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(All parts in English)

FREUD, in two articles respectively titled “The Loss of Reality in Neuroses and Psychoses” and “Neuroses and Psychoses”, provided valuable insights on the subject.

I will attempt to emphasize what differentiates neurosis from psychosis in terms of the disturbances they introduce in the subject’s relationship with reality. This is an opportunity to finely and systematically recall what is meant by repression in neurosis. It is here that Freud points out that there must be a profound, structural reason for the vastly different organization of the subject’s relationship with reality in each condition. It is quite clear that a neurotic does not have the same relationship with reality as a psychotic, whose clinical characteristic is precisely to present, to communicate, to make one realize a deeply perverted relationship with reality—this is what we call delusion.

What is at stake in Freud’s work is to see how we must articulate this difference in our explanation. Precisely when we speak of neurosis, we attribute a certain role to an escape, an avoidance, a conflict with reality. A certain part of this conflict, and its triggering factor, is the notion of trauma, the initial tension of neurosis, which is an etiological notion. The role of reality in triggering neurosis is one thing; another is the moment in neurosis when there will be, for the subject, a certain rupture with reality.

Freud emphasizes that, initially, the reality sacrificed in neurosis is a part of psychic reality. Here we already encounter a very important distinction: “reality” is not synonymous with “external reality.” At the outset, at the moment when the subject triggers their neurosis, they elide, scotomize—as it has been said since—a part of their psychic reality, or in another language, a part of their “id.” This is forgotten. There is no reason for this not to continue to make itself heard, in a way that my entire teaching emphasizes—articulated and in a “symbolic” manner. In this regard, one cannot fail to mention, among other testimonies, the indication found in Freud, which could have benefited from being better articulated.

Aber die neue, phantastische Außenwelt der Psychose will sich an die Stelle der äußeren Realität setzen, die der Neurose hingegen lehnt sich wie das Kinderspiel gern an ein Stück der Realität an – ein anderes als das, wogegen sie sich wehren mußte -, verleiht ihm eine besondere Bedeutung und einen geheimen Sinn, den wir nicht immer ganz zutreffend einen symbolischen heißen.

I note that in one of his articles, “The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis,” Freud insists, articulates differences, and specifies how the fantastic world—as he calls it—is this kind of “storehouse” set apart from reality, where the subject preserves resources for constructing the external world.

This storehouse is where psychosis will draw the material it will use, as we will see shortly. But in this context, he states that neurosis is something quite different. The reality that the subject once elided, they will attempt to make resurface, lending it a particular significance and a secret meaning that we call “symbolic,” although we do not always emphasize this term adequately. Freud stresses here that the somewhat impressionistic way we use the term “symbolic” has never been clarified in a way truly faithful to what is at stake.

I point out, in passing, that for the desire to give you what some of you wish—namely, references in the text—I do not always have the possibility of doing so, because my discourse must not be disrupted. Nevertheless, I will provide citations when necessary. There are other passages in Freud that are significant: the call, the necessity he felt for a full articulation of this symbolic order. This is indeed what is at stake in neurosis, which he contrasts with psychosis insofar as, in psychosis, there has been a rupture, a gap in external reality, and it is the fantastic that is called upon to fill this void.

Can we entirely rely on such a simple definition, such an opposition?

We must recognize that it is, ultimately, in neurosis, in the second stage, and to the extent that reality cannot be fully rearticulated in a symbolic way in the external world, that there will be this partial escape from reality. This escape takes on a different form here—it manifests as an inability to always confront this part of reality. This void leads to a reorganization, in a secret way, of the reality that is preserved.

Can we be satisfied with this division between neurosis and psychosis? Moreover, in psychosis, it is indeed reality itself that is initially marked by a hole, which is then filled with this fantastic world. Certainly not! Freud himself specifies, following his reading of Schreber’s text, that it is not enough to understand how symptoms are formed; we must also understand the mechanism of their formation. Undoubtedly, we prioritize the possibility of replacing a hole, a flaw, a rupture point in the structure of the external world with the patchwork piece of the psychotic fantasy.

To explain this, we have the mechanism of projection. I begin here today, not by chance, certainly, since it follows the trajectory of my discourse, but with particular emphasis, because I have been made aware by some of you who are working on Freud’s texts, which I have already commented on, that while revisiting a passage whose importance I emphasized, they remained hesitant about the meaning to be given to a very clear section of the text regarding that episodic hallucination where the paranoid potentials of The Wolf Man are revealed.

