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(All parts in English)

When I told you at the beginning of our discussions: “I do not seek, I find.” This means that in FREUD’s field, for example, one only has to bend down to pick up what there is to find. The “nachträglich,” for example, has been, in its real significance, neglected, even though it was there and only needed to be picked up. One day, I remember the astonishment, the surprise of someone who was following the same paths as I was, upon seeing what could be done with the einziger Zug, the unary trait.

Today, regarding what I introduced last time, I would like to show you the importance, already indicated by my schema from last time, of what FREUD calls, at the level of repression, the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz. Vorstellungs: the German language has this kind of flaw that leads it to add unnecessary “s” which cannot be linked to the normal declension of the determiner but is necessary to bind its compound words. There are two terms here: Vorstellung, Repräsentanz. I spoke to you last time about a form—which I called the form of alienation—that I illustrated with several examples and that I told you could be articulated in a field of a very special nature.

Today we could try to articulate in some other ways, let’s say “no something… without another thing.” The dialectic of the slave is obviously no freedom without life, but for him, there will be no life with freedom. In other words, from one to the other there is a necessary condition, and this necessary condition becomes precisely the sufficient reason for the loss of the original demand.
Perhaps it is something, thus, that presents itself in certain circumstances, for some of those who follow me: no way to follow me without passing through my signifiers, but passing through my signifiers entails this feeling of alienation that incites them to seek—according to FREUD’s formula—”the little difference,” unfortunately, this “little difference” makes them lose exactly the scope of the direction I was pointing out to them.

And so it is that—my God, I am not so touchy, I let everyone follow their own path in the direction I show—I would have gladly done without having to point out what seemed to someone so precious to rectify, in the translation I had first given, of this Vorstellungsrepräsentanz.

I said: if FREUD in the repressed insists, emphasizes, it is because repression concerns something that is of the order of representation, but he did not say that it was the representation. He said it was the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz. And as soon as I introduced, several years ago, this remark, which was also simply a way of reading what FREUD writes under the title of Verdrängung, namely the article that, in the series of articles gathered as metapsychological, immediately follows the article on the unconscious, I obviously insisted on the fact that FREUD clearly says, emphasizes, that this is not the fact of the repressed.

The Verdrängung—and we will see what this means in our theory—wanders elsewhere, wherever it can. There will always be enough psychology professors to justify with the patient that it makes sense where precisely it is no longer in its place. But by insisting on the fact that it is the representation that is repressed, I also insisted on this: that what is repressed is not the represented of the desire, the meaning, but it is the representative, and I translated, literally: of the representation.

Here intervenes—showing, illustrating, in the very example of this transmission that teaching entails, the function of alienation—here intervenes in some, more or less animated by the concern for privileges, let’s say for example, of academic authority, let’s not qualify it otherwise, after all, this authority—a tenth, let’s say no more, of infatuation upon taking office—claims to correct, the representative, let’s say, representative.

It seems like nothing, but in a little book, which has just been published or is about to be published immediately, on psychosomatics, we will find a whole argument about some alleged misunderstanding that would exist in something that must be called “my theory of desire,” and in a small note, which will refer moreover to some elusive passage, taken from the text proposed by two of my students, it will be emphasized that by following me, they make desire the representative representative of need.

I do not argue whether, indeed, my students wrote that: we have not managed to find it together! But the important thing is this: that the remark, the only relevant remark in this extremely unsubstantial little book, consists in saying: “We, we would rather say that desire is the non-representative representative.” Now, this is precisely what I say—what I mean and what I say, because what I mean, I say—by saying, by translating Vorstellungsrepräsentanz as representative of the representation.

To locate it in our fundamental schema of the essence of the original mechanisms of alienation, this Vorstellungsrepräsentanz is very precisely what we will call—for the sake of clarity—not to complicate things nor to add another term to our vocabulary, but to clearly designate what I want to say today—the first signifying coupling that allows us to conceive that the subject first appears in the Other insofar as the first signifier, the unary signifier, emerges in the field of the Other and represents, as such, the subject, for another signifier.

