🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I am not quite sure where to begin in order to conclude this lecture. Just to be safe, I have put two small diagrams on the board:

• One, which you are expected to know as it is older. It is a sort of grid, through which I began this year by attempting to show you how the problem of delusion arises if we wish to structure it, particularly when it appears to be a relationship tied, in some way or another, to speech. This diagram, which I might still have to refer to, I remind you of once again. I believe it has already been sufficiently explained to you.
• Another, which is different, entirely new, and which I might need to refer to shortly.

Today, we pick up from where I left you last time, namely, at the conclusion of contrasting descriptions:

• One from FREUD,
• And one from a psychoanalyst who is far from being without merit and who, representing the most modern tendencies, has the advantage of doing so quite intelligently.

What I described to you this year was, above all, centered on the concern of refocusing on the structure of delusion. I aimed to show you that this delusion is clarified in all its phenomena—and I believe I can even say in its dynamics—when it is primarily considered as a disruption of the relationship with the Other and, as such, tied to a mechanism of transference.

However, the interest, in addressing the problem within the framework we have taken—that is, in reference to the functions and structure of speech—is to extract and liberate this mechanism of transference from I-don’t-know-what kind of confused and diffuse object relations. These relations, by hypothesis, would manifest each time we are faced with a disorder considered as immature, yet seen in its entirety, leaving us with no alternative but a sort of linear series of this immaturity of object relations.

Far from being situable in any developmental reference—provided, of course, it implies this unilinearity regardless of its emergences—I believe experience shows that we arrive at impasses, to insufficient, unmotivated explanations, layered upon one another in such a way that they do not allow us to distinguish different cases. Most importantly, they fail to differentiate between neurosis and psychosis.

The very experience of partial delusion as such opposes the notion of immaturity or even regression, or the mere modification of a simple object relationship. And even if we did not have psychoses and dealt solely with neuroses, next year we will see that the concept of the object is not univocal. I have already told you that I will begin by contrasting the object of phobias with the object of perversions. This will be another way to revisit the same problem at the “object” level in the subject’s relationships with the Other. Here, at the psychosis level, I would say these are the two opposing terms.

Let us limit ourselves here and quickly summarize how, in essence, FREUD’s position on this delusion stands, what objections are raised against it, and whether, in raising these objections, anyone has outlined even the smallest beginning of a better solution.

FREUD, we are told, after reading him, explains that SCHREBER’s delusion is linked to an eruption of homosexual tendencies, which the subject denies.

Why is it denied? We will see shortly. This denial—I summarize—can be verified by referring to the text; I assume you have done so by now—to see whether my summary is accurate and balanced. This denial, in SCHREBER’s case, who is not neurotic, leads to what we might call a “divine erotomania,” with a mode of double reversal, both on the symbolic plane—an inverted emphasis on one of the terms of the sentence, symbolizing the situation.

You know how FREUD categorizes the various denials of homosexual tendencies. He tells us, within a sentence like “I love him,” there are several ways to introduce denial into this simple negation of the situation:

• One might say: “It is not I who loves him.”
• One might say: “It is not him that I love.”
• One might say: “It is not loving him that concerns me; I hate him,” for example.

Moreover, he tells us that the situation is never simple nor limited to this straightforward symbolic reversal. For reasons he considers sufficiently implicit, yet does not insist upon, the imaginary reversal of the situation occurs in part of its three terms. For example, “I hate him” transforms into “He hates me” through an imaginary mechanism of projection. Similarly, in our case: “It is not him I love; it is someone else”—here it is a grand “Him,” as it is God Himself—reverses into “He loves me,” as in all erotomania.

It is clear, then, that FREUD points out that it is not without a very advanced reversal of the symbolic apparatus as such that the ultimate outcome of the defense against homosexual tendencies can be classified, situated, and understood.

Why is this defense so intense that it makes the subject endure trials leading to nothing less than derealization—not only of the external world in general but also of the very people surrounding them, even the closest ones, the Other as such—requiring this entire delusional reconstruction? This reconstruction is one through which the subject gradually re-establishes, albeit in a profoundly disturbed way, a world where they can recognize themselves, though in an equally disturbed manner. They will not recognize themselves as a subject destined, at some point, projected into the uncertainty of the future, into an indeterminate but undoubtedly insurmountable horizon, to become the subject of the ultimate divine miracle: a recreation of all humanity, of which they will themselves be both the support and the feminine receptacle.

