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(All parts in English)

We will continue our discussion in order to reach the point of formulating our perhaps daring goal for this year: to state what the analyst really must be in order to respond to transference, which also implies, for the future, the question of what he must be, what he can be, and that is why I have called this question daring.

Last time, regarding the reference I gave you to the article by JEKELS and BERGLER, in Imago, 1934—that is, a year after they made this communication to the Vienna Society—you saw how we were led to pose the question in terms of the function of narcissism regarding any possible libidinal investment.

You know, on this subject of narcissism, what allows us to consider this domain as already open, largely dusted off, and in a way that reminds us of the specificities of the position that is ours—I mean the one I have taught you here insofar as it is directly involved here and that we are going to see how it broadens, how it generalizes, the one usually given or received in analytic writings. I mean that by generalizing it, it allows us to perceive certain traps included in the particularity of the position ordinarily promoted, articulated by analysts.

I indicated to you last time, regarding Übertragung und Liebe, that one could find there, if not all, at least some of the dead ends that the theory of narcissism risks leading to for those who articulate them. One could say that the entire work of a BALINT revolves completely around the question of the so-called ‘primordial auto-eroticism’ and the way in which it is compatible both with the observed facts and with the necessary development applied to the field of analytic experience.

That is why, as support, I have just made for you on the board this little diagram which is not new, and which you will in any case find—much more neat, perfect—in the next issue of La Psychanalyse. Here, I did not want to make it in all its details, I mean the details that recall its relevance in the optical domain, both because I am not especially inclined to tire myself out and because I think that would, on the whole, have made the diagram more confusing.

I simply remind you of this old story, known as the illusion—in the classic physics experiments of entertaining level—of the reversed bouquet, by which, thanks to the operation of the spherical mirror placed behind a certain apparatus, one makes appear the image—I emphasize this—real, I mean that it is not an image seen through space, virtual, spread through a mirror, which stands—provided that certain conditions of lighting all around are respected, with sufficient precision—above a support, of a bouquet that is in reality hidden beneath this support.

These are artifices which are also used in all sorts of tricks that illusionists occasionally present. One can present in the same way anything other than a bouquet. Here, it is the vase itself which, for reasons of presentation and metaphorical use, we are using. A vase which is here, under this support, in flesh and bone, in its authentic pottery:

This vase will appear in the form of a real image provided that the observer’s eye is sufficiently distant, and on the other hand, of course, within the field of a cone that represents a field determined by the opposition of the lines joining the limits of the spherical mirror to the focus of this mirror, the point where this illusion can occur. If the eye is sufficiently distant, it will follow that these minimal movements will not cause the image itself to waver noticeably and will allow these minimal movements to be appreciated as something whose outlines are, in sum, sustained on their own, with the possibility of visual projection in space.

It will not be an image that is flat, but one that gives the impression of a certain volume. So why is this used? To construct a device which itself has metaphorical value and which is based on this: if we suppose that the observer’s eye, bound by topological, spatial conditions, is in a way included in the spatial field that surrounds the point where the production of this illusion is possible, if it fulfills these conditions, it will nevertheless perceive this illusion while being at a point that makes it impossible for it to perceive it.

A device is possible for this, which is to place somewhere a plane mirror that we call capital A because of the metaphorical use we will give it later, in which it can see by reflection the same illusion occur in the form of a virtual image of this real image.

In other words, it sees happening there something which is, in sum—in the (reflected) form of a virtual image—the same illusion that would occur for it if it placed itself in real space, that is, at a point symmetrical, with respect to the mirror, to the one it occupies, and looked at what happens at the focus of the spherical mirror, that is, the point where the illusion formed by the real image of the vase occurs:

And just as in the classic experiment:

– insofar as it is the illusion of the bouquet that is at issue, the vase [real] has its use in the sense that it is what allows the eye to fix, to accommodate itself in such a way that the real image [of the bouquet] appears to it in space, conversely, we suppose the existence of a real bouquet that the real image of the vase will come to surround at its base.

