🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

We will resume our discussion by going back a little. Let me remind you that we have reached the point where, through the analysis—in the ordinary sense of the word—of SCHREBER’s text, we have increasingly emphasized the importance of language phenomena in the economy of psychosis.

It is in this sense that we can speak of “Freudian structures of psychoses.”

But the current question is: what role do these language phenomena, which appear so frequently in psychoses, play within them? It would be surprising if…
if indeed analysis is what we claim here—that is, so closely tied to language phenomena in general and to the act of speech—
…it would be very surprising if it did not provide us with a way of perceiving the economy of language in psychosis in a manner that differs fundamentally from the classical approach. The latter could do no better than refer to traditional psychological theories of language and its various levels.

We have arrived at something…
to refer to our fundamental schema of analytical communication…
…that is revealed to the subject S, who is simultaneously the S where the I must become the S to the Other, which is essentially what the subject’s speech must reach, since it is also the space where this message must return to him. This is because the response of the Other is fundamental to speech, to the foundational function of speech.

Between S and A, the fundamental speech that analysis must reveal, we encounter a detour or derivation,
a kind of imaginary circuit that obstructs the passage of this speech, taking the form of the path through a and a’,
which are the imaginary poles of the subject. This (a and a’) is sufficiently indicated by the so-called specular relation,
that of the mirror stage.

This (a and a’) is the means by which the subject, in his corporeality, multiplicity, and natural fragmentation (which is in a’), as an organism, relates to this imaginary unity, which is the ego (or a) where he recognizes himself, yet also misrecognizes himself. This is what he speaks of—though he does not know to whom, as he does not even know who is speaking within him—
and thus it is what is spoken of in a’.

When the subject begins analysis—as I have schematically outlined in the early days of the seminars—the subject begins by speaking of himself. When he has spoken of himself, and this self will have significantly changed in the interim, we will have reached the end of the analysis. What does this mean? I do not need to expand on this topic here.

It means that the absence of the analyst as an ego—since the analyst, if placed in this schema,
is situated in the schema of the subject’s speech—we can say that the analyst is somewhere in A.
The position being strictly reversed, we then have a’, where the analyst might speak or respond to the subject if he were to enter into the subject’s game, if he were to engage in the coupling of resistance,
if he were to do precisely what he is taught not to do—or at least what is attempted to be taught. In that case, the analyst would be in a’.

It is here, that is, in the subject, that the analyst would most naturally appear, namely: if he is not analyzed.
This happens occasionally… I would even say that, in a certain sense, the analyst is never completely an analyst,
for the simple reason that he is human. That is to say, he too participates in the imaginary mechanisms
that obstruct the passage of the subject’s speech (S → A).

It is precisely to the extent that he will:

• not identify with the subject,
• not enter into the imaginary capture,
• that is, to be sufficiently “dead” not to be caught in this imaginary relation

…that he will know—when his speech is solicited to intervene—not to intervene…
sufficiently to prevent the progressive migration of the subject’s image in S towards that something which is the S,
the Thing to be revealed, the Thing also without a name, the Thing that cannot find its name.

…Specifically, insofar as the circuit of migration completes itself directly from S to A,
it is what was beneath the subject’s discourse; it is what the subject had to say through his false discourse.
This will eventually be concluded and find a passage, all the more easily as the economy will have been progressively reduced of this imaginary relation.

I am moving quickly; I am not here to reconstruct the entire theory of analytical dialogue but simply to indicate to you that the word, this speech…
with the emphasis that the notion of the “word” carries as the solution to an enigma,
as the solution to a problem, as a problematic function…
…it is located there, in the Other. It is always through the intermediary of the Other that any full speech is realized,
always in the “you are…” that the subject situates and recognizes himself.

The notion we arrived at through analyzing the structure of SCHREBER’s delusion,
at the moment when it was constituted—that is, at the moment when the correlative system linking the ego to that imaginary Other, to that strange God whom SCHREBER confronts, this God:

• who understands nothing,
• who misrecognizes him,
• who does not respond,
• who is ambiguous,
• who deceives him,

…this system, therefore, in which his delusion culminated, correlatively with a kind of precipitation, a localization, I would say, very precisely of hallucinatory phenomena, brought us to at least approach the notion that in psychosis, there is something we can recognize and qualify as an exclusion of the Other in the sense in which being is realized there in the avowal of speech.

