🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

I cannot say that your attendance this year does not pose a problem for me… What does that mean for a discourse that—if there were any doubt, I have repeated it enough for it to be known—is essentially addressed to psychoanalysts?

It is true that my position here, from where I speak to you, already sufficiently testifies to something that has come to pass, placing me in an eccentric position with respect to them: the very position in which, for years, I have done nothing but question what I have taken this year as my subject: the psychoanalytic act.

It is clear that what I said last time could only have met with that murmur of satisfaction that has reached me regarding the general opinion of the audience, if I may put it that way, which, in truth, partly…
those—there must be some, given this number—who come here for the first time
…came despite, or even because, they had been told that they would understand nothing. Well, they had a pleasant surprise!

In truth—as I indicated in passing—speaking about PAVLOV on that occasion, as I did, was indeed extending a helping hand to the feeling of understanding. As I said, nothing is more highly regarded than Pavlovian enterprise, especially at the Faculty of Letters, and, after all, it is from that side that, by and large, you come to me. Does this mean that this kind of approbation in any way fulfills me? You suspect: certainly not! Since, after all, this is not what you come looking for either.

To get to the heart of the matter, it seems to me that if anything can decently explain this attendance, it is something that, in any case, would not rest on this misunderstanding to which I do not often lend myself, hence the kind of expectation I alluded to earlier. It is nonetheless something that is not a misunderstanding, and that prompts me to do my best to respond to what I have called this attendance.

It is that, to a greater or lesser degree, those who come, in general, do so because they have the feeling that something is being stated here that might well—who knows?—have consequences.

It is quite evident that if this is so, this attendance is justified, since the principle of the teaching that we will roughly situate by calling it “university teaching” is precisely that, whatever is presented, whatever concerns even the most pressing or current topics—political, for example—everything is presented, put into circulation, in such a way that it does not have consequences.

At least, this is the function that university teaching has been fulfilling for some time in developed countries. That is precisely why, moreover, the university is what it is there, because where it does not fulfill this function, in underdeveloped countries [sic], there is tension. Thus, it fulfills its function well in developed countries, in that it has this tolerable aspect: that whatever is professed there will not lead to disorder [sic].

Of course, it is not on the level of disorder that we will consider the consequences of what I say here, but the public suspects that at a certain level, which is precisely that of those to whom I am addressing myself—namely, psychoanalysts—there is something tense.

This is indeed what is at stake regarding the psychoanalytic act, for today we will push a little further, we will see what it is about those who practice this act—that is, those who, and this is what defines them, are capable of such an act, and capable in such a way that they can be classified within it—as one says of other acts: sports or techniques—as professionals.

Assuredly, from this act, inasmuch as one makes it a profession, there results a position in which one naturally feels assured by what one knows, what one holds from experience. Nevertheless, and this is one of the aspects, one of the stakes of what I am advancing this year, the very nature of this act entails…
a field whose edges—I do not even need to say—last time I did not even touch
…serious consequences concerning the position to be held: that of being skilled in exercising it.

It is here that it takes place—strikingly, as you will see—that I can draw upon others than analysts, upon non-analysts, to conceive what is at stake in this act, which nonetheless concerns them. The psychoanalytic act concerns, and very directly, and first of all, I would say, those who do not make it their profession.

Will it suffice here to indicate that if it is true—as I teach—that this is something like a conversion in the position resulting from the subject’s relationship to knowledge, how can one not immediately admit that there could not but arise a truly dangerous gap if only certain individuals were to gain sufficient insight into this subversion—as I have called it—of the subject?

Is it even conceivable that what constitutes the subversion of the subject—and not of some chosen moment in a particular life—could be something imaginable only as occurring here or there, or even at some gathering point where all those who have undergone this turning point find reassurance in one another?

That the subject is realizable from each individual’s standpoint, of course, does not in any way alter its status within the structure itself.

From this, it already appears that making heard…
not outside, but within a certain relation to the analytic community
…what this act is, which concerns everyone, can only, within this community, allow for a clearer understanding of what is desired regarding the status that those who actively make this act their profession may assume.

This is how we find ourselves this year approaching it from its edge, as we saw last time by first advancing what imposes itself: precisely the distinction between the act—as it may sometimes be presented when flipping through pages—and motor activity.

