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(All parts in English)

Charles MELMAN

As part of what was a teaching project for the École freudienne, I suggested to Jacques LACAN that we consider meetings that could be held at varying intervals, monthly for example, where people—mainly from the School—who are interested in the seminar could gather and where a certain number of questions, even difficulties raised precisely by this seminar, could be formulated. Because in fact, these discussions among us concerning the seminar take place either in working groups or in friendly meetings—or not so friendly, no matter—in any case, these discussions take place, and it seemed to me that it could be a fair return to try together to formulate these questions, if that, of course, turns out to be either feasible or interesting for us.

Also, I have absolutely not asked anyone to prepare something today about the first seminars we have had this year, concerning this crucial point: the psychoanalytic act. What I propose to you, then, is that we try today to see if we can attempt this format of a working group, by trying to formulate the questions, the difficulties posed to us by the seminar.

To introduce things, I will not sort or filter the arguments that have been presented by Jacques LACAN so far. Such sorting would already, in my view, bear the mark of a certain partiality, of a specific point of view. I will therefore simply try, to introduce our discussion, to go over again, for the various seminars… no matter how far we go or don’t go, we shall see… in the form of very brief formulas, what the important articulations might have been, and we can, after my evocation of the problems raised in the various seminars, see whether or not we have elements to bring into discussion on this.

You know that Jacques LACAN readily points out that the obstacle or obstacles his teaching may encounter are very rarely, if not exceptionally, situated at the level of what could be called an antithesis. There may be no reason why we couldn’t try here—for example—to formulate what could perhaps appear there as an essential element of dialogue. In the first seminar, for instance, the one held on November 15, a number of formulas introduce the question of the psychoanalytic act, such as the reminder of this already old formula: “Transference is the enactment of the unconscious.”

On the other hand, what could be considered an act in a still peripheral field to psychoanalysis: — Entering psychoanalysis, for example, is that an act? — Establishing oneself as a psychoanalyst, should that be classified in the category of the act?

The reminder that the act has readily been identified with action, in other words with something essentially concerning motricity and the function of discharge, the evocation of the stimulus-response process and, however, the first question raised: — Did the field of psychoanalysis exist before the act of its birth? — Where was it? — Or at any rate, who knew it?

So a first glimpse, a first flash, concerning the carrying out of the act, and its effects. The same example is developed: what was the status of the field of algebra before the invention of algebra? The same question to which is added, for instance, a response of this kind: “It is not a matter of disputing that reality precedes knowledge.” But in this same register: “What about knowledge?”

The second part of this first seminar is significantly concerned with Pavlovian experimentation where it is established that Pavlov’s approach is a structural-type approach, that what PAVLOV, without recognizing it as such, actually implemented in relation to the animal, in relation to his experimentation, was a system that functioned in fact as a structure, if only because, contrary to the reflex, the stimulation there already appeared as inadequate to any essential fruition.

Or again this formula, still in this same register: the whistle represents… if the signifier is that which represents the subject for another signifier… the whistle, says LACAN, represents PAVLOV for a signifier, this sign of gastric secretion which derives its value from being an effect of deception.

And likewise, in this system, this remark which is not without flavor and which, I believe, has already been a source of humor: that PAVLOV received his own message in an inverted form, in other words that it was because of the gastric secretion that PAVLOV in return blew into his little trumpet.

Voilà for example a certain number of points I noted in this first seminar. It is possible that there are others you might wish to note if you have any notes. Could we already begin a discussion on that? Does all this seem self-evident to you and able to be ratified as is?

Ginette MICHAUD

In your statement, you said that LACAN resumes the theme “Transference is the enactment of the unconscious.” Yet it seems to me that, in the formulations prior to this one, it was “Transference is the enactment of the reality of the unconscious.” Do both things mean the same, or is there a difference between these two formulations? Because the term “reality” placed there, it is not usually without effect that this formula is used.

Charles MELMAN – What do you think?

Jean OURY

He even once said “Putting the unconscious into action,” in the seminar on anxiety. But I think we shouldn’t dwell too much on…

Charles MELMAN

What Ginette MICHAUD raises is still, I believe, something that may be of value. I am not sure there is an antinomy between these two formulations. It does not seem to me at all that they contradict each other.