– We call A this mirror.
– We call i(a) the real image of the vase.
– We call (a) the flowers.

And you will see what this will be used for in the explanations we have to give concerning the implications of the function of narcissism, insofar as the ego ideal plays there the role of a spring which the original text of FREUD on the Introduction to Narcissism introduced, and which is the one so often mentioned when we are told that the spring of the ego ideal is equally the pivot point, the major point of that kind of identification which would intervene as fundamental in the production of the phenomenon of transference.

This ego ideal, for example in the article in question, which is really not chosen at random, as I told you the other day, but on the contrary is chosen as entirely exemplary, significant, well-articulated, and representing, at the date when it was written, the notion of the ego ideal as it was created and generalized in the analytic milieu—so, what idea do the authors have at the moment when they begin to elaborate this function of the ego ideal, which is quite novel in its topical function within the conception of analysis?

To consult in a somewhat casual way the clinical works, therapeutic reports, or case discussions is enough to see what idea the authors of the time have of it. One encounters both difficulties of application, and here is, at least in part, what they develop.

If one reads them with sufficient attention, it follows that, to see what is effective in the ego ideal, insofar as it intervenes in the function of transference, they are going to consider it—this ego ideal—as a field organized in a certain way within the subject. The notion of “within” being an absolutely crucial topological function in analytic thought—even introjection refers to it—it is thus an organized field that is considered somewhat naively, to the extent that, at that time, distinctions are by no means made between the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real.

This state of imprecision, of indistinction, that topological notions present, we are indeed forced to say that, generally, we must represent it to ourselves in a spatial or quasi-spatial way, let’s say—the thing is not pointed out, but it is implied in the way we are spoken to about it—as a surface or as a volume. In either case, as a form of something which—because it is organized in the image of something else—presents itself as providing the support, the foundation for the idea of identification.

In short, within a certain topical field, it is a differentiation produced by the particular operation called identification. It is around functions, around identified forms, that the authors are going to ask questions. What can be done with them so that they may, in sum, fulfill their economic function? We do not have—because it is neither our topic nor our aim today, it would take us too far—to discuss what, for the authors, requires the solution they will adopt, which, at the moment when it arises here, is quite new.

It has not yet been, as you will see, entirely popularized, it is here, perhaps, promoted for the first time. In any case, it is naturally only a matter of promoting it in an accentuated way, for indeed in certain passages of the text by FREUD to which they refer—lateral passages in the contexts from which they are borrowed—there is the beginning of a solution.

To state what it is about, it is the supposition that the property of this field is to be invested with a neutral energy, which means the introduction into analytic dynamics of a neutral energy, that is, at the point of evolution of the theory where we are, an energy which is distinguished—it cannot mean anything else: as being neither one nor the other [neither eros nor thanatos], which is what neutral means—from properly libidinal energy, inasmuch as FREUD’s second topic obliged him to introduce the notion of an energy distinct from libido in the Todestrieb, the death drive, and in the function henceforth, by analysts, pinned down under the term THANATOS—which certainly does not contribute to clarifying the notion—and, in an opposite usage, to pair the terms EROS and THANATOS.

It is in any case under these terms that the new dialectic of libidinal investment is handled by the authors in question: EROS and THANATOS are there agitated as two absolutely primordial fates behind all the analytic mechanics and dialectic. And the fate, the aim, the stakes of this neutralized field, that is what will be developed for us in this article, the fate, das Schicksal [destiny], to recall the term FREUD uses concerning the drive, and to explain to us how we can imagine it, conceive it.

To conceive of this field, with the economic function that we will be led to retain for it to make it usable, both in its proper function as ego ideal and in the fact that it is in the place of this ego ideal that the analyst will be called upon to function, here is what the authors are led to imagine—here we are in the highest, the most elaborated metapsychology—they are led to conceive this: that the concrete origins of the ego ideal… and this especially insofar as they cannot separate them, as is legitimate, from those of the superego, distinct and yet, throughout the theory, coupled… they cannot—and after all we have nothing to envy them for, so to speak, with what the developments of Kleinian theory have brought us since—they can only conceive of the origins in the form of a creation of THANATOS.