FREUD’s explanation of this delusion—which clearly presents itself here in its final form with all the megalomaniacal characteristics of redemption delusions in their most developed forms—if examined closely, seems entirely rooted in reference to narcissism. It is from threatened narcissism that the defense against the homosexual tendency arises. Megalomania represents the means by which narcissistic fear is expressed, through an enlargement of the subject’s ego to the dimensions of the world, an economic phenomenon of libido that appears to function entirely on the imaginary level. The subject makes themselves the very object of the Supreme Being’s love. From this point, they can abandon what initially seemed most precious and essential to preserve: the mark of their virility.

Ultimately, what do we see in FREUD’s interpretation? I emphasize: the pivot, the focal point of the libidinal dialectic to which the entire mechanism and development of neurosis refer, is the theme of castration. It is castration that conditions narcissistic fear. It is the acceptance of castration that must be paid for with the heavy price of the subject’s complete reworking of reality.

This centrality, which FREUD steadfastly adheres to, can be described as the invariant within the explanatory material framework of Freudian theory, spanning its entirety. Calling it merely an invariant is insufficient; it is a prevalent invariant—by which I mean that in the theoretical conditioning of the subjective interplay where the history of any psychoanalytic phenomenon is inscribed, FREUD never derived, subordinated, or relativized its place.

Thus, it is within his analytic community—but never in his work—that attempts have been made to assign symmetries, equivalents, or the central position of the object, specifically the “phallic” center and its essential function in the libidinal economy, both in men and women.

What is absolutely essential and characteristic of the theorizing upheld by FREUD—regardless of any adjustments he introduced, and this is the important point—is that this has never changed throughout any phase of the schematic representations he provided of psychic life: it is centered around castration.

And this is all the more striking because, in fact, if you read the text carefully—and here lies the relevance of Mme MACALPINE’s objection, or at least its potential relevance, since it is the one point she does not truly bring to light—you will see, as I will mention shortly, the axis of her argumentation. However, what is true in her observations is that it never directly concerns castration. The German term “Entmannung” (emasculation) is used, and when one reads SCHREBER’s texts, it becomes clear that “Entmannung” formally means “transformation” with all the transitional connotations the term implies: a transformation into a woman, with associations of procreation and fertility, but not castration in the strict sense. Nevertheless! What is striking and essential in FREUD’s text is that it revolves around the theme of castration, the loss of the phallic object, which serves as the focal point for the entire dynamic he assigns to the SCHREBER subject.

Clearly, without further explanations, we must acknowledge this outcome: despite certain weaknesses in his argumentation—particularly the one in question—his structuring of the terms (homosexual tendency, libidinal economy) within the imaginary dialectic of narcissism, with the virile object as the conflict’s crucial stake, allows us to delineate and understand the various stages of the delusion’s evolution, its phases, and its final construction.

Moreover, we noted along the way numerous subtleties, left partially unexplored, such as where FREUD shows that projection alone cannot explain delusion. It cannot merely be described as a reflection or a mirror image of the subject’s feelings. Instead, it is necessary to determine the stages and, at a certain point, identify a loss of the tendency that grows obsolete.

Throughout the year, I have insisted repeatedly that what is repressed internally reappears externally, resurfaces in the background—not in a simple structure, but, as we have seen, in an internal positioning. This positioning means that the subject themselves, who happens to be the agent of persecution in this case, is an ambiguous and problematic figure.

After all, at first glance, they are only the representative of another subject who not only permits but undoubtedly acts as the ultimate agent. In short, a stratification in the Other’s alterity is one of the problems that FREUD has undoubtedly led us to but where he stops. This is approximately the state of affairs at the point where we leave FREUD’s text.

Ida MACALPINE, using different terms but in a more coherent way than others, argues that nothing, she claims, allows us to conceive of this delusion as something that presupposes genital maturity, so to speak, which would explain or clarify the fear of castration.

The homosexual tendency is far from manifesting itself as something primary. From the very beginning, what we observe are symptoms, initially hypochondriacal symptoms, then psychotic symptoms—something specific lying at the core of the psychotic relationship, as well as other phenomena, especially psychosomatic phenomena. These phenomena, particularly for her, constitute the entryway to the phenomenology of this case.

For this clinician, who has specifically studied psychosomatic phenomena, her direct apprehension of a certain number of phenomena—structured entirely differently from what occurs in neuroses—reveals something that could be called an imprint or direct inscription of a moment, so to speak, or even, in some cases, of a conflict, onto what might be directly called “the material picture” presented by the subject as a corporeal being.