Paul LEMOINE

Regarding action and transference, I would like to point out that I have difficulty in somehow linking action and, on the other hand, the psychoanalytic act. Because what happens is that in certain interminable analyses, what exists is, in some way, in the patients, a mechanism of repetition which makes them speak endlessly and never act. So how does one act within the transference to ensure precisely that this “enactment of the unconscious” becomes an enactment of the conscious, or at least an enactment—because as for saying whether action belongs to the domain of the conscious or the unconscious, I don’t know. But what about inhibition?

Charles MELMAN

That is indeed also a question that entirely concerns our topic. You are asking how in certain analyses of the interminable kind… you are referring, for example, to FREUD’s text on Analysis Terminable and Interminable… and you evoke the case of those patients who speak endlessly and, as you say, never act. If I understand you correctly, you are asking: how can we actually move there toward what would be the psychoanalytic act?

Paul LEMOINE – No. What is the relationship between the psychoanalytic act and action? That is it.

François TOSQUELLES

It seems to me that perhaps the two initial formulations you brought up—“Transference is the enactment of the unconscious” and “the act of entering psychoanalysis” or “the act of becoming an analyst”—there may be common points in those words, but also completely different points.

The differing point, one to be discussed moreover, is this “enactment of transference,” which is rather something that recalls the acts of a play: Act I, Act II, Act III, Act IV… that is to say, a kind of staging, with more or less distinct breaks: Act I, Act II, etc.

This is entirely different from the act of entering analysis or the inaugural act, which is first, it seems to me, perhaps of another structure. For there to be an act, unlike the “acting out” you are speaking of, it seems to me that it was this comparison between the act and the “acting out”—acting out does not involve repetition.

It leans toward technique, if you will. Whereas the act, at bottom, is something that inscribes itself more in front of a witness: There are always at least three people. — There is the validation of acts. — There is the request for recognition of the act.

If I have understood certain aspects of Jacques LACAN’s thought correctly, it is not by chance that he said: “The sexual act is not an act,” he said that it was an acting out, roughly speaking. Whereas one does not say one does an acting out of marriage. Marriage is an act.

“Getting laid” is not an act because it is a commitment and a recognition that by definition involves repetition. Something is inscribed at the mayor’s office or at the priest’s, or perhaps in parentheses in the big Other. That means that, when there is a dispute, it can be brought back up. An act can always be brought back up. It must be. It must, by definition, return. Whereas an acting out cannot return. Not that it “cannot” but it is independent, it is not constitutional for an acting out to return.

I would like to say a word about what LACAN said, and it’s true that in the story of PAVLOV there was an unconscious structural image on the part of PAVLOV. But as he approached it the first time, in his opening words, it was precisely in another context—it is precisely a matter of acting out, a stimulus-response. Basically, motricity has nothing to do with the act, if I understood correctly. Stimulus-response, that’s how he introduced the problem of PAVLOV, in terms of stimulus-response. With the version you gave, which is also true, it seems to me that it could lead us not to grasp why the problem of PAVLOV was posed from the outset on that day.

Jacques RUDRAUF

It seems to me that, as far as the starting point for defining somewhat what is meant by act, there is a third dimension that has not yet been mentioned today, which is nonetheless present in the mind and is evident in the transference “enactment of the unconscious”—it is the definition of the act as actual or actualization in relation to the virtual. The act opposed to action, or the act as it is in civil status, as being repetition. But the notion of actualization in relation to what is virtual is also fundamental.

Xavier AUDOUARD

I tend to think that, contrary to what Mr. TOSQUELLES said, the notion of the act in no way implies the notion of recognition—quite the opposite. I think that the act, insofar as it implies the notion of recognition, is more a conditioning of the subject than an enactment of the subject, that is to say, conditioning in the Pavlovian sense of the term seems to me to include this reflection, this self-representation that makes motricity accept to shift its object based on something that is sent back to it, and sent back by the Other since, according to LACAN, the Other here is present, from a reflection of the subject by the Other—that is to say, by the mirror dimension.

It is in this sense that the subject can agree to reassure himself regarding the displacement of the object of his act. Whereas the enactment of the subject, on the other hand, seems to me to return us to the origin. I have the impression… and LACAN too, since he gave us the notion of the act as the notion of pure beginning… that the notion of act returns the subject to his origin, that is to say, to that place where he cannot reflect himself, where he is precisely pure beginning, that is to say, pure act of pure subject. I think that if it is a sufficient condition that the act be recognized, it is not a necessary condition.