And immediately attempting to ascend a few steps that in no way present themselves in an apodictic manner…
that neither can nor, above all, wishes to proceed through some sort of introduction
that would be structured along a psychological scale of greater or lesser depth
…we will instead seek, in the presentation of the contingencies concerning what is stated about this act, diverse flashes of illumination that allow us to grasp where the problem truly stands.

Thus, in speaking of PAVLOV, I was not seeking any classical reference on the matter, but rather to highlight something that lingers in the corners of many memories, namely the convergence noted in a classical work, that of DALBIEZ, between Pavlovian experimentation and Freud’s mechanisms.

Of course, this always has its little effect, especially given the era. You cannot imagine…
given the underlying insecurity of the psychoanalytic position
…what joy some felt at the time, as they say—that is, around 1928 or 1930—that psychoanalysis was being discussed at the Sorbonne.

Regardless of the interest of this work—crafted, I must say, with great care and full of pertinent remarks—the kind of reassurance that can be drawn from the fact that Mr. DALBIEZ articulates—oh well, pertinently—that there is something that does not deviate from the perspective of psychology, of Pavlovian physiology, and of the mechanisms of the unconscious, is extremely weak.

Why? Simply for the reason I pointed out to you last time, namely that the linkage from signifier to signifier, inasmuch as we know it to be subjectivating in nature, is introduced by PAVLOV in the very structure of the experiment, and that therefore it is not surprising that what is built upon it converges with analogous structures to those we find in the analytic experience, insofar as you have seen that I could formulate in it the determination of the subject as founded on this linkage: from signifier to signifier.

Nonetheless, aside from this, they will certainly be closer to each other than either will be to the conception of Pierre JANET; that is precisely where DALBIEZ places his emphasis. But through such a rapprochement—one based precisely on the misrecognition of what underlies it—we will not have gained much.

But what interests us even more is PAVLOV’s misrecognition of the implication that I have called, more or less humorously, “structuralist”…
—not at all humorously regarding the fact that it is structuralist,
—humorously in that I called it Lacanian structuralist
…in this venture.

This is where I left off, suspending my discussion around the question: what about what one might call here, from a certain perspective—what?—a form of ignorance? Is that enough? No!

We are certainly not going to…
just because an experimenter does not question the nature of what he introduces into the field of experimentation
—it is legitimate for him to do so, but that he does not go any further into this question, which is in some sense a preliminary one
…we are certainly not going to introduce here these functions of the unconscious: something else is necessary, something that, in truth, we lack.

Perhaps this other thing will be delivered to us in a more manageable way, through something entirely different—let us be blunt—a psychoanalyst who, before an audience…
one must always consider to which ear a given statement is addressed
…a psychoanalyst who advances the following assertion, which was recently reported to me:

— “I do not accept any psychoanalytic concept unless I have verified it on the rat!”

Even to a forewarned ear…
and that was the case at the moment this statement was made, it was an ear, so to speak, and at the time—for this statement was made at a time already distant, some fifteen years ago—it was to a communist friend, the one who reminded me of it fifteen years later, that the psychoanalyst in question was addressing himself
…even to an ear that might have seen in it I don’t know what, perhaps a form of repentance, the statement seemed somewhat excessive.

Thus, the thing was reported to me recently, and far from expressing doubt, I began to muse aloud, and turning to someone who was to my right during that meeting, I said, “But so-and-so is entirely capable of having made such a statement!” I named him—I will not name him here—he is the one I call the “benêt” in my Écrits [p. 335].

“Benêt,” says the excellent dictionary I often mention to you, that of BLOCH and VON WARTBURG, is a late form of “benoît,” which comes from benedictus, and its modern meaning is a subtle allusion deriving from the statement inscribed in chapter V, paragraph 3 of MATTHEW: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

In truth, this is what leads me to pin the name “benêt” on the person in question, for it so happened that my interlocutor immediately said to me: “But yes, it was he who told me!” To a certain extent, he was the only one who could ever have said such a thing. I do not necessarily hold in low regard a person who, within the theoretical discourse of psychoanalysis, is capable of making such astonishing statements. I rather consider the fact as a structural matter, one which, in truth, does not strictly speaking warrant the qualification of poverty of spirit. It was rather an act of charity on my part to impute to him the happiness reserved for the so-called “poor in spirit.”

