LECLAIRE
Octave MANNONI
In VALÉRY’s ‘Fragments du Narcisse’, one finds primary narcissism and secondary narcissism, and a small theory is set out there:
Dream, dream of me!… Without you, lovely fountains,
My beauty, my pain, would be uncertain to me.
I would seek in vain what I hold most dear,
Its confused tenderness would astonish my flesh,
And my sad looks, ignorant of my charms,
Would address their tears to others than myself…
[Paul Valéry: ‘Fragments du Narcisse’, in Charmes]
And consequently it turns into secondary narcissism.
LACAN
LECLAIRE, who has worked this difficult text for us, will continue to bring us today his reflections,
his questions as the occasion arises, on the text Zur Einführung des Narzißmus.
Serge LECLAIRE – I think we have already said quite a bit about this text; it’s full of things.
LACAN
Take up the second part again, if you like; try to quote as well. It really has to be made known, given that many
cannot manage to read it for lack of having the text, which is regrettable.
Serge LECLAIRE
I am going to summarize it. It is impossible to summarize; you almost have to quote it in full and take up the passages that interest us
in the 2nd part. The 1st, as you remember, sets out the fundamental distinction of libido, hence important arguments
on which you drew up these considerations on the germinal plasma?
In the second part, he continues to tell us that it is certainly the study of early-onset dementias, what he calls the group
of paraphrenias, that remains the best access for the study of ego psychology. But it is not that which he will follow in this 2nd part,
or at least it is not that which he will continue to examine, and he will cite for us several other paths first,
several other considerations that can lead us to reflections on ego psychology.
And he starts from the influence of organic illnesses on libidinal distribution, which can be regarded as an excellent
introduction to psychosomatic medicine. He refers to a conversation he had had with FERENCZI on this subject
and starts from this observation that the patient withdraws his libidinal investment onto his ego, in the course of an illness, of a suffering.
He finds that it is a banal consideration, but one that nonetheless needs to be examined. The patient withdraws his libidinal investment
onto his ego in order to free it again after his recovery. During this phase, during which he withdraws his libidinal investment from objects,
libido and ego interest are once again conflated, once again have the same destiny, and become impossible to distinguish.
LACAN – Did you have recourse to the reference to Wilhelm BUSCH?
Serge LECLAIRE – Which one? The one ‘in a narrow hell’?
LACAN
No, no, it is not ‘Hölle’, it is ‘Höhle’; it is a hole, it is not hell. [German: ‘Hölle’ = ‘hell’; ‘Höhle’ = ‘cave/hole’; one-letter wordplay.]
Wilhelm BUSCH is a humorist you should be steeped in. There is an unforgettable creation by Wilhelm BUSCH, called Balduin Bählamm, the hampered poet. His adventures
are moving. It is a toothache that comes to bring a total suspension to idealistic and Platonizing reveries, as well as to
amorous inspirations of […] which is evoked here. It is very amusing. He has forgotten stock-market quotations, taxes, the multiplication table;
all the habitual forms of being, which otherwise appear real and important, are all of a sudden without attraction and annihilated.
And now in the little hole – and not in hell – of the molar, the soul dwells, this investment in the pain of the world,
symbolic of stock-market quotations and of the multiplication table.
LECLAIRE
I think he then moves on first to another point, the state of sleep in which there is likewise a narcissistic withdrawal of libidinal positions.
LACAN – [To Perrier] You worked the article? Get to it starting this evening; it is a difficult article, which is part of our cycle.
Serge LECLAIRE
Then, to return to hypochondria, in its differences and its points in common with organic illness. He [Freud] arrives
at this notion that the difference, which may have no importance, between the two is the existence of an organic lesion.
At least he arrives, at a certain point, at that consideration. But the study of hypochondria and organic illnesses
allows him above all to specify that, precisely in the hypochondriac, there undoubtedly also occur organic changes
of the order of vasomotor disturbances, circulatory disturbances, and he develops a similarity between the excitation of some
particular zone of the body and sexual excitation. And he introduces the notion of the erogeneity of erogenous zones which can, he says:
‘…replace the genital and behave like it, that is to say, be the seat of manifestations and relaxations.’
And he tells us that every change of this type, of erogeneity in an organ, could be parallel to a change
in libidinal investment in the ego. That re-poses the psychosomatic problem. In any case, following this study of erogeneity
and the possibilities of erogenization of any part of the body, he arrives at this supposition that hypochondria could
be classified among the neuroses dependent on ego libido, whereas the other actual neuroses would depend on object libido.
I nonetheless had the impression that this passage, which in the overall second part is a sort of paragraph,
was less important than the second paragraph of this 2nd part, in which he defines for us the two types of object choice.
LACAN
All the same, at that moment, the essential remark is that…
you know how difficult it is to translate Verarbeitung: ‘elaboration’ is not quite it
…for such an ‘elaboration’ of this libido, it is more or less indifferent whether this happens, occurs, on real or imaginary objects.
The difference appears only later when the orientation of libido is made toward unreal objects. This takes its significance,
as he has just said: that leads to a damming of libido – a dam of libido, which blockage[…]. This is important because
this introduces us immediately, since it is a matter of ego libido, to the precisely imaginary character of the ego.
Octave MANNONI
This German word must mean the construction of a dike. It seems to have a dynamic sense, and at the same time signifies a raising
of the level, and consequently an increasingly great energy of libido. Which English renders well by damming.
LACAN
Damming up, even… You have – in passing – a little quotation from Henri HEINE, in the Schöpfungslieder generally gathered
with the Lieder. It is a very curious little group of seven poems in which it is a matter of a kind of very curious[…] made to the Creator.
