Lacan and Levi-Strauss or Freud's Return 1951-1957

LACAN AND LEVI-STRAUSS OR THE RETURN TO FRE UD (195 1- 1957)

LACAN AND LEVI-STRAUSS OR THE RETURN TO FREUD (1951-1957)

Markos Zafiropoulos Translated by j ohn Holl and

Published in 2010 by Karnac Books Ltd 118 Finchley Road london NW3 SHT Copyright© 2010 by Markos Zafiropoulos Originally published as Lacau et Levi-S/muss o11le reto11r i1 Freud, 1951-1957 Presses Universitaires de France 2003

Liberti • £galiti • Fraterniti

REPUBLIQUE FRAN<;AISE Titis book is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as part of the Burgess programme run by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in london. www.frenchbool
ISBN-13: 978-1-85575-726-4 Typeset by Vikatan Publishing Solutions (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in TK

CON TEN TS

NOTE TO THE READER AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

vii

INTRODUCTION

• The young Lacan

1

CHAPTER ONE

The transcendence of the imaginary by the symbolic or the m irror s tage and the symbolic fw1ction • Freud's technique, transference from Lacan to Freud, and the post-Freudians' resistance to Freud • The effectiveness of symbols: From Arma Freud to Claude Levi-Strauss • From the mirror stage to the inverted bouquet

17

20 45 57

CHAPTER TWO

The subject receives from the Other his own message in an inverted fonn: An investigation • Presentation on Transference (1951) • "The Freudian Thing or the Meaning of the Retum to Freud in Psychoanalysis" v

93

97 107

• 1953 • The Rome Report: "The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis" or testifying to a pass (September 1953)

117

129

CHAPTER THREE

The name of the father, psychosis and phobia • From the Rat Man to little Hans: The question of the Name-of-the-Father • The institutional forms of the zero value • Object Relations: Book IV of the Seminar, 1956--1957

157 158 165 174

CONCLUSION

• • • •

The d oxa: Its ideals and the repression of Levi-Strauss Louis Althusser's point of view The essential: Lacan's point of view Thanks to Levi-Strauss

193 199 205 206

POSTLUDE

• Making the world incomplete • The lack in the other

211

• The sublime excommunicant

212 214 216

BIBLIOGRAPHY

219

INDEX

225

• Lacan as a critic o f Levi-Strauss

NO TE TO THE READER AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To Claude Levi-Strauss

First, I would like to express my gratitude to Claude Levi-Strauss, who gave generously of his time to read this manuscript, the very publication of which was in question. LaC/In and Levi-Strauss is not only an attempt to make. a new contribution to the archaeology of Lacan's thought. It is also an analysis of his return to Freud and seeks to show what the movement that has changed the history of psychoanalysis owes to Levi-Strauss. I wanted to lead people to see the importance of this debt, which has, to a large extent, been repressed in psychoanalysis, although it has played a significant role in the metamorphosis of our field. Accepting that a large element of what we have inherited from Lacan comes to us from Levi-Strauss leads us not so much to honour a debt, but simply to recognize it; in doing so, we can progress in our analysis of a filiation that a number of psychoanalysts depend on in their analysis of the symptom, w hether in its individual or collective forms. The "imaginary filiations", as Louis Althusser called them, have little to recommend them from this point of view. Yet what

