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(All parts in English)

I will begin my little weekly speech by scolding you, but all in all, when I see you here, so kindly gathered at such an advanced point in the year, this verse rather comes to mind:
“It is you who are the faithful ones…”

I will resume my intention related to the last meeting of the society. It is quite clear that the paths I am leading you along can lead somewhere; they are not so well-trodden that you wouldn’t have some difficulty showing you recognize the point where someone moves along them.

Still, that is no reason for you to remain silent, if only to show that you have some idea of the question. In such cases, you could show some discomfort; you gain nothing by not showing that things are not yet entirely clear to you. You may say that what you gain is that, in a group, you collectively appear “dense,” and that, ultimately, in this form, it is far more bearable.

Nevertheless, regarding the term “dense,” one cannot help but notice that certain philosophers—precisely those from the era I occasionally reference discreetly—encounter a fragment of the assertion that man, among all “beings,” is an “open being.”

One cannot fail to see, in this kind of panicked affirmation that characterizes our time, “the openness of being,” in what fascinates everyone who begins to think. At certain moments, one cannot avoid seeing it as a sort of balance or compensation for the fact that the very familiar term “dense” expresses, as is noted sententiously, a divorce between the prejudices of science when it comes to man—namely, that it increasingly fails to account for the properties that are present, such as the fact that he speaks, thinks, feels, and is, after all, a rational animal.

On the other hand, those who strive to rediscover that, assuredly, what lies at the heart of thought is not the privilege of thinkers, but that in the smallest act of existence, the human being—no matter their confusion about their own existence, especially when trying to articulate something—remains nonetheless, among all “beings,” an open being. Rest assured, in any case, it is not on that level—let me emphasize this, because some, taking a superficial view, try to spread the contrary thought—it is certainly not on that level, where those who truly think—or at least claim to—are supposed to stand, that the reality we are dealing with when exploring analytical material is situated and conceived.

Certainly, it is impossible to say anything sensible about it without restoring it within this milieu of what we will call “the gaps in being.” However, these gaps have taken on specific forms, and this is undoubtedly the precious aspect of analytical experience: it is not closed to this radically questioning and questionable side of the human condition but brings certain determinants to it. Of course, mistaking these determinants for the determined plunges psychoanalysis into the path of scientific prejudices, which lose all essence of human reality. Yet simply maintaining things on this level, without elevating them excessively, is what I believe allows us to give our experience the proper tone of what I call “mediocre reason.”

Next year—the conference by Perrier has precipitated me into this; I didn’t know what I would do—I will address the question of the object relationship or the so-called object relationship. Perhaps I will even introduce it with something that would consist of bringing together the objects of phobia and fetishes. Comparing these two series of objects, whose differences are already evident in their respective catalogs, might be an excellent way to introduce the question of the object relationship.

For today, we will pick up where we left off last time. And since I have also been told, regarding how I introduced these lessons on the signifier:

“You undoubtedly bring it from afar; it’s tiring, we don’t quite know where you’re going, but retroactively, we realize that the starting point… well, there was some connection between where you started and where you ended up.”

This way of expressing things shows that we lose nothing by retracing the path once more.

The limited question—I do not claim to cover the entire field of something as enormous as merely observing President Schreber’s case, let alone paranoia in its entirety. I only claim to shed light on a small field, an approach that consists of focusing on certain phenomena without reducing them to a mechanism entirely foreign to them—that is, without forcibly inserting them into the commonly used categories of the psychological chapter of the philosophy syllabus, but instead relating them to notions that are simply a bit more developed concerning the reality of language.

I claim that this may allow us to pose the question of origin differently, in the very precise sense of determinism, in the very precise sense of the occasion for the entry into psychosis—namely, ultimately, entirely etiological determinations. Let us ask the question: What is necessary for the “it” to speak?

This is one of the most essential phenomena of psychosis, and framing it in this way may already serve to steer us away from false problems, such as the one provoked by noting that [in psychosis], the “it,” the “id,” is conscious.

Increasingly, we dispense with this reference and this category of consciousness, about which Freud himself always said:

• Literally, we no longer know where to place it.
• Economically, nothing is more uncertain than its incidence—it seems.

Whether it arises or not is, from an economic point of view, entirely contingent. It is thus well within the Freudian tradition that we position ourselves when we say that, after all, the only thing we have to consider is that it speaks.

To make it speak, we have tried to focus the inquiry on: Why does it speak? Why, for the subject themselves, does it speak—meaning it presents itself as speech, and that this speech is “it,” not “them”?

