🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

At the beginning of an article on countertransference published in 1960, a good psychoanalyst to whom we will give some consideration today—Dr. D.W. WINNICOTT—writes that the word “countertransference” must be related to its original use and, in this regard, to contrast it, he mentions the word “self.”

“A word like self,” he says—here, I must use English—”naturally knows more than we do: it naturally knows more than we can do, or than we do. It is a word that uses us and can command us: it takes charge of us, it can command us,” if I may put it that way.

This is a remark—my God—that is quite interesting to see from a pen that is not distinguished by any special reference to language, as you will see. The remark struck me as amusing, and it will be even more so in light of what I will evoke before you today about this author.

But just as well, for you, it takes on its value from the fact that—whether you suspect it or not—you are now integrated into a discourse that many of you obviously cannot see in its entirety. I mean that what I am advancing this year has its effect only in relation to what has preceded it, yet this does not mean that approaching it now—if that is the case for some of you—exposes you less to its effect. Strangely enough, this is because, in the end, this discourse—and you may find that I insist on this point—is not directly addressed to you, since it is addressed—to whom?—my God, I repeat it every time: to psychoanalysts, and under conditions such that it must be said that it is addressed to them from a certain atopia, an atopia that would be my own, and therefore one that must articulate its reasons.

It is precisely these reasons that will be emphasized here today. There is a rhetoric, if I may say so, concerning the object of psychoanalysis, which I claim is linked to a certain mode of psychoanalytic teaching as it exists within existing societies. This connection may not appear immediate—and indeed, why should it?—as long as, through a certain degree of investigation, one can come to feel its necessity.

To start from there, that is, from an example of what I would call a normative knowledge regarding what constitutes useful conduct, with all that this may imply in terms of extension to the “general good,” to the “particular good,” I will take a sample that will have whatever value it may have, but which will be valuable precisely because it is typical, coming from the pen of a well-known author.

Simply, for those of you who are at least somewhat initiated into what analytical method consists of—at least in terms of roughly knowing what it is about: speaking for weeks and months, at a rate of several sessions per week, and speaking in a certain way, particularly unburdened, under conditions that deliberately abstract from any concern for reference to the norm, to utility—precisely, perhaps we will return to this point, but certainly, in any case, in a way that liberates itself so completely that the circuit before returning to it is as broad as possible.

I believe that the references I have chosen, taken from where they are found—namely, at the beginning of an article, very explicitly under the pen of an author who published it in the year 1955—have called into question the concept of genital character. Here is more or less where he begins in order to effectively present a critique that I do not need to elaborate on today. It is a matter of style; this is a passage from the classic M. FENICHEL, all the more so because—as the author himself acknowledges, I mean: as the author explicitly states—FENICHEL is part of the foundation of psychoanalytic teaching in the institutes:

“A normal genital character is an ideal concept,” he himself says, “yet it is certain that the completion of genital primacy involves a decisive advance in character formation. The ability to attain full satisfaction through genital orgasm makes the regulation of sexuality—physiological regulation—possible, and this puts an end to damming-up, that is, the barrier, the containment of instinctual energies with their unfortunate effects on a person’s behavior. It also contributes to the full development of love (and hate),” he adds in parentheses, “that is, the overcoming of ambivalence. Moreover, the ability to discharge large amounts of excitation signifies the end of reaction-formations and an increase in the capacity for sublimation. The Oedipus complex and the unconscious feelings of guilt of infantile origin can now truly be overcome at the level of emotions. They are no longer kept in reserve but can be integrated by the ego; they form a harmonious part of the total personality. There is no longer any need to guard against pregenital impulses that still remain imperative in the unconscious. Their inclusion in the total personality”—I express it as the text does—”[…] in the form of traits or drives of sublimation becomes possible. However, in neurotic characters, pregenital impulses retain their sexual nature and disturb rational relations with objects—that is how it is for neurotics—whereas, in the normal character, they serve as partial pre-pleasure goals or preliminary pleasure under the primacy of the genital zone. But insofar as they appear in greater proportion, they are sublimated and subordinated to the ego and to reasonableness…”

I believe it cannot be translated otherwise. I do not know what impression such an enchanting picture makes on you or whether it seems appealing. I do not believe that anyone, analyst or not, with even a little experience of others and of themselves, could take this strange piece of sentimentalism seriously for even a moment. The thing is, strictly speaking, false—entirely contrary to reality and to what experience teaches.