I think the act—if we want to purify the notion—on the contrary returns us to an original experience, which makes the subject, for a brief instant, accept not to recognize himself in his act. He recognizes himself in the representations he gives of it, that is to say, in the consequences his act may receive. That is already a mechanism we can align with the obsessive series, but insofar as he accepts being act, he cannot, at the same time, accept being representation of himself acting. In other words, I think that it is:
— on the side of conditioning that the imaginary is situated,
— on the side of enactment that symbolic life is situated.

It is a question I pose to TOSQUELLES who, on the contrary, insisted in my view on the imaginary and intersubjective aspect of the act, which seems to me to be able to be included there, but which does not in any case seem to me to properly belong to it.

Irène ROUBLEF

I wouldn’t want to say everything I have to say now, since it concerns the whole seminar of LACAN, in any case it falls within what TOSQUELLES was saying, in the difference between act and acting out. I believe moreover that LACAN says “the act” and “the doing,” which both together determine the psychoanalytic act. What I wanted to talk about is the relationship between the psychoanalytic act and acting out and passage to the act. I believe that what TOSQUELLES was talking about was—in LACAN’s perspective—what he calls acting out, that is to say, something that shows itself, something that does indeed want to be recognized. But I’d like to talk more about that shortly, once we’ve looked at all the seminars.

Eugénie LEMOINE

Reality as preexisting knowledge, which you said could not be questioned I believe, on the contrary seems to me to be the only question. Is there an antinomy between reality and knowledge? Where is the difference?

Charles MELMAN

Reality preexisting knowledge. But, says LACAN, what about knowledge?

Eugénie LEMOINE – That is the problem. That very relation. It’s a big problem.

François TOSQUELLES

I’m not too surprised by this misunderstanding. I would say that’s why I spoke with an accent—to facilitate the misunderstanding. But really, I don’t believe it’s a matter of accent that prevented things from being turned in such a way that… For example, as I presented things, I was able to understand what an act was. I used this image:
— the act of marriage,
— or the act of baptism,
— or the notarial act, etc.

It was precisely to show that it is a symbolic act and not an imaginary act. It is not imaginary to go get married.
The word “to inscribe,” someone said “to write”… I had rather used, I believe, FREUD’s term who always spoke of inscription, etc. So my intention was precisely to say that the act was something foundational. Thus, to again take up the exaggerated image of the sexual act, what is foundational is marriage and not getting laid.

Charles MELMAN – The question remains whether marriage is an act or not.

François TOSQUELLES

In each civilization, there are those recordings of acts that are consecrated by a certain type of custom, which are done differently. But I would like to say one more thing on this subject, to better differentiate this matter of acts and action, of acting out.
We don’t say that our actions follow us, whereas we say “our acts follow us.” That is very important, and once again it raises the problem of repetition, of memory, etc. Acting out may or may not follow us, whereas our acts do follow us, that is absolutely certain.

Perhaps the problem that causes a bit more confusion is between act and action, and not between act and acting out. Because in action, by contrast, there is this matter of recognition, of participation, even in our financial actions.
If you buy a financial share, you’re not buying an act, you’re buying an action, and you participate in the economy, in the profit and in the loss. It is precisely these actions that are negotiable, transferable. The labor of the worker in the factory is neither transferable nor negotiable. It is the action that is negotiable. That, it seems to me, raises the problem.

Charles MELMAN – I believe, Mr. TOSQUELLES, that you’ve been able to reiterate what you wanted to say.

Paul LEMOINE

I’d just like to ask TOSQUELLES if a marriage that is not consummated is an act or an acting out.

François TOSQUELLES

There is no marriage that is not consummated, says the Church. The marriage is null if it is not consummated. A null act.

Paul LEMOINE – What is the sexual acting out in the act of marriage?

Charles MELMAN

In any case, there is one word I’d like to say right now. For my part, I would be somewhat concerned that we might be indulging in an inflation, under the term “act,” of a large number of elements that may have with it only homonymic relations.
Precisely, the problem of this year’s seminar is, I believe, to succeed in isolating what would be the specificity of the act as such—that is, precisely what would allow it to be distinguished radically and with certainty from any hesitation concerning action, concerning acting out, concerning acts of civil status.

