🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

What I am going to tell you here, first of all, is a preamble, on the margins of the seminar. It can only be a parenthesis because we are not here to do exegesis. Still, it connects to our question. In this penultimate meeting, I questioned you with mixed success; it was a session that had diverse effects on the minds of those who participated. I hope that now you have understood what the meaning and function were for me—it was a way of tuning my instrument to what I had to tell you last time. I hope it was not only useful to me but also to you.

But finally, I retained—without dwelling on it at the moment, because given the direction things were going, if I had followed you on that path, it would have given us an even greater feeling of aberration—what did you mean when you told me that the verbum of the first verse of Saint John was the Hebrew דבר [davar]? On what basis did you tell me that?
This is not a trap. I thought about it again an hour ago, and I am no more equipped than you on this matter, and certainly even less so!
So don’t be troubled, and tell me why you said that the verbum was the Hebrew דבר [davar].
What allows you to say this, given that the Gospel of Saint John was written in Greek?

M.X: Well, first, I will say that there is an a priori fact that compels us to think so.

LACAN: Today, we are closing certain small accounts. And I will tell you shortly what we plan to do.

M.X: First, the meaning. Should I not explain the meaning of this?

LACAN: I certainly hope you do.

M.X: So that is not the question you are asking. I will say this first…

LACAN: First, the philological question, the one that allows you to say—if it is indeed certain that Saint JOHN wrote in Greek, it is not at all obligatory that he thought in Greek, and that his λόγος [logos] was the Babylonian λόγος, for example—you say that he thought the Hebrew דבר [davar]. Tell me why? Because that is not, after all, the only way to say it in Hebrew.

M.X: To say?

LACAN: To say precisely the something which is the meaning of דבר [davar].

M.X: Λόγος [logos], yes obviously, that is not the only reason. To summarize the question, I will say this:
One finds in Saint JOHN no truly Platonic concept. It is a fact, and I could demonstrate it to you.
What is interesting is that generally λόγος…

LACAN: Who is talking to you about Platonic concepts? The last time, at the moment when I paused on this verbum—essentially, to tell you that the verbum was a word chosen by Saint JEROME, if my memory serves me correctly, he was the one who made the translation…

M.X: It already existed.

LACAN: It does not matter. Verbum, that is to say, the word that I associated, on that occasion, with the Latin usage, which is quite indicated to us by the use made, for example, by Saint AUGUSTINE in the De significatione, which we commented on last year.
Essentially, I was making a simple allusion to a kind of axiomatics, even preceding the fiat, even preceding the fiat of Genesis.
I was posing a question. I did not say that it resolved it. But you must now better grasp all the implications it has after my last lecture. It was regarding this that I suggested that the verbum might be something prior to any speech, even to the first word of creation, in principio erat verbum.
And on this, you tell me, as an objection, that it is the Hebrew דבר [davar].

M.X: That’s because you said: “In the beginning was language,” you translated it like that.
To which LECLAIRE said: “Not language, but speech.”

LACAN: That’s what it was about.

M.X: And I said, yes, it is very clearly “speech,” and not “language.”

LACAN: Where do you derive the דבר [davar]? There are two questions:
– First, that it is the דבר [davar] beneath the λόγος [logos] of Saint JOHN,
– And second, that the דבר [davar] means more “speech” than something else.
So address these two questions. Why do you think it is the דבר [davar]?

M.X: For two reasons. The first is that it is a very clear implicit reference to the beginning of Genesis.

LACAN: At the beginning of Genesis, we have, in verse 3: fiat lux, precisely: Va’omer. It is not at all דבר [davar], va’omer.
It is even exactly the opposite. That’s where I want to lead you.

[καὶ εἶπεν ὁ Θεός· γενηθήτω ϕῶς· καὶ ἐγένετο ϕῶς.
Dixit que Deus fiat lux et facta est lux.
וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים, יְהִי אוֹר; וַיְהִי-אוֹר.]

M.X: Ah no! It’s not exactly the opposite!

LACAN: Explain to me how.

M.X: There is a rabbinical tradition, which has somewhat reified this 3rd verse of Genesis into something like an entity, if you will, a mediator between the Creator and creation, which would be speech, just as there is wisdom.
But what is certain is that throughout the biblical tradition…
—I’ll first explain a little of the meaning, it helps better to show why I interpret Saint JOHN in this way as well—
…the concept of ratio, of λόγος in the Greek sense, is absolutely lacking.

This is what BULTMANN demonstrated through very profound analyses, namely that, for example, the concept of universe does not exist in the biblical tradition. They do not have this sense of a determined world where all things occur according to a certain determinism; they absolutely lack this concept of a fixed, determined law by which everything is linked together, which is really the ultimate meaning of the Greek concept of λόγος: it is the rationality of the world, the world that is thus considered as a whole in which everything happens in a logical, interconnected way. This is also what makes up Aristotelian philosophy, ultimately, with its four causalities, which must explain how even movement is reduced to a determined static order.
For example, the Hebrews always say—instead of universe—”the sum of things” or “heaven and earth” and all that, but they never have this rational concept. They do not think in static, essentialist concepts. It is something absent from their way of thinking.

LACAN:

Do you believe, after hearing my lecture, that when I speak of a thoroughly radical symbolic order, this play of positions, this initial conjecture, this primordial conjectural play which is entirely before determinism, before any kind of notion of a rationalized universe—which is, if I may say, the rational before its conjunction with the real—do you believe that this is what I am aiming for? Are they the four causalities, the principle of sufficient reason, and all that rigmarole?

M. X: But if you say, “In the beginning was language,” it’s like a retrospective projection of current rationality.

LACAN: It’s not a matter of me saying it. It’s not me; it’s Saint JOHN.

M. X: No, he does not say that.

LACAN:

Come here, Father BERNAERT, because we are trying to dismantle the philological formation of […]
That the Semites fundamentally lack an inspiration for the notion of a universe as closed as the “O”, the one, if you will, whose foundation gives us the preparation, whose system ARISTOTLE gives us perfectly: agreed!

M. X:

It is essentially in motion and without rational law. For example, what happens in nature is the word of God reverberating in nature. This demonstrates, if you will—it might be said—that it is an animistic universe, no matter! It is an essentially undetermined, non-rational universe, a historical universe, if you will, where everything happens through personal initiatives.

LACAN: Yes. But first, that does not mean it isn’t rational, as long as it is speech that modulates it.

M. X: I would say: not essentialist.

LACAN: Where I want to get to is this… And you, Father BERNAERT?

M. BERNAERT: I studied Sacred Scripture, like everyone else.

LACAN:

The other day, M. X gave me a background of Saint JOHN‘s λόγος, allowing for the Hebrew דבר [davar].
Is this what you are taught?

M. X [to M. Bernaert]: It is what is demonstrated, for example, by very in-depth studies by BULTMANN, etc.

LACAN: Do you know what a certain BURNETT did?

M. X: Yes.

LACAN:

He studied this first verse of Saint JOHN with great attention. It’s a work I recommend you read.
I couldn’t find it again since you made that objection to me. But its memory is very precise, at least its conclusion. He says that behind Saint JOHN‘s λόγος, it is the Aramaic memmra that must be supposed.

