🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I introduced last time the concept of transference. You may have noticed: I did so in a problematic way, relying on the difficulties it imposes on the analyst.

I took—offered to me by chance in the encounter—the opportunity of the latest article published in the most official organ of psychoanalysis, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, the article by SZASZ, who goes so far as to question the use of the notion of transference in analysis, as it opens the door to an execution of the analyst’s role that would, in itself, be ultimately beyond control. This is because, due to the reference points—ones I dare to believe are themselves problematic—that SZASZ adopts for his discussion, namely, the reference points of logical positivism, he approaches the question by directly interrogating the effect of meaning in the signifier as something determined externally, assuming that its use in relation to a given reality presupposes factual data.

In this context, it is in relation to what will manifest as current within the treatment that the analyst will point out to the patient the effects of discordance that more or less evidently emerge concerning what is called the “reality of the analytic situation,” that is, the two subjects present within it. And of course, SZASZ has no difficulty opposing the two poles of what can occur there, namely, the cases in which this effect of discordance, quite evident, will take the form, for example, of something we are not at all surprised to see emerge under the humorous pen of a SPITZ, an old hand who knows a thing or two about what is appropriate, using exemplary examples, and, all in all, thoroughly entertaining his audience!

Taking as an example the case in which one of his patients, in what is called a “transference dream”—that is, a dream of amorous fulfillment with her analyst, in this case, him, SPITZ—sees him endowed with a head of hair as blond as it is abundant, something that, to anyone who has glimpsed the egg-shaped skull of the man, and he is well-known enough to be famous, will quite obviously appear as a point on which the analyst can show the subject to what distortions the effects of the unconscious have led her. But certainly, when it comes to qualifying a patient’s behavior as being, toward the analyst, of a disparaging intent:

“One of two things—says SZASZ—either the patient agrees, or if they do not, who will decide, if not the fundamental position that the analyst is always right?”

This throws us back to that pole, both manifestly mythical and idealizing, of what SZASZ calls “the integrity of the analyst,” about which we wonder what that could possibly mean if not an invocation of the dimension of truth!

I can therefore only situate SZASZ’s article within this perspective, where he himself can consider it as operative only in a manner that is not heuristic but eristic—serving solely to manifest to us, in the dead-end reflection of an analyst, the presence of a genuine crisis of conscience in the analytic function, in the function of the analyst.

This crisis of conscience, I would say, concerns us only in a very peripheral manner, if we ourselves have the sense, if we can find:

– that we have traced paths that do not run into this obstacle at all,

– in short, that we have shown the way in which such a stumbling block, insofar as, after all, it merely profiles in the sharpest, most extreme manner, and even to the point of forcing, to a certain extent, the outcome of a particular slope, if one were to give in to it—not so much the practice of transference analysis as a certain unilateral way of theorizing it.

This certainly indicates to us the dangers of this slope, but it is a slope we ourselves have denounced for quite some time, showing that the line of sight lies elsewhere, so that we are affected by it only as a confirmation of a personal reflection from someone who, likewise, must thereby demonstrate some return, some reaction occurring, which inevitably must occur within this drift of analysis. This drift, as I associated it last time, pertains to a certain sociological domain, to a certain ideal of individual conformism that would, in a way, dictate the measure and use of analytic practice within this specific social configuration, which I have designated by its name [“American way of life”].

And to bring us back to what I would almost call phenomenological data, which allow us to reposition the problem where it truly lies, I pointed out last time, in concluding, that in this relationship from one to the other, whatever it may be, which is established in analysis, one dimension is elided in this, I emphasize, unilateral way of presenting transference: it is that one of the two addresses the other.

Undoubtedly, the notion of transference will allow us to determine in what terms and why, based on what presuppositions, and indeed, these presuppositions must have something to do with the phenomenon of transference… But without even needing to refer to them, it is clear that this relationship is established on a plane that is neither reciprocal nor symmetrical.