It is—I believe, and LACAN emphasizes it—from the field of psychoanalysis that the question of the act is put into place,
is at once awakened, evoked, and at the same time perhaps authorizes the developments that allow us to put it into place. Now, this might be a first remark concerning the risk that we might, in the end, absorb under this term precisely what still belongs, and quite legitimately, to all our questions.
So it is both legitimate to absorb them, but it might also be legitimate to already point that out.

Xavier AUDOUARD

I would simply like to ask TOSQUELLES whether he thinks that, for example, the origin of language is an act.
It’s one of two things: either he thinks so, or he doesn’t.

If he thinks so, then he agrees with me in saying that language cannot recognize its own origin, except within rationalist philosophies, which we are not here to critique. But if language cannot recognize its own origin as such, and if nevertheless the origin of language is an act, then the act escapes recognition. Or he does not think that the origin of language is an act, in which case, I ask him to tell me what it is.

Themouraz ABDOUCHELI

I wonder whether the way you introduced the discussions, seminar by seminar, is the most conducive to avoiding the bogging down that you mentioned earlier.

Charles MELMAN – It’s not at all certain that we are bogging down.

Themouraz ABDOUCHELI

You’re the one who spoke about that. To avoid us beginning a discussion on a point that may seem like a detail but is in fact a very important point, I wonder whether there might not be reason to make a quick overview—since you decided to start this way—of all the seminars or of the important questions, rather than proceeding seminar by seminar.

Charles MELMAN

Do you already see which questions from the other seminars might allow for such a disengagement?

Themouraz ABDOUCHELI

Yes, I do have a question to raise, but one that practically does not fall into any seminar in particular.

Charles MELMAN – That doesn’t matter.

Themouraz ABDOUCHELI

It’s a very lateral question, with primarily practical implications, and one that nonetheless takes us quite far from the problem of the discussion of the act. Here is my question: I’ve been wondering whether the emphasis that LACAN has placed for some time now on producing the object (a) might not have a very particular impact on our treatments. I mean that most of our patients are neurotics and that, as LACAN has said very clearly, their desire is our demand.

Now it turns out to be known—and I believe, more and more—that an object (a) is being asked for, is being demanded, of course as object cause of desire. But this object, which is in a way going to be requested, does it not run the risk of being every time from now on, even more than before, an anal object, which means that we will always and increasingly be dealing with anal objects. We will thus be covered in shit more than we have ever been, like the pigeons before Mr. MALRAUX’s campaign, and I’m afraid that all this shit will prevent us somewhat from seeing clearly.

So there is something here which, on the practical level, seems to me worthy of reflection, and I would like to pose the question here: can such an effect already manifest in our treatments?

Charles MELMAN

There was a well-known patient, whom you know well, who precisely had a certain difficulty in seeing clearly, that famous patient who had that “veil over his eyes” that prevented him from making contact with reality—what he called reality. It’s a symptom that is not rare, far from it. Indeed, the problem is certainly that of the relation of this object (a) with that “veil over the eyes.” Now perhaps, as you say, we may be able along the way to see what, in this dialectic, allows for seeing clearly or not—in other words, what risk must or must not be taken for the said patient to cease having that “veil over the eyes.” It’s an excellent question.

Perhaps we will make progress there, as you wish, in our inquiries.

Note… that a certain way your question is formulated is not without echoing LEMOINE’s earlier, a certain approach regarding precisely the problem of those patients for whom something cannot be decided, let’s say: and the question of why, and what must be done?

Themouraz ABDOUCHELI

So that the meaning of my question is well understood: I fear that something that already exists and that exists far too often… namely this sort of linkage of the subject’s desire to what he believes to be the possible demand of the analyst… might encounter here a real structure—the Lacanian analyst effectively asking for something.

Charles MELMAN – It was the Wolf Man I was referring to with regard to that “veil over the eyes.”

Claude CONTÉ

I would like to make a brief remark regarding what ABDOUCHELI has proposed as a subject for reflection, insofar as it indeed prompts a number of comments and questions that immediately arise. For example, you asked precisely in what way it seems to him that Lacanian teaching is something that leads us… insofar as we would be situated by the patient in his illusion as demanders… in what way LACAN’s teaching would lead us to demand the object (a), in what way the object (a) would be the real object of our demand. It seems to me that there is a certain crossing of a line in what you are saying on this point.

Themouraz ABDOUCHELI – Of course.

