Translator'sI{ otes

t "La topique," the French rendering of the Freudian "die Topik" (literally: "arrangemenr of material"). The acceptedEnglish rerm, which there seems no reason to change, is "topographyr" and it does in fact match the Freudian metaphor of the "double inscription." But another candidate would be "topologyr" especially since Lacan seems to use it from time to time as a synonym for Topifr. For the nontechnical reader, it may be of assistanceto state briefly some of the varying "points of view" used by Freud ro represent the psychic system:

(1) the functional: Freud's earliestattempt to systematizehis discovery, concernedwith the difference between memory and perception and with rhe unsolved problem of consciousness,is usually describedas functional (Standard Edition, Y, 571); (2) the descriptive: conscious/unconscious-that is, Cs./Pcs.Ucs.; (3) the topographical (or structural): CsPcs./Ucs. This includes the concept of the double inscriptio n (Niederschrif t); (a) the dynamic: where the unconsciousis equated with the repressed; (5) the systematic:equivalent to the topographical plus the dynamic, where the division is: secondarysystem/primary system; (6) the economic (essentiallyfunctional): concerned with the "prin- t'iplc of constancy"expressed in the opposition of pleasureand unpleasure rvith the attempt of the system to re-establishan original inertia, and rvith the notion of cathexis. (7) the "new topography" (1920): the ego,the id, and the superego.

Itt rcfcrctrce to thc "ncw topography," the last diagrammatic represen- trtti

ot 92 NorEs ro PAcEs3"4 9l NorEs ro pacE, 4

Edition, XXII, 78, is of value in clearing up some popular miscon- In this light the whole phenomenological--or cven existentialist-move- ceptions about the status of these "divisions." But perhaps the most im- ment appears like an exasperated compensation of a philosophy which is no longer sure of being master of its portant point of view in the present context is that to be found in the motivesl and one that must not be confused, although this movement plagiarizes them, with Wittgenstein's and Heideggcr's quotation from Freud in note 66. It is essentially systematic, but if one interrogations of the relationships of being and Language, an interrogation were to give it a label, it would be the "linguistic view." so pensive because it knows itself to be enclosed within what it questions, so Note that the "new topography" ir intimately connected with Freud's slow to seek out its time (Actes, p.251). later attempts to deal with "disavowal" (Verleugnung-note 11), outside An analyst would obviously be less than sympathetic to philosophies the perversions,in the terms of a "splitting" of the ego (Ichspaltung). taking their departure, or their certitude, directly from the cogito, or See, for example, p. 58 of the Neut Introductory Lectures and the un- centered on it. The following extract from the article on the stade du finished article: "The Splitting of the Ego in the Processof Defense" miroir (1949) is of particular significance in this respect: (1940), Standard Edition XXIII, 273, where a number of other references will be found. Thc term 'primary narcissism' by which analytical doctrine designates the libidinal cathexis proper to this moment [that of the completion of the 2I* symbolique, l'imaginaire, and le riel are the three "61ds15"- stade du miroir by the identification with the imago of the counterpait], reveals basically, the discursive, the perceptive, and the real orders-introduced in its discoverers [Nicke, Havelock Ellis, Freud. See: "Narcissism" (1914), standard Edition, xIV, 67f, as I see it, a truly profound feeling for into psychoanalyticalterminology by Lacan in 1953. the latencies of semantics. But semantics also clarifies the dynamic opposition its relation to the Symbolic For some remarks on the Imaginary and ,f this libido to the sexual libido, which they sought to define when they and the Real, seethe 1958article by Leclaire on psychosis.Leclaire says invoked instincts of destruction, even the death instinct, in order to explain in part: "The experienceof the Real presupposesthe simultaneoususe of rhe evident relation of narcissistic libido to the alienating function of the fc, two correlative functions, the Imaginary function and the Symbolic func- to the aggressivity which arises out of it in every relation with the other, be it that of tion. That is Imaginary which, like shadows,has no existenceof its own, the most Samaritan kind of help. The fact is that they touched on that existential negativity whose reality and yet whose absence,in the light of life, cannot be conceived; that promoted by the contemporary philosophy of being and nothing- which, without power of distinction inundates singularity and thus es- ;:.::. "t"tdly capesany truly rational grasp. That is Imaginary which is irremediably But this philosophy unhappily grasps this negativity only within the limits opposedor which is indistinctly confused,without any dialectical move- of a self-sufficiency of consciousness,which, by the fact of being inscribed in ment; the dream is Imaginary .. . just as long as it is not interPreted." its premises, binds to the constitutive misconstructions of the moi, the illusion ()l autonomy in which it puts its trust. Word And later: "no symbol can do without Imaginary support" (pp. 383-84). play in the mind which, nourish- rng itself in singular fashion on borrowings from analytic experience, cul- topographical regression of the "dream thoughts" to images in The rrrinatesin the pretension of setting up an existential psychoanalysis. the dream might be described as a process of the Symbolic becoming At the end of the historical enterprise of a society which now no longer Imaginary. rccognizes in itself any but a utilitarian function, and in the anguish of the rrrtlividual in the face of the concentrationary form of the social tie, the 3 Lacan's views on phenomenologyand existentialismare not explicitly ,rnguish whose surging forth seems to be a compensation for that effort, developedin the Discours,but are significant for its comprehension. Their rxistentialism is judged by the justifications which it gives for the subjective most extended development will be found in the 1961 article on Merleau- rrrl)asseswhich in fact result from it: a liberty which never afHrms itself so .rrrtlrcntic as when Ponty. In 1953,after referring to the condemnation of the autonomy of within the walls of a prison, an exigency of. cngagefttent rrr wlrich the impotence of pure consciousnessto surmount any situation is the consciousness-of-selfin Hegel, to Freud's discovery of "the contrary .xl,rcssed, a voyeur-sadisticidealization of the sexual relationship, a personal- the linguistic power," to the logico-mathematicaltheory of sets,and to rry which can only realize itself in suicide, a consciousnessof the other which theory of the phoneme,he goeson: , .rrr <.rnlybc satisfied by the Hegelian murder [that is, by a refusal of the 95 NorEs ro pacr 6 94 NoTEsro PAGEs4{

of both one and the other]' themselvesat a certain limit that we must think that signification fsignifica- master+lavcdialectic in the mutual annihilation these views, insofar as it dis' tionf reignsover it all alone.This would be an error. Everything i" ;;; experienceis opposedto on the systcm percePt;on' For the signifier of its very nature invariably anticipateson the meaning us from conceiving the moi ..rrr.r.d - suades ", which is formulated fscnsf by a sort of unfolding ahead of itself of the dimension of sense.Thii as rrg""ir.[ by the::rJi,y principle" in consciousnerr, of connaisso"ce can be seen at the level of the sentencewhen it is ,.iltism the most contrary to ih. dialectic interrupted before the thc prejudice of of significative make our deparrure from the function term:'I never . . . ,''It is always. . . ,''Againrperhaps . . . .' -so as to indicate to us to ii all the structuresso forcefully The sentencedoesn't make any less sense,and all thJ moie oppressively m|connaissaflcewhich characteriz.r-,1r.moi -wait Verneinung representsthe patent becausethe meaning expressesitself adequately by making one fo; articulatedby Miss Anna Freud: for if the remain latent for the most Part it. [. . .] form of this misconstruction'its effectswill light reffectedon the level of As a result' one can say that it is in the chain of thc signifier that thc sense so long as they ,ro, clarihed fi- gf."q of " insists,but that none of its elements consistsin "r. th. id that itself (pp' 454-55)' the signification of which the fatality, where it i, sense.is -""iftttt capableat that particular moment ("L'Instance de la lcttre" UgS7l, being a simple businessof a For Lacan, the didactic analysisis far from p. 56). student him- of a therapeutic technique; it Puts the learning the "rules" Although I doubt whether Lacan always maintains an observabledifier- "formation" in a sensevery similar to self in question.He usesthe word encebetween the two words, Bildungsro- the convention has been adopted of translat- xs in Hegel, or in the concept of rhe the Germ an Bildungr ing signifcation by "signification" and sens by "sense" or by "meaningr" phiiomtnologie d,e l'Esprit, l, 165ff.; II, 50ff., Particu- m,n. see: La except where the best rendering p. 148ff; p' 350fi') seemsto be somerhing like the hendiadys Hyppolite's nore t+, p. :5. (Phiinomenologie, larly of "sense and direction." Nonsens will be rendered "non-senser',contre- Enttiusserung' and Entlremdung in his Cf. Hyppolite on Bildunl, sens left as in the French. 371'fr' d.e la Phdnomtnologie de l'Esptit' ll (1946)' Genlse et Structure e That is, if the subject refuses to recognize the meaning of a symptom s in a Fivei(ear-Old Boy" (1909)' Standatd "Analysis of a Phobia it is quite pointless to tell him about it (as Freud repeatedly explains). Edition, X,5. For Lacan, cognition depends on recognition, and is necessitatedby an Account of a Case of original mis-cognition. See note 12 on mtconnaissance. s "Psychoanalytic Notes on an Autobiographical (1911) standard Edition, xII', 9' 10 Paranoia (Dernentia Paranoides)" , For "isolation" and "undoing what has been done" (annulation), stundard Edition' XX' both technical terms used by Freud, see "Inhibitions, ? cf. Freu d, An Autobiographical study (1925), Symptoms and Anxiety" (1926), Standard Edition, XX, especiallypp. l19-20. 66: Both are mechanismsof defense characteristic religion' of obsessionalneurosis. my contributionsto the psychologyof I myself set a higher valuego In the 6rst, after some significant but unacceprableoccurrence in his life, remarkableiimilarity betwern ob- which began *iih th. establishrientof a the Actions and Reli- subject seeksto break its continuity with the rest of his existenceby sessiveactions and religio,.r,pr".iices or ritual ["Obsessive without as yet under- i'terpolating an isolating interval in which nothing further must hap- gious Pracrices"(1907), standard Edition,IX, 117]. neurosis as a pen- In the second,he seeks "blow the deeper connections,I describedthe obsessional to away"-in a fashion even closer to standing obsessional and t.rigio" a kind of universal the magical and the ceremonial-what he does not wish ro distorted private religion "t accepr.Both neurosis. are consequentlyforms of.Verneiflungt or denegation. .,Nores it is not simply a Both were originally referred to in the caseof the Rat Man: 8 "Sens" presentsdifficulties. In the present context, ;meaningr" "direction"' "feel"' and upon a case of ObsessionalNeurosis" (1909), Standard Edition, X, question of choosingbetween "senser" between sens antJ 235-36,243,246. so forth, but also ihrt of maintaining the difference rr signifcation - F or examPle: I have retainedthe French word becauseit is Lacan's emendationof and lcxicology cxhaust tlrc usual translation of Ilrcurl's Verneinung as "ntgation" (for the But it is not becauscthe enterpriscsof grammar pncr,s 96 NoTEs To PAcE 6 97 NoTEs ro 6-9

English, seethe article "Die Verncinung" ["Negation" (1925)f in Stand- . . . It seems clear to me that in his feelings of influence and automatism, the subject does ard Edition,XlX,223),TheVerneinung is not simply "negation," nor is not recognize his productions as his own. It is in this respect that we all agree that a madman is a madman. But isn't the remarkable part it simply "denial," which in any caseentails confusion with the Freudian rather that he should have to take cognizance of itl And isn't the question translated "denial," but which rhe Standard Edition Verleugnuag, usually rather to discover what he knows about himself in these productions *itho,rt "disavowal." (See the note on p. L43 of.Vol. XIX.) Freud recognizing now translates himself in theml] ("Propos sur la causalitd psychique" [1950], usesVerneinung in the 1925 article to refer both to the concrete attitude pp.33-3a.) with in experience("You ask who this person in the ls of "no-saying" met Cf. Freud's succinct rejection of behaviorism in the posrhumous be. not my mother.") and to the creation of the symbol dream can lt's outline of Psychoanalysis(1940), standard Edition, xxIII, l5z. "Corn- of negation, constitutive of iudgment itself. See I. Hyppolite, la English in the original. mentaire parli sur la Verneinung de Freud" (1956), and the introduction and commentary by Lacan. Needlessto say, it is the first sensethat is in 15English in the original. question here. 18English in the original. 12There is no simple equivalent for mlconnaissancein English. It is 17 This and the precedingparagraph were slightly modified in 1966. an important term in the Lacanian vocabulary of the moi. The problem 18 is to render it by rerms that will bring out the senseof a "failure to As noted in the Translator's Introduction, the asterisksrefer to re- appreciater"a "refusal to recognizer"a "mis-cognitionr" and at the same visionsmade by Lacan in1966. time to remind the reader of its etymological affinity with connaissance le The referenceis to "The Lice seekers" by Rimbaud. The author in ("knowledg.r" "understanding," "acquaintance with") and reconnais- question is the French analyst B6nassy. sanc€ ("recognition," "appreciation"). Depending upon the English con- 20 text, therefore, mlconnaissance will be rendered "misconstruction" (that "Give [-.] a rrue and stable word in my mourh and make of me is, "something misconstrued") or "failure to tecognizer" and micon' a cautious tongue" (The Internal Consolation, Forty-fifth Chapter: that naitre by similar expressions. one must not believe everyone and of the lapsesof spoken words). The The following passage,related to Lacan's theory of. la connaissance French title of this chapter is "Parole vide et parole pleine dans la r6alisa- paranoiaque,will illustrate Lacan's use of theseterms: tion psychanalytique du sujet." on this norion, compare Heidegger's Gerede and Rede and Kojlve's view of the discours adtquat, Introduction la croyanced6lirantel-Il est, disons-nous, Quel cst donc le phinomdnede d la lecture de lJegel (1947), pp.550f. "Idle talk" in Heidegger (Being mdconnaissance,avec ce que ce terme contient d'antinomie essentielle.Car and Time [1962], pp. 211-14 et passim) is not, however, disparaging,as mCconnaitresuppose une reconnaissance,comme le manifeste la m€connais- the parole uide (the discours imaginairc) sancesystdmatique, oil il faut bien admettreque ce qui est ni6 soit en quelque is for Lacan. Compare also the fagon reconnu. empty discourseof the belle dme: Phtnomlnologie, II, 189 (phiinome- . . . lt me parait clair en eflet que dans les sentimentsd'infuence et d'au- nologie,p, a6\, tomatisme, le sujet ne reconnait pas ses proPres productions comme 6tant 21"Always siennes.C'est en quoi nous sommestous d'accordqu'un fou est un fou. Mais a cause"or "keep talking." qu'il ait ) en connaitrel et la question,de 22 le remarquablen'est-il pas plutdt The French text readsas follows: savoirce qu'il connattli de lui sanss'y reconnaitreI in fact is the phenomenonof delusionalbeliefl It is, I insist,failure Mais si le psychanalysteignore qu'il en va ainsi de la [What ,1 - foncrionde la parole, to recognize,with all thar this term containsof an essentialantinomy. For to tt il n'en subiraque plus fortementI'appel, et si c'estle vide qui d'abordi'y ;i I fait in systematic NI fail to recognizepresupposes a recognition,as is manifested ;, 1 cntendre,c'est en lui-mdmequ'il l'€prouveraet c'estau deli de la parolequ'il failure to reiognire, whiie it must obviouslybe admittedthat what is denied ll chercheraune rdalirdrlrri comble ce vide. *v is in somefashion recognized. s Ainsi en vicnt-il ) :rrr:rlyscrlc cornportementdu sujct pour y trouver ce

