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(All parts in English)

I therefore resume, after fifteen days, this continuation which I am presenting to you this year concerning the psychoanalytic act, in parallel with a certain number of propositions, to use the proper term, which are those I have made within a circle composed of psychoanalysts.

The responses to these propositions… moreover, which are not limited to those that have been explicitly labeled as such, are followed by a number of other productions, let us say, since at the end of this month a journal will be published which will be the journal of the School …all of this results in a certain number of responses or manifestations which are certainly, in no way, without interest for those to whom I am speaking here.

It is clear that some of these responses, some of these reactions, occurring at the sharpest point where my propositions are consistent with what I present to you on the psychoanalytic act, are undoubtedly full of meaning in defining—through a test one can rightly call crucial—what is at stake in the status of the psychoanalyst.

Indeed, last time I left you with the indication of a logical reference. It is, of course, at the point we have now reached… which is that where the act defines, by its cutting edge, what is at stake in the passage through which the psychoanalyst is instituted, is established …it is absolutely clear that we can only return through the mode of testing that a logical questioning constitutes for us. Will it be, to take ARISTOTLE’s inaugural reference, at the moment when—as I was evoking—he takes the decisive steps from which the logical category in its formal species is established as such?

Are we dealing with a demonstrative or dialectical intentional procedure? The question, as you will see, is secondary. It is secondary—why? Because what is at stake is established from discourse itself, namely that everything we can formulate concerning the analysand and the analyst will revolve… and I think I won’t surprise you by stating it as I am going to, I have prepared the ground enough for it to seem already said to you now …around this: the analysand, in situ within discourse—how can one contest that he is in the position of the subject?

Whatever reference we may arm ourselves with to situate him, and of course linguistic reference in the foreground, he is essentially “the one who speaks” and “the one upon whom” the effects of speech are experienced. What does this “upon whom they are experienced” mean? The formula is deliberately ambiguous. I mean that his discourse, as it is regulated, as it is instituted by the analytic rule, is made to be the test of that in which, as a subject, he is already constituted by the effects of speech.

And yet, it is also true to say that this very discourse, as it will continue, be sustained as a task, finds its sanction, its outcome, its result, as an effect of discourse—and above all of his own discourse—whatever insertion the analyst’s interpretation may take within it.

Conversely, we must realize that the ever-present, even at times burning, question—if it concerns the psychoanalyst, let us say to proceed cautiously, to go to the minimum—that it is to the extent that the term psychoanalyst is placed in a position of qualification: who, what, can be said—predicate—psychoanalyst?

Certainly, even if this initial approach might appear to move a bit quickly, it will, if you like, be justified in retrospect. Thus, by going to the heart of the matter, I announce under what signboard, under what heading, I intend to place my discourse today. You can trust me, this is not without having, in this regard, regained my footing, so to speak, with what is illuminating in the very history of logic, in the way that, in our time, the handling of what is designated by that term—logic—undergoes such a shift, in such a way that it really makes us, I will not say always more puzzled, but makes us ourselves ever more disoriented before the starting point of ARISTOTLE.

We must refer to his text, and specifically in the Organon, I mean at the level of the Categories for example, or the Prior Analytics, or the first book of the Topics, to see to what extent the theme of the subject as he states it is close to our problematic. For certainly, from this very first statement, nothing already more sensitively illuminated us regarding what, at the level of this subject, is of its nature—that which eludes us par excellence—nothing that, from the very outset of logic, is more firmly affirmed as being distinct from what has been translated—certainly most insufficiently—as “substance”: ὀυσία [ousia].

Translating it as “substance” clearly shows how, over time, it is through an abusive slippage of the function of the subject in these Aristotelian first steps that we are dealing, so that the term substance, which here creates an equivocation with what the subject entails as supposition, could have been so easily advanced.

Nothing in the οὐσία [ousia], in that which is—that is to say for ARISTOTLE—the individual, is of such a nature that it could be
— either situated in the subject,
— or affirmed, that is to say, neither attributed to the subject.