It is not at all surprising, then, that this is precisely what SZASZ observes—wrongly so—to deplore:

– that within this relationship from one to the other, there is indeed instituted the dimension of a search for truth, where one is supposed to know, or at least to know more than the other,

– and that from the one who is supposed to know, there immediately arises the dimension of thinking that not only must he not be mistaken, but also that he can be deceived, that the “being mistaken” is, at the same time, displaced onto the subject, that it is not simply that the subject is—so to speak, if one may put it this way—in a static manner, in lack, in error.

Rather, it is that, in a dynamic way, in discourse, in the direction he moves toward, in what he articulates through his discourse, he can, he must, he is essentially positioned in the dimension of “being mistaken.”

Even, as an analyst quite rightly observes—one whom I will refer to several times today to mark in him as well a certain curve, a certain evolution of his thought concerning transference—it is NUNBERG, NUNBERG in the year 1951, volume XXXII of The International Journal of Psychoanalysis. This is an article he titles… No! Earlier: in 1926, in volume VII, an article he titles The Will to Recovery, which is to say “the will,” not strictly speaking “to healing”: recovery is restoration, return—the word is very well chosen.

And he questions what, ultimately, can motivate the patient— the patient whose symptom, as theory tells us, is designed to bring him certain satisfactions, if not outright satisfaction, then certainly—this is doctrinally established—some form of pleasure. What, in the end, can drive the patient to turn to the analyst, to seek something that he himself calls health?

Through many examples—and not the least humorous ones—NUNBERG has no trouble demonstrating that one does not have to take many steps into analysis before seeing what has motivated the patient suddenly erupt, as the profound, though undoubtedly initially unacknowledged, goal of his search for what he calls his “health,” his “balance.” This goal is, in fact, precisely his unconscious aim—not in some long-term perspective, but in its most immediate scope.

And what a refuge, for example, is the recourse to analysis to restore peace in his marriage because some dysfunction has arisen in his sexual function or some extramarital desire! What the patient quickly proves to be aiming for, strictly speaking—under the guise of a temporary suspension of his presence at home, of a distancing from his spouse—is precisely what he desires, which is the exact opposite of what he initially presented as the primary goal of his analysis in addressing his analyst, namely, not the restoration of his marriage but its rupture!

There is no doubt, then, that we find ourselves here—at the very moment of the commitment to analysis and certainly in its early steps—confronted with the profound ambiguity of any assertion made by the patient, given that it inherently and fundamentally has a double face. To put it plainly, it is as if the dimension of truth were first established within and even through a certain lie. In this, truth is not strictly speaking undermined, since the lie itself already situates and establishes itself within the dimension of truth.

That this initial entanglement—that the entirety of analytic experience, in the subject’s relation to the signifier, not in the sense that he commands it, but in that his relation to the signifier constitutes and institutes him as a subject—this is the reference point that we deliberately sought to place at the forefront of a general rectification of analytic theory. For it is just as primary and constitutive in the establishment of analytic experience as, we have emphasized, it must be conceived as primary and constitutive in the function of the unconscious in its most radical aspect.

Undoubtedly, this is a limitation—within our didactic focus on analysis—of the unconscious to what could be called its narrowest platform, so narrow that it is akin to the edge of a knife. But it is precisely in relation to this point of division that we can avoid any error of substantialization regarding what is at stake, regarding what must be handled in analytic experience.

By taking things and centering them on the four-cornered schema of our graph, deliberately distinguishing the plane of enunciation from the plane of the utterance, illustrating it through the absurdities introduced by overly formal logical thinking—such as marking the impasse, even the paradox, in viewing the statement “I am lying” as an antinomy of reason, when everyone knows there is no antinomy at all, and that it is entirely false to respond to “I am lying” with: “If you say ‘I am lying,’ then you are telling the truth, and therefore you are not lying,” and so on—it becomes entirely clear that “I am lying” is not only meaningful despite its absurdity but is also entirely sustainable and perfectly valid.

