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(All parts in English)

Ladies and Gentlemen,
In the series of lectures I have been entrusted to deliver by the Sixth Section of the École Pratique des Hautes Études, I will speak to you about the Foundations of Psychoanalysis. Today, I only wish to indicate the meaning I intend to give to this title and the manner in which I hope to fulfill it.

However, I must first introduce myself to you—even though most of you here, though not all, already know me—because the circumstances compel me to address a preliminary question in presenting this subject: “What authorizes me to do so?”

I am authorized to speak here before you on this subject by virtue of having previously conducted what has been referred to as a “seminar” directed at psychoanalysts. But, as some of you know, I resigned from this position—which, for ten years, I had truly devoted my life to—due to events that occurred within what is called a “psychoanalytic society,” specifically the very one that had entrusted me with this role.

It could be argued that my qualification is not thereby invalidated for fulfilling the same function elsewhere. Nonetheless, I choose to suspend this question for the moment.

If I am called upon to continue, let us say, merely to extend this teaching which was mine, I consider that I must begin, before opening what thus presents itself as a new stage, with expressions of gratitude. First, I owe thanks to Mr. Fernand Braudel, President of the Section of the École des Hautes Études, who has delegated me here before you, under whose gracious aegis I am able to do so under the banner of this highly honored institution.

Mr. Braudel, unable to attend, expressed his regret at not being present to witness this homage that I pay him today. I also acknowledge the nobility with which he, on this occasion, sought to remedy the predicament I found myself in—for a teaching about which, in essence, he had received nothing but reports of its style and reputation—ensuring that I would not be purely and simply reduced to silence.

Nobility is indeed the proper term here when it involves welcoming someone in the position I find myself in: that of a refugee. He acted with urgency upon being prompted by the vigilance of my friend, Claude Lévi-Strauss, whose presence today brings me great joy and who knows how much I value this testimony of his attention to work—my work—that is developed in profound correspondence with his own.

I extend my thanks to all those who, on this occasion, have shown me their sympathy, culminating in the graciousness of Mr. Robert Flacelière, Director of the École Normale Supérieure, who kindly made this hall [E.N.S., Rue d’Ulm, Salle Dussane] available to the École des Hautes Études. Without it, I would not have known how to receive you so numerous, and for this, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

All of this concerns, therefore, the base—in a sense, I would say the “local” or even “military” sense of the word—the base for my teaching.

Allow me now to approach the matter at hand: the Foundations of Psychoanalysis.

Regarding the Foundations of Psychoanalysis, my seminar was, if I may say so, implicated in them. It was an element:

• since it, in essence, contributed to grounding it concretely,
• since it was part of the praxis itself,
• since it was internal to it,
• since it was directed towards an element of this praxis, namely, the training of psychoanalysts.

At one time, I was able—ironically—to define, perhaps temporarily and faute de mieux, amidst the difficulties I faced, a criterion of what psychoanalysis is, as “the treatment dispensed by a psychoanalyst.”

Henry Ey, who is here today, will recall this article, as it was published in the volume of the encyclopedia he directed. Since he is present, it will be all the easier for me to evoke the fact of the determined effort to have that article removed from said encyclopedia—to the point where even he, whose sympathies for me are well-known, was ultimately powerless to halt this action, which was executed by a governing committee that included psychoanalysts!

This article, which I aim to include in what I am currently preparing—a compilation of some of my writings [Écrits will be published by Seuil in 1966]—will, I believe, enable you to judge whether it has lost its relevance. I think not, particularly because all the questions I raised in it are the very ones that remain present today, accentuated by the fact that I find myself here, introducing once again the same question: “What is psychoanalysis?”

Undoubtedly, this question contains more than one ambiguity. As I described in the article, it remains a “bat-like question.” To examine it in daylight is precisely what I intended to propose.