Such a symptom, for instance, a dermatologically classified facial eruption—of whatever kind—is something that may mobilize itself in response to a specific anniversary. It is, in a sense, a direct correspondence:

• Without any dialectic,
• Without any intermediary,
• Without any interpretation we might cross-reference,
• Without any equivalent,

…between the symptom and something from the subject’s past.

Has this led Ida MACALPINE to question the very peculiar problem of such correspondences? Indeed, these are direct correspondences between the symbol and the symptom. The apparatus of the symbol is so lacking in today’s psychoanalytic mental categories that such relationships can only be conceived through one of the fantasies.

Thus, her entire argument rests on relating the development of President SCHREBER’s delusion to a fantastical theme, an imaginary fixation—using the standard term applied to developments of this kind today: pre-Oedipal—emphasizing that what sustains the desire, what supports it, is essentially and above all a theme of procreation. If I may put it this way, this procreation is pursued in an asexual form, leading the subject into conditions of devirilization and feminization, as I formally explained, only as a sort of a posteriori consequence of the demand in question.

The subject is something born solely within the relationship of the child to the mother, insofar as the child, before any triangular relationship is constituted, develops within themselves a fantasy of desire—a desire to equal the mother in her capacity to create a child.

This, too, constitutes the entire argument of Ida MACALPINE. There is no need to explore all its details here; they are rich but ultimately accessible to you. She wrote both a preface and a postface, thoroughly developed, for the English edition of SCHREBER’s text, where she presents all her themes.

The important point is to see how this ties into a certain reorientation of the entire analytic dialectic, which tends to make the imaginary economy of the fantasy—and the various reorganizations or disorganizations, restructurings or destructurings of fantasies—the pivotal point, the most effective axis of both any progress in understanding and any therapeutic advancement.

The schema currently so widely accepted, “frustration, aggression, regression,” is at the root of everything Mme Ida MACALPINE believes she can explain about this delusion. She takes it very far. She states:

• There is no decline of the world for SCHREBER,
• There is no twilight of the world, and no momentary quasi-confusional disorder in his grasp of reality,

…except because this world needs to be recreated, introducing a sort of finalism even into the deepest stages of mental disorder. The entire “myth” is constructed because it is the only way that SCHREBER can satisfy his imaginary demand for giving birth.

Indeed, this picturing may undoubtedly allow us to conceive of this kind of imaginary impregnation of the subject being reborn. However, what one may then ask is whether the origins of this imaginary staging—and here I nearly echo one of the subject’s own themes, as you know, the staging that drives this entire delusional construction—can truly account for its emergence.

What allows us—since we are dealing only with imaginary fantasies—what allows us, from Ida MACALPINE’s perspective, to understand how the function of the father, which is so promoted, so emphasized, can come into question? Whatever envy or intention there may be to challenge the prominence FREUD gave to the father’s function in analytic theory, it remains undeniable, striking—even if there are certain weaknesses in FREUD’s argument concerning psychosis—to observe in this delusion the exaltation of the father’s function, to the point that nothing less than “God the Father” himself is required in the delusion. And for a subject to whom, until that moment, as he tells us, this notion meant nothing, nothing less than “God the Father” is needed for the delusion to reach, so to speak, its completion, its equilibrium.

The predominance, throughout the evolution of SCHREBER’s psychosis, of paternal figures as such—who replace one another, growing and enveloping one another until they merge with the divine father himself, the deity marked with a distinctly paternal accent—is something that remains absolutely unshaken. It compels us to revisit the problem: How is it that something providing, so to speak, such solid grounds for FREUD is nevertheless approached by him only through certain angles, in ways that leave us with undeniable gaps?

Everything remains, in truth, balanced. Everything remains, on the contrary, open and inadequate in the corrective attempt made by Mme Ida MACALPINE.

It is not only the enormity of the fantastical father figure that allows us to say we cannot, in any way, base our understanding on a dynamic of the eruption of the pre-Oedipal fantasy. There are many other elements—even including what remains enigmatic in both cases and which we have particularly focused on this year.

What FREUD undeniably approaches more effectively than Mme MACALPINE is the overwhelming, dominant, proliferating, vegetative aspect of verbal auditory phenomena—this formidable captation of the subject, caught in this “world of speech,” which has become for him not only a perpetual co-presence—what I called last time a spoken accompaniment of all his acts—but also a perpetual intimation, solicitation, or even summons to manifest himself on this plane.