This other signifier results in the ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis] of the subject, division of the subject insofar as the subject appears somewhere as meaning, elsewhere it manifests as fading, as disappearance. It is therefore, if one can say, a matter of life and death, between the unary signifier and this subject as a binary signifier, it is the cause of its disappearance. The Vorstellungsrepräsentanz is this binary signifier.

How is it implicated, how does it come to constitute the central point of the Urverdrängung, of what, having passed into the unconscious, will be—as FREUD indicates in his theory—the point of Anziehung, the point of attraction, through which all other repressions, all other similar passages, will be possible, in the place of the unterdrückt: what has passed beneath, as signifier.

This is what is at stake in the term Vorstellungsrepräsentanz. This by which—I told you—the subject in some way finds the way back, from the vel of alienation, it is this operation that I called the other day “separation,” it is something by which the subject finds, if one can say, the weak point of the primitive couple, of the signifying articulation, insofar as it is, by its mechanism, by its essence, alienating.

It is insofar as it is at the level of a desire, at the level of the desire that exists in the interval between these two signifiers, a desire that is offered to the subject, offered to its identification in the experience of the discourse of the Other, of the first Other with whom it is involved: the Other—let’s illustrate by saying, in this instance, the mother—it is insofar as beyond what she says, what she commands, what she evokes as meaning, an unknown motive, her desire is something that manifests as being beyond or beneath, as being unknown.

It is at this point of lack that the desire of the Other is constituted, and the subject, through a process that is not without deception, that is not without constituting this kind of fundamental twist through which what the subject finds again—this is the twist I spoke of last time—returns to the initial point, which is that of its lack as such, of its ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis], of its disappearance.
We will return in detail, we will closely follow the consequences that this implies in the very process of what is called the cure, the treatment, and we will see that this effect of twisting is essential to integrate into what can be called “the phase of exiting the transference.”

For now, what I want to focus on is the essential aspect of this function of desire insofar as it is here that the subject comes to play its part in the separation, that the S, the binary signifier, the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz, is as such unterdrückt, that is to say, fallen beneath.

This point is essential to articulate clearly, and in some way, it immediately resonates, casting some light—which is the sign of an approach that is precisely what we call in our vocabulary, in our practice, interpretation—casting some light simultaneously on very different regions.

It may not be useless to suggest in passing, however metaphysical it may seem at first in relation to our experience, but still, in a technique that, incidentally and as if the thing were self-evident, frequently alludes to, uses the term of liberating something, is it entirely foreign to our field to say that it is here that the matter of this term is at stake, after all, a term that indeed deserves—as much as another to which we have applied it—the qualification of “phantom,” which is called freedom?

What the subject has to liberate itself from is this aphanisic effect of the binary signifier, and if we look closely, we will see that, indeed, it is nothing other than this that is at stake in the function of freedom. It is not for nothing that when illustrating last time, when justifying this term vel of alienation at the level of our experience, the two most certain, most evident supports that came to us are this choice, these two choices different from each other, and which in their formulation structure:
– one, the position of the slave,
– the other, the position of the master.

For one, the choice is given of “freedom or life,” and resolving it as “no freedom without life” leaves life forever scarred by this freedom. For looking at things, indeed from a broader perspective, you will see that it is exactly in the same way that the alienation of the master is structured. For if HEGEL indicates to us that the status of the master is established from the struggle to the death, “of pure prestige” he emphasizes, it is indeed that it is from death as such, that it is by making his choice pass through death, that the master too constitutes his fundamental alienation.

For just as well, I hardly needed to emphasize that, surely, of course one can say that death is not spared to him any more than to the slave. He will always have it in the end, and that is the limit of his freedom. But that is saying too little, for if the death in question is not this constitutive death of the master’s alienating choice—death, struggle to the death, says HEGEL, of pure prestige—the revelation of the master’s essence manifests at the moment of “the Terror” when it is said to him: “freedom or death,” and where he obviously has only death to choose in order to have freedom. The ultimate term, the supreme image of the master, is this character from Claudel’s tragedy: Sygne de Coûfontaine, which I have commented on at length in a detour of my seminar. And insofar as from her register, which is the master’s register, she refused to abandon anything, the values to which she sacrifices bring her, in addition to her sacrifice, only the necessity of renouncing, down to her very core, her very being.