We have tried to center this speech around the “you,” that point of “you” which, as someone pointed out to me, is distant from the point I reached when I attempted to symbolize the signifier through the example of the highway. This “you” point—again, we will return to it, as it was the focus of all our progress last time, and perhaps some objections raised to me.

This “you” we constantly use. Let us pause at this “you” if, as I claim, the deepening of its function must be central to the original apprehension of what I am leading you toward and urging you to reflect upon.

Last time, someone said to me regarding “You are the one who will follow me”—raising a grammatical objection that there was some arbitrariness in linking “You are the one who will follow me” to “You are the one who will follow,” arguing that the elements were not homologous, that indeed it was not the same “the one” being referred to in both cases, since this one could also be elided, and that “You will follow me” is a command.

This is entirely different from “You are the one who will follow me,” which—if we understand it in its full sense—is not a command but a mandate. I mean that “You are the one who will follow me” implies the presence of the Other, something developed that assumes presence, an entire universe established by discourse. It is within this universe that “You are the one who will follow me” makes sense. We will return to this.

Let us first pause at this “you” and make this remark, which seems self-evident but is not commonly noted: the said “you” has no proper meaning. It is not simply because I address it indifferently to anyone, but I address it just as well to myself as to you and even to all sorts of things. I can even “tutoyer” (use informal “you”) something as foreign to me as possible; I can even tutoyer an animal, an inanimate object. However, the issue is not there.

The “you,” if you look closely, is very near, formally and grammatically, to the side of things that reduces to you any usage of the signifier where you involuntarily insert meanings—and that you believe in grammar! All your schooling roughly boils down, as an intellectual gain, to having made you believe in grammar. They didn’t tell you that was the point—otherwise, the goal wouldn’t have been achieved—but that is roughly what you retained. But if you stop at sentences like:

• “If you risk a glance outside, they’ll shoot you down.”
• Or: “You see the bridge, then you turn right.”

You will notice:

• That the “you,” when examined closely, does not at all carry the subjective value of some reality of the other or the partner.
• That the “you” is entirely equivalent to a site or a point.
• That the “you” fully assumes the value of a conjunction.
• That this “you” introduces a condition or a temporality.

I know this may seem entirely speculative to you, but I assure you that if you had even a little practice with the Chinese language, you would be utterly convinced: there is this famous term that combines the sign for woman and the sign for mouth, 如 [rú]. But one can have much fun with these Chinese characters.

The “you” is someone addressed in the form of an order, that is, “as it is proper to speak to women!” Of course, one can also say a thousand other things, so let us not dwell on this.

What is far more interesting are sentences that I will not quote in full here—since it might seem excessive—but I can show you how “you,” under this form, exactly the same 如, is used to formulate the locution “as if.” Or again, that another form of “you” is used precisely, as I just mentioned, to properly express—and in a way entirely free from ambiguity—a “when” or a “if” introducing a conditional.

This reference may demonstrate that it is not excluded—if the matter is less evident in our languages, and if we encounter certain resistances in understanding and admitting it in the examples I have just provided—that this resistance arises solely from the prejudices of grammar that compel you…
because suddenly, instead of simply hearing a phrase, you scrutinize it…
compelling you, through the artifices of etymological and grammatical analysis, to impose upon this “you” the second person singular. Of course, it is the second person singular, but the question is: what purpose does it serve?

In other words, the point is to realize that the “you” has a number of other elements which are referred to…
in languages that, for us, have the advantage of slightly broadening our minds…
I am referring specifically to these inflectionless languages…
as “particles,” those curious, multiple signifiers—sometimes so extensive and varied that they disorient us when we attempt to construct a rational grammar of these languages—but which nonetheless constitute a linguistic contribution that is, of course, universal.

It would suffice to write in a somewhat phonetic manner to observe that even tonal or accentual differences emphasize the use of a term like the signifier “you” in ways that extend far beyond and entirely differently from the viewpoint of meaning, which an identification of the person claimed to grant it as an autonomous signified. In other words, in Greek, the “you” has the value of introducing what in linguistics is called the protasis, that which is posited beforehand. It is the most general way of articulating what precedes, properly speaking, the statement that gives importance to the sentence.

There would be much more to say about this, and if we were to delve into the details to refine the signifier “you,” we would need to make extensive use of formulas like “you only have to…” which we often use to dismiss our interlocutor. This phrase has so little to do with “only” that a slip of the tongue very naturally morphs it into “just do that.” It becomes something that inflects and modifies. The “you only have to…” does not carry the reflective value of something that would allow for illuminating semantic remarks.