I also indulged, in my own text—the one I referred to the other day, The Direction of the Treatment—in some derision regarding what had been put forward in another context and in a more literarily vulgar form. The tone in which, at a certain time—precisely around the date of this text, around 1958—one could speak of the primacy of object relations and the perfections it attained, of the internal joy that resulted from having reached this peak state, is, strictly speaking, ridiculous. In truth, it is not even worth revisiting here, regardless of whose pen produced it at the time.

The singularity of it all is to ask how such statements can retain—not the appearance of seriousness, for in fact, they do not have that for anyone—but rather seem, I would say, to respond to a certain necessity concerning… as was said—I must say—at the beginning of what is stated here… a sort of ideal point, which would at least have the virtue of representing, in a negative form, the absence of all the inconveniences that would otherwise be the ordinary conditions of other states. No other reason for it is apparent.

This is naturally worth noting insofar as we can grasp the mechanism in its essence—namely, realizing to what extent the psychoanalyst is, in some sense, called upon—or rather, I should say, even compelled—to hold a discourse that, under the pretext of so-called didactic purposes, ultimately has nothing to do with the problems posed to him in the most acute and everyday manner by his experience.

This matter, in truth, has a certain significance, insofar as it might allow us to perceive that, for example, discourse—inasmuch as it is adorned with a certain number of clichés, and that is saying little—does not thereby become any more effective at reducing them, the said clichés, in the psychoanalytic context, and even less so when it comes to the organization of teaching.

Of course, no one still believes in a certain number of things, nor does anyone feel particularly at ease with a certain classical style. Yet, in many respects, across many areas of application, it remains the case that this does not change anything. What I mean is that my discourse itself could just as well be taken up again—I mean, in certain of its forms, certain of its phrases, its statements, even its turns of phrase—only to be reinserted into a context that, in its essence, changes little.

A long time ago, I asked a person who, in more recent times, had been seen frequently attending what I was trying to organize. I asked:

— “After all, given your general positions, what advantage do you find in following my lectures?”

My God! The smile of someone who understands himself, I mean, who knows very well what he means.

— “No one,” he replied, “talks about psychoanalysis like this.”

Thanks to that, of course, he found material and opportunity to embellish his discourse with a number of ornaments, little flourishes, but this did not prevent him, on occasion, from radically reducing…
to the tendency he assumed to be constitutive of a certain psychic inertia…
from radically reducing the status, the ordination of the analytic session itself—I mean, in its nature, in its purpose as well—to a return that would occur through a kind of inclination, a sliding as natural as can be, towards that fusion, or something essentially of its nature, that supposed original fusion between the child and the maternal body.

And it is within this sort of figure, this fundamental schema, that—what?—my famous “it speaks” would take place.

You can clearly see what use can be made of a discourse when it is taken out of its context.

God knows that when I say “it speaks” about the unconscious, I have never, strictly speaking, meant the discourse of the analysand, as is improperly said—it would be better to say “the analysand,” we will return to this later.

But surely, who—except by deliberately distorting my discourse—could assume that there is anything in the application of the rule that, in itself, belongs to “it speaks,” that suggests it, that calls for it in any way? At the very least, you see, I would have had the privilege, after FREUD, after BREUER, of renewing the miracle of hysterical pregnancy, if this way of evoking the concavity of the maternal womb to represent what happens inside the analyst’s office is indeed justified.

At another level, I would have renewed this miracle—but upon the psychoanalysts themselves! Does this mean that I analyze analysts? Because, after all, one might say that. It is even tempting—there are always clever people ready to come up with elegant formulas like that, summarizing the situation.