The issue is that not for a single moment does the subject cease to bear witness, in the constant invitation of the speech accompanying him. Not that he necessarily responds to it, but that he exists, present and capable. If he does not respond, it is perhaps, he says, because someone wishes to force him to say something foolish. But whether in response or non-response, he constantly testifies that he remains fully awake to this inner dialogue. His sole movement within this presence in dialogue signals to him what he calls Verwesung—translated accurately as a kind of decomposition.

It is on this point that we have drawn attention, emphasizing the value of FREUD’s pure position. Despite the paradox presented by certain manifestations of psychosis in comparison to the dynamics FREUD recognized in neurosis, psychosis is nevertheless addressed in a more satisfying manner within FREUD’s perspective. This is because, implicit in this perspective—though never fully clarified by FREUD, who approached it indirectly, as I showed you last year concerning the pleasure principle—what sustains FREUD’s position against the sort of instinctual sign-planning or imagined instinct dynamic into which psychoanalytic dynamics tended to be reduced after him is precisely these terms he never abandoned. These terms, demanded by him for any possible analytic understanding, apply even when they fit only approximately—better approximated than excluded. These are:

• The function of the father,
• The castration complex.

The issue here is not purely and simply about imaginary elements. What has been identified in the imaginary, for instance, as the phallic mother, is not homogeneous—as you all know—to the castration complex as it is integrated into the triangular Oedipal situation.

The triangular Oedipal situation, though not completely elucidated in FREUD, is maintained in such a way as to lend itself to further elucidation. This elucidation becomes possible only if we recognize that in the third element—the central element for FREUD, and rightly so—the Father, there exists a signifying element irreducible to any form of imaginary conditioning. I am not saying that the term “Father” or the “Name of the Father” alone constitutes this element. I would say this element emerges whenever we grasp something belonging properly to the symbolic order.

On this point, I recently re-read, among other things, JONES’s article on symbolism. When you observe the effort made by this disciple of FREUD to grasp the symbol and explain that it represents, perhaps, a deviation of sorts—I forget exactly how he phrases it—to see in the symbol something that reduces itself entirely to the characteristics of a grand fundamental relationship, it is striking. He provides examples, more than one, but I will choose one of the most notable.

For instance, he tells us about the ring—a ring. He argues that it does not function symbolically, in the analytic sense, as representing marriage with all its cultural and elaborated connotations. He dismisses all of this, saying, in essence, “Let’s set aside such over-sublimated references.” If the ring signifies something, it is not because of its relationship to such a “super-sublimated” reference, as he puts it. Instead, he claims, the ring is a symbol of the feminine organ.

Is this not enough to leave us pondering? Naturally, we know that the interest in the involvement of signifiers within the symptom is precisely unrelated to tendencies or to the strangest of relationships. But to let oneself be carried away in such a dialectic to the point of failing to notice that a ring cannot in any way naturally symbolize the female sex is truly to misunderstand what it means to dream of putting a ring on one’s finger. This is particularly evident in the story I have in mind, which you all at least know the theme of, titled Hans Carvel’s Ring. It is a good tale from the Middle Ages, revived by BALZAC in his Droll Stories. It describes a rather colorful man—frequently depicted as a priest—who finds himself, in the middle of the night, dreaming of a ring, placing his finger where the ring is called…and without responding further, we must truly admit that natural symbolizations lead to the strangest ideas.

Let us state it clearly: what in experience could possibly correspond—let us put the dots on the “i”—to the experience of penetration into this orifice, given that it is indeed an orifice, to an experience resembling in any way a ring? Unless one already knows in advance what a ring is, how could this comparison arise? A ring is not an object found in nature, and if there is anything in the realm of penetration that vaguely resembles tightness, it is certainly not this.

I appeal—not as Marie-Antoinette said, to all mothers, but—to all those who have never placed their finger anywhere. Surely, penetration into this location—heaven forbid!—is far more molluscan than anything else. If anything in nature is destined to suggest such properties, it is precisely what language has consecrated with the term anus—which, as you know, is written in Latin with a single “n.” This is nothing other than what the more modest commentators of ancient dictionaries described as “the ring that one may find behind.”

To confuse the two—regarding natural symbolization—requires an intellectual blindness so severe that FREUD himself would despair of you. He would consider you utterly incapable of understanding the difference, to the point of writing you off as incurably obtuse.

The elaboration on this occasion by Mr. JONES is precisely intended to show us how such associations might signify something primitive. The point is that if the ring appears in a dream—potentially even leading to a sexual act, humorously illustrated in its bawdy French translation—it is precisely because the ring already exists as a signifier, entirely independent of its connotations.

