→A1, A2…).

And all the progress of analysis, and what is called the reduction of transference, is the progressive displacement of this relationship which the subject can, in fact, grasp at every moment, beyond the wall of language, as being transference:
– that is to say, this something which is both of him and where he does not recognize himself (S←A),
– that is to say, this relationship which he can assume and at the same time objectify, this something which all of analysis consists in making him become aware of,
– that is to say, to which Other he is truly addressing himself, even though he does not know it,
– that is to say, his relationships, and not his relationships with the analyst’s ego.

It is about his relationships with all the others who are the true respondents in the subject of the subject, whom he has not recognized.

It is progressively a matter of shifting S’—which here represents the relations of transference—more and more towards a subject who can fully assume them in the position where he is and where he did not initially know he was. This means that there are two meanings to Freud’s phrase: “Wo Es war, soll Ich werden.”

This Es—take it with the meaning of the letter S—is there, it is always there; it is the subject. He may or may not recognize himself. That is not even the most important thing. He may or may not have speech: at the end of analysis, it is he who must have speech.
In S’, he must enter into relationship with the true Others. Where the Es was, that is where the Ich must be. This is one conception of analysis. It is there that the subject reintegrates all his disjointed parts, where he recognizes his experience, where he reaggregates it.

Something is constituted and formed as an object. But this object, far from being what it is about, is only a fundamentally alienated form. It is the imaginary ego as such that gives it its meaning and its structure, and this will be the subject of our next lesson. This is perfectly identifiable with a fundamental form of alienation, closely related to paranoia as such.

The fact that the subject ends up with a kind of belief in the ego, even as such, is, in itself, a form of madness.
Thank God, analysis rarely succeeds in this. But to orient it in this direction is to push it in this direction, and we have countless proofs of this. Analytic literature confesses it at every moment. This is the point on which I insist.

This is the point on which two ways of conceiving analysis differ. Next time, I will give you an illustration of this.

I want you to know one thing: this is very important because if it is true, it gives us the power to discern what will be our program for next year:
– what “paranoia” means,
– what “schizophrenia” means.

Paranoia is something that is always related to this imaginary alienation of the ego. Schizophrenia is something else. There is a fundamental difference between the two. And I will say that, apart from the theoretical development of the explanations I can give you, it is also a research hypothesis.

By this, I mean that, guided by what I will tell you about it, certain things can be identified in the clinic and tested through experience. I say this only in passing.

I will have to return to it in the seminars that will follow.