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Grammaire de PICHON et DAMOURETTE, page 264:

“I am much more myself. Before, I was a pseudo-self who believed it was the real one, but who was absolutely false.”
“In any case, I want to clarify that there are many of us who supported the Popular Front…”

I will finish at the end.

These sentences hold the quality of being attested sentences. They were collected by me, among other sources, in the grammar by PICHON and DAMOURETTE, a substantial and highly instructive work, if only because of the enormous amount of documents intelligently organized, regardless of any overarching or detailed errors.
These two sentences, one of which is spoken and the other written, propose to us—show us—that what I am going to focus your reflection on today is not merely something forged from misplaced literary subtlety; that is, it pertains to what I want you to grasp today.

The first sentence was clearly collected. PICHON indicates this with the initials of a patient in analysis. He says: it is Madame X, on such and such a date. “I am much more myself,” she says—no doubt greatly pleased with some progress made in her treatment. “Before, I was a pseudo-self who believed…” And, thank God, the French language, often ambiguous when spoken, allows us here—thanks to the interplay of consonantal silences and an initial vowel—to perfectly distinguish what is at issue: “I believed I was the pseudo-self in question,” in the first person singular, it is “I” who “believed.” Through the relative clause, the first-person subject “I” is carried into the relative.

You might tell me, “That’s obvious!” That is precisely what a charming woman responded to me recently when I tried to interest her in these topics by proposing the problem of the difference between “I am the woman who will not leave you” and “I am the woman who will not abandon you.” We will only talk about that today. I must admit that I had no success. She refused to be interested in this nuance, which you already sense is significant.

Usage demonstrates it sufficiently in the sense that in the same sentence, the person continues:

“I am much more myself. Before, I was a pseudo-self who believed it was the real one and who was absolutely false.”

I think no sentence expresses itself more accurately; it does not sound out of place in the least. But you can feel what “absolutely false” is not; “absolutely false” does not quite fit. It “was absolutely false,” this pseudo-self.
There is an “it” in the second part, and there is an “I” in the first.

There are a few more like this in PICHON. Others are just as striking and still relevant:
“In any case, I want to clarify,” writes Albert DUBARRY, “that there are many of us who supported the Popular Front, voted for its candidates, and believed in an entirely different ideal pursued, in an entirely different action, and in an entirely different reality…”

The other example falls into a different category. That said, pay attention, as you will continuously collect such examples of what happens in certain sentence forms, thanks to what can be called, on the screen, the lens of that entry into the relative clause, which allows us to see whether the personhood in the main clause crosses or does not cross this screen. The screen itself is clearly neutral; it does not vary. Thus, it is a question of understanding what the power of penetration consists of—if one may put it that way—of the antecedent personhood.

We will return to this later. We will examine this small linguistic point, which can be found very vividly in other languages as well and is no less vivid in those others. However, we would obviously have to look beyond this syntactical form. We will revisit this.

What I left you with last time was the question of the perspective offered by this step we have taken regarding the function of the signifier as such, concerning what is:

• the great question,
• the burning question, generally, in relationships, in the analytic relationship,
• the question ultimately actualized confusingly by the function of the object relation,
• the question particularly made present by the very structure and phenomenology of psychosis…

…which is what we must represent of the other, this other whose duplicity I have shown you so far, between the imaginary other and the Other (capital O).

This Other, therefore, in this small topic I shared with you in the last session, last year, under the title “Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis,” and which has just been published in L’Évolution Psychiatrique under the title “The Freudian Thing,” at the head of a paragraph titled “The Place of Speech.”
I apologize for citing myself, but what is the point of polishing one’s formulations if not to use them?

“The Other is therefore the place where the ‘I’ who speaks is constituted with the one who hears.” (Écrits, p. 431)

I said this following a few remarks, the last of which was this, to reestablish where the problem lies today:

“Ordinarily, everyone knows that others, just like themselves, will remain inaccessible to the constraints of reason, except for a principle acceptance of a rule of debate, which does not exist without an explicit or implicit agreement on what is called its foundation—an agreement almost always equivalent to an anticipated consensus on its stakes. What is called logic or law is never anything more than a body of rules laboriously adjusted at a duly dated and situated moment of history, marked by an origin stamp: agora, forum, church, or even party. I will therefore expect nothing from these rules except the good faith of the Other; and, in despair, I will only use them, if I deem it appropriate or am forced to, to amuse bad faith.” (Écrits, pp. 430-431)

This remark about the fact that there is always an Other beyond any concrete dialogue, beyond any interpsychological interplay, is what is finalized and concluded in the formula that I repeat, which must be taken by you as a given, as a starting point:

“The Other is therefore the place where the ‘I’ who speaks is constituted with the one who hears, what one says already being the response, and the Other deciding in hearing it whether or not one has spoken.” [Écrits p.431]

I would like you to feel, or at the very least to remember, the difference that exists, from such a perspective, compared to the one that is more or less accepted whenever one begins to speak, in a more or less confused way, about the Other. Saying that the Other is the place where the one who speaks is constituted with the one who listens is entirely different from starting with the idea that the Other is a being.