And what else is more apt to immediately make us leap with both feet into what is the formula through which I have believed I could, with full rigor, bear witness to this truly key, truly central point in the history of logic—the point where, having thickened with increasing ambiguity, the subject finds again, in the steps of modern logic, this other face, a kind of turning point which, so to speak, shifts the perspective—namely, that in mathematical logic, it tends to be reduced to
the variable of a function, that is to say, to something which will subsequently enter the entire dialectic of the quantifier,
which has no other effect than to render it henceforth unrecoverable in the mode in which it manifests in the proposition.

The term “turning point” seems to me to be fairly well fixed in the formula I felt I had to give when I said that the subject
is precisely that which a signifier represents for another signifier. This formula has the advantage of reopening what is elided in the proposition of mathematical logic—namely, the question of what is initial, of what initiates the positing of any signifier, the act of introducing it as representing the subject, for that is—already in ARISTOTLE—what is essential
and what alone makes it possible to place in its proper position the difference
— of that first bipartition, the one that differentiates the universal from the particular
— of that second bipartition, the one that affirms or denies.

Both— as you know—intersect to give the quadripartition: of the universal affirmative,
of the universal negative, of the particular negative and affirmative in turn. The two bipartitions have absolutely no equivalence.

The introduction of the subject—insofar as it is at its level that the bipartition of universal and particular is situated—what does it mean?

What does it mean to take things as someone who found himself—as was PEIRCE,
Charles Sanders—at that historical point, at that junction between traditional logic and mathematical logic,
and which makes it so that, in a sense, we find under his pen this moment of oscillation where the turning point that opens a new path begins to take shape. No one more than he…
and I have already presented his testimony when I had to speak in 1960 on the theme of Identification
…has better highlighted, nor with more elegance, what is the essence of this foundation from which the distinction between the universal and the particular arises, and the link of the universal to the term of the subject.

He did so through a small exemplary diagram, well known to those who have followed me for some time,
but which it is still worth repeating. Of course, he allows himself the ease of giving, as the support of the subject,
what it really is about, namely nothing—in this case, the mark. None of these marks, which we will take to exemplify what is involved in the function of the relation of subject to predicate, is not already specified by the predicate
around which we will revolve the statements of our proposition, namely:

— the vertical predicate [top left]
— here [bottom left], we will place marks that correspond to the predicate, they are vertical marks, and others that are not.
— here [bottom right], none are.
— here [top right], there are no marks.

That is where the subject is, because there are no marks. Everywhere else, the marks are indicated by the presence or absence of the predicate. But, to make it clearly understood in what way it is the “no mark” that is essential, there are several methods, not least that of establishing the statement of the universal affirmative for example like this: “No mark that is not vertical.”

And you will see:

— that it will be by making the no operate on vertical, or by removing it, that you will be able to carry out the affirmative and negative bipartition,

— but that it is by removing the no in front of mark, by leaving the mark which is or is not vertical, that you enter into
the particular, that is to say the moment where the subject is entirely subject to the variation of vertical or not vertical:
there are some which are, and some which are not.

But the status of universality is only established here, for example [bracket at the top]:

by the union of the two boxes, namely the one in which there are only vertical marks and also the one in which there are no marks,
because the statement of the universal which says “All marks are vertical” is sustained, and legitimately so, only by these two boxes and by their union.
It is equally true—it is more essentially true—at the level of the empty box, that: “There are only vertical marks” means
that where there are no vertical ones, there are “no marks.” This is the acceptable definition of the subject insofar as, under any predicative statement, it is essentially that something which is only represented by a signifier for another signifier.

I will only briefly mention, because we cannot spend our entire discourse dwelling on what we can draw from PEIRCE’s schema. It is clear that it is likewise from the union of these two boxes [bracket on the right] that the statement “no mark is vertical” takes its support. This is precisely why it is necessary that I emphasize it.

In this is demonstrated what is already known, of course, if one reads ARISTOTLE’s text properly:
— that the universal affirmative and the universal negative in no way contradict each other, that both are equally acceptable, on the condition that we are in that box at the top right,
— and that it is equally true—at the level of that box—to state “all marks are vertical” or “no mark is vertical”; both things are true together, which ARISTOTLE, curiously, fails to recognize.