If it is cultural connotations that frighten Mr. JONES, he is entirely wrong. He fails to recognize that a ring is precisely an object through which humanity, in all its engagement with the world, is capable of crystallizing much more than marriage. The ring is primordial in relation, for example, to elements such as the undefined circle, the eternal return, or a certain constancy in repetition. A ring is far from being what Mr. JONES seems to imagine, akin to those who think you make macaroni by taking a hole and putting flour around it. A ring is not a hole surrounded by something; a ring has, above all, a signifying value, and this is precisely the point.

We do not even need to bring such an example to the forefront.

The essence of this discussion leads us, ultimately, to speech and through this pathway. Nothing in experience can ever fully explain how a man perceives and understands something—a simple formulation, whatever it may be, inscribed within language, reduced to the most elementary articulation of speech within the function of language: the “that is it.” This formulation has explanatory meaning for a man.

He has seen something, anything, something that is there: “that is it,” no matter what the thing may be. This “that is it” already places him in relation to something—a presence—whether it is singular, strange, or ambiguous. “That is it now” places it somewhere different from where it was before, which is to say, nowhere. Now he knows what it is.

Let me take for a moment the most insubstantial fabric, intentionally the thinnest example of what might present itself to man. For this, we can turn to an exemplary domain: that of the meteor, in any form. By definition, the meteor is precisely “that,” something real, and at the same time, what is it? It is illusory. It would be entirely incorrect to call it imaginary. The rainbow is “that.”

When you say that the rainbow is “that,” when you say “it is so,” you then begin to search. People puzzled over this for quite some time, until DESCARTES, who entirely resolved the small matter: they explained that it was a region of iridescence, caused by tiny suspended droplets of water, what we call a cloud. Fine! And then? What remains after that? You still have the ray of light on one side and the more or less condensed droplets on the other. “That is it,” but it was only appearance.

Note that this does not settle the matter at all, because the ray of light, as you know, is both wave and particle. And the tiny droplet of water is a curious thing, since, in the end, it is neither fully gaseous nor fully liquid—it is a condensation, a suspended state between the two. It has reached the expansive sheet-like state that defines water.

When we say “that is it,” we imply something that is only that, or “it is not that,” referring to the appearance we have paused at. But this proves that everything subsequently derived—the “it is only that” or the “it is not that”—was already implicit in the original “that is it.”

In other words, this phenomenon is truly devoid of imaginary interest. Animals, for example, never pay attention to a rainbow. Humans, in truth, also ignore countless similar phenomena. Iridescent displays are extremely widespread in nature, and apart from observational talent or specific research, no one dwells on them.

If the rainbow is something that exists, it is precisely in its relationship to the “that is it” that we have named it the rainbow, so that when speaking to someone who has not yet seen it, there comes a moment when we say, “The rainbow is that.” Now, that the rainbow is that, with all that “that is it” implies—namely, the engagement we will pursue until we are left breathless:

• To understand what is hidden behind the rainbow,
• To know the cause of the rainbow,
• To determine how the rainbow can be reduced.

Note, however, that the very nature of the rainbow and meteorological phenomena, from their inception—and everyone knows this because that is precisely why we call them meteors—is that there is absolutely nothing hidden behind them. They exist entirely in their appearance. Nevertheless, what sustains them for us, to the point where we can pose questions about them, lies solely in the “that is it” of their origin, in the very naming of the rainbow. There is nothing more to it than this name.

In other words, if we wish to go further, the rainbow does not speak, but we could speak in its place. No one ever speaks to the rainbow, which is striking. We invoke the dawn or all sorts of other phenomena, but the rainbow retains the privilege, shared with certain other manifestations of this kind, of being left unaddressed.

There are undoubtedly reasons for this. It is particularly insubstantial, which is precisely why it is chosen. But suppose we were to speak to this rainbow: it is clear that, since we can speak to it, we could also make it speak. We could have it speak to whomever we wish, perhaps the lake.

If the rainbow has no name or refuses to acknowledge its name—unaware that it is called “rainbow”—then the lake has no other recourse but to display the thousand small mirages of sunlight on its waves and the mist trails rising from it. It might attempt to join the rainbow, but it will never succeed, for a simple reason: the dancing fragments of sunlight on the lake’s surface and the mist rising from it have nothing to do with the production of the rainbow. The rainbow begins exactly:

• At a specific angle of the sun,
• At a certain density of the droplets involved,
• At something relational, indicative, and proportional,
• At something that exists in reality as a full and utterly elusive phenomenon.