Thank God, I set up a barrier in advance on that front as well, by writing—I believe—somewhere (I do not know if it has been published yet) regarding a reminder…
it was a brief report I made on my seminar from last year [1966-67: The Logic of Fantasy]…
a reminder of these two formulas:
— that in my language, there is no Other of the Other, the Other in this case being written with a capital O,
— that there is no, to respond to an old murmur from my seminar at Sainte-Anne—alas, I regret to say—truth about the truth.

Likewise, there is no reason to consider the dimension of “the transference of transference,” which means that no transferential reduction is possible, no analytic reassessment of the status of transference itself.

I always feel a little uneasy, given the number of people in this room this year, when I put forward such formulas, because there may be some who have no idea whatsoever what transference is. After all, this is even the most common case—especially if they have already heard about it. You will see, in the continuation of what I have to say today, how it should be considered.

All the same, let us point out—since I mentioned it last time—that the essence of this position on the concept of transference is what this concept enables the analyst to do. This is even how some analysts—as I mentioned last time—and, my God, how vainly—feel obliged to justify the concept of transference. In the name of what, my God? In the name of something that seems to them to be gravely threatened, very fragile, namely, a kind of superiority in the ability to objectify, in objectivation, or in an eminent quality of objectivity that the analyst would have acquired and that would allow him, in a seemingly present situation, to refer it to other situations that explain it and that it merely reproduces, thus carrying with it this aspect of illusion or deceptiveness.

I have already said that this question, which seems pressing, which even seems to carry a certain dimension of rigor in the one who raises it, is purely superfluous and vain, for the simple reason that transference, its manipulation as such, the very dimension of transference, is the first strictly coherent phase of what I am trying to develop before you this year under the name of the psychoanalytic act.

Outside of what I have called the manipulation of transference, there is no analytic act.

What needs to be understood is not the legitimization of transference through a reference that would establish its objectivity, but rather the realization that there is no analytic act without this reference. And of course, stating it this way does not dispel all objections, but it is precisely because stating it this way does not, strictly speaking, designate what constitutes the essence of transference that we must go further into it.

That we are forced to do so, that I am compelled to do so before you, at the very least suggests that this analytic act is precisely what—if what I am putting forward is correct—is least elucidated by the psychoanalyst himself, or even more: that it is what has been more or less completely eluded.

And why not? Why not, at the very least, question whether the situation is as it is because this act can only be eluded? After all, why not? Why not all the way back to FREUD and his inquiry in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life? What we now commonly call, what is readily available to our modest understanding under the name of symptomatic act, of parapraxis—who would have thought, and even who still thinks, of giving them the full meaning of the word act?

Despite everything, the idea of failure, which FREUD explicitly says is nothing but a shelter behind which what are, strictly speaking, acts are concealed—this does not change anything; we continue to think of them in terms of symptomatic failures, without seeking to give a fuller meaning to the term act.

So why should it be any different for the psychoanalytic act? Surely, what might enlighten us is if we can, ourselves, say something that goes further. In any case, it may well be that it can only be eluded if, for example—as happens when it comes to an act—it is, in particular, entirely unbearable.

Unbearable in what sense? It is not a matter of something subjectively unbearable—at least, I do not suggest that. Why not unbearable in the way that acts in general are, unbearable in some of its consequences?

I am approaching, as you can see, in small touches. I cannot state these things in immediately displayed terms, so to speak—not at all because I do not practice it on occasion, but because here, in this delicate matter, what must be avoided above all is misunderstanding.

This consequence of the analytic act, you may say, should be well known, should be well known through didactic analysis. Only, I am speaking of the act of the psychoanalyst. In didactic psychoanalysis, the subject who, as they say, submits to it—the psychoanalytic act, there, is not his part. This does not mean that he could not have some suspicion of what results for the analyst from what takes place in didactic psychoanalysis.

Only, things until now have been such that everything has been done to conceal from him—but in an absolutely radical way—what the end of didactic psychoanalysis consists of, from the perspective of the analyst.