Claude CONTÉ

Another question, which goes a bit further. After all, if the patient approaches us in this way, under this form of demand, well, one could say that this is something given from the outset, and one could also say that the logic of the analyst—LACAN said this—is always integrated into the fantasies that “the analysé” or “the analysand” constructs around the treatment. From this point of view, I don’t see what our positions with respect to LACAN’s teaching would bring that is very new to the situation. I would even say that if the logic that LACAN constructs turns out to be closer to the reality of things or to the concrete dialectic, I fail to see how it would concern or possibly block something in the treatment.

Themouraz ABDOUCHELI

I’m not saying that LACAN’s logic could block something in the treatment, but I’m talking about the knowledge that is formed of it on the outside and that will increasingly be formed, the way in which this knowledge could interfere with the treatment. That is a practical problem I’m raising.

Charles MELMAN

There may be another question, that of whether the Lacanian analyst demands something, or whether it is something that is put into place by a structure in relation to which the analyst and the analysand—this is what CONTÉ was trying to highlight—are bound in a closely dependent way. I mean by that, whether an analyst is Lacanian or not, whether he formulates or not the concept of the object (a), the question of the object (a) will in any case, and necessarily, and unavoidably, be present.

One need only open a large number of articles by psychoanalysts belonging to other schools to realize that the question of the object (a), and of the least harmful way not to misuse it, is constantly raised, even if it does not reach a formulation that effectively allows for a resolution of the kind that LEMOINE was hoping for earlier. So, it seems to me that it distorts or misdirects the terms to pose the question of the relationship between the analysand and the Lacanian analyst in that way.

The question of the object (a) is posed in any case; the only issue is how to use it and what risks must be taken in its use. That is the question. In other words, one could just as well say, ultimately, that the analyst—Lacanian or not, or whatever—does not, a priori, demand anything. In any case, the object (a) will enter into circulation.

Jean AYME

Regarding the dialogue that has just taken place, the question can be asked—and CONTÉ’s intervention clarified it—whether the analyst, Lacanian or otherwise, is a demander or a subject presumed to be a demander. Because that is indeed what it’s about, and perhaps fortunately, this emphasis placed on the object (a) may lead to a revealing of something that rarely unfolds in psychoanalytic societies, which is the socio-economic status of the psychoanalyst, since this practice also takes place—and it is from his position that he defines it—in a field of so-called liberal practice which, under capitalism, is a commercial practice. It is possible that, if he does not attempt a revealing of that dimension, something may risk being misaligned between the true demander and the subject presumed to be a demander.

I also wanted to speak about the seminar of November 15: — regarding a question that concerned why PAVLOV came up that day,
— at the same time as the formulation of this year’s seminar The psychoanalytic act is a provocation at the level of this figure whose function is to handle speech within the field of language, in reference to that proverb from the wisdom of nations: “Spoken words fly away, written ones remain.”

To return to that dimension, there is something that seems to me to have been highlighted by LACAN, in that problematic which underlies the discussion on act and action, which is the old philosophical problematic of idealism and materialism. It seems to me that that is why PAVLOV came up that day. And you didn’t recall that sentence I had noted: “Where there is language, there is no need to refer to a spiritual entity.” I think that sentence was worth recalling, insofar as it can help articulate that problematic.

Charles MELMAN

There is still—following up on what has been raised in the various questions so far—this: LACAN begins by stating the paradox that it is within the psychoanalytic field that the question of the act can be posed, that is, in a field where, ultimately, the act has until now only been recognized as such insofar as it is missed, failed, which is already a primary issue, and in a field also where, precisely, the rule dictates abstention during the treatment from anything that would be an act. It is also from a certain veiling of what the psychoanalytic act is among psychoanalysts that LACAN originates or restores the emergence of his inquiry.

LEMOINE, it seems to me, has taken up this question quite well, at that clinical level which is precisely that of the end of analysis and of what the act is at that moment. I note clearly that this does not concern the first seminar, but I say nonetheless: it doesn’t matter… LACAN indeed situates a difficulty here concerning the psychoanalytic act in its relation to psychoanalysts, in other words, something that concerns what one could call their fate regarding the act of which they make a profession.