The “I” that enunciates, the “I” of enunciation, is not the same as the “I” of the utterance, that is, the shifter that designates it in the utterance. It is entirely conceivable that—from the point where I enunciate, where I formulate something in an entirely valid way—the “I,” the “I” that at that moment formulates the utterance, is lying, that he has lied just before, that he will lie afterward, or even that in saying “I am lying,” he is stating that, in uttering these words, he has the intention to deceive.

We do not need to look far to illustrate this. The famous Jewish anecdote about the train, where one of the two characters tells the other: “I am going to Lemberg,” to which the other responds: “Why are you telling me that you are going to Lemberg since you are really going there? And if you tell me this, it is so that I believe you are going to Krakow.”

What is at stake in this division between utterance and enunciation is precisely that, if we pinpoint the “I” in “I am lying” at the level of the chain of utterance…

• where “lying” is a signifier that belongs, at the level of the Other, to the treasure trove of vocabulary,
• where the “I” is determined retroactively, becomes a generated meaning at the level of the utterance,

…what it produces at the level of enunciation is, in effect, a “I deceive you,” which is the result. But this arises from precisely the point where the analyst awaits the subject in the analytic quest. And, reflecting back to him, in accordance with the formula, his own message in its true meaning—that is, in an inverted form—he tells him:

“In this ‘I deceive you,’ what you are sending as a message is precisely what I am expressing to you. In doing so, you are telling the truth.”

In the effort, in the path of deception where the subject ventures, the analyst is in a position to formulate this “you are telling the truth,” and our interpretation has meaning only within this dimension.

Here, I would like to indicate to you briefly—because it presents itself within our reach—the resource that this schema offers us in relation to the fundamental process, the one I have dated as the possibility of the discovery of the unconscious. It has, indeed, always been there; it was there in the time of THALES, it was present at the level of the most primitive modes of interhuman relations. But from where does the possibility of what I have called “its discovery” originate?

If we transfer to this schema—though I will have to proceed quickly—the Cartesian “I think,” observe carefully how this would function.

Certainly, the distinction between enunciation and utterance is what makes its slippage always possible, and, if one may say so, the potential stumbling block. For if something is instituted through the process of the cogito, it is precisely a cogitans, a dimension, the register of thought as extracted from an opposition to extension, which remains currently its most fragile point but which nonetheless ensures it a sufficient status within the order of signifying constitution.

That the ego here may be designated as a consequence of this process—this, indeed, provides its certainty at the level of enunciation, the cogito taking that place. But it must be said: the status of “I think” is as reduced, as minimal, as punctual, and could just as well be affected by the connotation of “this means nothing” as the “I am lying” from earlier. For “I think,” reduced to the mere punctuality of being an “I think” that is assured only by the absolute doubt concerning any meaning of “I think,” may even hold a status more fragile than that to which “I am lying” has been subjected.

From this point, I would dare to characterize, in its effort toward certainty, the Cartesian “I think” as partaking in a sort of—I would not even call it premature formation, but an abortion—and it is here that the difference in status granted to the subject by the discovered dimension of the unconscious is found. Cartesian, it belongs entirely to the difference between something whose certainty regarding the subject is that of an abortion and something that we shall call—what?—a promise, something whose platform is broader than that homunculus.

I will return shortly to the term to clarify what I mean, namely, the desire that must be situated at the level of the cogito: that everything that animates what all enunciation speaks of is desire! Again, I draw your attention to the fact that I said desire, and the desire as I formulate it, in relation to what FREUD brings us from the very beginning of his assertions, says more.

I will elaborate on this shortly, but for now, I take up again the term “abortion,” “homunculus.” If I may thus pinpoint the function of the Cartesian cogito, it is because it is illustrated by the downfall, by the relapse that inevitably occurs in the history of what is called “thought”—which is the mistake of taking the I of the cogito for the little homunculus:

– that has long been represented whenever psychology attempts to define itself: this famous little man inside the man,
– that has long been denounced in its function by thought, even presocratic thought,
– that claims to account for psychological unity or discordance through the presence inside man of a little man who governs him, who drives the chariot,
– that is the point nowadays referred to as the “point of synthesis.”