That the phenomena involved in verbal hallucination…

• these phenomena, which in their very structure manifest the inner echo relationship in which the subject stands with respect to his own discourse,
• these hallucinatory phenomena, which increasingly become, as the subject expresses, “nonsensical,” as they say, “purely verbal,” emptied of meaning, made up of varied repetitions, objectless refrains,

…they give us the sense that the structure we need to examine is directed precisely toward this: What is this special relationship to speech?

What is missing such that:

• the subject could, in some way, come to be compelled in the construction of this whole imaginary world,
• while at the same time experiencing from within himself a kind of automatism, strictly speaking, in the function of discourse, which becomes for him not only invasive and parasitic but also something whose presence becomes, in a way, that on which he is suspended?

This is where we have arrived. And I must say that here, to take another step forward, we must, as often happens, first take a step back. That the subject, ultimately, can only reconstitute himself in psychosis through what I have called the imaginary allusion—this regarding other phenomena I have demonstrated “in vivo” in a presentation of a patient. This is the precise point we are now reaching.

And it is in the relation of this constitution of the subject in pure and simple imaginary allusion—an allusion that can never be resolved—that lies the problem, the step we must take to attempt to advance. Until now, this has been sufficient. The imaginary allusion seemed very significant. In it, one could find all the material, all the elements of the unconscious. There seems to have been no real question, strictly speaking, about what it meant, from an economic point of view, that this allusion in itself had no resolutive power.

And yet, as this point has been insisted upon…
though cloaked in a kind of mystery, and I would say almost, with the passage of time, with an effort to erase the radical differences that exist in this structure compared to the structure of neuroses…
…in Strasbourg, I was asked the same questions as in Vienna.

People who seemed rather sensitive to certain perspectives I had raised ended up asking me:

• “How do you operate in psychoses?”

As if it weren’t enough, when dealing with audiences so unprepared as these, to emphasize the basics of technique. And I replied:

• “The question is somewhat premature. We must first try to identify a few essential markers before discussing technique, let alone psychotherapeutic recipes.”

Yet the insistence continued:

• “We can’t simply do nothing for them!”
• “Of course. But let’s wait to discuss it until certain things have been clarified.”

Before taking this step, I would like to…
since the fascinating nature of these language phenomena in psychosis is something that may reinforce what I earlier called a misunderstanding…
…I would like to return to it, even quite insistently, so that I can hope that, after this, something will be definitively clarified on this point, for both myself and those listening to me today.

I will let someone else speak. Very often, I am assumed to say that I intend to situate and even recognize that, in his discourse, he verbally articulates everything the subject has to communicate to us in the framework of analysis. Naturally, this extreme position does not fail to provoke rather sharp objections among those who dwell on it, expressed in two attitudes:

• that of “hand on heart,”
• and, concerning what we might call the authentic testimony of an upward displacement, the other attitude is “a bow of the head,” intended to tip the scale that I supposedly unbalance too much for my questioner’s liking.

In general, I am trusted. There is this:

• “Fortunately, you are not alone in the Psychoanalytic Society. And besides, there is a woman of genius: Françoise DOLTO, who shows us in her seminars the entirely essential function of the body image, of how the subject relies on it in his relationships with the world. There, we find this substantial relationship on which, no doubt, the relationship of language is grafted, but which is infinitely more concrete, more tangible.”

I am not at all criticizing what Françoise DOLTO teaches because, very precisely, insofar as she employs her technique—this extraordinary apprehension, this imaginary sensitivity of the subject—she uses it exactly, albeit on a different terrain and under different conditions, at least when addressing children, in exactly the same way. That is to say, she speaks about all of it; in other words, she also teaches those who listen to her how to speak about it. But this cannot simply resolve the issue by making this observation: something still remains obscure, and this is precisely what I want you to understand.

It is clear that I am not surprised either—I will return to this—if I say that something persists, a misunderstanding to be resolved even among those who believe they follow me. I will not express myself in a way that might suit…
To say that would imply that since I […] in the belief of those who follow me, I express a kind of disappointment there.

It would still be contradictory on my part to experience even the slightest disappointment if—since it is strictly at the core of the notion of discourse I am teaching you—I were to suddenly misrecognize my own: that the very foundation of interhuman discourse is misunderstanding.

