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(All parts in English)

I have chosen this year to focus on the subject of the psychoanalytic act. It is a strange pair of words that, to be honest, has not been commonly used until now.

Certainly, those who have been following what I have been setting forth here for some time may not be surprised that, under these two terms, I introduce what concluded my discourse last year: within the logic of the fantasy, whose every outline I have tried to bring forth here.

Those who have heard me speak, in a certain tone and in two registers, about what the term “sexual act” can and must mean—also a coupled term—may feel somewhat already introduced to the dimension that the psychoanalytic act represents. Yet I must proceed as though part of this assembly knows nothing about it and introduce today what this use that I propose entails.

Psychoanalysis—it is understood at least in principle, it is assumed by the very fact that you are here to listen to me—psychoanalysis does something. “It does”—that is not enough. It is essential; it is at the very core; it is, properly speaking, the poetic vision of the thing. Poetry, too, does something. Incidentally, I have noticed, from having taken some recent interest in the field of poetry, that very little attention has been paid to what it does and to whom, and more specifically—why not?—to poets themselves. Perhaps questioning this would be a way of introducing what the act in poetry consists of.

But that is not our concern today, since we are dealing with psychoanalysis, which does something, but certainly not on the level, the plane, or in the sense of poetry. If we must introduce—and quite necessarily, at the level of psychoanalysis—the function of the act, it is precisely because this psychoanalytic “doing” profoundly involves the subject, to the point that… and thanks to this dimension of the subject that entirely renews for us what can be formulated about the subject as such, which is called the unconscious … this subject, in psychoanalysis, is—as I have already stated—put into act.

I recall that I had already advanced this formulation in relation to transference, saying, in a time already past and in a still-approximate formulation, that transference was nothing other than the putting-into-act of the unconscious. I repeat, this was only an approach, and what we will advance this year concerning this function of the psychoanalytic act will allow us to bring a precision worthy of the numerous—and, I hope, certain, decisive—steps we have taken since.

Let us approach this simply via a certain self-evidence.

If we adhere to the meaning of the word “act,” which consists in constituting—a crossing over with respect to what… let us set that aside—we undoubtedly encounter the act at the entry point of a psychoanalysis. It is, after all, something that deserves the name of an act to decide, with all that this entails, to undertake what is called a psychoanalysis. This decision involves a certain commitment. All the dimensions that are ordinarily associated, in common usage, with the meaning of the word “act,” we find them here.

There is also an act that can be so qualified—the act by which the psychoanalyst establishes himself as such: now, that is something that deserves the name of an act, up to and including the fact that this act, my God, can be inscribed somewhere: “Mr. So-and-so, psychoanalyst.”

In truth, it does not seem absurd, excessive, or out of place to speak of the psychoanalytic act in the same way as one speaks of a medical act. What, then, is the psychoanalytic act in this respect? I must say that it can be recorded under this category in the register of Social Security. Is the psychoanalytic act, for example, the session? One may ask what it consists of, what kind of intervention it involves, since, after all, no prescription is written.

Everything that is, properly speaking, the psychoanalytic act:
— Is it interpretation?
— Is it silence, or whatever else you might choose to designate among the instruments of its function?

In truth, these perspectives do not lead us very far, and to move toward the other point of reference we might choose to present and introduce the psychoanalytic act, let us note that, in psychoanalytic theory, it is indeed spoken of.

However, we are not yet in a position to specify this act in such a way that we could in any manner delineate its limit from what, in a general and commonly used term in analytic theory, is called action.

Action is frequently discussed; it plays a singular role as a point of reference, particularly in the case where it is emphasized—that is, when it comes to accounting for it, I mean theoretically and across a rather broad field.

Analytic theorists, when expressing themselves in analytic terms, in their attempt to explain thought—out of a kind of need for security—seek to account for this thought, which, for reasons we will have to examine, they do not wish to turn into an entity that would appear overly metaphysical, by grounding it in a basis that, in this context, they hope will be more real.