At the other points of the crucial division, you have the institution of the particulars.
In these two boxes [bracket on the left] there are vertical marks:

And at the junction of the two lower boxes [bracket on the bottom] there are—and nothing more—marks which are not vertical:

You thus see:
— that at the level of the universal foundation, things are situated in a way that, if I may say so, entails an exclusion, precisely that of this diversity [box at the bottom left].
— And likewise, at the level of particular differentiation, there is an exclusion, that of the box at the top right. That is what gives the illusion that the particular is an affirmation of existence.

It is enough to speak at the level of “some”—some man, for example, has the color yellow—for it to be implied, from the fact that this is stated in the particular form, that there would be by that very fact, if I may put it this way, by the fact of this enunciation, also an affirmation of the existence of the particular.

That is precisely what countless debates have revolved around concerning the logical status of the particular proposition, and this is certainly what makes it ridiculous, for it is absolutely insufficient for a proposition to be stated at the particular level to in any way imply the existence of the subject—except by virtue of a signifying arrangement, that is, as an effect of discourse.

The interest of psychoanalysis is that it brings to these problems of logic, as has never been done until now…
what was in fact at the root of all the ambiguities that have developed in the history of logic: the implication within the subject of a οὐσία [ousia], a being
…that the subject might function as not being.

It is precisely this—I have articulated it, I have insisted on it since the beginning of this year and already throughout the whole of last year—
that brings us the illuminating opening by means of which a renewed examination of the development of logic could be undertaken.
The task remains open—and who knows, perhaps by stating it this way I might provoke a vocation—that would show us
what so many detours really mean, I would say so many embarrassments…
sometimes so singular and so paradoxical in their manifestation throughout history
…which have marked logical debates through the ages and which make so incomprehensible:
— from the point of view of a certain time… at least ours, the time they sometimes took,
— and what seems to us to have constituted for a long time stagnations, even passions around these stagnations, whose import we barely grasp as long as we do not see what was truly at stake behind them.

Namely, nothing less than the status of desire, whose connection, though hidden—for example, with politics—
is entirely perceptible in, for example, the turning point constituted by the institution within a philosophy, namely English philosophy, of a certain nominalism: it is impossible to understand the coherence of this logic with a politics
without realizing what logic itself implies in terms of the status of the subject and reference to the effectiveness of desire in political relations.

For us, this status of the subject is illustrated by questions in which I have again pointed out that all of this takes place within a very limited, even very brief environment, marked by discussions whose intensity, whose burning character partakes, I would say, of those old undercurrents—what we, on this occasion, take as example, what we can articulate—it is for this reason that it may, as you will see, not be without consequence for a much broader domain, insofar as it is certainly not only within the practice revolving around the function of desire—as far as analysis has discovered it—
that the question is played out.

Here then are the analysand and the analyst placed by us in those distinct positions they respectively occupy. What will be the status of a subject defined by that discourse which, as I told you last time, is instituted by the rule, especially in that the subject is asked to abdicate within it—that is the aim of the rule—and ultimately, by devoting himself to the drift of language, he would go, as I was saying earlier, to attempt, by a kind of mediated experience of its pure effect, to rejoin the effects already established?

Such a subject, a subject defined as an effect of discourse—to the point of undergoing the ordeal of losing himself there in order to find himself again—such a subject whose exercise is, in a way, to test himself through his own resignation, what can we say about him, to what can a predicate be applied? In other words, can we state something that belongs to the category of the universal? If the universal already showed us in its structure that it finds its spring, its foundation in the subject insofar as he can only be represented by his absence—that is, insofar as he is never anything but represented—we would certainly be entitled to ask the question whether anything can be stated of the order, for example, of:

“Every analysand resists.”

I will not, however, go so far as to decide yet whether anything universal can be posited of the analysand. We do not rule it out despite appearances, for in positing the analysand as this subject who chooses to make himself, so to speak, more alienated than another, to devote himself to that which only the detours of an unchosen discourse—namely, that which stands in the greatest opposition to what is there, on the schema, at the outset, namely that it is, of course, based on a choice, but a masked choice, eluded because prior… one chose to represent the subject by the mark, by that mark which is no longer seen as such because it is now qualified—nothing appears more opposed to that in which the analysand is constituted, which is nevertheless a matter of a certain choice, that choice I earlier called “abdication”: the choice to test oneself against the effects of language.