In analysis—and this without any justifiable or motivated reason—we have been, for some time, intoxicated by something that has undoubtedly come to us from what is called “existentialist” discourse, where the Other is the “you,” or the Other is “the one who can respond,” but who can respond in a mode of symmetry and complete correspondence: the alter ego, the brother, a fundamentally reciprocal idea of intersubjectivity.

Add to this the sentimental confusions that fall under the category of personalism and the reading of Martin BUBER’s book I and Thou, and the confusion becomes definitive and, for some time, irremediable—unless we return to experience.

It is clear that, far from bringing any clarification to the foundation of the existence of the Other, all this existentialist experience has only suspended it ever more radically on the fundamental hypothesis known as “projection”—which, of course, you all live by—ultimately relying on the idea that the Other…
and it can hardly be anything else…
is merely a certain human semblance, animated by an “I” that reflects mine.

Everything implied in the usage and terms of animism and anthropomorphism is always ready to emerge and, truthfully, impossible to refute. Furthermore, references to rudimentary experiences—such as the early stages of language development—show us this “you” and “I” in the experience of the child as something whose mastery is not immediately acquired. Ultimately, for the child, the acquisition boils down to being able to say “I” when you say “you,” understanding that when you say, “you will do this,” the child should not say, “you will do this,” but rather “I will do this.”

“You are a father” becomes “I am a father” in their understanding. Thus, things are as simple and symmetrical as that. Ultimately, all of this in the analytical field—meaning at the level of analysts’ discourse—leads to some primary truths, to sensational and definitive assertions of the following type:

“There is no possible analysis for someone for whom…”

I have literally heard this from someone belonging to what is called “the other group”:

“One cannot analyze someone for whom the Other does not exist.”

I wonder what it means for “the Other not to exist.” I wonder if this statement contains even the slightest value of approximation. What is it about? A kind of experience, an irreducible feeling? What is it? It is truly impossible to know, because, for instance, take our case of SCHREBER, for whom, evidently, all of humanity passed for a time into the realm of hastily assembled shadowy figures—à la 6-4-2—mere semblances of men. Yet, there is:

• an Other that has a structure,
• an Other that is singularly even more pronounced,
• an absolute Other,
• an entirely radical Other,
• an Other that is not at all a place or a schema,
• an Other that he assures us is a living being in its own way and one he emphasizes, to the extent that it is a living being, is capable of selfishness, like all other living beings, when threatened.

God Himself, through some disorder for which He is the primary responsible party, finds Himself in a position of being threatened in His independence. And from that moment, He is capable of manifesting relationships that are more or less spasmodic—of defense, of selfishness.

Nevertheless, this Other retains an alterity such that it is alien to living things and, more specifically, incomprehensible in relation to all the vital needs of our SCHREBER. Saying that this Other truly bears the full emphasis on this matter is sufficiently indicated by the singularly striking and humorous beginning of one of SCHREBER’s chapters, where SCHREBER tells us:

“I am not a paranoiac. We are often told that the paranoiac is someone who relates everything to himself, whose egocentrism is particularly invasive—for he specifically read KRÆPELIN—but with me, it is entirely different: it is the Other who relates everything to me: everything that happens, he relates it to me.”

It must be acknowledged, nonetheless, that he does not seem insightful in saying this—for here we see the fundamental misrecognition—that the structure is different because there is an Other, and this is decisive, structural, in the structuring of the case.

So, it becomes a matter of knowing…
before speaking of the Other as something that is or is not placed at a certain distance, something we are capable of embracing, extinguishing, or even consuming in doses of varying rapidity, as increasingly happens in analysis…
…it is a matter of knowing whether the phenomenology of things as they present themselves to us in our experience and elsewhere does not deserve to pose the question entirely differently.