And thought will be explained to us as representing something that is motivated, that justifies itself through its relationship with action—for example, in the form of a more reduced action, an inhibited action, an incipient action, a small model of action, or even that within thought, there is something akin to a kind of tasting of what action—whether it presupposes it or renders it immanent—could be. These discourses are common; I do not need to illustrate them with quotations, but if someone wants to look more closely at what I am implying, I will mention not only a famous article but an entire volume written on the subject by Mr. David Rappaport, a psychoanalyst of the New York Society.

What is striking is that, for anyone who approaches this dimension of action without prejudice, the reference, in this instance, does not seem to me any clearer than what it refers to. And clarifying thought by means of action would perhaps require first having a less confused idea than those typically manifest in such contexts regarding what constitutes an action—since, if we reflect on it for a moment, an action seems indeed to presuppose, at its center, the notion of an act.

I am well aware that there is an approach—one that those who attempt to formulate things in the register I have just described also cling to, or rather, strongly rely on—which consists in identifying action with motor activity. At the very beginning of what we are introducing here, we must perform an operation—call it what you will, a simple clarification or a clearing-away—but it is absolutely essential.

Indeed, it is well known and, after all—my God, why not?—acceptable, that one might wish to apply, in a way that is commonly accepted, perhaps even out of routine, the rule—or at least the pretense of following the rule—of not explaining what continues to be called, not always with much justification, “the superior” and “the inferior.” That is, of not—let me say—explaining the inferior by the superior, and, as is commonly stated—though we no longer quite know why—that “thought is superior” … to start instead from this inferior, which would be the most elementary form of the organism’s response: namely, the famous circuit whose model is given to us under the name of the “reflex arc.”

That is, the circuit that is, depending on the case, called “stimulus-response” when one is cautious and equates it with the pair “sensory excitation”—whatever form it takes—and “motor activation,” which here plays the role of the response. Apart from the fact that, in this famous “arc,” it is all too certain that the response is by no means necessarily or obligatorily motor, and that, consequently, if, for example, the response is excretory or even secretory—if the response is simply that: that it wets—then the reference to this model … as a basis for locating, for grounding the function that we may call action … undoubtedly appears far more precarious.

Moreover, one may observe that motor response, if we define it solely by its connection to the reflex arc, can hardly serve as a model for what might be called “action.” For what is motor, from the moment you insert it into the reflex arc, appears just as much as a passive effect, as a pure and simple response to the stimulus, and the response contains nothing beyond an effect of passivity.

The dimension that expresses itself in a certain way of conceiving the response as a discharge of tension—a term that is also common in psychoanalytic energetics—would thus present action here as nothing more than a sequence, even a flight, following a more or less intolerable sensation, or, in the broader sense, a stimulus, insofar as we introduce into it elements beyond those that psychoanalytic theory includes under the name of internal stimulation.

Thus, we undoubtedly find ourselves in a position where we cannot locate the act in this reference—neither in motor activity nor in discharge. On the contrary, we must now ask why theory has had, and continues to display, such a strong tendency to use these as a foundation for rediscovering the original order from which thought would be established, initiated, and installed as a kind of duplicate.

It is clear that I recall this only because we will need to make use of it. Nothing that takes place within the order of elaboration, however paradoxical it may appear from a certain point of view, fails to leave us with the impression that some motivation is at work sustaining this paradox. And from that very motivation … this is the method from which psychoanalysis never deviates … from that very motivation, we can derive some benefit.

— That theory occasionally relies on something that it is precisely—psychoanalytic theory—best equipped to recognize as nothing more than a short-circuit in relation to what it must necessarily establish as the status of the “psychic apparatus,”
— That not only Freud’s texts but the entirety of analytic thought can sustain itself only by introducing, into the interval between the afferent element of the reflex arc and its efferent element, that famous system Ψ[psy] of Freud’s early writings,
— That, nevertheless, it still feels the need to emphasize these two elements—this is undoubtedly evidence of something that compels us to mark the position of analytic theory in relation to what we might, in a broader sense, call the physiologizing theory of the psychic apparatus.

It is clear that here we see a number of mental constructs manifesting, based in principle on an appeal to experience and attempting to use, to rely on, this initial model, presented as the most elementary one—whether we consider it at the level of an entire microorganism, the stimulus-response process at the level of the amoeba, for instance—and to somehow establish its homology, its specification, for an apparatus that would concentrate it, at least at certain points that are powerfully organizing for the organism’s reality, namely at the level of this reflex arc within the nervous system once it has differentiated.