In other words, in our vocabulary, this constructs the S by which we symbolize the subject as determined, constituted as secondary in relation to the signifier. And to illustrate this, I emphasize that the matter can be presented in the simplest way through the unary trait: the first signifier is the notch, by which it is marked, for example, that the subject at that moment has killed an animal, whereby in his memory, he will only become confused once he has killed ten others, [but?] he will no longer remember which one is which.

And it is from this unary trait, by which the subject is first marked, by which the subject himself is situated—and first and foremost as a tattoo, the first of signifiers—that the subject subsequently, when this “1” is instituted, counts as “a 1.” And it is at the level not of the One but of the “one1” that he must first situate himself as a subject.

This is where the two “one”s already distinguish themselves, and the first split is marked, the one that makes the subject, as a subject, distinct not from what he designates but from the sign in relation to which he was first able to constitute himself as a subject.

It is through the confusion of this function of S with i(a)—that is, the image of the object (a) insofar as this is how the subject:

– sees himself doubled,
– sees himself constituted by the reflected, momentary, precarious image of mastery,
– imagines himself as a man precisely and solely because he imagines himself.

Any reference, any identification of the subject within analytic practice in relation to the reality supposed to constitute us already leads to falling into the trap, into the degradation, into the downfall of this constitution of the subject as a “psychological isolate.” And any approach based on the relation of this “isolate” to a real context may have its validity within certain psychologizing speculations, within certain institutions of psychological experiments. It may produce results, have effects, allow the institution of “tables.”

Of course, this will always occur in contexts where it is we who construct reality: for example, when we propose tests to the subject—tests that are organized by us. This is the domain of validity of what is called psychology, but it has nothing to do with the level at which psychoanalytic experience is instituted and sustained. And let us not forget that in instituting it in this way, we push things to a point that, if I may say so, incredibly reinforces the subject’s destitution.

For what I have called “psychological isolate” is far from being the old—or ever-young—old “monad” traditionally instituted as the center of knowledge. For the “Leibnizian monad,” for example, is not isolated; it is a center of knowledge, it is that which, within the cosmos, is the center from which something that we might call—depending on the inflection—contemplation or harmony will be exercised. It is inseparable from a cosmology.

The “psychological isolate,” instituted within the concept of the ego, as it emerges through a deviation—a deviation which, I believe, is merely a detour—within psychoanalytic thought, comes to function as a subject, so to speak, “in distress” in relation to a reality. And for now, it is our task to determine how even this reality is conceived within analysis, something that must also be situated here so that, in relation to what analysis effectively outlines on its horizon as an opening, we may perceive its paradox.

I first wish to mark, as a simple reference point, that this way of theorizing the operation is in full discord, in complete rupture, with what experience, on the other hand, leads us to promote—and what we cannot eliminate from the analytic text—namely, the function of the internal object.

Here, the terms introjection and projection are used haphazardly. I do not know whether we will or will not have time to eventually point out how they should be rectified, but if anything, even within this approach, within this context of faltering theorization, if something is given to us, if something comes to the foreground from all sides—I would almost say from any horizon of experience where the analyst, in that moment, constitutes his own experience—it is this function of the internal object, which, in the extreme, has ended up polarizing itself into this “good” or “bad object,” around which some have made everything revolve that, in the subject’s behavior, represents distortion, inflection, paradoxical fear, a foreign body in conduct.

And in the operational context where the analyst intervenes, some, in urgent conditions—such as in the selection of subjects for specific professional roles requiring various levels of supervision, cybernetic control, or responsibility (when training aviation pilots or locomotive drivers, for example)—have pointed out that it involves concentrating the focus of a rapid analysis, even a flash analysis, or even using certain so-called personality tests.

We cannot avoid raising, within this mode of conceiving the relationship between the ego and reality, the question of the status of this internal object:
Is it an object of perception? How do we approach it? Where does it come from? What, then, would constitute the analysis of transference within this rectification?
I merely indicate this reference point here, since we will have to return to it through the detour we now need to take.

