🦋🤖 Robo-Spun by IBF 🦋🤖

(All parts in English)

There is going to be something slightly modified in our pact today. Of course, it is understood that, according to the proper law of an exchange performance, you grant me your presence in return for something you are expecting, something that is supposed to emerge from a certain fund and to have been, up to a certain point—it remains to be determined which—destined for you. In short, you are expecting a lecture.

On several occasions—it happens to me from time to time—I revisit this question of whom I am addressing, where this originates from: you know how much care I take in insisting on this. I could not for a single moment lose sight of the original reference point, which is that this discourse, conducted on psychoanalysis, is addressed to psychoanalysts. That there are so many people who are not, who are gathered here to hear something—this alone demands a certain number of explanations.

One would be mistaken in this regard to settle for historical explanations, that is, for the encounter, or encounters, or the effects of a surge in a crowd, which resulted in my being within reach of being heard elsewhere than where I was originally speaking: obviously, this is not sufficient to explain things.

This is precisely where one could compare historical references—since, after all, what is generally called history is this hustle and bustle—with those of structure. There are, obviously, structural reasons. The fact that I am speaking this year about the act, that I am posing the question of the act, that I have arrived at the point of what I stated last time, which seemed to me—based on a few small samples—a proof that at least some have perceived the importance of what was formulated last time, insofar as it marks a point that justifies and allows for gathering, at least at a nodal point, what had begun to be articulated by me from the start of our year and which, of course, at the outset, may have left a vague impression, especially if one starts from the idea that what is said first must necessarily be the principles—in many cases, one is forced to proceed otherwise, even when one has a structural reference, and even more so when one has it, since it is in its nature not to be able to be given first, it must be conquered, otherwise one does not see why, for example, the Klein group-type schema…
on which, for now, I am attempting to articulate what is at stake with the act in the perspective that opens onto the psychoanalytic act…
one does not see why I would not have started with that some fifteen years ago.

Thus, today, there is going to be a kind of halt, the occasion for which is here merely a pretext, although this does not mean that it is incidental. On the invitation cards for this year’s seminar on The Psychoanalytic Act, it was planned that on January 31, February 28, March 27, and May 29, entry would be by invitation, which means that I had planned for a certain number of smaller gatherings, something that would have allowed for an exchange.

This, in short, was intended to provide a minimum of something that has always been and still is quite difficult for everyone to manage: the rule of closed seminars, with all the complications this entails regarding selection, the mode of choice—I am not sure that those who come forward desiring to be present are necessarily the most qualified.

In matters of this sort, a kind of competition always arises: the place where one initially has no desire to go suddenly becomes desirable from the moment one’s friend is going there. All this does not make the task easier for someone whose principle is rather to be welcoming than the opposite, but it is an effort to establish an exchange environment with a somewhat different internal dynamic.

This is how I plan to resolve things. Something external to the series means that on this January 31, I will not be here. This is not a reason for there not to be a closed seminar. It was agreed that the members of the so-called Freudian School of Paris, whom everyone knows I am involved with…
and with the utmost legitimacy, since, after all, they are psychoanalysts…
that it would be they—provided they express the desire—who would come here on January 31. I have not even yet asked—I am asking him now—Dr. MELMAN to be present in order to organize this gathering. I had established the principle that only members of the School who had attended here with sufficient regularity to know what I have articulated so far would participate in this meeting.

You will see how justified this is, as I am going to give this meeting the following purpose… The idea, moreover, is not solely mine, far from it—I would even say that it was given to me by Dr. MELMAN, who, within the teaching of the School, recently suggested to me that, even in the course of this particularly important seminar—since, after all, one can hardly conceive of a more central point for psychoanalysts than that of the psychoanalytic act itself, provided, of course, that this word has a meaning…
which I hope has sufficiently taken shape in your view by now…
at the very least, that this meaning, I have given it a form, that it can be articulated according to a certain number of questions and that we can determine whether we can answer them, or even whether they are truly questions.

This is precisely what is opened; after all, this is how the problem presents itself. I have given it its initial articulation, as a result of which one can see certain blanks manifesting within it, at other points spaces already filled or even excessively filled, or even completely overflowing, unbalanced due to not having taken the others into account. This is precisely the interest of introducing what is called structure. It is rather curious that we are still at this point… and I am forced to say it since there have been some recent manifestations of it… at the level of psychoanalysts, still considering that there could be a question at the level of the principle of structure.