And while fully grasping what I mean, what I have articulated, and what I have emphasized by saying:

“What has been rejected from the symbolic reappears in the real.”

On this point, a discussion may arise concerning how I translate “the patient wants to know nothing about it.” Acting with the repressed through the mechanism of repression is knowing something about it, because repression and the return of the repressed are one and the same thing, expressed elsewhere than in the subject’s conscious language.

What has posed a difficulty for some is that they do not grasp that what is at stake is the way in which there is knowledge. But I will provide you with another example borrowed from President Schreber, at the moment when FREUD explained to us the specific mechanism of projection, which is, of course, immediately suggested as the mechanism of this reappearance of fantasy in reality. Freud pauses expressly here and notes that we cannot simply and purely speak of projection:

– As is all too evident when we observe how projection operates differently in delusions of jealousy, for example, which are described as “projective,” where one imputes to one’s partner infidelities for which one feels more or less truly guilty, imaginatively guilty.
– And it is something entirely different in the appearance of persecutory delusion, which indeed manifests through interpretative intuitions in reality when what is at stake is the well-known homosexual drive that our theory places at the foundation of delusion.

And it is here that he states:

“It is neither correct nor accurate to say that the inwardly repressed sensation…
Repression (Verdrängung) is a symbolization, it is the return of the repressed. On the contrary, Unterdrückung is merely the indication that there is something that is inwardly repressed…
to say it is projected outward again; rather, we must say that what is…
You may perhaps recall the emphasis he placed on the use of this word,
and whether one knows it or not, no one will convince me that Freud did not know how to highlight the euphemism ‘isolated’…
rejected, returns from the outside.”

[An der Symptombildung bei Paranoia ist vor allem jener Zug auffällig, der die Benennung Projektion verdient. Eine innere Wahrnehmung wird unterdrückt, und zum Ersatz für sie kommt ihr Inhalt, nachdem er eine gewisse Entstellung erfahren hat, als Wahrnehmung von außen zum Bewußtsein. Die Entstellung besteht beim Verfolgungswahn in einer Affektverwandlung; was als Liebe innen hätte verspürt werden sollen, wird als Haß von außen wahrgenommen. Man wäre versucht, diesen merkwürdigen Vorgang als das Bedeutsamste der Paranoia und als absolut pathognomonisch für dieselbe hinzustellen, wenn man nicht rechtzeitig daran erinnert würde, daß 1. die Projektion nicht bei allen Formen von Paranoia die gleiche Rolle spielt und 2. daß sie nicht nur bei Paranoia, sondern auch unter anderen Verhältnissen im Seelenleben vorkommt, ja, daß ihr ein regelmäßiger Anteil an unserer Einstellung zur Außenwelt zugewiesen ist. Wenn wir die Ursachen gewisser Sinnesempfindungen nicht wie die anderer in uns selbst suchen, sondern sie nach außen verlegen, so verdient auch dieser normale Vorgang den Namen einer Projektion.]

Here, I think, is another text alongside those I have already cited in the same register, which, as you know, are key texts.

And it is precisely the text on “Verneinung” (Negation) that was commented on by M. HIPPOLYTE, which allowed us to articulate this notion precisely: that there is a moment, so to speak, an origin moment of symbolization—understand well that this origin is not a point of development—that there must be a beginning to symbolization, and that at any moment in development, this something can occur:
– Which is the opposite of Bejahung (affirmation), in the theory Freud develops.
– Which is a primitive Verneinung (negation), of which Verneinung, in its clinical consequences, is a sequel.

In short, this essential distinction—these two mechanisms of Verneinung and Bejahung—places the connection of “projection” (now in quotation marks) into question. It would be better to abandon the term altogether, since it refers to something essentially different from psychological projection—the kind that makes us, when dealing with people toward whom we harbor highly mixed feelings, respond to their actions with at least a perplexed attitude of doubt regarding their intentions.

This projection in psychosis is not the same thing. It is merely the mechanism that ensures that what has been caught in Verwerfung (foreclosure), what has been excluded from the general symbolization structuring the subject, returns from the outside.