It is insofar as through the sacrifice to these values, she is pushed, cornered, forced to renounce her very essence of being, the innermost part of her being, that she ultimately illustrates this: what constitutes the radical alienation of freedom in the master himself.

Do I need to emphasize how essential this Repräsentanz of the signifier is in its meaning? Do I need to emphasize that Repräsentanz must be understood here—but my God—in the way things occur, at the real level where communication happens in every human domain? These representatives are precisely what we commonly call “the representative of France,” for example.
What do diplomats deal with when they engage in dialogue?

Very precisely, they only perform in relation to one another this function of being pure representatives, and above all, nothing should intervene that would pertain to their own personal significance. When diplomats engage in dialogue, they are supposed to represent something whose meaning—shifting, moreover—is beyond: France.

But in the dialogue itself, each only has to register what the other conveys in their terms, in their function as a signifier, and the two diplomats engaging in dialogue do not have to—at least as much as possible, essentially in the structure—take into account what the other is as a presence, as a more or less sympathetic man with whom there could be various inter-psychological matters; this is nothing but an impurity in the game.

The term Repräsentanz is, strictly speaking, to be invoked in this sense of the signifier, where what is emphasized is that it must be registered, taken as such, but that it is essentially at the opposite poles of meaning. The meaning that plays, that comes into play, in the Vorstellung, and besides, the Vorstellung is what we deal with in psychology, that is to say, the handling, the bringing into play, of what concerns the objects of the world, under the parenthesis of a subject. This happens here: an S with a parenthesis in which would unfold the entire sequence you can imagine of a, a’, a”… [S(a, a’, a”)], and so on. Here is this subjectivity on which the theory of knowledge hangs.

Let’s say, of course, that every representation requires a subject, but what the origin of the subject teaches us is:
– that this subject is never a pure subject,
– that each subject does not sustain itself in the world with its original or primordial Weltanschauung [worldview],
– and that what is at stake would be, in short, as an outdated psychological or psychosociological consideration still suggests to us, that what is at stake, what there would be to do, that “the path of truth” would be, in a way, the investigation: the totalization, the statistics on the sum of Weltanschauungen, on what constitutes opinion. [the “reality” as the sum of representations]

Things could be thus if, indeed, there were in the world a series of subjects, each tasked with representing certain conceptions of the world. This is, very essentially, the fault, the flaw, the philosophical error—untenable, and besides, never radically upheld—of idealism. But what constitutes the subject shows us that there is always the correlation, the correlative of this point, somewhere, of ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis] of the subject, and that it is there, in our alienation, in this fundamental division, that the dialectic of the subject is established.

Here, of course, arises something that responds to the question that may have been posed to me last time, regarding what would make me adhere, more or less, to the Hegelian dialectic. Would it not suffice here for me to answer that in this vel, this sensitive point, this point of balance, there is the emergence of the subject at the level of meaning only through the ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis] of the subject in the other place, which is that of the unconscious?

Would it be necessary to point out anything else, nor does this involve any mediation, and I take it upon myself, I make it a point, if provoked, to show that actual experience, that of what has been inaugurated in this path aimed at as that of knowledge, of an “absolute knowledge,” never brings us, in any way, to something that could illustrate the Hegelian vision of successive syntheses, and even reveals the promise of what in him, with him, is obscurely tied to this profile, in this ultimate aim, of what someone else has humorously illustrated here under the title of “Sunday of Life,” of that moment when no further opening will remain gaping in the heart of the subject.

But it will suffice for me… and I believe it is necessary here that I indicate where this Hegelian lure originates, and how it is, in a way, included in the inaugural approach, in that of the Cartesian “I think,” insofar as I have indicated to you the inaugural point that introduces into History, into our experience, into our necessity, which forever prevents us from ignoring the vel of alienation, because it was, for the first time, taken as the constituent of something henceforth ineliminable in its radical foundation, and which once again specifies what is at stake as the dialectic of the subject.

Moreover, this reference will be quite essential to me in what follows… quite essential to characterize what is at stake in the experience of transference… so that I return here to articulate some of its features.