Indeed, it is quite certain that: if one starts from the notion of a perfect original narcissism as regards libidinal investment, if one conceives that everything which belongs to the order of the primordial object is primarily included by the subject in this narcissistic sphere, in this primitive monad of enjoyment to which, moreover, the infant is identified, in a way that is in fact conjectural, it is hard to see what could bring about a subjective exit from this primitive monadism. The authors, in any case, do not themselves hesitate to consider this deduction as impossible.

Now, if in this monad the destructive power of THANATOS is also included, it is perhaps there that we can consider as the source of something that compels the subject—if one can put it so briefly—to emerge from its self-envelopment.

In short, the authors do not hesitate—I do not take responsibility for this, I am commenting on them and I ask you to refer to the text to see that it is indeed as I present it—to attribute to THANATOS as such, the creation of the object.

They are themselves struck enough by this that, at the end of their explanations, in the last pages of the article, they introduce I do not know what small humorous question:

“Have we gone so far as to say that, in sum, it is only through the instinct of destruction that we really come into contact with any object whatsoever?”

In truth, if they question themselves thus to allow, in a way, some tempering, to put a touch of humor on their own development. Nothing, after all, truly comes to correct this entirely necessary framework, this feature, if one is led to follow the path of these authors, I point this out in passing. For the moment, besides, it is not really this feature that poses a problem for us. This is at least conceivable locally, dynamically, as a notation of a significant moment in early infantile experiences: it is indeed that it may be in an outburst, a moment of aggression, that the differentiation takes place, if not of every object, at least of a highly significant object. Then this object, as soon as the conflict has erupted, the fact that it can subsequently be introjected to such a degree is what gives it its price and its value.

Thus we find here the classic and original schema of FREUD: it is from this introjection of an imperative, interdictive, essentially conflictual object—FREUD always tells us so—it is indeed insofar as this object, the father for example, on this occasion, in a first rough and summary schematization of the Oedipus complex, it is inasmuch as this object has been internalized that it will constitute this superego, which on the whole constitutes progress, a beneficial action from the libidinal point of view, since, by being reintrojected, it enters—it is a first Freudian theme—into the sphere which in sum, if only by being internal, for that very reason is sufficiently narcissized to be able, for the subject, to be an object of libidinal investment: it is easier to make oneself loved by the ego ideal than by what was for a time its original, the object.

Nevertheless, even if it is fully introjected, it continues to constitute a troublesome agency. And it is precisely this character of ambiguity that leads the authors to introduce this theme of a neutral investment field, a field of stakes that will be in turn occupied and then evacuated, to be reoccupied by one of the two terms—whose Manichaeism bothers us a bit, it must be said—those of EROS and THANATOS.

And it is especially in a second phase, or more exactly, it is in feeling the need to mark it as a second phase, that the authors will accomplish what FREUD had already introduced at the outset, namely the possible function of the ego ideal in love (Verliebtheit), as well as in hypnosis. You know, Hypnose und Verliebtheit, that is the title of one of the articles FREUD wrote, in which he analyzes a Massenpsychologie.

It is insofar as this ego ideal, this already constituted, introjected ego ideal, can be reprojected onto an object… “reprojected”… let us emphasize here once again how the fact that classical theory does not distinguish the different registers of the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real means that these phases of introjection and projection, which after all are not obscure but arbitrary, suspended, gratuitous, delivered up to a necessity that can only be explained by the most absolute contingency… it is insofar as this ego ideal can be reprojected onto an object that… if this object comes to be favorable to you, to look at you with a kindly eye… it will be for you that object of amorous investment par excellence, insofar as here the description of the phenomenology of Verliebtheit is introduced by FREUD at such a level that he makes possible its almost total ambiguity with the effects of hypnosis.