Hence, regarding the teaching I must present to you today, the position from which I revisit this problem—a position that one could define as having changed, no longer entirely within and not clearly outside—is far from anecdotal.

For this reason, you will find no recourse on my part to anecdote or any form of polemics as I point out this fact: that my teaching, explicitly identified as such, has been subjected to a rather extraordinary form of censorship by an organization…
which is called the Executive Committee of that international organization known as the International Psychoanalytical Society.

This censorship is nothing less than the prohibition of this teaching, declared null and void in terms of any implications it might have for accrediting psychoanalysts within the register of this society. The prohibition itself has been made the condition for the affiliation of the society to which I belong.

This is still not sufficient: it has been stipulated that this affiliation will only be accepted if guarantees are provided that my teaching will never, through this society, be incorporated into activities aimed at the training of analysts. This is therefore something comparable to what is referred to elsewhere as “major excommunication.” Even so, in the contexts where this term is used, it is never pronounced without the possibility of return.

Such a notion exists, but only in this form, within a religious community identified by the indicative, symbolic term of the Synagogue. It is precisely what SPINOZA was subjected to in two stages: on July 27, 1656—a peculiar tricentennial, as it coincides with FREUD’s tricentennial [born May 6, 1856]—on July 27, 1656, SPINOZA was subjected to the חרם (herem), an excommunication that indeed corresponds to this “major excommunication.” He awaited some time—completing our tricentennial—before becoming the subject of the Chammata, which entails the added condition of the impossibility of return.

Do not think, either, that this is a mere metaphorical play, a puerile game to invoke when considering the field—admittedly vast and serious—that we have to cover. I believe—and you will see—that it introduces something…
not only through the echoes it evokes but also through the structure it implies…
it introduces something fundamental to our inquiry into the praxis of psychoanalysis.

Of course, I am not saying—though it would not be impossible—that the psychoanalytic community is a Church. But undeniably, the question arises as to what it might possess that resonates here with a religious practice. We shall come to this and will see that this path will not prove unproductive for us.

Nor would I need to emphasize this fact, though it carries a certain weight, bringing with it a whiff of scandal [σκανδαλον (skandalon): trap, stumbling block (cf. Chantraine Dictionary)], if—as with everything I will discuss today—you could be sure of finding its echoes in subsequent applications.

Of course, I do not mean to suggest that, in such circumstances, I am merely an indifferent subject. Do not think that for me, no more than for the intermediary…
whose role I did not hesitate a moment ago to reference as a precedent or point of reference in such a case…
no more for me than, I presume, for him, is this a matter of comedy, in the sense of something laughable.

However, I would like to note in passing—because it reveals a certain level of psychoanalytic perception—that I did not miss the broad comic dimension of this episode. It was not found in the formulation I referred to as excommunication. It rather stemmed from the situation in which I found myself for two years, knowing that I was…
and precisely by those who were, in relation to me, in the position of colleagues, or even students…
in the position of being what is called “negotiated.” For the issue at hand was to determine to what extent concessions regarding the legitimizing value of my teaching could be balanced against what was sought in return: the legitimization of this society.

I do not want to let this occasion pass…
in the same perspective I mentioned earlier, namely, to identify what we may later revisit…
without noting—something we will revisit—that this is, strictly speaking, an experience that can be lived, when one is in it, in the comic dimension. However, I believe it may only be fully grasped by a psychoanalyst.

Being “negotiated” is not, for a human subject, an exceptional or rare situation, despite the rhetoric surrounding human dignity or even Human Rights. At every moment and on every level, everyone is negotiable, since—as we call it—any serious apprehension of social structure is exchange. And the exchange in question involves the exchange of individuals, of social supports who, in turn, are what we call subjects, along with the so-called “sacred” rights they embody to autonomy. Moreover, everyone knows that politics consists of negotiation, and this time, “on a grand scale,” en masse, involving the same subjects, referred to as “citizens,” in their hundreds of thousands.