A\ &L 98 NorEs ro PAcE9 99 NorEs ro peces 9-11 qu'il ne dit pas. Mais pour en obtenir I'aveu, il faut bien qu'il lui en parle. ing of the "spatial capture" of the stade du miroir as manifested in Il retrouve alors la parole, mais rendue suspectede n'avoir rdpondu qu'i la man, he characterizes it as the eflect of "an organic de son propre n6ant. insufrciency of his difaite de son silence,devant l'6cho pergue natural reality" (man always being prematurely born in relation to other 23 any usable equivalent in English animals) Bdance,another key word, lacks and then relates it to the function of the imago (see passage ("opennessr" "yawningnessr" "gapingness"). The following quotation quoted in note 106). He continues: "But this relatiol to nature is im- from Leclaire will bring out the weaker sensein which bdance is used paired in man by a certain dehiscenceof the organism within itself, by a in general, and also the stronger sensein which it is used by Lacan in primordial Discord which is revealed by the signs of malaise and the lack referenceto psychosis: of motor co-ordination of the neonatal months,, (,,Le Stade du miroir,, If we imagine experienceto be a sort of tissue,that is, taking the word lr949l,p. a5\. literally, like a piece of cloth made of intersectingthreads, we can say that 2{ The French text reads as follows: repressionwould be representedin it by a snag or rip of some sort, perhaps can be darned or rewoven, qu'6tait even a large rent, but always something that . Y"i: donc cet appel du sujet au dela du vide de son direl Appel btancc of some i la v€riti whereasforeclusion fVera,,erfuagl would be representedby a dans son Principi, i travers quoi vacilleront les appelsde besoins itself was woven; plus humbles. sort, resulting from the way in which the original tissue Mais d'abord et d'cmbl6e apperpropre du videl d"r6 la b€ance capableof finding its own ambigue d'une foreclusionwould be a sort of.'original hole,'never sdductiontentde sur l'autrl'p"i t.r moyens of le sujct met sa substanceagain sinceit had never beenanything other than'hole'substance'; complaisanceet or) il va engagerle monument de son narcissisme. this hole can be filled, but never more than imperfectly,only by a 'patch,' to 26 Boileau,L'Art poitique,I: take up the Freudianterm [alreadycited]. This reference is to "Neurosis and Psychosis" (1924), Standard Edi' Hdtcz-uouslentcmcnt; ct, sansped.re courage, Vingt sur le m1ticr rcmettcz tion, XIX, l5l: "In regard to the genesisof delusions,a fair number of tois aotreouarage: analyseshave taught us that the delusion is found applied like a patch In pope'stranslation: over the place where originally a rent had appearedin the ego's relation to the external world." 7Tl ;:j:,#:i ;.1::;::';;:, Lacan has brought out Freud's distinction between the concept of l,ti!,, *, o, 2BFreud does Verwerfung ("rejectionr" "repudiation," "censure"), which he now not normally use the usual German expressionsfor frus- tration (vereitelung, translates "forch,tsion," and that of "normal" neurotic repression or verhinderung). The Freudian term translated "frustration," Verdrtingung. In 1954 he translated it "retranchemeflt" ("cutting offr" which is obviously that in question here, is versagung, which might "cutting outr" "withdrawal") and spoke of the repressionof a specific be defined as a particular kind of denial of satisfactionor of an object signifier (Freud's Signorelli) as "une parole retranch6e" ("Introduction to the subject by his own ego. cf. Freud on vcrsagung, "Types of onset of Neurosis" (lgl2), au commentaire d. J. Hyppolite" [1956], p.27). In relation to the con- siandard Edition, xil, 23142, especially cept of b€ance, it is worth noting the various meanings of the verb p.234 and the Editor's Notes. Lacan larer characterized ,,promesse aerarcrfen(basically: "throw awalr" "throw in the wrong directionr" "re- Versagung as being essentially et rupture de ject"), especiallythe reflexive forms meaning "to become warpedr" "to promesse"in the seminar of |anuary-February igsl, p. 743, and again .,goes show a (geological) fault," Vcrwerfuag itself also meaning "fault" in as being a processin which th. ,.r61ect back on his word," "gainsays himself,' (se dfidire: this sense.For faille, seenote 116.The concept of Veruerlung is further u€r-sagen). 27 referred to as "a primordial deficiency fcarcncel in the signifier" The French text readsas follows: (Seminarof |anuary, 1958,p.293). Le suiet engage-t-ilpas more strictly bio- . 1. :'y dans unc ddposscssiontoujours plus grande In 1949,Lacan expressedthe concept of btance in a de cet 6trc de lui-m6me,doni, i force de peinturessincires qui n'en laisscnt logical context,and one without particular referenccto psychosis.Spcak- tDoins Pas incoltirctttcI'itl{c, tlc rcctificationsqui n'atteigncntpas } d6gager I0I NorEs ro PAGEsL2-t3 ilO Norts ro PAGESll'12

2s statue' has no simple English equivalent. In a less significant son essence,d'6tais et de d€fcnsesqui n'emp€chentpas de vaciller sa louissance d'dtreintesnarcissiques qui se font to.tffi. i I'animer, il finit par reconnAitrc context, it might be translated "enjoymentr" "possessionr""appropria- cette que cet 6tre n'a jamais-it€ que son oeuvrc dans I'imaginaitt-.:t tion," "right," "pleasure." Since in Lacan's view the enjoyment of pos- qu'il fait-que de la i.,rnr. ddgoit en lui toute cerritude. Car dans cc travail sessionof an object is dependentfor its pleasureon others, the ambiguity fondamentalequi la lui a reconstruirc Poul un uiltre, il retrouve l'ali6nation dirob{c of the French iouissanccnicely serveshis purpose. fait constrtirecomme une autre,et qui I'a touioursdestinie i lui 6tre 30 par uft ot0tfe. The words ego, moi, and ie are left as in the French. The ambiguity very of Freud's use of the term das Ich is well known, but Lacan's concept Referring to the work of charlotte Biihler on the behavior of of the moi is essentially that of rhe ldealich or the lchideal. There is a young children, Lacan speallsof the (paranoid) phenomenon of "transi- nice distinction between the ego-ideal and the ideal-ego, a distinction dvism" as "a veritable caPtureby the other" in a "primordial ambivalence never methodologically clarified by Freud, and Lacan's assimilation of which appearsto us . . . 'as in a mirror,' in the sensethat the subject and narcissism to identification is in the tradition of that same ambiguity. identifies his sendmcnt of Self in the image of the other"' "Thus, in human At the same time, Lacan's use of moi sharesthe lch's senseof "selfr" this is essential,the first effect of the Imago which apPears as Freud sometimesemploys it, especiallyin the earlier works. beings is an effect of alienation in the subject. It is in the other that at first" ("Propos sur la the subject identifies and even senseshimself The concept of the moi which Freud demonstrated particularly in the causalit6psychique" [1950.|,p. 45). theory of narcissismviewed as the source of all enamoration or 'falling in Compare the following: love' (Verliebtheu)-and in the techniqueof resistanceviewed as supported by the latent and patent forms of dtntgation (Verneinung)-brings out in In order for us to come back to a fnore dialectical view of the analytic the most preciseway its function of irreality: mirage and misconstruction. the experience,I would say that analysisconsists precisely in distinguishing He completed the conceptby a genetic view which situates the moi clearly with person lying on the analyst's.o,r.h from the p.ttott who is speaking' in the order of the Imaginary relationsand which shows in its radical aliena- situa- ih. p.rro' Iistening, that makes three Personspresent in the analytical tion the matrix which specifiesinterhuman aggressivityas essentiallyintra- casesof don, among wfrorri.it is thc rule that th. q,.,.tiion-at the basein all subjective(Actes,p. 209). it hysteriabe put: Where is the moi of.the subiect?Once this is admitted' the role 31Compare the following: must be said that the situation is not three-way,but four-way, since as in bridge, is alwayspart of the game,and so much of dummy lle mort), . . . The subject may take pleasure in the desire of the Other. He may taken into account,it is impossibleto articulate anything of so rhat if it is not respondto it, or believehe is respondingto it, by minting his own signs, the in regardto obsessionalneurosis (Actes, p' 210)' any sensewhatsoever gifts by virtue of which he may believehimself to be loved. But the analytic is the :rttitudeis designedto suspendhis certitudeson this subject,and the analyst's See also Leclaire in the 1958 article on psychosis: "'The moi interpretation, when the opportunity offers, is designed to show him what of the subiect.' My intention is locus of the Imaginary identif.cations I-acancalls the 'vanity' of his gifts, or in other words, their regressivecharac- of the above all to indilate fy this definition the Imaginary function ter. To this extent, the analytic way is that which leads towards anxiety to the sym- 'moi" (formation, deformation, information) in opposition (M. Safouan,"Le R€veet son interprCtation,"I-a Psychanalysc,VIII [1964], bolic characterof the 'subiect"' (p.399). p. lle). 110. For the "6rst personr"see note 32The allusion is to the function of the tesseraas a token of recogni- 28,,. suiet se fait obiet dans la tion, or "password." The tesserawas employed in the early mystery re- .. iusqu') I'image passivantepar oil le be- iigions where fitting together again the two halves of a broken piece of parade du miroi r . . .." see the descriptionof the child's behavior miroir was used as a means of recognition by the initiates-and in fore a mirror at the beginning of the article on the stadc du I)ottery ()reece the tesscr4was callecl the sumbolon. Note that the central con- (1949)."Passivation" describes the chernicalprocess of "1>icklittg"nrctal ccl)t involvcd in thc symbol is that of,a linl1,but that Lacan views this to nrakeit reac.lyto receivea coaring,strch as pailtt or plltirtg' 102 Norrs ro PAGEs13-15 101 NorEs ro pAGEs 15-16 link as one between systems, not between terms or between terms and own unconscious like- a recePtive organ towards the transmitting unconscious things. See note of the patient 80. fu.st as ih. Jta.lphone] r...i".t converts waves back into sound- The allusion to Mallarmi is to a passagein his preface to Ren6 Ghil's the electric oscillarions in ttre t.teihorr. lirr. which were set up by sound waves, so the doctor's unconscious Traitt du Verbc (1886); it can be found in the Oeuures complltes is able, from the derivatives of unconscious which the are communicated to him, ,o ,..orrr,ruct (Paris : Pl€iade, 1945), pp. 368,857. which that unconscious, has determined the patient,s fr.. 83That is, "rro.iatiorrr. the discourse of the subject being treated by the analyst Seealso XII, 112. under the supervisionof another analyst: 37see: Breuerand Freud, "preriminary . . . If the intermediary of the Word were not essentialto the analytic communication,,(1g93): structure, the supervisionof an analysisby another analyst who has only a For we found, to our greatsurprise at first, that eachindividual verbal relationshipto that analysiswould bc absolutelyinconceivable, whereas symptomimmediately hysterical 1.n9p.rrn"r.rtly disappearedwhen we had succeeded it is in fact one of the clcarestand most fruitful modes of thc analytic rela- in bringingclearly to right'the memory of.tir. ltr".rmatic]evenr by which tion (cf, my report) (Actes,p. 210). it was provoked and in arousing its accompanyingaffect, and when the sa patient had describedthat evenr That is, the analyst's"evenly suspendedattention." This, or a similar t the gr.";;;;orriut. deiail and had put the affect into words. Recollectionwithoit expression, appears in affect armost invariably produces Standard Edition, X, 23 ("Little Flans"); XII, no result' The psychicalprocess which."tisi"."irt iook place must be repeated lll; and XVIII, 239; and elsewhere. as vividly as possible;it must be brought 6a.k io it, statusnascendiand then 35 given verbal utterance Compare the following: [most of this"p.r""g. I itdi.i"ed in the original] (Snndard Edition,II, 6): I beg you simply to note the link which I affirm to exist between thc And further on, p- 17: "[The psychotherapeutic secondposition [that psychoanalysisis the resolutionof the symbolic exigency method] brings to an end the operative force of the that Freud revealed in the unconscious and which his last topography idea [vorsteilungf which was nor linked so strikingly with the death instinct], the only correct onc for us, and abreacredin the first instance, by allowing its stranguratedafiect to find the recognitionof the validity of Frcud's often debatedposition on the death out through speech : lRede disclursf . .. .,, See also pp. instinct. You will agrec with me on this when I say that any abrogation of ;rJ$. 225, that part of his work is accompaniedamong those who pride themselvcson 38"Act it by a repudiation which extendsall the way to Freud's basic principles, in of becoming aware." compare the folrowing: thc sensethat theseare the samepeople-and not by chance-who no longer It will be understood seek anything in thc subject of the analytical experiencethat they do not ' ' ' why it is as false to attribute the analytical dinouement ro the prise de situatebeyond the Word (Actcs, pp.207-8). conscienceas it is to be surprised at happeningto have its not 80 the power to do it. It is ;-d;stion The referenceis to Reik's Listening taith the Third Ear. ttnconscious, of passingfrom the plunged in ob-scu.rity, consciousness,";; .to site of crarity, by some Cf. Freud's papers on technique, parricularly Standard Edition, Xll, sort of mysteriouselevator. ttris iJly ,r ou;..iii...ion-by which the subject u5-16: .rdinarily tries to avoid his responsibiiity-aira iiir i.re that the bully-boysof i.tcllectualizationshow their intelligence fy-i."J"ing him in it yet again. [The diflerent rules I have brought forward] are all intended to create for It is not a question of a^ passag.irrto consciousness,but of a passage the doctor a counterpart to the 'fundamental rule of psycho-analysis' which tlreWord . . . (Actrr,p.Z06). " into is laid down for the patient. fust as the patient must relate everything that his self-observation can detect, and kecp back all the logical and aflective Seealso note 66. objections that seek to induce him to make a selection from among them, so :f0Freud's the doctor rejection of his earry "inteilectuarist,, must put himself in a position to make use of everything he is views and the prise de told (onscicncais elaborated for the purposes of interpretation and of recognizing the concealed un- in his papers on technique,in particular:..on conscious material without substituting a censorship of his own for the selec- lfcginning the Trearmenr" 1ui:) , stundara Ei;t;on, xII, r4L4z. tion that the patient has foregone. To put it in a formula: he must turn his :rls