This is what we have to account for from this perspective: that this reference persists within a technique—psychoanalysis—which seems, strictly speaking, the least suited to relying on it, given that it implies an entirely different dimension, one that is in fact radically opposed to this reference, which results in a manifestly flawed conception of what the act may be—internally unsatisfactory, so to speak. Quite the opposite, we are dealing here with that position of the function of the act that I first evoked through its aspects of self-evidence, and which is well known to be the one that interests us in psychoanalysis.

I spoke earlier of commitment, whether it be that of the analysand or the analyst, but after all, why not pose the question of the birth act of psychoanalysis? For within the dimension of the act, something immediately emerges, implied by a term such as the one I have just mentioned, namely, the inscription somewhere, the correlate of a signifier, which in truth is never absent from what constitutes an act.

I can pace back and forth while speaking to you, and that does not constitute an act. But if one day it were to involve crossing a certain threshold where I place myself outside the law, that day my motor activity would take on the value of an act. I stated this here, in this very room, not long ago. It seems to me that this is simply an appeal to a commonly accepted order of self-evidence, a dimension that is, properly speaking, linguistic concerning the nature of the act and that allows us to gather together, in a satisfying way, all the ambiguities this term may present, spanning the entire range I first evoked—encompassing not only, beyond what I called the medical act, why not, on occasion, the notarial act?

I mentioned this term: the birth act of psychoanalysis. Why not? That is how it emerged at a certain turn in my discourse. But if we pause here for a moment, we will easily see the dimension of the act opening up concerning the very status of psychoanalysis. For after all, if I spoke of inscription, what does that mean?

Let us not remain too fixated on this metaphor. Nevertheless, the one whose existence is recorded in an act when they come into the world is there before the act. Psychoanalysis is not an infant. When one speaks of the birth act of psychoanalysis—which does have meaning, for it did appear one day—it is precisely this question that arises: did the field it organizes, the one over which it reigns, governing it more or less, exist before? This is a question well worth raising when it comes to such an act. It is an essential question to pose at this turning point.

Of course, there is every chance that this field existed before. We are certainly not going to dispute that the unconscious produced its effects before the birth act of psychoanalysis. But still, if we pay very close attention, we can see that the question “who knew it?” may not be without significance.

Indeed, does this question have no other scope than ἐποχή [epoché], the idealist suspension, the one founded on the idea taken as the radical of representation, as the foundation of all knowledge, which then asks:

“Outside of this representation, where is reality?”

It is absolutely certain that the question I raise in the form “who knew this field of psychoanalysis?” has absolutely nothing to do with the fallacious antinomy on which idealism is based. It is clear that there is no question of contesting that reality precedes knowledge. Reality, yes, but knowledge? Knowledge is not the same as knowing, and to reach even the least prepared minds, those least inclined to suspect this difference, I need only allude to savoir-vivre or savoir-faire.

Here, the question of what exists beforehand takes on its full meaning. Savoir-vivre or savoir-faire can come into being at a given moment.

And then, if indeed the emphasis I have always placed on language has, for a certain number of you, finally taken on its full significance, it is clear that here the question gains its full weight: namely, precisely what was at stake in something we can call the manipulation of the letter—through a formalization referred to, for example, as logical—before anyone began to engage with it.

The field of algebra before the invention of algebra—this is a question of full significance, before one knew how to manipulate something that must be called by its name: digits, and not simply numbers.

I say digits, without being able to elaborate here, but I appeal to the few among you whom I assume to have read enough, in some journal corner or some popularization books, about how Mr. Cantor proceeds to demonstrate that the dimension of the transfinite in numbers is absolutely irreducible to that of the infinity of the sequence of whole numbers: namely, that one can always produce a new number that was not, in principle, included in this sequence of whole numbers—no matter how astonishing this may seem to you—and that this is achieved merely through a particular way of operating with the sequence of digits, using a method called diagonalization.