The important thing is for you to grasp:

• That this “you” is far from having a univocal value, far from being anything we might hypostatize as the Other.
• That this “you” is, properly speaking, within the signifier, something I would call a way of hooking this Other, precisely within discourse, of anchoring meaning to the Other.

It does not, therefore, essentially coincide with what is called the addressee, meaning the one to whom one speaks—this is too obvious. The addressee is often absent. And in imperatives, where the addressee is most evidently implicated—since this is the basis on which a certain so-called simple locutionary register of language has been defined—the “you” is not manifested. Instead, it functions as a kind of limit that begins with the signal, that is, the articulated signal. For instance, “Fire!” is indisputably a sentence; simply pronouncing it demonstrates that it provokes a reaction.

Then comes the imperative, which requires nothing else. It constitutes an additional stage: there is the “you” implied, for example, in the command in the future tense that I mentioned earlier. This “you” acts as a way of hooking the Other into discourse, situating them within the curve of meaning represented by Saussure—a parallel to the curve of the signifier. This “you” is this anchoring of the Other within the wave of meaning.

This term, which serves to identify the Other at a point within this wave, is, in the end—to put it plainly—if we follow this “you” and push our understanding, even our metaphor, to its ultimate radical conclusion, a punctuation mark. This is particularly evident in the forms of non-inflectional languages, where punctuation plays the most decisive role in anchoring meaning. In such cases, when we have a classical text, its meaning can vary entirely depending on where punctuation is placed. Indeed, this variability is often exploited to enrich interpretation and the variety of meanings within a text.

The entire intervention referred to as “commentary” in traditional textual forms plays precisely on how to apprehend and fix, in a given case, where punctuation ought to be placed. The “you” is a signifier, a punctuation mark, something through which the Other is fixed at a point of meaning. The question then becomes: What is required to elevate this “you” to subjectivity?

This “you,” which is there, in a way, unfixed within the substrate of discourse, in its pure bearing, in its fundamental idea—this “you,” which is not so much a designation of the Other as a means of operating upon them, and which nevertheless is always present in us, in a state of suspension, comparable to those otoliths I mentioned the other day at the same moment I began introducing those formulas. With some artifice, these formulas allow us to guide small crustaceans with an electromagnet to wherever we wish.

This “you,” which, for ourselves, as we leave it free and suspended within our own discourse, is always capable of exerting this anchoring, this conduction against which we can do nothing but oppose it or respond to it.

What is needed to promote this “you” to subjectivity? When I say “to promote this ‘you’ to subjectivity,” I mean to make this “you,” itself in its form as a signifier present in discourse, become for us something capable of supporting something comparable to our ego, and something that is not, that is to say, a myth.

It is quite certain that this is the question that interests us, for after all, it is not so surprising to hear people vocalize their inner discourse in the manner of psychotics—a little more than we do ourselves. It has long been observed that the phenomena of mentism, whether provoked by something or not, yield phenomena entirely comparable to what we ultimately collect as testimony from a psychotic, as long as we do not interpret it as being caused by some source emitting interference. We could simply say, perhaps naively, that this “you” presupposes an Other, which, in essence, lies beyond it.

Indeed, it is around the analysis of the verb “to be” that our next step should be situated. We cannot exhaust everything proposed to us concerning the analysis of the verb “to be” either. I make these references by referring to philosophers I now more precisely name—those who have centered their meditations on the question of Dasein. All this inquiry into the verb “to be” has been revisited, and we are compelled to evoke it as having been pursued particularly in German, since it is in German that Dasein has found its identification.

On this matter, Mr. Heidegger promoted some reflections in his metaphysical treatise concerning Being, beginning to consider it from the grammatical and etymological angle. I will tell you immediately that I do not entirely agree. For those among you who know these texts, or who may have encountered them more or less faithfully commented upon—such as in an article recently dedicated to them by Jean Wahl—the notion of Being…
with the nuances it derives solely from its level as a signifier, through the analysis of the word and its conjugation (or, more precisely, its declension), as is commonly said…
leads Mr. Heidegger to emphasize the various radical forms that, as you know, constitute this famous verb “to be” in both German and French. Far from being a simple verb, it is not even a single verb. It is too evident, for instance, that the form “suis” does not come from the same root as “es,” “est,” or “fut.” Moreover, there is no strict equivalence between these forms within the verb “to be”: the form “été” recurs across different languages.

This “été”—while “fut” has its equivalent in Latin, as does “suis” and the series of “est”—derives from “stare,” originating from a different source than the roots of the other forms. It comes from “stare.”