This is precisely what I am explaining to you when I say that the Other must first be understood—not in terms of how it will be more or less realized—but as a place, a place where speech is constituted. And why not? Since today we are concerned with persons, they must come from somewhere. But they will first emerge in a meaningful way, in a formal sense, where speech is constituted for us, as both an “I” and a “you.” These two semblables may or may not be addressed, as speech gives them a certain distance, undoubtedly a certain proper relationship, but—and this is where I want to place the emphasis—a distance that is not symmetrical and a relationship that is not reciprocal.

The “I,” as you will see, is never where it appears, in the form of a particular signifier.
The “I” is always present as the sustaining force of the entire discourse, in both direct and indirect style.
The “I” is the “I” of the one who utters the discourse. Everything spoken is underpinned by an “I” that utters it.
It is within this enunciation that the “you” emerges.

These are foundational truths, so foundational, in fact, that you risk overlooking them even though they are right under your nose. There is nothing more to understand than what I have just pointed out. That the “you” already resides within the discourse is entirely evident. There has never been a “you” anywhere but where “you” is spoken. This is where we must begin to find it, truly as something that is this vocalization: “you.” Let us start there.

As for the “I,” it may not seem immediately evident to you either; it does not function like currency, a fiduciary element circulating in discourse. But I hope to demonstrate this to you shortly. I affirm and establish it now simply so that you do not lose sight of it, so you know where I am heading. This “you,” far from addressing some ineffable person, some kind of beyond that existentialist trends—fashionable as existentialism is—try to highlight as primary, is something entirely different in use.
It is on simple observations of this kind that I want to pause for a moment.

Far from being always that kind of “you” laden with significance, to which so much attention is paid…
and of which you know that, on occasion, I myself have made major examples… You know the matter concerns determining whether there is so much of a “you” in “you are my master,” “you are my wife,” examples which I have often emphasized to explain something about the function of speech. It is about refocusing and re-centering the meaning attributed to this “you” today.

Far from always having that fully charged and foundational usage—as if it were foundational in any way—that is precisely what we are going to examine today. I will bring you back to a primary linguistic observation, which is that the second person singular is far from always being used with that emphasis. This concerns its most common usage, the one that makes us say:

“One cannot walk in this place without being approached.”

This involves no “you” or “thou”; it is neither a “you” nor a “thou.”
It is almost the reflexive of “one,” its corresponding element. I will provide an even more significant example:

“When one reaches this degree of wisdom, there is nothing left but to die.”

Here too, what “you” or “thou” is being addressed? Certainly, it is not anyone in particular to whom this is spoken; it is not anyone else—even the “you” here… I ask you to consider the sentence, as no sentence can be detached from the fullness of its meaning.

…What this “you” refers to is so little about another that I would almost say it is a remnant of those who would stubbornly persist in living independently of those who would remain after this discourse, which speaks of wisdom, saying that the only end to everything is death, that there is nothing left but to die.

This is something that quite sufficiently demonstrates this function of the second person in this instance:
its purpose is precisely to address the interior of what is “person,” what resides there, what depersonalizes.

Indeed, we are well-acquainted with this “you” that is being silenced here, in this instance; it is the same one we know perfectly in analysis and in the phenomenology of psychosis. It is what within us says “you”:

• this “you” that is always discreetly or indiscreetly heard,
• this “you” that speaks on its own,
• this “you” that tells us “you see,” that tells us “you are still the same,”
• this “you” that, as in SCHREBER’s experience, does not need to say “you” to still be the “you” that speaks to us.

For it takes only a small degree of disintegration—and SCHREBER had more than his share—for it to produce an entire series of expressions like this: “Do not yield to the first invitation.” This concerns something that…
as with everything more or less focused in SCHREBER’s internal experience…
targets something unnamed, something we are capable of reconstructing as that homosexual tendency, but also something that may be something else, since the invitations, the injunctions, are not rare; they are constant. And this sentence, which indeed serves as the guiding principle for many, does not extinguish itself upon your first impulse—it might even be the right one, as people always say.

And what do they teach you, if not precisely to never yield to anything on the first invitation?
If, furthermore, we recognize our old friend, the superego, which suddenly appears before us not in its agreeable genetic hypotheses but in its phenomenal form. This superego is indeed something like the law; it is a law without dialectics. It is no coincidence that it is recognized—more or less rightly—as the “categorical imperative,” as spoken of by the internal enemy in what I will call “its malevolent neutrality,” which a certain author calls the “internal saboteur.”

This “you” would be misunderstood if we failed to recognize its function as “you” and its various properties, which, as we know from experience, make it an observer: it sees everything, hears everything, notes everything. This is precisely what happens with SCHREBER and defines his relationship with that something within him, expressed through this “you”—a relentless, incessant “you” that provokes him into a series of responses devoid of any meaning: it sees everything, hears everything, notes everything.