M. X: It is the same as דבר [davar] in Hebrew; it is the דבר [davar], slightly reified, rabbinical, as I told you.

LACAN: What do you mean by saying “rabbinical”? That is not the question.

M. X:

That is to say, several things led to this first verse:
– You certainly have the tradition of Creation, from Genesis,
– Then the tendency of rabbinical thought to explain it a little…

LACAN:

In any case, I will tell you one thing. The memmra is much closer to va’omer—it’s the same root—the memmra is much closer to va’omer in the first verse of Genesis. Listen, I will tell you what I looked at an hour ago; it’s in the Genesius regarding what דבר [davar] means. It is much closer to duxit, locutus est, in the sense of an entirely incarnate imperative. And it even goes as far as the translation insidiatus est.

M. X: What do you mean by that?

LACAN:

It’s in the Genesius: meaning to engage, to seduce. In short, it precisely implies everything in this perspective that is twisted, flawed, deviated, diverted, essentially corrupted in everything that is speech at the moment it descends into the archi-temporal. In any case, דבר [davar] is attested in […] and it is always something at once very limited, very precise, and, as such, ultimately: insidiatus est, what is delusional, deceptive.

M. X: But no! Not always!

LACAN: It is speech in its most decadent character, compared to memmra.

M. X:

No. For example, thunder is the word of God, and not in the decadent sense—that is very clear.
No, no! That’s a derived meaning. But the primary meaning is not that one.

LACAN: But that shows you the direction in which it derives.

M. X: It can derive, obviously, it can derive…

LACAN: It is clearly attested.

M. X: That it exists as well? But of course! But that proves nothing—that it exists as well!

LACAN:

But it still leaves the question pending… Nothing allows us to identify this דבר [davar] with the admittedly problematic use of λόγος in the Greek text of Saint JOHN.

M. X:

In any case, one thing is certain, and it must be excluded because it is totally absent everywhere else: the Platonic meaning of λόγος.

LACAN: But that is not what I was aiming at.

M. X: It should not be translated as language in any case.

LACAN:

This λόγος in question—and here I find we must not neglect the inflection given by the Latin verbum—we can make it something entirely different from the reason of things. But precisely this play of absence and presence is entirely primordial in the sense that it already provides the very framework for the fiat.
For indeed, the fiat occurs against a background of non-fiated, of something absolutely prior to any fiat.
In other words, I think it is not unthinkable that the same fiat is a secondary thing, even speech, even the most original creative speech.

M. X:

Yes. But I would say that we are placing ourselves here at the beginning of the historical temporal order, but we do not go, as you suggest, beyond it. That is an absent thing.

LACAN:

Every time we say in the beginning, in principio, we are dealing with something completely enigmatic when it comes to speech. I also pointed out to you that this in principio indeed has a mirage-like quality, that it cannot involve the same imaginary retroaction indicated in the couplet by Daniel VON CHEPKO, which I quoted to you in this regard: “Who was there before God even made all this? Me!” This very clearly indicates its mirage-like nature.

M. X: I do not quite understand what you mean now.

LACAN:

That is to say, once things are structured within a certain imaginary intuition, they seem to have been there forever. They cannot even be felt otherwise. But it is a mirage, of course! That is your objection when you tell me that there is a kind of retroaction of this constituted world into some kind of model or archetype that would constitute it.
But it is not necessarily an archetype. Here, this retroaction into an archetype that would be a condensation is excluded.

M. X: It is completely excluded.

LACAN:

Completely excluded in what I am teaching you. And if the Platonic λόγος resembles anything, it is eternal ideas. But what I was talking to you about last time, when I spoke of a certain language, was not that!

M. X: I have always understood language as opposed to speech, as that condensation, that essence of everything there is.

LACAN: That is another meaning of the word language that I was trying to make you understand.

M. X: Ah!

LACAN:

It is precisely that something which can be reduced to this succession of absences and presences, or rather to this perpetual simultaneity of presence against a background of absence, of absence constituted by the fact that a presence can exist. Because ultimately, there is no absence in the real.
There is absence only if you suggest that there could be a presence there where there is not, that is, something entirely outside the order of the real. That is what was aimed at. In “In principio”, there can be the word insofar as it creates this opposition, this contrast; there is no longer any “no”, any contradiction that is overly particularized in relation to this original contradiction between 0 and 1.

M. X: In what way is it opposed to speech, then?

LACAN:

It is because it provides speech, if one may say, with something that is a kind of radical condition.
Do you see what I mean?

M. X:

Yes, but I find that within this condition, you could just as easily say speech as language.
It is so far beyond this opposition!

LACAN:

That is correct! But this is what I want to point out to you—it is that in the hammer, or the hommer, or the memmra…
It is about this kind of master word, if one can say, and not about the register of דבר [davar], which is, in some way, oriented towards legalism.

M. X: Oh!

LACAN: You will consult Genesius again when you return home.

M. X:

But I have studied all these texts because there is a great article by […], which brings together all possible texts.
It does not go in that direction. I find it more nuanced than Genesius, which shows what you are saying: “insidious.”

LACAN:

That the דבר [davar] can go as far as insidiatus est indicates just how much it bends.

M. X: It can bend, yes! Just as speech can become chatter.

M. BERNAERT:

It is the same for the word speech in French—it speaks, meaning it does nothing.

LACAN:

That is not quite it, because the דבר [davar] is not at all in the sense of emptiness.

M. X:

You have a text: ISAIAH, LIII: “The word of God descends upon the earth, and it rises again as fertilized.”
So here you clearly have the sense of creative speech, and not insidious speech, which corresponds to the Aramaic memmra, slightly reified, the speech charged with vitality.

LACAN:

Do you believe that is the meaning of the Aramaic memmra? Do you believe there is the slightest compromise with life in this speech? We are here at the level of the death instinct.

M. X:

That comes from this speculative tendency to understand a little what exists as an intermediary between the one who speaks and what he produces.
It must have a certain consistency, and it is the beginning, if you will, of a speculative tendency in Hebrew thought.

LACAN: What, the דבר [davar]?

M. X: The memmra…

LACAN: Do you believe that?

M. X:

Yes. It’s the rabbinic tradition, the same substantification as “wisdom,” and several other things, and what you later find in […] which tried, through this substantification, to mediate with the Platonic λόγος.

M. BERNAERT: At what time does memmra appear?

M. X: It must be the 3rd century.

LACAN:

BURNETT shows us, through cross-references, in the article I am talking about, through all sorts of obvious connections, he highlights that Saint JOHN was thinking in Aramaic.

M. X: And…

M. BERNAERT: That’s certain.

M. X: It is even highly doubtful that he ever knew anything of the tradition of […].

LACAN:

Yes. I don’t see why you bring it in here, because what you call the rabbinic tradition is its gnostic inflection.

M. X:

Yes, which can later become gnosis, which obviously provides grounds for gnostic thought, although it is not gnostic in itself. It is essentially a legalistic thought that tries to fix everything, to codify everything.

LACAN: Don’t you think that the דבר [davar] is closer to that?

M. X: No, the memmra.

LACAN:

Today, I will be relapsed, and I hope you will be too, with more success than last time—that is to say, I have firmly resolved to affirm, in the way our last meeting operated, that I am not delivering you an ex cathedra teaching.