There is no reason to search for the favorable inclination of the sun or any of the indicators determining the rainbow phenomenon until the phenomenon itself is named.

If I have just undertaken this lengthy study of something whose significance lies in its spherical belt-like character—something simultaneously deployable and foldable—it is because this mirrors the human interest engaged here. The imaginary dialectic is structured in exactly the same way. In mother-child relations, which increasingly tend to limit the imaginary dialectic in analysis, what we see is that these relationships would, in theory, suffice entirely. Yet, what does experience show us? A mother who, we are told, has a fundamental requirement: to provide herself in some way with an imaginary phallus.

It has been explained that the child serves as a very effective and even sufficiently real support for this imaginary extension. As for the child, we also know this much is indisputable: male or female, the phallus is identified very early on and is generously attributed—whether in reflection or not—to the mother.

It is therefore evident that if something intervenes, it must occur at the level of mediation—or, more precisely, through a mediating function of this phallus.

If the mother and child could perfectly mirror one another in this shared illusion of reciprocal phallicization, their conflicts or internal alienations would arise precisely because the phallus is, if I may say so, a wanderer. It is elsewhere, and everyone knows where psychoanalytic theory places it: the father is presumed to be its bearer.

Is it not worth pausing and reflecting on this? If, indeed, something akin to imaginary, affective exchanges—if you will—between the mother and child occur around this imaginary lack of the phallus, forming the element of intersubjective composition and coaptation, then the father, presumed to be the true bearer of the phallus, plays a specific role. Around him revolves the child’s fear of phallic loss, claims, deprivation, or longing for the mother’s phallus.

In this Freudian dialectic, have you noticed that the father is never supposed to lack anything? As a father, he has the phallus. That’s all. He does not exchange it, nor does he give it; there is no circulation. There is no function in the triad beyond representing the bearer, the possessor of the phallus. The father, as father, has the phallus—period.

In other words, within this imaginary dialectic, the father is the necessary presence that ensures the phallus is more than a mere meteor. This is so fundamental that if we were to locate this aspect within Freud’s conception of the Oedipus complex, you would see that it is not the “father-mother-child” triangle that matters but the “phallus-mother-child” triangle. And where is the father in this? He is the ring that holds everything together.

The notion of the father presumes a series of signifying connotations that grant him existence and coherence, which are far from being confused with the genital. Across all linguistic traditions, the father is semantically distinct from the genital. I won’t go as far as quoting HOMER or Saint PAUL to illustrate this, but whether invoking ZEUS or someone else, the father refers to something entirely different from mere generative function. The father has far greater roles.

From the moment we are certain it is a signifier, we realize that its principal function is precisely this: to be something that, in the lineage of generations—inasmuch as living beings evidently reproduce themselves, do they not?—serves as a factor in that process where, from a woman, an indefinite number of beings emerge. Let us suppose these beings to be male or female, and for a moment, imagine only women. Incidentally, we will return to this soon, as reports in the press suggest that parthenogenesis is underway, and women will generate a significant number of daughters without anyone’s assistance.

Now, notice that if masculine elements of any kind intervene in this schema, these elements can play their role, their function—fertilizing as needed—at any level of the lineage. In such cases, they are nothing more than a kind of lateral aid, an indispensable side circuit, as in animality. Nothing introduces any structuring element here except for the reproduction of women by women, with the assistance of these lateral auxiliaries that may indeed help keep the process going. However, from the moment we seek to inscribe descent in relation to males, and only from that point, something structural intervenes. This means that we cannot represent this lineage in the same way; it must be depicted differently.

[Diagram on the board]

Here is a brother. Let us not dwell on something as trivial as a suggestion of incest between brother and sister. Instead, we will unite them and obtain a male. It is only from the moment we speak of descent and of relationships between males that we see the introduction of a break—a discontinuity. Each time, there is a break, meaning a difference between generations. The introduction of the father’s signifier already brings order into the lineage, establishes a series of generations, and this generational series alone introduces an absolutely essential signifying element.

We are not here to explore all aspects of the father’s function. I draw your attention to one, among the most striking: the introduction of order, specifically a mathematical order, which is a novelty compared to natural order—a different structure. That is the point.