I am almost tempted to conclude with the old saying “nobody suspects it,” which used to be printed in telephone directories about private detectives. One senses here how much this represents an ideal. For, of course, one also sees the advertising function of such a statement: how happy everyone would be if, indeed, “nobody suspected it.” This is precisely the matter at hand: no matter how much one hides behind a curtain, there are always large boots sticking out [cf. Polonius’s death in Hamlet]. For the superego, it is the same. But certainly, the superego itself suspects nothing.

This is also what is expressed in the phrase: there is nothing less doubtful than everything that appears to us through the intermediary of this “you.” In other words, as we embark on this exploration, we must first realize that any kind of elaboration of the “you” will overlook this fundamental edge, which is precisely what our analytic experience reveals.

Yet, it seems almost unbelievable that we could forget that the “you” is there, essentially as a stranger. One analyst, on occasion, went so far as to compare it to what happens in a small crustacean, like a shrimp, which has a particular peculiarity: during the early stage of its existence, its vestibular chamber remains open to the marine environment. The vestibule, as the organ responsible for balance regulation, is initially open. Normally, this vestibular chamber closes and contains small particles dispersed within these species. In other words, something in the external environment inscribes the different positions of the subject by causing these particles to shift within the chamber, depending on whether the subject is upright or horizontal.

In these small creatures, they themselves, at a certain stage of life, gently introduce a few grains of sand into their shell, and the chamber closes through a physiological process. Thus, they supply themselves with these charming little devices. If one substitutes the grains of sand with small iron filings, one could subsequently take these delightful little creatures to the ends of the earth using an electromagnet, making them swim upside down.

Well, this is the function of the “you” in humans. This, says Mr. ISAKOWER, is what it is.

However, the fact that I am relating it here in this discourse shows that I willingly use it as an exemplary reference to help you understand, above all, what the experience of the “you” entails. Let us say, if you like, at its most basic level, although failing to recognize that it leads precisely to this is to entirely misunderstand the function and existence of the “you” as a signifier. Note that these matters extend quite far, and analysts—this is not a solitary path—have also insisted on them.

I cannot dwell at length on the relationship between this function of the superego signifier, which is none other than the function of the “you,” and the feeling of reality. There is no need to insist, for the simple reason that every page of SCHREBER’s observations accentuates this point. If the subject does not doubt the reality of what he hears, it is due to the foreign-body nature of the intimation of the delusional “you.”

Do I even need to remind you, on the other hand, that when it comes to reality, KANT’s philosophy concludes that the only fixed realities are the starry sky above us and the voice of conscience within? Ultimately, this stranger, like the character in Tartuffe, will nevertheless be the true owner of the house, telling the ego, “It is you who must leave,” whenever even the slightest conflict arises.

When the feeling of strangeness arises somewhere, it is never on the side of the superego:

• It is the ego that no longer recognizes itself,
• It is the ego that enters into the state of “you,”
• It is the ego that perceives itself as a double, in that disquieting state of seeing itself expelled from the house. And it is always this “you” in question that remains the possessor of things.

This is, of course, experience. This does not mean we must stop there. But it is necessary to recall these experiential truths to understand where the problem lies and where the structural issue resides.

Naturally, since we are dealing with discourse and speech, it may seem strange to you that I mechanize things in this way. Perhaps you imagine that I am simplifying the notion of discourse, teaching that everything is contained within the relationship of the “I” to the “you,” of the ego to the Other. This is precisely the point where linguists, not to mention psychoanalysts, falter and begin to stammer whenever they address the question of discourse.

And I would even say it is regrettable—
in a highly remarkable book like that of PICHON, which I just mentioned—
to see that it is deemed necessary or appropriate to recall, as a principle, as the foundation of a significant definition of verbal “repertoires,” as he calls them, that one must start from the idea that discourse always addresses another. It is in relation to these connections between the ego and the Other, or more precisely:

• the speaker, the locutor,
• and the addressee, the allocutor,
  …that these major repertoires are classified. One begins by speaking of a simple locutionary plane, which we find in the imperative: “Come!” There is no need to say much more: “Come!” presupposes an “I,” presupposes a “you.” On the other hand, there is a narrative plane, a delocutionary one, that starts from something else.