And through the irony, the humor of this poem, there obviously appear many things that touch on our psychology of Bildung.
They show us that God does a certain number of things twice, and in particular:
‘My glory makes the oxen and the sun…’
[In the beginning God created the sun,
Then the nightly stars;
After that he also created the oxen,
From the sweat of his forehead.
Later he created wild beasts,
Lions with grim paws;
After the lion’s likeness
He created pretty little cats.
To populate the wilderness
Man was then created;
After the man’s lovely likeness
He created interesting apes.
Satan watched that and laughed:
‘Why, the Lord copies himself!
After the image of his oxen
In the end he will even make calves!’
Henri Heine: Schöpfungslieder I]
Au Au beginning, God created the sun,
Then the stars in the skies,
And, with the sweat of his brow,
God then created the oxen.
PluPlus later, he created wild beasts,
And lions with ferocious claws.
And, with lions as an example,
He then created beautiful kittens.
And, In order to populate the earth,
Man was then created,
And, it is in his gracious image,
That the monkey was modeled.
Sat Satan looked at it and laughed:
‘This copying is truly shameful,
The Lord fashions calves,
In the very image of his oxen!’
Truly interesting, the monkeys, those ones: he calls them for his own pleasure[…]. In a preceding paragraph,
the devil, quite amiably, says that he tries to imitate himself! These things were written in 1839, before the appearance
of On the Origin of Species, and one can still speak very freely of the monkey as a fancy of God.
But this sort of game he engages in is nonetheless rather profoundly… goes rather far. It is certainly striking
that FREUD brings in, that at that moment the question is posed of the meaning of the exit from narcissism. For in the end,
the question is posed there: why is man dissatisfied? He gives us the answer in a purely
poetic reference, and at a truly crucial moment of his scientific demonstration, by saying:
[Illness was indeed the last reason
For all the creative drive;
Creating, I could recover,
Creating, I became healthy.
Henri Heine: Schöpfungslieder VII]
La Illness was the second reason,
That pushed me to create:
Creation saved me,
Creation caused my recovery.
‘Illness – it is God who speaks – is indeed the last foundation of the whole of the creative drive;
by creating I was able to heal, by creating I became well: I became healthy.’
Serge LECLAIRE
That is to say that this inner work to which he alludes, for which real objects and imaginary objects are equivalent,
I specify it in order to situate…
LACAN
He does not say that it is equivalent. He says that it is indifferent at first to consider whether it is real, or imaginary. He says that at the point
where we are in the formation of the external world, it is indifferent to consider them both as such.
But that it is only afterward that the difference appears, at the moment of the effects produced by that damming. For this whole passage is made
to put in parallel the production of what he still calls at that moment ‘the actual neuroses’, that is to say quite late,
on the eve of the slightly different elaboration of ‘Inhibition, symptom, anxiety’.
At that moment, he considers hypochondria as […] among the disturbances of ego libido. Consequently, in the paranoid and hypochondriacal affections,
[…] occupying the same place as anxiety in the transference neuroses. Which moreover leaves
an open question, which we will take up again when we approach […] the analysis of President SCHREBER.
It is at the same time a […] of the problem concerning the genesis of psychosis.
Serge LECLAIRE
I thus arrive at the second subchapter of the 2nd part, where he tells us that another […] the study of narcissism, a 3rd lies
in the […] difference in the modalities of the love life of man and woman. He arrives at the distinction of two types of choice,
which can be translated as anaclitic and narcissistic, and he studies its genesis. He arrives at this sentence from which one can begin:
‘Man has two primitive sexual objects: himself and the woman who takes care of him.’
[We say that the human being has two original sexual objects: himself and the caring woman, and we assume thereby the primary narcissism of every person, which may possibly come to expression in a dominant way in his object choice.]
LACAN – ‘Himself’ that is to say his image; that is perfectly clear.
Serge LECLAIRE
But he goes into more detail on the genesis, the very form of this choice: he notes that the first autoerotic sexual satisfactions
have a function in self-preservation. Next, he notes that sexual drives at first apply to the satisfaction
of ego drives, and become autonomous only later. Thus, the child first loves the object that satisfies his ego drives,
that is to say, the person who takes care of him. Finally, he arrives at defining the narcissistic type of object choice:
‘Especially clear – he says – in those whose libidinal development has been disturbed.’
LACAN – That is to say, in neurotics.
Serge LECLAIRE
These two fundamental types correspond to – as he had announced to us – the two fundamental types, masculine and feminine.
LACAN – The two types: narcissistic and Anlehnung.
Serge LECLAIRE – Anlehnung has a meaning of support.
LACAN
It is not unrelated to the notion of dependence, developed since then, but it is a broader and richer notion.
It is clear that at that moment he gives us a list, one can say, of the different types of amorous fixations, which exclude any reference
to what one might call ‘a mature relationship’, that myth of psychoanalysis concerning the psychology of the love life.
He is certainly not in the myth at that moment, for he enumerates for us, as covering in a complete way the field
of amorous fixation, of Verliebheit, the narcissistic type that is fixed by this, that one loves:
- what one is oneself, that is to say – he specifies it clearly in parentheses – oneself,
- what one has been,
- what one would like to be,
- the person who was a part of one’s own ego.
This is the narzißtischen Typus.