dans I'unitd interne aoVerbaliser,in its legal sense'would be the equivalent of "to write a de cette temporaiisation, l'6tant marque la convergencc elso des ayant iti. C'est-i-dire que d'autres rencontres 6tant suppos6esdepuis I'un traffic ticket." pandore i, a ,6ng term for gendarme. But uerbaliser quelconque de ces moments ayant 6t6, il en serait issu un autre itant qui le "to at needlesslength" and, retains its older, pejorative senseof discourse ferait avoir 6td tout autrement. in a rather specialtechnical sense,"to certify in writing." Compare with Heidegger: al The term uerbe will be left untranslated since it is more or less (le Verbe)' depend- As authentically futural, Dasein lr authentically as " hauing been" . synonymous with mot, ?arole, logos,and the Logos lgcwesenf has a Anticipation of one's uttermost and ownmost possibility [death] is coming ing on the context-and "rnore or less" means precisely that it back understandingly to one's ownmost "been." only insofar as it is futural following translation of a citation from pr-rti.ulu favor of its own. The can Dasein De authentically as having been. The character of "having been" French to aPPreciate the Littrd may assist the reader unfamiliar with lGcutesenhcil] arises, in a certain way, from the future (Being and Time, agree that the usage of the term: "Your wise men, says Tertullian' trans. Macquarrie and Robinson U9621, p.373). the say, le ucrbe, la parole, seemsto be the craftsman of ab logis,that is to Compare the following: rriiu.rr.; we believe, moreover, that the proper substanceof this uerbc' of this reason,by which God has made all things,is lesprit" (condillac). To tell the truth, the subiect who is invited to speak in analysis doesn't demonstrate a great deal of liberty. Not that This reference io th. father of the ideologists is not without Particular he is enchained by the rigor of his associations: no doubt they oppress him, but it is rather that they open relevance to the tradition in which Lacan is writing. up onto a free Word, onto a full Word which is painful to him ("La Direc- for religious and ecclesiastical verbe was in fact very early on reserved tion de la cure'r p. 179). the [1961], contexts (as Lacan later points out), and as such it has remained auon (poetical) "word" par excellence. the "theory of. deferred action," see also the "Project" of 1895 in TIre origins ol Psychoanalysis (1954), Part II, particularly Section 4 a2It to take into account the severalmeanings of will assistthe reader (pp. alrl3). This theory crops up consranrly in Freud's early writings "speechr""taler" "songr" "promiSer" "sayingr" thiS Gfeek term: "Wordr" on psychoanalysis-for example, in the French article of 1896 referred "message,"and in the plural: "epic poetflr" "word" (opposed to deed)r to in Lacan's note i,-as well as throughout the case of the Wolf Man. passage'see Flegel on the Homeric ePos, "lines of verse." On this whole Seethe editor's remarks at the end of the note cited by Lacan (Standard especially p. 243 (Phrinotnenologie, 570fr')' Plthominologie, II, 242fr., Edition, xvII, p. 45, n.1), and also the further referencesgiven at the end 43"Reprdsentation" also means "performance" (of a pl^y) (Darstel' of the lengthy note on p. 167in StandardEdition,lll. translatesboth the Hegelian and the Freudian Vorstellung' a? tung). Ii also See: "Le temps logique et I'assertionde certitude anticipie" (1945). translated "stage" is the French sclne' The word Lacan's analysis of this sophism is concerned with the psychological cf. Freud on transference: "so what he is showing us is the kernel of and temporal processinvolved between three hypothetical prisoners of life history: he is reproducing it tangibly, as though it were his intimate which the first to discover whether he is wearing a black or a white ltappcning, instcad of remembering it." "The Question of' Lay actaally patch on his back has been offered his freedom by the prison governor. (iSZA1, Standard Edition, y'X, 226. This is referred to in the Analysis" The prisoners are not allowed to communicate directly. The governor as the patient's obligation "to stage a revival of an old next paragraph has shown them three white and two black patches and has then fixed pi...j' SJ. "Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through" "to: '* a white patch on eachman's back. Edition, XII, L47. (1914), Standard il Lacan analyzes the intersubjectiveprocess in which each *r man has to a{ SI, put hin'rself in the place The French text reads as follows: *li o[ the others and to gauge the correctnessof lris dcducrions through their actions in time, from rhe insrant du regard On peut dire dans le langage heideggerienque l'une et I'autre constituent t

two black it by his consciousnessresults from the fact that it was by the way of a bAancc prendre is a wait (which tells each man that no one can see specific to his Imaginary relation to his counterpart, that he was able to o decision by each that he is white ("If I were p"t.h.s), followed by cnrer into this order as a subiect. But he was only able to make this entrance that he is white, tlr.k, o.r. of the otlrers would have already concluded by the radical defile of the Word, the same, in fact, of which we have recog- they all set off becausenobody has as yet started for the cloor") ' Then nized a genetic moment in the play of the child [the Forul Dal of. Beyond of doubt' each towards the door and all hesitate in a retrospectivemornent the Plcasure Principla] but which, in its complete form, is reproduced hesitation will time that the subiect addresseshimself to the Other as absolute, that is to say' The fact that they all stop sets them going again' This all as the Other who can nullify the subject himself, in the same way as he can be repeated twice (in this hypothetically ideal case)' before only do for him, that is, by making himself an object in order to deceive him. three leavethe prison cell together' This dialectic of intersubjectivity, whose use I havc shown to be necessary -from the theory of transference to the structure of paranoia itself-during a8The word-play is between "interlocution" and "interloqui"' the past three years of my seminar at Sainte-Anne, is readily backed uP by of assistance a0The following passagesfrom his later writings will be the following schema which has long been familiar to my students: In opposition in clarifying Lacant frt,n.r elaboration of this concept' @'utre to what he calls a certain "phenomenological" trend in psychoanalysis' Daniel Lacan refers ro the divergencebetween himself and his colleague Lagachein the following terms: on inter- divergence] lies in the actual function which he confers [Our relation to the subjectivity. For intersubiectivity is defined for him in a relation oirr.r1rr.rr1 of the .oun,.rp" rt f'l'autre du semblabl.el,a symm-etrical scldu,r L : sets up the @o,t" in principle, as can be ,.e1 frorl the fact that Daniel Lagache through the The two middle terms representthe coupled reciprocalImaginary obiectifrca- formula that the subiect learns to treat himself as an obiect from the given of the tion which I have emphasizedin the stade du miroir" ("Lc S6minairc sur other. My position-ir',h", the subfecthas _,?..T.tg. locus: I-a lcttrc aol6e[1956], p. 9). ,igrrifi.rr'*lri.r, cover him in bthe, which is their transcendental "r, the manifestly through this he constitutes himself in an existencewhere There is a simplified and slightly diflerent version of the schema in to of the Freudian area of experienceis possible:that is constituting vector the "Traitement possiblede la psychose" (1958), P. 18, with the follow- called desire ("Remarque sur lc rapport de Dahiel Lagache" say, what is ing comments: [1961],p.1le). Modernes (1961)' In the article on Merleau-Ponty in Les Temps from the Lacan points out the problematic involved in philosophizing primacy of the cogito,or from that of rhe percipio: to which it is To put it in a nutshell, it scemsto me that the 'I think,' how in' that presencebe reduced, continues t9 *1tY scnfue f, : d intended imply, "9 by determina,. or.-rrr"y it, all ih. po*.rs-of the-reflection lr1fl'erionf mirage which This schema signifies that the condition of the subicct S (ncurotic or which subjectand consciousness-"t.e .orrfotnded-namely, the "r. m^c.otnaissancc psychotic) depends on what is being unfolded in the Other A. What is being psychoanalyticexperience places at the basis [principel of the stadc du miroir unfolded there is articulated like a discourse (the unconscious is the discoursc of the subiectand which I myself have tried to fotut on in the of the Orher)-a discoursc whose syntax Freud first sought to dcfine for thosc by concentratingit there(pp.2a8 9)' fragments of it which come to us in certain privileged momentsr dreams, as follows: The structureof intersubiectivityis further elaborated slips of the tongue or pen, flashesof wit. How would the subject bc an interested party in this discourse, if he were thinking the Symbolicorder' it is bccause Thus it is that if man comesto corners of 'I'hc tltat hc hasformcd not taking partl He is one, in fact, in that he is drawn to the four he is caughrin it from the first in his being. illusion pAcEs 108 NorEs ro PAGES2V2l 109 NorEs ro 2l-22 the schema,which are: 5, his incffable and stupid cxistence;c, his obiects; chotic. And lastl/, there is the instance of "secondary revision" and of a', his moi-that is, what is reflectedof his form in his obiects; and A, the the Entstellungen ("distortions") in the dream and in the symprom, existenccmay be put to him. locusfrom which the questionof his where the subject, unbeknownst to himself, seeks ro "rnake it all make The rest of this article is given over to an analysis of the Schreber better s6nss"-notably after the topographical regression to perception case,accornpanied by a topological transformation of the schema seeking in the dream, the fundamental mehning being finally restored only by to represerri the distortion of the psychotic's relation to others and to the putting into words of the "images" (the thing presenrations) and reality. their assumption by thc subject'sdiscourse in the dream texr, where the See also Leclaire in the 1958article on psychosis,pp. 399t.,whcre a and dialectical working through of associationsenables the subject to pro- a' are explicitly the rnoi's of S and A, and the axes S-A and A-a' are, vide himself (unconsciouslyat first) with the exegesisof his own dream explicitly, the Symbolic axis and the Imaginary axis, resPectively. (or symptom). of consciousness"see: "The Psychotherapy of 63 For Freud's "'defile' The rclationship made by Lacan between metaphor (condensation) Hysteria" (1895), Standard Edition, lI, 29L. and the symptom, and that berween metonymy (displacement) and 60On the theoretical background of the preceding remarks, see the desire, is elaborated in the notes to Chaper II (for example, note 67) posthumous Outline of Psychoanalysis(1940), Standard Edition, XXIII' and dealt with in further detail in the essayfollowing these notes. In 144,especially pp. I57fr., where it is a question of the rePresentationof 1953 Lacan did not make the later distinction between metaphor and the lacunae in the "broken sequences"of consciousness,as well as of the metonymy. prisc de conscience. Cf.. also p. l?7: "For a Patient never forgets again Freud 6rst came to recognize the mechanism of condensation (Ver- what he has experiencedin the form of ransference; it carries a greater dichtung) in the simple fact that the dream itself is much shorter and forcc of conviction than anything he can acquire in other ways." much more compressedthan its verbal representation(the dream texr). Dreams are "laconic," as is the dream text itself in relation to its later 61"La pensie inconsciente." The sil uenia uerbo ("let thc word be interpretation. Condensationrepresenrs the "nodal point" (KnotenpunQt) pardoned") occurs in the analysisof the Wolf Man (XVII, 84), where of the dream and will be like a railroad switch in the dream work, al- the expressiOnin question is rendered "an unconsciousconcept." ways allowing multiple interpretations (overderermination). 62One immediately recognizesin this passagea whole seriesof allusions After noting that it is impossible ever to know whether a dream has to the Freudian metaphors about the unconscious,as Lacan mentions in been fully interpreted, Freud goes on ro the use of words in dreams: the next paragraph. One recognizes the metaphor of the ancient city "The work of condensation in dreams is seen at its clearest when it undergoing excavation through various layers: that of the somatic com- handles words and names.It is true in general that words are frequently pliance of the hysterical symptom, which may exhibit the condensation treated in dreams as though they were things, and for that reason they and displacement to be found in language and which "ioins in the are apt to be combined in just the same way as thing presentations" conversation" (rnitsprechcn), as Freud put it; that of Freud's view that (lnterpretation of Dreams, Standard Edition, IV, 295-96). resonancesof unconsciousmeanings and linguistic relationships from a Freud often employs the related conceptsof "password" and "switch- mythical earlier time are exhibited in the language of dreams; that of word" in his analysesof symptoms and dreams. In the Psychopathology the double inscription. Moreover, we are reminded of Freud's constant of Eueryday Life and the work on jokes, condensation is revealed to be recourscto the myth and to the fairy tale as exhibiting universal struc- essentialto the joke, the forgetting of words, slips of the rongue or pen, tures or as serving as representatives in thc subiect's discourse-thc and so forth. whole analysisof the Wolf Man revolves around the attempted integra- Displacement (Verschiebung) is less clearly de6ned. It is a form of tion of a fable by the subject into his own history-as well as to the

01 Neat of minor importance' and This incident is described at the end of Lecture XXX of the center of the dream. onto obiects or words in dreams, for Freud' not Introductory l*ctures (1933), Standard Edition, XXII, following the thus reveal its latent content. Displacement of thought but every analysis of the "Forsyte" incident alluded to in the first part of this only covers any kind of "diverrion from a train "substitution by sentence.This last is the "third case" omitted (as a result of Freud's sort of indirect representation as wellr" including ^ (lo\es and the unconsciousresistance to the occult) from the ardcle "Psychoanalysisand piece of symbolism, or an analogy, or something small" this context (the context Telepathy" (1941 [1921]), XVIII, t77-93. IJnconscious,Standard Editioa, VIII, 171). In "dis- 62 of presentations), he also employs the term Verschiebungersatz; The orientation of. psychoanalysisafter World War II, both in of displacement in p1"..-.rrt-substitute." connected with the concept England and in the United States,had especially concentrated on the "dislodge" his early writings are a number of other terms' including countertransference(of the analyst onto the patient), that is to say, on (Jebertragung itself (dislozieren).,'iranspose" (transponieren), and the two-wey or dual nature of transference (first mentioned by Freud senset ("tr"nrfarencer" "trarxlation") in the usual nontechnical German in 1910). See, for instance: Michael Balint, "Changing Therapeutical and "conversion"' as well as concePtSinvolving "false connections" .Aims and Techniques in Psycho-analysis,"International lournal ol symptom formation In mental illness itself, diqplacement as a mode of Psycho-Analysis(1950), XXXI, 117. terms' referring to the transfer iil one of Freud's earliest methodological 03 ,.quantity to another' or from a The French text reads as follows: of a of afiect" from one presentation is especially presentation to the body itself (hysteria). This mechanism . . ce qui se ditache comme psychologiei l'6tat brut de I'exp€rience commune (qui ne se confond avec l'expdriencesensible que pour le pro- evident in obsessionalneurosis' fessioneldes id6es)-i savoir dans quelque suspensiondu quotidien souci, 64". . . au for interne comme au for ext6rieur"' I'itonnement surgi de ce qui apparie les 6tres dans un disparatcpassant celui consider what In the paragraphs which follow, the reader should des grotesquesd'un L6onard ou d'un Goya-ou la surprise qu'opposeI'dpais- as well as keep' seur propre d'une peau i la caressed'une paume qu'anime Ia ddcouverte Lacan has just s.id the domain of the metaphor, "borr, scene" sans que l'dmousseencore le d6sir--ceci, peut-on dire, est aboli dans une the Freudian metaphors translated as the "primal ing in mind expdrience,rev€che i cescaprices, r€tive i cesmyst8res. and the "other scene" (the dream)' 6aThis is the phrase employed by the chorus in the macaronic Latin of 66 English in the original. the burlesqued ceremony which closes Molibre's Le Malade lmaginaire. if theY had 66"There are people who would never have been in love, The example is a real one. The allusion to Plato is to the Sophist,249b. love" (Maxim CXXXVI, Garnier .d.). never heard talk of 65"Des elements signifiants." "The dream-work follows the laws of Edi- 6?"From the History of an Infantile Neurosis" (1918), Standard the signifier." "The unconsciousis not the primordial, nor the instinc- tion, XYII, 46,102, 11G-11, 1 18. tual, and elementarily it is acquainted only with the elements of the signifier" ("L'Instance de la lettre" U957), pp. 65, 7a). As Lacan points 68"LJne v€rit6 de La Palice" is a self-evident truth, a truism' our elsewhere,the dream is not the unconscious,but rather what Freud is more precisely 59"Le discours de I'autre." After 1955, this "autre" called the "royal road" to the unconscious,the latter being revealed not .,l'Autre." see note 49 and Lacan's note j added in 1966. by the manifest text of the dream as such, but by rhe lacunae latent (1966)' Lacan In thc "subversion du sujet et dialectique du disir" within it. Latin /r (obiective clarified the "de" as to be read in the senseof the Cf. Freud: "The IJnconscious" (1915), Standard Edition, XIV, t67: the phrase: tua res determination)i "de Alio in oratione (to complete All these consciousacts Iparapraxes,dreams, symptoms, obsessions, ideas agitur)" (Ecrits, P. 81a). tlrat "come into our headwe do not know from wherc"] remain disconnccted anclunintclligiblc if wc insistupon clairningthat everymental act that oc- ooEnglish in the original. rli 113 ro PAGEs30-31 112 NorEs To PAGE30 NorEs