There are things that I have truly not had the time to examine and that I am not even certain I will look into closely, but of which, of course, I have echoes. One sees people endowed with psychoanalytic authority, of a certain weight, so-called “honorable practitioners,” manifesting in a very singular way the point at which things stand. For example, there is a whole environment where it was—for everyone knows—prohibited even to put oneself within reach of the wrong word.

And then there was a time, a fabulous time—but it must be said that things move very slowly in this very particular milieu—just think: 1960! There are people here who were 14 years old at that time, the Bonneval Congress—it is ancient, dusty, unbelievable! It must be said that it took about six years to produce the proceedings…

There are people who, to discuss what I teach, have found this extraordinary: to take things back to the Bonneval Congress. I personally am very grateful to a member of my School for having created a journal which, in a way, and quite obviously, is not mine—since it is his—and which allows for this effect of a dumping ground. One would not know where else to unload this, because “elsewhere” is not the place; in a certain journal called—I do not know why—the French Journal of Psychoanalysis, it is out of the question to discuss what I teach, and this is understandable since psychoanalysis is not even discussed there!

But then, in this other place—the side pocket—there, one can pour things out, and to discuss what I say about the signifier, with everything I have been telling you for four years, which has largely exceeded the question, if one wants to know whether at the principle it concerns the signifier or not, one goes back to the Bonneval Congress, which was a kind of tunnel where people fought without knowing who was landing the blows and where there were all sorts of the most outlandish, the most fantastic ramblings.

There was someone there named LEFEBVRE, absolutely incredible people! I must say, there were also some pleasant individuals: our dear MERLEAU-PONTY intervened on that occasion. But at that time, everyone was completely off track! It was simply a matter of publicly discussing, for the first time, what I had been teaching for seven years at Sainte-Anne to a small circle.

This is how things happen, and it highlights the fact that within every discourse, there are effects of the act because, if there were only the dimension of discourse, it would normally spread more quickly. Precisely, this is what I am trying to emphasize: that, of course, this discourse, which is mine, undeniably has this dimension of the act, and above all, at the moment when I am speaking about the act, this becomes glaringly obvious.

And I would say that, if one looks closely, this is the only real reason for the presence of most of the people here, for otherwise, particularly in the case of a young audience, it is difficult to see what they might be seeking here. We are not operating on the level of university service provisions: I have nothing to offer you in exchange for your presence. What amuses you is that you feel that, precisely, something is happening. We are not in agreement: that is already a small beginning for the dimension of the act.

It is truly extraordinary—naturally, I only know this by hearsay—but nevertheless, I am assured that the kind of authors I was referring to earlier are among those who object to this structure, which—so it seems—would leave us, as persons, so ill at ease: the being of the person would be something that suffers from it. I fear that here we are dealing with something that fully deserves analysis and scrutiny. What is at stake with the being of the person of the psychoanalyst is precisely something that can only truly be perceived in its relation to structure.

This kind of small tetrahedron on which we have embarked in recent times—one thing must still be strongly felt: the multiplicity of translations to which it lends itself. Here, “I do not think” is not a reserved place for the psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst reveals his necessity; this is something entirely different. He reveals it in the following way: that it is so manifestly necessary for someone who deals only with thoughts not to think. And what of the others!

This is what makes this starting point instructive and, in sum, what makes it entirely clear: that this point at the top left, “I do not think,” is the point of forced choice, the forced choice of alienation. It is a small refinement brought to the notion of alienation as it was discovered before us, as it was identified at the level of production, that is, at the level of social exploitation.

This “I do not think” is what allows us to give meaning to this word that has truly been manipulated in a way that, until now, I must say, has been quite abject, in the sense that it reduced the position of the analysand, the patient, to an attitude that I would call “depreciated” if the analysand—who is called “the patient,” rightly or wrongly, in certain “vocabularies”—resisted.

You see what this reduces analysis to: something that it obviously is not and that no one ever thought to make it, namely an operation of collaring, of extracting the rabbit from its burrow. He “resists.” What resists is obviously not the subject in analysis; what resists is, of course, the discourse, and very precisely in the measure of the choice at stake. If he renounces the position of “I do not think,” as I have just explained to you, he is nevertheless drawn toward the pole where there remains only the opposite choice, which is that of “I am not.” Now, since “I am not” is, strictly speaking, inarticulable, it is certain that what first appears in resistance is that discourse cannot come to be something. What?