Thus, I do not see why I should be surprised myself. But it is not only for this reason that I am not surprised that it might generate a certain margin of misunderstanding. It is also because…

• if one must still be consistent with their own notions in their practice,
• if any valid discourse must precisely be judged by the very principles it produces,

…I would say that it is with an express, if not entirely deliberate, intention that I pursue this discourse in such a way that I give you the opportunity not to fully understand it: thanks to this margin, at least, there will always remain the possibility for you to say to yourself that you believe you follow me, that is, that you remain in a position relative to this problematic discourse, one that always leaves the door open to a progressive rectification.

In other words, if I arranged myself to be easily understood—that is, for you to be absolutely certain that you have grasped it—due to the very premises concerning interhuman discourse, the misunderstanding would be irreparable, thanks to the way I believe it is necessary to approach these problems.

Thus, there is always for you the possibility of being open to a revision of what has been said, all the easier since the fact that you did not grasp it earlier is entirely my responsibility, meaning you can shift that burden onto me. It is precisely for this reason that I permit myself to revisit something today that is entirely essential and that signifies exactly this: I am not saying that what is communicated in the analytic relationship passes through the discourse of the subject. Therefore, I have absolutely no reason to distinguish within the very phenomenon of analytic communication the domain of verbal communication from that of preverbal communication. That this communication—”pre-” or even extra-verbal—is in some way permanent in analysis is absolutely beyond doubt.

The question is to see what constitutes the properly analytic field in analysis. It is identical to what constitutes the analytic phenomenon as such, namely, the symptom. And a great many so-called normal or subnormal phenomena that have not, up to the point of analysis, been elucidated in terms of their meaning extend well beyond discourse and speech, as they are things that happen to the subject in everyday life in an extremely broad way and that had remained not only problematic but unchallenged.

Then there are the phenomena of “slips of the tongue,” “memory disturbances,” “dreams,” and even more so some others that analysis has helped to illuminate, particularly the phenomenon of the “witticism,” which holds such essential value in Freud’s discovery because it truly makes one feel, it allows one to grasp directly, the perfect coherence that this relationship between the analytic phenomenon and language had in Freud’s work.

Let us begin by stating what the analytic phenomenon is not. This “preverbal” in question is something on which analysis has specifically shed immense light; in other words, it has provided an exceptional instrument for its understanding and recognition.

One must distinguish between what is illuminated by an instrument, by a technical apparatus, and the technical apparatus itself. One must distinguish the subject from the object, the observer from the observed. This “preverbal” is something essentially linked in analytic doctrine to the preconscious. It is that sum of internal and external impressions that the subject can infer from natural relations—if indeed there are natural relations in humans that are entirely natural, though there are, however perverted they may be.

Everything belonging to this preverbal realm participates in what we may call, if I may say so, an intramundane Gestalt. The information, in the broad sense of the term, that the subject receives from it, however specific it may be, remains information from the world in which he lives. Within it, anything is possible: it includes the […] and the infantile doll he once was and still is. He is the excremental object; he is the drain; he is the suction cup. It is analysis that has called upon us to explore this imaginary world. All of this belongs to a kind of barbaric poetry that the analyst was by no means the first to bring to light and that gives its charm to certain poetic works. Here we are in what I would call “the innumerable shimmer of great affective significance.”

To express all of this, the words that come so abundantly to the subject are all available to him, perfectly accessible and as inexhaustible in their combinations as the nature to which they correspond. This is the child’s world, in which one feels entirely at ease, especially because one has become familiar with all these fantasies: up equals down, reverse equals obverse, and the greatest and most universal equivalence is the law. This very fact leaves us somewhat uncertain when it comes to establishing its structures.

Ultimately, this discourse of affective meaning directly reaches the sources of storytelling. There is a world of difference between this and the discourse of passionate demands, for example, which seems poor in comparison, already monotonous, but that is because here the clash with reason has already occurred. The work of this discourse ultimately makes it far more commonly accessible than its appearance might suggest.