What is this shell game, this peculiar game of the conjurer to which we seem prey, which makes it so that, in the way you register all these phenomena, everything fits neatly into the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real? Since we do not know the conjurer, we can ask the question I have placed on this year’s agenda concerning President Schreber.

Why have I placed it on the agenda? Because it is this question that will allow us to articulate, in a way that avoids the confusions perpetually made in analytical theory, the subject of what is called “relationship to reality.” Because it is this question that will simultaneously allow us to conceive and articulate the goal of analysis, and when we speak of “adaptation to reality,” what exactly are we talking about? For no one knows until we have defined what reality actually is, which is not something simple.

To introduce the path mapped out toward this problem, I will start with something entirely current. For it cannot be said that all of this is purely and simply a textual commentary, in the sense of pure and simple exegesis. These issues are alive for us every day in our practice, in the subjects we deal with in our supervision, in how we guide our interpretations, in our idea of how to approach resistances.

I will take an example—something some of you may have heard last Friday during my case presentation, where I introduced two individuals sharing a single delusion, what is called a “folie à deux.”

One of them, the younger one—the daughter, who, like the mother, was not particularly easy to highlight—had to be examined and presented several times before I took over, given the role patients play in a teaching clinic. A good ten times, in fact. No matter how delusional one might be, these sorts of exercises can quickly become overwhelming, and she was not particularly well-disposed.

Nevertheless, certain things could be observed, if only this: for example, that this paranoid delusion—since she was indeed a paranoid—was something that, far from presupposing the characteristic “pride,” “mistrust,” “susceptibility,” “rigidity” often described as “psychological,” presented—in the young girl, at least—an extraordinarily benevolent feeling.

I would even say almost that she had a feeling…
alongside the chain of difficult-to-highlight interpretations of which she felt herself a victim…
the feeling that, on the contrary, she could not possibly be anything other than such a kind, such a good person, and, moreover, that amidst so many hardships endured, she could only deserve general sympathy. And indeed, in the testimony observed about her, her department head, who had dealt with her, spoke of her in no other way than as a charming woman, loved by everyone.

In short, after having had the greatest difficulty in approaching the subject and her relationships with others, I came closer to the core that was evidently present there. For, of course, her fundamental concern was to prove to me that there was no element subject to suspicion and not to expose herself to the misinterpretation that she was certain the doctor would inevitably make.

Nevertheless, she admitted to me that one day, in her corridor, as she was leaving, she had encountered a sort of “ill-mannered man,” which did not surprise her, since this was the vile married man who was the regular lover of one of her neighbors of loose morals. And as she passed by him…
she could not hide this from me; it still weighed on her heart…
he had said a vulgar word to her, a word she was not disposed to repeat to me because, as she expressed it, it “devalued her.”

However, I believe that a certain gentleness I had applied in my approach resulted in a good rapport after just five minutes of conversation. At that point, she confessed, indeed with a conciliatory laugh, that she herself was not entirely innocent in the exchange. That is to say, she too had said something in passing, and she confessed this to me more easily than the insult she had heard. What she had said was:
“I’ve just come from the butcher.”

Naturally, I am like everyone else—I make the same mistakes that I tell you not to make. I mean that I do everything I tell you not to do. I am no less wrong for it, even if it works for me. A true opinion remains purely and simply an opinion from the point of view of science, something developed by SPINOZA.

If you understand, so much the better; keep it to yourself. The important thing is not to understand—the important thing is to reach the truth. If by chance you understand, even if you understand, you do not understand. Naturally, I understand, which proves that we all share, with the delusional, a little something—that is, I too, like all of us, possess that delusional element present in every normal human being.

“I’ve just come from the butcher”: if someone tells me there is something to understand here, I could very well articulate that there is a reference to “pig.” I didn’t say “pig,” I said “pork,” but she was in full agreement, and that was what she wanted me to understand. Perhaps it was also what she wanted the man to understand.

Only, that is precisely what should not be done, because what we must focus on is understanding why she wanted the man to understand exactly that. But then, why didn’t she just say it clearly? Why did she express herself through allusion? That is what matters, and even if I understand, I must not stop at that point—because I will already have understood.

This, then, demonstrates to you what it means to enter into the game of the patient, to collaborate in their resistance. For the patient’s resistance is always your resistance. And when resistance succeeds, it is because you are submerged in it up to your neck—because you “understand.” You understand, and you are wrong, because what we must understand is why something is presented to be understood. That is where we must arrive; that is the essential point.