I am quite sure that, in taking such a position, it is not a question of any kind of heur, neither good nor bad, neither subjective nor objective. Rather, it is that, in truth, he must feel himself entirely beyond any heur to reach such extremes.

And indeed, one can see that his case is far from unique if one refers to a certain page in my Écrits, that of the Rome Discourse, where I mention what a certain MASSERMANN advances, who in the United States holds the position of what, in ALAIN, one would call an “Important.” This “Important,” no doubt in the same search for comfort, proudly reports on the research of a Mr. HUDGINS, about which I paused at the time…
this was already quite far back, it was from the very period of the statement I just recalled to you
…he proudly reports on what was achieved in the conditioning of a reflex, itself also conditional, established in a human subject, in such a way that a pupillary contraction would regularly occur at the utterance of the word “contract.”

The two pages of irony I devote to this, because it had to be done at the time, just to be heard at all…
namely, whether the supposed linkage thus determined between the soma and what he believes to be language seemed just as solid
if one substituted for “contract”: “marriage-contract” or “bridge-contract” or “breach of contract,”
or even if one reduced the word to its first syllable
…this is obviously a sign that there is here something at the breach of which it is not in vain to stand, since others choose it as a key point for understanding what is at stake. Perhaps, after all, this person would tell me that I can only see in it an auxiliary to the dominance I attribute to language in analytic determinism, for indeed, such is the degree of confusion one can reach from certain perspectives.

The psychoanalytic act, as you can see, can consist in questioning…
first and starting—from, of course, where else?—from what one considers necessary to set aside
…the act as it is effectively conceived within the psychoanalytic circle, along with the critique of what it may entail.

But nonetheless, this conjunction of two words—psychoanalytic act—can also evoke something quite different for us, namely, the act as it operates psychoanalytically, what the psychoanalyst directs of his action within the psychoanalytic operation. And there, of course, we find ourselves on an entirely different level.

— Is it interpretation?
— Is it transference to which we are thus led?
— What is the essence of what, in the psychoanalyst as an operative, constitutes an act?
— What is his role in the game?

These are precisely the questions psychoanalysts do not fail to ask themselves among each other. On this subject—thank God—they put forward more pertinent propositions, although far from being univocal, nor even progressive over the years.

There is something else, namely: the act, shall I say, as it is read in psychoanalysis. What is an act for the psychoanalyst? I believe it will suffice, to make myself understood at this level, that I articulate, that I recall what each and every one of you knows, what no one in our time ignores, namely: what is called the symptomatic act, so particularly characterized by the slip of the tongue, or just as well by that level which, broadly speaking, can be classified within the register, as they say, of daily action, hence the most unfortunate term Psychopathology of Everyday Life, for what, strictly speaking, is centered on the fact that it always involves—even when it is a slip of the tongue—the dimension of an act.

It is precisely here that the reminder I gave of the ambiguity left at the conceptual basis of psychoanalysis between motor activity and act takes on its significance, and it is assuredly due to these theoretical starting points that FREUD encourages this displacement just at the moment when…
in the chapter I may have time to reach shortly
…concerning what constitutes a misunderstanding, Versehen, as he designates it, he recalls that it is quite natural that one arrives there after seven or eight preceding chapters, namely, at the field of the act, since—as he says of language—we remain there on the plane of the motor.

On the other hand, it is quite clear that throughout this chapter and the following one, concerning accidental or symptomatic actions, it will only ever be a matter of this dimension that we have posited as constitutive of every act, namely its signifying dimension: nothing in these chapters is introduced concerning the act except this—that it is posited as signifying. Nevertheless, it is not so simple, for if it derives its value, its articulation as a significant act, from what FREUD introduces as the unconscious, it is certainly not because it asserts itself, because it presents itself as an act—on the contrary. It is there as an activity more than effaced, and, as the one in question states, an activity that fills a gap which exists only if one does not think about it, insofar as one does not concern oneself with it, which is present wherever it manifests itself through an entire range of activities, in a sense occupying hands assumed to be distracted from any mental relation.