The people who speak to us about the being of the person in order to object to structure—one would really like to ask them to articulate what it is, for them, these persons, that they call, on occasion, being. I do not know exactly where they place it—I mean, for themselves. There are certain ways of placing the being of the person in others that amount to a rather convenient trinket-making operation.

In sum, we are still going to try to articulate in what way this act, of a rather exceptional structure, namely the psychoanalytic act—what we are at least trying to initiate, to suggest, to point to this year—might be capable of presiding over a certain renewal of what nevertheless always remains the orienting point of our compass, in what way it might renew the function of the enlightened act. There may be some renewal.

If I use the term “enlightened,” you can well imagine that it is not without echoing the Aufklärung, but it is also to say that if our compass always seeks toward the same north—and here, I take responsibility for this north, if I may say so—this might, perhaps, be posed for us in terms that are somewhat differently structured.

Thus, last time, with regard to the two poles I defined and articulated concerning the position of the psychoanalyst…
inasmuch as I do not at all deny him the right—him too—to resistance: I do not see why the psychoanalyst should be deprived of it…
for this psychoanalyst, insofar as he institutes the psychoanalytic act, that is, insofar as he gives his guarantee to transference, that is, to the subject supposed to know, whereas his only advantage, the only one he has over the analysand, is that he knows from experience what is at stake with the subject supposed to know, that is, what it means for him, and to the extent that he is supposed to have undergone the psychoanalytic experience in a way that—without delving further into doctrinal debates—must be, at the very least, a way somewhat more advanced than that of the cures: he must know what is at stake with the subject supposed to know.

Namely, for him…
and I explained to you last time [see diagram] why it is here that the subject supposed to know appears…
for him who knows what the psychoanalytic act is, the trajectory, the vector, the operation of the psychoanalytic act must, this subject…
we have already seen how this S comes down here to the bottom left…
reduce it to the function of the object (a).

This is what, in an analysis, the one who founded it, this analysis, in an act, namely his own psychoanalyst, has become. He has become so precisely in this: that at the end, he has joined with what he was not at first—I speak from the subjectivity of the analysand—he was not, at first, from the outset, the subject supposed to know. It is in this that, at the end of the analysis, he becomes so—I would say, hypothetically—for in analysis, one is there to know something.

It is at the moment when he becomes it that he also takes on, for the analysand, the function that, in the dynamic… for him, the analysand, as subject… is occupied by the object (a), that particular object which is (a)—I mean in the sense that it presents a certain diversity… which, moreover, is not very extensive since we can quadruple it with something empty at the center… insofar as this object (a) is absolutely decisive for everything that concerns the structure of the unconscious.

Allow me for a moment to return to what was earlier my question… concerning those who are still there, on the edge, groping, hesitating… about whether or not something is acceptable in a theory that has already developed sufficiently for it to no longer be a matter of discussing its principle, but only of determining whether, on this or that point, its articulation is correct or needs adjustment.

Is there anyone here… I would even say those, if there are any, who are arriving for the first time… does it not settle the matter… that does not mean, of course, that it could have been stated so simply before… does it not purely and simply settle the question of this: yes or no, does analysis mean… and it seems difficult, in the way I am going to phrase it, not to see immediately what is at stake… yes or no, does analysis mean that in whatever you choose—a “being,” as they say, or a becoming, or anything whatsoever, something that belongs to the order of the living—there are, whatever they may be, events that carry consequences?

It is the term “consequences” that carries emphasis here. Are consequences conceivable outside of a signifying sequence? The mere fact that something has occurred, persists in the unconscious in a way that can be retrieved, provided one catches hold of an element that allows for reconstructing a sequence.

Is there a single thing that could happen to an animal of which it would even be conceivable that it be inscribed in this order?

Has not everything that has been articulated in analysis from the beginning been of the order of this biographical articulation, insofar as it refers to something articulable in signifying terms, a dimension that is impossible to extract from it, to expel from it?

From the moment one has seen it, one can no longer reduce it to any notion of plasticity or reactivity or biological stimulus-response, which, in any case, will not be of the order of what is preserved in a sequence. Nothing of what may operate in terms of fixation, transfixion, interruption, or even apparatus-formation around a device, of what will ultimately be nothing but a device—namely, a nervous one—is, by itself, capable of fulfilling this function of consequence.