This masking, which is fundamentally tied to what I earlier called the organization of psychoanalytic societies, might in the end appear to be a subtle modesty, a delicate way of leaving everything in its place, a supreme refinement of extreme-oriental politeness…

It is nothing of the sort. I mean that this is not quite the angle from which things should be considered, but rather what repercussions it has on didactic psychoanalysis itself. That is to say, due precisely to this relationship, to this separation I have just articulated, it follows that the same blackout exists concerning the end of didactic psychoanalysis.

A certain number of unsatisfactory, incomplete things have nonetheless been written about didactic psychoanalysis. Things have also been written that are quite instructive in their shortcomings regarding the termination of analysis. But no one has ever yet managed to formulate—by which I mean in black and white—I am not even saying anything of value, but anything at all, yes or no—nothing—about what could be the end, in every sense of the word, of didactic psychoanalysis.

Here, I simply leave open the question of whether there is a connection. There is the closest possible connection between this fact and the fact that nothing has ever been articulated about what the psychoanalytic act consists of.

I repeat, if the psychoanalytic act is precisely what the psychoanalyst seems to oppose with the most relentless misrecognition, this is not so much due to a kind of subjective incompatibility… the subjectively untenable aspect of the analyst’s position, which can certainly be suggested—Freud did not fail to do so—but rather, I say, to what would result, once the perspective of the act is accepted, in terms of the analyst’s assessment of what he himself gathers in the aftermath of the analysis, in the domain, strictly speaking, of knowledge.

Since, after all, I have here an audience in which, it seems—although in the past two or three sessions I have not been able to discern it so clearly—there is a certain proportion of philosophers, I hope no one will hold it against me too much… Even at Sainte-Anne, I managed to obtain a tolerance that extended this far: I once spent an entire term, and even a little more, speaking about The Symposium of PLATO, precisely in relation to transference [seminar 1960-61: Transference]… Well, today, I will ask at least some of you, if it interests you, to open a dialogue called Meno.

In the early days of a group in which I played a part, my dear friend Alexandre KOYRÉ had the kindness and generosity to honor us with a discussion on Meno. It did not last long—my psychologist colleagues said to me at the end of that second year: “That was good for this year, but it’s over now! No, no, no! We are serious people; this is not the kind of thing that fuels us.”

I assure you, my God, that you have nothing to lose by engaging with it, even just a little, by reopening it. In order to hold your attention, I have found, in paragraph 85d according to Henri ESTIENNE’s numbering, the following passage:

— Οὐκοῦν οὐδενὸς διδάξαντος ἀλλ’ ἐρωτήσαντος ἐπιστήσεται, ἀναλαβὼν αὐτὸς ἐξ αὑτοῦ τὴν ἐπιστήμην
He will therefore know without having had a teacher, through mere questioning, having recovered knowledge from within himself.

And the following reply:

— Τὸ δὲ ἀναλαμβάνειν αὐτὸν ἐν αὑτῷ ἐπιστήμην οὐκ ἀναμιμνῄσκεσθαί ἐστιν […]
Ἆρ’ οὖν οὐ τὴν ἐπιστήμην, ἣν νῦν οὗτος ἔχει, ἤτοι ἔλαβέν ποτε ἢ ἀεὶ εἶχεν
But to recover knowledge from within oneself—is this not precisely recollection? […]
This knowledge that he now has, must he not either have received it at some point or have always had it?

For analysts, posing the question in these terms—does it not seem that there is something here, something that quite naturally applies—not in the way it is stated in this text, but still, something that is meant to remind us of something? In fact, it is a dialogue about virtue.

Calling it “virtue” is no worse than any other term. For many, this word, and words resembling it, have resonated in various ways throughout the centuries. It is certain that the word “virtue” now has a resonance that is not quite that of ἀρετή (areté) as it appears in Meno, since areté would lean more toward “the pursuit of the good” in the sense of what is beneficial and useful, as they say—which allows us to realize that, after a detour, we too have returned to this point.