the curs in us must also necessarilybe experiencedby us through consciousness; zungl in the same locality; but the conscious presentation comprises it, on the othcr hand they falt inio a demonstrable connection if we intcrpolate presentation of the thing plus the presentation of the word belonging to bctuccn thcm the unconsciousacts which we have inferred. while the unconscious presentation is the presentation of the thing alone Now, too, we are in a position to state precisely what it is that repression os Scientific Interest" Cf. Freud: "The Claims of Psycho-Analysis to denies to the rejected presentation in the transference neuroses: what it denies (1913), Standard Edition, XIII, 177: to the presentation is translation into words which shall remain attached to the object. A presentation which is not put into words, or a psychical act in dreams are principally If we rcflect that the means of representation which is not hypercathected, remains thereafter in the Ucs. in a state of shall see that it is even more visual images fBitdenl and not words, we repression(pp. 201-2). appropriat. to .t^p"r. dr."-s with a systemof writing than with. a language' decipher- n^fa.t the interprit"tion of dreams is completelyanalogous to- the Lacan takes up the whole question of representation in greater detail both ment of an ancient pictographicscript such as Egyptian hieroglyphs' In in "L'Instance de la lettre" (1957), where he also deals with the hiero- be interpreted (or casesthere are certain elementswfrich are not intended to glyphic "determinatives." thc casemay be) but are only designedto serve as 'determinatives" read, as B? that is to establishthe meaningof someother element' Lacan elaborates on his use of the concepts of metaphor and metonymy and explains the algorithmic representation he uses, in "L'In- the specifrc reference of this of Lacan's (and for Freud's For Passage stance de la lettre" (1957) and "La Direction de la cure" (1961). the metaphor of the rebus), se. Standard Edition,lV, 277:78' use of Metonymy represents the connection of "word to word" (rnot d rnot) will note the relationship, in Freud's own system of meta- The reader in the signifying chain, or the combination of. signifier to signifier the "double inscription" (Niederschrift), as a means of phors, between (S... S'), and represents the subject's desire; metaphor-the substitu- for the coexistenceof conscious and repressedideas, and the "..o.rntirrg tion of "one word for another one" in which the first signifier is occulted hieroglyphs (Bil derschriften). referenceto end falls to the level of the signified while retaining its metonymic con- should be read with the later analysis of the toPo- These p.rr"g., r)ection with the rest of the chain-represents the symptomatic passage visual graphical ,egression in the dream from the dream-thoughts to i*"g.r (the Rac(sicht auf Darstellbarfreit, or "concern for rePresentabil- rcross the bar of the Lacanian algorirhm (+) The articles in question ity") where Freud makes the distinction between "word presentations" \"/ should be consulted, but (sachaorstellungen or in the first, basing his elaboration on the (wortuorstellungen) and "thing presentations" 'fraumdeutung, are Lacan proceeds as follows: biogrorrtellungen) and where these two types of Vorstellungen Entstellung, ,rr.d in relating the dream-language to the language of schizophrenia' translated transposition ["distortion" in Englishl, where Freud in dcmonstrates the general precondition of the dream, is what I designated This "backwarJ .ourr., through the (Jcs. to PercePtion" is discussed carlier in this article, following Saussure,as the glissement of the Supplement to the Theory of Dreams" (1917), [sliding] the "Metapsychological signified under the signifier, always in action (unconscious action, let it be the same time Standard.Edition, XtV, 222-35.This Paper was written at noted) in the discourse. 16G as the article "The IJnconscious" (1915), Standard'Edition, XIV, But the two aspects of the incidence of the signifier over the signified by 204, where the following passageoccurs' part of which is quoted rrc to be found again in it. Verdiclztuzg, condensation, Leclaire and Laplanche in their structural analysis of the two modes is the structure of the superimposition of the signifiers in which the field of the metaphor is found, and whose narne, of representation in their article on the unconscious: c

What is it that distinguishes these two mechanisms, which play such a insignia of the other, but rather the condition that the subject has to find privileged role in the dream-work (Trauma.rbcit), from their homologous the constituting structure of his desirc in thc same biancc op.ned up by thc function in the discoursel Nothing, except a condition imposed upon the .$..I th_e 9f signifiers in those who come [through transfer.ice] to ,.pr.r.rr, signifying material, called Riic\sicht aul Darstcllbarfteit of ["considerations the otirer for him, insofar as his demandis-subjec"ted to them rm1. representability"], which is to be translated: concern for the means of the 1p. mise en sclnc . . . (p. 6a). For some further remarks on the dialectic of dcsire, and concerning its [And later:] . . . It is the connection of signifier to signifier which permits relation to need and to demandr seenotes 143 and 183; for the andcre the elision through which the signifier installs the lack of being in the objcct sclrauplatz (a remark of Fechner's) see: standard Edition,IV, 4g; v, relation, by using the power of 'reference back' of signification in order to 536; and Letter 83 (1898) in Thdorigins of psychoanalysis (1954). invest it with the desire aimed at this lack which it supports (p. 68). For furthcr clarificadon, see the "subversion du ,,r;.t" liloe;, espe- See the Interpretation of Dreams, Standard Edition,IV, 279-338, nota- cially p' 814. The "de" is a subjective genitive-that is, man desiresinsofar bly p.308; and V,339-49;50G7. as he is Other. Man's ignorance (nescience) of his desire is "less ignorance Freud brings out the sense of. Entstellung as meaning "to put some- of what he demands, which can after all be defined or limild, than thing in another place," "to displace,"in Moses and Monotheism (1939), ignorance of athencehe desires.', Standard Edition, XXIII, 43. 6s standard Edition, Yl (1901). See in particular 68In Lacan,s commenhry 1946Lacan paraphrasedHegel as follows: on the repression of the signifier "signorellir" the first parapraxis in the text, in the introduction Thc very desireof man, [Hegel] tells us, is constitutedunder the sign of to rhe verneinung (1956), pp. 27-2g, and ^rticles mediation; it is desire to make its desire recognized.It has for its object a Freud's structural representation of the mechanism i; th. article desire,that of the other, in the sensethat there is no object for man's desire "The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetfulness" (lggs), standard Edition, which is constitutedwithout some sort of mediation-which appearsin his rrl, 287, which is reproduced again in the pryc:lropnthology of Eueryday most primitive needs: for example, even his food has to be prepared-and Life (p. 5). Freud reported the which is found again throughout the developmentof satisfactionfrom the incident ro Fliess in Letter 96 of the Origins of moment of the master-slaveconflict throughout the dialectic of labor ("Pro- Psychoanalysis(1954). see also ,La possur la causalitdpsychique" [ 1950],p. 45). the seminar of November, 1957, pp. 295-96, and pry- chanalyseet son enseignemenr" (1957), p. Seealso the first chapter of Kojbve's Introduction d la lecture de Hegel 75, ior further comments on (re47). the forgetting of "Signorelli." 70 In the "Direction de la cure" (1961), Lacan summarizes his remarks Compare the following: on the nature of desire : Symptoms of conversion,inhibition, anguish, these are not there to ofler you opportunity One of the principles which follow from these premises is that: to confirm their nod"alpoints, however seductivetheir topology--the -if desire is an effect in the subject of that condition which is imposed on may be; it is a question of untying theseknots, and this means to return them him by the existence of the discourse, to make his need pass through the to the Word function tl,at ittey hold in a discoursewhose sig- defiles of the signifier; nification determinestheir use and sense(ict"s, p.206). -if on the other hand by opening up the dialectic of transference, The letter of the messageis the important thing here. In order to grasp we must ground the notion of the Other with a big O as being the locus of o": j:,. }"tj stop an instant at the fundamentally iquivocal characterof the the deployment of the Word (the other scene, eine andere Schauplatz, of word, insofar as its function is as much to hide ,o .rrr.over . . . . It is this which Freud speaksin the Traumdeutung); into ", ldivision the different parts of an] orchestralscore inhercnt in the -it must be posited that, as a facet of an animal at the rnercy of Language, arnbiguity of Language which alone explainsthe multiplicity of the ways man's desire is desire of rhe Other. of accessto the secretof the Word. The fact remains that there is only one This formulation is aimed at quitc anothcr function than that of thc tcxt wherc it is ptlssiblcto read what the Word saysand whar it doesnot primary identification Iwith objccts-sec note l83l rnentioncd carlicr in say,antl that it is to this texttltat the synrl:tomsare connected just asintimately this article, for it is not a rlucstion of thc asstrrnptionby tlrc strbjcct o[ thc lus is a rclxrs to thc scntet)cc it rcprcsents. 117 NorEs ro P^cEs 3T34 116 NorEs ro PAcEs 32-33

?3 the multiple "Perle" is used colloquially for "goofr" "howler." The metaphor of For some time now therc has been utter confusion bctween calls the ways of accessto the deciphering of this sentence' and what Freud the promenade, the defile, and the garden is one applied by Freud to the p' 207)' overdetcrmination of the ty-ptotttt which rePresent it (Actes, plan of the Traumdeutung, an "imaginary walk" through the wood of that the authorities, "who cannot see the treesr" out into the open through is as a matter of fact too coherent in his thinking to co-nsider Freud See Letter 114 in The Origins enters- into a present conflict.insofar the defiles of his analysis of the dream. [this] overdetermination . .. actually the sup- of Psycho-Analysis (1954), or Standard Edition, IV, p. 122, editor's thi, conflict reproduces an old confict of a sexual nature; and ", (some lesional port-which is ,ro, adventitious--+f an organic biancc note. (fixation) would stimulus or somatic compliance) or of an Imaginary onc 7a to scorned' Standard Editioa, VIII, 106: "Anyone who has allowed the truth have appeared to him as something other than a verbal loophole F which unites to slip in an unguarded moment is in fact glad to be free of pre- if in these circumstances it were not a question of the structure out the signifier to the signified in Language (Actes, p'207)' tence.tt from the 75 What the linguistic concePtion which must form the worker Standard Edition,YIII, 105: "Thus jokes can also have a subjective provide proof of beginning will f,ach him, is to look for the symptom to determinant of this kind It declares that only what I allow to be it from the its function as a signifier-that is, proof of what distinguishes a joke lr a joke." .natural ("La indicator' that the same term currently designates in medicine ?6 Chose freudienne" [1956], P.238). The difficulty of translating the word esprit, which covers most of both Witz and Geisr, is well known, but in this passageit becomcs is dis- The psychoanalyzable symptom, whether normal or pathological,. distinguish- an insoluble problem. I have chosento translate it by the least objection- tinct not orrly fro* the diagnostic 'indicator,' but also from ev-efY by structure able term, "spiritr" except in the quotation from Freud in which the able form of prrr. expressivity, irl the sense that it is sustained a I do not which is identical to the structure of Language. And by this, word Witz is used in the German, and in the expression esprit libre semiology mean a srructure to be situated in some sort ol so-called generalized ("mind free from care"). of Language it drawn from the limbo of its periphery, but the structure -as The substanceof the passageon I'espzl is as follows: which are manifests itself in the languagls which I might call.positive, those et son . . et le qu'il nous rdvlle est celui de I'esprit dans I'ambiguitd actually spoken by the *"ti of human beings ("L" Psychanalyse . visage mdme que lui conflre le langage, oL I'autre face de son pouvoir rigalien est la enseignement" [ 1957], P.72). 'pointe' par qui son ordre entier s'aniantit en un instant,-pointe en effet oi Speaking of the two registers of the signifier and the signified- son activitd criatrice divoile sa gratuiti absolue, of sa domination sur le rdel s'exprimedans le d66 du non-sens,oi I'humour, dans la grice mdchante "relister" designating "two chained-sequencestaken in their globality" de I'csprit libre, symboliseune vdriti qui ne dit pas son dernier mot. . .] related system to system (in the mathematical sense of t. which are Ici tout est substance,tout est perle. L'esprit qui vit en exil6 dans la ", continues: group theory) and not as term to term-Lacan crdation dont il est I'invisible soutien, sait qu'il est maitre ) tout instant de I'aniantir. . .l can be read, it is becauseit is already itself t. Thus it is that if the symptom C'est la vdritd en effet, qui dans sa bouchejette li le masque,mais c'est writing. Insofar as a formation of the inscribed in a proc.r, oi Particular pour que I'esprit en prenne un plus trompcur, la sophistique qui n'est que unconscious,it is not a signification,but its relation to a signifying structure say strarageme,la logique qui n'est l) qu'un leurre, le comique mdme qui ne va which determinesit. If i-.y be permitted a play on words,-I would ucrbe' li qu'i 6blouir. L'esprit est toujours ailleurs.'L'esprit comporteen effet une that it is always a question oi the of the subject with the "gr..rrr.tt telle conditionnalitdsubfective . : n'est esprit que ce que comme (Ibid.,p.73). i'acceptc tcl,' poursuitFreud qui sait de quoi il parle. 7r to the (Jnconsaous (Det Witz und scinc lo\es and Their Relation ?7Thc French text readsas follows: Beziehung zurrt Unbewussten) (1905), Standard Edition, VIII. Nulle part I'intention de l'individu n'est en eflet plus manifestement ?2 phraser"or "conceit." d{'passCepar la trouvaillc du sujct,-nullc part la distinction que nous faisons "Witty & II9 pacE 118 NorEs ro PAGEs3+35 NorEs ro 35 de I'un ) l'autre ne se fait mieux comprendrer-puisque non seulementil faut Parole and symbole, as is well known, are derived from the same roor aie que quelque chose m'ait 6t6 6trang.t d"ttt ma trouvaille pour que i'y verb, "to throwr" the two compounds meaning literally "to throw to- ainsi pour gu'elle porte. *o" pt"itir, mais qu'il faut qu'il cn reste wardsr" "to throw besidesr"and "to throw with." The verb sumballo t'to ttto t'to t'to t'to ?sThe French text readsas follows: means meetr" unitert' ioinrt' make a contractr" lendr" "to contributer" "to join (battle)r" and, with logous understood, "to Ceci prenant sa place de la necessit{,si bien marqu€e par Freud.,du tiers converse" (or so say Liddell and Scott). Lacan has already referred to auditeui toujours suppot6, et du fait que le mot d'esprit ne perd Pas son the function of the pouvoir dans sa transmission au style indirect. Bref pointant au lieu dc Word as a tessera or "token of recognitionr" even i'A.rar. I'ambocepteurqu'€claire I'ariifice du mot fusant dans sa supr€me "password" (see note 32), and he refers it explicitly-and in a wider alacrit6. context-to the etymology of. symbole in the "Introduction au com- mentaire d. The first sentencewas modified in 1966,and the last sentence rePlaces I. Hyppolite" (1956), p. 28. (cf. also Freud's use of the expression that in the original text. An ambocePtor, a medical entity, has a double "verbal bridge" and Passaryt in the case of the Rat Man, affinity for opposites. Stan d ard E dition, X, 213,31S.) For the "third person" see loftes and the [Jnconscious,Standard Edi' The noun sumbolon, with its associatedforms, has a wide variety of tion,YITI, 140-58("]okes as a SocialProcess");173; 179-80' meanings. In a legal sense,it is used in the plural to refer to covenants or pacts entered into by states for the protection of commerce. In a ?eCompare the following: religious context, it came to refer to the distinctive Credo or confession of the Word in that it is what grounds man in his Settingoff from the action of faith of the early Christians. In its widest sense ("the sign or token authentilcity,or seizing it in the original and absotutepositiol of the 'In by which one infers a thing"), Euripides usesit to refer to marks on the the beginnirrg *", the fuord lle Vubej . . . of the Fourth Gospel,with which body (recognition of Orestes); Faust'i 'In the beginning was the action' cannot be in contradiction, sincc Galen employs it for "symprom." It has ,,insignia." this action of the Terbel, .o.*t.nsive with it and renews its creation every also the senseof "seal," "signet" (sceau)r"impression in waxr', phenomenologyof day-this is to go straight along both routes, beyond the Sophocles uses sumbolaion in the plural for "symptom"l the general to the problem of the mediation of an thi altcr rgo irrlmaginary alienation, senseof the term is that of a debtor's note p. 203). or contract. The feminine Other t*ho is] not iecond when the One ir not yet (Actcs, form, sumboli, "meeting," is also used in contexts where it would be to in note 49, the The alter ego is the autre du semblable referred translated"knottingr" "twisting togetherr" "bond" (noeud), "intercourser,, captures and supports us" (Seminar of April- "counterpart whose image :rnd in a rather specificsense "contribution to a common meal or feastr" fune 1958,p.252). which might be referred to the potlatch. also: Compare Compare C. S. Peirce on the symbol in his writings on semiosis-for who is this orher to whom I am more attached than to my[self], since cxample, "Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs" in: The philosophy to myself, it is at the most profound level of approbation of my identity rtl Peirce, pp, ll2-15. For the specific psychoanalytical reference of these he who agitatesmel lcrms,see: Rosolato, "Le Symbolique" (1959). His presencecan only be understood at a second degree of otherness, The verb paraballo, with its derivatives, has which iherefore situateshim in a position of mediation in relation to my a similar network of "to own doubling, in relation to my division from myself as from a counterPart rncanings: hold out as baitr" "throw towardsr" "set besider"..entrust ("L'Instancede la lettre" [1957],P.77). r{1," "approachr" "rneetr" "cross overr" "go by searttand, in the middle vr>ice,"to deceive." Various derivatives 80This passageabounds in allusions to the Greek terms from which have the senseof "thrown to or llcsides,""venturesomer" parole ,y*bole are derived. Although etymologies are notoriously "deceitful." ^ni It is worth false friends and although they are often abused,a few referencesmay remarking that "Danaoi" echoes the network of words rlcrivcclfrorn clarify Lacan's apparent intent. thc r