The structure, its stability, the maintenance of the line along which it is inscribed, implies another dimension that is properly that of structure. This is a reminder that does not come here at the point I had reached, at the moment when, therefore, I interrupted myself to make this recall.

Thus, here we are at this point S, which locates what is specifically at stake in the psychoanalytic act, insofar as it is around it that what I call “the resistance of the psychoanalyst” is suspended. “The resistance of the psychoanalyst,” in this structuring, manifests itself in this, which is entirely constitutive of the analytic relationship: it is that he refuses the act.

This is indeed entirely original to the status of what the analytic function is, every analyst knows it, and ultimately, it even ends up being known, even by those who have not approached its field. The analyst is the one who surrounds an entire zone that would be called—indeed, it is frequently called by, let us say, the patient—into intervention as an act:

— not only insofar as he may, from time to time, be called upon to take a stand, as they say, to take the side of his patient concerning a close one or anyone else,

— but even, and simply, to perform that kind of act which is indeed an act, which consists in intervening through approval or the opposite: advising. This is precisely what the structure of psychoanalysis leaves blank, so to speak.

And it is precisely for this reason that I have placed on the same diagonal… I say this for the sake of imagery, because, of course, what happens along this line—the diagonal—has no more right to be called “diagonal” than what happens on the others. It suffices to rotate the tetrahedron to turn them into horizontal or vertical lines, but for imaginative purposes, it is more convenient to represent it this way. One must not be misled by it; there is nothing more diagonal in transference than in alienation, nor in what I call the truth operation—it is precisely because the act remains blank, so to speak…

Thus, this line—the diagonal—can also be occupied in the other direction by transference, that is, in the course of the analyst’s “doing,” by the movement toward what is the horizon, the mirage, the endpoint—an endpoint that, of course, I have already sufficiently defined as a rendezvous, inasmuch as it is determined by the subject supposed to know (arrow toward S).

The analysand, from the outset, takes up his staff, loads his satchel, and sets out for the rendezvous with the subject supposed to know. This is made possible only by the careful prohibition that the analyst imposes upon himself on the side of the act. Otherwise, if he did not impose it, he would be purely and simply a deceiver, since he knows, in principle, what is at stake in the unfolding of the subject supposed to know within the analysis.

It is because analysis is—call it what you will—this original experience, or this artifact, or this something that, in history, may at some point appear as nothing more than a kind of episode, a very legitimate way of dealing with extremely particular cases, a practice that, by chance, found itself opening up a completely different mode of act-relations between human beings, that this will not be its privilege.

I believe I have given you sufficient indications last time that, over the course of history, the relationship of the subject to the act changes—that what still lingers in moral or sociological manuals does not even give you an idea of what the relations of the act are in our time—that, for example, it is obviously not just by remembering HEGEL, by the way professors speak of him, that you can truly measure the significance of what he represents as a turning point in relation to the act.

Now, I do not know what I should do at this turning point. Recommending a reading is always dangerous… because, of course, it all depends on the extent to which one has been previously cleansed, more or less. Still, it seems difficult to me not to have been sufficiently so to situate, for example, a very small book—I mean by this, to give meaning and significance to what I have just stated. A small book has been published by someone I believe I saw at this seminar at one time, who sent it to me for this reason, titled Le discours de la guerre by André GLUCKSMANN. I regret not having had the time to find in my notes what he might have conveyed to me about his qualities.

This is a book that, for example, might give you, on a certain level, within a certain field, the dimension of something that is sufficiently exemplary and complete, at least insofar as the discourse of war is concerned—of course, something that everyone talks about wildly and indiscriminately—but the influence of the discourse of war on war itself is not insignificant at all, as you will see when reading this book.

Namely, the way it engages with HEGEL’s discourse insofar as it is a discourse on war, yet one clearly sees its limits on the side of the technician, on the side of the military—and then, alongside it, the discourse of a military man.

One would be wrong to disdain the military once he knows how to hold a discourse—it happens rarely, but when it does, it is quite striking that it proves to be rather more effective than the discourse of the psychoanalyst! The discourse of CLAUSEWITZ, insofar as it is recalled in conjunction with that of HEGEL and as its counterpoint, might—naturally, I am speaking to those here with a keen ear—might give them some idea of what, perhaps, along this line, my discourse might contribute in terms of a relation that would allow one to believe that, in our time, there is a discourse that is valid outside the discourse of war. It might also clarify a certain gap—precisely the one between HEGEL and CLAUSEWITZ—at the level of the discourse of war.