There will always be the “I” and the “you,” but aimed at something else. It seems we are not entirely satisfied with such a division, as if, for instance, you were to refer back to PICHON… this might perhaps prompt you to look into his discussion on questioning… he will pose a few new problems. We will introduce it with an asymmetry that will create symmetry on the condition that we consider the number “3” to be the best. In other words, the narrative will be “he comes,” and the interrogative will be something like “does he come?” But it is not that simple. Nothing is simple in this function of “does he come?” The proof is that we say: “Does the king come?” which clearly shows that “does he” is not entirely the same subject in the question as it is in the narrative.

“Does the king come?” can mean:

• that he comes,
• that there is a king coming,
• or whether the king comes.

The question becomes much more complex as soon as we approach the concrete use of language.
For the imperative “Come!” indeed gives us the illusion of a symmetrical and bipolar presence of an “I” and a “you.”
What would you say? Are the “I” and “you” just as present in this imperative, in the narratives that constitute the essence of a locutionary act: “if he comes” and the reference to a third object, which is called a third person?

The so-called third person does not exist: there is no third person. I tell you this in passing to begin shaking some deeply rooted certainties in your minds, thanks to primary grammar instruction.
There is no third person. Mr. BENVENISTE has demonstrated this perfectly.

In any case, at the narrative level, I ask what is locutionary about the narrative. This is where we will pause for a moment and ask in what sort of questioning we can situate what, for us…
at the point we have reached in our statements or our development…
is called, what I call, the question—the question the subject poses to themselves, or more precisely, the question I pose to myself about what I am or can hope to be.

Perhaps starting from this radical position, always masked, of course…
and so well masked that, after all, in our experience, we find it expressed by the subject only outside themselves and without their awareness…
but nonetheless fundamental, since this is where we have caught it by the ears:
the question as the foundation of neurosis.

When this question surfaces, we already see it decompose peculiarly. And when it emerges in forms that are not at all interrogative—such as in “May I achieve it!”—hovering between exclamation, wish, and doubt, if we want to give it a little more consistency, expressing it in the indicative mode that belongs to the delocutionary and narrative registers, notice how we naturally express it: we say, “Do you think you’ll succeed?”

In short, I would like to return you to another distribution of language functions, at their full level…
distinct from this stumbling over locution, delocution, and allocution…
one that consists of this: the question, which is always latent but never explicitly posed. Yet the fact that it emerges, that it surfaces, is precisely due to a mode of appearance of speech, which we will refer to in various ways—I am not particularly attached to one term or another. We will call it mission, mandate, delegation, or devolution, referencing HEIDEGGER, who is, of course, the foundation, or the founding speech: “You are this…”—whether you are my wife or my master, or a thousand other things. This “you are this…” that I receive makes me in speech something other than what I am.

This is the question. Who pronounces it? How is it received in this full speech? Is it the same as this “you” navigating freely in the examples I have given you?
Is this mission primitive or secondary in relation to the question, phenomenally?
Certainly, it is here that the question tends to emerge. It is when we have to respond to this mission.
And here, the third term at play, I point out in passing, is never, in any case, anything resembling an object.

The third term at stake, the “he” that will emerge, is always the discourse itself to which the subject refers. In other words, to “You are my master,” responds a certain “What am I?” “What am I to be this, assuming that I am?”
And this apostrophe, this “l’,” is not the master taken as a third term, as an object; it is the total enunciation, the sentence that says: “I am your master,” as if “your master” had meaning only through the homage I receive from it.
But one says: “What am I, to be what you just said?”

There is a very beautiful prayer in Christian practice called the Ave Maria. No one suspects that it begins with the same three letters that Buddhist monks mumble all day: “AUM.”
But it is curious that they must be the same; this must indicate that there is something entirely radical in the order of the signifier. Never mind! “Hail Mary.” And not to repeat it in another popular form: “Hail Mary,” says the little song, “you will have a son without a husband.”

This, by the way, is not entirely unrelated to the subject of President SCHREBER. The response is not at all “What am I?” The response is:

“I am the servant of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word.”

The servant is not quite the same thing, in principle. “I am the servant” simply means: “I abolish myself; what am I to be the one you say I am?” But “let it be done to me according to your word”—this is the order of responses that belong to the clearest speech. From there, we may begin to recognize and properly situate what is at stake when this so-called “devolution” phrase is expressed in a way sufficiently developed for us to observe the reciprocal relationships between the “you” as a foreign body and the subject’s assumption—or lack thereof—its pinning, its quilting, its weight, its grip upon the subject through a signifier.

I ask you, then, to pause with me today on a few examples, examples whose linguistic significance is particularly relevant for us as French speakers:

“I am the one who always wants good and always does evil.”