That is why she said: “I’ve just come from the butcher,” and not: “Pig!”

First, understand that here you have the unique opportunity to touch upon something I have not had the chance to encounter in many other clinical experiences. I emphasized the moment itself…
that is where I limited my commentary because, at that moment, time was lacking for me to develop this element…
I pointed out to you that this was a pearl. And indeed, I showed you the very evident analogy with the discovery that one day revealed that some patients who complained of auditory hallucinations were demonstrably making throat movements, lip movements—in other words, we realized that they were articulating those hallucinations themselves.

This is not the same thing, but it is analogous. It is interesting because it is analogous. It is even more interesting because it is not the same.

Try to see and take an interest for a moment in this. This pearl consists of her saying:

“I said: ‘I’ve just come from the butcher.’”

And then she delivers the punchline: What did he say? He said: “Sow!”

It’s the “shepherd’s reply to the shepherdess,” as they say: thread-needle, my soul-my life—that is how it plays out in real life.

We must pause for a moment here: “There he is, quite content,” you might say to yourselves, “that’s what he’s teaching us: in speech, the subject receives their message in an inverted form.”

But you would be mistaken—that is precisely not the point. There is even a difference, and I believe it is by looking closely that we can see that the message in question is not quite identical—far from it—to speech, at least not in the sense in which I articulate it: as that form of mediation through which the subject receives their message, from the Other, in an inverted form.

First of all, who is this character? We said he is a married man, the lover of a woman who is herself deeply implicated in the delusion of which the subject is a victim—this neighbor. She is not the center, but she is a fundamental character.

Her relationship with these two characters is ambiguous. Certainly, they are persecutory and hostile figures, but not in an overtly demanding way, as those present during the interview might have been surprised to notice. Rather, there is perplexity: How did these gossips possibly come to organize the petition that undoubtedly brought both patients to the hospital?

This is something that rather characterizes the subject’s relationship with the outside world: a tendency to repeat the theme of universal interest that is granted to them. This is undoubtedly what allows us to understand the outlines of erotomaniacal elements observed in this case, which are not, strictly speaking, erotomanias but rather feelings such as “they are interested in us.” What is this “sow” in question?

It is indeed her message, but is it not rather her own message? If we look at something that took place at the origin of everything that was said, and the feeling that the neighbor was pushing two isolated women:

• who remained closely connected in life,
• who could not separate when the younger one married,
• who suddenly fled a dramatic situation that seemed to arise in the younger one’s marital relations, fleeing seemingly to the extreme, as per medical certificates, from her husband’s threats, who wanted nothing less than to “cut her into slices.”

Here, we sense that the insult in question…
since the term insult is truly essential here,
as it has always been emphasized in the clinical phenomenology of paranoia…
aligns with the process of defense, even expulsion, to which the two patients felt compelled concerning the neighbor, who was considered primarily invasive:

She would always knock while they were washing, or when they were beginning something, while they were dining, reading—she was essentially an intrusive person, and so the priority was to push her away. Things only started to become problematic from the moment when this expulsion, this refusal, this rejection by the patients, gained full force when they truly “emptied her out.”

So, is this something we are to understand more or less as a matter of projection, a defense mechanism whereby the patients:

• whose intimate lives unfolded outside the masculine element,
• who had always regarded the masculine element as a stranger with whom they never aligned,
• for whom the world was essentially feminine.

And this relationship with people of their own sex—is it something akin to a projection born of the need, the necessity to remain themselves, to remain a couple? In short, something that seems connected to that fixation on homosexuality, in the broadest sense of the term, as Freud has described as the foundation of social relations. In a feminine world isolated as theirs was, these two women were not so much in the posture of receiving their own reflections from the Other, but rather of declaring it to the Other themselves.

Is the insult a mode of defense that, in some way, reflexively returns in this relationship? A relationship whose extensiveness is understandable once it is established and subsequently extends to all others, whoever they may be, as such? This, of course, is conceivable and already suggests that the matter involves, not the message received in an inverted form, but rather the subject’s own message.

Should we stop here? Certainly not, as this can help us understand that they feel surrounded by hostile sentiments. But that is not the question. The question is this: “Sow” was genuinely heard, in reality. The person in question said: “Sow.” It is reality speaking. Who is speaking?