vii

VII I

NOTE TO THE READER A ND AC KNO\NLED CEME NTS

really cond itions the symbolic effectiveness of recognizing this debt is surely that it has been welcomed by the one to w hom we owe it; and this is all the more striking since he had not even been aware of how much we owe him. When he had finished reading the manuscript of this book, Claude Levi-Strauss wrote to me that "Thanks to your numerous quotations, I have read more of Lacan than I had ever done before." He also wrote that "I do think that I influenced him, since he himself said so several times, in texts that I had been unaware of and which you made available to me." If we cite these lines of a private correspondence, it is not to abuse a confidence and to make coercive interpretations of works that can spea k for themselves; on the contrary, it is to reduce and clarify the field of interpretations. Levi-Strauss' words do not testify he has finally seen that there is an agreement between his work and Lacan's thought, s ince Lacan, in his own words, "remains hermetic" to him; rather, he is notifying us that he has received the message, which has made him aware, for the first time, of the place that his work occupies in Lacan's thought and psychoanalysis. Yet once more, we need to be precise: to recognize this is neither to approve nor to disapprove of it. Although there needs to be a d istinction between recognition and scientific evaluation, these words illustrate rather well the formula that, as we shall see, links the two men's work in a counterpoint that is familiar to Lacan and is not foreign to the ear of Levi-Strauss: "The sender receives his own message from the receiver in an inverted form." I thank Alain Delrieu for the very attentive reading that he gave to this manuscript. Any reader of this book will profit from keeping in mind his own work, Levi-Strauss, lecteur de Freud ( 1999). I also thank Claudine Gttitton and Rene Sarfati, as well as everyone who helped me in the final editing of this manuscript.

I N TR O D UC TIO N

So, what's tire use of commmtary? Yes, what's the use of it. Hmueuer, this "what's the use" is already superfluous; whether we judge it barren or dangerous, tire necessity of repeating mn irr uo way escape us. Maurice Blanc hot, De Kafka a Kafka Commenting orr a text is like doing an analysis Jacques l acan, Seminar I

The young Lacan In my previous work (2001), Lacnn et /es sciences sociales: le declilr du pere 1938-1953', I showed that: 1.

Very early, Lacan elaborates an anthropology that is d istinct from Freud's.

l11is text, l..acfw aJid lite Social Sdtmces: Tlte Decline of tlrt, Fntlrer, has not been translated

1

into English.

1

2 2. 3.

LACAN A N D l ~Vl- STRi\USS O R THE RETURN TO FREU D ( 195 1-1957)

His early anthropological references are to Durkheim. The s tate of the family gro up, its composition, its social integration, and the social value of its head, the father, d etermine, according to the Lacan of this period, the symptomatic avatars, and even the stntctural catastrophes of a subjective maturatio n that would develop under the primacy of three complexes: the weaning complex, the intrusion complex and the Oedipus complex.

Let us develop certain points quickly: 1.

2.

3.

In this perspective, the weaning complex d ominates the first six months of the subject's life; it is organized by the "maternal in1ago", and is required fo r the survival of the child, whose mo tor skills are still uncoordinated. Its body is a jumble of bits and pieces, and it experiences anxiety because of this state. The intntsion complex-from six to 18 months--which is dominated by the imago of the counterpart (the brother), offers the subject the unifying image of his own body. This image comes from the other, can be seen in the mirror, and becomes the basis of an ideal image of himself: his ideal ego. This is the solution to the weaning complex. This intrusion complex is characterized both by a jubilatio n experienced by the. subject w hen, in the mirror, he finally perceives himself as a wlity, and a lso by a morbid aspect: the danger of narcissistic fascination, from w hich the Oedipus complex would allow him to escape. The Oedipus complex is dominated by the paternal imago-by this image of the "stranger" in the family- wllich is s upposed finally to introduce the subject to alterity, the ego ideal, and social exchange.

Lacan wrote in 1938 that w hen the subject is brought u p in a family tha t is incomplete- tha t has no father -s/ he is likely to stagnate in the imagin ary on the level of "libid inal struc ture",

that is, in terms of the libidinal investment of the body, but also o n the level of "menta l stmcture", in the sense that this has in the myth of Narcissus, as an indica tion of dea th. The latter is

I N TROD U CTION

3

an insu fficiency of life from which the world derived either the specular reflection, to which the image of the d ouble is centra l, or the illusion of the image. We s hall see that this world contains no O thers (pp. 44-45). The world without a father is a world w ithout Others. "The clinic shows that a group that is incomplete in this way can easily produce psychoses, and it is here that we find most of the folies i1 deux" (p. 49). Psychoses proliferate in the morbid atmosphere of a fatherless world, as do numerous pathologies that can be categorized in terms of the moment of fixation; fixation prevents the normative d evelopment mentioned above, which would lead the subject from the weaning to the intrusion complex, w ith a culmination in the Oedipal solution. Hence: 1.