In short, the opening of this order, which is assuredly verifiable and has the right, quite simply and on the same grounds as any other term, to be qualified as true—was this order there, waiting for Mr. Cantor’s operation from all eternity?

Now, this is indeed a question of significance, and it has nothing to do with that of the anteriority of reality in relation to its representation. A question that carries its full weight.

It is a combinatorial system, and what unfolds from it is a dimension of truth—this is what most authentically brings forth what this truth consists of, which it determines before knowledge arises from it. This is precisely why an element of this combinatorial system may come to play the role of the representative of representation.

And this is what justifies the insistence I place on translating Freud’s German term Vorstellungsrepräsentanz in this way. It is not out of a mere personal sensitivity that, each time I see resurface, in some marginal note, the translation “representative-representational,” I denounce it, I point it out as bearing, in a completely valid way, an intention—precisely the intention to create confusion. And the question is, why do certain individuals adopt this position within particular places of the analytic field?

In this domain, disputes over form are not futile, since they precisely bring with them an entire subjective presupposition, which is, properly speaking, at stake. Later, we will provide certain precise indications that will allow us to orient ourselves on this point.

That is not my objective today—where, as I have told you, it is only a matter of introducing the function I am to develop before you.

But already, I indicate that by merely marking three points of reference…
— the function of a term like “set” in mathematical theory,
— demonstrating its distance and distinction from the much older term “class,”
— and attaching to it, in a relation of articulation, something that shows that what I am about to say inserts itself there with a certain articulated difference while implying it within the same order—the order of the Subjective Positions of Being, which was the true subject, the secret title, of the second year of teaching I conducted here [E.N.S., rue d’Ulm, Salle Dussane] under the name Crucial Problems
… all of this indicates that referring to the distinction between “set” and “class,” the “function of the object” as (a) takes on its full value as a subjective position. This is what we will have to address in due course.

I am merely marking it here as a kind of milestone, whose indication—and, at the same time, its meaning—you will find again when the time comes for us to return to it.

For today, then, having marked out what is at stake, I want to return to the physiologizing reference in order to show you something that—perhaps—will illuminate as effectively as possible what I mean by the term “psychoanalytic act.” And since we have so easily critiqued the assimilation of the term “action” with that of “motor activity,” it may now be easier, more accessible, to recognize what this fallacious model consists of.

For if we support it with something that is part of daily practice, such as the triggering of a tendon reflex… I believe that from now on, it may be easier for you to see that it constitutes a process whose designation as automatic is itself questionable, since αύτόματον [automaton] essentially implies a reference to chance, whereas what is involved in the dimension of reflex is precisely the opposite—but let us set that aside.

Is it not obvious that we can only conceive—rationally, I mean—of the reflex arc as something in which the motor element is nothing other than what is to be located in the small instrument of the hammer with which the reflex is triggered, and that what is registered is nothing but a sign—a sign, in this instance, of what we may call the integrity of a certain level of the spinal apparatus? And as such, a sign whose most indicative aspect is precisely when it is absent—when it signals the non-integrity of this apparatus—for, concerning the question of this integrity, it provides us with very little. However, its value as a sign of defect, of lesion—this, which holds positive value—yes, here it takes on its full significance.

To make of something that has neither entity nor meaning except as an isolated phenomenon within the organism’s functioning—isolated in response to a certain form of inquiry that we may call clinical inquiry, or even, when pursued further, the clinician’s desire—something that would grant this whole structure we call the reflex arc any special title to serve as a conceptual model for anything considered fundamental, elementary, or an original reduction of a living organism’s response—this is unwarranted.

But let us go further—let us turn to something infinitely more subtle than this elementary model, namely, the conception of the reflex at the level of what you will allow me to call—since it is precisely what I intend to examine—the Pavlovian ideology.

This is to say that I intend to interrogate it here, not from the perspective of any absolute critique, but so that you may observe what it offers us by way of “suggestion” regarding the analytic position.

I certainly do not intend to disparage the body of work that has been produced within this ideology. Nor do I say anything excessive in stating that it proceeds from a project of “materialist” elaboration—something they themselves acknowledge—concerning a function whose very aim is to reduce any reference that might be made… as if this were still a battleground… to some entity of the order of the mind.