rhat I deliberately orient my conception of Language; its function as ex- sents a universal trait of human thought" (Les Structures llimentaires pression, as far as I know, was mentioned only once in my report. parent€ 613). de la [1949]'P. Let me therefore say precisely what Language signifies in what it com- into Houailou in 1922. Leenhardt had translated the New Testament rnunicates: it is neither signal, nor sign, nor even sign of the thing inso- lar as the thing is an exterior reality. The relation between signifier and 81Compare the following: signified is entirely enclosed in the order of Language itself, which com- The signal does nor go beyond the level of. communicetion: its function pletely conditions its two terms. signification, the- anticipa' Let us examine the term signifier first of all. It is by a set is to be f,erceived,without entailing a search{or constituted *.rr"ge offering only a restricted amount of free play, of a of material elements linked by a structure of which I shall indicate presently tion of it, -presen.. binary type: the ot abience, affirmation or negation' positive 9r the extent to which it is simple in its elements, or even where one can situate negative'(for.*"*ple, the password,a red light,.the tilt light on a pinball its point of origin. But, even if I have to pass for a materialist, it is on the *".hirr., a white nag) (Ro*l"to, "Le Symbolique" [1959], p' 226)' fact that it is a question of material that I shall insist 6rst of all, and in order to emphasize, in this question of locus which we are discussing, the 82 English in the original. place occupied by this material. This is with the sole purpose of dcstroying the mirage which by a process of elimination seems to assign to the human 83English in the original. lrrain the locus of the phenomenon of language. Well, where could it be thenl 8aEnglish in the original. Replying for the signifier: 'everywhere else.' [Lacan then mentions rnodern communication theory which has given to the reduction of the 85Compare the following: signifier into nonsignifying units (Hartley units) the "scientific" status of use in industryr and then to the "frozen words" of Rabelais, which anticipate is synchronic structure of the The first network, that of the signifier, the the "two pounds or so of signifier" rolled up in the recorder in front of him.] takes on in it its exact usage material of Language insofar as each element Let us move on to the signified. If it is not the thing, as I told you, what principle of distribution which as being difieren"tfr"om the others; this is the is it thenl Precisely the sense.The discourse which I am delivering to you language at its different alone rfgrrl^t.s the function of the elementsof the here , . is concerned with an experience cornmon to all of us, but you will compound expressionsof levels, fiom the phonemic pair of oppositions to cstimate its value insofar as it communicates to you the sense of that ex- its stableforms. which the task of th. most hod.tr, tii."rch is to disengage perience, and not the experience itself is the diachronic sel of con' The secondnetwork, that of the signified, And this sense, where is itl The correct reply here, 'nowherer' if opposed historically the- first, in cretely pronounced discourses,which set reacts 9n -when it is a question of the signified-to the correct reply that suited the the latter governs the- paths of the th. s"rrr. way in which the structure of signifier, will not disappoint my questioner any the less, if he expecred in it of signifrcationwhich establishes second.Here what dominates is the unity something approaching the 'denomination of things.' For, besides the fact indication of the Real, but al- itself as ncver becoming resolvedinto a pure that no 'part of speech' has the privilege of such a function, contrary to the is to say that if the significa- ways as referring to an"othe,signification. This grammatical appcarances which attribute this function to the substantive, their set by enveloping it tions 'grasp' the"things, it is only by-web constituting meaning is never capable of being sensed except in the uniqueness of the this set enough to in the" signifier; ih", if thiir always covers signification developed by the discourse. "tr6r not a signification of any- overfow ir, it is becausethe set of the signifier is Thus it is that interhuman communication is always information on in- signal, but always dia- thing. This point confirms that l-anguage is never formationr put to the test of a community of Language, a numbering and p'23')' lecticat*ou.*.nt ("La Chosefreudienne" [1956], a perfecting of the target which will surround the obiects, themselves born of 'What link do you make,' I heard myself asked,'betwecn that instrument the concurrence of a primordial rivalry. No doubt thar discourse of Language,whose given data man must acceptevery bit-as as those the is concerned with things. It is in fact in this --":h encounter that from of the R."1, and thai grounding function which you say is the function of realities they become things. It is so true that the word is not the sign of the the Word insofar as iiconstitutes the subject in an intersubiectiverelation?' thing, that the word tends to become the thing itself. llut it is I reply: in making Language the intermediary in which to set the analytic only insofar as it abandons the sense cxperi'errccto rights] it is noi the senseof means implied by this term that If someone should oppose me with the traditional view that it is the rle{inition gives I emphasize,but that of locus that a word its meaning, I would not say no: after all it was not I who said that every word prcsupF)scsby its use the cntire dis- I add that it is from the point of view of the notion of communication 124 Norts ro pAGEs 37-38 125 NorEs ro pAcEs 3U39

course of thc dictionary . . -or even that of 87 .. all the texts of a given lan- Compare the following: guage (Actcs, pp. 2aZ l. . . . Man will soon.no ronger 80"L'ordre appear [in the human sciences] in any symbolique"or "le symbolique"is to be distinguishedfrom serious-wayexcePt in the techniqueswhere-he is'taken into account,like so "la symbolique"(die Symbotift): Inany head of cattle; in other words, he would soon be more effectively cffacedin thc human sciencesthan nature has been in the physical sciences, I* ymbolique, descriptive'science,' enumerates signs and if . comparesthem psychoanalystsdid not know how to brint to in order to constitutethe keys to -we a the fore what in his dreams, to rnake Inventoriesof myths, to b.3.g is-dependentonly upon the Symbolic. arrange the repertoriesof esthetic paradoxi- qualities, to ser up heraldries. The fact remains that.ihe Symbolic is it neglects ,,Le something that cannor possibly be :il^ltl the symbol, in its characters(Rosoiato, symbolique" reified way all-any i" 1'y .at more than we *Lr. of doing io' ro, th" [1959],p.226). seriesof whole numbers or the notion of a mathematical."p..6tior (Actes, p.2a5). The symbol is that transmuted - sign ["giving accessto le symbolique,', Rosolato's which comprises 88 _note] ntt*or4 oi relations bet*.Jn signifiers "A stone, two houses,three ruins, four ditchdiggers, and signifieds, ^ a garden, some themselves,by this fact, plurivalent. This entails the con- flowers, a raccoon." .,some-thing," sequencethat thc Symbolic does not taki into account nor doesit represent(Ibid., t'cf. Hegel phenomenology, p.ZZ5). on language in the passim; for example, (in the French translation): I, 83-86, 9l-92; tt, ole., ci The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), lg4ff., 242fr.. erc.; standard Edition, v, 350- ;rnd also Kojlve's Introdacrion d ra recture de Heger (rg4i), especiaily 404, where the rnarerial added from 1909 to lgz5, mainly as a result of pp.364fr. the infuence o{ Stekel, setsforth Freud's theory of a fixed symbolic code. e0That is, the Compare the following: Fort! Da! where a child's (phonemic) oppositiono/A was relatedby Freud to the presenceand absenceof p.rrorm and things, The conceptsof psychoanalysisare to be grasped in a 6eld of Language, Beyond the PleasurePrinciple (1920), standard Edition, and its domain cxtendsto the xv[I, 14_17. point that a f,tn.tion used as an apparat,r,Lf (Seealso note 183.) fonclion-d'appareil], a mirage of consciousness,a ,.g*.rrt of {isplay -fune The allusion to the chin ese the or of its image, a social phenimenon, a metamorphosi"sof the ftuta which follows is presumablybased -body rn the fact that .,o-oo-o,, symbolsthemselvcs can serveas signiiying material for what th-eurr.onscious what the child actually urreredwas an (dis- subjecthas to signify, appearance)followed by a,,da,'(return). This is the essentialorder in which psychoanalysis is situated, and I el The French shall call ir henceforththe symbolic order ('Actes,p. zoo;. text readsas follows: Par ce qui ne prend-golpr que d'6trela It remains ro say that, apart from the caseof living species,from which traced'un ncant et dont re sup- port ddslors ne peut s'alt6r.rr1. concept, Aristotle's logic takes its support the] Real, and *troi. link sauvantla dur6ede ce prrr., [in to nomina- cngendre la chose. lui t: already sufficiently indicated :io-" in the Book of Genesis,all reification . . c'cst le monde des mots qui cr6e lchosifcationf entails a confusion between the Symbolic anj thc Rcal, an le monde des choses d,abord confondues dans I'hic ct error we must know how to correct. nunc du toui en devenir, en donnant son €tre concret i leur essence'et sa place partout so'calledphysical scienceshave guarded against this i ce qui est de toujours - Tlt. error in radical fashion by reducing the Symbolic to the functioi of a tool with Compare: which to "No doubt that the discourseis concernedwith things. carve up the Real-no doubt with a successwhich, It on this principle, takcs is in fact in this encounter that from realities on more-obviously every day thc rcnunciation they become things" which it entails of any knowl- (Actes,p.2a\. edgeof being or even of the existent,however much l'6tant might ,o etymology-in any caseentirely .pilysical'"rrr*., oe lfre forgotten-of the t.r- [Srior: "An eternal possession."Thucydides,I, xxii: ,,My "growr" "begetr"tte-ld, dasein.f history has been (Actcs, p. Z+S). r:omlloscdto be an evcrlastingpossession,not the showpieceof an hour." 126 Norts ro PAcEs 394L 127 NorEs ro PAcEs4142

es This proverb is the epigraph to Claude L€vi-Strauss, Les Structures invocations;absolutely unthinkable if the 'name of the father' doesnot have il*mentaires de la parenti (1949), which is alluded to more directly in that signifying value which condenses,orients, and polarizes in its direction a wholc seriesof significationswhich are on a number of extremely diverse the two sentences that follow. olanes(p.ga). salnL947, himself on the Oedipus complex as follows: Lacan expressed Certain primitive societies, against all the evidence, do not attribute I have often taken a stand against the risky way in which Freud inter- procreation to the father. But, says Lacan, whether they do or not is of preted sociologically the capital discovery for the human mind that we owe no significant importance, the to him [in the discovery of the Oedipus complex]. I do not think that . . . since, if the symbolic context requires it, paternity nonetheless Oedipus complex appeared with the origin of man (if indeed it is not com- will be attributed to the fact that the woman met a spirit at some fountain or pletely senselessto try to write the history of that moment), but rather at somerock in which he is supposedto live. the dawn of history, of 'historical' history, at the limit of 'ethnographic' This is certainly what demonstratesthat the attribution of procreation to cultures. Obviously the Oedipgs compl.ex can appear only in the patriarchal the father can only be the eflect of a pure signifier, of form of the institution of the family-but it has a no less incontestable value a recognirion, not of the real father, but of what religion as a threshold, and I am convinced that in those cultures which exclude it, has taught us to invoke as the Name- of-the-Father. its function must be or have been fulfilled by initiation experiences, as There's no need of a signifier, ethnology in any case still permits us to see this fact today, and the value of course, to be a father, no more than there is to be dead, but withour the signifier of the Oedipus complex as a closing-off of a psychic cycle results from the no one would ever know any- thing at all about either of these two statesof being ("Traitement possible fact that it represents the family situation, insofar as by its institution this de la psychose" p.24). situation marks the intersection, in the cultural sphere, of the biological [1958], and the social ("Propos sur la causalitdpsychique" [1950], p.47). It is this article, by way of a detailed commentary on Schreber'sbook, which elaborates the e5Compare the following: concept of Verwcrfung, of "the hole hollowed out in the field of the signifier by the foreclusion of the Name-of-the-Father" For where on earth would one situate the determinations of the unconscious (p. 31), and its relationship to the symbolic father of. Totcrn and Taboo if it is not in those nominal cadres in which marriage ties and kinship are (rer2-13). always grounded for the speaking being that we are, in those laws of the of discourse with s7 Word where lineages found their right, in this universe Tiers Liure,iii, iv; Quart liare,ix. how would one apprehend which these laws mingle their traditionsl And Debts, says Panurge, are "the connecting link between Earth and the analytical conficts and their Oedipean prototype outside the engage- Heaven, the unique mainstay of the human race; one, I believe,without ments which have 6xed, long before the subiect came into the world, not which all mankind only his destiny but his identity itself ? (Actes, p.205.) would speedily perish;" they are "the great soul of the universe." e6 plre \s in the later theoretical What is meant by te nom du elaborated e8 Notably in his "Introduction ) I'oeuvre Marcel Mauss" (1950), article on psychosis (1958), especially pp. 22-24. "The name of the de where he compares the notion of mana to the concept of the zero- father" is the signifier of "the function of the father," and the question phoneme introduced into phonology by Roman of the sense in which these terms are to be taken is briefly dealt with in Jakobson. Concepts like that of mana devolve "La Psychanalyse et son enseignement" (1957). The signifier is not only from what Ldvi-Strauss conceives of as an "overabundanceof signifier" in "to be taken au pied dc la lettre, it rs the letter." relation to the actual signifieds (that is, the universe, the cosmos) which are available to human "rynt- . . . The incidence of the signifier over the signified is something com- bolic thought." Thus a concept like mana seeksto fulfil the function of the level of the B, A, Ba of the analyst's experiencc. pletely sensible at rcpresentingall this "floating signifier," and consequentlyall the antin- Consider for instance the function of the father; this function is absolutcly omics ancl contradictionsinvolvcd-since mana may in fact mean al- unthinkable in this experienceif the signifier which is its term is not brought out in it: this signifier is thc name of thc fathcr, rs ot)c says in rcligiotrs t'rlostarrything. Mauss'scclcllrutctl Essaisur le tlon depends upon the 129 NorEs ro PAGEs42-43 128 NorEs ro PAcE42