However, I will now immediately indicate something to you, which will here be only a schematic approach, a model—one that we will need to refine considerably. Take it, then, as a problematic model.

But the adhesive power of the schema, which is generally centered on the function of rectifying illusion, is such that I can never introduce too soon something that at least obstructs it, that at the very least unsettles it—if not yet refocusing it.

Here, I will represent on the board something, a schema, that allows us to situate how the problem is structured. The unconscious,

– if it is what I have told you: something marked by a temporal pulsation,
– if the unconscious is what closes again as soon as it has opened,
– if repetition, on the other hand, is not simply this stereotypy of behavior,
but if it is repetition relative to something that is always missed,

then you can already see that transference, in itself, as it is presented to us as a mode of access to what is hidden, to what is concealed in the unconscious, can only be a precarious path:

– for if transference is nothing but repetition, it will always be the repetition of the same failure,
– for if transference claims, through this repetition, to restore the continuity of a history, what it actually does is awaken, revive, and bring back—what?—a relation that the unconscious presents to you as, by its very nature, syncopated.

We can see, then, that transference as an operative mode cannot suffice by conflating itself, as it is practically done, with the efficacy of repetition, with the restoration of what is concealed in the unconscious, or even with the purification, the catharsis of unconscious elements!

When I speak to you of the unconscious as something that appears in temporal pulsation, an image may come to mind: that of the fishing net that opens slightly, at the bottom of which the catch will be made. The unconscious is, according to the image of the pouch, something reserved, closed within itself, into which we must penetrate from the outside. But it is precisely here that its topology must be reversed in a schema that you must reconcile with the one I presented in my article: Remarks on the Report of Daniel Lagache concerning the Ideal Ego and the Ego Ideal.

I emphasize, regarding the last elements I have introduced to you concerning the scopic drive, that this schema clarifies:
that from where the subject sees himself—that is, where this real and inverted image of his own body is formed [he sees only i(a), a virtual image in the plane mirror of i(a), a real image produced by the concave mirror]—which is given in the schema of the ego, I ask you to refer to this schema and this text and the role of the concave mirror, that from where the subject sees himself [i’(a)], this is not where he looks at himself [I].

He sees himself in the space of the Other [i’(a)], but the point from which he sees himself is also within this space of the Other [I]—and yet, this is precisely where the subject looks at himself and even where he speaks. Insofar as he speaks, it is here, in the place of the Other, that he begins to constitute that truthful lie through which something is set in motion that partakes of desire, of desire at the level of the unconscious.

The net in question—and particularly regarding its opening, which constitutes its essential structure—the subject, we must consider him as being inside. What is important is not what enters it, as the Gospel says, but what comes out of it. But the mode through which we can conceive this closure of the unconscious is through the instance, the emergence, the incidence, in a manner as necessary as it is rhythmic, of something that plays the role of an obturator.

This obturator is here [(a)] in this schema. To visualize this simplified model, you must understand it purely and simply as the call, the aspiration, the suction—if I may say so—at the opening of the net of the object (a). It is the pivot, the play of the object (a), at this point of oscillation, at this opening where it emerges, within this image, which you may also liken to those large spheres in which the numbers of a lottery are shuffled. What is effectively being concocted at the start, within this great game, this great roulette, from the first utterances of free association, what may come out of it as valuable, comes out in the interval where the object (a) does not block the opening.

This schematic structure—rudimentary, crude, elementary, “hammer-blow philosophy,” if you will, in this instance—is what allows you to restore, in its reciprocal counter-position, the constitutive function of the symbolic, in this knot of the subject, within the odd and even [0,1] of his encounter with what comes to present itself there in the effective action of the analytic maneuver.