One is struck to see that this is not entirely unrelated to what, after this long detour, has found expression in the discourse of BENTHAM. I have already referred to utilitarianism in the now-distant past when I spent a year presenting something called The Ethics of Psychoanalysis. That was, if my memory serves me well, the year 1958-59, unless that is not quite right [in fact, the seminar was 1959–60]. The following year, it was Transference.

Since I have been speaking here for four years now, a certain correspondence could be established between each of these years and two—following the chronological order—of my previous teachings. Thus, this fourth year would correspond to the seventh and eighth years of my previous seminar, echoing in some way the year on ethics, which is quite evident in my very articulation of the psychoanalytic act, and in the fact that this psychoanalytic act is something essentially and entirely linked to the functioning of transference.

This will allow at least some to find their way within a certain trajectory that is my own.

So, it is a matter of ἀρετή (areté), and of an ἀρετή which, from the outset, raises its question in a register that is in no way disorienting for an analyst, since what is at stake here is a first model given for what this word means in the Socratic text: the proper political administration—that is, of the polis—as it pertains to man.

It is curious that, from the very beginning, there appears a reference to woman, stating that—my God—the virtue of a woman is the proper ordering of the household [71e]. As a result, here they are, both placed on the same level, step by step, with no essential difference, and indeed, if it is taken in this way, why not?

I mention this only because, among the thousand riches that will prove suggestive in this text—should you be willing to read it from beginning to end—you will be able to grasp firsthand how a certain moral perspective, precisely the traditional moral perspective, has always eluded—though in this case, it is done admirably—has from the outset sidestepped, in the very first exchanges, to the extent that there is no longer any need to discuss it, the very question that is so interesting to us, analysts, precisely as analysts, who are, of course, certain to know: whether there is not a point at which the morality of man and woman might perhaps diverge, when they find themselves together in a bed—or separately.

But this is swiftly eluded in favor of a virtue that can already be situated on a more public, more environmental plane. And thus, the questions that arise can proceed in the manner in which SOCRATES proceeds, quickly arriving at the question of how one can ever come to know by definition what one does not already know—since the first condition of knowing, of recognizing, is to know what one is talking about.

If one does not know what one is talking about…
as becomes evident after a brief exchange of replies with his interlocutor, the MÉNON in question…
then there arises what you already know and what emerges in the two or three sentences I read to you earlier, namely, the theory of recollection. You know what this is about, but I will revisit it and perhaps extend and develop it a little further, to show what it means, what it can mean for us, and why it deserves to be highlighted by us.

To say, to express that the soul…
as it is expressed—it is the language used in any case in this dialogue…
does nothing—when it is taught—but recall, this implies, both in that text and in ours, the idea of an infinite expanse or, rather, of an unlimited duration in what concerns the soul.

This is somewhat what we, too, invoke when we find ourselves at a loss for references…
since it is not very clear how this could occur in ontogenesis…
so that certain things, always the same and so typical, are reproduced…
we then call upon phylogenesis—there is not much difference to be seen.

And what next? Where exactly is this soul to be found? To demonstrate that all it does is recollect everything it can learn, a gesture is made, one that was significant in its time—SOCRATES’ gesture:

“Look, Meno, I will show you. You see, you have here your slave, who has, of course, never learned anything in your household—a completely ignorant slave…”

He is questioned, and through certain ways of questioning, one indeed manages to elicit from him some rather reasonable responses—not advancing very far in the field of mathematics, of course. The question concerns what happens or what must be done to obtain a surface twice the size of the original one, assuming it is a square. The slave, without hesitation, replies that the side simply needs to be twice as long.

It is easy to make him realize that with a side twice as long, the surface will be four times larger.
Thus, proceeding in the same way by interrogation, we quickly find the correct method: to operate via the diagonal, taking a square whose side is the diagonal of the previous one.

All that we know of these little amusements, the most primitive recreations—which do not even reach as far as what had already been established in that era concerning the rational nature of √2—is that we have taken a subject “outside the class,” a slave, a subject who does not count.