When there is a fixation on the weaning com plex, which is domina ted by the maternal im ago and her mortifying sed uction, w hat is dominant is the "d eath instinct'' (or abandomnent in the mother), which threatens to appear as: the mental anorexic's hunger strike certain drug addicts' slow oral poisoning of themselves the gastric neurotics' "famine diet" non-violent suicides.

2.

When there is a fixation on the intrusion complex, which is dominated by the imago of the cow1terpart, there is a proliferation of psychoses,folies adeux, homosexual object choices, varieties of sexual fetishism, or hypochond riacal neuroses.

Lacan presents several versions of the Oedipus complex. a) The Oedipus complex "in a good condition", w hich was dominant before the "Viem1ese crisis": the idealizing of the father is supposed to be s ufficient to remove the subject from the morbid attachment to the mother. b) The Oedipus complex that was contemporary w ith the psychological crisis of children in fin de siec/e Vienna: according to Lacan, they inherited a paternal imago that was in decl ine; this decline involved a first degradation of the complex and

4

LACAN AND l ~Vl -S T R i\ U SS OR TH E RETU RN TO FREU D ( 19 5 1- 195 7)

led to an excessive attaclunent to the mother, which was not compensated for by an idealization of the paternal figure; hence the emergence of the "fin de siec/e neuroses" (obsessional neurosis, hysteria, etc.) and the discovery of the complex by Sigmund Freud, "a son of the Jewish patriarchy", as well as the invention of psychoanalysis (Lacan, 1938). c) The 1938 version of the Oedipus complex, whicl1 was characterized by an aggravation of the father's deficiency and sense of humiliation, and the correlative emergence of the "great contemporary neurosis", as d iagnosed by Lacan: its kernel was a character neurosis and it expressed itself in the neuroses of failure and destiny and in certain suicides. d) This 1938 version anticipates Lacan's formulations of 19502, w hich are even more sombre. Since the decline of the paternal in1ago is even more pronounced-and thus further degrades the Oedipus complex- the families' capacities to produce identifications are weakened. The latter leaves the sons in the grip of the "character kernel" of their neuroses, and- in an even more painful way-of the social and clinical morbidness of the psychopathies. According to the theory that Lacan held between 1938 and 1950, the symptom depends on what he would finally call "the social conditions of Oedipalism" (1950, p. 111). These cond itions constitute the axis of a theory of s ubjective maturation that turns mainly around the paternal imago, an inlago whose structuring value is directly correlated to the social value of the actual father and the social integration of the family itself. Lacan's distance from Freud

This theoretical position is not Freudian, since for Freud, the value of the unconscious father is not open to debate and the Oedipus complex is universal. Yet Lacan, throughout this period-and even w hen

::Jacques Lacan and Marcel Cenacl A Theoretical Introduction to the Functions of Psychoanalysis in Criminology. In; B. Fink (Trans.), l crits: Tire First Complete Edition in E11glish New York: Norton, 2006, pp. 102-122.

I N TROD U CTION

5

he was already a skilled psychoanalyst-disagreed w ith Freud o n a series of crucial doctrinal points: the wliversality of the Oed ipus complex, the primacy of the father in the castration co mplex and thus in the fo rmation of the law, the Freudian theo ry of primary narcissism, the formation of the super-ego and the ego ideal, etc. On the other hand, by borrowing from the sociology of Durkheim 3 and Marcel Mauss, from American ethnologists (Malinowski', Bened ict5, Mead6) and also from several post-Freud ians, most notably Melanie Klein7, as well as the work of Henri Wallon• and Louis Bolk, Lacan sought solutions to what did not satisfy !lim in Freud's work. During tllis period, he retho ught the nlirror stage• and invented bo th