Another point… to briefly return to that discussion between TOSQUELLES and AUDOUARD… concerns whether the act does or does not imply recognition, or even registration. It seems to me that two things could be raised here: — on the one hand, the function of Verleugnung that AUDOUARD, if I’m not mistaken, brought up without naming it, as there would be something in relation to the act that would lead the subject to deny it. — but also, regarding the recognition of registration, something that might perhaps also lie on the side of what the act inaugurates as a field, as a new field.

In other words, a somewhat delicate articulation, perhaps, if one had to use the term recognition or inscription, but in any case, something which, of course, at the level of the act… at least this is how it is attempted to be specified… something that marks the beginning, the opening of a new field.

M. NOYES

It seems to me that there is a word that should be introduced at that point—you just now introduced it with an accent that you said was missed. I wonder whether what is the specificity of the analytic act… and what distinguishes it from actions or other acts, particularly from the medical act… is that the psychoanalytic act immediately makes present—and this is what grounds the treatment—the dimension of lack.

My question would be: can we truly recognize what is specific in the psychoanalytic act without introducing not only the notion of lack but the notion of cut, because it seems to me that the notion of act was brought, at the end of the seminar, together with that of cut. Can we think act without thinking cut?

Ginette MICHAUD

I was about to say almost the same thing. The starting point of the discussion was nevertheless to articulate transference with the act. But there can be no transference if there is no cut, and it seems to me that it is not specific to the psychoanalytic act to be punctuated by a cut. It seems to me that this is what characterizes any act in relation to acting out, precisely, that it closes by a cut and the possibility of closing not onto a closed system but, so to speak, toward a closure as much as a cut, to be put into circulation, in the sense that an act, for it to follow you, is marked, it is defined, one does not return to it. One returns to it when there is reason to, but it is closed.

We can say that, for there to be transference, transport, everything that pertains to the dynamic in transference, something must be cut, there must be a break from a certain moment, and one can even articulate the formation of the big Other with the cut of the first signifier and thus the possibility that there be permutation, transmutation. One cannot speak of one without the other, and likewise, make an analogy with systems of barter and money: from the moment there is a stamp and the possibility of putting into circulation a value that is an exchange value.

Lucien MÉLÈSE

I was a bit surprised earlier by the discussion on the introduction of the (a) into circulation in psychoanalytic circles. It was there before, of course, but there was nonetheless the cut of the act of the seminar which brought it the stamp of knowledge, something there that makes it indeed not the same thing to refer to an unnamed (a), and thus one that circulates in the text like that without emerging from it, and a structured (a) with that structure. It is not the same thing.

Jean OURY

I would like to add a question to this impressive list. You cited the second phrase: “entering psychoanalysis,” and then “establishing oneself as a psychoanalyst.” That already poses a problem in the sense that we would need to articulate the relation between “entering psychoanalysis” and “establishing oneself as a psychoanalyst.”

This raises the well-known issue of didactic analysis. It would be interesting to see whether there is a more or less subtle distinction to be made between the act of entering psychoanalysis and the act of presenting oneself to a society of psychoanalysts in order to become an analyst, which still falls within a strictly analytic perspective.

In other words, doesn’t this act of going around to see certain individuals in a formally constituted and therefore positive society still seem to be an act, one that carries a certain importance in becoming an analyst, and how does that articulate with the individual act of entering analysis?

It seems to me that one certainly cannot resolve the question outright, but that through this false opposition the problem of didactics is raised. In other words, is it the same thing to enter into didactics or to enter into analysis?

Claude DORGEUILLE

On that very point, I had noted in the seminar the following statement: “Beginning an analysis is indeed an act.” But LACAN had added: “Who does it?” And he had then said that one could not attribute the structure of an act to the one who engages in it.

Charles MELMAN

Yes. It is clear that a certain number of questions—yours as well as those of the seminar—concern what is the relationship of the analyst with knowledge, and in particular with what is established from the opening of the treatment, that is, the presentification of a subject supposed to know, and without any doubt also what is at the same time the analyst’s intimacy with this subject supposed to know, the one who animates, so to speak, the treatment. It is certain that this is a highly practical situation, the effects of which can certainly extend very far, including—without any doubt—into the marginal issues, but ultimately only to the limits of the organization of psychoanalytic societies. It is certain that there lies something that one could properly call essential.