Because, truthfully, if the matter may still be in doubt for some of you, I do not at all believe it aligns with our purpose—since it is about language and speech—that I should bring you something already fully formed, asserted in an apodictic manner, that you would merely have to record and then slip into your pocket.
Because of course, as things go, there is more and more language in our pockets, and even when it overflows into our brains, it does not make much difference. You can always put your handkerchief over it.

I believe, on the contrary, that if there is a true speech behind every discourse, it essentially consists in this: that it is yours, the speech of the listeners, as much and even more than mine. And in a subject like psychoanalysis, where this question is absolutely and permanently present in all analytical communication, it seems entirely excluded to me that theoretical teaching should participate in this creative communication.

That is to say, that I can truly, legitimately ask you, as I did last time—truthfully, I did not do so immediately—I asked you to pose questions to me. And as they seemed a little thin, I proposed a certain theme to you, and I said: How do you understand what I am trying to approach concerning language and speech?
On that, valid objections were indeed formulated, and the fact that they stopped midway through explanation, that they might have even engendered some confusion at certain moments, was never discouraging in any way. It simply means that analysis is ongoing.

Since then, I have made a few remarks that seem to me to take a step further in what was part of our dialogue the penultimate time, and today I am again asking you if you have any questions for me.

That is to say, if specifically the lecture I gave…
– insofar as it can be seen as a kind of dialectical peak of everything initiated by this year’s work,
– insofar as it leaves open questions for you, points that need clarification…
Well then, I give you the floor and ask those who wish to pose questions to me.

I ask them again today to take the risk, to venture into this unknown, into this uncharted zone, which we must truly never forget, in the analytical experience, as being our principle position.
If I wanted to express myself concisely, playing a little on words, I would say, very precisely, as far as making psychoanalytic theory something that is delivered as such—that I construct it, offer it to you, and you walk away with it—it is indeed the case. On this conception, I want to know nothing, to which you can also give its full meaning.

For indeed, whether it is something particularly archetypal and Platonic—which, as you know, I entirely reserve judgment on—or whether it is simply this speech, this ambiguous, entirely primordial language that is there to give us the emergence of the symbolic, it is certain that the relationship we have with this speech is very precisely to conceive it by giving it its full meaning.
Of course, to conceive it—since we do not think for a single moment that everything is already written—there is something quite problematic there, because it is both there and not there.

And as M. LEFÈVRE-PONTALIS pointed out the other day, there would be nothing at all if there were no thinking subject, and it is for this reason that, for something new to exist, ignorance must obviously exist.
This is the position we are in, and this is why we conceive something.
When we know something, we already no longer conceive anything.

Who will take the floor? M. MARCHANT, who seems to be visited by the spirit?

M. MARCHANT:

The spirit visiting me at this moment would rather have me protest against drawing questions.
For what interest will we derive from it?

LACAN:

It may be that there was a turn in my speech, during my last lecture, which seemed too abrupt to you, evaded, abbreviated, forgotten, and which prevents you from making the connection.

M. MARCHANT:

It’s on a much higher level, if I may say so. For several months, we have been listening here to a seminar from which each of us has drawn what we could. If we start asking questions, we will always tend to bring it back to things on a more solid level, so to speak, with all the drawbacks that entails, and it will revert to concepts we believe we can use—whereas, precisely, the aim is to remain somewhat suspended.

LACAN:

On the other hand, that is still how things eventually reach their conclusion. That is to say, you still take care to move within a world, a practice, and a technique that are entirely conceptualized. It’s a matter of knowing the place it holds, of recovering the perspective.

M. MARCHANT:

I find it difficult to ask relevant questions about a lecture we have heard, on which we have not had time to reflect.

LACAN:

The other day, when we left, it seemed to you that our last meeting could have been usefully spent on questions.

M. MARCHANT: It wasn’t me who spoke about questions.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

I have a question regarding your lecture, specifically the notion of triangularity, for example, which you discussed, in terms of whether or not it can be recognized by a cybernetic machine. Can we then say that this notion, in your view, belongs to the imaginary order or the symbolic order in the development of thought?

Since you spoke about ignorance earlier, I thought of Nicolas de Cusa, who, in the first part of De Docta Ignorantia, conducts a formal conceptual analysis of the notion of triangularity and, it seems to me, links it to the symbol.
So, what cybernetics introduces in the recognition or non-recognition of a shape such as a triangle—and therefore in the elaboration of triangularity—does it allow…

LACAN:

I believe you are referring to what I said about the specific difficulties in formalizing, in the symbolic sense of the word, certain Gestalten, certain good forms. But it wasn’t the triangle I used as an example—it was the circle.
That’s not the same!

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

In what I said, I was referring to the fact that the cybernetic machine may or may not recognize a shape, depending on its position in space, whether it can or cannot orient itself. For example, if it perceives—as an analogy I’m making—a circle as an ellipse, according to distortions of perspective, it would recognize the shape or not.

This therefore implies, in your thinking, questions related to the notions themselves, circularity or triangularity.
Then, confusion arose in me, and in others as well: we no longer knew whether, for you, a notion such as circularity or triangularity belonged to the symbolic order or the imaginary order in these experiences.

LACAN:

Everything that is intuition is much closer to the imaginary than to the symbolic. This is a question truly present at every moment, and one that is now, more than ever, prominent in mathematical thought—to eliminate as radically as possible all intuitive elements. The intuitive element is considered an impurity in the development of mathematical symbolism. I do not believe RIGUET would contradict me.

To say that mathematicians have fully achieved this, to say that mathematicians do not ultimately assign a creative, source value to intuition, does not mean that they consider the matter settled. There are certain mathematicians who, in the end, still attach to intuition a value that cannot be eliminated.

Nevertheless, the mere fact that there persists in mathematics this aspiration to reduce everything, to be able to reduce everything into a mathematical axiom, proves that this is the trend, and that there is always the possibility of success ahead of it.

What you are saying about the machine—I believe the machine cannot resolve the question, of course. But observe what happens every time we try to put a machine in a position to recognize the good form as such, despite all the aberrations of perspective.

Well, this thing, which in intuition is an extremely simple act—because that is what Gestalt theory signifies: the good form is something that, in imagination, is given as the simplest, as that towards which various Gestalten always tend to return—in the machine, we never produce an effect based on such simplicity. It is always through the most extreme compositions, and this time in this order, the most artificial—through a scanning by the machine, a point-by-point sweep of space, which we call a scanning—that we recompose, through corresponding formulas that then become extremely complicated, what one might call the machine’s sensitivity to a particular form.

In other words, good forms are not what provides the machine with the simplest formulas. Do you follow me?
In a way, already sufficiently indicated there in experience is the opposition between the slopes of the imaginary and the real.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

I did not make myself clear in my question. The debate you mentioned, concerning the origins of mathematics, between intuitionists and non-intuitionists, and rationalists, is certainly an interesting debate. It is old, and it is tangential to the question I am asking. Because the question I am asking concerns the notion and not the perception of a triangle or a circle. It is the finality within the very notion of triangularity, for example, that I am aiming at.

LACAN:

Well then, the notion of triangularity—we could return to the text you referred to. I reread part of it this year, regarding maxima and minima. I no longer clearly see how Nicolas de Cusa approaches the question of the triangle.