Or else, this act will place its meaning…
precisely in relation to what is at stake, what is to be attacked, to be shaken
…its meaning under the cover of clumsiness, of failure. This is precisely what the analytic intervention is: the act, then.

A reversal similar to the one we made last time concerning the motor aspect itself of the reflex that PAVLOV calls absolute: this motor aspect is not in the fact that the leg extends because one strikes a tendon; this motor aspect is where the hammer is held in order to provoke it. Similarly, if the act lies in the reading of the act, does this mean that this reading is merely superimposed and that it derives its value as a reduced act nachträglich [after the fact]?

You know the emphasis I have long placed on this term, which would not have appeared in the Freudian vocabulary if I had not extracted it from FREUD’s text—myself, the first, and, in truth, for a good while, the only one. The term certainly has its value. It is not solely Freudian: HEIDEGGER employs it as well, though in a different perspective, when he questions the relationship between being and Rede [speech, language, discourse].

The symptomatic act must already contain within itself something that at least prepares it for this access, to what, for us, in our perspective, will fulfill its plenitude as an act—but after the fact. I insist on this, and it is important to mark it from now on: what is the status of the act? It must be said to be new, and even unheard of, if one gives its full meaning—the one from which we started, the one that has always held concerning the status of the act.

And then what? After these three meanings, the psychoanalyst, in his acts of affirmation, namely what he professes when he is required to give an account, especially of what this status of the act represents for him. And here, as it happens, the course of events has recently led to…
in a certain framework, known as that of the “Psychoanalysts of Romance Languages”
…the need to provide a report, an account of what is envisioned from the perspective of the authorized psychoanalyst regarding passage à l’acte and also acting out.

Here—after all, why not?—is a very good example to take, since it is within our reach, which is precisely what I have done. I opened the report of one of them, named Olivier FLOURNOY, a well-known name, the third generation of great psychiatrists, the first being Théodore, the second Henri…
and you know the famous case by which Théodore remains immortal in the analytic tradition, that clairvoyant delirious woman with a marvelous name, about whom he wrote an entire book—one from which you would greatly benefit if you happened to come across it, though I believe it is currently out of circulation
…so, in the third generation, this young man presents us with something that consists in taking up at least part of the field—the part that the other rapporteur did not cover. The other rapporteur spoke about acting out; this one will focus on agieren, and since agieren is believed—quite rightly—to concern transference, he advances on this transference a few questions that, just as well, function as propositions. I will not, of course, read it all to you, as nothing is more difficult than reading aloud before such a large audience. Nevertheless, to give you a sense of its tone, I will take the first paragraph, which reads approximately as follows:

— “From this review […] of the recent evolution of ideas […], one always comes away with the impression of something obscure and unsatisfying—I skip a few lines—[…] But why does regression imply transference, that is, the absence of recollection and agieren, in the form of the transformation of the analyst, through projection and introjection, and why does it not merely imply a regressive behavior?”
[R.F.P., p. 856]

That is to say, its own structure, is it not? In other words, why does it evoke transference?

— “Why does an infantilizing situation imply transference and not an infantile behavior based on the model of a child-parent interaction…

Here, he alludes to another framework that emphasizes development and developmental antecedents, rather than the proper category of regression, which refers to phases identified in analysis.

— …or even repeating a conflictual situation and even drawing its strength from it? Is this enough to confer upon such behavior the epithet of transference?”
[R.F.P., p. 856]

What do I mean by announcing these questions introduced in this tone? It is that there is, assuredly—and the entire following discussion demonstrates it—a certain tone, a certain way of questioning transference, I mean: taking things quite sharply and putting its very concept into question as radically as possible.

This is something I myself did exactly nine years ago—or more precisely, nine years and almost half a year ago—in what I titled Direction of the Cure and Principles of Its Power. In truth, you will find there—chapter III, page 602 [of Écrits]: “Where do we stand with transference?”—the questions that were raised at that time. Raised and developed with infinitely greater scope and in a way that, at the time, had absolutely no equivalent.

I mean that what has since taken its course…
certainly not thanks to my pioneering, but through a kind of convergence of historical conditions
…what has, for instance, led a certain SZASZ to pose the most radical questions concerning the status of transference, and indeed, I would say, so radical that, in truth, transference is considered to be so entirely at the mercy—may I say—of the very status of the analytic situation that it is precisely posited as the very concept that would render psychoanalysis open to objection.