' Emile Durkheim (185S-1917) was one o f the founders o f French sociology and the hea d of a school of tl1ought. Sta rting in 1897, his d isciples p ublished the ir work in L mznee sociologique, the journal of his school, whose influence on French sociology was, and to some extent remains, considerable. In 1906, Durkheim was named the chair o f the Sciences of Education at the Sorbonne, and his nephew, Marcel Mauss, taught at the t role pratique des lmutes i tudes. _. Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) was an ethnologist and one of the founders o f functionalism. His research on sexual behaviour was highly innovative. He worked especially on the Melanesians of the Trobriand Islands. See especially Sex and Repressioll i11 Savage Society (20())). ' Ruth Fulton Benedict (1887-1948) came to ethnology a fter studying English literature and was an assistant to Franz Boas. Her origina1ity \ovas to consider cultures to have a specific and large-scale personality. • Margaret Mead (1901-1978). A student of Boas and Benedict, she convinced Boas to allow her to work with adolescents in Samoa. She made several joumeys to Polynesia, which provided her with the material for several works that \\'ere very critical of the ideals of her counh-y, the United States. 'Melanie Klein (1882- 1%0) was an English psychoanalyst who was born in Vienna to a Polish jewish fa ther and Slovak jewish mo ther. The family set itself up in Budapest, where she became a member of the Psych oana lytic Society in 1919. Analysed fi rst by Sandor Ferenczi, she moved to Berlin and undertook a second analysis with Karl Abraham. Later she moved to London. Her work constitutes a major conh·ibution to child a nalysis a nd produced the Klein school of object relations theory. "Henri WalJon (1879- 1962). Henri Walton entered the £cole uormnle supirieurel where he prepared for the aggregation in philosophy. Becoming a d octor of medicine in 1908, he served as a military physician during the war and acquired neurological

experience, which enabled him lo interpret his observations of children. He became director o f studies at the l cole pratique rles lmutes i tudes, then a pro fessor at the Collfge de Fra11ce, where he heJd the chair in child psychology and education. • Lacan, "The Mirror Stage as Forma tive o f the I Function" (Ecrits, 1950, p p. 75-81).

6

LACAN A N D l ~Vl- STRi\USS O R THE RETU RN TO FREU D ( 19 5 1- 195 7)

a theory of the social conditions of Oedipalism10 and a completely new conception of the super-ego. All these inventions enabled him to analyse the clinical avatars of the human being's subjection to the law; also, more fundamentally, they helped him resolve the anthropological enigma of the transition from nature to culture." If, from 1938 to 1950, Lacan kept his d istance from certain significant aspects of Freudian theory, that does not mean that he was not Freudian. His research aimed at resolving what seemed to him to be the "crucial problems of psychoanalysis"": problems not only of the individual clinic but also of the clinic of the social. In undertaking researcl1 that sought to throw light on both social formations--and even the emergence of history- and the individual subject's unconscious formations, Lacan's epistemology was perfectly Freudian . In order to be completely clear, let me repeat that from 1938 to 1950, Lacan was thoroughly Freudian in terms of the origin and sources of his method, even if he was not always so in his relation to a series of concepts, about which he had the honesty to say that he disagreed with Freud. It is a fact that Lacan, during his "Durkheimian period", promoted a socio-historical relativism concerning subjective stntcturing, which went against Freud's universalism; it is also the case that he worked- against a backgrotmd of general indifference to his thought on the part of both psychoanalysts and ethnologists-to throw light on the most crucial anthropological enigma: tl1at of the transition from nature to culture. Certain commentators on my previous work have claimed tl1at I was promoting a "sociological" reading of Lacan, w hile others were disturbed by tl1e discussion of the intellectual gap that separated Lacan, during his Durkheimian period, from Freud. Others, finally, were shocked by the idea tl1at the d iagnosis of the humiliated father had sources not only in sociology but in the works of Charles Maurras and Paul Claude!; they were disturbed by the idea that Lacan did not object to calling on a political and religious father who was incompatible with the Freudian etllic. The project of analysing

10

See "A Theoretical Introduction to the Functions of Psyd1oanalysis m Criminology". 11 See Lacmr et les sciences socialt!S, pp. 18 ff. " This was tl1e title of book XII of tl1e seminar (1965, unpublished).