What constitutes the Cartesian approach, what is new in it, what distinguishes it from that search for επιστήμη [epistēmē] in ancient thought, what distinguishes it from one of its terms, namely skepticism, is what we will try to articulate here from this very double function, which we connected last time to alienation and separation.

What is DESCARTES seeking? I have told you; I do not need to repeat it, to illustrate it with texts in hand—you will see it—I can, after all, take some excerpt; it is certainty:

“An extreme desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false—underline desire—to see clearly—in what?—in my actions, and to walk with assurance in this life.”

Is it not already a matter of something entirely different from the pursuit of knowledge? Do we not see here the originality of this approach, which is not that of a dialectician nor of a professor, even less of a cavalier? It has been emphasized: not only is DESCARTES’ biography marked above all by this search, this wandering in the world, these encounters, and—after all—this secret design.

It is not simply because we bring to it, as elsewhere, this concern for biography—after all, I am among those who consider it secondary in relation to the meaning of a work—but it is because DESCARTES himself emphasizes that this biography, his approach, is for him essential to the communication of his method, of this path he found toward truth. And he emphasizes it as such; he properly articulates that what he has given is not—as BACON attempted to do a few years earlier—that it is not the general means of properly guiding one’s reason, for example, without yielding to experience; it is not that at all.

It is his own method insofar as he set out on this path, that he embarked in the direction of this desire: – in the direction of this search, which is “to walk with assurance,”
– in this “desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, to see clearly” in what? “in my actions.”

This example, then, is particular. Here too, I could point out texts to you since he even goes so far as to add this:

“What was, for me at such a moment, my path, may not seem good to others; that is their affair; let them gather from my path, from my experience, what they have to gather from it.”

And this is part of DESCARTES’ introduction of his own path to science. Does this mean that there is no aim at knowledge? Does this mean that the weight of knowledge is not present there, in DESCARTES’ impact?

But of course, this is where he starts: there is knowledge to spare, there always is, there still is. It is not for nothing; it is not I who impose this allusion here; it is his very text. He was trained by the best professors; he graduated from the Collège de La Flèche; he was a student of the Jesuits. As far as knowledge and even wisdom are concerned, there is no lack there.

Shall I go so far as to say that it is appropriate to center, to name, to clearly see what is there, what it is about, and what he also seeks to demonstrate in this diversity, this abundance, this even overabundance of what is brought to him as knowledge—it may not be insignificant that it is precisely from his departure from the Jesuits that he carries this sharp aim.

Is it not the case that behind a certain mode of knowledge transmission, there is something that still interests us most vividly, at the heart of what is transmitted through a certain humanist wisdom? Is there not something like a hidden perinde ac cadaver that is not where it is usually placed, in the supposed death that the rule of Saint IGNATIUS would demand of everyone?

As for me, I am not very sensitive to it: these Jesuits, as I see them, from the outside, always seem quite well, even rather lively. They make their presence felt and in a diversity that is far from evoking that of death. The death in question is the one hidden behind the very notion of “humanism,” at the heart of all humanist consideration, and even in this term that is always attempted to be animated under the title of “human sciences,” there is something we will call “a skeleton in the closet.” That is what is at stake, and it is in this that DESCARTES finds a new path. His aim is not to refute uncertain knowledge. He will let them—the knowledge—run along quietly, and with them, still, all the rules of social life one might wish.

And the proof, moreover, is that the other term of the vel of alienation, as it presents itself at that inaugural moment of the emergence of this term called the subject, would be what was also present, very close to it, in its time, the historical moment of the early 17th century: that of the proliferation of what are called libertines, who are, in reality, Pyrrhonians, skeptics.

PASCAL designates them by their name, except that he does not sufficiently emphasize their meaning and significance.
Skepticism is not the successive and enumerable doubting of all opinions, of all the more or less precarious paths through which the quest for knowledge has attempted to slip. It is the holding of this subjective position: “One cannot know anything.”
There is something here that would deserve to be illustrated by the range, the shimmer, the iridescence of those who have been its historical incarnations.