Of course, CLAUSEWITZ did not know the object (a).

But if, by chance, it were the object (a) that allowed for a clearer view of something that CLAUSEWITZ introduces as the fundamental asymmetry between two sides in war—namely, that which is absolutely heterogeneous—and if this asymmetry dominates the entire relation between offense and defense, while, as you know, CLAUSEWITZ was not exactly one to waver over the necessities of offense, then this is a simple little indication.

I am, in a way, hastily filling in a certain number of—how should I put it?—gaps in the background of what I articulate concerning what the analytic act allows us, in sum, to establish or to restore regarding the coordinates of the act, of what we are attempting to clear a path for this year. You can thus see that the inclinations are multiple.

First, there is something that must, in some way, remain established as a minimum reference point for us.

That is, what, within a logical structure instituted by something entirely privileged—psychoanalysis—insofar as it constitutes the conjunction of an act and a doing, this logical structure, if we do not constitute it with, so to speak:
— those parts that are alive in the operation,
— and then those that are left in a dead state,

…we will be entirely incapable of orienting ourselves within the analytic operation.

Thus, this is something fundamental, something not only important for the practice itself that is at stake, but also for explaining the paradoxes of what occurs around it—namely, how it can give rise, particularly among those engaged in it, to a certain number of selective misunderstandings, those corresponding to what I call “these dead parts,” or those suspended for the very operation in question. That already makes two aspects.

The third, which is certainly no less fascinating, is something that, at the end of my last discourse, pointed toward—I do not know what—some indication that was too easy, too tempting to translate hastily, one from which an echo reached me…
I must say, one I cannot endorse, but which is quite amusing…
It was relayed to me through one of the many voices available to me at this point, someone…
I have absolutely no idea who, I do not even remember who repeated it to me…
who said: “Today, without a doubt, it is the Che Guevara seminar.”

All this just because, regarding the subject supposed to know, the S at the bottom left, I had said that what is perhaps…
at least this model poses the question for us…
the end—I meant it in the sense of termination, the tipping point, the overturning—of what is essentially the normal outcome of the act. After all, if psychoanalysis reveals anything to us—and this, from the outset—it is that there is no act of which anyone can claim to be entirely master.

It is not of such a nature as to tear us away from all our foundations, from everything we have—deep down—gathered from our experience, from what we know of history and a thousand other things. That the act…
every act, and not just the psychoanalytic act…
promises to the one who initiates it this end that I designate in the object (a)—well, this is hardly something over which one’s eardrums should burst from their sockets, is it?

It is hardly worth, for that reason, believing that this is “the Che Guevara seminar.” There have been others before. And besides, perhaps that is not exactly what I mean, nor is it what is important. We are not here to give a brushstroke to the tragic to make it shine. Perhaps it is about something else.

In any case, it concerns something that is obviously much more within our reach if we bring it back to what I have said: that we must understand the logical structure of the act in order to conceive that, truly, what takes place within this limited field of psychoanalysis is precisely that questions can be formulated there—questions that arise among those within my School and who, after all, presume that they can place what I articulate into its proper context, throughout a construction whose necessity they have been able to follow through its various stages.

Let them bring me, through Dr. MELMAN, and no later than next Wednesday, something like a testimony—a testimony that they are capable of pushing a little further, of turning the hinges, the pivots, the doors, the way they use this apparatus insofar as it concerns them.

I mean that what I expect from this meeting…
where, I apologize, most of those here will find themselves, in sum, excluded in advance…
is a certain number of questions that prove to me that, at least up to the point I have reached this year regarding the act, it is possible to question something—or, at the very least, to propose a translation, and to that translation, if necessary, an objection, namely: “If you translate it this way, this is what it implies,” or “This contradicts such and such a point in our experience.” In short, show me that, at least to a certain extent, I am being understood.

This will then serve for the next closed seminar, the one on February 28, insofar as only those from my School who participated in this first meeting will, of course, be summoned. Because if they are not capable—it is also an act—of making the effort to attend, it is above all “an act of not making the effort,” and this is apparent.