The variety and even the distribution differ in German, where “sind” groups with “bist,” whereas in French, the second person groups with the third. The essential point is that, for European languages, approximately three roots have been identified, corresponding roughly to “sommes,” “est,” and **”fut”—**which can be linked to the Greek root ϕύσις (phusis), relating to the idea of life and growth.

For the others, Mr. Heidegger emphasizes the two aspects of the meaning “sten,” which would align with “stare”: standing upright, standing alone, and “verbahen,” meaning to endure. This meaning is still connected to the aspect or source of ϕύσις.

The idea of “standing upright,” the idea of “life,” and the idea of “endurance” would, for Heidegger, emerge from an etymological analysis—more or less supplemented by grammatical analysis—and would allow us to understand that it is from a kind of reduction and indetermination imposed upon all these meanings that the notion of Being arises.

To summarize, this type of analysis, as a whole, tends more to elide or mask…
what is singular in the advancement Heidegger attempts to initiate…
what is absolutely irreducible in the function of the verb **”to be”—**what it ultimately serves, but which we would be wrong to believe emerges from a sort of progressive evolution of these various terms.

It is the purely and simply copular function. And in the context of our inquiry—namely, at what moment and by what mechanism this “you”…
as we have defined it, as punctuation, as an indeterminate mode of signifying anchorage…
how this “you” attains subjectivity.

I believe this occurs very essentially when it is taken up…
and this is why I chose the exemplary phrases we began with: “You are the one who…”
…when it is taken up in this purely copular function, and in this form of its pure state, which consists, properly speaking, of its ostensive function.

We must identify the element that, by elevating this “you,” transforms it into something that surpasses, to a degree, its indeterminate function of striking, and begins to make it, if not a subjectivity, at least the first step toward “you are the one who will follow me”: it is “it is you who will follow me.”

Notice that these are not the same thing. “It is you who will follow me” is an ostension, and in truth, it presupposes the assembled presence of all those who, united or not in a community, are assumed to constitute its body, to be the support of the discourse within which this ostension of “It is you who will follow me” is inscribed. When we examine this closely, we see that what corresponds to this “It is you” is precisely the second formula, namely, “You are the one who will follow me.” The “You are the one who will follow me” presupposes, as I said, this imaginary assembly of those who are the supports of the discourse, this presence of witnesses, even a tribunal before which the subject receives the warning or the summons to which, ultimately, they are compelled to respond, “I am following you,” meaning to comply with the order.

At this level, there is no other response available to the subject than to retain the message exactly as it is sent to them, at most modifying the person, meaning transforming it for themselves into “You are the one who will follow me,” which then becomes an element of their inner discourse to which they are bound to respond, whether they like it or not, in order not to follow.

This indication of the terrain on which they are summoned to respond requires that they do not follow it at all on that terrain—in other words, that they refuse to hear. Once they hear, they are compelled to act. This refusal to hear is, properly speaking, a strength that no subject—except one with special preparatory gymnastics—truly possesses, and it is precisely in this register that the power of discourse lies and manifests itself.

In other words, this “Other” or this “you” at this level, as we reach it, is the Other as I reveal it through my discourse. I designate it, or even denounce it; it is the Other as caught in this ostension relative to the totality presupposed by the universe of discourse. Yet at the same time, I do not remove it from this universe; I objectify it there, occasionally designating its object relations within this discourse, and as long as it seeks nothing but this—
as we all know, this is precisely the property of the neurotic—it is with this that one designates it…
then things can go quite far.

Note that it is not entirely useless to give people what they ask for; the question is simply whether it is beneficial. In fact, if it incidentally has some effect, it is precisely to the extent that it helps them complete their vocabulary.

It is, of course, not what those who employ this method of operating with the object relation believe it to be, as they think they are effectively designating these object relations. In truth, it is rarely and purely by chance that this way of proceeding produces a beneficial effect, as this method of completing their vocabulary may indeed allow the subject to extract themselves from the kind of significant implication that constitutes the symptomatology of their neurosis.

This is why things have always worked better when this sort of vocabulary addition for our delusional subject retained some freshness. But since what we have in our little notebooks as Nervenanhang for neurotics has—at least for the cunning—lost much of its value, it no longer fulfills the function one might hope for in terms of the re-subjectivization of the subject.

By this, I mean the operation of extracting oneself from this significant implication, in which we have circumscribed the essence and very forms of the neurotic phenomenon. In other words, the issue lies in wanting to correctly handle this object relation, and to do so correctly, one must convey that, in this relation, the subject themselves is ultimately the object. It is, in fact, because they seek themselves as the object that they have lost themselves as the subject.