There is something more ingenious and more relevant that follows in what is raised: namely, whether virtue is a science. All things considered, this is certainly the best part, the finest passage in the dialogue.

There is no science of virtue, which is easily demonstrated by experience, as it becomes evident that those who profess to teach it are highly questionable masters—it is the sophists in question—and that, as for those who could teach it, namely, those who are themselves virtuous…
I mean virtuous in the sense in which the word virtue is used in this text, that is, the virtue of the citizen and that of the good politician…
it is quite manifest—as demonstrated through multiple examples—that they do not even know how to transmit it to their children; instead, they have their children learn something else.

Thus, we ultimately arrive at the conclusion that virtue is much closer to what is called true opinion than to science. But how does true opinion come to us? From the heavens!

Here is the third characteristic of something that has this in common: that what we refer to, namely what can learn…
you can sense how close this is—I am being cautious—to what I designate under the term subject…
what can learn is a subject that already possesses the fundamental characteristic of being universal. All subjects, in this regard, stand at the same starting point; their extent is such that it presupposes an infinite past and thus, probably, a future no less infinite, even though the question of survival is not settled in this dialogue.

We are not yet at the point of sharing the myth of Er the Armenian, but certainly, the idea that the soul has always, in a truly immemorial way, accumulated what has shaped it—to the point of making it capable of knowing—is here not only uncontested but serves as the very foundation of the idea of recollection.

That this subject is “outside classification”—here is another term—that it is absolute, in the sense that it is not—as the text explicitly states—like science, marked…
by what is termed—echoing so much of what we can say here…
that it is not marked by concatenation, by logical articulation of the same type as our science; that this true opinion belongs far more to the order of poetry, ποίησις (poïesis)—this is what Socratic questioning leads us to.

If I have taken such care in this reminder, it is so that you may take note of what can be signified…
at this archaic yet still present level of inquiry into knowledge…
what can be signified by this, which had not been isolated before I did so, specifically in relation to transference: the function that, not even in its articulation but in the presuppositions of any question about knowledge, I call the subject supposed to know.

The questions are posed from this premise: that somewhere, this function exists…
call it what you will—here it appears in all its obvious aspects, as something mythical…
that somewhere, something plays the function of the subject supposed to know.

I have already put forward this point as a question regarding certain advances, breakthroughs, or surges in specific sectors of our science.

Does the question not arise as to where, how we can conceive of, before they were forged, certain new dimensions in the mathematical conception of the infinite? Before these dimensions were established, could we conceive of them as having been, somewhere, already known? Can we already relate them to something that has always existed?

That is the question. It is not about knowing whether the soul existed before incarnating, but simply about whether this dimension of the subject—as the support of knowledge—is something that must be, in some way, pre-established in any inquiry into knowledge.

Observe, when SOCRATES questions the slave, what does he do? He provides…
even if he does not draw it on a board, since it is a very simple figure…
one could say that he provides the drawing of this square, in the way he reasons, namely through the fundamental modes of a metric geometry—by decomposition into triangles and the counting of triangles of equal area.

Thus, it becomes easy to demonstrate that the square constructed on the diagonal will contain precisely the necessary number of small triangles relative to the initial number and that, if the initial number was four triangles [Meno, 85a], there will be eight when proceeding in this manner.

All the same, it is indeed a drawing.

And in questioning the slave, the issue…
it is not we who invent it; it has long been noted that this procedure is hardly demonstrative, given that, far from SOCRATES being able to argue from the fact that the slave has never studied geometry and has received no lessons, the mere way in which SOCRATES organizes the drawing already constitutes, as the slave is quite perceptive, a geometry lesson…
but that is not the issue here. For us, if I may say so, it is to be considered in these terms: SOCRATES brings a drawing.

If we say that in the mind of his interlocutor, there is already everything that corresponds to what SOCRATES presents, this can mean two things, which I will express as follows: either it is a drawing—I would not call it a duplicate—it is a drawing, or, to use a modern term, it corresponds to what we call a function, namely, the possibility of applying SOCRATES’ drawing onto his own, or vice versa.