I believe the triangle is much more, for him, the ternary than the triangle. It is insofar as something relates to what I posit through mediation, through the third. I believe it is more about that than about the triangle itself.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

I am not specifically referring to him. What seems clear is that the notion of triangularity, regardless of the intuitionist or non-intuitionist positions of mathematicians, cannot be anything other than symbolic.

LACAN: Without a doubt.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

At that point, the question arises that a cybernetic machine should then recognize this triangularity, which it does not. That is why, it seems, you leaned towards saying that triangularity actually belongs to the imaginary order.

LACAN: Absolutely not!

Jean-Paul VALABREGA: That’s what I understood.

LACAN:

For the machine to recognize, one must give that a more problematic meaning.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA: Behavioral.

LACAN:

But then this triangularity you speak of is, in some way, the very structure of the machine. It is the first thing, from which the machine emerges as such. It’s that if we have 0 and 1, there is something that comes after.
It’s only from a precisely successive order that this kind of independence of 0s and 1s can be established, of symbolic generation, of the beginning of the interplay of connotations of presences-absences.

It absolutely cannot be maintained in the […] The simplest things I showed you on the board—by indicating all the possible combinations, showing you what is called the logical product, the logical addition or modulo-2 addition—always involve three columns:
– It is agreed that in such a margin of operations, 0 and 1 will make 1,
– And in another, 0 and 1 will make 0, which implies what 0 does with 0,
– Which may differ according to what 0 and 1 do, and what 1 and 1 will do.

In other words, ternarity is not only present but absolutely essential, necessary, to the very structure of the machine. And of course, according to what I explained to you, it is very clear that it is not about mechanical ritual as such but about principle, even symbolic principle. There is no doubt—the ternarity, which I prefer over your triangularity, which lends itself to an image, nonetheless…

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

That’s because I was not talking about ternarity but about triangularity. What you are discussing pertains to the ternarity of the organization, to the construction. What I said is not that. It’s the triangle itself, that is to say, the notion of the triangularity of the triangle, and not ternarity, do you understand?

LACAN: You mean triangle, as a shape?

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

If this notion, as is believed—as I believe—belongs to the symbolic order, one cannot explain why we cannot construct a cybernetic machine that, since it belongs to the symbolic order, would recognize in every case, in any case, the shape of the triangle.

LACAN: Very precisely, it is because it belongs to the imaginary order.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA: Then, it does not belong to the symbolic order.

LACAN: It is function 3 that is truly minimal in the machine.

Jacques RIGUET:

Yes. From there, one could somewhat generalize the question, asking whether a machine can recognize, in another machine, a certain ternary relation. The answer is yes.

LACAN:

Whereas the question of whether it can recognize the triangle in all cases is perhaps not, in my opinion, impossible—although indeed, it is not resolved—but precisely because the triangle still belongs to an order of forms that are highly symbolized. There is no triangle in nature.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

We can speak of a notion, which suggests that the problem might perhaps be resolvable. If it were insoluble, the problem of form recognition would suggest that the notion of triangularity in question is not entirely of the symbolic order, but also of the imaginary order.

LACAN: Yes.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

At this point, one cannot avoid evoking the notions of concrete concepts. And it seems that we would not have progressed much in the conceptualization of mathematical notions. We would remain intuitionist; there would be no mathematical notion, only elaborated concrete concepts. And that contradicts axiomatic research.
In axiomatics, it seems that, at least largely, concrete intuitive concepts are eliminated. Some have said that none remain at all. There is a question here.

LACAN: You mean there is as large a margin as you can imagine. The problem remains open.

Jean-Paul VALABREGA:

Yes, in the sense that you yourself said that the triangle does not exist in nature. What then is this intuition? It is no longer a concrete concept. That is not the concrete concept—it is an elaboration based on existing forms.
It is a notion, it is symbolic.

LACAN: Yes.

Jacques RIGUET:

In recent axiomatic research, a triangle is something symbolic.
Because a triangle is a certain relation.

LACAN: Yes. It can express that, reduced completely to a certain relation.

Jacques RIGUET: A notion of incidence between points and lines.

LACAN: Therefore, ultimately, it should be recognizable by the machine?

Jacques RIGUET:

Yes. But one must define very precisely what the universe of discourse is, what the universe of all the forms we can consider is. And among these, you ask the machine to recognize one well-defined form.

LACAN: Yes. It is based on an already performed symbolic reduction of the forms—essentially, the machine’s pre-existing work—that the concrete, real machine is asked to operate.

M. MARCHANT: That is a description.

LACAN: No, I don’t think so.

Jacques RIGUET:

It’s a description of the relationship where you impose on this incidental relation a certain number of properties, without, however, enumerating them. It’s a non-enumerative description because you do not list all the lines you consider, nor all the points considered, but the list of all the points and lines that exist in nature.

This is where the imaginary enters.

M. MARCHANT: The question arises: where do you place this concept, in which domain?

Jacques RIGUET:

It’s not of much use if you don’t place yourself within the framework of a well-defined axiomatics. I mentioned incidence on the line, but there are other ways to axiomatize elementary geometry.

Octave MANNONI:

One can indeed construct the triangle schematically, one can construct it, even without knowing one is talking about a triangle.
How do we realize it’s a triangle? That’s the central problem. How are we certain that the triangle we draw…

There’s a problem of the relationship between the symbolic and the imaginary, which is very obscure.

LACAN: Yes. Taken in the opposite sense, if I may say so.

Octave MANNONI: Yes, in reverse.

Jacques RIGUET:

When you reason about the triangle drawn on the sheet of paper, you accumulate a certain number of properties that have their counterpart in the axiomatic model you are considering.

Octave MANNONI: Then, you are speaking two languages that are being translated.

LACAN: Without a doubt.

Octave MANNONI: Then, the imaginary is already language, already symbolic. There are two levels.

LACAN:

Human language, embodied in a human tongue, is made, we do not doubt it, with chosen images that all have a certain connection with the living existence of the human being, with a rather narrow sector of his biological reality.

The most usable part—that is the practical discovery, the sum of knowledge accumulated through analysis—is that the most usable part is the elective character privileged concerning a certain tension, which is precisely that of human existence.

The image of the similar is given in an irreducibly imaginary experience.

It weighs down, it charges every kind of concrete language and, consequently, every kind of verbal exchange, with something that makes it human language, in the most down-to-earth and common sense of the word human, in the sense, if I am not mistaken, of human—human, in English.

It charges the language, every kind of human language, with this fundamentally imaginary experience.

It is precisely in this that it can be an obstacle to the progress of a certain symbolic realization, whose function manifests in a thousand ways in human life as pure, meaning essentially one and solely connotable in terms of presence and absence, or if you prefer, being and non-being.

And it is precisely in this that we always face some resistance to the restitution, so to speak, of this integral text of symbolic exchange.

It is perpetually stopped, chopped up, interrupted by the fact that it is expressed in terms of these images—we could say “necessarily,” in the sense of a low necessity, because we are incarnate beings who always think through some imaginary mediation.

This very fact pulls, stops, hinders, confuses, and obscures what properly belongs to symbolic mediation.

Octave MANNONI:

What bothers me is that I have the feeling that this imaginary duplication doesn’t only chop up or destroy but that it nourishes the symbolic language, that it is its indispensable nourishment, and that language, completely deprived of this nourishment, becomes a machine, that is to say, something that is no longer human.