This is precisely the case where we grasp that the question lies in this term. Since there is hallucination, it is reality speaking; this is part of the premises. We have posited reality as that which is constituted by a sensation, a perception. There is no ambiguity here. She does not say:

“I felt as though he responded: ‘Sow!’”
She says:

“I said, ‘I’ve just come from the butcher,’ and he said, ‘Sow!’”

Either we are content to say, “Well, she is hallucinating, agreed…” or we try…
which may seem like a senseless undertaking, but is it not the role of psychoanalysts, after all, to have engaged in senseless undertakings so far?…
we try to go a little further, to see what this means. First, does reality, as we understand it—the reality of objects, almost something real in the common sense of the word—is that what this is about?

First of all, who is speaking? Before asking, “Who is speaking?” might we not ask: Who usually speaks in reality for us? Is it precisely reality when someone speaks to us? I believe that the significance of the observations I made to you last time about the other and the Other…
the other with a small “o/a” and the Other with a capital “O/A”…
is to point out that if it is the Other speaking—with a capital “O/A”—the Other is not purely and simply the reality before you, namely, the individual articulating [the small other]. The Other is beyond this reality, since in true speech, the Other is that before which you make yourself recognized.

This is because speech—but you can only strictly make yourself recognized in it because the Other is first recognized. The Other must be recognized so that you can make yourself recognized.

This reciprocity, this additional dimension necessary for there to be an Other with whom speech—the kind I have given you typical examples of—could say, “You are my master,” or “You are my wife.” Just as deceitful speech, which, while being its opposite, is still its equivalent, precisely presupposes this something that is recognized as an absolute Other:

– something aimed at beyond anything you could know,
– something whose recognition holds value precisely because it is beyond the known, because it is through recognizing it and in recognition that you establish it—not as a mere element of reality, a pawn, a puppet, but as something irreducible,
– something whose existence as a subject determines the very value of the speech in which you make yourself recognized,
– something that is born, whether by saying to someone “You are my wife,” you are implicitly telling them “I am your man.” But first, you say, “You are my wife.” In other words, you establish her in the position of being recognized by you, thereby allowing her to recognize you.

This speech is therefore always beyond language, even through discourse, and things are so true that, from such an engagement—just as from any other speech, even a lie—all subsequent discourse (and here I mean discourse including acts, gestures, an act of contortion) will indeed turn the puppet into a part of the game. But the first puppet to be caught in the game is yourself, and it all begins with a word.

It is from a word that this game is established, entirely comparable to what happens in “Alice in Wonderland”, when the Queen’s servants and other court characters begin playing cards by dressing themselves in those very cards, becoming the King of Hearts, the Queen of Spades, and the Jack of Diamonds.

You are engaged from a word:

– not merely to support it, to deny it, to refute it, or to confirm it through your discourse,
– but, most of the time, to do all sorts of things that are within the rules of the game. And even if the Queen were to change the rules at any moment, it would change nothing in the question at hand, which is that once introduced into the game of symbols (Cf. also The Purloined Letter, the α, β, γ, δ), you are still always compelled to behave according to a certain rule.

In other words, everyone knows that when a puppet speaks, it is not the puppet speaking; it is someone behind it who speaks. The question is to know the function of the character encountered in this situation. And what we can say about the subject is that they are, evidently, something real that speaks. And this is what is interesting: she does not say that it is someone behind her who speaks. She receives her own speech—not inverted—but her own speech in the Other who is herself, her reflection in the mirror, her semblable, without even discussing the question. “Sow!” is delivered tit for tat, and we do not know what the first tat was with the “I’ve just come from the butcher.”

Speech expresses itself in the real, it expresses itself in the puppet. The Other involved in this situation is not beyond the partner; it is beyond the subject herself. And this is the sign, the structure of allusion. It indicates itself in a beyond of what it says.

In other words, if we were to place in a diagram the play of the four terms implied in what I told you last time:
– the S,
– the A,
– the lowercase a,
– the lowercase a’.

The lowercase a is the man she encounters in the corridor. There is no big A (Autre); there is something that goes from a to a’. a’ is what says, “I’ve just come from the butcher.” And who is saying, “I’ve just come from the butcher”? It is S.