This is, of course, entirely insufficient, but it is absolutely essential to bring to the foreground, as a “bulldozer” concept, if I may put it this way, in order to attempt to restore what is needed to first conceive how the notion of transference can be reconciled:

– as both an obstacle to recollection,
– and at the same time, the presentification of what is at stake, namely, that essential something—the closure of the unconscious—which is the ever-timely lack of the right encounter [εὐτυχία: eutuchia].

I could illustrate all of this with the multiplicity of formulations—and, of course, their discordances—that analysts have given regarding the function of transference. I cannot, of course, cover the entire field, but I ask you to at least follow some basic sorting operations if you have the curiosity to look into it yourself.

It is quite certain that transference and the therapeutic goal are distinct things. Transference does not coincide with this goal. Nor is it merely a means to that end. The two extremes of what has been formulated in analytic literature are situated here. How many times will you read formulations that, for instance, associate transference with identification, with that reference to point I as I situated it earlier—whereas it is merely a pause, a false termination of analysis, which is very frequently, moreover, taken to be its normal conclusion? Undoubtedly, its relationship with transference is close, but precisely because transference has not been analyzed.

Conversely, you will see the function of transference formulated as a point of support, as a means of that “realizing rectification” against which my entire discourse today is directed. Yet, it is impossible to correctly situate transference within any of these references. Since it concerns reality, it is indeed on this level that I intend to direct my critique.

Transference—let me state today, as an introductory aphorism to what I will elaborate on next time—transference is something crucial, indeed key, to the analytic experience, because it is the enactment of what? Not of illusion, not of something that would push us toward an identificatory, alienating movement on the imaginary plane—any conformity, even to an ideal model, of which the analyst could in no way be the support. Transference is the enactment of the reality of the unconscious.

Now, this is what I have left suspended in the concept of the unconscious—something quite singular: it is what is increasingly forgotten, which I have not recalled until now! I hope, as we proceed, to justify to you why this is so, why, concerning the unconscious, I have, in a sense, sought to remind you of the incidence we could call the constituting act of the subject at the level of the unconscious—because this is what we must sustain.

But let us not forget that, at its core, when FREUD introduced us to the dimension of the unconscious, we must remember everything that was associated with it. Not only associated but emphasized, all the way to its very end, by FREUD himself as strictly consubstantial with it—namely, sexuality.

For having increasingly forgotten what this relationship of the unconscious to the sexual means, we will see that analysis has inherited a conception of reality that has nothing to do with what reality was for FREUD at the level of the secondary process.

Thus, it is in positing transference, as I have said, as the enactment of the reality of the unconscious that we will take up the discussion next time, in order to reestablish the foundations upon which a positive conceptualization of it can be given.

Discussion

Guy ROSOLATO

I can share with you the reflections I had during your seminar. First, an analogy: your schema strongly resembles an eye:

– To what extent does (a) play the role of the lens?
– To what extent, for instance, could this lens have the function of a cataract in certain cases? This is an analogy.

That being said, for instance, what I would like is for you to clarify what you can say about the ego ideal and the ideal ego specifically in relation to this schema. As for the rest—”the enactment of the reality of the unconscious” in relation to transference… Yes, but by “enactment,” what do you mean?

It is certain that there is a relationship between transference and the unconscious. I see this stated in that formulation. But it seems to me that, first, “reality of the unconscious” applies insofar as we are dealing with the plane of psychic reality. However, “enactment”—I think perhaps this is important in your formulation.

LACAN

You see, I have emphasized it. “Enactment” is a word of promise, in the sense that people know quite well how to invoke the function of the act as such—and, of course, I clearly distinguish it on this occasion, since this act cannot take on… this act is not to be understood as conduct. This is not about the objectification of behaviors as they are emphasized in an objectifying mode within the perspective I oppose—that is, the one that judges, measures according to similarity, according to the formal similarity of behaviors in reflection, what is effective and convincing to put forward. I have specifically spoken of act and not conduct.

This term “act” is situated at the level of what is constitutive of the subject.