Simply put, at the point we have reached, there is no common measure between ourselves and this “you” as we have brought it forth, this kind of relationship necessarily followed by absorption, this relationship of injunction more or less obligatorily followed by a disjunction. Ultimately, to have an authentic relationship with this Other on this level, there is no way to find it other than in the following direction:

To the one to whom we say, “You are the one who will follow me,” we must bring the objective closer.
The one who then becomes “You are the one who follows me” must respond, “You are the one I follow.” This opens up to wordplay and ambiguity, as it concerns the relationship of identification with the Other. But if indeed we guide each other through mutual identification toward our desire, inevitably we encounter each other there—and we will meet there in an incomparable way. Whether it is one or the other, whether it is you or me who possesses it, since it is as I am you that I exist—and here, the ambiguity is total.

“I am” is not merely to follow; it is also “I am, you are,” and even “you, the one who, at the meeting point, will kill me.” That is to say, the relationship highlighted at this level, where the Other is taken as an object in the relationship of ostension, the only point where we encounter them as a subjectivity equivalent to ours, is on the imaginary plane. It is on the plane of me or you, one or the other, and never both together. It is on the plane where our ego is the Other.

It is precisely on this plane where all confusions are possible regarding the object relation, and the object of our love is none other than ourselves—it is “You are the one who kills me.”

We might note the fortunate opportunity provided by the French language, where the very signifier embodies the various ways of understanding the form “tu es” and how, within the meaning of “you” itself, we in France have the advantage of possessing the radical signifier of “tu.” In the second person singular, reproduced even in its alphabetical form, “tu” is inscribed—and when this passes to the other side of “the one who…”

…we can exploit this indefinitely. If I told you that we do this all day long: if, instead of saying “to be or not to be, to be or…” we said “you are the one who kills me,” etc., this would be the foundation of the relationship with the Other. This means that in all imaginary identification, “tu es” results in the destruction of the Other, and conversely, because this destruction exists only in the form of transference, it eludes us in what we will call “tutoyance” (the use of “tu”).

I could perhaps show you a passage to attempt this particularly despairing and stupid type of analysis, such as what is inscribed in a famous volume of the same school, called The Meaning of Meaning. This leads to utterly dizzying ideas, reminiscent of a kind of buzzing.

Similarly, to translate a passage from [Pichon?], indeed well-known, where it involves urging people who have a small beginning of virtue to at least have the consistency to complete its entire field. Somewhere, even the “you” says: “kill me.” This signifies something about being unable to bear it, and he applies this to the field of justice, beginning also from this reasonable conception:

“You cannot bear the truth of the ‘you,’ in which you can always be designated for what you are—namely, a scoundrel. If you want the respect of your neighbors, rise to this notion of proper distance, that is, a general notion of the Other, of the order of the world, and of the law.”

This “you” seems to have completely bewildered commentators, and truthfully, I think our examination of “you” today will make you quite familiar with the register in question.

Let us take the next step: the other must, therefore, be recognized as such.
What, then, is required for the other to be recognized as such?
What is the next step?

Ultimately, it is the Other insofar as it is present in the sentence of mandate I have sought to indicate to you. This is where we must pause for a moment. After all, this crossing is not something inaccessible, for we have seen that this vanishing alterity of imaginary identification of the me—as long as it encounters the you only at a limit point where neither can coexist with the other—means that the Other, with a capital O, must be recognized beyond this relationship, even of reciprocal exclusion. In other words, it must be recognized as being just as elusive as me in this vanishing relationship. In other terms, it must be evoked as that which it does not recognize in itself, and this is indeed the meaning of “You are the one who will follow me.”

If you examine closely, if this “You are the one who will follow me” is delegation, even consecration, it is because the response to this “You are the one who will follow me” is not a play on words, but rather “I follow you,” and “I am.” “I am what you have just said,” this being the use of the third person absolutely essential to discourse insofar as it designates what is the very subject of the discourse—that is, what the discourse has stated: “I am what you have just said,” which, in this case, means exactly: “I am precisely what I do not know, because what you have just said is entirely indeterminate, as I do not know where you are leading.” If the response to “You are the one who will follow me” is complete, it must say “I am,” exactly the same “I am.”

You find yourself in the fable of The Tortoise and the Two Ducks: it reaches this critical moment when finally the ducks have offered to take the tortoise to the Americas, and everyone awaits the sight of this little tortoise clinging to the travel stick. “The queen?” says the tortoise, “Yes, truly, I follow her.” Upon this, Pichon poses enormous questions to determine whether it concerns a queen in the abstract state or a concrete queen, speculating in a manner bewildering for someone with some finesse in grammar and linguistics, wondering whether she ought to have said: “I am she.”