The authors certainly understand that following this second projection, nothing stops us—in any case, nothing stops them—from involving a second reintrojection which makes it so that in certain states, more or less extreme, in which they do not hesitate to put at the limit the states of mania, the ego ideal itself—even if carried away by the enthusiasm of the effusion of love implied in the second phase, in the second projection—the ego ideal can become for the subject completely identical, playing the same function, as what is established in the relation of total dependence in Verliebtheit.

In relation to an object, the ego ideal itself can become something equivalent to what is called in love, which can give the full satisfaction of the wish to be loved, of the geliebt werden wollen.

I think that it is in no way to show an exaggerated requirement in conceptual matters to feel that if these descriptions, especially when illustrated, drag after them certain tatters of perspectives where, even if we find flashes of them in the clinic, we cannot, for many reasons, be completely satisfied with them.

To immediately punctuate what I believe I can say and which is articulated in a more elaborate way by a diagram such as that of this little apparatus which has—as any other description of this kind, like those of a topical order made by FREUD himself—of course no kind, not only of pretension, but even of possibility, to represent anything whatsoever that is of the order of the organic. Let it be clearly understood that we are not among those who—as, however, one can read—imagine that, with the proper surgical operation: a lobotomy, one can remove the superego with a teaspoon somewhere. There are people who believe it, who have written that it was one of the effects of lobotomy, that the superego was removed, that it was put aside on a tray, this is not the point.

Let us observe what is articulated by the functioning implied by this little apparatus. It is not for nothing that it reintroduces a metaphor of an optical nature; there is certainly a reason for this which is not only one of convenience: it is structural. It is indeed insofar as what is of the order of the mirror goes much further than the model—as concerns the purely imaginary mechanism—that here the mirror intervenes. But be careful, it is obviously a diagram a little more elaborate than that of the concrete experience that occurs in front of the mirror. It is indeed the case that something happens for the child in front of a real surface that actually plays the role of a mirror. This mirror, usually a plane mirror, a polished surface, is not to be confused with what is represented here as a plane mirror. The plane mirror which is here has another function.

This diagram has the interest of introducing the function of the big Other—the symbol of which, in the form of A, is here placed at the level of the apparatus of the plane mirror—of introducing the function of the big Other insofar as it must be implicated in these elaborations of narcissism respectively connoted—which must be connoted in a different way—as ego ideal and as ideal ego. So as not to make of this a description that is in some way dry, which at the same time would risk appearing what it is not, namely arbitrary, I will thus be led to do it first in the form of the commentary implied by the authors to whom we refer, insofar as they were led, required by the need to face a problem of thought, of orientation. It is certainly not in this connotation to emphasize the negative effects, but rather—and that is always more interesting—what there is of positive.

Let us then observe that, according to them, the object is supposed as created by what? As created, strictly speaking, by the “instinct of destruction,” Destruktionstriebe, THANATOS as they call it, let us say, why not: hatred. Let us follow them. If it is true that it is so, how can we conceive of it? If it is the need for destruction that creates the object, must there still remain something of the object after the destructive effect? This is not at all unthinkable. Not only is it not unthinkable, but we also find in it what we ourselves elaborate in another way at the level of what we call the field of the imaginary and the effects of the imaginary.

For, if one may say, what remains, what survives of the object after this libidinal effect, this Trieb of destruction, after the properly thanatogenic effect that is thus implied, is precisely what eternalizes the object under the aspect of a form, it is what forever fixes it as a type in the imaginary. In the image there is something that transcends precisely the movement, the mutable of life, in the sense that it survives it. It is indeed even one of the first steps of art for the ancient νοῦς [nous, Greek for ‘mind’], insofar as in statuary the mortal is eternalized.

It is also—as we know in a certain way—in our elaboration of the mirror, the function fulfilled by the image of the subject insofar as something is suddenly offered to it where it does not simply receive the field of something in which it recognizes itself, but of something that already presents itself: – as an Urbildideal [archetypal ideal image], – as something both ahead and behind, – as something always, – as something that subsists by itself, – as something before which it essentially feels its own fissures of being premature, of being which itself feels not yet—even at the moment when the image comes to its perception—sufficiently coordinated to respond to this image in its totality.