[A short overview of the paths to object choice may conclude these indicative remarks. One loves:
- According to the narcissistic type:
a) what one oneself is (oneself),
b) what one oneself was,
c) what one oneself would like to be,
d) the person who was a part of one’s own self. - According to the Anlehnung type:
a) the nourishing woman,
b) the protecting man and the substitute persons proceeding from them in series.]
You will see that the Anlehnung type is no less imaginary, for it too is founded on a reversal of identification, by identification
with a primitive situation. And what one then loves is the woman who nourishes and the man who protects.
Serge LECLAIRE
Here we arrive at the summary he gives, a little detailed earlier; I think it is summarized there. He advances a certain number
of considerations as indirect proofs in favor of the conception of the child’s primary narcissism, and which he sees essentially
in the way – it is amusing to say – in which parents see their child.
LACAN
It is a matter there of the seduction exerted by narcissism and which is very image-laden. He indicates what is fascinating and satisfying
for every human being in the apprehension – taken in the most total sense – the fundamental, full apprehension of a being presenting
itself with the characteristics of this closed world, shut in on itself, satisfied, which the narcissistic type represents,
and he brings it together with that kind of sovereign seduction – the word is implied in the text – exerted by any beautiful animal.
Serge LECLAIRE
He says ‘His Majesty the baby’. The child is something a bit different; it is what the parents make of him insofar as they project onto him
that sort of ideal.
LACAN – ‘His Majesty, the baby.’
Serge LECLAIRE
It must be recognized as a renewal, a reproduction for a long time. A certain number of new notions
are introduced there. He says that he will set aside the disturbances of the child’s primary narcissism, although this is a subject
very important, a choice morsel, since precisely the question of the castration complex is attached to it. And he takes advantage of it
to better situate ADLER’s notion of the male protest, by putting it back in its proper place…
LACAN – Which is not slight, though…
Serge LECLAIRE
Yes, which is very important. But which he links to these disturbances of original primary narcissism. We can stop there,
but that does not seem to be in the line of this article. And we arrive at this very important question:
‘What becomes of ego libido in the normal adult? Must we admit that it has merged entirely into object investments?’
He rejects this hypothesis and notes, recalls that repression exists, having in sum a normalizing function.
That is how one can summarize what he says about it.
‘Now this repression – he says, and this is the essential of his demonstration – emanates from the ego…
LACAN
‘…emanates from the ego, in its ethical and cultural demands’.
[We have learned that libidinal instinctual impulses are subject to the fate of pathogenic repression when they come into conflict with the cultural and ethical ideas of the individual.]
Once again underlined.
LECLAIRE
I wanted to quote exactly what he says about it, to give a very precise example:
‘The same impressions, the same events that have happened to an individual, the same impulses, excitations, that a person for example
lets arise in himself or at least elaborates in a conscious way, are by another person these same impulses, excitations, rejected
with indignation, or even stifled, before becoming conscious.’ [The same impressions, experiences, impulses, wish-impulses, which one person allows to arise in himself or at least consciously works through, are by the other rejected in full indignation or already stifled before their becoming conscious.]
There is there a difference in behavior, according to individuals, persons. And he tries to formulate this difference as follows:
‘We can say that one person has erected an ideal by which he measures his current ego, whereas the other lacks it.
The formation of the ideal would thus, on the part of the ego, be the condition of repression. It is toward this ego ideal that self-love now goes,
which in childhood the real ego enjoyed. Narcissism appears diverted onto this new ego ideal which finds itself in possession of all
the precious perfections of the ego, as the infantile ego was. Man has shown himself incapable, as always in the domain of libido,
of renouncing a satisfaction once obtained.’ [To this ideal ego there now applies the self-love which in childhood the real ego enjoyed. Narcissism appears displaced onto this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile, finds itself in possession of all valuable perfections. Man has shown himself here, as every time in the domain of libido, incapable of renouncing the satisfaction once enjoyed. He does not want to do without the narcissistic perfection of his childhood, and if he could not hold onto it, disturbed by the admonitions during his developmental time and awakened in his judgment, he seeks to regain it in the new form of the ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood, in which he was his own ideal.]
That is where he uses for the first time the term ego ideal. And it is toward this ego ideal that self-love now goes,
which in childhood the real ego enjoyed. There are the two terms: ideal ego and ego ideal. The individual does not want to renounce the narcissistic perfection
of his childhood, and he seeks to regain it in the new form. And there he uses the term of his ego ideal.
LACAN
Isn’t that so! It is one of the enigmas of this text, given the rigor of FREUD’s writing, which LECLAIRE has very well brought out,
of the coexistence in the same paragraph, in an entirely significant way, of the two terms.
Serge LECLAIRE
I have just quoted it:
‘We can say that one has erected an ideal by which he measures his current ego, whereas the other lacks it.
The formation of the ideal would, on the part of the ego, be the condition of repression.’
LACAN – It is the following paragraph.
LECLAIRE
It is nonetheless important that he speaks of the ideal as a reference term, since he says: ‘…has erected an ideal by which he measures
his current ego.’. And then the following paragraph is this one:
‘It is toward this ego ideal that self-love now goes, which in childhood the real ego enjoyed.’
LACAN – The real ego is not ‘true’; it is ‘real’: the real ego.
LECLAIRE
‘Narcissism appears diverted onto this new ego ideal, which finds itself in possession of all the precious perfections of the ego, as the infantile ego was. Man has shown himself incapable, as always in the domain of libido, of renouncing a satisfaction once obtained.
He cannot renounce the narcissistic perfection of his childhood, and he seeks to regain it in the new form of his ego ideal.’