For instance, it sometimes happens that one might wonder—and I do wonder—why a given psychoanalyst, well informed of what I teach, is precisely absent this year from what I am articulating about the act. One might say to me: “There are people who take notes.” There are not many. Incidentally, I point out that taking notes is better than smoking, and that, after all, smoking is not such a good sign when it comes to listening to what I am saying. I do not believe that this should be taken in through a cloud of smoke.

It seems to me that, precisely, since I have just alluded to the fact that what appears to motivate at least part of this audience, which honors me with its presence, is precisely the exploratory aspect of what is unfolding before you, I do not even find it comprehensible that, on the part of analysts, for instance, not being present here when I speak of the act…
that is to say, this is not just any discourse, even if they are to be provided with faithful and well-informed notes…
there is something quite instructive, quite significant here, something that might well find its place where I have inscribed the term “resistance.”

Since, after all, today I had planned to put you in some difficulty—meaning, to ask that one person, or two or three, pose one or two questions to me today, or even to make this a kind of entry point to the closed seminar at the end of February.

That wouldn’t be so bad, would it?

However, I am also aware of the freezing effect that results, first, from the large number of people present, and second, from the fact that it is now rare for me to request interventions at the end of my lectures. Nevertheless, I propose that it be more or less established—barring a few exceptions—that, for the regulation of access to the seminar on February 28, the invitations will be given, quite simply, to those who send me a written question that seems to me to be in direct continuity with what I am attempting to bring to you regarding what is currently in progress.

The ones I have here will be handed over to MELMAN for those from the School who are present, and who will enter with them next time. Those who are from my School or directly affiliated with it in some capacity are requested to take this card in order to be here on January 31, in such a way that I can gather something from it that will allow me to prepare the closed seminar on February 28.

I will still have to pin down, here and there, something that advances us a little…
even if today, unfortunately, I am not adopting the usual ex cathedra approach…
It is this: one must nevertheless observe that if this gap has always remained between the act and the doing—because that is what it is about—this is the crucial point around which we have been breaking our heads for a very small number of centuries.

I have never calculated how few great-grandfathers we would need to go straight back to the time of Caesar—you do not realize how deeply you are implicated in things that only history books make you believe are in the past…
If we are breaking our heads—look at HEGEL—over the difference between master and slave, and if you can give that distinction whatever elastic meaning you wish, if you examine it closely, it concerns nothing other than the difference between the act and the doing, to which we are attempting, of course, to give another substance, one a little less simple than the subject presumed by the act.

It is not at all necessarily and exclusively—this is what has been troubling until now—the subject who commands.
M. Pierre JANET developed an entire psychology around this alone. That does not mean at all that he was misguided; on the contrary, he was certainly on the right track. It is simply rudimentary and does not allow for understanding much, because…
aside from the fact, even as represented on Egyptian bas-reliefs, that there is a pilot,
or just as well that there is a conductor at Pleyel or elsewhere, and that there are those who “do”…
this does not explain much when we need to scale it up to a broader level. At that point, there are truly:

— masters—not so much those who “sit back and relax,” as one might think, but rather those who engage with the act,
— and those who engage with the “doing.”

Now, there is a “doing.” This is where we can begin to understand how this “doing” might, perhaps…
despite its ultimately futile nature and—let us say it clearly—partly ridiculous nature (I am speaking of psychoanalysis)…
how this “doing” might have a greater chance than others of granting us access to function. Because, take a good look at this “doing”—there is a trait I wish to highlight.

I do not need to say that it is a “doing of pure speech” since this is something I have been hammering home forever, in order to explain the Function of the Field of Speech and Language.

But what remains unnoticed is that it is precisely because it is a “doing of pure speech” that it comes closer to the act when compared to common “doing.” And furthermore, in the technique, in this thing that seems like nothing, that appears so simple—this famous free association—we could just as well translate it as the signifier in act, if we examine things closely.

That is, what truly defines the fundamental rule is precisely…
as far as possible, it is the directive…
that the subject must absent himself from it. Thus, this signifier—it is the task, it is the doing of the subject to leave it to its play.

The in act here is, of course, in quotation marks—it is not the act of the signifier.

The signifier in act has this connotation, this evocation of the signifier that, in a certain register, one might call in potentiality, namely precisely…
what our doctor from earlier would surely like to always be recalled…
that among those who emphasize structure, there are so many for whom something is ready to emerge, to bubble up in the person—the “being” is so overabundant—that trying to contain us within these precise tracks, within this logic…

which, by the way, is not at all a logic upon which he can, in any way or with any right, place the mark of emptiness…

it is not so easy to establish this logic—you can see here its weight and difficulty.