Thus, the situation was not exceptional. Except, for instance, that being negotiated by those I earlier called one’s colleagues, or even one’s students, sometimes assumes, outside this game and from an external viewpoint, another name. Nevertheless, a sound perception of matters concerning the subject—even when this subject is in the position of Master—a sound perception of what truly pertains to the human subject:
– namely, that their truth does not reside within them but in an object,
– namely, that in whatever position one may find themselves, this element, which is inherently an element of pure comedy, arises, linked to the veiled nature of this object.

This is an experience that I believe is worth noting and one for which I can bear witness. Because, after all, perhaps in such an instance it might be subject to undue reticence, a kind of false modesty, for someone to testify to it externally. From within, I can tell you that this dimension is entirely legitimate, and from an analytical perspective—as I have told you—it can be experienced, even in a manner that, once perceived, transcends it: namely, experienced through what is called humor, which in this instance is merely the recognition of the comic.

I do not believe this observation is outside the scope of what I am contributing regarding the foundations of psychoanalysis, as “foundation” has more than one meaning. And I would not even need to invoke the Kabbalah to recall that it designates, in this context, a mode of manifestation specifically associated with the pudendum, and it would indeed be extraordinary if, in an analytical discourse, we were to stop at the pudendum. The “foundations” here would undoubtedly take the form of “undergarments” if these “undergarments” were not already somewhat exposed.

Therefore, I do not think it is futile to note that if some—externally—might be surprised, for instance, that in this negotiation, and insistently so, certain of my analysands, even those still undergoing analysis, participated, and might question how such a thing—if indeed it is externally scandalous—could be possible, unless there were discord in the relationship between your analysands and you, calling into question the very value of analysis.

Understand that it is precisely by starting from what, in this fact, could be material for scandal, that we can better and more precisely highlight what is called didactic psychoanalysis…
this praxis or stage of praxis that remains, both within and, of course, even more so outside psychoanalysis, shrouded in shadow…
to bring some clarity regarding its goals, its limits, and its effects.

This is no longer a matter of the pudendum; it is indeed a question of understanding what can and must be expected of psychoanalysis and what must be acknowledged within it as a hindrance or even a failure. For this reason, I believed I should not hold back but rather place here, as an object—one whose contours and possible retention I hope you will see more clearly—this question at the very threshold of what I now have to say as I ask before you:

“What are the foundations—in the broad sense of the term—of psychoanalysis?”

Which means: what grounds it as a praxis? What is praxis?

It seems doubtful to me that this term could be considered inappropriate for psychoanalysis. Praxis is the broadest term to designate an action deliberately carried out by humans, whatever it may be, that enables them to address, I would say, the real through the symbolic. The extent to which the imaginary is encountered within this process is secondary here. This definition of praxis thus extends quite far.

It is clear that we are not, like Diogenes, going to search—not for a man but for our psychoanalysis—in the various and highly diverse fields of praxis! Rather, we will take our psychoanalysis with us, and we shall see that it immediately directs us toward some fairly localized and identifiable points within praxis, which are even, through a certain transition, the two terms between which I intend to pose the question (“science” and “religion”), not in an ironic way at all, but in a manner I believe will prove highly illuminating.

It is perfectly clear that if I am standing here before such a large audience, in such a setting, and with such participation, it is to ask myself, alongside you, whether psychoanalysis is a science and to examine this question together.

It is equally clear that I have my perspective on the matter, as I hinted earlier when I referenced religion, specifying that I refer to religion in its contemporary sense—not a desiccated, methodologized religion relegated to the distant past of primitive thought—but a religion as we still see it practiced, alive and indeed thriving.

What we might expect from such a discussion is not merely to classify psychoanalysis—which, to us, has its authentic and perfectly recognizable value. We know where we stand: there are enough psychoanalysts in this assembly to serve as a form of verification for me here—but also to use this question posed by psychoanalysis to illuminate whether it is deserving of inclusion in either of these two registers, even to shed light on what we must understand by “a science” or “a religion.”