The aim of Pavlovian ideology, in this sense, is much better suited than the first order of reference I indicated with the reflex arc, which we might call the organo-dynamic reference. This aim is indeed much better suited because it is structured around the inscription of the sign within a function that is itself organized around a need.

I assume that you have all had sufficient secondary education to know that the standard model by which it is introduced in textbooks—and which, likewise, we will now use to support what we wish to say—is the association, in fact, of a trumpet sound, for example, with the presentation of a piece of meat before an animal—a carnivore, of course. This is supposed, after a certain number of repetitions, to produce the triggering of a gastric secretion, provided that the animal in question does indeed have a stomach. And this occurs even after the association is undone, after its decoupling, which, of course, takes place in the direction of maintaining only the trumpet sound. The effect is easily demonstrated by the permanent installation of a gastric fistula—that is to say, the collection of the juice that is secreted… thus, after a certain number of repetitions… in response to the mere sound of the trumpet.

This “Pavlovian enterprise,” if one may call it that, I would dare to qualify—considering its aim—as extraordinarily correct.

For indeed, when the goal is to account for the possibility of the higher forms of mental functioning, what must be established is, obviously, this hold over the organization of living matter by something that, in this case, only takes on illustrative value through the fact that it is not an adequate stimulus for the need that is engaged in the matter.

And even, properly speaking, that it is connoted within the perceptual field only by being truly detached from any object of possible fruition. I say fruition, which means enjoyment, but I did not want to say enjoyment, because I have already placed a certain emphasis on the word jouissance, and I do not want to introduce it here with all its context. Frui is the opposite of uti.

It is not even a matter of an object of use, but of an object of appetite, grounded in the elementary needs of the living being. It is precisely because the sound of the trumpet has nothing to do with anything that might interest a dog, for example… at least within the field where its appetite is awakened by the sight of a piece of meat… that Pavlov legitimately introduces it into the field of experimentation.

Only, if I say that this way of proceeding is extraordinarily correct, it is precisely in that Pavlov reveals himself, so to speak:
— a structuralist from the outset, at the very start of his experiment,
— a structuralist before the term even existed,
— a structuralist in the strictest sense, in the Lacanian sense, insofar as what he demonstrates there, what he implicitly assumes to be at play, is precisely that which constitutes the signifier, namely: that the signifier is what represents a subject for another signifier.

Here, indeed, is how to illustrate what I have just put forward: the sound of the trumpet represents nothing other than the subject of science—that is to say, Pavlov himself. Whom does it represent, and for what? Manifestly, for nothing other than this: something that is not a sign but a signifier—namely, this sign of gastric secretion, which takes on its precise value from the following facts:
— that it is not produced by the object from which one expects it to be produced,
— that it is an effect of deception,
— that the need in question is adulterated, and that the dimension in which what occurs at the level of the gastric fistula is situated is one in which what is at stake—namely, the organism—is, on this occasion, deceived.

There is thus, indeed, a demonstration of something which, if you examine it more closely, is, of course, not limited to a dog: the same can be done with any other species of animal. The entire Pavlovian experimentation would truly have no interest if it were not about establishing the essential possibility of something… which can only be defined as the effect of a signifier… taking hold within a field that is the living field. And this has no other resonance—I mean theoretical resonance—than that of allowing us to conceive how, where there is language, there is no need to seek a reference in a spiritual entity.

But who thinks about that now? And who would even care? It must still be noted that what the Pavlovian experiment demonstrates—namely, that there is no operation involving signifiers as such that does not imply the presence of a subject—is not at all what an uninformed public might initially believe. This proof is not at all given by the dog—and not even for Mr. Pavlov. In fact, Mr. Pavlov constructs this experiment precisely to show that one can perfectly well dispense with any hypothesis about what the dog thinks.

The subject whose existence is demonstrated—or rather, the demonstration of whose existence takes place—is in no way given by the dog, but—as no one doubts—by Mr. Pavlov himself, for it is he who blows the trumpet, he or one of his assistants—it makes no difference.

I made a remark in passing, saying that, of course, what is involved in these experiments is the possibility of something that demonstrates the function of the signifier and its relation to the subject.