[Narcissism appears displaced onto this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile, finds itself in possession of all valuable perfections. Man has shown himself here, as every time in the domain of libido, incapable of renouncing the satisfaction once enjoyed. He does not want to do without the narcissistic perfection of his childhood, and if he could not hold onto it, disturbed by the admonitions during his developmental time and awakened in his judgment, he seeks to regain it in the new form of the ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood, in which he was his own ideal.]
It is amusing to note…
LACAN – Perfectly!
Serge LECLAIRE – One can say that ‘form’ is substituted for ‘ego’.
LACAN
And there he uses ego ideal, which is exactly the opposite form. And it is the sign that at that moment FREUD designates two different functions,
and that it is precisely there the question that is posed to us today, namely: what does that mean?
What we are going to try, in a little while, to specify.
Serge LECLAIRE
What I note now is that at the moment when he substitutes the term ego ideal for ego ideal, he has the ego ideal preceded by new form.
LACAN – Of course!
Serge LECLAIRE – The new form of his ego ideal, what he projects in front of him as his ideal.
LACAN
This is illuminated immediately by the following paragraph where for once – exceptional in his work – he dots the i’s
on what sublimation is, the difference between sublimation and idealization, which is extremely important. You translated it well; go ahead.
Serge LECLAIRE
He thus set this for us: the existence of this ego ideal, which he then calls ego ideal, or form of the ego ideal. He says that there,
to seek the relations of this formation of the ideal to sublimation, there is only a step. And he precisely poses the question of the relations
of the ego ideal and sublimation. He says this about it:
‘Sublimation is a process of object libido. Idealization, on the contrary, concerns the object which is enlarged, raised, this without modifications
of its nature. Idealization is possible both in the domain of ego libido and in that of object libido.’
[Sublimation is a process in object libido and consists in the drive throwing itself onto another goal, removed from sexual satisfaction; the emphasis lies on the diversion from the sexual. Idealization is an operation with the object, through which it is enlarged without change of its nature and psychically elevated. Idealization is possible both in the domain of ego libido and also of object libido.]
LACAN – That is to say that once again he places them exactly on the same level.
Serge LECLAIRE
Ego idealization can coexist with a failed sublimation; that is the point.
The formation of the ego ideal increases the ego’s demands and favors repression to the maximum.
LACAN
One being the plane of the imaginary, and the other being the plane of the symbolic, insofar as it is quite indicated that it is within the whole
of the demands of the law that this demand of the Ichideal is situated.
Serge LECLAIRE – Sublimation therefore offers the way to satisfy this demand without bringing about repression. That is what he ends on.
LACAN – Successful sublimation.
Serge LECLAIRE
That is what he ends this short paragraph on, which bears on the relations between the ego ideal and sublimation.
‘It would not be surprising,’ he then says, ‘if we were obliged to find a special psychic agency that fulfills the task of watching over
the securing of the narcissistic satisfaction deriving from the ego ideal, by observing and monitoring the current ego in an uninterrupted way.
It is there that, in the end, the hypothesis of this special psychic agency, which would thus fulfill this function of vigilance and security,
will lead us to the superego.’. [Es wäre nicht zu verwundern, wenn wir eine besondere psychische Instanz auffinden sollten, welche die Aufgabe erfüllt, über die Sicherung der narzißtischen Befriedigung aus dem Ichideal zu wachen, und in dieser Absicht das aktuelle Ich unausgesetzt beobachtet und am Ideal mißt.]
And he supports his demonstration with an example drawn from the psychoses where, he says:
‘This agency is particularly visible and clear in the influence syndrome. The patients complain…’.
Before speaking of influence syndrome, he says that if such an agency exists, we cannot discover it, but only
suppose it as such. [Wenn eine solche Instanz existiert, so kann es uns unmöglich zustoßen, sie zu entdecken; wir können sie nur als solche agnoszieren und dürfen uns sagen, daß das, was wir unser Gewissen heißen, diese Charakteristik erfüllt.]
That seems to me entirely important since when he thus introduces this first way of introducing the superego, he says that it does not exist,
that it will not be discovered, that one can only suppose it. And he says that what we call our conscience fulfills this function,
has this characteristic. He says that the recognition of this agency, about which he says no more, allows us precisely to understand
what is called the influence syndrome which appears clearly in paranoid symptomatology:
‘Patients complain of being watched, of hearing voices, that their thoughts are known, that they are being observed. They are right; this complaint is justified;
such a power that observes, criticizes our intentions really exists in all of us in normal life.’
[Die Kranken klagen dann darüber, daß man alle ihre Gedanken kennt, ihre Handlungen beobachtet und beaufsichtigt; sie werden von dem Walten dieser Instanz durch Stimmen informiert, welche charakteristischerweise in der dritten Person zu ihnen sprechen. (« Jetzt denkt sie wieder daran »; « jetzt geht er fort ».) Diese Klage hat recht, sie beschreibt die Wahrheit; eine solche Macht, die alle unsere Absichten beobachtet, erfährt und kritisiert, besteht wirklich,
und zwar bei uns allen im normalen Leben.]
LACAN
That is not quite the sense:
‘If such an institution exists, it is not possible that it would be something we had not yet discovered.’
And he identifies it with censorship, doesn’t he. And he shows it in a certain number of examples, namely in the delusion of influence,
the one that commands the subject’s acts. He shows it again in a certain number of dream functions, in functional phenomena,
in what is defined as functional phenomenon. An important point that we cannot absolutely open up here
because that would go too far, but you know what SILBERER’s functional phenomenon is: he brought out the formative role
in the dream of something which in the dream translates a sort of internal perception by the subject of his own states,
of his own mechanisms, that is to say of his mental mechanisms as functions at the moment when he slips into the dream.