It is clear that it is more appropriate for me to begin by questioning science. I wish to avoid a misunderstanding immediately: someone might say, “In any case, it is research.” Well, here, allow me to state—and indeed to address, to some extent, public authorities, for whom this term “research” has recently become a sort of shibboleth for many things—that I am wary of the term “research.”

As for me, I have never considered myself a researcher. As Picasso once said, to the great scandal of those around him: “I do not search; I find.” [Pablo Picasso: Le Désir attrapé par la queue, Gallimard, 1989]. Moreover, in the field of so-called scientific research, there are two domains that can be perfectly distinguished: that in which one searches, and that in which one finds. Curiously enough, this distinction corresponds quite well to a boundary that is fairly clearly defined in terms of what can be classified as science. This boundary meaningfully separates two facets, both of which are distinctly recognizable within the realm of research.

There is undoubtedly some affinity between this form of research and what I have referred to as the religious facet. In this context, it is often said: “You would not be searching for me if you had not already found me.” And “found” lies in the past. The question, perhaps, is whether an opening is not established for a certain form of research—or even a complacent search—insofar as something akin to forgetting afflicts what has already been found.

Research, in this instance, concerns us for its role in the debate situated within what we nowadays call “the human sciences.” One sees how, under the steps of anyone who finds, arises what I would call the “hermeneutic claim,” which is precisely that of the seeker—the one who continually seeks “new meaning,” never exhausted, that would, in principle, be threatened with being stifled in the cradle by the one who finds!

Now, we analysts are interested in this hermeneutics because what hermeneutics proposes as the pathway for developing “meaning” is something that does not seem foreign—at least not entirely foreign—to us, or in any case, is often conflated in many minds with what we analysts call “interpretation.” [Psychoanalysis is not the search for a new meaning that, through interpretation, would reveal what was already present but hidden.]

In many respects, it seems that—even though this “interpretation” may not align entirely with the aforementioned hermeneutics—the latter accommodates and even willingly fosters it. The aspect through which we at least perceive a corridor of communication between psychoanalysis and what I have called the religious register—opening it here is by no means insignificant—we will revisit this connection in due course.

Thus, to authorize psychoanalysis to be called a science, we will demand something more.

Let us return to our praxis. What defines a science is having an object. One might assert that a science is characterized by an object defined, at the very least, by a certain level of reproducible operation, which we call experiment. The relationship between the object and praxis, in any case, is a necessary relationship. Is it sufficient? I will not immediately decide. Regarding science, we must be very cautious, because this object changes—and dramatically so!—over the course of a science’s evolution:

• We cannot say that the object of modern physics is the same now as at the time of its birth, which I date to the 17th century.
• Nor can we claim that the object of modern chemistry remains the same as at its birth, which I date to Lavoisier.

Perhaps these remarks compel us to take at least a tactical step back for a moment and return to praxis, asking whether, in the fact that praxis delineates a field, it is at the level of this field that the modern scientist is defined—not as a person who knows everything in every domain. To clarify, we will set aside here any reference to science as a unified system, a so-called “system of the world,” and the demand, as formulated by Duhem to define it, or by Meyerson in the relationships between identity and reality—a reference that could more or less be characterized as idealistic, stemming from the need for identification.

I would even go so far as to say that we can dispense with this transcendent, implicit complement in the positivist position, which always refers to an ultimate unity of all fields. We can dispense with it all the more easily since, after all, it is debatable and may even be considered false: it is not at all necessary for the tree of science to have only one trunk. I do not think it has many; it might have—following the model of the first chapter of Genesis—two distinct trunks.

Not that I attach exceptional importance to this myth, which is tinged with obscurantism, but after all, why should we not expect psychoanalysis to shed light on this? If we adhere to the notion of the field defining an experience, we immediately see that this is insufficient to define a science. For instance, such a definition would apply just as well to mystical experience. It is even through this gateway that mystical experience is sometimes afforded scientific consideration!