For things have reached the point where a psychoanalyst of the strictest adherence, highly placed within the American hierarchy, finds nothing better to say, in defining transference, than that it is a mode of defense for the analyst—that it serves to keep at a distance the reactions, whatever they may be, that emerge within the situation and that might appear to concern him too directly, to implicate him, to fall under his responsibility in the strictest sense. That analysis forges, invents this concept of transference, by means of which the analyst rules, judges in such a way that he essentially states—at the radical foundation of this concept—that he himself has no part in these reactions, and in particular, not by virtue of being there as an analyst, but simply by being able to point out what they contain of repetition, of the reproduction of previous behavior, of living stages of the subject who finds himself repeating them, agieren them, instead of recalling them.

This is what is at stake and what FLOURNOY confronts—no doubt with some restraint—while nonetheless fully addressing the conception or, at the extreme, the position to which those who believe themselves in a position to theorize psychoanalysis seem to be reduced within psychoanalysis itself. If this extreme position, once introduced, follows through to its consequences—that is to say, if for SZASZ everything ultimately rests on the analyst’s capacity for strict objectivity, and since this can in no way be anything but a postulate—then the entire field of analysis is thereby subjected to radical questioning, to a fundamental challenge at every point where it intervenes.

God knows that I have never taken the questioning of analysis so far—and for good reason. And it is indeed remarkable, as well as strange, that in one of those circles most committed to maintaining its social status, questions can, within that very circle, be pushed so far that it comes down to nothing less than determining whether analysis itself is founded or illusory. This would indeed be a profoundly unsettling phenomenon if we did not find, in the same context, so to speak, the foundation of what is called information, which is instituted on the basis of total freedom.

Only, let us not forget, we are in the American context, and everyone knows that, whatever the scope of a freedom of thought, a freedom of judgment, and all the forms in which it is expressed, we know full well what this means—namely, that, in the end, one can say just about anything, but what truly matters is what is already firmly established.

Thus, from the moment psychoanalytic societies are firmly grounded on their foundations, one might just as well declare that the concept of transference is nonsense. It does not affect anything. That is precisely the point. And this is also where, in taking on a different tone, our speaker plunges in, and we will now see the concept of transference left to the discretion of a reference to what we might as well call a little anecdote—the one from which, no doubt, it apparently originated—namely, the story of BREUER, FREUD, and Anna O., which—between us—reveals things far more interesting than what is made of it on this occasion.

And what is made of it on this occasion goes quite far. I mean that a third-party relation is particularly emphasized—naturally, the fact that FREUD was initially able to shield himself, to defend himself, as the saying goes, and under the guise of transference, by taking refuge in the idea that, as he wrote to his fiancée…
for yes, the fiancée is brought into the explanation as well, of course, since what is at stake here is nothing less than what I called the other day “the birth act of psychoanalysis”
…he tells his fiancée that these things, of course, could only happen to someone like BREUER.

A certain style of pertinence, even of cheap audacity, goes so far as to present transference as being entirely tied to these accidental conjunctions—or even, as one of them, a specialist in hypnosis, suggests, that when the incident later repeated itself with FREUD himself: “…that was when the maid entered.”

Who knows, if the maid had not entered, what would have happened then? Here, too, FREUD was able to restore the third-party situation: the “maidly” superego played its role and allowed him to reestablish what, from that moment on, we are told—because this is written in the report—becomes the natural defense. When a woman, upon emerging from hypnosis, throws herself around your neck, the natural response, we are told, is to say:

— “But I welcome her as a daughter.”

This kind of Muße, these trivialities, are evidently what increasingly sets the tone for what I earlier called the analyst’s act of affirmation: the more one asserts oneself through trivialities, the more one engenders respect. It is nonetheless peculiar…
this is apparent through many signs, and in this sense, I encourage you to take note of it when the opportunity arises, as it will surely boost the sales of the next Revue française de psychanalyse, the journal of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris
…to consider whether there is some relation between this bold meditation and what I stated nine years earlier.