But I also added that, of course, no one had the intention of achieving anything in the order of a transformation in the nature of the animal. What I mean by this—something that is of real interest—is that not even a modification of the kind we must suppose took place in the time when this animal was domesticated is obtained: for one must at least admit that the dog has not been domesticated since the earthly paradise!

So, there was a moment when one learned to make of this beast not, of course, an animal endowed with language, but an animal about which—perhaps—it might be interesting to probe whether the question formulated in the following way is valid:

Can the dog, in some way, be said to know that we speak? Since all appearances suggest so, what meaning should be given to the word know in this case?

That would seem to be a question at least as interesting as the one raised by the construction of the conditional—or conditioned—reflex.

What strikes me more, however, is the way in which, throughout these experiments, we never receive from the experimenters the slightest testimony regarding what must certainly exist—namely, the personal relationships, if I may put it that way, between the animal and the experimenter. I do not wish to strike a chord with the Society for the Protection of Animals, but admit that it would nonetheless be quite interesting, and that perhaps, in this domain, we might learn a little more about what could be termed neurosis in animals than what is commonly recorded in practice.

For what is aimed at in the practice of these experimental stimulations—when they are pushed to the point of producing those various disorders that range from inhibition to disordered barking, and which are labeled neurosis—is justified solely by the following:
— first, that they are provoked,
— second, that they have become entirely inadequate with respect to external conditions, as if, for a long time now, the animal had not already been outside all these conditions.

And in no way, of course, does this merit any rightful claim to be assimilated to what psychoanalysis properly allows us to qualify as constituting neurosis in a being who speaks.

In short, we see here that not only does Mr. Pavlov, in the fundamental establishment of his experiment, demonstrate himself— as I have said—to be a structuralist and of the strictest observance, but it can also be said that even the response he receives exhibits all the fundamental characteristics of what we have defined as central to the relationship of the speaking being to language—namely, that he receives his own message in an inverted form.

A formula I put forward long ago, some ten years now, applies here quite precisely, for what happens? He first attaches, in a secondary position, the sound of the trumpet to the physiological sequence he has set up at the level of the gastric organ. And now, what does he obtain? An inverse sequence, in which it is the reaction of the animal that becomes attached to the sound of the trumpet.

For us, there is in all this only a rather trivial mystery, which in no way diminishes the significance of the benefits that may have been gained, at this or that point in cerebral functioning, through this kind of experimentation.

But what interests us is its aim—and the fact that this aim is achieved only at the cost of a certain misrecognition of what initially constitutes the structure of the experiment is something that should alert us to what this experiment signifies as an act.

For this subject—here, Pavlov on this occasion—does nothing more, and without realizing it, than correctly reap the benefits of a construction that is precisely comparable to the one that imposes itself on us whenever the relationship of the speaking being to language is at stake.

That, in any case, deserves to be highlighted—if only to be excluded from the demonstrative thrust of the entire operation.

Regarding an entire field of so-called “scientific” activities during a certain historical period, this so-called “materialist” reductionist aim deserves to be taken as such, for what it is—namely, symptomatic.

“One must have believed in God for this to exist,” I might exclaim! And indeed, it is so true that this entire construction, labeled “materialist” or “organicist”—let us say it again, in medicine—has been very well received by spiritual authorities.

In the end, all of this leads us to ecumenism. There is a certain way of reducing the divine field that, in its final outcome, in its ultimate recourse, proves entirely favorable to gathering the entire shoal of fish into the same great net.

This, a striking fact that unfolds before your very eyes, should nevertheless inspire a certain hesitation in us regarding what is at stake—if I may put it this way—in the relationship to truth within a certain context:
— if the speculations of logicians (the “scholastics”), long since relegated to the realm of thought’s outdated values in a time now dismissed as the “Middle Ages,” could once lead to major condemnations,
— and if, on this or that doctrinal point within the very field in which we operate—formerly called “choices,” that is, “heresies”—people so quickly came to strangle and massacre one another,

…why should we think that these were merely effects of what is commonly called fanaticism?

Why—good Lord—invoke such a register, when perhaps it would suffice to conclude that certain statements about the relationship to knowledge may, in those times, have resonated infinitely more profoundly within the subject, producing effects of truth?