We might even come to think that we can approach such experiences scientifically, for we must not conceal that there is a kind of ambiguity here. To subject something to scientific examination often implies, or at least suggests, that the experience itself may possess scientific substance. Yet all these points of ambiguity, laden with misunderstandings, concern us in our discussion because it seems that the entire problem of psychoanalysis, at this turning point we are living through, consists of a true knot of misunderstandings.

It is evident—immediately—that we cannot integrate mystical experience into science. But this prompts another remark: if we apply this definition of praxis and its delineated field, would we then extend the title of science to alchemy? I recently reread a small volume, not even included in the Complete Works of Diderot, yet undoubtedly attributable to him. While modern chemistry might have been born with Lavoisier, Diderot speaks not of chemistry but throughout of alchemy with all the intellectual sharpness we know to be his hallmark.

What makes us immediately say—despite the striking and dazzling narratives that have been passed down through the ages—that alchemy, after all, is not a science? What do we really know about it? To my mind, one decisive factor is that in alchemy, the purity of the operator’s soul was explicitly and centrally considered an essential element of the endeavor. This observation is neither incidental nor contingent. You sense it because, perhaps, it will be suggested that there is something analogous in the presence of the analyst in the Great Work of analysis, and that this may indeed be what is sought in our didactic psychoanalysis.
[Psychoanalysis confronts a certain subject (S) and a certain object (a) in an impossible relationship (◊): S◊a, where the analyst (the support of a) questions the analysand (S) about their desire.]

And perhaps I myself have seemed to convey something similar in my teaching lately, as those who have followed me know, pointing openly and directly, with full sails, toward this central issue I have been questioning: namely, what is the desire of the analyst? What must the analyst’s desire be for them to operate correctly?

And if this question—one might admit—can be left outside the limits of the field, as it indeed is in modern sciences of the strictest kind, where no one questions the desire of the physicist, it takes true crises—posed, as they say, as human problems—to bring someone like Oppenheimer to ask all of us about the desire underpinning modern physics. Otherwise, no one would pay attention; they assume it is a political incident. Is this something of the same order as what was required of the adept in alchemy?

The desire of the analyst cannot at all be excluded from our question because the problem of the analyst’s training raises it. Didactic analysis can serve no other purpose than to lead the analyst to this point I designate in my algebra as “the desire of the analyst.” Once again, I must leave this question open, leaving it to you to sense what I bring to you through approximations such as this one: Is agriculture a science? Some would say yes; others, no.

This example is introduced solely to suggest that you nonetheless distinguish between agriculture— defined by an object and a field—and agronomy. This will allow me to highlight a fundamental dimension—we are addressing the basics, but it is necessary to do so—namely, the formulation of principles.

Will this suffice to create the connection, to define the conditions of a science? I do not think so. A common pseudo-science—it is true—can be expressed in formulas. The question, therefore, is not so simple, especially since psychoanalysis, as a supposed science, presents itself in forms that can rightly be described as problematic.

It might be appropriate to approach the question from other angles:

• What do these formulas concern?
• Where should they be applied?
• What motivates and shapes this shift in the object?

Undoubtedly, we cannot avoid the question of the concept.

• Are there already-formed analytic concepts?
• To what does the extraordinary prevalence and almost religious retention of terms introduced by Freud to structure analytic experience relate?
• Is this a highly marked, surprising phenomenon in the history of sciences, namely, that Freud’s concepts were the first and remain the only ones in this supposed science to introduce fundamental concepts that have remained isolated?
• Without this trunk, this mast, this foundation, where would we anchor our practice?
• Can we even assert that what Freud provided, which I am referencing, properly constitutes concepts?
• Are they concepts in formation?
• Are they concepts in evolution, in motion, and thus subject to revision?