In truth, the question will remain eternally unresolved since the author, in these lines, provides no testimony to it. However, a few pages later, something occurs—namely, that at the moment he speaks of what is at issue, since this is a personal advancement, the tone he adopts consists in highlighting what he nobly calls the intersubjective relation. Everyone knows that if one reads The Rome Discourse hastily, one might believe that this is what I am talking about.

But then again, one can discover the dimension of the intersubjective relation through means other than my own, since this error, this misinterpretation—the belief that I reintroduced into psychoanalysis something it had neglected too much—was made by many of those around me at the time. And being trained by these same individuals, one might indeed advance intersubjective experience as a reference to be recalled in this context.

— “…It is this intersubjective context,” one writes, “that seems to me original in analysis: it shatters the straitjackets of diagnoses known as ‘mental disorders.’ Not that psychopathology is an empty word. […] It is undoubtedly indispensable for exchanges between individuals outside the analytic experience. But its meaning evaporates during the cure.”
[R.F.P., p. 883]

You can hear the tone… except that, between ‘Not that psychopathology is an empty word.’ and ‘it is undoubtedly indispensable…’, a parenthesis bursts forth, and I ask you—what justifies its presence there?

— “On this point, in rereading a text by Lacan, I was astonished to see that he spoke […] of ‘the patient,’ he who orients himself toward language above all.”

It is in my own text, as you will see. I must say, I do not know in which of my Écrits I speak of the patient, as this is not quite my usual way of speaking. In any case, I would not see an objection to it, but the idea of leafing through the 950 pages of my Écrits to find where I speak of the patient would certainly never have occurred to me. On page 70, however, I can read:

— “…desire, the desire for what one is not, the desire that cannot be satisfied, or even the desire for dissatisfaction, such that Lacan, in the same cited text—what a relief, we will be able to look it up!—lightly presents it with reference to the butcher’s wife…”
[R.F.P., p. 886]

And there is a small note… What I say about the butcher’s wife, which is fairly well known, since it is a rather brilliant passage, one might expect that this is what is being referenced. Not at all: the reference is to the butcher’s wife in FREUD!
Well then, but for me, this is useful because it allows me to go and find, not the passage on the butcher’s wife—which you will find on page 620—but rather what it is actually about:

“This theory—I am referring to the second theory of transference—however much it has been downgraded in recent times in France…
it concerns ‘object relation,’ and as I explain, it concerns Maurice BOUVET
…has, like geneticism, its noble origin. It was Abraham who opened this field, and the notion of the partial object is his original contribution. This is not the place to demonstrate its value. We are more interested in pointing out its connection to the partiality of the aspect that Abraham isolates from transference, promoting it in its opacity as the capacity to love—as if this capacity to love were a constitutional given in the patient, from which one could infer the degree of their curability…”
[Écrits, pp. 604-605]

I will spare you the rest. This in the patient is thus credited to ABRAHAM. I apologize for unfolding such a lengthy story before you, but it is to establish the link between what I just referred to as the psychoanalyst in his acts of affirmation and the symptomatic act on which I had placed emphasis a moment earlier.

For what does FREUD bring us in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, precisely regarding mistakes, and specifically this kind of mistake? It is—he tells us, and he states it most knowledgeably—about three mistakes he made in the interpretation of dreams. He expressly connects them to the fact that, at the moment when he was analyzing the dreams in question, there was something he had held back, something he had suspended in the progression of his interpretation—something was being held back at that precise point.

You will find it in chapter ten [p. 168], which deals with errors, concerning three specific mistakes, namely:
— that of the famous Marburg station, which was actually Marbach,
— of HANNIBAL, whom he transformed into HASDRUBAL,
— and of some MEDICI whom he mistakenly attributed to the history of Venice.

What is truly remarkable is that, in each case, it was always when he was holding back some truth that he was led to commit the error. The fact that this reference to the lovely butcher’s wife—which was hardly avoidable—comes precisely at this point is significant, given that it is immediately followed by a short passage written as follows:

— “The desire to have what the other has in order to be what one is not, the desire to be what the other is in order to have what one does not have, or even the desire not to have what one has…” etc.