We retain from all these debates—wrongly or rightly called “theological” (we will have to return to what theology is about)—only texts that we more or less know how to read and that, in many cases, do not at all deserve the title of “dusty.”

What we perhaps do not suspect is that they may have had immediate and direct consequences—on the marketplace, at the school gate, or even within household life, in sexual relations.

Why should this not be conceivable? It would be enough to introduce another dimension besides that of fanaticism—seriousness, for example.

How is it that… for what is stated within the framework of our teaching functions and what is called “the University”… how is it that, in general, things are such that it is not considered absolutely scandalous to formulate that everything distributed to us by the Universitas litterarum, the Faculty of Letters… which still holds authority over what is nobly referred to as the “Human Sciences”… is a knowledge so measured that, in fact, it has no kind of consequence whatsoever?

It is true that there is the other side: the Universitas litterarum is no longer very stable in its foundation, for something else has been introduced into it—what is called the Faculty of Sciences. I would point out to you that, on the side of the Faculty of Sciences, due to the very way in which the development of science as such is inscribed, things may not be so different. For it has turned out that the condition for scientific progress is to refuse to know anything about the consequences that this scientific knowledge entails at the level of truth. These consequences are left to unfold on their own.

For a considerable period of historical time, people who already fully deserved the title of “scientists” thought twice before putting into circulation certain devices, certain modes of knowledge that they had perfectly foreseen. And I will name Mr. Gauss, for instance, who is quite well known—he had some rather anticipatory insights on this matter. He let other mathematicians put them into circulation about thirty years later, even though he already had them among his notes. It had appeared to him that perhaps the consequences at the level of truth were worth taking into consideration.

All this to say that the indulgence—or rather, the recognition—that Pavlovian theory enjoys at the level of the Faculty of Sciences, where it holds the greatest prestige, may perhaps be due to what I am emphasizing here—namely, its fundamentally futile dimension.

Futile—you may not know what that means. In fact, neither did I until a certain moment, until I happened, by chance, to come across the word futilis in a passage of Ovid, where it quite literally means: a leaking vessel.

This leakage—which I hope I have sufficiently circumscribed—lies at the very foundation of the Pavlovian edifice, namely:
— that what is supposed to be demonstrated does not actually need to be demonstrated, since it is already presupposed from the outset,
— that Mr. Pavlov merely demonstrates himself to be a structuralist—except that he does not realize it himself, which, of course, entirely nullifies any claim to actual demonstration.

Moreover, what is supposed to be demonstrated has only a very limited interest, given that the question of what concerns God is entirely concealed elsewhere.

And, to say it all, everything that the Pavlovian framework contains in terms of the foundations of belief, the hope for knowledge, the ideology of progress—if you look closely—rests on only one thing: that the possibilities demonstrated by Pavlovian experimentation are assumed to be already present in the brain.

That the manipulation of the dog—in this context of signifying articulation—yields effects, results, suggesting the possibility of a more advanced complexity of these reactions is not surprising in the least, since this complexity is precisely what we introduce.

But what is at stake is entirely contained in what I was highlighting earlier—namely, whether the things we uncover were already there beforehand. What is at issue when it comes to the divine dimension, and more generally to that of the Spirit, revolves entirely around this: what do we assume to have already been there before we made the discovery?

If, across an entire field, it turns out that it would not be futile but rather superficial to think that this knowledge was already there waiting for us before we brought it forth, this could lead us to question things in such a profoundly deeper way that it is precisely what will be at stake concerning the psychoanalytic act. The time obliges me to point out here the focus of what I am presenting to you today.

Next time, you will see—by bringing together what concerns the psychoanalytic act with this ideological model, whose paradoxical constitution, as I have told you, consists in this: that someone can found an experiment on presuppositions of which they themselves are profoundly unaware. And what does it mean for them to be unaware of it?

This is not the only dimension that comes into play—the dimension of ignorance, I mean—concerning the structural presuppositions underpinning the establishment of the experiment. There is another dimension, far more original, to which I have long alluded, and which, next time, I will allow myself to introduce in turn.