I looked into this yesterday evening to explain how I resolved the issue. Because he says:

“I am part of that force which always wants good and always does evil.”

Thus, it is written in such a way that there is nothing more to be done with it. But I ask you: how would you write it? Because in German, the passage through the screen of the relative clause also exists, meaning the question can arise as to whether I am “the one who wants” in the first person or “sings” in the third. I point out to you, moreover, that the first person in this instance is ambiguous with the third, which is no accident either. But let us consider this in French: what is the difference? Let us return to an earlier example:

• “I am the woman who will not abandon you.”
• “I am the woman who will not leave you.”

But these examples might evoke overly significant echoes for you. I will choose another example to make it easier for your clarity of thought to engage. What is the difference between:

“You are the one who will follow me everywhere.”
And:
“You are the one who will follow me everywhere.”

Here we have a main clause in the second person: “You are the one.” “Who” is precisely this screen, said to be “in the third person,” which either allows or does not allow the unity of “you” to pass from one part of the sentence to the other. You immediately see that it is absolutely impossible to separate this idea of “you” from the meaning of the signifier “will follow.”

In other words, it is not the “you” that determines whether the “who” will be permeable to it but rather the meaning of “will follow” and also the meaning attributed by me, the one speaking—and this speaker may not even be “me” but the one who hears the echo that underpins the entire sentence—of the sense given to “you are the one who will follow me” or “will follow.”

For it is clear that “You are the one who will follow me everywhere” is, at the very least, a choice—perhaps a unique choice, in any case, a mandate I mentioned earlier: this devolution, this delegation, this investment, which is distinct, at least, from “You are the one who will follow me everywhere” in the sense that the latter, at the very least, is an observation. We quickly tend to perceive it, to feel it as an observation that leans more towards a regretful acknowledgment. For indeed, “You are the one who will follow me everywhere”—if it truly carries a definitive character that the subject is “that one”—we might quickly tire of it. To put it bluntly, what on one side leans towards sacrament and delegation would, on the other, quickly tend towards persecution, which inherently includes the connotation of “following.”

In short, you can see here, through this example, the relationship that exists between this “you” and the signifier.

You might tell me once again that the signifier in question is, precisely, a meaning. I would reply that at the level of what I call “does he,” I cannot even describe it as more intense than the other. The “one who follows you everywhere like your shadow” might pass as something particularly intense, but it is quite inconvenient for that reason.

It is something different, this following, when I say “You are the one who will follow me everywhere” to the one in whom I recognize my companion, in a certain sense—a response, perhaps, to “You are my master,” which we have been discussing for so long. This is something whose meaning implies the existence of a certain mode of signifier. And we will immediately materialize it.

This is what, in French, can create ambiguity—I mean, fail to quickly enough carry within itself the mark of the distinctive originality of this dimension of “following.” Following what? This remains open. It is your being, your message, your speech, your group, what you represent. What is it? It is something that constitutes a knot, a point of tightening in a bundle of meanings that is either acquired or not by the subject.

Because, precisely, if the subject has not acquired it, they will interpret “You are the one who will follow me everywhere” in this second sense, meaning they will hear it differently from what is said in the “will follow” (future indicative)—in which case, everything will change, including the scope of “you.”

This presence within what grounds “you” in the “will follow” is something that directly pertains to the personhood of the addressed subject. For it is equally clear that when I say—let us return now to my sensitive example—“You are the woman who will not abandon me,” I am expressing, in a certain sense, a much greater certainty regarding my partner’s behavior than when she says to me:

“I am the woman who would not abandon you,”
or when she says:
“I am the woman who would not leave you.”

This refers to the first person. To make her feel the difference, which may not be immediately audible, I manifest in the first case much greater certainty, and in the second case, much greater trust. This trust precisely implies a looser bond between the person appearing in the “you” of the first part of the sentence and the person appearing in the relative clause. The bond, one might say, is less tight. It is precisely because it is looser that it appears with a special originality concerning the signifier. It assumes that the person knows what kind of signifier is involved in this “follow,” that she assumes it, that it is she who will follow—which also means that she might not follow.

Let me go further and draw a reference of some interest, one that touches on the most radical nature of the relationship between the “I” and the signifier.

In ancient Indo-European languages and in certain remnants within living languages, there is what is called—and what you all learned in school—the “middle voice.” The middle voice is distinct from the active and the passive voice in that, as we say in an approximation (valid to the extent of other approximations learned in school), the subject performs the action in question upon itself. There are verbal forms that convey this nuance. There are two different forms for saying “I sacrifice”: one as a sacrificer, and the other as one who offers the sacrifice for their own benefit.