In psychoanalysis, we have been shaped by the experience of neuroses. Within the context of neuroses, the imaginary dialectic can suffice if, within the framework we outline for it, a signifying relation is already implied for its practical use. It may take two or three generations before nothing makes sense anymore, and interpretations become so convoluted that even a cat would lose its kittens amidst the confusion. Nevertheless, as long as the theme of the Oedipus complex remains, this notion of essential signifying structure will persist to navigate neuroses.

But when it comes to psychoses, the issue is different. In psychoses, it concerns the subject’s relation not to a signified connection within existing signifying structures, but rather to a meeting—I deliberately say “meeting” because it marks the entrance into psychosis—between the subject and the signifier as such, under elective conditions.

In the case of President SCHREBER, we find all these elements when we closely examine his case. President SCHREBER reaches a point in his life where, on more than one occasion, he has been placed in a situation, in expectation, of becoming a father. He himself says he was suddenly invested with a socially significant and personally meaningful role: he was elevated to President, we are told, at the Court of Appeals. Within the administrative hierarchy of the officials among whom he lived, this position resembled something closer to the Council of State.

He was introduced not at the peak of the legislative hierarchy but into a legislative role, among men who create laws. Here he found himself among individuals twenty years older than him—a disruption in the generational order. By what means? By the explicit appointment of ministers, he was suddenly promoted to a nominal level that demanded from him a renewing integration, a transition to this other echelon, which is perhaps implied in Freudian dialectics.

For the subject—since this concerns the father and Freud’s entire body of research centers on the father—this question involves all the perspectives Freud introduced into subjective experience. Ultimately, the question is whether the subject will or will not become a father. You might say this is often forgotten, and I am well aware of that. With the object relation and the most recent analytic techniques, I would not hesitate to say…if you recall what certain analysts write regarding what is considered the ultimate experience, that famous “distance” in the object relation, which boils down to fantasizing about the analyst’s sexual organ and imaginatively absorbing it…

…I would say that the analytic theory of a certain fellatio—and I am not joking here—is tied to the root felo, felal in Latin, although this is not precisely the point.

In any case, the question remains:

• Is analytic experience merely this kind of obscene chain, involving the imaginary absorption of an object finally stripped of its fantasies,
• Or is it something else? Something that, within a certain signifier, involves the assumption of desire.

For the phenomenology of psychosis, it is impossible to ignore the originality of the signifier as such. This concerns the access or apprehension of a signifier to which the subject is called and, for some reason—on which I will not elaborate now—around which revolves the notion of Verwerfung that I initially addressed. Upon reflection, I suggest that we adopt the translation I find most fitting: “foreclosure.” Our current term, “rejection,” and its implications ultimately fail to satisfy.

But let us leave the phenomenon of Verwerfung as it stands, as our point of departure.

What is tangible in the phenomenon of everything that unfolds in psychosis is that it concerns the subject’s encounter with a signifier as such. The very impossibility of engaging with the signifier as such sets in motion a process that subsequently structures itself in relation to it. This constitutes what ordinarily defines the human subject’s relationship with the signifier. It initiates a process that involves something—what we have called the “imaginary cataclysm” as the first step.

That is to say, nothing can any longer be modified in that fatal relationship, which is, in itself, the relationship to the Other, to the little other imagined within the subject themselves. Then follows the unfolding—detached from the relationship to the signified—of the deployment of the entire apparatus of the signifier as such. This includes phenomena such as dissociation, fragmentation, and the activation of the signifier as:

• Speech,
• Ejaculatory speech,
• Insignificant speech,
• Or excessively significant speech, burdened with insignificance and unknown meanings.

This decomposition of inner discourse characterizes the entire structure of psychosis. In the case of President SCHREBER, after the encounter, the collision, the shock with the signifier—which cannot be assimilated and must therefore be reconstructed—he indeed reconstructs it. He reconstructs it because this father cannot be a simple father, so to speak, a perfectly rounded father, the “ring” we mentioned earlier, the father who is a father for everyone. No one knows what is inserted into the father.

Nevertheless, before concluding this year, I would like to point out that while you may remain innocent as doctors, as psychoanalysts, you ought to reflect occasionally. Reflect on a theme such as this one, even if it takes you no great distance. After all, the sun and death cannot be looked at directly.

I will not claim that the smallest gesture to alleviate harm invariably leads to greater harm, but it does tend to lead to greater harm. This is something a psychoanalyst ought to become accustomed to because, without this understanding, I believe they are wholly incapable of conscientiously carrying out their professional role.

This awareness does not take us far. Indeed, as everyone knows—newspapers remind us daily—the progress of science is perilous; God knows how dangerous it is, etc. But why does this neither chill nor trouble us? Because we are all, myself included, embedded in the major signifier we call Santa Claus. Santa Claus is a father! With Santa Claus, everything always works out—and not only does it work out, but it works out well.