I N TRODUCTION

7

these theoretical sources involves the development of a critical archaeology of Lacan's work; it involves showing what both his anthropology and his clinical research owed to the social scientists of his time and evaluating and then rejecting the elements of his research that are now obsolete. I m ust therefore repeat: •

•

•

Yes, Durkheim' s theory of the contraction of the family and its clinical corollary, the decline of the paternal im ago, are scientifically obsolete. Yes, it is necessary to understand the law of the contraction of the family- which Durkheim invented in 1892 at the age of 34-if one is to understand the theory that Lacan developed, at the age of 37, concerning the decline of the paternal imago, the degradation of the Oedipus complex and the consequent d iscovery of psychoanalysis, and the stmcturing of the neurosis. Durkheim's work is also crucial for comprehending Lacan's development between 1938 and 1950. Yes, it is necessary to understand the research of the Cambridge School, as well as the research that confirmed it both historically and etlm o logically, in order to detacl1 ourselves fro m what must be called the infantile theory of the decline of the father, a theory that has handicapped the analysis of everything it was s u pposed to account fo r. "

• ~ A modem ized

version o f this obsolete theory is expressed in a series o f very differ-

ent, but equally catastrophic, diagnoses made by certain clinicians who have followed certain essayists in almost compulsively mapping out a general "desymboJization" that supposedly characterizes post-modemity. What these authors have not seen is that the societies in question have been producing modem mythologies, which have been analysed by the specialists in these mytl1ologies. See for example, the work o f Bertrand Mf.heus t and Denis Duclos on the particularly rich production of myths

in the United States, the homeland of post-modemity. It would also be profitable to consult the multidisciplinary analyses of myths first produced at a conference of the Centre national de In reclrerclre scieutifique in November 2002 and collected in Zafi ropoulos, M., et Assoun, P.-L., L' Antl~ropologie psyc/mnalylique, 2002. If it is really understood that the theory of Ihe d ecline of Ihe father is itself a myth-one not reserved to Western societies- we \oVOtild not be surprised that it is precisely those who experience it most intensely-or those who believe it most sincerely- who are the least able to take stock of it as a myth. Enclosed within their myth, they are blind to the vigour and the power of the endless number of fonns

8

• • •

LACAN AND l ~Vl-STRi\USS OR TH E RETU RN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 195 7)

Yes, in 1950, Lacan abandons the reference to Durkheim and his own theory of the paternal imago and its decline. No, we can no longer use this theory to account for the discovery of psychoanalysis or modern malaise. Yes, until 1950, Lacan di verged signi ficantly from Freud on a series of concepts; yes, not to want-or to be able-to see this gap is to prohibit oneself from w1derstanding what constitutes the source of his research and w hat distinguishes his texts from Freud's and his desire as a psychoanalyst from Freud's own.