But to return to our discussion of imaginary communication, as it naturally expresses its preverbal foundation in discourse—more effectively than other modes—we also see that it is, on its own, the subtlest form of discourse, entirely unrestricted. Here, we find ourselves in a domain long explored, both through empirical deduction and categorical a priori reasoning, and we are treading entirely familiar ground. The source and repository of this preconscious, of what we call the imaginary, is not entirely unknown; I would say it has already been quite successfully approached in philosophical tradition. One might say that Kant’s schemata of ideas represent something situated at the threshold of this domain, at least where it could find its most brilliant credentials.

As for thought, the theory of image and imagination in classical tradition remains surprisingly insufficient, and it is precisely one of the problems before us to understand why it took so long to even open the discussion, let alone structure its phenomenology.

We know well, ultimately, that this domain, strictly speaking unfathomable:

• Even if we have made remarkable progress in its phenomenology, we still do not master it.
• The problem of the fundamental image is not resolved simply because analysis has enabled us to address the issue of the image in its formative value, which overlaps with problems concerning origins or even the essence of life. If we are to hope to go further one day, it will likely be through biologists, ethologists, or the observation of animal behavior.
• The analytic inventory does not exhaust the question of the imaginary function, though it does allow us to observe certain essential aspects of its economy.

Thus, this preconscious world, insofar as it correlates with the discourse of the Bewusstsein (consciousness), insofar as it contains this entire inner world accumulated there, ready to resurface, to emerge into the light of consciousness at the subject’s disposal—unless otherwise instructed—this world, I have never claimed it inherently possesses a linguistic structure. What I say, because it is evident, is that it is inscribed within it, that it is reintegrated there, but it retains all its own pathways and communications. This is absolutely not where analysis has made its essential discovery, its structural apparatus, nor even the basis for uncovering anything in this world.

It is indeed surprising to see how much emphasis is placed in analysis on the object relationship as such. The prominence of the object relationship has, in essence, led to an exclusive dominance of this imaginary relational world—and this is where I insist—as such, overshadowing, relegating, even erasing what is properly the field of analytic discovery. I will return to the responsibilities attributable to each in this regard.

It is certainly surprising that someone like Kris, for example, marks in the development of his work a progressive dominance of this perspective:

• By bringing to the forefront—quite justifiably—the importance of the economy of analytic progress on what he explicitly calls, having read Freud, preconscious mental processes.
• By emphasizing the fruitful nature of ego regression.
• By entirely situating the pathways to the unconscious within the imaginary.

This is all the more surprising because, if we follow Freud, it is entirely clear that no exploration, however profound or exhaustive, of the preconscious will ever lead to the unconscious as such. In other words, this sort of mirage induced by an excessively disproportionate prevalence of ego psychology in the new American school leads to something akin to this: as if an ideal mathematician who suddenly discovered the concept of negative values began to hope, by indefinitely halving a positive magnitude, to eventually cross the zero line and enter the dreamt-of domain of those glimpsed magnitudes.

This is an error all the more surprising, even gross, given that there is nothing Freud insists on more than this radical difference between the unconscious and the preconscious. Yet, despite this, it is considered that all of it is a great hodgepodge, with no structural difference between one and the other. Even though Freud insists so clearly on this point that I am amazed it is not precisely recognized for what it is, as I am now going to explain.

One imagines that no matter how much it is said that there is a barrier, it is like placing a divider in a grain storage room—sooner or later, the rats end up crossing it. Ultimately, the fundamental imagination that seems to govern current analytic practice is that there must be something that communicates between neurosis and psychosis, between the preconscious and the unconscious. The task is to push in one direction to penetrate the wall.

This idea, when pursued, leads the authors who are even slightly consistent to develop theoretical additions or extensions that are entirely surprising, such as the reemergence of the “non-conflictual sphere,” as it is expressed—a notion that is not only exorbitant but also not merely regressive but outright transgressive. Such an idea had never been heard of before…
…not even in the most neo-spiritualist domains of psychology concerning the faculties of the soul.
…Never had anyone conceived of the will as something situated in a sort of non-conflictual empire.
Yet it is to nothing less than this that the theorists of this new “ego” school have been led to explain how, in their own perspective, something can still remain as an instrument of analytic progress.