les cyclesdu langage, quand la confusion des langues s'en m€le et que les notion of. hau or mana as the raison d'€tre of the symbolic exchange ordres se contrarient dans les d€chirementsde I'oeuvre universelle. lies in the act or transmissionof mana or hau (whose prime importance Mais ce d6sir lui-m€me, pour €tre satisfait dans I'homme, exige d'6tre to in- rather than in any profit or advantage): and L6vi-strauss seeks reconnu,par I'accordde la parole ou par la lutte de prestige,dans le symbole terpret this mysterious anthropological entity in scientific terms as ou dansI'imaginaire. something like an algebraic symbol, representing an "indeterminate L'enjeu d'une psychanalyseest l'avtnementdans le suiet du peu de r€alitd des conflits symboliques et des fixations value of signification,"in the sameway as the zero-phonemeis one whose que ce disir y soutient au regard imaginaires comme moyen de leur accord, et notre voie est l'exp€rience function is simply to be opposedto all other phonemes,without entailing intersubiectiveoil ce d€sir se fait reconnaitre. any constant phonetic or differential value in itself. )ust as the function 102 of the zero-phoneme is also to exist in opposition to the absence of Further to Lichtenberg's aphorism cited by Lacan in note s, see the phonemes, rn"rr" is viewed by L6vi-strauss as a significative symbol "Propos sur la causalit6psychique" (1950), which examines what Lacan "paranoiac up substanceof his doctoral empty of meaning in itself, but therefore capable of taking on any mean- calls knowledge." Summing the "Romantic" paranoiac ing required. The function of mana is therefore to 6ll a gap between thesis ot 1932,Lacan refers to that analysis of a patient follows: signifier and signified at whatever level a lack of adequation between as "the reflexion tfuemis revealed.For the native, malla is simply subiective In this way I sought to focus on psychosisin its relationship with the of the exigenciesof a totality which he cannot perceive." Mana is a totality of the biographical antecedentsof the patient, with the totality of categoryof thought rather than a category of the Real; it fulfils for the her intentions, avowed or not, and, finally, with the totality of the motives, native rhe role of explanation that modern sciencefulfils for us. On this perccived or not, which came out of the contemporary situation of. her delusion-that is, as the title of my thesis indicates, psychosisin its re- view, like the zero-phoneme,mana is pure form without specificcontent' lationshipswith the personality. with the valtte of zero (pp. xliv-l). pure symbol, a symbol Out of this, it seemsto me, and from the very first, there emergesthe general how we under- so"By flesh and blood," an allusion to an anthropological binary op- structure of. miconnaissance.But we must be careful stand this. position brought our by L6vi-Strauss in Les Strercturestltmentaires de Certainly it can be said that the madman thinks he is other than he is, parentt (1949). .la a view expressedin the remark about 'those who think themselvesarrayed in gold and purple' by which Descartesrevealed himself conforming with 10oThe French text readsas follows: the most anecdotal of stories about madmen, and a view with which an Les symbolesenveloppenr en effet la vie de I'homme d'un r€seausi total authority on the subject contents himself-that is to say, the author for qu'ils conjoignen, qu'il vienne au monde ceux qui vont I'engendrer whom the concept of.'Bouarysrn€,'adapted to the measureof his sympathy 'par I'os ., p"r la "utttichair,' qu'ils apportent I sa naissanceavec les dons des for the mentallyill, was the key to paranoia. donnent .rtr.r, sinon avecdes dons des fdes,le dessinde sa destin€e,qu'ils But besidesthe fact that Gaultier's theory fof. Bouarysmef concernsone les mots qui le feront fidble ou rtn6,gat,la loi des actes qui le suivront of the most normal relationshipsof the human personality-his ideals-it is jusqueJi m€meoil il n'estPas encore et au deli de sa mort m€me,et que Par worth adding that if a man who believeshe's a king is mad, a king who eux-sa fin trouve son sensdans le iugement dernier oil le verbe absout son believeshe's a king is no lessso (pp. 37-38). 6tre ou le condamne-sauf i atteindre i la r6alisationsublective de I'ttre- be found in pour-la'mort. For Lacan, the Language "without dialectic" is to schizophrenic or psychotic language, where a "regression" to treating is normally rendered in English as The Heideggerian Sein-zum-Tode words like things leaves the speaker in the grip of an uncontrollable " Being-towards-death." shifting between opposites in which binary differential elements (for ! s 101The French text readsas follows: example, inside, outside; good, bad; O, A) are not "anchored" to the * " points dc capiton" supposedby Lacan's theory of the "paternal meta- s'an€antiraitle vivant, si le ddsir ne prdservait ls Servitudeet grandeuroi 1:i il phor." LIis discourscis inconrprchcnsiblc;for him all the Symbolic is sa part dans lei interf6renceset les battementsque font convergersur lui 130 NorEs ro PAGE43 I3I NorEs ro prcz 44

Real, in Lacan's terms, or in other words, there has been a Verwerlung 10?Maia, associatedby the Romans with an old Italian earth goddess, (foreclusion) of the Symbolic. The thing presentations of the language is derived from the Greek for "O mother eafthr" whence it came to of the unconscious (see note 66) have become consciousfor him; there is mean "motherr" "nurser" "grandmotherr" "midwifer" eventually emcrging no dialectic, no "dia-logos," becausehis discourse,in Lacan's view, is as mamtna. Voile is presumably to be read in thc sense of the Latin composed of nothing but words, rather than of the Word. This is the uelam, sornetimes used in distinctions between female clothing and the "obstacleto transference"in certain typesof psychosis. toga. Speakingof the Schrebercase and of his theory of psychosisas founded "Different from the perverse subiect who clasps thc rag that the Word on "a primordial deficiencyof the signifier" (the conceptof Verarcrfung), has permitted him to tear from the veil of Maia, to make of it the obiect Lacan goeson to say: of his satisfaction,the neurotic is the question articulated on what is beyond the veil" ("I- Psychanalyseer son enseignement" p. The Other as the seatof the Word and guarantor of Truth is compensated ll957l, for in psychosisby the other; it is the suppressionof the duality betweenthe 89). (Cf. Freud: "Fetishism" [1927), Standard Edition, XXl, 152-57.) symbolicOther and the other who is an Imaginary partner that causesthe See also the discussionof fetishism and the veil in the seminar of psychoticsuch difficulty in maintaining himself in the human Real, that is |anuary-February 1957.In the Hindu writers, of course,the veil of Maya to say in a Real which is symbolic(Seminar of November,1957rp.293). conceals"the illusion to which this whole world is due," an illusion "be- r03Ldvi-strauss has brought out the notion that the myth, like the gotten of entrenched selfhood," as Whorf once put it. discourseof the "they" (Gerede) in Heidegger, speaksitself through the On the symptom and the signifier, see "L'instance de la lettre" (1957) z has subject-that is, the subjectis being spoken by the myth. Sartre taken . . . If the symptom is a metaphor, it is not a metaphor to say so, no up the idea again in his analysisof Flaubert's almost paranoid horror of more than it is to say that man's desireis a metonymy. For the symptom ,r a the bdtise of the id€e regue, where "one is spoken rather than speaking," metaphor,whether it be admitted or not, iust as desirelr a metonymy,even in "La consciencede classechez Flaubert" (Part lI), Temps Modernes, if man mocksthe notion that it is so. . . . Nothing of value has so far been No. 241 (fune, 1966),pp.2113-153. articulatedconcerning what links the metaphor to the questionof being and metonymy to lack of being . . . 104Cf. Lacan's analysisof the Wolf Man's rejection (Verwerfung) of. (p. el). castration "in the senseof repression"in the reply to Hyppolite's com- In the Sartrean terminology, "lack of being" (manque d'€tre) is the mentary on the Verneinung (1956). ontological absence which provides the possibility of the pour-soi's de- 105Thefollowing note was kindly supplied by jean Hyppolite: sire: "For the pour-soi is described ontologically as maflque d'€tre, and the possible belongs to the pour-soi as athat is tacfring to it." "Liberty is 'Man is the sick animal, or sicknessis the becomingof the subject': all the concrete rnode of being of the lack of being Man is funda- thesetexts (taken up again by Nietzsche) are to be found in Hegel's work mentally desire of being . . . desire is a lack . . . ." "And the at fena (Realphilosophie,ed. Hoffmeister, vol. II, pp. 167-75) and eventually [since] in the Encyclopedia,towards the end of the section on the philosophy of being lacking to the pour+oi is the en-soi" (L'Etre et le Nfunt [Paris: nature (ed. Lanson, ft371 to fi376). If the Phcnotnenologydoes not ex- Gallimard ,19431,p. 652). plicitly contain this view of illness,the same processis very much in the 108 spirit of Hegel'sremarks on death (the master-slavedialectic, and so forth). The palimpsest is a piece of parchment or other writing material from which the writing has been partially or completely erased (literally: See also Kojlve's Introduction d la lecture de Hegel (L947), pp. 553fI. "scraped again") to make way for a new text. This is perhaps to be 106 Compare: "The function of the stade du miroir establishesitself vierved in the light of Freud's discussionof rememoration and memory for me . . as a specialcase of the function of the imago, which is to irr "A Note on the Mystic Writing Pad" (1925), Standard Edition, XIX, establisha relation of the organisnr to its reality-or, as it is said, of thc 227-32. Innenuelt to the Umutelt" ("Le Stade du rniroir" [1949], p. 452). Iltrt sccalso tltc met:tphorof the pllirnpscst(common in the nineteenth 132 NorEs ro PAcE44 133 NorEs ro pten 44 century) applied to the dream by )ames Sully (1893), quoted by Freud from the translation of the Scienza Nuoaa by Thomas Bergin and Max in an approving note added to the Traumdeutung in 1914, Standard Fisch [Anchor Books,New York: 1961].) Edition,IV, p. L35,note2, These passages from Vico illustrate l-acan's cryptic note v about Reich's theory of the protective "character armor" 100This passageseems to echo Vico's Scienza Nuoua (1725), where of the neurotic, from which there arises "character resistances" (as Vico examines what he calls Poetic Wisdom: "[This] second-kind of opposed to syrnptom re- sistances):". . . Reich made only one mistake in his character speech,corresponding to the age of heroes, was said by the Egyptians analysis: What he called'armor' (character armor) and treated as such is to have been spoken by symbols. To these may be reduced the heroic only an armorial bearing. After the treatment, the subject keeps the emblems, which must have been the mute comparisonswhich Homer weight of the arms nature gave him; all he has done is to erase the blazon calls semata (the signs in which the heroes wrote). In consequence or bearings" ("Variantes de la cure-type" Ecrits, p.3a\. they must have been metaphors, images, similitudes, or comparisons, [1955J, 110 which, having passedinto articulate speech,supplied all the resourcesof This linguistic phenomenon is mendoned again by Lacan in dealing poetic expression"(II, iv). The first language, corresponding to the age with the lch. of Freud's "'wo es war soll Ich werden," deformed by the of the gods when men believed themselves governed by divinities, aus- French translators into "Le rnoi doit diloger le ga" and originally rendered pices, and oracles,was "a mute language of signs and physical objects in English by "Where the id was rhere the ego shall be" (the definite having natural relations to the ideas they wished to express" ('Idea of articles have since been dropped-the id is das Er and the ego das lch- the Work'), it was a "hieroglyphic" language, "with natural significa- see the Neat Introductory Lectures ll933f, Standard Editioa, XXII, g0). tions" (II, iv). The third language, corresponding to the age of men, The reader should refer to "La Chose freudienne" (1956), pp. 237-38, the age of equality, is a language "using words agreed on by the people, for the development of Lacan's "translation" and its iustificadon as: "L) a language of which they are the absolute lords" (unlike the secret oil c'6taitr p€ut-on dire, li oil s'itait, voudrions-nousfaire qu'on entendit, languagesof the priests nobles the stages); he calls the and of earlier it c'est mon devoir que ie vienne ) 6tre." The created verb s'€tre being used "epistolary or vulgar language"; its purpose is the communication neces- to exPress"absolute subjectivity insofar as Freud properly discovered it saryin ordinary life; it consistsof words which are arbitrary signs. in its radical ex-cenrriciryr" the English would be approximately .,,There Part of Vico's demonstration, which is too repetitive, and com- diffuse, where ri was,' one might say, 'where es was an absolute subject,' I plicated to be reproducedhere, is to the insignia, em- derive origins of all would like it understood,'it is my duty that / come to be."'For Lacan it blems, blazons, markers, and coats of arms, through a repeated seriesof would seem that since "sollr" "vienner" and "come" can each be read as etymologies, from his theory of the three languages and his theory of either first or third person verb forms, they are not necessarilyin agree- signs,based upon the idea of the necessiryof marking ownership of prop- ment with the moi qui parle. erty by recognizable signs. These views are developed under the head- see also the seminar of November, 1958-]anuary, \959, p. 266, aod ing: "Corollaries concerning the Origins of Languages and Letters; and, "L'rnstance de Ia lettre" (1957), p.76, where I-acan adds: "This aim is Therein, the Origins of Hieroglyphics, Laws, Names, Family Arms, one of reintegration and of accord, I would say, one of reconciliation Medals, and Money; and Hence of the First Language and Literature of (Versdhnuflg)." The problem of this reconciliation is perhaps as cenrral the Natural Law of the Gentes." In Book IV, Section v, he summarizes: for Freud as it is for Hegel, but in the context of analysis,it is an essen- "The first hieroglyphic language] was a divine mental language by [the tially asymptotic return to "unity" (see note ll3). Cf. Hegel on recon- mute religious acts or divine ceremonies. . . . The second fthe symbolic ciliation: language] was by heroic blazonings, with which arms are made to The promiseof reconciliation Wort dcr Vers\hnangl speak The third fthe epistolary language] is by articulate speech, fdas is the objectively- existing spirit which contemplates the which is used by all nations today." (The above quotations are taken fanschautf pure Knowledge-of itseif as universalessence in its counterpartfGegentcil), ln the pure Knowledgeof 134 NorEs ro PAcEs 44-45 135 Notns ro pAcEs45-46 self as indiaiduality lEinzclheitl which is absolutely within itself-a recipro- not recognize what it sees), Lacan speaks of this fundamental "onto- cal recognition which is the Absolutc Spit'it (Phtinomenologie, p. 471; logical structure of the human world" as follows: Ph|nominologie, II, 198). It suffices to comprehend the stade du miroir as an identification in the Lacan's constant insistence upon a number of radical translations of full senseof the term in analysis-that is, the transformation produced in this aphorism of Freud's results in part from the fact that in the passage the subjectwhen he assumesan image . . . . in question Freud is discussing the strengthening of the ego. The joyful assumption of his specular image by a being still unable to control his motor functions and still 111 dependenton his *otli, to nurse him, For the moi of modern man: as is the inlans at this stage,therefore seems to me to reveal in an exemplary situation the symbolic matrix in which the precipitates One cannot insist too heavily in fact on the correlation which links psy- 1e itself in a pri- mordial form, beforeit becomesobjectified in the di.l..ii. chological obiectifrcation to the growing dominance that the function of of the identification with the other, and beforeLanguage restoresto it in the universalits function the moi has taken on in the lived experience of modern man, beginning as subject. from a set of sociotechnological and dialectical conjunctures, whose cultural 'This primordial form would probably be best designatedas je-id6al, Gestalt is visibly constituted by the beginning of the seventeenth century it I wished to fit it into the usual terminology of psychoanalysis, (Actes, p. 208). in the sense that it would also be the root stock oi r..orrd.ry ideniifications, whose For the belle dme: functions of libidinal normalization we recognize in this term. But the important point is that this form situatesthe instance of the moi, from be- One might . . . remark that every verbal denunciation of a disorder par- fore its social determination, in a fictional line, eternally irreducible for the ticipates in the disorder against which it protests, in the sense that the single individual-or rather, an instancewhich will oniy asymptoticallyre- disorder has been set up by its discourse. Hegel, in the dialectic of the join_thebecoming of the subject,whatever may be the successof tire dialectical bellc d.me, had already shown that this remark is tautologous only if the synthesesby which the subject is to resolveas je his discordancewith his tauto-ontic eflect in which it is rooted is not recognized-that is to say that own reality ("L. Stadedu miroir,, ll949J, p. a50). being is primary in the disorder on which rhe belle dtne lives in all the Lacan's translation senses(including the economic sense) which can be found in the expression, of "Ich" by "j." had been dropped by 1953. in denouncing the disorder, the bellc 6me rt4 ('LJD "enough to live on," and that mur de langage."See note 124. proceeds only to the still misconstrued mediation of himself by the conduct : Compare the early Freud on the technique of following the patient's through which he subsistson it ("La Chose freudienne" [1956], p.235). associationspast his resistances:"It is at first as though we were standing See: Phdnorndnologie, II, 168ff. (Phiinomenologie, pp. 460tr.), and before a wall which shuts out every prospect prevenrs us from "Phlnomlnologie "nd J. Hyppolite, Genlse et structure de la de I'Esprit" having any idea whether there is anything behind it, and if so, whar,, (1946),rr,495fr. ("Psychotherapy of Hysteria" [1895], standard Edition, lr, 2g3). 115 At the time of the delivery of the Discours the "elsewhere" mentioned For example, Phinominologie, I, 268fr (phrinomenologie pp. I , in the text was the "Propos sur la causalit6psychique" (1947), where the .i 237fr.). !t example of the belle dmc is the Alceste of Moliire's Le Misanthrope. 116 fi "Men are so necessarilymad that it would be being mad by another 112 kind of madness not Used without a modifier, sciencehas of course a much wider con- ro be mad" (pens6es, Brunschvicq ed. #414 notation than the English 'rssissqs"-for example, "kuowledger" "learn- [Pliiade ed. S18a]). iag." Compare the following: For a characteristicwhich is 113In the article on the stade du. miroir, writing of the child's expe' much more decisive for the reality which the subjectconfers on thesephenomena madness],than the sensorality rience of himself when placed in front of a mirror (Kohler's Aha-Er- [of which he experiencesby them or the beliei which he aita.h.s to rhem, is that lebnis),which is quite dilTerentfrom thar of the chiml)rnzcc (which docs all of thent,whatcvcr thcy arc-hallucinations,interpretations, intuitions, and 136 NorEs ro PAGEs4G47 Il7 NorEs ro pAGEs4849