taken by the symbolic function in Weste rn societies. l11is function is changeable and polymorphous, but that does not mean that it has deserted our world, except tor the neighbourhoods o f post-modemists, who are in a good loca.tion for perceiving what is missing for everyone e lse. As for the idea tha t this d esymbolization of the world can be obsen red from an alysts' o ffices, we ca nnot go along with it, since our own analytic p ractice has e nd lessly shown us the currency o f the Freudian d iscovery. See Markos Zafiropoulos, in Assoun, P.-L, & Zafiropoulos, M. (Eds.) (2001). Les solutions socia/es de l'iHcousdtml,. Indeed, we find it difficu lt to see how psyd1oanalysts could make precise d iagnoses ot subjects whose psyd lic economy would prohibit any an alysis. It seems more heuristic to ' "'ork on the social evolution o f symbolic forms and on the effects of the differential subjectivizing o f these forms-forms of the Other. In our opinion, it is better to do this than to repeat endlessly that, not content with having deserted heaven, the Other is now deserting the world. \¥hat is in question here is a sort o f ritual for reinforcing the belief in the underlying d isappearance ot something that can take various forms: the pa temal fu nction, rituals, myths. Indeed, we would say nothing against this myth it it had not led too often to an erroneous socio-d inical orientation. Finall}~ we shall see at th e end of this work that what ensu res the success o f this myth-or of this obsolete sociological thesis-in the Laca nian psychoana lytic field is nothing o ther than La.can's choice to deprive this commun ity ot the 1964 semina r on the Nnmes-of-tlte·Fntlrer, in which he had intended to an alyse what "in Freud, was never ana lysed ". He continues by saying tha t "[ had read1ed p recisely this point when, by a strange coincidence, I was put into the position of having to give up my seminar." "What I had to say on the Names-of-the-Father had no otl1er pu rpose, in fact, than to put in question the origin, to d iscove r by what privilege Freud 's desire was able to find the entrance in to the field o f experience he designates as the unconscious. " It is absolutely essen tial tha t we should go back to this origin if we wish to p ut analysis on its teet" Qacques l acan, Tire Four Frmrlnment.nl Concepts of Psyclzoarmlysis, p. 12). At the moment of his e xcommunication, Lacan volunta rily left a hole in the (Freud ian) a nalysis of the origin of psyd1oanalysis, a nd consequently, he left the door open to the eternal retum of the myth of the d ecline of the fa ther, which he had himself used in 1938 in order to account for the origin of psychoanalysis. Since he d id not put psyd1oanalysis "on its feet" in 1964, it is not surprising that \oVe still some times find it standing on its head.

I N TROD U CTION

9

Finally, it is to forbid oneself from seeing the most powerhol mainsprings of his rettm1 to the texts of the dead father of psychoanalysis. If, out of transferential piety, we imagine that Lacan was always Freudian, how can we accotmt for the epistemological constraints that led to his return to Freud? The return to Freud

I have mentioned the gaps between Lacan's and Freud's texts precisely in order to throw light on the paths by w hich he returned to Freud and to avoid any d irect use of the notion that Lacan, in rejecting some of Freud's ideas, repressed them. I am avoiding the latter notion, even if the analytic register requires us to think of the return (of the repressed) as the repressed itself. Was Lacan's return to Freud determined by the elements of the father's speech that had, until then, been repressed by his heirs? This is what we shall see. To make of this re ttorn a simple instittotional issue would be to show a sociological blindness that is best avoided; I do not advise anyone to read Lacan in ignorance of his anthropological guides, whether they are Durkheim from 1938 to 1950 or Levi-Strauss, whose influence on the relttrn to Freud first became central in 1951. Concerning the notion of the father, the central idea of psychoanalysis, I showed briefly in my earlier work w hat Lacan's uwention of the Name-of-the-Father owed to Levi-Strauss. Now I shall re-examine, not every element of Lacan's work that is u1fluenced by Levi-Strauss, but the aspects of the ret urn to Freud that cmm ot be understood without seeu1g the transference of knowledge from anthropology to psychoanalysis. Can I refer to transference in this context? Yes, for this relttrn to Freud is, first, a s ubjective rectification of Lacan's relation to knowledge, and especially to Freud's knowledge. My research will investigate the period of Lacan's return to Freud, after his Durkhein1ian period. I have already shown how, until that time, he had d isagreed

with Freud about various issues, and especially about the father. Now, I shall examine the rectification of Lacm1's transferential relation to Freud, a rectification that I shall consider as the most

10

LACA N AN D LEVI-STRAU S S OR THE RETURN TO FREU D ( 195 1- 1957>

important cause of this retu rn; I shall also examine the element of transference to Levi-Strauss. The thesis of this work is simple: Lacan ret urns to Freud by means of Levi-Strauss. My intention is not to examine whether this return was well-founded, but simply- and this is already a lot-to retrace his itinerary and to draw up a theoretical map of it. Method