Indeed, if we find ourselves caught between a notion of the ego that becomes the prevailing framework of phenomena, it is the essential framework itself from which one cannot deviate. Everything must pass through the ego. It is clear, however, that it becomes difficult to see how the regression of the ego—now, in turn, regarded as the pathway to the unconscious—could retain, in any way, a mediating element that is absolutely indispensable for understanding the action of analytic treatment, unless one places it in this kind of truly “ideal” ego—here in quotation marks, in the worst sense of the term—which is the so-called non-conflictual sphere, which becomes the mythical locus of the most incredibly reactionary reifications.

What is the unconscious in opposition to this domain of the preconscious as we have just situated it?
If I say that everything in analytic communication has the structure of language, this does not mean that the unconscious expresses itself in discourse. What I say is: it pertains to the order of the unconscious. And this, as Freud’s writings:

• The Interpretation of Dreams,
• The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,
• and Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious,

make absolutely clear, evident, and transparent.

Nothing can explain the detours, the contours Freud gives to his exploration of these questions if it is not understood as follows: the analytic phenomenon as such, whatever it may be, is not a language in the sense that it would imply it is discourse—but I have never claimed it to be discourse. The analytic phenomenon is structured like language.

In this sense, one can say it is a phenomenal variety—not the least of them, but precisely the most important and revealing—of the relations, as such, of man to the domain of language: the analytic phenomenon. Every analytic phenomenon, every phenomenon that belongs as such to the analytic field, to the analytic discovery, and to what we encounter in the symptom and in neurosis, is structured like language.

What does this mean? It means that it is a phenomenon that has always presented this essential duplicity of the signifier and the signified. It means that the signifier within it has its own coherence, which partakes of the characteristics of the signifier in language. That is, we grasp the point where this signifier distinguishes itself from any other kind of sign. We will trace it in the preconscious imaginary domain.

We begin with the biological sign; the experience of animal psychology has shown us its importance. There is something in the structure itself, in the morphology of animals, that has this captivating value, through which the receiver—the one who sees the red of the robin’s breast, for example—and the one made to receive it, enter into a series of behaviors, into a now unified behavior, binding the bearer of this sign to the one perceiving it.

This provides us with a precise idea of what can be called natural meaning. And from this, without further seeking how this develops in humans, it is clear that we can indeed, through a series of transitions, reach a complete purification, a full neutralization of the natural sign.

There is a point where this sign separates from its object—it is the trace, the footprint on the sand left by the unknown figure who will become Robinson’s companion on his island. This is a sign that Robinson does not misinterpret. I would say that here we witness the separation of the sign from the object: the trace, in what it contains of negativity and separation, leads us to what I called the order and field of the natural sign, to the very limit where it becomes, strictly speaking, the most evanescent.

The distinction here between the sign and the object is entirely clear since the trace is precisely what the object leaves behind after it has moved elsewhere. I would even say that, objectively, there is no need for any kind of subject, for any person to recognize the sign, for the sign and the trace to exist. The trace exists even if there is no one to observe it.

From what point do we move into the realm of the signifier? The signifier is indeed present somewhere. It can encompass many elements within the domain of the sign. But the signifier is a sign that does not refer to an object, not even in the form of a trace, though its trace still reveals its essential character. It, too, is a sign of an absence. However, the signifier, as part of language, is a sign that refers to another sign—in other words:
to oppose it within a pair where the essential element is the relationship of the pair, meaning its essential element is the agreement. I have often revisited, lately enough to surprise, a theme like that of “day.” Even as a signifier, from the moment there is day and night, it is not something in any way definable by experience. Experience can only indicate a series of modulations, transformations, even pulsations, or alternations of light and darkness, with all their transitions.

Language begins with the opposition: “day and night.” From the moment day exists as a signifier, this day is subject to all the vicissitudes of a play within the realm of signifiers and according to the economic laws unique to the signifier, where “day” comes to signify quite diverse things.

This characteristic of the signifier fundamentally defines everything within the realm of the unconscious. Freud’s work, with its enormous philological framework that operates even in the intimacy of phenomena, is utterly unthinkable unless one places at the forefront the predominance, the dominance of the signifier in everything that involves the subject in analytic phenomena as such.

This should lead us to take a further step, which is our focus today. I have spoken to you about the Other as fundamental to speech, as the place where the subject confesses, recognizes himself, and seeks recognition. This is the essential point. In neurosis, the determining element, the one that emerges, is not any specific disturbed relation, as one might say, “oral,” “anal,” or even “genital,” or any homosexual link as such.