And that is precisely where we are going to find ourselves again. Indeed, if we follow the thread, the weave suggested by the use of the syllogism, what we must of course arrive at is something that—that subject—will conjoin it to what was here advanced as predicate: the analyst. If there exists an analyst… but alas, this is what we lack in order to support this logical articulation …everything is assured: there can be many others. But for the moment, the question for us is to understand how the analysand can become the analyst, how it is that, in the most justified manner, this qualification is supported only by the completed task of the analysand.

We clearly see here the opening of that other dimension, which is the one I have already tried to outline before you, that of the conjunction of act and task: how are the two conjoined? Here we are faced with another form of what has been problematic and which ended up being articulated in the Middle Ages—it is not for nothing—inventio medii, what ARISTOTLE discusses with that admirably light step which is that of the Prior Analytics, namely the first figure of the middle term, that middle term which he explains to us that, being situated as predicate, allows us to rationally conjoin that evanescent subject to something that is a predicate: through the middle term, this conjunction is possible.

Where is the mystery? How is it that something appears to exist which is a middle term and, in the first figure, appears as the predicate of the minor premise, where the subject awaits us as the subject of the minor, and which will allow us to reconnect the predicate in question? Is it, yes or no, attributable to the subject?

This thing, which with the passage of time has taken on various colors, which appeared at the turn of the 16th century as an exercise, ultimately—there is no doubt, as one sees it under the pen of the authors—a purely futile exercise, we now give it substance again by realizing what it is about.

It is about what I have called the object (a), which, for us here, is the true middle term that proposes itself, certainly, with an incomparable seriousness, as being the effect of the discourse of the analysand and being, on the other hand… as I have stated in the new graph—the one you have seen me use before you for two years now …not as what the analyst becomes, but:
— as what is from the outset implicated by the whole operation,
— as what must be the remainder of the analytic operation,
— as what liberates what there is of a fundamental truth at the end of psychoanalysis.

It is the inequality of the subject to any possible subjectivation of his sexual reality, and the requirement that, for this truth to appear, the psychoanalyst must already be the representation of that which masks, occludes, blocks this truth called the object (a). Observe well, in fact, that the essential point of what I am articulating here—and I will return to it at length—is not, as some—so I have seen from questions that have been asked—imagine, that the psychoanalyst becomes for the other the object (a). This “for the other” here singularly takes on the value of a “for oneself,” precisely insofar as, as subject, there is no other than this other to whom all the discourse is left. It is neither for the other, nor in a for-itself, which does not exist at the level of the psychoanalyst, that this (a) resides—it is indeed in the being-for-itself of the psychoanalyst.

It is insofar as—as psychoanalysts themselves proclaim, and indeed one only has to open the literature to find at every moment the testimony—
— they are truly that breast of “O my Intelligence Mother” of MALLARMÉ,
— that they themselves are that waste presiding over the operation of the task,
— that they are the gaze,
— that they are the voice,
…it is insofar as they are in themselves the support of this object (a) that the entire operation is possible.
Only one thing escapes them: the extent to which this is not metaphorical.

So now let us try a little to take up again what is at stake with the analysand.
This analysand who engages in this singular task, this task that I have qualified as being supported by his abdication—is there not something here that we are going to feel is, in any case, illuminating?

If he cannot be taken under the function of the universal, or if he can—we do not know.

There is perhaps something else that will strike us, which is that we have posited him as subject, not without intention; that means that the meaning of the word “analysand,” when we articulate it at the level of the subject, insofar as he is the one who plays with all those assumed colors, like those of the moray eel on the platter of the wealthy Roman—this one can only be put to use by changing meaning as an attribute.

The proof is that when one uses it as an attribute, one uses it just as foolishly as the term “psychoanalyzed.” One does not say these or those, or all of these, or all of those are analysands. I have not used, as you notice, a singular term. That would be even more revolting.

But we leave the singular aside, feeling at this turning point the same repugnance as that which causes ARISTOTLE not to employ singular terms in his syllogistics. If you do not immediately feel what I am aiming at with this sensitive testing of the use of the term “analysand” as subject or as attribute, I will make you feel it.