l20Notably with whatever extraneousness and strangeness they are lived by him-these in Ldvi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," in: him into two, respond phenomena are aimed at him personally: they split MYTH: A Symposium, lournal ol Ameican FolQlore, Vol. 78, No. 27Q in him as he identifies them, interrogates them' pro- to him, echo him, read (oct.-Dec., 1955), pp. 428-44 (republished with modifications in his vokes them, and deciphers them. And when the point comes where he Anthropologie Structurale The myrheme is described and'em- lacks any further way of expr:ssing them, his perplexity reveals to us ll958l. ^ ployed by Livi-strauss as a "gross quesrioning b€ance within him: in other words, madness is lived wholly in constitutive element" of the myth-that the register of meaning. is, an element "higher" than the morpheme or the semanterne in lan- The" moving interest which madness arouses gives a first reply to the guage, and one to be analyzed in its occurrence within "bundles of re- value of the phenomenon of question I proposed concerning the human lations" at the sentencelevel. (The mytheme is more or less equivalent madness. e"a itt metaphysical import is revealed in the fact that the phe- to the useof "concept" in the general sense.) nomenon of madness is not separable from the problem of signification for L6vi-Strauss'spoint is that the view being in general-that is, from the problem of Language for man ("Propos of myth as having some sort of "natural," "symbolic," "archetypal" sur la causaliti psychique" [1950], p.34). or meaning (in the ]ungian sense) is a view still on the level of the investigationsof the ancient philosophers For the risk of madness can be measured by the very attractiveness of into the "natural" relationship between identifications,in which man commits at one and the same time his Truth sound and sense in language and his being. (Plato's Cratylus, for instance, which ends with a non tiquet)-a rela- Madness is therefore far from being the contingent fact of the fragilities tionship which many poets, theorists of synaesthesia,and linguists (Ro- open fault of his organism; it is the permanent virtuality of an lfaillcl man Jakobson, for example) agree exists at the level of the affective in his essence. Power of phonemes. (Mallarmi complains that is "dark" and nuit is Madnessis far from being an 'insult' to liberty: it is her most faithful iour "light" in French.) companion,it follows her movementlike a shadow. And the being of man not only cannot be understoodwithout madness, obviously for all arcrds the relarionship is clearly arbitrary, how- if it did not carry madnesswithin it ever. Thus Ldvi-Srrauss but it would ttoi b. the being of man claims as a working hypothesis that (l) .the asthe limit of its liberty (Ibid., p. 41). meaning of the myth does not reside in the isolated elemenrs which 11?Chapter V, in particular, of Group Psychologyand the Analysis of make it up, but "only in the way these elements are combined," (2) that the Ego (1921), Standard Edition, XVIU. myth, although it is language, has specific propertie$, which (3) are "above the ordinary linguistic level" becausethey are "more complex 1r8 "guidancer" as in the religious senseof "direction de con- That is, than those to be found in any kind of linguistic expression." sciences." See also the intervention of Lacan in the discussion following L,ivi- llesee: Strauss'slecture: "Sur fakobson and Halle, "Phonology and Phonetics" (1955). Mor- les rapports entre la mythologie et le rituel" (1956), phemes, the ultimate constituents of language endowed with meaning, pp. 113-18. are composedof syllableswhich are in turn composed of sequencesof The application of this type of structural analysis (but at a much less phonemes.Phonemes are bundles of concurrent distinctive features (for formal and less methodological level) can be seen in Lacan's use of the example,tone, force, quantity, and the twelve inherent binary oppositions elementsof the oedipus complex in analysisof a myth. See: "Le Mythe of qualities like grave/acute,voiced/voiceless, and so forth), these last individual du ndvrosi" (1953) and the seminars on "La Relation d'objet being the ultimate components of language (equivalent to Saussure's et les structures freudiennes." "no singlenessof reference" r21The "6l6ments diff6rentiels"). A phoneme has French text readsas follows: (Sapir). All phonemes"denote nothing but mere otherness" (P. 11). Si ces deux exemplesse llvcnt, pour nous des champs "This lack of individual denotation setsapart the distinctive features,and les plus contrast6s ;i dans le concret: ie,r toujours plus loisible de la loi mathdmatique, front their combinations into phonemes, from all other linguistic uttits" d'airain de I'exploitationcapitaliste, c'€st que, pour nous paraitre partir de (Ibid.). loin, leurs effetsviennent ) constituernotre subsistancc,et iustementde s'y 119 NorEs ro PAGES53-56 Il8 NorEs ro PAcEs49-53

lute incarnate if he it. only becomes croiseren un double renversement:la sciencela plus subiectiveayant forg€ Knowledge, Wisdom, ftnows The Logos flesh,only becomesMan, on of wanting to and being able to dic." une rialiti nouvelle,la tinlbre du Partage social s'armant d'un symbole cpndition agissant. 126Standard Edition2, X, 16748. The word translated "pleasure" is There is an allusion, apparently, to Lassalle's loi d'airaia, the iron law jouissance in the French. The "clarifications" mentioned later in this of wages. sentenceoccur on pp. L75-78.This paragraph was slightly modified in 1966. 122 727 ". . . tha, faugustl uoice ln "The Psychotherapy of. Flysteria" (1895), Standard Edition, Il, llnows hersell uhen she sings 288-92. -Who uoiceol anYone To be no longet the 128 As mwch as the uoice ol the wauesand the arcod's"' That is, in the order of Language. The metaphor of the partition Vallry: La PYthie. and the registre is to be found very frequently in Lacan's writings. This topic is taken up again in the introduction to the commentary on the The whole stanza is as follows: Verneinung (L956). Sagesse Honneur desHommes, Saint LANGAGE' Voici parler une The metaphor of the orchestra score derives its value for Lacan (and Et sonner cette auguste Voix Discours prophttique et Pari. for Livi-Straussl the fact is quand elle sonne see referencein note 120) from the that it Belles chaines en qui s'cngage Qui se connait de read both vertically and horizontally at the same time. b dieu dans la chaire 6gar6, N'€tre plus la uoir Personne ondeset des bois! I llumination, Iar ge ss e ! Tant que des r2eReferring to the statement that, when all is said and done, "neu- r2s Edition' XX, rotics are really incomprehensible," in his analysis of desire in "La In "The Question of Lay Analysis" (1926), Standard Dilection de Ia cure" (1961), 246. Lacan continues: But this is preciselywhat was said has always been said- 124'(Between man and love, there is woman. Between man and woman' long ago, and and yet there are analystswho have only just come round to it, analystswho is a world. Between man and the world' there is a wall"' there are stuck on this. fact. The simpleton calls it the irrational, since he hasn't 125"For I have seen with my own eyes the Cumean Sibyll hanging even realized that Freud's discovery is confirmed fs'hornologue) by Freud's sibyll,' considering it certain, from the very first-a fact which draws the teeth of inside ajar,and wheneverboys askedher:'what do you wish, o our exegesisfrom the start-that the Real is rational, and then by his afrrm- wish to die."'This is the epigraph to The Waste she would reply:'I ing that the rational is real. As a result Freud can articulate the fact that from The Hotlow Men (1925)' Land (Lg22); Lacan has already quoted what presentsitself as unreasonablein desire is an eflect of the passageof There seemsto be a connection between Lacan's choice of this epigraph the rational insofar as it is real-that is to sa/e the passageof Language, trans- on death and Heidegger's commentary on Heraclitus in "Logosr" into the Real, in so far as the rational has already traced its circumvallation there(p. lated by Lacan in La Psychanalyse,| (1956). On p. 75 Heidegger com- 199). wish" but "to be ments on the sense of. a./r€X,(dil

Since the adjectiveHegel usesin the aphorism on the rational and the to let the Other speak" ("L" Psychanalyseet son enseignement" U9571, real from rhePhilosophy ol Right is wirftlicl, it should probably be trans- P.67). (or effectivelyreal), and what is actual lated: "Whar is rational is actual 183The Kierkegaardian repetition is taken up again in the "Sdminaire In the Phenomenologya similar notion (or efiectively real) is rational." sur La lettre aoltC' (1956). Here Lacan links the "compulsion to repeat" phrase "the spiritual Geistigef alone is the effec- i, .*pr.r.ed by the ldas (Wiedcrholungswang) and the death instinct of. Bcyond the Pleasure (Phiinomenologie, p. 24; Phinomtnologie, tively real fdas Wirfttichc)" Pinciple to the necessity of refinding the object originally lost which l, Z3). When linked with Hegel's statements about the relationship be- Freud declared to be the characteristic of the system * in the "Project the spirit, language, and consciousnessat various stagesof the tween for a ScientificPsychology" (1895): Phenomenology-for example: that the "non-mediate Dasein of the spirit is consciousness"(p. 32; I, 31), that "language is the Dasein of the pure Thus it is that Freud takes a position from the very beginning in the two Self as Self" (p. iAZ; II, 69), that "once more we see language as the opposition, which Kierkegaard has taught us about, concerning the notions of existencefounded respectivelyon reminiscenceand on repetition. Dosein of the spirit" a58; II, 184), and that "language is the [non- fu. If Kierkegaard discernsin this opposition, and admirably so, the diflerence which is for others" (ibid.)-it seemsclear mediate] consciousness-of-self betweenthe classicaland modern conceptionsof man, it neverthelessappears are oPen that both his statementand Lacan's application of it to Freud that Freud, by taking aw^y from the human agent-identified with consci- to wide interpretation in relation to Heidegger'sview of the logos and in ousness-the necessityincluded in this repetition, causes thc second con- relation to theories of intersubjectivecommunication. ception to take a decisivestep forward. Since this repetition is a symbolic repetition, the fact becomesestablished as a result that the order of the 180Or processof attaining uiritt. symbol can no longer be conceivedas constituted by man, but rather as cf. Koflve, Introduction i la lecture de Hegel (1947), p.375, n. 1: constitutinghim (p. 2). of Being and ConcePt is a process (Bewe- "For Man the adequation r34". . . qui fassejustice de leur puissanceet viriti des mattres-mots is a result. k is only this 'result of the gung), and truth (Wahrheit) de la cit6." A master word would be, for example, Sqptoxparta. pro..rr' which merits the name of (discursive) 'truth,' for only this 135 processis Logos or Discourse." T'he senseof this passagetakes its support from the je-moi distinc- tion and from the difference between the full Word and the empty 13r Compare the following: Word. "The subject . . . begins the analysisby talking about him[self] with- The discoveryof Freud is that the movement of this dialectic does not simply deterrnine the subiect unbeknownst to him even by the paths of out talkingto you, or by talking to you without talking about him[self]. his miconnaissance-whichHegel had already formulated in the 'cunning of When he can talk to you about him[self], the analysis will be over" principle of the phenomenologYof the spirit-but reason'which is the first ("Introducrion au commentairede Jean Hyppolite" [1956], p.21, n. 1). hittt itt an ctrderwhich can only be ex-centric that this movementcclnstitutes In the resistancedisplayed by the subject'sVerneinuzg, Freud in reletion ro any bringing ro realization of the consciousness-of-self.. . ' (Actes,p. 206). uncovers for us a phenomenon which structures all revelation of Truth in the dialogue. There is the fundamental difficulty encountered by the 132 that Truth will be found again Hegel, says Lacan, is always sure subjectin what he has to say; the most cornrnondifrculty being that which in his final accounting,because it is already there. If the analyst could Freud demonstratedin repression-in other wordsr,that sort of discordance be equally sure of it-which he cannor, becausethe Truth is only there betwecn the signified and the signifier determinedby every censorshipof

well twisted-he would k social origin. The Truth can always be communicatedbetween the lines in the form of the symptom, that is to say' pretty dt tl in this case.That is to say,that whoeverwants to make it heard can always bc able to be neutral in a much more fundamental way. sl have recourseto the techniquewhich is indicated by the identity between is to this Other beyond the other that the analyst cedes place by "It {f thc Truth and the symbolswhich revealit; in other words,he can attainhis nc-uter, treithcr one nor lhc ,:} the neutrality through which he becomes ends l>y rlclibcratelyintroclucing into a text discordanccswhich will corre- hc kcclls silclrt,it is ilt ordcr other of the two who are therc, ancl if 3rt sJrontlcry[)t()graphically to thosc inrposc