We know all too well how difficult it is to handle, for example, this homosexual relationship, which we consistently highlight in subjects whose diversity makes it impossible to uniformly address this homosexual relationship strictly on the level of instinctual relations. What is at stake is literally and precisely a question, a problem through which the subject must recognize himself on the level of the signifier, on the level of “to be or not to be,” what is or what is not, on the level of his being.

And I want to illustrate this with an example. I did not need to search for a particularly favorable one. I chose an old observation of hysteria. The reason I selected this one—a case of traumatic hysteria—is that it foregrounds the fantasy of pregnancy, of procreation, which is absolutely dominant in the story of President Schreber, where, ultimately, the entire delusion culminates in this: everything must be regenerated by him when he has finally achieved his feminization in relation to God. Finally, a new humanity of Schreberian spirit, a series of Schreberian children, will be born.

I want to speak about this case of hysteria because it will precisely help us closely examine the difference between neurosis and psychosis. Here, there is no trace of hallucinatory elements in speech. We are fully within the realm of a hysterical symptom. It involves an observation by Joseph Hasler, a psychologist from the Budapest school, who recorded this case at the end of World War I.

The story takes place during the Hungarian Revolution and concerns a tramway conductor. He is 33 years old, a Hungarian Protestant—marked by austerity, solidity, and rural tradition—and left his family at the end of adolescence to move to the city. His professional life had already been marked by changes that are not without significance. He began as a baker, then worked in a chemistry laboratory, and finally became a tramway conductor.

As a conductor, he was responsible for ringing the bell and punching tickets. He also had experience at the wheel. One day, while stepping off his vehicle, he stumbled, fell to the ground, and was dragged slightly. He suffered a bump and mild pain on his left side. Taken to the hospital, it was determined that he had no significant injuries. A scalp injection was administered to close the wound. Everything went smoothly. After thorough examinations, including extensive X-rays, it was confirmed that nothing was wrong. He himself was cooperative.

However, over time, a series of crises began to develop, characterized by the emergence of a unique pain in the first rib—a truly peculiar and mysterious crisis that radiated from this point and led to progressively worsening malaise. He would lie on his left side, stretched out. He rested on a pillow to support him. Yet, the symptoms persisted and worsened over time, becoming increasingly pronounced. These painful crises, lasting several days, recurred at regular intervals, progressively escalating to the point of causing true loss of consciousness.

All the questions were revisited: he was examined thoroughly again, and nothing was found. It was diagnosed as traumatic hysteria, and he was referred to Hasler for analysis. This observation is extremely instructive in what it reveals to us. There is abundant material. The man belonged to the first analytic generation. He observed the phenomena with great clarity and explored them thoroughly.

Nevertheless, this observation, published in 1921, already exhibits signs of a systematic approach beginning to take hold at that time, seemingly correlating with both observation and practice. This was the turning point in analytic practice, from which emerged the shift that placed emphasis on the analysis of resistances. Historically, Hasler was greatly influenced by the new “ego psychology” of the time.

On the other hand, he was well-versed in earlier approaches, including Freud’s initial analyses concerning anal character, which emphasized the notion that the economic elements of the libido could play a decisive role in ego formation. It is clear that Hasler was very interested in the ego of his subject, in his behavioral style, and in the elements that revealed these regressive factors—not only in symptoms but also within the structure itself.

He very astutely highlights the importance of certain striking phenomena observed in the initial sessions, namely, the subject’s attitude, which leaves him somewhat perplexed: after the first session, the subject suddenly sits on the couch and stares at him with wide, astonished eyes and an open mouth, as if discovering an unexpected and enigmatic monster.

On other occasions, the subject exhibits quite surprising manifestations of transference: at one point, he abruptly sits up, then falls to the other side of the couch, presses his nose against it, and offers the analyst his dangling legs in a manner whose general significance is not lost on the analyst. In short, these elements, such as the profoundly significant nature of the imaginary relationship, the immediate emergence of tendencies that raise questions about the subject’s instinctual drives, and a latent—indeed, even overt—homosexuality accompanied by various regressive elements, are all emphasized by the observer.