I have chosen to structure the analysis of Lacan's return to Freud by recalling, first of all, how, from the beginning of his seminar, he placed himself at the heart of the analytic experience; in his first seminar, he examined Freud's technical papers", thus demonstrating a strong concern for the clink. Since my readers are not necessarily familiar with psychoanalytic thought, w henever I discuss Lacan's disagreement with the post-Freudians about the direction of the treatment, I shall present the passages from Freud that Lacan conunented upon before giving my own read ing of the seminar. In this way, the reader will be able to make his/ her own judgement inunediately. Tilis is an important point, for if Lacan's return to Freud is, first of all, ]lis own, it was also tmdertaken by the French analysts who had followed ]lis critical reading of both Freud and the works of various Anglo-American analysts. Among the latter were Otto Fenid1el", Alma Freud 16, and Allllie Reich17, whose work was concerned with the crucial

" I shall retain the numbering of Lacan's seminars used in their published versions, despite an awareness tha t he gave seminars before 1953-1954. In 1975, Lacan himself chose to publish the seminar on Freud's technical papers, as edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, as Book 1of the seminar. " Otto Fenichel (1897-1948). Bom in Vienna, he became involved in psych oanalysis in 1918, undertaking a first analysis with Paul Fedem and then a second with Sandor Rado in Berlin. Participating in the Freudian left, he tried, despite the anivalofNazism, to maintain his Marxist and psychoanalytic activities. He fin ally left for the United States, where his work became a crucial reference for American psychoanalysts. 16 Anna Freud (1895-1982). Born in Vienna, Anna Freud was Freud's sixth d1ild. Analysed by her own fa ther, she devoted herself, first of all, to child analysis, but also published Freud's works, d irecled the new Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute and finally set herself up, especially in opposition to Melanie Klein, as the guardian of Freudian orthodoxy. She moved to london in 1938 with the rest of the Freud family. "Annie Reich (1902-1971). Bom in VIenna to a jewish family, Annie Reich was the daughter ot a feminist activist. After studying medicinel she became interested in

IN TRODU C TIO N

11

question of resistance and whose theoretical conception of the ego determined how they treated this agency in transference. Should the analystally him/herself with the ego or should it be considered, instead, as the seat of illusion and repression? What is resistance to analysis? What resists? What teclmique and what authority should be marshalled in order to ensure the progress of the treatment? Freud had discussed all these questions in his own work, but they were re-thought by the postFreudians and Lacan examined their deviations in his seminar. From this poin t of view, Lacan's position in relation to Freud must be seen clearly; his understand ing of his own distance from Freud-which is a sign of his honesty-enables him to analyse how far the other post-Freudians had moved away from Freud and how heterodox they had become. As a consequence, his commentary and his analysis of Freud's texts became tmbearable, as we shall see, to many of his peers; for this reason, after 1953, he was no longer welcome in the h1temational Psychoanalytic Association, which finally expelled hin1 in 1964. Lacan's research is thus related to certain institutional conditions and group effects, but it is also necessary to understand how Lacan understood his own responses to the institutional situation during the period that began in 1953. h1 that year, La can was separated from the lPA and took part in forming the Societe fran~aise de psychanalyse (French Psychoanalytic Society). What led to his theoretical inventions was not a q uest for power and a wish to dominate the French analytic scene, its institutions, and its sources of income. Lacan always in terp reted his relations to institutions--here, his exclusion by the lPA-in terms of the logic of the same "toolbox" that had allowed him to locate hin1self in analytic experience. This is the case for both 1953 and 1964. Therefore I shall examine how the events of 1964 can retroactively shed light on those of 1953.

The excommunication

Let us jump ahead ten years. At the end of his seminar on anxiety (Seminar X, 1962-1963), Lacan distinguishes between the gaze and

psychoanalysis and married Wilhelm Reich. She lived in Prague u ntil 1938, tl1en emigrated to the United States and became a member o f the New York Psychoanalytical Society.