The lowercase a says, “Sow!”

a’, the person speaking to us—the one who spoke as a delusional person—undoubtedly receives her own message from somewhere, in an inverted form. She receives it from the small other. And what she says concerns the beyond that she herself is, as a subject, and which, by definition—simply because she is a human subject—she can only speak of through allusion.

There is only one way to speak of this S, this subject that we radically are:
– either by genuinely addressing the big Other (A) and receiving the message that concerns you in an inverted form,
– or—another way—by indicating its direction, its existence, in the form of allusion.

This is precisely what makes her a paranoiac. For her, the cycle includes an exclusion of this big Other. The circuit closes around the two small others, which are:
– the puppet in front of her, who speaks and in whom her own message resonates,
– and herself, who, like me, is always another, and who speaks through allusion.

This is precisely what is important. She speaks about it so well through allusion that she doesn’t know what she is saying. Because, ultimately, if we look at things closely, what does she say? She says: “I’ve just come from the butcher.”
Who comes from the butcher? A cut-up pig. She doesn’t know she is saying it, but she says it nonetheless.

To this other she is speaking to, she says about herself:

– “I, the sow, come from the butcher. I am already disjointed, a fragmented body, ‘membra disjecta,’ delusional, so that my world falls apart in pieces, just as I do myself.”

That is what she says to him. And indeed, this way of expressing herself, as comprehensible as it seems to us—at least, the very least we can say—is a little bit funny.

Do you think that’s all there is to it? No! There’s something more. There’s something within the order of a certain temporality, a certain succession of moments. It is quite clear from the patient’s account that we do not know who spoke first.

By all appearances, it wasn’t our patient—or at least not necessarily. In any case, we will never know. We are not going to time “words from the real” with precise articulation… But I point out to you that if the development I have just presented is correct, if the subject’s speech is indeed in order, the least we can say is that the locution—that is to say, the “I’ve just come from the butcher”—presupposes the response: “Sow!” precisely because the response is the locution—with an apostrophe—that is, what the patient truly says.

I have pointed out that there is something entirely different here from what happens in true speech, in “You are my wife” or “You are my master,” where, on the contrary, the locution is the response. What responds to speech is indeed this consecration of the Other as “my wife” or as “my master.” Thus, here, the response, unlike in the other case, presupposes the locution.

Here, then, is the situation in the case of the subject and delusional speech: the Other is truly excluded. There is no truth behind this delusional speech as such, nor is it received from the Other.

In fact, there is so little truth in it that the subject themselves invests no truth in it. Regarding this phenomenon, they exist in the perplexity of the raw phenomenon in the end. It takes a long time for them to attempt to reconstruct an order around it, an order we will call the “delusional order.” They reconstruct it, not as one might think—through deduction and construction—but in a manner we will later see as inseparable from the primitive phenomenon itself.

The Other is thus truly excluded, and what concerns the subject is indeed said by the Other, but by which Other? By the little other, by a shadow of the other, as our Schreber expresses it, for example, when he tells us that, for some time, all his partners, all the human beings he encounters, are “botched-together little men.”

Let us also emphasize this kind of unreal quality, tending toward the unreal, which this “little other of shadows” conveys. However, this is not quite explicit in the text.

So, these “botched-together little men”—I am still not entirely able to give you a fully valid translation. There are resonances in German that I have tried to convey with “botched.”

But here, we might notice something: after focusing on speech, we are now going to focus on language. It becomes clear that the triple division of the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real applies precisely to language, because the care Freud takes to eliminate the motor articulation in his analysis of language clearly shows that he distinguishes its autonomy and that real language is concrete discourse—because language speaks.

And it is certainly in a relationship that is “of the Other,” in the symbolic and the imaginary, that we find the distinction of the two other terms through which he articulates the structure of language, namely, the signifier.

You must understand the material of the signifier as it is. And I say in passing that if you do not quite see the material of the signifier as something I continually describe to you—namely, as material that is there on the table, in those books—it is there, and you cannot do anything about it, nor can you truly understand it. Artificial languages are always created by attempting to attach themselves to meaning. As I recently told someone who reminded me of the forms of deduction governing Esperanto: “When you know ‘ox,’ you can deduce ‘cow,’ ‘heifer,’ ‘calf,’ and anything else you want.” And I replied, “Ask how one says ‘Death to cows!’ in Esperanto—it must be deduced from ‘Long live the king!’”