It is very striking to see the small child, sometimes still enclosed in those little apparatuses with which it begins to attempt its first efforts at walking, and where even the gesture of taking the arm or the hand is marked by the style of dissymmetry, of inadequacy, to see this being still insufficiently stabilized, even at the cerebellar level, nonetheless agitating, bending, leaning, wriggling with a whole expressive babble in front of its own image as soon as a mirror has been put within its reach, placed low enough, and showing in some way in a living manner the contrast between this thing that can be traced, that is projected in front of it, that attracts it, with which it obstinately plays, and that incomplete something which is manifested in its own gestures.

And there, my old theme of the mirror stage, insofar as I suppose in it, as I see in it an exemplary point, a highly significant point which allows us to make present, to imagine, for ourselves the key points, the crossroads where the renewal of this always open possibility for the subject may come to light, to be conceived, of a self-shattering, a self-tearing, a self-biting, in front of this something which is at once itself and another. In it I see a certain dimension of conflict where there is no other solution than that of an “either or.”

He must either tolerate it as an unbearable image that snatches him from himself, or he must break it immediately, that is, reverse the position, consider as annulled, annullable, breakable the one he has in front of himself, and preserve of himself what at that moment is the center of his being, the drive of that being by the image, this image of the other—whether it is specular or incarnate—that can be evoked in him. The relation, the link of the image with aggressiveness is here entirely articulable.

Is it conceivable that a development, such a theme, could result in a sufficient consistency of the object, in an object that allows us to conceive the diversity of the objectal phase as it develops in the course of the individual’s life, is such a development possible? In a certain way, one can say it has been attempted. In a certain way, one can say that the Hegelian dialectic of the conflict of consciousnesses is after all nothing other than this attempt to elaborate the whole world of human knowledge starting from a pure conflict that is radically imaginary and radically destructive in its origin. You know that I have already pointed out its critical points, its points of gap, on several occasions, and that is not what I am going to repeat today.

For us, I think there is no possibility, starting from this radically imaginary origin, to deduce everything that the Hegelian dialectic believes it can deduce from it. There are implications, unknown to it, which allow it to function, which in no way can be satisfied with this support.

I would say that even if the hand that reaches out—and it is a hand that can be the hand of a very young subject, believe me, in the most direct, most common observation—even if the hand that reaches out to the figure of its fellow armed with a stone… the child does not need to be very old to have, if not the vocation, at least the gesture of CAIN… if this hand is stopped, even by another hand, that is, the hand of the one who is threatened, and if then, this stone, they place it together, it will constitute in a certain way an object, perhaps an object of agreement, of dispute, that it will be in this respect the first stone, if you wish, of an objectal world but that nothing will go beyond, nothing will be built upon it.

It is indeed the case evoked in echo, in a resonance that is called: “he who must cast the first stone,” and even for something to be constituted and stop there, it is indeed necessary first that it has not been thrown, and having not thrown it once, it will not be thrown for anything else. It is clear that it is necessary, beyond, that the register of the Other, of the big A, intervenes so that something may be founded that opens to a dialectic.

That is what the diagram expresses: it means that it is insofar as the third party, the big Other, intervenes in this relation of the ego to the little other, that something can function that leads to the fecundity of the narcissistic relationship itself. I say, to exemplify it again in a gesture of the child before the mirror, this gesture which is well known, quite possible to observe, to find, of the child who is in the arms of the adult and deliberately confronted with his image: the adult, whether he understands it or not, it is clear that it amuses him.

One must give full importance to this gesture of the child’s head, who, even after being captivated, interested by these first sketches of the game he plays before his own image, turns towards the adult who carries him, without one being able to say exactly what he expects from him, whether it is agreement, a witness.

But what we want to say here is that this reference to the Other comes to play an essential function, and it is not to force this function to conceive it, to articulate it, as putting in place what will respectively attach to the ideal ego and the ego ideal in the subject’s subsequent development. From this Other, insofar as the child before the mirror turns towards him, what can come from him? We move forward. We say: there can come only the sign, image of (a): i(a).