It is, of course, not at all necessary that these be properly constructed squares in either case.
Let us say that in one case, it is a square according to a MERCATOR projection, that is, a “square” square, and in the other case, something more distorted.

Nonetheless, the point-by-point correspondence is what gives a very particular value to the relationship between what SOCRATES brings and how his interlocutor responds—namely, the value of deciphering.
This is of interest to us as analysts, because in a certain way, this is precisely what our analysis of transference entails.
In the interpretative dimension, it is to the extent that our interpretation reads a chain in a different way…
which is still a chain and already a chain of signifying articulation…
that it functions.

Then there is another possible conception: instead of realizing that there are two drawings that, at first glance, are not exact copies of one another, we might assume another metaphor, namely, that there is nothing visible—I mean, on the slave’s side—but that, as in certain cases where one might say, “Here, there is a drawing, you see nothing, but it must be exposed to fire…
you know there are inks called sympathetic inks…
the drawing then appears.”
There is, in this case, what is called—when referring to a sensitive plate—a function of revelation.

Is it between these two terms that the suspense lies concerning what is at stake for us in analysis, in a retranslation…
I say “re…” because in this case, the first signifying inscription is already a translation of something…
is it that the signifying organization of the unconscious, structured like a language, is what our interpretation comes to apply to?
Or is our interpretation, on the contrary, an operation of an entirely different order—one that reveals a drawing that had until then remained hidden?

It is, of course, neither one nor the other…
despite what this opposition might have initially suggested as an answer to some…
that I am teaching. The issue, which makes our task all the more difficult, is that things indeed involve the operation of the signifier, which makes the first reference—the first model of what deciphering is—eminently possible.

Only, the subject—let us say, the analysand—is not some flat entity suggested by the image of a drawing; he himself is inside it. The subject as such is already determined and inscribed in the world as caused by a certain effect of the signifier.

The result is this: that it comes very close to being reducible to one of the previous situations—except for one thing. What makes the difference is that knowledge, at certain points—which can, of course, always remain unrecognized—fails.
And it is precisely these points that concern us under the name of truth.

The subject is determined, in this reference, in such a way that renders him incapable—as our experience demonstrates—of restoring what has been inscribed, through the effect of the signifier, in his relation to the world.
It renders him, at certain points, inadequate to close himself off, to complete himself in a way that would be, with regard to his own status as a subject, satisfactory. And these are the very points that concern him as he must situate himself as a sexed subject.

In light of this situation, do you not see what results from the establishment of transference, given that it takes hold as it always does?
Because it is an ever-present movement, truly an institutionalized movement of traditional inherence, transference establishes itself in function of the subject supposed to know—exactly in the same way as it has always been inherent to every inquiry about knowledge.

I would even go further: by the very fact that he enters into analysis, the subject makes reference to a subject supposed to know better than the others.

This does not mean, by the way—contrary to what is often believed—that the subject identifies with his analyst. But this is precisely the core of what I wish to designate before you today: it is immanent. From the very outset of the movement of analytic inquiry, there is this subject supposed to know, and as I just said, supposed to know even better.

Thus, the analyst submits to the rules of the game, and I may raise the question of whether, when he responds, he does so in the way he should if we were dealing with SOCRATES’ slave, and if the slave were allowed to speak freely—something that, of course, is not permitted in the Meno experiment.

The question of the analyst’s intervention arises precisely in relation to the suspension I mentioned earlier:
— the two maps that correspond point by point,
— or, on the contrary, a map that—through some manipulation—is revealed in its nature as a map.
This is precisely how everything is conceived, based on—so to speak—the initial conditions set at the origin of the game.

Recollection occurs in such a way that what is remembered is not so much things as the very structure of amnesia, or the return of the repressed, which is exactly the same thing. In other words, it concerns how, at any given moment, the tokens are distributed across the squares of the game—by which I mean, the squares where one must place a bet.