This is something that, in a way, organizes itself and gives meaning, a general outline, to what is observed. Let us examine these matters more closely. This is a subject who has been relatively well-adapted. His relationships with his peers are those of an active unionist, somewhat of a leader, and he is deeply invested in his connections with them. He enjoys an undeniable prestige in this setting. Our author also notes the peculiar way in which his self-education operates: all his papers are meticulously organized. The author seeks signs of anal character and progresses in his analysis. Yet ultimately, the interpretation he provides regarding the subject’s tendencies is neither accepted nor rejected; it is met with neutrality, leaving no impact. Nothing changes.

We find ourselves facing the same impasse that Freud encountered a few years earlier with the Wolf Man, for which Freud—focused on a different objective—did not provide a comprehensive explanation in his study.

Let us take a closer look at this observation because it is extremely revealing. What becomes apparent is that, in the triggering of the neurosis, I mean in its symptomatic aspect—the one that necessitated analytic intervention—what do we find? We can say that there is indeed trauma, and that this trauma must have awakened something. We find traumas in abundance from the subject’s childhood. For instance, when he was very young and crawling on the ground, his mother stepped on his thumb. It is noted that something decisive must have happened at that moment, as family tradition suggests that, from then on, he began sucking his thumb. You see castration-regression here. Other examples are found as well.

However, a small issue arises, made evident by the emergence of the material: what was decisive in triggering the decompensation of the neurosis—because naturally, the subject was already neurotic before the accident; otherwise, it would not have resulted in hysteria—what played the essential role in the decompensation of his neurosis was apparently not the shock or accident. The complications, aggravations, and symptomatic manifestations arose after the X-ray examinations themselves. The X-rays, as such, seem to have played a pivotal role.

The author does not fully grasp the significance of what he presents and seems to interpret it in the opposite direction. It is this interrogative proof, subjecting the individual to the mysterious scrutiny of the X-ray machine, that triggered his crises. The nature, periodicity, and style of these crises appear clearly linked, within the broader context of the material, to the fantasy of pregnancy.

What dominates in the symptom, in the subject’s symptomatic manifestations, is undoubtedly the relational elements that color his object relations in an imaginary way. These allow us to identify anal or homosexual relations, or some other dynamic. However, what the symptom pertains to—what these very elements are embedded within—is the question posed:

“Am I or am I not someone capable of procreating?”

And specifically, procreating within a feminine register. This takes place at the level of the Other, the level of the word, the symbolic element. As analysts, we must recognize that the integration of sexuality in the human subject is inextricably linked to symbolic recognition.

If the recognition of the subject’s sexual position, as such, is not tied to the symbolic apparatus, psychoanalysis and Freudianism might as well cease to exist; they would mean absolutely nothing.
If it is not about the relationship…
…as Freud insisted from the beginning and throughout his work, and as we must never forget…
…of the Oedipus complex—that is, the subject finding their place within a pre-formed symbolic apparatus:

• that establishes the law,
• that institutes the law within sexuality, a law that henceforth becomes constitutive,
• that incorporates all of sexuality, establishes it, and allows the subject to access and realize it only on this plane, the symbolic law—then psychoanalysis, had it failed to grasp this, would have discovered absolutely nothing.

For this subject, the issue is the question “Who am I?” or “Am I?” It is a question of being, an essential relation, a fundamental signifier. It is to the extent that this question is reawakened—it was, of course, always present, and we can trace it throughout the observation—that it emerges in its symbolic dimension.
Not merely as an intersubjective relationship or an imaginary reactivation of any kind, but as something beyond, as an attempt to articulate the question itself:

• What brought about the new decompensating trigger in his neurosis?
• How did the symptoms themselves become organized?

Whatever their qualities, their nature, or the material they are drawn from, the symptoms acquire their value as formulations, reformulations, and as insistences on this very question.

This key, of course, is not sufficient on its own. It is corroborated by the fact that, at this moment, elements from the subject’s past life retain all their vividness for him. For example, there was a day when he was able to secretly observe a woman from his parents’ neighborhood crying out in endless screams and moans. He surprised her in a posture of contortions and pain, with her legs raised, and he understood what was happening. This was especially so as the delivery failed, and the doctor had to intervene, dismembering the fetus. He saw the child being taken away in pieces down a hallway—it was all they could retrieve.