LACAN:

But here, let’s not rely on sentiment. Don’t go telling yourself that the machine is evil, that it clutters our existence, that we are the objects of machinism.

That’s not what this is about, given that the machine in question, in the end, is merely the succession of little 0s and little 1s.

The question of whether it is human or not is obviously already settled—it is not.

However, the question is also whether the human, in the sense in which you mean it, is really that human.

Octave MANNONI: That is a very serious question.

LACAN:

Still, on this point, the historical notion of humanism—about which I will not give you a seminar—seems to me heavily burdened by history.

We should consider it as a phenomenon, as a specific position realized within a historical field, entirely localizable, of what we continue to call, imprudently, “humanity.”

So, we should not be surprised that, within the symbolic order, we find ourselves facing something absolutely irreducible to what is commonly called “human experience” as such.

You tell me that, without a doubt, nothing would exist if it weren’t incarnated in this imagination. We do not doubt that.

The question lies precisely there: Are all the roots there? Nothing allows us to say so.

The simple questions posed by the empirical deduction of whole numbers—which not only has not been completed but seems even demonstrably impossible to complete—raise the question.

Ultimately, to attempt to condense this into a brief schematic summary—which would seem to me merely a commentary on a Freudian text found in the one we are studying this year, that is to say, at the beginning of Chapter III of Beyond the Pleasure Principle [Pleasure Principle and Affective Transference]—when FREUD recounts the history of the evolution of what happened and which led him to the questions of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, there are a number of paragraphs that I believe are necessary to bring back to your attention before we part, because they are, in a sense, decisive paragraphs, absolutely essential, and, as you will see, at the heart of what we have taught this year.

He explains the stages through which the progress of analysis has passed. He distinguishes them with an exemplary clarity that makes this text absolutely luminous, a text that you should all have a copy of in your pocket to refer to at any moment.

He first says:

“We aimed at resolving the symptom by giving it its meaning.”

It turns out that, nonetheless, we achieved some results, some insights, some clarity, and even some effects through this method.

M. BERNAERT: Why?

LACAN:

For the absolutely radical reason that if the analytical discovery means anything—that is to say, what I am teaching you, in other words, what I am teaching you is nothing other than expressing the condition by which what FREUD initially states is possible—it is precisely to answer your why.

Because precisely, the symptom is in itself and from start to finish meaning, that is to say, truth. It is truth, but as a symptom, it is already truth shaped into form.

As truth, it distinguishes itself from the natural index by the fact that it is already structured in terms of signifier and signified, with all that this entails, that is to say, a play of signifiers.

A complementarity is established: if such a thing means such a thing in this symptom and in this patient, something else, which has been abandoned because this has taken on this meaning, will signify something else.

There is already a precipitation into a signifying material within the very concrete given of the symptom. The symptom is the reverse of a discourse.

M. BERNAERT:

The only question I will ask is: “How is immediate communication to the patient effective at that moment?”

LACAN:

The communication—to the patient—of this heals precisely to the extent that FREUD says it generates in the patient the Überzeugung—that is the term he uses in this passage—that is to say, conviction.

Now, the rest of the text means nothing other than this: that the subject integrates what you give him at that moment as an explanation into the entire set of meanings he has already accepted.

This happens—it can happen—punctually, or in a way we sometimes observe in wild analysis, which is not always without effect, but it is quite clear that it is far from general.

That is why we move to the second stage, where precisely it is recognized that there is a necessity for this integration into the imaginary, which is determined by the fact that it is not simply the understanding of the meaning that must emerge, but reminiscence, properly speaking—that is to say, the passage into the imaginary, the fact that the patient reintegrates something, which is all this imaginary content called the ego.

Ultimately, he must support himself as being the origin of this something, which makes the sequence of meanings reintegrate him into his biography. That is the second stage.

For the moment, I am following the text, which is the beginning of Chapter III of Beyond the Pleasure Principle in the Essays in Psychoanalysis.

At the third stage, we realize that this, too, is insufficient, in the sense that there is an inertia precisely proper to what is already structured in a certain way in the imaginary.

The text at this point continues:

“The main weight, during these efforts, comes to bear on the patient’s resistances. The art is now to uncover these resistances as quickly as possible, to show them to the patient, and to move him—to push him through human influence—here is the place for the suggestion that acts as transference—to bring him to abandon these resistances. The passage to consciousness, the becoming conscious of the unconscious, even through this path, is not always entirely possible. This entire memory is perhaps not strictly essential if, at the same time, conviction, Überzeugung, is not also obtained.” [Cf. éd. Payot p.21]

[Bei diesem Bemühen fiel das Hauptgewicht auf die Widerstände des Kranken; die Kunst war jetzt, diese baldigst aufzudecken, dem Kranken zu zeigen und ihn durch menschliche Beeinflussung (hier die Stelle für die als « Übertragung » wirkende Suggestion) zum Aufgeben der Widerstände zu bewegen. Dann aber wurde es immer deutlicher, daß das gesteckte Ziel, die Bewußtwerdung des Unbewußten, auch auf diesem Wege nicht voll erreichbar ist. Der Kranke kann von dem in ihm Verdrängten nicht alles erinnern, vielleicht gerade das Wesentliche nicht, und erwirbt so keine Überzeugung von der Richtigkeit der ihm mitgeteilten Konstruktion.]

The continuation of the text insists on this. You must read it as I read it—that is, in German (Jenseits des Lustprinzips)—because the French text is truly a sort of… it comes down to the translator’s art; it has a grayish, dusty quality that prevents one from seeing the violence of the relief of what FREUD brings in this passage.

He insists on this: it is far more necessary that the repressed—insofar as he has just given us this limit of what can be achieved, even after the reduction of resistances—there remains a residue which, he says, may be the essential.

[Er ist vielmehr genötigt, das Verdrängte als gegenwärtiges Erlebnis zu wiederholen, anstatt es, wie der Arzt es lieber sähe, als ein Stück der Vergangenheit zu erinnern. Diese mit unerwünschter Treue auftretende Reproduktion hat immer ein Stück des infantilen Sexuallebens, also des Ödipuskomplexes und seiner Ausläufer zum Inhalt und spielt sich regelmäßig auf dem Gebiete der Übertragung, d. h. der Beziehung zum Arzt ab. Hat man es in der Behandlung so weit gebracht, so kann man sagen, die frühere Neurose sei nun durch eine frische Übertragungsneurose ersetzt. Der Arzt hat sich bemüht, den Bereich dieser Übertragungsneurose möglichst einzuschränken, möglichst viel in die Erinnerung zu drängen und möglichst wenig zur Wiederholung zuzulassen. Das Verhältnis, das sich zwischen Erinnerung und Reproduktion herstellt, ist für jeden Fall ein anderes. In der Regel kann der Arzt dem Analysierten diese Phase der Kur nicht ersparen; er muß ihn ein gewisses Stück seines vergessenen Lebens wiedererleben lassen und hat dafür zu sorgen, daß ein Maß von Überlegenheit erhalten bleibt, kraft dessen die anscheinende Realität doch immer wieder als Spiegelung einer vergessenen Vergangenheit erkannt wird. Gelingt dies, so ist die Überzeugung des Kranken und der von ihr abhängige therapeutische Erfolg gewonnen.]