This specular image, both desirable and destructive, is or is not actually desired by the one towards whom he turns, at the very place where the subject at that moment identifies, supports this identification with this image. From this original moment we find perceptible the character I will call “antagonistic” of the ideal ego, namely that already in this specular situation there are duplicated—and this time at the level of the Other, for the Other and by the Other, the big Other—the desired ego, I mean desired by him, and the authentic ego, das echte Ich, if you will allow me to introduce this term, which is not so new in the context in question.

Except that you should notice that, in this original situation, it is the ideal that is there—I am speaking of the ideal ego, not the ego ideal—and it is the authentic ego that is yet to come. And it will be through evolution—with all the ambiguities of that word—that the authentic will come to light, that it will be this time loved in spite of everything, ὀυκἔχων [ouk echôn, Greek: ‘not possessing’], even though it is not perfection. This is also how the function of the ideal ego operates in all progress, with that character of progress, it is against the wind, in the risk and challenge that makes up all the rest of its development. What is the function here of the ego ideal?

You will tell me that it is the Other, the big A, but you can sense here that it is originally, structurally, essentially implicated, interested only as the place from where there can be constituted—in its pathetic oscillation—this perpetual reference to the ego, from the ego to this image which presents itself, and with which it identifies, but which only presents itself and is sustained as problematic, solely starting from the gaze of the big Other. That this gaze of the big Other is in turn internalized does not mean that it will be confused with the place and the support that are here already constituted as ideal ego, it means something else.

We are told: it is the introjection of this Other. This goes far, because it presupposes a relation of Einfühlung [empathy] that goes very far, to be admitted as necessarily as global as what is involved in the reference to a being, itself fully organized, the real being who supports the child before the mirror. You can sense that this is where the whole question lies, and that already I am indicating in what, let us say, my solution differs from the classical solution.

It is simply in this that I am going to say right away, even though it is our aim and the conclusion on this occasion. It is from the very first step that FREUD takes in the articulation of what Identifizierung, identification, is, in the two forms in which he introduces it.

1. A primitive identification, which it is extraordinarily important to retain in the initial steps of his article—which I will return to in a moment—for they nonetheless constitute something that cannot be set aside, namely that FREUD implies, prior even to the emergence of the Oedipal situation, a first possible identification with the father as such.

The father was on his mind. So he is allowed a first stage of identification with the father, around which he develops a whole refinement of terms. He calls this identification exquisitely virile, exquisit männlich. This takes place in development, I have no doubt. It is not a logical stage, it is a developmental stage before the engagement of the Oedipal conflict, to the point that in sum he even goes so far as to write that it is from this primordial identification that desire towards the mother would point, and from there, then, by a return, the father would be considered as a rival.

I am not saying that this stage is clinically founded. I am saying that the fact that it indeed appeared necessary to FREUD’s thought should not, for us—at the moment when FREUD wrote this chapter—be considered as a kind of extravagance, of rambling. There must be a reason which necessitates for him this earlier stage, and this is what the rest of my discourse will try to show you. I move on…

2. He then speaks of regressive identification, the one that results from the love relationship, insofar as the object refuses love. The subject, by a regressive process, and you see here, this is not the only reason indicated for which, in fact, it was necessary, for FREUD, that there be this stage of primordial identification, the subject by a regressive process is capable of identifying with the object who, in the appeal of love, disappoints him.
3. Immediately afterwards, having given us these two modes of identification in the chapter Die Identifizierung, there is the good old mode that has always been known, since the observation of DORA, namely the identification that comes from the subject recognizing in the other the total, global situation in which he lives: the hysterical identification par excellence. It is because the little companion has just received, in the room where the somewhat neurotic and crazy subjects are gathered that evening, a letter from her lover that our hysteric has a crisis. It is clear that this is identification—in our vocabulary—at the level of desire. Let us leave that aside…
   FREUD expressly pauses in his text to tell us that in these two modes of identification—the two fundamental ones—identification is always made by ein einziger Zug [a single trait]. This, in several respects, relieves us of many difficulties. First, with respect to conceivability—which is not something to be disdained—of a single trait.