If she were speaking of a truly existing queen, she might say many things: “I am the queen.” But if she says something like “I follow her”—that is, what you have just mentioned—no other distinction needs to be introduced, except to know that “her” refers to what is implicated in the discourse.

What is implicated in the discourse is precisely the subject here. We must pause for a moment at this inaugural speech of dialogue, when it comes to “You are the one who will follow me.” We must briefly measure its enormity: that it is to the “you” itself, as unknown, that we address ourselves. This is what gives it its ease; this is also what gives it its strength; this is also what allows it to persist from “you are” into the “will follow” of the second part, persisting precisely because, in the interval, it may falter.

Thus, in this formula, I am not addressing a me as I show it, but all the signifiers composing the subject opposed to us. I say: all the signifiers they possess, including their symptoms. It is to their gods as well as their demons that we address ourselves, and it is for this reason that this form of sentence, this way of stating the sentence I have so far called one of mandate, I will henceforth call “invocation,” with the religious connotations of that term—that is to say, I infuse them with this faith that is mine, not merely with this inert formula, this invocation.

I point out in passing that in the works of classical authors, and perhaps in Cicero, invocation is properly the designation, in its original religious form, of precisely what I have just described. It is a verbal formula through which, before combat, one seeks to make the gods…
what I earlier called signifiers, the gods and demons, the gods of the enemy…
favorable. It is to them that invocation is addressed, and this is why I believe the term invocation properly designates the highest form of sentence, thanks to which all the words I utter in this invocation are true words, evocative voices, to which each of these sentences must respond, the emblem of the true Other.

Thus, as you see, as you have just observed through these two levels:

• How the “you” depends on the signifier as such,
• How the nature and quality of the “you” called upon to respond depend on the level of the signifier that is vociferated.

From the moment when the signifier carrying the sentence fails to reach the other, the “I am” that responds to you can only take the form of an eternal question: “You are the one who… me.” What? At the extreme, what emerges is a reduction to the preceding level: “You are the one who… me. You are the one who… etc. You are the one who kills me.”

The “you” reappears each time that, in the call to the Other, uttered as such, the signifier falls into the field of the Other’s signifier, which is excluded, Verworfen (foreclosed), and inaccessible to the Other. I say, then, that at this moment, the signifier produces the reduction but intensifies it to the level of pure imaginary relation.

At this point occurs that singular phenomenon which has perplexed all commentators on the case of President Schreber: the bewildering “murder of souls,” as he calls it, which for him marks the signal of entry into psychosis. This is something that, for us analysts and commentators, may naturally hold all sorts of meanings, particularly as we place it within the imaginary field. Specifically, it relates to the short-circuiting of the affective relationship, which transforms the Other into a being of pure desire who, in the human imaginary register, can only be a being of pure inter-destruction.

This type of purely dual relationship constitutes the very register of aggression at its most radical source. No doubt, in the case of President Schreber, this emergence of purely dual aggression is interpreted by Freud within the register of the homosexual relationship as such.

We have countless proofs of this; it aligns most coherently with everything we perceive as the source of aggression, the emergence of aggression through the short-circuiting of the dual simplification of the triangular relationship—in other words, the Oedipal relationship.

However, given that the text lacks—or is purported to lack—the elements that might allow us to examine it more closely, such as Schreber’s actual relationships with his father or a presumed brother referenced by Freud, we do not require much additional information to understand that it is necessarily through this purely imaginary relationship with the “you” that the register of the “you” must pass when, so to speak, it steps beyond the limits of […], becoming a “you” invoked and evoked as such.

That is, a “you” summoned from the Other, from the field of the Other, by the emergence of a primordial signifier, which, however, cannot in any case be received by the Other. This is because the signifier as such, the “you are the one who is a father” (or as I named it last time, “you are the one who will be a father”), cannot in any case be received. This is because the signifier, as such, represents that indeterminate support, something around which a number of meanings—or not even meanings, but series of meanings—condense and coalesce, converging through and around the existence of this signifier.

Before the Name-of-the-Father, there was no father; there were all sorts of other things. Freud himself intuited this, and it is precisely why he wrote Totem and Taboo—to glimpse what direction might reveal what preceded. But assuredly, before the term father was historically established within a certain register, there was no father.

I offer this kind of historical perspective as a mere concession, for it interests me not in the slightest. I have no interest in prehistory, except insofar as it indicates that it is highly probable that certain essential signifiers were absent for Neanderthal man. But there is no need to look so far back; these signifiers are equally absent in psychotics, and consequently, we can observe them in objects accessible to us.