Use the term “worker” as it is situated in the perspective of: “Workers of the world, unite!” that is, at the level of the ideology that emphasizes their essential alienation, the constitutive exploitation that posits them as workers, and contrast that with the use of the same term in the paternalistic mouth, the one that qualifies a population as industrious: “They are hard workers by nature in that area…” these are attributes, good workers.

This example, this distinction, is the one that may perhaps introduce you to something that may lead us to ask whether, after all, in this operation so singular—which is the one where, as I have told you, the subject of the psychoanalytic act is supported, and on the principle that the act from which psychoanalysis is instituted does not start from elsewhere—whether this is perhaps not meant to make us realize that there is also here a kind of alienation?

And after all, you are not going to be surprised by this, since it was already present in my first schema, that it is a necessary alienation, and where it is impossible to choose between “either I do not think or I am not,” from which I derived the entire initial formulation of what the psychoanalytic act is.

But then, perhaps in this way, laterally, by proposing a way that I have, so to speak, heuristically, of introducing you, could you ask yourself—I ask myself the question because the answer is already there, of course—what does this psychoanalysing task produce?

We already have to guide us the object (a), because if, at the end of the completed psychoanalysis, this object (a), which is undoubtedly always already there, at the level of what is our question, namely the psychoanalytic act—it is nonetheless only at the end of the operation that it will reappear in the real, from another source, namely as rejected by the analysand: but this is where our middle term functions, where we find it charged with a completely different accent.

This (a) in question, as we have said: it is the psychoanalyst—not because he is there from the beginning, but at the end, from the point of view of the psychoanalysing task this time, it is not he who is produced—I mean, one can indeed ask the question of what the qualification of the psychoanalyst is.

There is, in any case, one certain thing: there is no psychoanalyst without analysand, and I will go further—this something so singular that has entered the field of our world, namely that there are a certain number of people, whose status as subject we are not all that sure we can establish, are nonetheless people who work at this psychoanalysis. The term “work” has never, not for a single moment, been excluded from it: from the origin of psychoanalysis, Durcharbeiten, working-through, is indeed the characteristic to which we must refer in order to acknowledge its aridity, its dryness, its detour, even at times the uncertainty of its edges. But if we place ourselves at the level of an omnitude in which all subjects then fully affirm themselves in their universality of no longer being and of being the upper right box, thus founding the universal, what we see is that there is assuredly something which is its product, and even properly its production.

Already here I can pinpoint what this genus, this species is: the psychoanalyst, defined as production.
If there were no analysand, I would say—borrowing and inverting some classical bit of humor…
“If there were no Poles, there would be no Poland.”
…if there were no analysand, there would be no psychoanalyst.

And the psychoanalyst is defined, at this level of production, by this:

— by being that kind of subject who can approach the consequences of discourse in so pure a way that he can isolate its plane in relation to the one by whom, through his act, he institutes the task and the program of that task, and who, throughout the support of that task, sees in it nothing other than those relations I designate when I handle all that algebra: the S, the (a), even the A and the i(a)…

— by being the one who is capable of remaining at that level, that is, of seeing only the point the subject has reached in that task whose end is when it falls, when it drops, at the final moment, that which is the object (a),

— by being the one who belongs to that species—and this means the one who is capable, in relation with someone who is there in the position of undergoing treatment, of not letting himself be affected by all that constitutes the way every human being communicates in any function with his fellow being.

And this has a name, which is not merely, as I have always denounced it, narcissism taken to its extreme end called love. There is not only narcissism, nor fortunately only love between human beings—let’s call it what it is—there is that something which someone who knew how to speak of love fortunately distinguished: there is taste, there is esteem. Taste is on one side, and esteem may not be on the same, but it joins with it admirably.

There is, fundamentally, that something called “you please me,” and it is made essentially of that dosage, of what makes, in a precise and irreplaceable proportion—of the kind you can place in the lower left box:

…the relation, the support the subject takes from the (a), from that i(a) which founds the narcissistic relation, resonates, is for you exactly what it takes for it to please you. That is what makes, in relations between human beings, that there is encounter.

It is precisely from this, which is the bone and flesh of everything that has ever been articulated in the order of what nowadays is being foolishly mathematized under the name of human relations, it is precisely this from which the analyst distinguishes himself by never resorting—in his relation within psychoanalysis—to that inexpressible, to that term which alone supports the reality of the other, which is the “you please me” or “you displease me.”