Here, he introduces the notion of repetition, wiederholen. What does this repetition mean?

[Um diesen « Wiederholungszwang », der sich während der psychoanalytischen Behandlung der Neurotiker äußert, begreiflicher zu finden, muß man sich vor allem von dem Irrtum frei machen, man habe es bei der Bekämpfung der Widerstände mit dem Widerstand des Unbewußten zu tun. Das Unbewußte, d. h. das »Verdrängte«, leistet den Bemühungen der Kur überhaupt keinen Widerstand, es strebt ja selbst nichts anderes an, als gegen den auf ihm lastenden Druck zum Bewußtsein oder zur Abfuhr durch die reale Tat durchzudringen. Der Widerstand in der Kur geht von denselben höheren Schichten und Systemen des Seelenlebens aus, die seinerzeit die Verdrängung durchgeführt haben. Da aber die Motive der Widerstände, ja diese selbst erfahrungsmäßig in der Kur zunächst unbewußt sind, werden wir gemahnt, eine Unzweckmäßigkeit unserer Ausdrucksweise zu verbessern. Wir entgehen der Unklarheit, wenn wir nicht das Bewußte und das Unbewußte, sondern das zusammenhängende Ich und das Verdrängte in Gegensatz zueinander bringen. Vieles am Ich ist sicherlich selbst unbewußt, gerade das, was man den Kern des Ichs nennen darf; nur einen geringen Teil davon decken wir mit dem Namen des Vorbewußten. Nach dieser Ersetzung einer bloß deskriptiven Ausdrucksweise durch eine systematische oder dynamische können wir sagen, der Widerstand der Analysierten gehe von ihrem Ich aus, und dann erfassen wir sofort, der Wiederholungszwang ist dem unbewußten Verdrängten zuzuschreiben. Er konnte sich wahrscheinlich nicht eher äußern, als bis die entgegenkommende Arbeit der Kur die Verdrängung gelockert hatte.]

It essentially consists in this, he says: that there is—and he asserts it in this text—on the side of what is repressed, on the side of the unconscious, only a tendency to repeat. There is no resistance on the side of what is repressed.

Now, it is in the same text that he highlights the novelty, the originality of what he introduces, in a decisive way, in his new topology.

It is precisely the dual emphasis that, on the one hand, there is an unconscious function of the ego. In other words, the simple qualitative connotation of unconscious and conscious is not the essential starting point; the dividing line passes exactly between what is repressed and what tends to repeat itself.

And what is repressed that tends to repeat itself is precisely this symbolic modulation that I am talking to you about.

And it is precisely because the division does not pass between unconscious and conscious, but between:
– something that tends only to repeat itself, that is to say, this speech that insists,
– and something that obstructs it, whether conscious or unconscious, which is organized in another way, and which is called the ego.

When you follow this text—if you read it with the notions I believe I have acquainted you with—it is strictly, precisely the order of the imaginary.

And he emphasizes that all resistance, in this sense, comes solely and precisely from this order.

So, if you will, before we part, it is necessary to punctuate, to firmly place a full stop somewhere—a point that serves as a sort of orientation table for you.

I will take up the four poles that I have more than once inscribed to outline them on the board:

• In the form of an A, with which I begin, which is the radical Other. I will do this quickly; you will make of it what you will. It is the Other as such, the radical Other, the Other as Other, the one from the eighth or ninth hypothesis of Parmenides, which is also the real in its most radical character, the real pole of the subjective relationship, and which

is also—this will be revisited at the end—what FREUD refers to when he attaches the relationship to the death instinct. All of this is present in this schema represented by A.

– Then you have here m, which is the ego.
– You have here a, which is the other, but not another at all—the other which, as such, is essentially coupled with the ego, always in a reflexive, interchangeable relationship, through which the ego is always an alter ego.
– And you have here S, which is at once the subject, but also the symbol, and also the Es, that which concerns the symbolic realization of the subject, insofar as it is always symbolic creation, relation through speech.

It is a relationship that goes from A to S (S ← a ← m ← A). It is underlying, it is unconscious. It is essential to every subjective situation as such. It is about the symbolization of the real.

It is very clear that this does not originate from some kind of absolute and isolated subject, that all of this happens only within a framework where everything is linked to the transmission and constitution of the symbolic order, ever since humans have existed in the world and have spoken.

And what is transmitted, what tends to constitute itself, is this immense message through which, little by little, the entire real is transported again, recreated, remade in a symbolization that tends to become equivalent to the universe. In this, human beings and subjects as such are relays and supports.

But for now, what we are doing here is a cut at the level of one of these couplings. Nothing can be understood except from this, which is, throughout FREUD’s entire work, consistently recalled and taught to you. Take the schema of the psychic apparatus, of the psyche, as found in the small manuscripts he sent to FLIESS, and one might believe he was simply attempting to formalize it within what could be called scientific symbolism, but it is far from being only that.

You also find it at the end of The Interpretation of Dreams. What is essential in what FREUD introduces, his idea, the sharp point, the thing that cannot be found anywhere else, and this thing on which he mainly insists in Chapter VII, or Part VII, on the psychological processes explaining the entire theory of dreams, is this: that there is truly an opposition between the conscious function and the unconscious function.

This starting point—whether justified or not, it doesn’t matter: we are in the process of commenting on FREUD—seems essential to him for explaining anything concrete that happens with the subjects he deals with, with his patients, to understand the fields of psychic life, which are those within which he introduces a new order.

It is this: that essentially what happens at the level of pure consciousness is, as such, and absolutely, immediately erased.

We must think that if something happens at a level of the cortex where this reflection of the world, which is consciousness, takes place, for it to function, it must not leave any trace. The traces occur elsewhere.

It is from this that those sorts of absurdities about the term “depth” arose, which FREUD, I think, could have avoided, and which have been so poorly used.

This means, ultimately, that a living being can only record and receive what it is capable of receiving, that is to say, what it is already made to receive. More precisely, its memory and its functions are far more designed:
– not to receive,
– not to see what is not useful for its biological reality,
– not to hear what is not biologically sensible.

And it is precisely from these conditions that the problem of what happens with human beings begins to become visible.

How does the human being go beyond the reality that is biologically natural to him? That is to say, why does the human being, unlike all animal machines, which are strictly tied to their conditions of the external environment—and if they vary, it is only to the extent that, as we are told, this external environment varies, but, of course, only insofar as they follow it.

But the peculiarity of most animal species is very precisely not to want to know anything that disturbs them: they would rather die! That’s why they die, and we are strong!

It is by imagining specially primitive species, open, sensitive, that we always find at the origin of […] family branches—species of species, indeterminate, which would have had the power to receive from their external environment a new imprint, which is nothing other than their form.

Because if living beings remain within a certain form—
it is, in any case, FREUD’s inspiration to state this—it is in this that he is not mystical, that he does not believe that there is a morphogenic power as such, primordial in life.

It is about always marking the strict correlation that makes the type and the form absolutely linked also to a choice in the external environment, which is the front, just as the other is the back, or the back just as the other is the front.

The question is why something else happens in the human being. Because, when it comes to the action of reality, in the sense that reality is that something where, from that point onward, one learns to do this, the octopus also does it, and does it exceedingly well, the octopus or anything else.