This alone is enough to refute the existence of artificial languages, which are characterized by breaking down meaning. This is why they are stupid and generally unused.

Thus, there is the signifier, the symbolic—this is the material. And then there is meaning, which always refers back to meaning. Of course, the signifier can become entangled in this from the moment you assign it a meaning, creating another signifier as something signifying in this function of meaning.

This is why we can speak of language, but the signifier-signified partition will always reproduce itself.

That meaning, on the other hand, belongs to the imaginary is beyond doubt because, in the end, it is, like the imaginary, always elusive. It is strictly tied, as they say, to what interests you, that is, to what captures you. If you understood that hunger and love are the same thing, you would be like all animals—truly motivated. But what, thanks to the existence of the signifier, drives you much further is always your little personal meaning—at once absolutely hopeless in its generic humanity and excessively human—that drives you.

Only, because there is this sacred system of the signifier, you have not yet been able to understand:
– how it is there,
– how it exists,
– what it is for,
– where it leads you.

It is through it that you are led.

What is happening? We have several remarks to make regarding this essential distinction.

First, there is a modification that occurs in the signifier: the signifier exhibits phenomena akin to precipitation, a sudden heaviness of certain of its elements, which precisely give it weight, inertia, which “take hold” in a surprising way within the system of structures, in the synchronic whole of language as a given. Whatever the subject does when they speak, they have at their disposal the entire material of language, and it is from this that concrete discourse is formed.

There is, first of all, a synchronic whole which is “language,” understood as the simultaneous system of structured groups of opposition that constitute it. And then there is what happens diachronically, over time, which is discourse. One cannot not place discourse within a certain sense of time and in a sense that is defined in a linear manner, as De Saussure tells us.

I leave him the responsibility for this statement—not because I think it is false, for it is fundamentally true. There is no discourse without a certain temporal order and therefore without a certain concrete succession, even if it is virtual. It is quite certain that if I read this page starting from the bottom and moving backward, it will not produce the same result as if I read it in the correct order.

And in certain cases, this reversal can create very serious confusion: “I am my father’s son,” and saying at the same time “My father is my son” does not have the same meaning. It is enough to invert the sentence. It is not entirely accurate to say it is merely a line; we might more appropriately say it is a “staff,” but there are lines.

Diachronically, then… It is within this diachronism that discourse is situated: this signifier, as it exists synchronously, is already sufficiently characterized in delusional speech by something that must be noted: namely, that some of these elements isolate themselves, take on value, become charged with meaning—but a meaning in itself, which primarily characterizes the specific weight the word acquires.

For example, “Nervenanhang” (nerve attachment). In this case, the word itself is a fundamental word of the language. That is to say, Schreber perfectly distinguishes the words that came to him inspired, precisely through the “Nervenanhang” pathway. These are words that came to him and were repeated with their elective meaning, which he does not always fully understand. For instance, “soul murder” is problematic for him, but he knows it holds a particular meaning.

In some way, his book is adorned with these words, scattered throughout, but he speaks of them in a discourse that is very much our own. In other words, his book is remarkably written, clear, fluid, and is something as coherent as many philosophical systems. Compared to what happens in our time, where we perpetually see a gentleman suddenly pricked by a tarantula at some crossroads, which makes him discover Bovarysme, and similarly, duration as suddenly becoming the key to the world. He begins to reconstruct the entire world around one notion, even though no one knows why he chose that one or where he picked it up.

I do not see Schreber’s system as being of lesser value than those of the philosophers whose general theme I have just outlined. I would even say that, as you will certainly see, there is sometimes more to learn from Schreber’s text, for he goes extremely far. And what ultimately emerges in Freud, at the end of his discussion, is essentially this: this man wrote some absolutely remarkable things. “It resembles what I have written,” says Freud.

This book, written in a discourse that is common discourse, points out words that have taken on this weight, which already dissociates, ruptures the entire system of signifiers as such. We will call this “erotization” and will avoid overly simplistic explanations.

It is a matter of analyzing what is happening: the signifier is charged with something, and the subject is well aware of it. There is even a moment when Schreber uses, to define the various articulated forces of the world with which he is dealing, the term “instance.” He also has his “little instances,” and he says this:

“‘Instance’ is from me; it is not something others have told me. It is my ordinary discourse.”