I would like to show you that MONTAIGNE, in a certain way, is truly the one who centered himself, not around skepticism, but around a living moment of this ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis] of the subject, and it is in this that he is fruitful, that he is an eternal guide who remains and surpasses all that he may have represented as a moment to be defined in a historical turning point.

But that is not skepticism:
– skepticism is something we no longer know,
– skepticism is an ethics,
– skepticism is a mode of sustaining oneself in life, which involves a position so difficult, so heroic, that we can no longer even imagine it, perhaps precisely because of this flaw, this passage that was pointed out to us—in what?—in this passage found by DESCARTES, which is the one that carried the search for the path to certainty into the flaw, into this very point of the vel of alienation, for which there is no way out except through the path of desire.

This desire for certainty, though it may for DESCARTES result only in doubt, in having chosen this path is precisely what led him to perform a very singular separation. I would simply like to touch on a few terms, to highlight a few points, because they will serve as markers for us for some of the terms of one of the essential functions, though masked, that is still alive, present, and directive in our investigative method, which is that of the unconscious.

One could say that DESCARTES…
in pushing himself forward through a method, which I have always emphasized before you—and I was quite satisfied when rereading these texts to see that here I am not embellishing, that this is not a commentary—that indeed, for him, as I have told you, certainty is not a moment that can somehow be taken as acquired once it has been crossed; it must, each time, be repeated by each person, it is an ascetic practice. It is a joint, and it is a particularly difficult point of orientation to maintain in this sharpness that constitutes its essential value and which is, strictly speaking, the establishment as such of something separated…
one could say that when DESCARTES grasps, holds, we will say inaugurates the concept of a certainty that would reside entirely in this “I think” of cogitation…
if one can say, even marked by this point of dead-end that exists between the annihilation of knowledge and skepticism, which are not two similar things…
one could say that his error is to believe that this is a form of knowledge, that from this certainty he can say that he knows something, as I have already told you, that this “I think” is not simply a point of vanishing.

But there is something else he did, which is essential in this separation. And this other essential feature concerns the field he does not name, but which is the very field where all this knowledge wanders, which he said should be placed in radical suspension. It is at the level of this broader subject, the subject supposed to know—supposed to know up to him—namely, God.

You know that he cannot but reintroduce His presence, but in what a singular way! In an absolutely essential way, in that it is there, concerning Him—not himself, who holds this “I think”—concerning Him, the question of eternal truths is posed, that to ensure that there is not in front of him a deceiving God, he must pass through this medium of a being whose, in his register—this would, of course, deserve longer comments—it is not so much a matter of a perfect being, but of an infinite being.

Does DESCARTES, then, remain attached to what has always been the case until him, that all research, that all scientific pursuit, must ensure this: that this current science exists somewhere, in an existing being called God, in other words, that God is supposed to know.

This may seem to you… it may seem to you that I am taking you far from what belongs to the field of our experience, and yet I recall it here to, in a way, both excuse myself and keep your attention firmly on what is the field of our experience: it is that this subject supposed to know is, for us, the analyst.

And what we will have to discuss next time, when it comes to the function of transference, is how it happens that we have, ourselves, no need for the experience, for the thinking of an idea of a perfect, infinite being. Who, indeed, would think of attributing these dimensions to their analyst, for the function of the subject supposed to know to be introduced?

But let us return to our DESCARTES and his subject supposed to know. How does he get rid of it?
Well—you know—through his voluntarism, by giving primacy to the will of God.
It is assuredly one of the most extraordinary feats of intellectual fencing ever delivered in the history of thought:
“eternal truths” are eternal because God wills them to be so.

I believe you can appreciate the elegance of such a solution, which, in a way, leaves the responsibility for an entire part of truths—specifically the “eternal” ones—to Him. Understand clearly that DESCARTES means—and says—that if “2 and 2 make 4,” it is because God wills it, quite simply, because it is His affair. Now, it is true that it is His affair and that “2 and 2 make 4” is not something that goes without saying in His absence.

I will try to illustrate here what I mean. DESCARTES, when he speaks to us about his process, his method:
– of clear ideas and confused ideas,
– of simple ideas and complex ideas,
between these two terms of his method, he places the order to follow.