There have been exhaustive laboratory experiments for quite a few years now to know that this happens everywhere. And that even abstraction, generalization, and even triangularity—in the sense raised by VALABREGA—even triangularity can be inserted somewhere.

It is enough to place it with a certain tenacity, the triangle in front, for it to eventually be recognized, that is, generalized.

Because ultimately, it is at the level of the general that one must respond on this topic of triangularity.

What is new in man is precisely that something is already, imperceptibly, open, disturbed in this imaginary coaptation, so that it is there that the symbolic use of the image could be inserted.

One must obviously suppose a certain biological gap already in the animal relationship, and very precisely the one I am trying to define when I speak to you about the fundamental structurable relationship of the mirror stage.

That is to say, in this total capture of desire, of attention. This already presupposes lack. It is already there when I say the desire of the human subject in relation to his image.

This is precisely that extremely general imaginary relationship called narcissism.

Namely, that living animal subjects are sensitive to the image of their type. This is an absolutely essential point, thanks to which the entire living creation is not an immense orgy.

For the human being, there is a certain special relationship with this image which is his own. And this relationship is obviously one of gap, of alienating tension, constructed as such.

It is there that the possibility of use in the order of presence and absence is inserted, that is to say, in the symbolic order, of something—that is, the introduction of something that moves toward the tension between the symbolic and the real.

This is a tension, of course, that is underlying. I will say substantial if you will simply give its purely etymological sense to the term “substance”: it is underlying. It is a ὑποχείμενον (hypokeimenon) with respect to every situation of the human subject.

What happens?

What happens is this: for all human subjects who exist, they will consider that the relationship between A and S will always proceed like this:

A → m → a → S, that is to say, through the intermediary of those necessary imaginary substrates that are m and a, the ego and the other, and with them, the constitution of all the imaginary foundations of the object.

And you [to Lefèvre-Pontalis], why are you laughing—are you for or against? Let’s try to create a bit of a “magic lantern” effect to accompany this tendency toward amusement.

Let us imagine this: that what is at stake in the middle, at the intersection point between this direct symbolic pathway we have supposed and the passage through the imaginary, let us suppose that what is here—we are about to descend into crude mechanics, which is man’s enemy—do you know what it is? You don’t know?

Let me tell you that I could put anything in its place—a triode lamp, for instance—it’s amusing, it’s exemplary…

This means that when you have a space where there is emptiness, you can produce something called an electronic wave, which consists of this: when a current passes through the entire circuit, if there is emptiness, something occurs called an electronic bombardment, thanks to which the current flows.

This happens because, besides the anode and the cathode, there is a third electrode (the grid), and this third electrode, which is transverse here, has this utility: depending on how you let the current pass through it, you can do two different things:

• Either positively charge this third electrode in such a way that the electrons are, so to speak, guided towards what lies behind, that is, the anode (A → S),
• Or negatively charge it, or completely stop the process, meaning that what already emanates from the negative side will be repelled by the negative charge you have interposed (A → m → a → S).

This is simply a new illustration of the story of the door that I told you the other day, given the non-homogeneous nature of the audience. But let us say it is a door of a door, a second-order door, that’s all.

You can make a second-order door, that is, a door within a door, in countless other ways. You can imagine anything.

The important thing is to notice precisely this: that because of this very particular passage through the imaginary, it is precisely the role that the imaginary can play:

– That is to say, to interrupt, to chop up, to scan in a certain way what can pass through the circuit.
– And, in a way, the conflictual nature inherent to this, where what happens between A and S, at best, always passes in such a way as to contradict, stop, cut, and fragment itself.

At best… I say at best because, of course, universal discourse is symbolic, coming from afar, because we did not invent it:

– It was not us who invented non-being; we have fallen into a small corner of non-being.
– As for the imaginary, and the transmitted imaginary, we also have our fair share, with all the fornications of our parents, grandparents, and other scandalous stories that provide the spice of psychoanalysis.

From there, quite a few things become somewhat easier to understand, particularly the necessities of language and those I have expressed many times before you—the necessities of inter-human communication.

At the base of this, you could have another subject. It often takes the form of the message that the subject emits in a form that structures it, that grammaticalizes it, like receiving this message from the Other, in an inverted form.

When a subject says to another, “You are my master” or “You are my wife”—I have explained this to you many times—it means exactly the opposite: it means that it passes through A, and it passes through m (A → m → a → S), and it somehow returns to the subject, suddenly enthroning them in this perilous and essentially problematic position of spouse or disciple through the intermediary of human language, which is how fundamental words are expressed.

So what is it about when we talk about the symptom, in other words, a neurosis? You may have noticed that in this schema, the m, that is, the ego, in the circuit, is truly separated from the subject S by the small a, that is, the other.

And yet there is still a connection: I am myself, and you are yourself, and between the two, of course, there is also something. There is something we characterize through this structuring given, that subjects are embodied, and that it is indeed about this, and what happens at the level of the symbol indeed happens among living beings.

And there is truly something there that expresses this entire biological reality of the living, which essentially establishes this kind of division between the [dimension?] imaginary aspect of the living, of which the ego is one of the forms and is structured—we do not have much reason to complain…—and the fact that it is capable of fulfilling this symbolic function, which gives it a prominent position with respect to the real.

What happens when there is a neurosis is this. To say that there is a repressed—a repressed that never exists without a return—is exactly to allude to this: that something passes from discourse, which goes from A to S (A → S): something passes, and at the same time, something does not.

In other words, it is to the extent that something of what is in S, that is, something contained in speech to reveal itself (A → S), passes elsewhere (A → m → a → S), passes through the bodily support of the subject (m → a). This something is present and intervenes in another way, which remains to be measured against the given speech:
– insofar as it passes,
– insofar as—as I just gave you an example earlier—it structures a part of human relations and establishes the various kinds of commitments that exist: it is still an act at the basis of all structuration, whether social or otherwise.

What we have when it comes to neurosis is this: it is something like this, but considered within the subject’s own relationship, between this m and S. That is, something passes through here (A → m → a → S) and interferes in a way that seems much more disturbing, with respect to fundamental speech (A → S), than what happens in this second-order, derivative speech, which constitutes this rupture, this scansion of discourse.

This rupture is simultaneously a gap in time, discourse itself, but at the same time, discourse in its meaning, saying something, which makes the symptom this inverted, sealed truth that analytical treatment is meant to resolve.

What is the meaning of analysis? I have told you and taught you this many times: it lies in the fact that if there is indeed something deserving to be called resistance—and it is resistance-schema: so goes every schema—
it is that m is not S, namely that the ego is not identical to the subject.

You must realize that it is not so much this resistance that FREUD emphasizes, as he says that all resistance stems from the organization of the ego. It is not so much because this natural condition exists, but because it is in the nature of the ego to integrate into the imaginary circuit, which conditions the interruptions of fundamental discourse as such.

It is insofar as it is imaginary, and not merely as it is carnal existence, that it is the ego, that it is the source of what in analysis is presented as interruptions of this discourse, interruptions that seek only to manifest as acts, or words, or repetition (Wiederholen)—it is all the same.

When I tell you that: the only true resistance in analysis is the resistance of the analyst. What does that mean? It means this: that an analysis is only feasible, only conceivable, precisely to the extent that this a, in a certain way, this a in the elective position of the analyst, is erased, is absent.