I believe this is a point where we can hold that an experiment has already been conducted along a path that can only be one of effort and conquest toward resolving the question. If psychoanalysis is a science, and if the retention of its concepts remains central to all theoretical discussion within that tiresome, tedious, and off-putting chain that no one reads except psychoanalysts—the so-called psychoanalytic literature—it shows us at least the following:

• That it lags far behind these concepts; most of those advanced by Freud are distorted, adulterated, or broken.
• Those that are too challenging are simply and plainly set aside.
• The entire development elaborated around “frustration” is, compared to the concepts from which it derives in Freud’s work, clearly behind, pre-conceptual.

It is perfectly clear that no one—except for a few rare exceptions, notably in my circle—cares any longer about the tertiary structure of the Oedipus complex or the castration complex. Merely consolidating accumulated experience into a theoretical status for psychoanalysis, like an author such as Fenichel, who reduces it all to dull enumeration and general collections, is far from sufficient. To be sure, a certain quantity of facts has been assembled. There is value in grouping them into chapters, and it might give the impression that everything in a particular field has been preemptively explained.

But psychoanalysis is not about identifying a differential feature of theory in a case and thinking one has explained it by saying, “why your daughter is mute.” The task is to make her speak.

The effect stems from a type of intervention that has nothing to do with referencing a differential feature. To make her speak, one refers to analysis—the analysis that consists precisely of making her speak. One might even define psychoanalysis, ultimately, as the removal of mutism. And indeed, this is what was once called the analysis of resistances. The symptom is, first and foremost, mutism in the subject presumed to be speaking. If the subject speaks, they are cured—of their mutism, at least!

However, this does not at all tell us why the subject began to speak or why they were cured of their mutism. It only indicates a differential feature, which—unsurprisingly, in the case of the mute daughter—turns out to be that of the hysteric.

This differential feature is precisely this: that it is in the very act of speaking that the hysteric constitutes their desire. Thus, it is no surprise that it was through this gateway that Freud entered what were, in reality, the relations of desire to language. Within this field, he discovered the mechanisms of the unconscious. That the relationship between desire and language did not remain veiled to him is a mark of his genius. But this is not to say that it was fully elucidated—especially not by the overwhelming question of transference.

To cure the hysteric of all their symptoms, the best way might be to satisfy their hysterical desire—
a desire which, in our view, and in the view of the hysteric, involves positing their desire as an unsatisfied desire.
Yet this leaves entirely outside the field the specific question of why they can only sustain their desire as unsatisfied desire, so much so that hysteria, I might say, puts us on the trail of a certain original sin of analysis. There must be one, after all.

The truth may be only this: it is Freud’s own desire, namely, the fact that something in Freud was never analyzed.

It was precisely at this point that, by a singular coincidence, I found myself compelled to resign from my seminar. For what I had to say about The Names-of-the-Father aimed at nothing other than questioning the origin, that is: by what privilege Freud’s desire was able to find, in the field of the experience he designated as the unconscious, the entryway. Retracing this origin is absolutely essential if we want to set analysis on firm footing—ensuring it does not lack any of its essential elements.

In any case, such an approach to questioning the field of experience will, in our next meeting, be guided by the following reference: what conceptual status must we assign to four of the terms Freud introduced as fundamental concepts? Specifically:

• The unconscious
• Repetition
• Transference
• The drive.

Considering these concepts, in relation to the mode in which I situated them in my past teaching within a broader function that encompasses them and demonstrates their operational value in this field—namely, their reference to the signifier as such, which is underlying, implicit but not explicit—this is what will lead us to take the next step in our forthcoming session.

I promised myself this year to conclude my remarks at a fixed time, twenty minutes to two. I believe I will hold to that faithfully. By concluding my presentation at this fixed point, I reserve the opportunity, for all those who are able to remain here and are not immediately required elsewhere, to pose questions suggested to them by the day’s discussion.