The extraction, the absence of this dimension, and precisely the fact that there is a being—a being psychoanalyst—who can make turn, by being himself in the position of (a), everything at stake in the fate of the analysand subject, namely his relation to truth, to make it revolve purely and simply around those terms of an algebra which concern nothing of the multitude of existing and more than admissible dimensions, a multitude of data, a multitude of substantial elements in what is there in play, in place, and breathing on the couch: that is what constitutes the production entirely comparable to that of such and such a machine circulating in our scientific world and which is, properly speaking, the production of the analysand.

Now that is something original!

Now that is something quite tangible!

Now that is something not so new, even though it is articulated in a way that may strike you—because, what does it mean if we ask the psychoanalyst not to bring into play in the analysis what is called “countertransference”? I challenge anyone to give it any other meaning than this: that there is no place for either “you please me” or “you displease me,” after having defined them as I just have.

But now, here we are face to face with the question: what is it, after having, so to speak, transformed the object (a) into a mass-produced item, the psychoanalyst—as this product (a)—like an AUSTIN, what could the psychoanalytic act mean if indeed it is the psychoanalyst who commits it?

This obviously means that the psychoanalyst is not “wholly” object (a): he “operates” as object (a). But the act in question, I believe I have already articulated it strongly enough up to this point to be able to restate it without commentary, is the act that consists in authorizing the psychoanalysing task, with all that this entails of faith placed in the subject supposed to know.

The thing was quite simple as long as I had not pointed out that this faith is untenable and that the psychoanalyst is the first—and until now the only—one who can measure it, thanks to what I teach.

He must be aware that:

— first, the subject supposed to know is precisely what he relied on, namely the transference considered as a gift from heaven,

— but also, from the moment it becomes clear that the transference is the subject supposed to know, he—the psychoanalyst—is the only one able to question this, meaning that if this supposition is indeed useful for engaging in the psychoanalytic task, namely that there is one—call him what you will: the all-knowing, the Other—who already knows all this, everything that will take place—not the analyst, of course—but there is one, so we can proceed… The analyst himself does not know if there is a subject supposed to know, and even knows that everything psychoanalysis is about, due to the existence of the unconscious, consists precisely in erasing this function of the subject supposed to know from the map.

So it is a singular act of faith, this affirmation of faith precisely in what is being questioned, since by simply engaging the analysand in their task, one utters this act of faith—that is to say, one saves them. Do you not see here something that singularly overlaps with a certain dispute, one of those issues that have lost some of their relevance to the point that now no one cares anymore… At Luther’s last centenary, apparently, there was a postcard from the Pope: “Fond greetings from Rome.”

Is it faith or works that saves? You may see here a schema in which the two things are conjoined: from the psychoanalysing work to the psychoanalytic faith, something is tied together that perhaps could retrospectively help illuminate the validity and the asymmetrical order in which those two formulas of salvation—by one or the other—were posed.

But it will surely seem more interesting to you—at least I hope so—to see, at the end of this discourse, something emerging, something which I must say is, for me, a surprise to find.

If it is true that in the field of the psychoanalytic act, what the analysand produces is the psychoanalyst, and if you reflect on that brief reference I made in passing regarding the essence, the universal consciousness of the worker, properly speaking as the subject of man’s exploitation by man, is it not the case that by focusing all attention on the economic exploitation around the alienation of the product of labor,

— this is not concealing something in the alienation that constitutes economic exploitation,
— this is not concealing one side of it—and perhaps not without motive—the side which would be the most cruel, and to which perhaps a number of political facts lend plausibility?

Why would we not ask ourselves whether, at a certain level of the organization of production, it might precisely appear that the product of the worker, in some of its aspects, is in fact the singular form, the figure that the capitalist takes today? I mean that by following this thread and hence seeing the function of capitalist faith, take a few small references from what I have been indicating to you regarding the psychoanalytic act, and keep that in the margins of your mind, in relation to the remarks with which I will continue my discourse.

I will continue in fifteen days… in the name of the very vacation they give to the kids in the high schools, I grant it to myself, and I will meet you again in fifteen days.