Let us stop here, noting that when we proceed beyond this crucial moment—this absolutely essential crossing that you will always find if you observe attentively, if you know how to pinpoint it—in every entry into psychosis, there is a moment when, from the Other as such, from the field of the Other, comes the call of an essential signifier that cannot be received.

In one of my clinical presentations, I highlighted the case of a man from the Antilles whose family history illustrated the problem of the original ancestor—a Frenchman who had arrived there, lived an extraordinarily heroic life, a sort of pioneer, intertwined with remarkable highs and lows of fortune, and who became the ideal of the entire family.

This figure, himself deeply uprooted, lived near Detroit as a relatively well-off craftsman. One day, he found himself literally confronted by a woman who announced to him that she was going to have a child. It was uncertain whether the child was his, but what is absolutely clear is that, within days of this announcement, the first hallucinations emerged. It was upon being told, “You are going to be a father,” that something occurred—someone appeared to him and said, “You are Saint Thomas.”

I believe this was Saint Thomas the doubter, not Saint Thomas Aquinas. The subsequent proclamations leave no doubt: they came from Elizabeth, she who, very late in life, announced that she was to bear a child.

In brief, the connection between this register of paternity and the emergence of certain phenomena that present themselves as annunciatory revelations—regarding all that might allow someone, who otherwise literally cannot—contemplate generation, is no coincidence. And it is not by chance that I use the term “contemplate.”

What a generation could be, in sum—a generation akin to the alchemical speculation about “what is generation?” when we do not, properly speaking, touch upon the sexual correlations—is always ready to emerge as a sort of response in detour, as an attempt to reconstruct something that is, properly speaking, unreceivable for the psychotic subject.

From that moment, precisely because the ego is evoked for a moment, however fleetingly…
and I ask you to search, in each case, for what is evoked beyond any signifier that might be meaningful for the subject…
the response can only be the permanent, I would say constantly sensitized, use of the signifier as a whole.

What we observe is that, in its emptiest, most neutral, and most ego-centric forms, the mnemonic character accompanying all human acts is immediately animated, vocalized, and becomes the ordinary mode of relation for an ego that is evoked but cannot find its counterpart in the signifier at the level to which it is called. Its ego power is invoked, but it cannot respond.

From this, we see unfold all the phenomena that, in the case of President Schreber, give this case its extraordinarily rich character: all the immediacy of gestures and acts is perpetually commented upon. This is not such a peculiarity since it is even the very definition of what is called “mental automatism.” And why?

Because precisely, insofar as the subject is called upon in a domain where they cannot respond, this becomes the only way to react and reconnect with the humanization they are losing. It is by perpetually presenting themselves in this running commentary on the current of life that constitutes what we call the text of mental automatism.

For the subject who has crossed this threshold, there is no longer the customary security of meaning, except in this spoken accompaniment.

I believe this is deeply the mechanism behind mental automatism, and this is what, through a detour, justifies the very use of the term “automatism.” After all, we might note here that the power of the signifier is such that, in the end, words seem to be more intelligent than people. The term “automatism” has been extensively used in mental pathology, even without a clear understanding of its implications. Reflect carefully: what has been the scope of its use?

If the term has a relatively precise sense in neurology, where certain liberation phenomena are called “automatisms,” its adoption in psychiatry to designate the phenomenon of mental automatism remains at least problematic. However, in Clérambault’s theory, the term automatism cannot be adopted analogously. Nevertheless, it is the most accurate term because, if you examine closely, αὐτόματον (automaton), as Aristotle uses it in contrast to τύχη (fortune), a distinction now almost entirely forgotten, reveals something crucial.

Returning to the signifier—while acknowledging the limits of referencing etymology in such contexts—we see that αὐτόματον (automaton: that which moves by itself) means nothing other than something akin to “myth,” “math,” which precisely means “to think.”

Automatism is what truly thinks by itself; it has no connection to that beyond, the ego, which gives its subject to thought. This reminds us, once again, of something consistently visible and problematic. If language speaks on its own, it is precisely here that the term automatism finds its justification. This is what gives the term mental automatism its authentic resonance, and likely its satisfying quality for us, as employed by Clérambault.

This introduction of Schreber into psychosis, illuminated by what we have just highlighted, we will compare next time with other perspectives to draw connections and identify what is missing in each case.

The introduction to the truth, which does not alter in its foundation, setting, or overall balance of its structure, is consistent between Freud’s view—rooted in latent homosexuality implying a feminine position—and the leap it involves. Freud tells us: a fantasy of impregnating impregnation, as if the matter were self-evident. This means that any acceptance of a feminine position implicitly entails, as if by extension, the register so richly elaborated in Schreber’s delusion, which ultimately makes him the wife of God.