The interest here is not in entering into the nuances of the middle voice regarding verbs that exist in both voices, because we do not use it, and we will always feel it vaguely. What is instructive is to realize that there are verbs that only exist in one or the other voice, and this is something linguists, except in cases where they are particularly astute, often overlook.

Here you notice very intriguing things—things collected in an article by Mr. BENVENISTE on this subject, which I will reference: Journal de Psychologie Normale et Pathologique, January-March 1950, entirely devoted to language. We will see that middle verbs include to be born, to die, to follow, to set into motion, to be master, to lie down, to return to a familiar state, to play, to profit, to suffer, to endure, to experience mental agitation, to take measures—the Latin medeor, from which you are all invested as physicians, as everything related to medicine is derived from this medeor—and finally to speak, which is precisely the domain relevant to what is at stake in our analytic experience.

In cases where verbs exist and function in certain languages solely in the middle voice, and only in this voice, it is precisely tied to the notion that the subject constitutes itself in the process or state expressed by the verb.

Do not attach undue importance to the terms “process” or “state”; the verbal function as such cannot be easily captured within any category. The verb is a function within the sentence, and nothing else, as “process” or “state” can just as well be expressed by substantives. The degree to which the subject is more or less involved is not altered in the slightest by whether the process is expressed in verbal form. The use of the verbal form in the sentence does not, in itself, carry any inherent meaning—it simply serves as the support for certain accents of signification that place the entire sentence within a temporal mode or aspect.

There is no other difference between the noun and the verb in this function within the sentence, but the existence of distinct forms in the verbal conjugation—forms that are specific to verbs in which the subject constitutes itself as such, as an “I”—is significant. The Latin sequor implies this by the full meaning of the verb “to follow.” This presence of the “I” in the act of following is illustrative for us and guides us toward understanding why the “will follow” of the second sentence may or may not align with the “you” of the main clause, here purely presentative: “You are the one who will follow me.”

The “will follow” will align—or not—with the “you,” depending on what occurs at the level of the “I,” of the one in question. That is, it depends on how the “I” is engaged, captivated, pinned, or caught in the quilting I discussed previously—the manner in which the signifier attaches itself to the subject within their total relationship to discourse.

The entire context of “You are the one who will follow me” will change:

• according to the mode and emphasis given to the signifier,
• according to the implications of “will follow,”
• according to the mode of being that lies behind this “will follow,”
• according to the meanings the subject attaches to a certain register of signifiers,
• according to that something, within the indeterminacy of “What am I?” that determines whether the subject proceeds with or without baggage.

It matters not whether this baggage is primordial, acquired, secondary, defensive, or fundamental—its origin is irrelevant!

It is certain that we live with a number of answers to the “What am I?” that are, generally speaking, highly questionable. Needless to say, while “I am a father” has a fundamental meaning, “I am a concrete father” carries a highly problematic one. It is pointless to state:

• that while it is extremely convenient, and truly commonplace, to say: “I am a teacher,” everyone knows this leaves completely open the question: a teacher of what?
• that if one identifies themselves in a thousand other ways, such as “I am French,” this presupposes the complete bracketing of what the notion of belonging to France might represent,
• that if you say “I am a Cartesian,” it is in most cases because you have absolutely no understanding of what Mr. DESCARTES said, likely because you have never opened his works,
• that when you say “I am someone with clear ideas,” it begs the question: why?
• that when you say “I am someone with character,” anyone is justified in asking: what kind?
• and that when you say “I always tell the truth,” well, you are certainly bold!

This pertains precisely to the relationship with the signifier in order for us to understand the emphasis taken in the subject’s relationship to discourse by this initial part of “You are the one who…”—depending on whether or not the signifying part has been conquered and assumed by the subject or, on the contrary, verworfen, rejected.

To leave you with the full weight of the question, I want to provide a few additional examples.

This is not confined to the verb follow. If I say to someone, “You are the one who must come,” you must immediately grasp what background of signifiers this assumes. But if I say to someone, “You are the one who must arrive,” this amounts to saying “You will arrive!” We see what this implies. Yes—but in what state? It is crucial to emphasize these examples.

“You are the one who wants what he wants” means “You are a stubborn one.” It means “You are someone who knows how to want.”
It does not necessarily mean that you are the one who will follow me or not follow me: “You are the one who will follow his path to the end.” Or, “You are the one who knows what he is saying,” just as “You are not the one who will follow his path to the end.”