This memory arises in connection with the analysis of his recognition of his disturbances, which themselves have two aspects. First, their symbolic value—namely, the feminized character of the subject’s discourse, for instance, when he speaks or seeks the doctor’s help—is something so tangible and immediately evident. When the analyst shares the initial observations with him, the subject makes this remark:
that the doctor who examined him sensed something similar and said to his wife:

“I can’t figure out what’s wrong with him. It seems that if he were a woman, I would understand much better.”

The doctor perceived the symbolic significance but could not grasp it…
…simply because he lacked the analytic apparatus,
…which is conceivable only within the framework of linguistic structures.
Thus, he could not recognize that all of this was merely favorable material, which could just as well have been any other material used to express something beyond any current or past relationship. It is the subject’s fundamental question:

“Who am I?”
“Am I a man or a woman?”
“Am I particularly capable of creating life?”

When this key is applied, his entire life seems to reorder itself into a perspective of incredible fecundity. For example, discussions of his anal preoccupations, his excremental functions, and the significant weight these carried for him become intelligible. But what lay at the core of his interest in his excrement? It revolved around this: whether seeds from fruits within the excrement could still germinate if planted in the earth. The subject had great ambitions—to raise chickens and, specifically, to engage in the egg trade. He was also interested in various botanical questions, all centered around germination and incubation.

One could even say that a series of accidents in his career as a tram conductor were tied to something fundamental connected to fragmentation and his apprehension of the dramatic nature of birth. This may not be the ultimate origin of the subject’s question, but it is an exceptionally expressive instance.

Other elements allow us to view these accidents—particularly the last one—as a situation in which the subject integrates himself into the scenario in an unmistakable way: he falls from the tramway, which has become a sort of symbolic apparatus for him; he falls, he gives birth himself. This is the central and singular theme of his pregnancy fantasy, with all its correlates, culminating in a particularly dramatic ending. But what dominates here?

It dominates as a signifier of something that the entire context reveals to be his central concern—his integration or non-integration into the masculine role as such, into the paternal function, which he never fully achieves. When he married, he arranged to wed a woman who already had a child and with whom he could only have inadequate relations. The problematic nature of his symbolic identification sustains all possible understanding of the observation.

In other words:

• everything that is said,
• everything that is expressed,
• everything that is gestured,
• everything that is manifested,

derives its meaning only in relation to the answer to be formulated about this fundamentally symbolic relationship:
“Am I a man or am I a woman?”

When I present this summary of the observation, you cannot help but draw a parallel to what I emphasized in the case of Dora. What does her case ultimately reveal, if not a fundamental question about her sex? When I say “her sex,” it is not about what sex she is but rather: “What does it mean to be a woman?” Dora’s two dreams are absolutely transparent—they speak of nothing but this: “What is a female organ?”

Here, we encounter something extraordinary: the male subject finds himself in the same position. That is:

• just as a woman questions what it means to be a woman,
• the male subject also questions what it means to be a woman.

This is where we will pick up next time.

For this will lead us to highlight elements that are absolutely essential to any understanding of the symbolic value of the symptom in neurosis: these are the asymmetries that Freud consistently emphasized in the Oedipus complex. In other words, if a woman’s realization of her sex does not occur in the Oedipus complex in a manner symmetrical to that of a man…
…that is, not through identification with the mother in relation to the maternal object,
…but instead through identification with the paternal object, as Freud emphasizes…
then she must make an additional detour, a necessity Freud never relinquished. This is something that, since then, has been approached particularly from the perspective of women, to reestablish this symmetry.

This is not without reason and further confirms the distinction between the imaginary and the symbolic, which I have revisited today.

But you will see: this sort of—on the other hand—additional detour, this disadvantage that the woman faces in accessing the identity of her own sex, her sexualization as such, is something that, in hysteria, transforms itself into an advantage.

Thanks to this imaginary identification with the father, which is entirely accessible to her precisely because of her position and her situation in the competition that the Oedipus complex allows her to interrogate, things in hysteria naturally become exceedingly easy for her to conceptualize and schematize.

You will see, for the man, precisely because the Oedipus complex is structured in a way that allows him to achieve and access what is most difficult to attain—namely, an effective virility—because of this, in neurosis and the neurotic detour, the path will be more complex for him.