And the dream would immediately give a symbolic transposition of it, in the sense in which symbolic simply means image-based.
SILBERER brought out this important phenomenon insofar as it shows a spontaneous form of the splitting of the subject
in relation to himself as profoundly active. This point was not especially brought out by FREUD, who always had,
vis-à-vis SILBERER’s functional phenomenon, an ambiguous attitude, by saying that it is very important and on the other hand
it is nonetheless something secondary in relation to what is most important, namely the mechanisms that I myself have brought out
-FREUD-: the manifestation of desire in the dream. And perhaps if I did not bring it out as much,
it may be that I myself am of such a nature that these phenomena did not have in my own dreams the importance
they can have in the dreams of other people. It is written strictly. I no longer know where; I will find it for you.
And then this sort of vigilance of the ego, which is what FREUD brings out as perpetually present in the dream,
is the guardian of sleep, the one that reveals itself as on the margin of dream activity, and which very often is ready, it too,
this agency, to comment on it. This remainder of participation by the subject’s ego, which manifests itself as present, is,
like all these agencies he points out at that place under the heading of censorship, the agency that censors.
It is an agency that speaks, a symbolic agency.
Serge LECLAIRE – Then, starting from there, there is a sort of attempt at synthesis, where the discussion of the feeling of self is taken up in…
LACAN – Selbstgefühl
Serge LECLAIRE
…in the normal individual and in the neurotic. We can take it up again in a moment, but we can summarize it, since in sum
this feeling of self, in the end, recognizes somewhat far off three origins, which are:
– primary narcissistic satisfaction,
– the criterion of success, that is to say the satisfaction of the desire for omnipotence,
– and the gratification that is received from love objects.
These are the three roots he seems to retain of the feeling of self. But there is there a discussion of the feeling of self that is more developed.
However I think it is not necessary to go into it in detail here, and for my part, I would prefer to return to the first
of these few complementary remarks, when he has finished his paragraph on the feeling of self, by saying that a happy love
corresponds to the primitive state in which object libido and ego libido can no longer be distinguished. Immediately after, he introduces
a few complementary remarks that bear on the whole article. He says this, which seems to me extremely important:
‘The development of the ego consists in a distancing from primary narcissism and generates a vigorous effort to regain it.
This distancing is effected by means of a displacement of libido onto an ego ideal imposed from outside, and satisfaction results from the fulfillment of this ideal.’.
[Die Entwicklung des Ichs besteht in einer Entfernung vom primären Narzißmus und erzeugt ein intensives Streben, diesen wiederzugewinnen.
Diese Entfernung geschieht vermittels der Libidoverschiebung auf ein von außen aufgenötigtes Ichideal, die Befriedigung durch die Erfüllung dieses Ideals.]
This short summary of the development of the ego, which passes through a kind of distancing, through a middle term that is the ideal,
and which then returns to its primitive position, is a movement that seems to me to be the very image of development.
Octave MANNONI – Structuration.
LACAN – Yes, structuration, as MANNONI says very well.
Serge LECLAIRE
Because here precisely, this displacement of libido onto an ideal seems to me a notion that would need to be specified,
because one of two things:
– either this displacement of libido is made once again onto an image, onto an ego image, that is to say onto a form of the ego, which is called ideal because it is not similar to the one that is there presently, or to the one that was there,
– or else one calls ego ideal, and that exists all the same, this notion exists in the text, throughout the text, something that is beyond a form of the ego, that is to say something that is properly an ideal, and that comes closer to the order of the idea, of the form?
LACAN – Agreed.
Serge LECLAIRE
It is in that sense, it seems to me, that one sees all the richness of this sentence, but also a certain ambiguity insofar as,
if one speaks of structuration, it is because one then takes ego ideal as form of the ego ideal. But I think one must nonetheless
not forget that here it is not specified in this text.
Jean HYPPOLITE – Could you reread FREUD’s sentence?
Serge LECLAIRE
‘The development of the ego consists in a distancing from primary narcissism and generates a vigorous effort to regain it.’ [Die Entwicklung des Ichs besteht in einer Entfernung vom primären Narzißmus und erzeugt ein intensives Streben, diesen wiederzugewinnen.]
Jean HYPPOLITE – Distancing, is that Entfernung?
LACAN – Yes, it is Entfernung, exactly.
Jean HYPPOLITE – But must one understand that as the engendering of the ego ideal?
Serge LECLAIRE
No. He spoke of the ego ideal earlier.
‘This distancing is effected by means of a displacement of libido onto an ego ideal imposed from outside, and satisfaction results from the fulfillment of this ideal.’ [Diese Entfernung geschieht vermittels der Libidoverschiebung auf ein von außen aufgenötigtes Ichideal, die Befriedigung durch die Erfüllung dieses Ideals.]
Obviously, insofar as there is fulfillment of this ideal…
Jean HYPPOLITE – Unfulfillable, because it is in the end the origin of transcendence: destructive and attractive.
Serge LECLAIRE
It is not explicit; however the first time he speaks of the ego ideal is to say that it is toward this ego ideal
that self-love now goes.
Octave MANNONI
In my view there is a problem. One often has the impression that several languages are being spoken. I think – it is a hypothesis –
I think one would perhaps have to distinguish a development of the person and a structuration of the ego. It is something like that
that would allow us to understand each other, because it is indeed an ego that structures, and it is nonetheless within a being that develops.