The true subject,that is, the subiectof the unconscious,does not proceed would be better described in this context as a theory of. metaphor or differently in the Language of his symptoms which, although it is in below on laftshanalafr.shana(note I77). ^ metonymy. See sensedeciphered by the analyst, is more a processof the subject'scoming 188 (1937), around to addresshimself to him in a more and more consistentway, for Jn his "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" Standard the ever-renewedsatisfaction of our experience.This is in fact what our Edition, XXIII,2l9. experiencehas recognizedin the phenomenonof transference. t3oCompare the following: What the subjict who is speakingsays, however empty his discoursemay be at first, takes on its efiect from the processof approachingto the Word The creative spark of the metaphor does not fly forth from the making- which is realized in his discourse,a coming closer to the Word into which present of two images, that is, of two signifiers equally actualized. It he will fully convert the Truth which his symptoms express" [that is, the surges forth between two signifiers of which one is substituted f.or the paroleuidc will becomea parolcpleincl (Ibid., pp.20-21). other by taking its place in the chain of signifiers, the occulted signifier remaining prcsent becauseof its (metonymic) connection to thc rest of 136"Refoul6." It is perhaps worth remarking at this point on certain the chain ("L'Instancede la lettre" [956], p. 60). lexical distinctions. Psychoanalytic "repression" (Verdriingung) is ren- The supplantation of one signifier by another means that "the one dered by the French refoulement; ripression in French, best translated which is supplanted falls to the level of the signified and as a latent "suppressionr" or "conscious repressionr" corresponds to the Freudian signifier perpetuates at that levcl the interval in which another chain Unterdrilcfrung. There is the further distinction between what Freud of signifiers can be grafted on to it" ("Th€orie du symbolisme" [1959], called the "primal repression" (refowlement originaire : Uruerdriingung) P. 12). to and what he first called Nachdreingen ("after pressure") and referred laoEnglish in the original. as "repression proper" (Standard Edition, XIV, 148), later Nachaer- lal English in the original. driingung (ref oulemcnt aprls coup: "after repression") (Standard Edi- 1a2 tion, XXlllr 227). But for there to be a primal repression, a "mythical" English in the original. earlier stage must be supposed; for Freud, the primal repressionis in- 148ttL'inlitnationde la parole." accessibleto consciousness;moreover, it never was "conscious."Leclaire The relation of need, dernand, and desira and the relation of desire and Laplanche develop their own theory around these distinctions in to the signifier are elaborated throughout the later writings of Lacan, note the relationship between "L'Inconscient" (1961). The reader will and in detail in the unpublished seminars (see the summaries of !. B. these concepts and the theory of deferred action (Nachtrtiglich\eit). Pontalis) : "It must be granted that it is the concrete incidence of the signifier in the submission of. need to demand which, by repressing r3?The early schoolsof poetic theory in the Hindu writers were (1) desire into the position of being faultily recognized, confers on the the school of rasa (sentiment), (2) the school of. iti (style), (3) the unconsciousits order" ("Thiorie du symbolisme" [1959], p. 13). school o[. dhuani, (4) the school of. uaftro(li (beautiful expression), as The question is further delineatedby Leclaire in "L'Obsessionelet son well as the school of.citra (picture), of which only the third is still of d6sir" (1959). After stating that "need aims at the object and is satisfied any importance. by it"; that demand "puts the other as such into question"l that it is Dhaani means "sound, murmur, roarr" even "thunder"l but most im- "that sort of appeal to the Other" whose nature is "to open up on to a portant here are the meanings: "toner" "allusion." Dhaani represents biance and to remain unsatisfied"l and that desire participatesof both, "that power of a word or sentence,"says Apte's dictionary, "by virtue he summarizes: of which it conveys a sense dif{erent from its primary or secondary ii d [Desire] is the necessarymediation betweenthe implacablemechanism meaning, suggestivepower." The doctrine of dhuani, tone' long domi- f,l ilt of ncedand the dizzy solitudeof demand in Hindu poeticsand one of which Abhinavagupta was a leading l;r nant . Dcsire is pnrJrerto the Imaginary; it is to be conceivedas signifcatiue but no doutlt it exponent,is usually called the doctrine of "suggestion," mcdiationol o lundamentalantinony. Thtrs it participatesin nced insofar 144 NorEs ro PAGES6C..{,2 145 NorEs ro PAcEs6247 as it is relatively satisfiedby an object, but only sustainsitself insofar as it ,rsfollows: the action of the Word, as far as the subject means to ground participatesin demand by its perennially unsatisficd quest of the being of himself in it, is such that the sender, in order to communicate his the Other, locusof the signifier (pp.38G90). rnessage,must receive it from the receiver, and all the same he only u4 "Le malentendu du langage-signe." manages to do it by emitting his messagein an inverted form" (Actes, The varied technical use of terms like "sign (signum)r" "sigfif,ns," 1,.248). "signatum.," "signifier (signifcans)r" "signified (signifcatum)r" "signalr" "The unconscious is that discourse of the Other where the subject "indexr" "referentr" "Objectr" and so fOrth readily leads to confusiOn receives,in the inverted form suited to the promise, his own forgotten among different authors and in different domains. message" ("Lr Psychanalyseet son enseignement" [L957], p. 67). point verbally as follows: Lacan has clarified his r48"You would not be looking for me if you had not already found The langage-signeis any languagewhich aims at basing itself only on its me," the words of Christ in Le rnystlre de llsus, Penstes (Brunschvicq thus confuses the significd 'reference'-to the object, any language which cd. f 553[Pl€iade ed. ff736J). with the object,and which consequentlymisses the point that it is constituted lae of signifiers and not of signs-with this further condition that it is nevcr ]akobson also combats the notion of "redundancy" as meaning a question of. a code but rather of. une batterie dc signifents. "something superfluous." See: "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation" in R. A. Brower, ed., On Translation (Cambridge: Flarvard University For Lacan the signifer seems to take over the role of the siga for Press, 1959), pp. 232-39. Saussureor for Ldvi-Strauss.The further Lacan pursues his epistemology There is a distinction to be made between the formal necessityof of the signifier, the less one hears about the signified (Saussure's "con- redundancy uncovered by the theory of information-undifferentiated cept") as such. information being intransmissible as such-and the existential redun- 1a6 English in the original. dancy of speech.Since the theory of communication is concerned with laoThat is, as a code arrived at by convention, such as the alphabet, the transmission of messagesbetween all sorts of senders and receivers or a traffic system,or a spectrograph,and so forth. (for example, man and Nature, man and machine, machine and ma- Further to what follows, see the discussion of von Frisch's discoveries chine), it posesthe possibility of reducing human language to a (theo- (the precise significance of the "wagging dance" was only made public retically) one-to-onerelationship of signifier and signified, or of signifier in 1948, whereas the original observations date from 1923) in E. Ben- and signifier, on the assumption that the unconscious code of language veniste, "Communication animale et langage humain," Probllmes de is in fact a convention. lin guisti que g€n1rale (1966), pp. 5641 150See: StandarrdEdition, XVII, 89-97, 107-8, lL2-13 (and note). The 1a7Compare the following: Wespeincident is reported on p.94, r5r Standard Edition, X, 225, 260,280-81, 29+95. The original formula For this revelation of meaning lin the practice of analysis] requires that the subject be alrcady ready to hear it-that is to say, that he would not is decondensedon pp. 28f81, where the condensation of "Gisela" into be waiting for it if he had not already found it. But if his comprehension "S" is also demonstrated. it in a Word, which from rcquires the echo of your word, is it not that is 152 the fact of being addressedto you was already yours, that the message This is the "constellation familiale" of the subject, the history and which he is to receivefrom it is constitutedl Thus the act of the Word ap- the internal relationships of the subject's family-and "history" in the pears less as communication than as the grounding of the subiects in an precisesense of both a lived experienceas well as of what the subject essentialannunciation (Actes, p. 204). is told by his parents about their lives (as the incidents mentioned indi- Later, in the formal discussionin 1953,Lacan gave wltat hc callcd "the catc). Scc: "Le Mythe individuel du n6vros6" (1953), pp.8ff., where generalequation of transsubjectivecommut'ticatiotr": "'l'ltis formula is l-rtcanclcals with thcseaspccts of the caseof the Rat Man in detail, and 146 Norts ro PAcEs67-68 147 NorEs ro PAGEs6&{19 particularly with the theme of the double therein, which he relates to an 362). (For the phallus as the fourth term, see the last part of the essay obsessionalepisode in the life of the young Goethe, taken from Dichtung following the translator's notes.) und Wahrheit. 156"Toutes lesintimations." The reference in the preceding paragraph to Freud's "inexact inter- pretation" of the father's role will clarify what Lacan means by the Now the Real confronted by analysisis a man who must be allowed to role of "dummy" in analysis (as in bridge: le mort in French), as wcll go on speaking. It is in proportion to the sensethat the subject effectively as the role of the "Symbolic fathcr" (the dead father-see note 96) in brings to pronouncing the "ie" which decideswhether he is or is not tlte one who is spea\ing. But the fatality of the Word, in fact the condition of the subiect'shistory, if it is comparedto the following passage: its plenitude, requires that the subjectby whose decisionis actually measured lThis interpretation of Freud's] is contradictedby the reality it assumes, at every instant the being in question in his humanity, be the one who is but [it] is neverthelessa true interpretation in that Freud's intuition antici- listening as much as the one who is speaking.For at the moment of the pates on what I have brought out about the function of the Other in full Word, they both take an equal part in it (Actes, p.20a). obsessionalneurosis. I have demonstratedthat this function is particularly 16?Literally "that (thing)." The French for the id is le ga,but this ccla suited to being held by a dead man (or "dummy") and that in this case it could not be better held than by the father, insofar as by his death the -the "phenomenological" object-is precisely not the ga. For Freud's Rat Man's father had rejoined the position which Freud recognizedas that "W'o es war soll Ich werdenr" see note 110. of the absoluteFather ("La Direction de la cure" [1961], p. 161). 158Compare the following: 153"Ses yeux de bitume." See Standard Edition, X, 200, 293, and Genesis,XI, 3 ("and slime they had for mortar"). T!.re moi of which we speak is absolutelyimpossible to distinguish from the insidious Imaginary captures fcaptationr] which constitute it from head 154The French text readsas follows: to foot, in its genesisas in its status, in its function as in its actuality, by another and for another. In other words, the dialectic which sustainsour L'hystirique captive cet obiet dans une intrigue raffinie et son dgo est experience,situated as it is at the most envelopinglevel of the efficacyof the dans le tiers jouit par le midium de qui le sujet de cet objet oil sa question subject,obliges us to comprehendthe moi through and through in the move- s'incarne.L'obsessionel entraine dans la cage de son narcissismeles objets oil ment of progressivealienation in which the consciousness-of-selfis consti- sa questionse r€percute dans I'alibi multipli€ de figuresmortelles et, domptant tuted in the Hegelian phenomenology. leur haute voltige, en adresseI'hommage ambigu vers la loge oil lui-m€me a This means that if you are dealing with the ego of the subject,in the mo- sa place,celle du maitre qui nc peut se voir. ment which we are studying, the fact is that you are at this moment the 166 For Lacan, the mediation of the Word "is conceivableonly if a third support of his alter ego ("Introduction au commentaire de |. Hyppolite" p.22). term is supposedto be present in the Imaginary relationship itself : mortal lle56l, 150 reality, the death instinct, which has been shown to condition the marvels "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria" (1905), Standard of narcissism," notably in analyses conducted to their termination as Edition,VIl,T.It is here (pp. 117-18) that Freud for the first time in- relationshipsof moi to moi. dicates the importance of transferencein the progress of analytical therapy. In order for the transferencerelation to escapethese eflects henceforth, (The term Uebertragung firsr. appears in the Studies on Hysteria ll895l.) it would be necessaryfor the analystto srip the narcissisticimage of his rzoi See Lacan's dialectical interpretation of the progress of this analysis in of all the forms of the desire in which this image has been constituted,so a lengrhy intervention at the Congrls des psychanalystesde langue ro- as to reduceit to the sole figure which can sustainit under their masks: the mane (1951), published in the Reuue FranEaiscde Psychanalyse,XVI, face of the absolutemaster, death ("Variantes de la cure-type" [955], No. 1-2 (January-)une, 1952), pp. 15M3, and republished in the Ecrits Ecrits, p. 3a8). Qtp.215-26). And death, for Lacan, is the fourth term to be integrated into the tri- Irreud first raisedthe questionof countertransferencein 1910("Future angle of the three personsmaking up the oedipal rclationship (ibitl., 1t. Prosl>ccts

185 Thus Lacan concludesthat the identification with the analyst,which is ". . . dont I'objet de d6sir est disormais sa propre peine"l that is, sometimes how trausference is described, notably by English analysts, the object of the desire of the other is what makes it possiblefor the child amounts ultimately to "an identification with signifiers." to desire the desire of the Other-and this is "sa propre peine." These remarks are taken up from another point of view in the essay For the "Imaginary partnerr" see the remark on the mirror in notc 183. following the translator's notes. The "Real partner" is presumably related to the fact that when the child In "La Direction de la cure" (1961), p. 158,Lacan describesthis moment could talk, he replaced the "o-o-o" with "Go to the fwont!" as he threw as: "The point of the insemination of a Symbolic order which pre-exists the toy down. His father was fighting "at the front" in World War I, and in relation to the child and according to which it will be necessaryfor him the child was not displeasedby his absence,which left him in sole posses- to structure himself." sion of his mother. On the other hand, when the child's mother died in 1920,shortly before he was six, Freud reports that the child (his eldest t8nFor the notion of the couple or pair as anterior to the isolated ele- grandson) "showed no signs of grief." ment, see Henri Wallon, Ixs Origines de la pcnsie chez fenfant (1945), t86 Chapter III, "The Elementary Structures": For "le meurtre de Ia chose," see Kojive, Introduction d la lecturc Even at the very beginning,the thought of the child is far from being de Hegel (1947), pp. 372fr. Lacan takes up another Kojevian formula totally unorganized.It is not simply a question of a content resulting from when he saysin "La Direction de la cure" (1961), p. 189,that "the being origin which contactwith obiectsand formationsof an empirical or subjective of Language is the non-being of objects." ("The mind lManasfr" said juxtaposing formations- experienceof eventshave succeededin betweenthese the author of the Voice of the Silence, "is the great slayer of the real.") By themselves,they would never be more than an amorphous successionof Kojlve expressesthe idea as follows: psychicmoments, one replacinganother or simply conglomerating,with no real principleof unity. In reality, thought only existsinsofar as it introduces What distinguishesBeing from the concept 'Being' is purely and simply structures into things-very elementary structures at first. What can be the Bcing of Being itself . . . . Thus one obtains the concept 'Being' by ascertainedat the very beginning is the existenceof coupled elements.The subtracting being from Being: Being minus being equals the concept'Being' elementof thought is this binary structure,not the elementswhich constitute (and not Nothing or'zero'l for the negarionof A is not Nothing, but 'non-Ar' it. Duality has precededunity. The couple or pair are anterior to the isolated that is, 'something'). This subtraction . . takes place literally 'at every element.Every term identifiable by thought, every thinkable term, requires instant'; it is called 'Time.' (Intoduction h la lecture de Hegel [1947], p. a complemenraryterm in relation to which it will be differentiated and to 375,n. l.) which it can be opposed Without this initial relationshipof the couple, ((. 18? . . dans un vouloir qui vouloir the wholelater edifice of relationshipswould be impossible(p. al). est de I'autre." Thc double senseof "vouloir de I'autre" ("to want of the other") cannot be brought out in On the intellectual plane also the. couple is oriented in neither time nor the English. On this whole passage, the space.It is the act which unifies at the same time as it distinguishes,without see Verneinuag articles. of relationship(pp. 130-31). 188 at first beingable to specifythe nature the Leenhardt, for example, employs this spatial representation in his Chao's This work is one cited by |akobson and Halle in discussing Do ftamo to representthe native's existenceas a locus of relationships with question as to whether the. dichotomous scale is actually inherent in the others. structure of language, or whether it is an imposition on the linguistic code 18e ". . . comme mddiatrice entre I'homme du souci et le sujet du savoir by the analyzer: absolu." Souci is the usual French rendering of the Heidegge rian Sorgc, and, . . . The phonemic code is acquired in the earliestyears of childhood and sauoir, of the Hegelian Wissen. as psychologyreveals, in a child's mind the pair is anterior to isolatedobiects. 1e0 Thl binary-oppositionis a child's 6rst logical operation.Both oppositesarise 1 The French text readsas follows: .tt simultaneously-andforce the infant to chooseone and to suppressthe other of { f Qu'il connaissebien la spire oil son ipoque I'entrainedans I'oeuvrecon- the two alternativeterms" ("Phonologyand Phonetics"[1956], p.47). Tr* tinuic de Babel,et qu'il sachesa fonctiond'interprdte dans la discordcdes Seealso pp.37-38 on "pa." i lengages.Porrr les tinlbres du mundr.Jautour dc qrroi s'enroulela tour irn- i t flt 156 NorEs ro PAGEs8G87 mense,qu'il laisseI la vision mystique le soin d'y voir s'6leversur un bois LACAN AND THE DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER 6ternelle serpentpourrissant de la vic. The serpent is Moses' brazen serpent,god of healing (Numbers, xxi, 9).

lelCf. Freud's analysisof Dora, Standard Edition, VII, 39: "It is a rule of psycho-analytictechnique that an internal connection which ie still un- disclosedwill announce its presenceby means of a contiguity-a temporal proximity-of associations;iust as in Writing, if 'a' and 'b' are put side by side, it means that the syllable 'ab' is to be formed out of them." Lacan's allusion plays on the fashion in which French children learn to read. Freud's first use of this metaphor occurs in the Tra,umdeutung, Standard Edition,IV,247,3L4.

ls2"Soumission, don, grice." The three Sanskrit nouns (damah, ddnam, dayd) are also rendered: "maitrise de soir" "aurn6ner" "piti6" (Senart); "self-controlr" "giving;," "compassion" (Rhadhakrishnan); the three verbs: "control," "giver" "sympathize" (T. S. Eliot: The Waste Land, Part V: "What the Thunder Said").

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