Now imagine the psychotic: someone who truly does not believe in Santa Claus. That is to say, someone inconceivable to us at present—someone who, through sufficient reflection in our era, has managed to actualize what might be called a colorblind subject (if such a figure ever truly existed). Do not think I attach much importance to these rumors or hearsay.

But, at its core, this notion entails precisely a disciplined refusal to believe that doing something good, for instance, inevitably results in equivalent harm and, therefore, should not be done. This may seem debatable from the perspective of Santa Claus, but if you accept it even momentarily, you can conceive that many things depend on it—fundamental things—at the level of the signifier.

The psychotic has both the disadvantage and the privilege of occupying a differently situated relationship. They did not intentionally extract themselves from the signifier but instead found themselves positioned slightly askew. From the moment they are summoned to align themselves with these signifiers, they must make an extraordinary retrospective effort. This effort results in what are often called wildly absurd developments—what we refer to as the unfolding of psychosis.

However, this development, as it is presented to us, can vary in its exemplarity, its significance, and its aesthetic coherence. It is particularly rich in the case of President SCHREBER. But I assure you that once you adopt this perspective, you will realize, as we have shown in clinical presentations throughout this year, that with patients—at least within this framework—you begin to see a bit more than usual, even with the most common cases.

The last case I presented was someone very, very peculiar because they stood on the edge of mental automatism without fully crossing into it. For this individual, everyone seemed to be suspended in a kind of artificial state, which they described quite clearly and precisely, just like that. They had realized that the signifier overwhelmingly dominated the existence of beings and that, in the end, their own existence seemed far less certain than anything else presenting itself with a certain significant structure. They stated this quite bluntly and straightforwardly. You might recall that I asked them:

“When did it all begin? During your wife’s pregnancy?”

They were a little surprised at first, but after a moment, they said:

“Yes, that’s true, I hadn’t thought of that.”

This, at least, demonstrates that such notions are not entirely without clinical relevance. There is another point worth noting. It is evident that, within the imaginary perspective—and increasingly so—what we used to say in passing during analysis has absolutely no significance, given that everything seems to boil down to frustration or lack of frustration. The subject is frustrated, so the solution must be coupling. If they are aggressive, they regress, and so we proceed, tracing this path all the way to the emergence of the most primordial fantasies.

Unfortunately, this is not entirely the correct theory. In other words, I am not yet at the point of saying we must articulate certain things. But if we are to say them, we must do so with full understanding of what we are saying. That means introducing signifiers, not in the way of:

“I’ll pat you on the back… You’re a nice person… You had a bad father… It’ll get better…”

…but rather by employing and reasoning through signifiers differently—or, at the very least, by avoiding the misuse of certain signifiers altogether. This includes refraining from negative indications concerning certain interpretative content, which, in such a perspective, would become a priority on the analytic agenda.

Finally, I will leave these questions open, just as they are. The year concludes in this dialect, and why should it end otherwise?

To close, I would like to adopt a different style than my own, referencing someone admirable: Guillaume APOLLINAIRE. Several weeks ago, I resolved to end this seminar with a beautiful passage from L’Enchanteur pourrissant (The Rotting Magician).

Mlle […] who has honored us by attending my final lecture of the year, will not contradict me. In L’Enchanteur pourrissant, we find the fundamental image of what analysis represents in its essence. At the end of one of the chapters, the magician, rotting in his tomb—as any good corpse would—does not mutter, as BARRÈS might say. Instead, since he is a magician, he enchants, and speaks remarkably well.

Then, there is the Lady of the Lake, seated upon his tomb. She is the one who placed him there, telling him he would emerge easily. But she, too, had her tricks. And so, the magician remains, rotting, occasionally speaking. This is where we find ourselves when, amid various processions, a few madmen arrive. You may imagine our usual company, joined by a monster I hope you will recognize: a monster who, in truth, has found the analytic key to human behavior, especially concerning the father-child relationship with the mother.

“I meowed and meowed,” said the monster Chapalu,
“but I met only screech owls who assured me he was dead.
I shall never be prolific.
And yet, those who are prolific have qualities.
I must confess, I find none in myself.
I am solitary. I am hungry, I am hungry.
Now I discover a quality in myself: I am starving.
Let us seek food. Whoever eats is no longer alone.”

End of the 1955–56 Seminar

[Applause]