What does that mean? It means that something, a certain subjective purification in the analysis… without which, what would be the point of all these ceremonies we engage in?
…this a is realized, so that, in a way, throughout the analytical experience, this a can be conflated with this A.

This is because the analyst, in a way, participates in the radical nature of the Other, precisely insofar as it is what is most difficult to access. And from that moment—here we return to the first schema—something can be established, which ensures that what originates from the imaginary of the subject’s ego aligns:
– not with this other to which it is accustomed, which is merely its partner, the one meant to enter its game,
– but precisely with this radical Other, which remains hidden to it.

What is called “transference” occurs precisely at this level, between A and m, insofar as the a, represented here by the analyst, is absent.

You see, what is at stake—as FREUD says admirably in this text—is this kind of Überlegenheit…
which is translated here as superiority, but I suspect there is a play on words in FREUD, as the context indicates…
through which the reality that appears at that moment in the analytical situation is always recognized as als Spiegelung—
a surprising term: as the mirage of a certain forgotten past.

That is to say, it is in the imaginary function of the ego as such—and the term Spiegel, mirror, is included—that what happens in the relation to the other can take on this polyvalent value. This value is tied to the fact that from the moment this resistance no longer exists, the A and the m can, in a way, align, communicate enough for there to be a certain isochronism, a certain simultaneous positivation, if you will, in relation to our triode lamp, between A and m, so that what goes from A to S encounters here, so to speak, a harmonic vibration.

Something that, far from interfering or opposing the passage of fundamental speech, finds here something that, in this context, has enough meaning, increasingly so—sometimes even amplified meaning…
because you can use this lamp in its real role, which is often that of an amplifier in reality…
to clarify the fundamental discourse that has so far been censored, to use the term that is most fitting.

And to the extent that this process takes place through the effect of transference…
which, as you see, is itself different and occurs elsewhere than where the repetitive tendency manifests—that which insists, that which seeks only to pass…
what happens between A and S, the transference, occurs between m and A.

And it is in this sense that, little by little, the m, so to speak, learns to align itself with this discourse, so that it can be treated in the same way as A is treated—that is, little by little linked to S.

This means the following, not that “an allegedly autonomous ego relies on the analyst’s ego,” as LŒWENSTEIN wrote…
in a text I will not read to you today, though I had scrupulously chosen it…
and becomes an increasingly strong, integrated, and knowledgeable ego.

It means, on the contrary:
– that the ego becomes what it was not,
– that it reaches the point where the subject fundamentally resides.

And that the final position is realized as follows: what starts from m, which is not, however, volatilized after an analysis—whether didactic or therapeutic—one does not ascend into the heavens, disembodied and pure symbol; it is still the ego speaking, of course, but the circuit passes from the ego to this fundamental source of symbolic activity, which is S, and going towards the other, to meet the a, that is, the little a insofar as it is imaginary, through the intermediary of a radical experience of the Other and the real as such, and insofar as it has been symbolized in the experience.

Because every analytical experience is an experience of meaning. And one of the greatest objections repeatedly raised against us concerns what catastrophe might happen if we reveal to the subject their reality, their drive, or who knows what—their homosexual life. God knows how many moralists have objections to expose to us on this occasion.

This is an obsolete objection, and it holds no value in itself. Because, even assuming that we reveal to the subject some tendency that might have been forever set aside from them through I-don’t-know-what effort, what is at stake in analysis is absolutely not the reality we uncover in the subject.

This is precisely where our authentic experience of analysis radically opposes a certain conception of resistance analysis, which indeed falls quite into this register—that one discovers their reality. The subject discovers, through analysis, their truth, that is, the meaning that these particular data, which are indeed their own and which we might call their lot, take in their destiny.

Human beings are born with all kinds of extremely heterogeneous dispositions, well or poorly distributed. We are in no position to take sides on this matter ourselves, nor to choose.

But what analysis achieves is that, regardless of this fundamental lot, this biological lot, what is revealed through analysis is its meaning, based on a certain speech, the speech of the subject, which is not and never entirely theirs, because they are merely the point of passage for this speech—they receive it already fully formed.

I don’t know if it comes from the master-word, from the book of judgment, or I don’t know what, inscribed in the rabbinic tradition. We don’t look so far back; we have sufficiently singular problems, of sufficiently limited scope, for the terms vocation and calling to have full value.

If there were not this divergence, this distinction of planes between a certain speech included and received by the subject, which carries, due to a particular situation insofar as it is symbolic, if this distinction did not exist, there would be no conflict with the imaginary, and everyone would simply follow their inclination.

It is quite clear that experience shows us otherwise.

The fundamental meaning of the conflict highlighted by FREUD—and maintained as the essential dualism, the one he never abandoned, as constituting the subject—means nothing other than these intercrossings.

And these intercrossings, I would like to pursue them. You can sense that this network does not stop at the planes of the symbolic but extends to those of the imaginary.

In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, the discovery is precisely that this ego, insofar as it is inscribed in the imaginary, and its discovery is homogeneous with libidinal tensions.

Everything that pertains to the libido, or more precisely, everything that pertains to the ego, is inscribed in imaginary tensions, like the rest of the libidinal tensions.

Libido and ego are on the same side.

Narcissism is libidinal. The ego is not a higher power, not a pure spirit, not an autonomous ego, as they try to present it to us now, nor a sphere without conflicts, as one dares to write, upon which we would rely to allow the subject the slightest progress.

What is this story?

What are these subjects from whom we would demand some kind of superior tendencies towards truth?

What is this transcendent tendency towards sublimation, which FREUD repudiates in the most formal manner in Beyond the Pleasure Principle?

He does not see, in any of the concrete manifestations of human functions, nor in their history—
and he asserts it, and it holds weight coming from him, the one who invented our method—
the slightest tendency towards progress:
– There is absolutely nothing inscribed in the libidinal or biological order.
– There is no tendency towards higher forms.
– As far as forms of life are concerned, all are equally miraculous, equally equivalent, and equally astonishing in their existence.

It is about something entirely different.

It is here that we arrive precisely at this symbolic order, distinct from the libidinal order, where both the ego and all tendencies and drives are inscribed.

This is what Beyond the Pleasure Principle tends towards; it rejects it as an order beyond the limits, which are strictly speaking the limits of life, the limits of the pleasure principle, when FREUD identifies it with the death instinct.

It is at this point—you will reread the text, and you will see, if it seems worthy of approval—that it is to the extent that the symbolic order is, as such, rejected from the libidinal order, insofar as it includes the entire domain of the imaginary, including the structure of the ego, that FREUD wrote Beyond the Pleasure Principle and arrived at the notion of the death instinct.

Which, he said, is nothing but the mask of the symbolic order, precisely—he writes this—because it is mute.

That is to say, as long as it has not been realized, as long as the symbolic order has not been established on one point, on the point of recognition of anything concerning the subject, by definition, it is mute.

And it is between this symbolic order, at once non-being and insisting on being, that FREUD aims when he speaks to us of the death instinct as being what is most fundamental in the depths of the unconscious, what is, in short, the most radical aspect of the Es.

The death instinct, that is to say, this insistence, a symbolic order in gestation, in surge, in the process of coming, in the process of insisting on being realized.

[End of Seminar 1954-55]