Freud’s theory on this is that this is the only way for Schreber to avoid the consequence of castration anxiety. He will undergo:

• But it may not be emasculation; it could simply be demasculinization or transformation into a woman.
• After all, as Schreber himself remarks, is it not better to be a spiritual woman than an utterly oppressed, miserable, and possibly castrated man?

In short, the resolution to the conflict introduced by latent homosexuality lies in this expansion of Schreber’s own universe to the scale of the Schrebian God.

In essence, we will see that this theory best respects the progression of psychosis as understood by Freud. However, there are certainly objections raised by Mrs. Ida Macalpine, who deserves, in this instance, to provide a counterpoint, or even to challenge or complement certain parts of Freud’s theory. She emphasizes, in contrast, the determining factor in the process of psychosis as stemming from the direction of the pregnancy fantasy. This fantasy of pregnancy implicitly rests on something suggesting a rigorous symmetry between the two significant lacks that can manifest in a neuroticizing way in each sex.

She goes quite far with this idea, and there are some highly amusing aspects to it. Indeed, the text provides ample material to support it, even evoking the backdrop of a kind of heliolithic civilization, where the sun, regarded as feminine and embodied in stone, would serve as the fundamental symbol—a sort of feminine counterpart to the promotion of the phallus in classical theory. This notion finds a particularly amusing echo in the name of the hospital where Schreber was institutionalized: Sonnenstein (“Sunstone”).

I mention this simply to illustrate that we frequently encounter, and should not underestimate the significance of, these peculiar “tricks of the signifier,” these uncanny coincidences we continually observe in concrete analyses, even with the least neurotic individuals. We see these strange overlaps arising from all corners of the horizon—bizarre homonymies that seem to grant an otherwise elusive unity to a person’s destiny, as well as their symptoms.

Certainly, there is less reason than ever to shy away from such inquiries when examining moments of entry into psychosis, for instance. Note in passing that during Schreber’s second relapse:

• Schreber arrived at Flechsig’s consultation in an extremely disturbed state.
• Flechsig had already been elevated in Schreber’s mind to the status of a prominent paternal figure.
• Moreover, the observation contains many antecedents, what I might call a suspension or heightened alertness of the function of paternity: we know from Schreber’s own testimony that he had hoped to become a father.
• We also know that during the eight-year interval between his first and second crises, his wife experienced several spontaneous miscarriages.

Amid all this, one particularly significant, perhaps unfortunate, statement was made. Flechsig, who had already appeared in Schreber’s dreams and in intrusive imagery—such as the notion that “it would be beautiful to be a woman subjected to coupling”—reportedly told him that great progress had been made in psychiatry since their last meeting, and that they would induce one of those little sleeps that would be quite “fruitful.”

Perhaps that was precisely the wrong thing to say, for from that moment on, Schreber was entirely unable to sleep and, that very night, attempted to hang himself. Here we enter the domain of procreation as implicated in the subject’s fundamental relationship to death. This is what I hope to explore further next time.

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THE TORTOISE AND THE TWO DUCKS

A tortoise, who was rather light-headed,
Grew tired of her hole and wanted to see the world.
Eagerly, we dream of foreign lands;
Eagerly, those who limp hate their homes.

Two ducks, to whom the tortoise shared this lovely plan,
Told her they could satisfy her wish:
“Do you see this wide path?
We will carry you through the air to America.
You will see many republics,
Many kingdoms, many peoples; and you will benefit
From the varied customs you will observe.
Ulysses did the same. Who would have thought
That Ulysses would be part of this story?”

The tortoise listened to their proposition.
The deal was struck; the birds devised a contraption
To transport their pilgrim.
A stick was placed crosswise in her mouth.
“Hold tight,” they said, “and don’t let go.”

Each duck took one end of the stick.
The tortoise, lifted into the air, astonished everyone
Who saw this slow creature and her house
Moving in such a manner,
Suspended between the two ducks.

“Marvelous!” they cried. “Come see in the skies
The Queen of Tortoises pass by.”

“The Queen? Yes, indeed. I truly am she.
Don’t mock me.” She would have done better
To hold her tongue and pass by silently;
For as she loosened her grip on the stick,
She fell and crashed to the ground,
Dying at the feet of those watching her.

Her downfall was caused by her indiscretion.
Imprudence, chatter, foolish vanity,
And idle curiosity
Are all closely related.
They are all children of the same lineage.