Félix GUATTARI

When LACAN founded this School, in rupture, in a cut from a long tradition of the psychoanalytic movement, within a certain attitude of avoidance precisely regarding its responsibilities, he, one could say, committed an act which weighs on each of us, and—I find—particularly weighs in a session like this one, with the somewhat distressing aspect of having to say in a few words something… About what? About a demand precisely from LACAN. A demand for what? That we return the favor? A demand that there be some kind of return, a response to that question he posed when he said: “I found, alone as always…” I no longer remember how exactly he said it.

And I question myself on LEMOINE’s point. When LACAN baptized something that stems from the partial object at its origin, he named it the object (a).

The fact that he took that first letter of the alphabet, which thereby gave a certain quality of inscription, of letterhood—ultimately, the status of the letter—this act of bringing something that was part of the psychoanalytic movement into a certain designation, this act of creating a name, thus taking on the paternity of a certain rational reclassification, is something that, in a way, places all of us in this School in a transferential position, particularly in relation to what must be acknowledged: namely, that LACAN, in a certain way, refounded, re-enacted psychoanalysis after FREUD. Now I think that in these conditions, a whole uncertainty manifests itself in the very functioning of the School. This was discussed at a congress two years ago. I don’t know whether much was taken up afterward, whether much attention was paid to the observations and proposals that were made.

Be that as it may, the Psychoanalytic Society, the Freudian School—how do they constitute a respondent to this act of reappropriating Freudianism? I believe that is a bit of the trap of today’s session: how is it possible to speak after an act? How is it possible to speak after the responsibility LACAN took in making a cut and a refoundation of psychoanalysis?

And, well, I believe that the demand being made of us here, in this session, should at the very least lead us to go beyond the mere question of the act and to revolve around this act that resembles more of an inhibition, that resembles more of an incapacity to go beyond elucidation.

Charles MELMAN – What do you find distressing in your own question?

Félix GUATTARI

It’s the fact that everything that has been developing in the École freudienne for years now, I believe, is nothing but a strict rephrasing of LACAN’s formulations, or else, in some cases, has a certain originality, but the assertion of which is very uncertain. I consider that LACAN engaged himself on a terrain that he had long prepared in advance, that he had built over time through the entire history of psychoanalysis, and I feel that there is a kind of inhibition… quite classical, by the way, in group mechanisms… which is that most of us, I believe—starting with myself—have a certain difficulty in putting ourselves into act from the analytic point of view in specific fields: fields which are precisely not especially those of LACAN, and not especially within LACAN’s path.

There is thus a kind of difficulty in speaking about what our engagement in psychoanalysis is, or rather, a desire to speak of it only where LACAN leaves us a tiny margin, a tiny gap to be able to say—I don’t really know what… And I am very sincerely questioning what we have been saying since the beginning of this session.

M. MORALI

I would like to return to a question that may be the same as the one that was just expressed: since the beginning of this discussion and of this seminar, is it a matter of questioning psychoanalysis from within the general structural field of language? That is, to ask what, in psychoanalysis, deserves to be designated by what language names “act,” or is it the reverse hypothesis? That is, are we asking psychoanalysis to truly teach us what the act is, and if need be, to teach it to us against language?

Which is precisely what your remarks might suggest—that it is in psychoanalysis that we know that the act appears as missed, as that which must therefore be precisely avoided, as the cut with respect to language and with respect to what language would lead us to understand as act?

In this second hypothesis, how will we know, in fact, what will make us understand that the psychoanalyst is not using language in order to escape both the act and the truth of the act? And what we are doing right now—might it not be both the experience and the enjoyment of this reduction, of this protection that language provides against the act and the truth of the act?

Charles MELMAN

There are two points on which I will give my opinion—unless others wish to express theirs?

Mme X.

I had the impression, listening to LACAN, that in the last seminars, when he spoke of the object (a), the point was that the subject supposed to know becomes the object (a) at the end of psychoanalysis. Now, maybe that doesn’t have the importance and meaning that has been attributed to it, but the goal of psychoanalysis would be that, at the end, the subject becomes the object (a).

Charles MELMAN

Yes. I would like to say two things. One concerning GUATTARI’s remark, which—I must say—I have a hard time understanding or situating. The issue is not about knowing what LACAN expects from a working session, nor whether he expects something in return. The issue is what we want to say about it. That is already a first point. Either we have something to say, or we don’t. If we do, then we can consider discussing it and talking about it. I don’t see there what the slightest problem is—I mean, not the slightest shadow.

Félix GUATTARI – It’s been going on for years.