LACAN
Yes, we are in structuration. Exactly there where the whole analytic experience develops, at the junction of the imaginary
and the symbolic. As earlier LECLAIRE posed the question: it is a matter of knowing what is in there the function of the image
and the function of what he called the idea. The idea, we know well, never lives all alone: here, it lives with all the other ideas.
PLATO already taught us that; no one can forget it.
Let us take it up again in order to try to fix the ideas a little, and in order to begin to make it work, the little apparatus that I show you
in the imaginary for several sessions. That will nonetheless make it possible to bring a bit of clarity, I think. I recall once again
what its value is, its significance, its merit.
Let us start from the study of instinct in the animal, an animal that is also ideal, that is to say successful. The ill-successful,
that is the animal that we have managed to grasp, whose mechanisms, whose functioning satisfy us. This animal gives us precisely…
the very text of FREUD that we have before our eyes indicates it
…this vision of completeness, of an accomplished world, of perfect fitting together, even identity of the Innenwelt and the Umwelt,
which makes for us precisely of seduction a living form, unfolding harmoniously its appearance.
What is it that, in instinctual functioning, development shows us? It is the extreme importance of what one can call
‘the image’. What is it that functions in the setting in motion of this complementary behavior of the male stickleback and the female stickleback?
Gestalten! Let us simplify: let us consider its functioning only at a given moment. One can consider the animal subject,
from whatever side we place ourselves: male or female, as captured by something that is essentially this Gestalt,
mechanism[…].
The releasing stimulus is something with which the subject literally identifies. From the moment when the male is caught in
the phenomenon of the zigzag dance, it is from a certain interrelation between himself and the image that literally commands
the triggering of every mechanism, which is inserted into the cycle of the sexual behavior of the stickleback. Just as the female
is also caught in this sort of reciprocal dance. In the end, is that not the external manifestation
of something that always has this character of dance, of two-body gravitation, that is to say one of the most difficult problems
so far to resolve in physics, but which is realized harmoniously in the natural world by the relation of the pair-bond,
the subject at that moment is entirely identical to this image that commands the total triggering of a certain motor behavior,
which itself produces in a certain form a certain style, sends back to the partner this command
which itself makes him continue the other part of the dance.
The closed character of this two-world is precisely what gives us in a simple state the confusion, the conjunction in one and the same
natural manifestation of object libido and narcissistic libido, since the attachment of each object to the other is precisely
made of something that is a narcissistic fixation, precisely on this image. For it is this image and it alone that he was waiting for;
that is the very foundation of the fact that in the order of living beings, only the partner of the same species
-this is never remarked enough- can trigger this special form that is called sexual behavior. With a few exceptions,
which must precisely be considered as that sort of margin of error there is in the manifestations of nature.
That is where we start. Let us say that in this cycle of sexual behavior in the animal world, the imaginary dominates everything.
And on the other hand, it is there too that we see, even at the animal level, the greatest possibility of displacement manifest itself.
And we already make use of it experimentally when we present experimentally to the animal a decoy, that is to say a false image,
a male partner that is only a shadow bearing the major characteristics. At the moment of phenotype manifestations
that occur in the many species at the biological moment that calls for sexual behavior, it suffices to present it
to trigger exactly the same conduct. Underscoring in a way:
– both the possibility of displacement, which is absolutely essential to everything that is of the order of sexual behaviors,
– and on the other hand, the imaginary character that manifests itself there in the illusory character of what we provoke experimentally.
That is where we start. In man, yes or no, is it the same? For in the end, you see that it can be
there this image, this Idealich, of which we were speaking earlier. Why not? Nevertheless, one does not think of calling that the Idealich.
It must indeed be situated elsewhere. And here the merits of my little apparatus come in. What is its scope?
I explained to you the physical phenomenon of the real image, as it can be produced by the spherical mirror, and be seen in its place,
and be inserted into the world of real objects, and be accommodated at the same time as the real objects -and why not?- even
bring to these real objects a kind of imaginary ordering, namely to include them, exclude them, situate them, order them, complete them
in a certain way.
Up to there, what do you see? Nothing other than precisely this imaginary phenomenon that I was detailing for you in the animal.
Basically, what happens? Approximately exactly that: it makes a real object [the partner] coincide with this image that is in him.
And I would say more: as is indicated somewhere in FREUD’s texts, this coincidence of the image with a real object
reinforces it, gives it body and incarnation. And it is in that sense that the image is reinforced,
that at that moment a certain number of behaviors are triggered which will lead, through the intermediary of the image,
will guide the subject toward his object.
In man, does this occur?
We know that in man the manifestations of sexual function are characterized by an eminent disorder.
Namely that nothing adapts: that this image that we learn, around which we -psychoanalysts- move,
whether it is a matter of neuroses or perversions, shows us precisely a kind of fragmentation, of bursting, of dismemberment
of this image, of maladaptation, of inadequacy of this image, a kind of game of hide-and-seek, a game of noncoincidence
between this image and its normal object, if indeed we adopt this ideal of a norm in the functioning of sexuality.
It is here that the problem is posed for us of seeing how we can represent the mechanism by which this disordered imagination
can finally nonetheless manage to fulfill its function. I am trying to use simple terms in order to guide you well
in the thread of thought; one could use more complicated ones.
In the end we are around the question that analysts pose desperately, vigorously scratching their heads
in front of everyone. One has only to take any article, the last one I read for your use, by our dear Michael BALINT,
whose visit and coming to our society I announce to you soon. In the end: what is the end of treatment?