It is quite possible, after all, that 1+1+1+1 does not make 4, and I must tell you that what I am articulating here for you—the vel of alienation—is indeed an example of that. For, in the cardinal order, this would look something like this: +(1+(1+(1)))… each time a new term is introduced, one or more of the others always risk slipping through our fingers.

But to get to that point, what matters is not the cardinal but the ordinal: there is a first mental operation to perform, then a second, then a third, then a fourth. If you do not perform them in order, you miss them. And knowing whether, in the end, it makes three, four, or two, is relatively secondary—that is God’s business.

In other words, what DESCARTES introduces is immediately illustrated—because his Discourse on Method is introduced at the same time as his Geometry, his Dioptrics, and yet another treatise—what DESCARTES introduces is something that is not, for us, to be formulated in a way that I can say should be truly transparent, but which is nevertheless indicated in the sense I am about to explain.

He substitutes the small letters—a, b, c, etc.—of his algebra for the “capital” letters. The “capital” letters are, if you will, the letters of the Hebrew alphabet with which God created the world, and you know that they have a numerical reverse, meaning that each corresponds to a number.
The difference between DESCARTES’ small letters and the “capital” ones is that:
– DESCARTES’ small letters have no number,
– they are interchangeable,
– and only the order of permutations will define their process.

From what is already implied in number by the presence of the Other—my God—it would suffice to illustrate this by telling you that the sequence of numbers can only be represented by introducing a certain term of numeration, namely zero, in one form or another. Now, zero is the presence of the subject, who at that level totalizes: we cannot extract it from the dialectic of the subject and the Other. For a time, where it connects, it sustains this field whose apparent neutrality is nothing other than the presence of desire as such.

Of course, I will illustrate this only by way of return; yet we will have been able to take a few more steps forward in the function of desire. DESCARTES, for a time, inaugurates the foundational bases of a science in which God has nothing to do. For the characteristic of our science, its difference from ancient sciences, is that we have a science where no one even dares, without ridicule:
– to wonder if God knows anything about it,
– if God leafs through modern mathematics treatises to keep Himself updated.

I have gone far enough today, and I apologize for not having gone further…

It is on this note that I will point out to you, consistently, what is the final aim of my discourse this year: to pose the question of the position of analysis within the science that concerns whether analysis is—or can be situated—in our science, our science considered as the one where God has nothing to do.

Discussion

LACAN

I’ll give you the opportunity right away to expand on what I’ve said today,
at another level, I’d be glad to hear it.

André GREEN – I’m having a hard time connecting it with what you said afterward.

LACAN – It’s brief, of course, because, in reality, I haven’t had the chance to come back to it.

André GREEN

Wouldn’t there be, precisely, a way to connect it to what you said afterward? The subject’s relation to the mirror, exactly in relation to what you mentioned afterward. The subject’s relation to the mirror, as it reflects back the subject supposed to know
who is in the mirror.

LACAN

Hmm… Well, I won’t follow you in that direction. I won’t follow you in that direction because I believe it’s a shortcut.

The point where the return of the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz connects—which is still very necessary in today’s discourse, isn’t it—the point that I told you is, if you will, the virtual point of the function of freedom, insofar as this choice,
the vel manifests there between the signifier and the subject, I illustrated it with a brief reminder, an indication, an opening on what could be said about the avatars of this freedom which, ultimately, is of course never truly reclaimed by anyone serious.

And then I moved on to DESCARTES. I moved on to this DESCARTES who scarcely concerns himself with it, except in action. It is in action
and through this path where he finds his certainty, that his freedom passes. That doesn’t mean he bequeaths it to us, like a bank account!

This place of the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz, insofar as it will allow us to precisely situate certain elements that interest us, that will be the path I still need to take next time before bringing into play before you, at the level of transference,
these terms that I was forced to introduce today around the function of the Other.

These are things that, on the surface, seem far removed from our field, but which, nonetheless, I am not obliged to announce
right away today. It is precisely psychosomatics. Psychosomatics is something that is not a signifier,
but which nonetheless arrives there. It is to the extent that the affair of the signifying induction at the level of the subject has occurred
in a way that does not bring into play the ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis] of the subject, that psychosomatics is conceivable.