Here, speech is thus situated at the level of the signifier. What happens at the level of meaning? You are precisely seeing what indisputably happens and which is located at the level of the dream as an insult. It is always a rupture of the language system, and the word of love as well.

In any case, whether “Sow!” carries a dark meaning—which is likely—or not, we already have an indication of this dissociation. Meaning, like any self-respecting meaning, always refers to another meaning. This is precisely what characterizes, in the subject’s case, the allusion: she said, “I’ve just come from the butcher.” She indicates to us that this refers to another meaning. Naturally, it shifts slightly—meaning, she prefers that I understand it…

Always be wary of people who tell you, “You understand,” because it is always meant to send you somewhere else rather than where you need to go… And here, too, she does it. She tells me: “You understand well.”

This means she herself is not entirely sure, and that her meaning refers, not so much to a continuous, adjustable system of meaning, but to meaning as ineffable, to the meaning of her own fundamental reality, and, as I have told you, to her personal fragmentation.

And then there is indeed the real articulation, and this is the “shell game” as it has passed into the other.

What is important to see is how real speech—I mean speech as articulated—appears at another point in the field, and at a point that is not just any point. It is the other, the puppet, as an element of the external world.

I think I will leave you here today. I had intended to push this discussion further, and I am not saying that it forms a closed system in this way, but I do not want to keep you too long.

This structural analysis has an endpoint: it is to show you, to initiate you into what I will delve into next time. That is to say, speech, as the medium of the subject, of the big S, which is always what constitutes the problem for us, and which analysis warns us is not what common thought assumes it to be.

– That is to say, there is the real person (real), who is in front of you inasmuch as they occupy space, to the extent that you could fit ten people in your office but not 150. There is this about the presence of a human being: it occupies space.

– And then there is what you see (imaginary), which is not just anything; it is something that clearly captivates you, something capable of suddenly making you throw yourself into their arms—an unconsidered act that belongs to the imaginary order.

– And then there is something else: the Other (symbolic) that we were speaking about, which is also the subject, which is not what you believe it to be. It is not the reflection of what you see in front of you. It is not purely and simply what occurs when you see yourself seeing.

If this is not true, it means that Freud never said anything true, because the unconscious means precisely this.

The issue with speech is to see what happens in this relationship between the big S and the big A. What concerns us is to see where reality is situated in all this. But to know this, we must speak about what constitutes the material: there is the subject and then there is a, the other of otherness. In this otherness, there are several possible forms of otherness.

We will see how this otherness manifests in a complete delusion like that of Schreber. I can already point out that here, the Other of otherness, as corresponding to this S, that is, to this big Other, is somewhere. In this otherness, there are others who are subjects, but who are unknown to us.

And in this otherness:

– There is, first, the foundation, the order of the world: day and night, the sun and the moon, the things that always return to the same place (real), what Schreber calls “the natural order of the world.” We cannot function without it.

– There is an otherness that belongs to the symbolic: it is the Other to whom one addresses oneself beyond what one sees.

– And then, in the middle, there are objects (imaginary).

We had these three orders in speech:

1. Signifier (symbolic)
2. Signification (imaginary)
3. Concrete real discourse (real)

And then, on the level of the S, there is something situated on the imaginary level: the ego and the fragmented body—or not fragmented, but rather fragmented.

If you take this small general outline, we will see next time, and we will try to understand what happens in Schreber, the delusional subject who has reached complete fulfillment, the perfectly adapted delusional subject.

In the end, this is what characterizes the Schreber case: he never stopped expressing himself freely, and yet he adapted so well that the director of the asylum said: “He is so kind.”

We are fortunate to have here a man who communicates the entire system to us, and at a moment when he has reached his full development.

Before asking ourselves how he entered into this state, before recounting the “pre-psychotic phase,” before asking ourselves about things in terms of development, we will take things as they are given to us—and there are indeed reasons for this—as they are presented to us in Freud’s observation, who only had the book, who never saw the patient.

We will start, as is always said—and this is the source of inexplicable confusions—from an idea of genesis. We may then move on to analyzing the text, the first and second chapters of Schreber’s delusion.

We will attempt, within this, to see what happens, to see how the affair is fully developed.

You will see how the different elements of a system constructed according to the coordinates of language are modified—which is entirely legitimate when dealing with something that has been given to us only through a book.

This may be what allows us to effectively reconstruct the dynamics of the case.

But to begin, let us start with dialectics.