Perhaps, I do not know, that will depend on my inspiration… but I would like, in the last session of our cycle this term, to speak to you
about the termination of analysis, which will obviously represent a certain leap. Our examination of the mechanisms of resistance and transference
would perhaps not allow it. But since the termination of analysis is one of the most mythical of our knowledge,
one can indeed put it right from the start.
The question that is posed is: what is the end of treatment?
Must we consider it as the end of a natural process, as a natural outcome?
Is genital attainment, that famous ‘genital love’ of which it is said that it is the promised Eldorado not only for analysts,
but also that we rather imprudently promise to our patients, is this genital love a natural process or on the contrary
the result of a series of cultural approximations that can be realized only in a certain number of cases?
Analysis and its termination would thus be dependent on all sorts of contingencies. We are always at the heart of the question.
In the end, what is at issue? To see what is the properly speaking function of the other, of the other human,
in this adequation of the imaginary and the real. That is in the end where we arrive.
What is the merit, then, of this little diagram?
I brought to it in the last session this refinement, which moreover is an essential part of what I am trying to demonstrate.
I explained to you that this real image can be seen consistently only in a certain field of the real space
of the apparatus, which is in front of the apparatus, constituted by the spherical mirror, the bouquet that is inverted.
It is only in a certain field that the accommodation of the eye can occur, which is that movement of parallax that gives
depth and space, those slight displacements of the eye. For reasons having to do with the laws of reflection of rays,
placed too close or behind, one would see even less. But this ideal spectator placed very far away can be satisfactorily
replaced by a virtual subject in a mirror.
In other words, since we know that the sight of an image in the mirror is exactly equivalent for the subject who sees
something in the mirror to what the image of the real object would be in relation to a hypothetical spectator who would be beyond the mirror
in the same place where he sees his image, this apparatus that I invented means that by being placed at a point very close
to the real image one can nonetheless see it farther away by looking in a mirror. That is to say that this real image you see
in the state of a virtual image. That is what occurs in man. And this becomes quite interesting from the moment when
you have understood it well, and when you can simplify the diagram.
Here is simply a mirror, the mythical eye, the imaginary object [real image] here, which is not seen here, given the position of the mythical eye,
but which is seen in the state of a virtual image in the mirror, as a function of the surely ideal position of the eye, of the reflection of the mythical eye
in the mirror. What results from it? A very particular symmetry. What is at issue?
In sum, that the reflection of the mythical eye [ego ideal], that is to say the other that we are, where we first saw our ego,
that is to say outside ourselves in human form, not insofar as it is made to capture a sexual behavior,
but insofar as it is linked to something that will emerge only later in FREUD’s work, fundamentally linked
to the primitive impotence of the human being, and to the fact that he sees his realized form -his total form, the mirage of himself- outside himself.
That is what is the orbit of a certain function of the ego. This will make it possible to distinguish a certain number of them. You thus see from this
that according to the inclination of this mirror, this character who does not exist, but who is the one who sees so that we understand at each
moment, we know what the subject, he, who exists, will see in this mirror, that is to say an image, clear or fragmented, inconsistent, uncompleted.
On what does this depend? On what was in the primitive remark: that one must be in a certain position in relation to the real image,
and not beyond. Too far toward the edges, one sees badly. This is realized simply by the particular incidence of this mirror, that is to say
that everything will happen, in order to see this image, as if it were a matter of an observer placed outside the field.
It is only within a certain cone that one forms a clear image.
On the inclination of the mirror will depend what you will see more or less perfectly.
You will see this image more or less perfect, this real image seen in the mirror and which is realized only in the mirror,
you will see it more or less well, according to the incidence -in the regions that constitute it- according to the incidence with which this mirror will be struck,
according to the inclination of the mirror.
This character who is the spectator—he, one can call him ‘ideal’ [the mythical virtual eye]—the one whom you substitute, by the fiction of the mirror, in order to see this real image: it suffices that the mirror be inclined in a certain way for him to be in the field where one sees very badly. By that sole fact, you too see the image in the mirror very badly. It is always a matter of something that indeed represents a kind of reflection, a representation of this accommodative difficulty of the imaginary in man.
It suffices for us to suppose that the inclination of the mirror, that is to say of something that does not exist, at the level and at the moment of the mirror stage, but which afterward is incarnated, realized, by our relation with others as a whole, and in its whole fundamental for the human being, namely the symbolic relation, in the other’s voice and what that voice says, it is that which commands the inclination of the mirror.
That is to say that it suffices for you to suppose, in an egocentric model:
– that this incidence of the mirror responds to the voice in order for you to understand what is at issue,
– that the command of the apparatus, the regulation of the imaginary, can depend on something that is situated in an entirely transcendent way, as M. HYPPOLITE would say, the transcendent on this occasion being nothing other, for the moment, at the level where we are, than the symbolic linkage between human beings.
What does that mean? It means the way:
– in which—to dot the i’s—socially we define one another, through something that is called the law, the exchange of symbols, by means of which we situate our different egos in relation to one another,
– in which you are—you, MANNONI, and I, Jacques LACAN—in a certain relation, which is complex, according to the different planes on which we place ourselves, according to whether we are together at the police commissioner’s, or together in this room, or together traveling, according to everything that is defined in a certain symbolic relation.
In other words, it is the symbolic relation that defines the subject’s position as seeing. It is speech, the symbolic function,
which can—this is rendered as an image by the diagram—define the more or less great degree of perfection, of completeness, of approximation
of the imaginary.