Likewise, what level do the effects of interpretation operate on? On the stimulation it brings to the subject’s inventiveness—that is, to that poetry I mentioned earlier. But what does the analysis of transference mean? If it means anything at all, it can only mean this: the elimination of the subject supposed to know.

For analysis, and even more so for the analyst, there is nowhere—this is the novelty—any subject supposed to know. There is only that which resists the operation of knowledge, which constitutes the subject: namely, the remainder that we can call truth.

But precisely here arises the question of Pontius PILATE: What is truth?

“What is truth?” is precisely the question I am posing. And in order to introduce what constitutes the properly psychoanalytic act, what defines the psychoanalytic act as such, it is quite singularly:
— this feint whereby the analyst forgets that, in his own experience as an analysand, he has seen this function of the subject supposed to know reduced to what it actually is—hence, at every moment, all these ambiguities that displace the issue elsewhere, for example, onto the function of adaptation to reality, in addressing the question of truth,
— and also the feint of pretending that the position of the subject supposed to know is tenable, because this is the only access to a truth from which this subject will ultimately be rejected, reduced to its function as the cause of a process in deadlock.

The essential psychoanalytic act of the analyst involves something that I do not name explicitly but have outlined under the term feint, which becomes a serious matter if it turns into forgetting: the feint of forgetting that his act is to be the cause of this process.

That this constitutes an act becomes even more evident through a distinction that is essential to make here.

The analyst, of course, has a need—I would even say—to justify to himself what takes place in analysis.
Something is happening, and it is precisely this difference between doing and an act that is at stake. What the analysand is harnessed to, what he is subjected to, is a doing. He does something—call it whatever you like, poetry or ritual—he does, and it is quite clear that a part of the technical indication of analytic practice consists in a certain letting-do.

But is this enough to characterize the analyst’s position when this letting-do maintains, to a certain extent, the integrity within him of the subject supposed to know, despite the fact that, through his own experience, he has known its downfall and exclusion, and all that follows from this on the side of the analyst?

As for what follows from this, I will not immediately elaborate on it today, since this is precisely what we must articulate further in the sessions to come. But I will conclude by indicating an analogy that arises from the fact that, in advancing this new approach to questioning the act, I must address you, the third parties that you constitute, within the register I have already introduced under the function of number: number is not multitude, for it takes very little to introduce the dimension of number.

If it is within such a reference that I introduce the question of what the status of the psychoanalyst might be, insofar as his act places him in a position of radical imbalance with respect to these preliminaries, it is to remind you that this is a common dimension of the act: that it does not, in its moment, include the presence of the subject.

The passage of the act is that beyond which the subject will rediscover his presence as renewed—but nothing more.

Next time, since I have run out of time today, I will provide an illustration of this: the WINNICOTT through which I introduced, in relation to the word self, an example of a kind of accurate touch in relation to a certain effect of the signifier. This WINNICOTT will give us an illustration of what happens to the analyst precisely in proportion to the interest he takes in his object.

Specifically, insofar as he is someone—within the technique—who stands out as eminent for having chosen a privileged object for himself, he will allow us to grasp that the one he qualifies, more or less, as possessing that latent psychosis which exists in certain cases is, in fact, the entire analytic technique itself, which he will come, quite singularly, to disavow.

Now, this is not a particular case, but an exemplary one.

If the position of the analyst is determined by nothing other than an act, then for him, it can only register its effect as the fruit of an act. And in using this word fruit, I recall the resonance of fruition that I mentioned last time. The primary experience that the analyst records cannot go beyond this turning point that I have just indicated: the turning point of his own presence.

What means could allow for the collection of what, through the unleashed process of the analytic act, is recordable as knowledge? This is what raises the question of analytic teaching.

To the extent that the psychoanalytic act remains unrecognized, to that same extent, negative effects are recorded in relation to the progress of what analysis can accumulate as knowledge…
which we have observed, which we can grasp firsthand, which manifests itself and is expressed
in numerous other instances and throughout the entire scope of analytic literature…
deficits in terms of what can be consolidated, in terms of what it will be able to store as knowledge.