Charles MELMAN

On the other hand, although we are indeed involved in a certain field, with what that field originates, the fact remains that, precisely, we are speaking, we are talking, and that ultimately the point is even to encourage such things. Now, as for the question of originality, that is an absolutely fascinating question, one that many people are undoubtedly interested in. I must say that it’s something we certainly need to reflect on. It is very delicate. In particular, the question of originality arises precisely in relation to what is being done here—that is, the establishment of a structure. What does it mean to be original in a work of research that concerns a structured organization, in mathematics, for example?

A mathematician makes an exciting discovery, truly cutting-edge. He publishes it, and eight days later… that’s all it takes… another mathematician who has read it presents a more general formula.

Who made the discovery? What is the originality of these two mathematicians? This question, it seems, deserves to be posed in a way other than at the level of this kind of blur, vagueness, halo…
and we are interested in the blur, the vagueness, and the halo…
that concern originality. We should try to elucidate what originality is.

There is an already old text in which LACAN speaks of the passion for uniqueness. It’s a question that was opened by Mme PARISOT at the Lectures de LACAN, concerning the passion for uniqueness. Perhaps we could also see something that might, after all, be placed in quotation marks—or at least reflected upon—concerning what one might call the “passion for originality.”
It is not a question of attributing value to it, of judging it acceptable or unacceptable, but of trying to know what’s there, what it means, what it signifies. As for me, it does not seem at all that, at the level of the questions raised today for example, there was anything of the order of inhibition. I must say that, from a clinical point of view, I have not particularly encountered it.

There is a second point, regarding what M. MORALI said about the act and language. That’s a very, very big question. In any case, it is not a matter of answering it now, but, ultimately, I won’t even consider addressing it here at this moment. Maybe someone will want to take it up here afterwards?

Just this remark—that LACAN precisely emphasizes the dimension he calls the signifying dimension of the act.
To take it at the level of the example between:
— the Johannine “In the beginning was the Word,”
— and Goethe’s “In the beginning was the Act.”

LACAN repeatedly emphasizes, in a way, the collusion of these two fields, in other words, something that would allow for no evasion or avoidance anywhere, but which precisely binds the act, for LACAN, to a domain that escapes the stimulus-response motor dialectic, acting-doing, etc.—something that would be capable of granting its status to what would indeed be the act.

In any case, it seems difficult to me to see an evasion in this undertaking.

Xavier AUDOUARD

I would like to highlight along the way the relation that clearly appeared in several contributions between the act and the primal scene, all this to say to GUATTARI that, after all, I am not inhibited in making this connection that LACAN did not make. Indeed, it is through personal experience that I’ve long questioned this extraordinary experience that we all, as analysts, have—that the man who speaks there, or the woman, speaks of the primal scene as if they had attended it. The subject was not there, and yet he is fully entitled to speak of it—that is, he is trying to take up, in the inaugural act of his speech, the inaugural act of his life.

In this model, there is something that seems to define, or at least illuminate for us the essence of what an act is—namely, that the act, if it wants to be recognized, is nonetheless something that cannot be, and, being unable to be, always commits us, pushing our lack ahead of us, to restore it, to repeat it—even independently of the contents that this act inaugurates or the field that this act opens—but as pure act, and this pure act wants to present itself as consciousness.

It is at that moment that consciousness, which becomes act and believes itself to be act, falls precisely into error—to return to what? To something of the act that cannot be pure, that is, consciousness at that moment lets itself fall, it as consciousness, in order to restore a subject that is not consciousness and that becomes what? That becomes the act.
I believe there is no reason why this dialectic should then stop, and there is no final recognition.

Charles MELMAN

What I propose to you, for the next closed seminar perhaps, is that, if there are any among you who would like to develop certain points—at the level of their own field, their work, their reflections—they make themselves known, they will be most welcome… [Jean Oury, Irène Roublef make themselves known]

We remained within the themes of the first seminar that I mainly discussed. But there is a subject that seems quite important to me, that deserves to be taken up again in order to clarify matters—it is what was done last year on The Logic of Fantasy and which is taken up again this year in a very precise way, but at a different level.
Would one of you like to prepare something that would be a revisiting of The Logic of Fantasy?

Jacques NASSIF – I’m willing to try. It all depends on how much time can be devoted to it.

Charles MELMAN – Enough time so that we’re still able to talk about it.