Therefore, I will have to return to this and—if you will—to introduce here a punctuation, a promise of a heading for the next chapter, following this reference that must be highlighted. This is precisely what I mean and what I believe must be stated as essential from the outset so that transference does not become a site of alibi, an insufficient operative mode, taken through biases and detours—not necessarily ineffective ones—that account for the limits, for instance, of analytic intervention, for the false definitions that may be given of its conclusion, and which I have specifically pointed out today as the very issue at stake when I spoke of what certain authors content themselves with as a definition of the end of analysis, regardless of what they themselves effectively do in their practice. Take BALINT, for example, when he speaks of identification with the analyst.

This is a very important point. That is why I am coming back to it immediately in responding to you. It is entirely consistent with a certain way of considering transference. If you do not take transference at this level—which, I must say, has not been fully, or even at all, illustrated today but will be the subject of my next lecture—you can never grasp anything but partial incidences of it, incidences that lead either to confusing it with other concepts or to making selective choices about its efficacy and the place it might occupy.

As for the remarks you made, they are amusing. In everything concerning topology, one must always be very careful not to assign it the function of a Gestalt. This does not mean that certain Gestalten, certain living forms, do not sometimes give us, so to speak, the sensation of being some kind of biological effort to shape, within space—and our real space, whatever KANT may think, is indeed three-dimensional—something resembling those twists of fundamental topological objects that I presented to you during the year of the seminar on Identification, such as, for example, that mitre [cross-cap], which you surely remember as a surface rejected into three-dimensional space that intersects itself, which, by the way, does not mean anything else.

I could very well designate for you this or that point or plane where an organ appears to represent the touching effort—if one may say so—of life to align with these topological configurations, which are, after all, of some interest. I have specifically chosen not to complicate the matter here and to avoid presenting too many difficulties for a portion of my audience. I deliberately refrained from using these topological considerations, which are nonetheless quite simple, as they would have required me to introduce them in a somewhat developed manner.

However, it is certain that only these topological considerations can provide us, for example, with the image of what is at stake when what is inside is also outside.

That is precisely why they are particularly necessary when dealing with the unconscious. For what am I telling you here when I say that, at the level of the unconscious, a deceptive subject begins to present itself? I represent it to you at once as being what is inside the subject but which only comes into being externally—that is, in this place of the Other, where alone it can assume its status.

This can truly be represented only within a topological configuration in which the inside is the outside and vice versa, and therefore something quite different from a sphere, a net.

It is a net of an entirely different configuration. And you know that, after all, there exist wine bottles that represent this quite well—it is a net, a net in which one maneuvers in a very particular way, since one cannot simultaneously say that one is outside when one is inside and vice versa.

On occasion, other analogous forms have been quite useful, but I cannot, in this context, rely on all the knowledge accumulated in my previous seminars, for the simple reason that part of my audience is new. That is why I have used the pure and simple schema of the net and have simply introduced the notion of the obturator. That the object functions as an obturator—this is something we still need to determine precisely how. Of course, it is not purely and simply that kind of passive obturator, a mere stopper, which, to set your thinking in a certain direction, I initially sought to illustrate.

I will provide a more refined representation of it, in which you may indeed recognize certain analogies showing its relation to the structure of the eye. It is not entirely by chance that the eye is formed as it is—and, I would say, formed this way throughout the entire animal kingdom, something that has already struck observers yet, curiously, seems to have led to no real conclusions.

But it is indeed quite singular that the structure of the eye presents us with a general form that is so easily evoked whenever we attempt to chronologically depict the subject’s relations to the world.

This is certainly not coincidental. Nevertheless, it is important not to rush to embrace this idea too closely. In any case, since you made this remark, I will take advantage of it for one thing: to highlight for you the difference between this and a similar schema made by FREUD—namely, the one he presents when he gives the schema of the Id and represents the ego as the lens through which the Unbewusstsein, the perception-consciousness, comes to operate upon the amorphous mass.

It is a schema that is worth what it is worth, just as limited in its scope as mine in a certain way. But you can at least notice the difference: if I had wanted to place the ego somewhere, it is i(a) that I would have placed there… But here, it is (a)!