In other words, when in the little work I was talking about earlier, whose verbosity you can assess, this little remark is made which, even though it claims to refute—not me, thank God—I am not being called into question, but those who speak in my name, when it corrects the idea that desire is not representative of need.

Indeed, this is something absolutely essential, because it is to the extent that a need comes to be implicated
in this function, because in that place the Vorstellungsrepräsentanz can do something that will, of course, significantly limit our interpretative play, for the reason that the subject as ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis] is not involved in it, that psychosomatics can be conceived as something other than the simple chatter of saying there is a psychic overlay to everything that happens somatically.

It has been known for a long time, if we speak of psychosomatics, it is to the extent that desire must intervene, it is insofar as, here, the chain of desire is maintained, even if we can no longer take into account the function of ἀϕάνισις [aphanisis] of the subject.
I indicate this now, after all, why not even stick with it? Since, after all, regarding the subject of this year, namely The Foundations of Psychoanalysis, this side commentary may in any case be too brief to shed light anywhere other than in already prepared minds—because they have already worked in this field.

Nevertheless, I will re-mention it next time at the beginning of what I will have to state. I would still like to make you feel, since I’m on this topic, what it’s about.
In the conditioned reflex, in Pavlovian experiments, it is not noticed—not noticed enough—that it is only possible to the extent that the exercise of a function, a biological function, that which we can attach to the unifying, totalizing function of need, is demonstrable. Namely, that more than one organ interferes, that if you have made your dog salivate at the sight of a piece of meat, what will interest you from that point on is the thing cut at the point of salivary secretion.

And what it’s about is showing that this is articulable with something that functions as a signifier—since it is done by the experimenter. In other words, the Other is present. But as for demonstrating anything about the supposed psyche of the unfortunate animal, it demonstrates absolutely nothing. Even the so-called effects of neurosis that are obtained are not effects of neurosis, for a simple reason: they are not analyzable through speech.

Producing results is certainly interesting, but you know very well what the primary interest of these conditioned reflexes is: it is to see what the animal can perceive, that is, to use the signifier that is not a signifier for the animal,
but which, to function as a signifier, must nonetheless be inscribed in a difference, to see what differential possibilities exist at the level of its perceptum, which by no means implies that it will be the percipiens in the subjective sense of the word.

The main interest of these experiments is to allow us to observe in the animal the range of differential perception, but a perception that has nothing of a representation. Naturally, because the subject in question here can only be the subject of the experimenter. It goes even further: we are questioning the animal about our own perception. This way of limiting
the scope of Pavlovian experiments is, at the same time, the way to restore their great and true importance.

What are their actual, scientific benefits?
They are precisely those I’ve mentioned, and, moreover, they are used for nothing else.

The interest, ultimately, may lie in realizing the question that is nonetheless raised by the fact that we still discover in the animal that these signifiers, which are ours—since, as I’ve told you, we are the ones arranging them
in perception, we, the experimenters—nonetheless translate among themselves a kind of equivalence that serves to highlight a question.
I’m not saying that I resolve it by posing it—a kind of equivalence that allows us to pinpoint the question—if I may say so—of the realism of this number I mentioned earlier, in a form that is not that of number in the sense that I’ve decomposed it for you here,
on the board, and where I show you what question is implied in every use of number and what causes arithmetic to be a science that has been, not at all affected, but literally halted, blocked, by the intrusion of algebraism.

In another sense, number, as frequency, pure frequency, intervenes in what we can call,
to put things in place, the Pavlovian signal, which is to say, that an animal conditioned to one hundred visual stimuli per second
reacts to one hundred auditory stimuli per second.

Here begins the indication of what, in experimentation, introduces a new question, because you can sense that it is not yet a matter of something to which we can fully assign the status of a signifier, except for us, of course, who count the frequencies. But still, if the animal, without learning, shifts from one hundred frequencies in one register
to one hundred frequencies in another, this perhaps allows us to go a little further in understanding what the properly perceptive structure is.

I’ve taken the opportunity to tell you the things I wanted to tell you and hadn’t yet shared. Let’s leave it at that.