Secondly, this converges for us towards a notion we know well, that of the signifier. This does not mean that this einziger Zug, this single trait, is thereby given as such, as a signifier. Not at all! It is quite probable, if we start from the dialectic I am trying to sketch out before you, that it is possibly a sign. To say that it is a signifier, more is required. It needs its later use, in a chain of signifiers or as something that has a relation to the chain of signifiers. But the punctual character of this point of reference to the Other, at the origin, in the narcissistic relation, this is what is defined by this einziger Zug. I mean that this is what gives the answer to the question: “how does he internalize this gaze of the Other,” which, between the two enemy twin brothers, of the ego or the image of the little other, specular, can at any instant tip the preference?

This gaze of the Other, we must conceive as being internalized by a sign—that is enough—ein einziger Zug. There is no need for an entire field of organization, for a massive introjection. This point [I] of the unique trait, sign of the Other’s assent, of the choice of love on which the subject can rightly operate, regulate himself in the subsequent mirror play, it is there somewhere, it is enough for the subject to come to coincide with it in his relation with the Other for this little sign, this einziger Zug, to be at his disposal.

The radical distinction between the ego ideal—as there is not much to suppose another possible introjection—and the ideal ego is that:
– one is a symbolic introjection, like every introjection: the ego ideal [‘on the other side of the mirror’],
– whereas the ideal ego is the source of an imaginary projection [i(a)].

What happens at the level of one: that narcissistic satisfaction develops in relation to the ideal ego, depends on the possibility of reference to this primordial symbolic term which can be monoformal, monosemantic: ein einziger Zug. This is crucial for the whole development of what we have to say. And if I am still granted a little time, I will then begin simply to recall what I can call, what I must consider here as received from our theory of love.

Love, as we have said, can only be conceived in the perspective of the demand: there is love only for a being who can speak. The dimension, the perspective, the register of love develops, takes shape, is inscribed in what can be called the unconditional of the demand: it is what comes from the very fact of demanding, whatever one demands, simply insofar not that one asks for something, this or that, but in the register and order of demand as pure, as it is only a demand to be heard.

I will go further: to be heard for what? Well, to be heard for something that could very well be called ‘for nothing’. This does not mean that it does not take us very far nonetheless because, already involved in this for nothing, there is the place of desire.

It is precisely because the demand is unconditional that what is at stake is not the desire for this or that, but desire as such. And this is why, from the outset, the metaphor of the desiring one [ἐραστής (erastès)] as such is implied. And that is why at the start of this year, I had you approach it from every angle.

The metaphor of the desiring one [ἐραστής (erastès)] in love implies what it is substituted for as a metaphor, that is, the desired one [ἐρώμενος (erômenos)]: what is desired is the desiring one in the other, which can only occur if the subject is placed as desirable, that is what he seeks in the demand for love.

But what we must see at this level, the point that I cannot miss today because it will be essential for us to find in the continuation of our discussion, what we must not forget is that love as such—as I have always told you and we will find it required from every angle—is to give what one does not have. And one can only love by making oneself as ‘not having’, even if one has. Love as response involves the domain of ‘not-having’. It is not me, it is PLATO who invented it, who invented that only poverty: Πενία [Penia], can conceive Love [Ἔρως] and the idea of getting impregnated on a festival night. And in fact, to give what one has, that is celebration, that is not love.

From this—I’m taking you a bit quickly, but you will see we will land on our feet—from this, for the rich, it exists and even is thought about, to love always requires refusing. That is even what is irritating. It is not only those who are refused who are irritated, those who refuse, the rich, are no more at ease. This Versagung of the rich, it is everywhere, it is not simply the trait of avarice, it is much more constitutive of the position of the rich, whatever one may think.

And the theme of folklore, of GRISÉLIDIS, with all its charm—though it is still rather revolting, I think you know the story—is there to remind us of this. I would even add, while I am here, the rich do not have a good reputation. In other words, we progressives do not like them much.