The importance of these distinctions lies in this: the change in emphasis—where the “you” confers fullness upon the other, which is also the fullness received by the subject—is fundamentally tied to the signifier.

What happens when the invoked signifier is absent? What happens then?
This is something we can both deduce from this approach and confirm through experience.
We need only align our formula with the schema we once proposed for speech, in the sense that it moves from S to A: “You are the one who will follow me everywhere.” Naturally, the S and A are always reciprocal, and insofar as it is the message we receive from the Other that constitutes us, the A is at the level of the “you,” the lowercase a at the level of “who me,” and the S at the level of “will follow.”

To the extent that the signifier gives the sentence its weight and simultaneously gives emphasis to the “you,” and to the extent that this signifier is missing, to the extent that it is heard but nothing within the subject can respond to it—in all these respects, the function of the sentence is reduced to the scope of the remaining signifier, the free-floating signifier, the signifier that is never anchored anywhere and whose function is, of course, entirely unrestricted.

• There is no elective “you.”
• The “you” is simply the one to whom I am speaking, nothing more.
• There is no “you” fixed in any way.
• The “you” is merely the one who follows, the one who dies.

This is precisely where sentences begin to focus and halt at the point where a signifier arises that remains entirely problematic—laden with some certain significance, though it is unclear what, a significance that is, strictly speaking, missing, trivial, signaling the gap, the void, the place where nothing within the subject can respond to the signifier.

It is precisely in the measure that it is the signifier being invoked, being summoned, being implicated, that the pure and simple apparatus of the relationship to the Other arises—the empty stammering of “You are the one who…” This is the very type of sentence heard by President SCHREBER, producing this presence of the Other in a manner all the more radically present, and all the more radically Other, the more absolutely the Other, as there is nothing to situate it on a level of signifier to which the subject can accord this de-proposition. And the text is in SCHREBER. He says it regarding this relationship he now has with the Other: if the Other were to abandon him, to let him fall, even for a moment, a true Zersetzung (disintegration) occurs; he would be left to his decomposition.

This decomposition of the signifier is something that phenomenally occurs at and around a focal point constituted by a lack, a disappearance, an absence of a certain signifier insofar as, at some given moment, it was invoked as such. Suppose it is the “will follow me” in question. Everything will be evoked around the meanings that approach this for the subject. There will be “I am ready,” “I will submit,” “I will be dominated,” “I will be frustrated,” “I will be deprived,” “I will be alienated,” and “I will be influenced.” But the full sense of “will follow” will not be there.

What was the meaning that, in the case of President SCHREBER, was at one moment approximated?
It concerns what was invoked, something that, in this man—until then healthy, fully accommodating the apparatus of language as it established his relationships with his peers—was called forth in such a way as to produce such an upheaval.

So much so that nothing remained but the return of speech as such, in this half-alienated form, which became for him the essential and elective mode of relation to an Other. This Other, from that moment on, unified itself, becoming the register of unique and absolute alterity, shattering and dissipating the category of alterity concerning all other beings surrounding SCHREBER at that time.

This is the question at which we pause today. I will already point you toward the direction we will pursue. We will examine the “key words,” the signifying words, those of SCHREBER, from “nerve assumption,” “voluptuousness,” “beatitude,” and a thousand other terms revolving around a kind of central signifier that is never explicitly stated but whose presence is decisive, as he himself declares.

He employs the essential word for everything happening within his delusion as an indication. To reassure you in concluding and to show that we are on familiar ground, I will point out that throughout SCHREBER’s work, his father is mentioned only once. This occurs in reference to the most well-known, if not the most significant, work of SCHREBER’s peculiar father: The Room Gymnastics Manual of My Father. This is a manual I made every effort to procure. It is filled with little diagrams. SCHREBER cites it to say that he referred to his father’s work. It is the only time he mentions his father—when he goes to check if what the voices are telling him about the typical posture a man and a woman should adopt during sexual intercourse is accurate. Admit that it is a rather strange idea to consult The Room Gymnastics Manual for this purpose. Everyone knows that love is an ideal sport, but still, it is hardly the place one would seek rules for it.

This, despite its humorous introduction, should nevertheless guide you toward what I mean. We are also on familiar ground when we pose this question in another language—a language containing structurations that are absolutely decisive and essential across our entire domain of defining what is at stake. This is particularly true when we approach, via the internal relationship within the signifier and the coherence from sentence to sentence, the issue of what arises from a certain absence at the level of the signifier. It concerns how the subject experiences, perceives, and enters into the fundamental effective relationship at the level where the “I,” the subject, speaks, addressing “you” as such.