Let us say—just to reassure—after all, ours, whatever it may hold to, that a psychoanalyst would raise terms like “the person” is something that—to my ears, at least—is utterly exorbitant…

But, well, perhaps this will not become obvious to everyone for a little while yet.

But if he wants to reassure himself, let him observe that this logic—the one, for example, that I strive for and that I am attempting to construct before you—I would define it somewhat as follows…

if he has the slightest education—but who knows?—I have not seen him in so long, I have no idea…

a logic that would remain as close as possible to grammar.

That hits you hard, I hope! So, ARISTOTLE, quite simply. Well, yes, why not!

Only, we must try to do better.

I would ask you to observe that if this logic—Aristotle’s logic, precisely—has remained indestructible for centuries, even up to our own, it is precisely because of the objections made against it, namely, that it is said to have been a logic that failed to realize it was doing grammar.

I have great admiration for university professors who know that Aristotle “did not realize” something! He was the greatest naturalist who ever lived: you can still reread History of Animals, and it holds up—something truly astonishing!

It may be the greatest step ever taken in biology. One cannot say that no progress has been made in logic since then either, but still, the fact that the logic he formulated—precisely from grammar—is still the one around which we continue to break our heads, even after adding very clever elements to it, I must say, such as quantifiers, which have only one drawback: they are entirely untranslatable into language.

I am not saying that this does not pose a question—for instance, that it does not bring back to light the question on which I have taken a kind of dogmatic stance, a sort of label, a banner, a slogan: “There is no metalanguage.”

You can well imagine that this troubles me as well—whether there might, in fact, be one. But in any case, let us proceed on the assumption that there is none—it will not be a bad thing; at the very least, it will prevent us from mistakenly believing that there is one.

It is not certain that something which cannot be translated into language does not suffer from a deficiency that is entirely effective.

In any case, the continuation of our discussion may lead us back to this question of quantifiers, for indeed, it will necessarily involve posing certain questions to you, and these questions will concern what is to take place in the corner of S, where the subject supposed to know has been erased from the map.

What we will have to elaborate concerning the availability of the signifier at this place may perhaps lead us to this junction between grammar and logic, which—let me point this out here only as a reminder—is precisely the joint on which we have always navigated, this logic that someone from our circle back then called, with sympathy, an attempt at an elastic logic.

I do not entirely agree with this term, as elasticity is not, strictly speaking, the best quality one could wish for in a standard of measurement.

But the joint between logic and grammar—there, too, is something that might allow us to take a step further.

In any case, what I would like to say in closing is that I cannot urge psychoanalysts enough to meditate on the specificity of the position that is theirs: that of having to occupy a place different from the very one where they are nonetheless required, even if they are, so to speak, forbidden from acting there.

It is nevertheless from the perspective of the act that they must center their meditation on their function, and it is not for nothing that obtaining this is so difficult.

There is, in the position of the psychoanalyst—and by function…
and I believe this diagram makes it evident enough that no offense should be taken…
something of the carpet.

We will attempt to decipher, as the saying goes, the figure in the carpet…
or in the carpets, if you prefer…
There is a certain way for the psychoanalyst to center himself, to savor, so to speak, something that is consumed in this carpet-like position.

They call it whatever they can:
— they call it listening,
— they call it the clinic,
— they call it by all the opaque words one can find on such an occasion.

For I wonder what could, in any way, emphasize the truly specific flavor of an experience.

It is certainly not accessible to any logical manipulation.

A certain attitude, in any case—under the pretext of what I hesitate to call solitary enjoyment, a mere morose delectation—allows one, for example, to say:

After all, all theories are equally valid; above all, one must not be attached to any of them; whether one translates things in terms of instinct, behavior, the genesis of gentle babbling, or Lacanian topology, it all amounts to the same thing… We must position ourselves equidistant from such debates.

All this, in the name of a hypochondriacal enjoyment, a centered, peristaltic, and anti-peristaltic process at once, revolving around something intestinal in the psychoanalytic experience.

Indeed, this is something I often encounter—sometimes, in a way that is graphically displayed from a platform.

Certainly, this is not necessarily the easiest point to win through dialectical effect, but it is the essential point—the one around which everything turns—precisely what CLAUSEWITZ defines as the asymmetry between offense and defense.