Let us beware, perhaps this hatred of the rich, through a secret path, participates in a revolt against love quite simply, in other words in a negation, a Verneinung of the virtues of poverty that might very well be at the origin of a certain misrecognition of what love is. The sociological result is moreover rather curious.

It is that obviously in this way, many of their functions are facilitated for the rich, their role is made easier, it is tempered in them or, more exactly, they are given a thousand excuses to evade their festive function. That does not mean that they are any happier for it. In short, it is quite certain, for an analyst, that there is a great difficulty in loving for a rich person—which a certain preacher from GALILEE had already noted in passing—it may be better to pity him for this rather than hate him, unless after all this ‘hating’—which is quite possible still—is a mode of ‘loving’.

What is certain is that wealth has a tendency to render impotent. An old analyst’s experience allows me to tell you that, all in all, I take this fact as given. And that nonetheless explains things, the necessity, for example, of detours. The rich man is forced to buy because he is rich. And to make up for it, to try to regain potency, he strives, by buying at a discount, to devalue; it is from him that this comes, it is for his convenience, for that the simplest way, for example, is not to pay. Thus, sometimes, he hopes to provoke what he can never acquire directly, namely the desire of the Other.

But that is enough about the rich. Léon BLOy once wrote La femme pauvre. I am rather embarrassed, for some time now I have been talking all the time about Catholic authors, but it is not my fault if I have long since noticed some very interesting things. I would like someone, one day, to notice the enormities, the astonishing things as analytic benefits, that are hidden in La femme pauvre, which is a book at the limits of what is bearable, that only an analyst can understand—I have never yet seen any analyst take an interest in it—but he would have done well also to write La femme riche. It is certain that only the woman can worthily embody the ferocity of wealth, but in the end, that is not enough, and that poses, for her and quite especially for the one who seeks her love, some very particular problems. That would require a return to feminine sexuality. I apologize, I will simply be forced to indicate this to you as a kind of foundation stone.

I would still like, since in the end we will not be able to go further today, to highlight right away… since what is at stake when we speak of love is very specifically to describe the field where we will have to say what our place must be in the transference… to highlight before leaving you something that is not at all unrelated to this discussion on wealth: a little word about the “saint”.

He does not come here completely like a hair in the soup, for we have not finished with our CLAUDEL. As you know, right at the end, in the solution given to the problem of desire, we have a saint, the man named ORIAN, of whom it is expressly said that if he does not want to give anything to little THOUGHT—who fortunately is well enough armed to take it from him by force—it is because he has far too much Joy, nothing less than that, all of joy, and it is not a matter of reducing such wealth to a little adventure—it is said in the text—a thing that happens like that, a matter of three nights at the hotel. Strange story.

It is still a bit hasty, when it comes to creation, to do psychology, and to think only that he is a great repressed person, perhaps CLAUDEL was as well, a great repressed, but what poetic creation means, that is, the function that ORIAN has in this tragedy, namely that it interests us, is something else entirely, and that is what I wish to point out by making you notice that the saint is a rich man.

He does everything he can to look poor, it is true, at least in more than one climate, but it is precisely in this that he is a rich man, and particularly filthy among others, because it is not a wealth, his, that one easily gets rid of. The saint moves entirely within the realm of having. The saint perhaps gives up a few little things, but it is to possess everything. And if you look closely at the lives of saints, you will see that he can love God only as a name for his enjoyment, and his enjoyment, ultimately, is always rather monstrous.

We have spoken, in the course of our analytic discussions here, of some human terms among which “the hero”. This difficult question of the “saint” I introduce here only anecdotally, and rather as a support, one of those I think quite necessary for locating our position. For, of course, you can imagine: I do not place us among the saints.

It must still be said, for if it is not said, there would still remain for many that that would be the ideal, as they say. There are many things of which one is tempted, regarding us, to say that it would be the ideal. And this question of the ideal is at the heart of the problems of the position of the analyst. That is what you will see develop in what follows, and precisely all that we should abandon in this category of the ideal.