The distinction is made in this representation between what we can call Idealich and Ichideal, between ideal ego and ego ideal.
The ego ideal commands a certain play of relations on which the whole relation to others depends, and on this relation to others depends
the more or less satisfying character of imaginary structuration. One sees in such a diagram that the imaginary and the real
play at the same level on the same plane.
To understand it, it suffices to make one more little refinement to this apparatus: to think that this mirror,
as is normal for it to be, is a pane of glass, namely:
– that you see yourself at the same time in a pane of glass,
– and that you see the objects beyond.
It is precisely a matter of that, of a coincidence between certain images and the real. That is what we are talking about when we speak
of an oral, anal, genital reality, of something that shows a certain relation between our images and images. These are
nothing other than the images of the human body, if you like, the hominization of the world, the perception of the world as a function
of a certain number of innate images, linked to the structuration of the body. That is what is at issue. It is what happens at once
through the intermediary and through this mirror: real objects are in the same place as the imaginary object, that is to say in the end:
– what is proper to the image,
– what is called investment by libido,
– that in which an object becomes desirable,
– that in which it is conflated with this image that we bear within us, variously and more or less structured.
This diagram gives us a manageable diagram, which allows you to represent what is always carefully distinguished
in FREUD and remains always, for many readers, enigmatic: the difference between:
– topical regression,
– and genetic regression, archaic regression, regression in history, as one also teaches to designate it.
But it is entirely conceivable—one can imagine—that since this imperfect image in the spherical mirror is
something that will give a more or less well-achieved image at the center or at the edges, according to the inclination of the mirror,
the image can be modified and be not simply blurred or vague, but modified, namely: how the original mouth is transformed
into the terminal phallus; it would perhaps be easier than realizing such a little model of amusing physics.
But you see it: all that this represents is that no kind of regulation that is truly effective and complete,
humanly, can be established except by the intervention, in relation to the subject, in his reification, so to speak, of his own being,
in what a certain way that analysis pursues—at least mythically—gives.
What is my desire? What is my position in imaginary structuration? It is strictly conceivable only insofar as:
– beyond there is a guide, at the level of the symbolic plane, at the level of lawful exchange that cannot have other incarnations than verbal exchange between the human being,
– that something that is beyond this ego ideal commands it so that it arrives, in a way, in opposition.
This distinction is absolutely essential, but at the same time it allows us to conceive exactly what happens
in analysis on the imaginary plane and which is called ‘transference’. To understand it, and that is the merit of FREUD’s text,
one must understand what Verliebtheit is, what love is.
Love, precisely insofar as it is a phenomenon that takes place at the level of the imaginary, and which, in relation to the symbolic,
produces a true subduction of the symbolic, a kind of cancellation, of disturbance of what is called properly speaking:
the function of the ego ideal. In the sense that love reopens the door, as FREUD writes in this text, who does not mince words,
to perfection.
Love is precisely this: it is at the moment when this Ichideal, the ego ideal, the other insofar as speaking, the other insofar as having
with me a certain symbolic relation, a certain sublimated relation, and this kind of properly human exchange which is at once
the same for us in our dynamic handling and yet different from imaginary libido, which is called precisely
symbolic exchange, namely what binds human beings, what makes of speech this kind of bond, which makes it possible to identify it in a way
that is not only metaphorical, but which, in a way, gives birth to intelligent beings, as HEGEL says.
This Ichideal, insofar as speaking, comes to be situated in the world of objects, at the level of the Idealich, at the level where this narcissistic capture
can occur, about which FREUD, throughout this text, keeps harping on to us. You think that at the moment when all
this confusion occurs, there is no longer any kind of regulation possible for the apparatus; in other words, when one is in love,
as popular language says, one is mad.
I would like to illustrate this with a small example: the psychology of love at first sight. Recall WERTHER, seeing for the 1st time
LOTTE in the act of nursing a child: an image perfectly satisfying on the plane of the Anlehnungstypus, or anaclitic.
This coincidence of the object with the inner image that is fundamental for GŒTHE’s hero is what triggers this kind
of deadly attachment, for it is still necessary to elucidate why this attachment is fundamentally deadly…
We will take it up next time.
At that moment, the phenomenon is realized, namely that that is love: it is one’s own ego that one loves in love,
one’s own ego realized at that moment at the imaginary level.
I am going quickly to indicate this to you: one exhausts oneself posing these problems. It is all the same curious, these neurotics
who are absolutely so hampered on the plane of love: how can this transference occur in them?
It is quite clear that the problem lies in this: in the absolutely universal character, truly automatic, with which transference occurs,
whereas the demands of love are on the contrary—as everyone knows—so specific.
It is not every day that one encounters exactly the image that is made to give you at once the image of your most satisfying desire…
I am leaving aside the deadly phase of this encounter; I cannot say everything at once,
but it is also essential to bring it out; I reserve that for next time.
How is it then that, in the analytic relation, this thing that is of the same nature…
FREUD tells us so in the text I had given GRANOFF to go through, on transference love
…occurs, one can say, even before analysis has begun? But in the end it is perhaps not quite the same thing
before analysis has begun and during analysis.
I see the hour advancing; I cannot keep you, as I have always promised you, beyond a quarter to two;
I will take things up again precisely at that point, namely: how, by the very premises of the analytic situation,
the function, absolutely mathematically triggered, almost automatically triggered, that the analyzed-analyst relation takes
even before it has begun, by the presence and function of the analyst, is going to allow us to make this imaginary function
of the Idealich work: how already something is situated there and situates the analyst?
Žižekian Analysis 