That is to say, a very direct excerpt—I must say, slightly amplified, and amplified in a way that does not improve it—of what I wrote precisely in Direction of the Cure, regarding what concerns this phallic function. Is it not striking that one should be acknowledged, through this error of course, if not through the irrepressible reference to my name…
even if it is placed under the heading of some incomprehensible stumbling on the part of someone who supposedly speaks of language above all, as the expression goes
…is there not something here that prompts us to question ourselves?

About what? About the fact that, in a certain analysis, within a certain field of analysis, one cannot, even while expressly relying on what I advance, do so except by renouncing it, shall I say.

Does this not, in itself, pose a problem—one that is none other than the problem, in general, of the status granted to the psychoanalytic act by a certain coherent organization, which, for the moment, reigns within the community concerned with it? To make this observation, to point out the emergence, at a level that is certainly not that of the unconscious, of a mechanism that is precisely the one FREUD highlights in relation to the act—I will not say the most specific act, but an act specific to the new dimension of the act introduced by analysis—this very act, I mean making this connection and posing the question, is itself an act: my act.

I ask only for your pardon that it has taken up a length of time that may have seemed excessive to you, but what I wish to introduce here is something that is indeed difficult for me to introduce before an assembly as large as this one, where things may resonate in a thousand misplaced ways. Yet I would not want the notion I seek to introduce to be misplaced—I will undoubtedly have to revisit it, and then you will see its importance.

It is not without reason that, for some time now, through the key forms I employ, I have announced its eventual arrival: Eulogy of Foolishness. I conceived this project long ago, this potential work, saying that, after all, in our time, this would be something deserving of the truly extraordinary success that continues to surprise us—the kind of success that ensures Erasmus’ In Praise of Folly still endures in the libraries of every doctor, pharmacist, or dentist, even though—God knows—it no longer speaks to us. Eulogy of Foolishness would certainly be a more subtle operation to undertake, for, in truth, what is foolishness?

If I introduce it at the very moment of taking the essential step concerning what is at stake in the analytic act, it is to highlight that it is not a concept—defining what it is, is difficult. It is something like a knot around which many things are constructed and through which all sorts of powers are delegated. It is undoubtedly something stratified, and it cannot be considered simple. At a certain level of maturity, if I may say so, it is more than respectable. It may not be what deserves the greatest respect, but it is certainly what receives the most.

I would say that this respect derives from a particular function, one that is entirely linked to what we must emphasize here—a function of misrecognition, if I may put it that way, and, if you allow me a moment of amusement, to recall:
“He’s talking nonsense,” people say—is there not a cryptomorpheme in this?

Would it not be by taking it in the present tense that the solidly established status of foolishness would emerge? One always assumes it is an imperfect tense: “He was talking nonsense at full blast,” for example. But in truth, this is a term that—like “I am lying”—always presents an obstacle to being used in the present tense. Whatever the case, it is difficult not to see that the status of foolishness in question, as instituted on “he was talking nonsense”, does not merely apply to the subject contained in that verb. There is something here, in this approach, that carries an intransitive and neutral quality—akin to “it is raining”—which gives this morpheme its full significance.

The important thing is: he was talking nonsense—about what? Well, that is what distinguishes what I shall call the true dimension of foolishness. It is that what it talks nonsense about is something that, in truth, is what most deserves to be affected by this term—namely, to be called foolishness. The true dimension of foolishness is essential to grasp, as it is precisely what the psychoanalytic act deals with.

For if you take a close look, particularly at those chapters where FREUD presents mistakes, accidental acts, and symptomatic acts, you will see that these acts—all of them, without exception—are distinguished by their great purity.

But observe, for instance, the famous story of dropping one’s keys in front of a particular door—the very one that is not the right one. Let us take the cases JONES speaks of, because while FREUD demonstrated the meaning and value that such a small act can have, JONES tells us a story that concludes with: “I would have liked to be here as if it were my home.”
Ten lines later, we reach the conclusion of another story interpreting the same act: “I would have been better off at home.”
That is not quite the same thing!

From the relevance of identifying this function of the slip, of the failure, in the use of the key, to its floating, equivocal interpretation, is there not an indication…
which you will easily recognize if you consider a thousand other facts gathered in this category
and notably the twenty-five or thirty initial ones compiled by FREUD
…that, in a way, what the act conveys to us is something it undoubtedly presents in a signifying manner, and for which the appropriate adjective would be to say that it is not so stupid? That is the truly fascinating aspect of these two chapters. But everything that attempts to conform to it as an interpretative qualification already represents a certain form of misrecognition, a collapse, and an evocation—one that, in more than one case here, must be said to be entirely radical—of what can only be felt as sheer foolishness.

Even if there is in the act—something which, for us, is beyond doubt, for at this point of the emergence of what is original in the symptomatic act, there is no doubt that there is an opening, a flash of light, something that floods in and will remain open for a long time—what is the nature of this message that FREUD highlights, which, at once:
— he does not know he is delivering to himself,
— and yet, he insists must remain unknown?

What is ultimately embedded in this strange register that, it seems, can only be taken up within the psychoanalytic act at the cost of falling from its own level? This is why, before I leave you today, I wish to introduce this slippery, thorny term, which, in truth, is not easily handled in such a broad social context, given the note of insult, abuse, and derogation that is attached, in French, to this peculiar word: le con…
which, by the way, cannot be found in Littré or Robert; only Bloch and von Wartburg—always honor to them—provide us with its etymology: cunnus (Latin).
…Certainly, to elaborate on what this word le con means in French, despite being so fundamental to our language and our exchanges, is precisely the kind of situation where structuralism would have every reason to articulate the bond that ties the word to the thing.

But how should one go about it? Other than by introducing here, I don’t know what—a restriction for those under eighteen, unless it should be for those over forty! And yet, that is exactly what is at stake, and someone whose words we find in a book distinguished by its utterly peculiar characteristic—never, I believe, has anyone made this remark—its total absence of foolishness, namely the Gospels, once said:

— “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.”

Naturally, observe that no one has ever noticed how absolutely staggering it is to say, “Render unto God” what he has put into play—but no matter! For the psychoanalyst, the law is different. It is:

— “Render unto truth what is truth’s, and unto foolishness what is foolishness’s.”

Well, it is not that simple, because they overlap. And if there is one dimension proper to psychoanalysis, it is not so much the truth of foolishness as the foolishness of truth. What I mean is that, apart from the cases where we can sanitize—which amounts to saying desexualize—truth…
that is, reducing it, as in logic, to a mere V value functioning in opposition to an F value
…everywhere that truth is engaged with something else—and notably with our function as speaking beings—truth finds itself troubled by the very incidence of something that lies at the center of what I refer to here as foolishness. And by that, I mean…
I will show you next time that FREUD says the same thing in this very chapter, although no one notices it
— that the organ which, if I may say so, grants its category to the attribute in question is precisely marked by what I shall call a particular inappropriation to enjoyment,
— that it is from this that the irreducibility of the sexual act to any truthful realization takes its significance,
— that this is precisely what is at stake in the psychoanalytic act, for the psychoanalytic act is assuredly articulated at another level. And what, at this other level, responds to the deficiency that truth encounters in its approach to the sexual field—that is what we must interrogate in its very status.

To suggest what is at stake here, I will take an example: one day, I collected from the mouth of a charming young man—who had every right to be called a fool—the following anecdote. He had experienced a misadventure: he had a date with a young woman who dropped him flat, like a pancake.

— “I understood well,” he said to me, “that once again, she was a woman of non-receipt.”

That is what he called it. What is this charming foolishness? Because he said it just like that, with all his heart. He had heard three words in succession, and he applied them. But suppose he had done it on purpose—that would have been a witticism, a Witz!

In truth, the very fact that I recount it to you, that I bring it into the field of the Other, effectively makes it a witticism. It is very funny—for everyone except him, and for the one who receives it from him, face to face. But as soon as it is told, it becomes extremely amusing. So, one would be entirely mistaken in thinking that the fool lacks wit, even if it is through a reference to the Other that this dimension is added.

To put it plainly, our position regarding this little amusing story is exactly what we always deal with whenever we attempt to formalize what we grasp as a dimension—not at the level of all the registers of what happens in the unconscious, but, very precisely, within what pertains to the psychoanalytic act.

I simply wished to introduce today this register, which, as you can see, is certainly a thorny one.

But, as you will see, it is useful.