12

LACA N AN D LEVI-STRAU SS OR THE RETURN TO FREU D ( 195 1- 1957>

the father's voice, and then mmotmces that the seminar of 1964 wiU be devoted to the theme of the Names-of-the-Father. Then, in 1964, he was excluded from the IPA. What d id he do? Did he simply continue and affinn his legitimacy as a psychoanalyst and the value of his teaching for the training of analysts? No, he publicly raised the question of w hether he is authorized to transmit psychoanalysis and decides to d iscuss the "fundamentals of psychoanalysis" rather than the Names-of-the-Father (Semi11nr XI, p. 1). He does so because he has to assume responsibility for his "exconunwucation" and goes back to the fw1damental conceptsthe w1conscious, repetition, transference, the d rive- in order to ask a question that is unavoidable for him: How can a psychoanalyst, whose teaching has been proscribed by Freud's own association, be authorized to teach the foundations of psychom1alysis and to train analysts? Deprived of the group's guarantee md forbidden to trm1Smit his teaching, Lacan carmot continue without going back to what the group, in giving its guarantee, had assumed that it had resolved: the delicate question of the conditim1S that enable the analyst to practise. In this situation, Lacan does not avoid the problem and asks the only good questim1S, those that could not escape a serious person in tlus situation: What is the analyst's desire? What must there be in the analyst's desire for it to operate in a correct way? (Semiunr XI, p. 9). In 1964, tlus return to tl1e fundamental concepts concerns the principles-the texts and Freud's founding desire . It confirms tl1at Lacm1's way of responding to the separation from the analytic institution is to turn to the "monuments" of the founder's speech-the fundamental concepts-and to question less Ius own institu tional position than Ius relation to Freud's speech and desire. Instead of denying that he has been excommunicated, he takes w hat has happened to him into account and responds by working publicly on Freudian concepts and tl1e analyst's desire. Let me be even more explicit: in 1964, Lacan occupies the place of the person who has been excluded (he says "exconunwucated ", " proscribed"). He thus incarnates for the group the object that is not in the right place: the object (a), the object that he has just been theorizing.

I NTRO D UCTION

13

The spl itting of 1953

Let us return now to 1953, where we begin the second part of our research; this moment has the same epistemological logic as the crisis of 1964. In 1953, Lacan locates himself both clinically and in relation to the group by means of a new version of the mirror stage: the experiment of the inverted bouquet. In this optical montage, the subject can only see his image if he is suitably placed or named by the O ther of the symbolic fw1ction. Let us say that this O ther is the father. The 1953 separation from the IPA d id not trigger the same kind of response as the excommun ication of 1964, since Lacan had actually started his return to Freud in 1951; furthermore, he had himself indicated that it was because of this ret urn that he had become unbearable to the Societe psycl•analytique de Pnris (Paris Psychoanalytic Society, SPP). No longer seeing his image in the mirror of the IPA, he maintains his analysis of and with the s peech of the founding father in order to understand his distance from it, to rectify his position, and to guide both his own generation and his students in a return to Freud. This was his position within the Societe fran fnise de psychnnnlyse (French Psychoanalytic Society, SFP), which he wanted to bring back into the IPA . In analysing his d is tance from Freud, he also analyses the d eviations of Freud's Anglo-American heirs, in all the d iversity of their practice and theories, a fragmentation of their professional bod y that hard ly conformed to Freud's desire. If we apply the theory of the inverted vase, which I shall present later, we can say that this fragmentation, whicl1 has been recognized by the heirs themselves, testifies to their own d istance from-or repression of-Freud's speech; accord ing to Lacan's perspective and the optical model, this explains the lack of clarity of their clinical work. What would distinguish the French situ ation from what prevailed in the English-speaking cow1tries is that no one w ho lived in the latter tried to reveal what motivated the variability and lack of clarity of their analytic practices; these are the marks of the catastrophic repression that characterize their relation to the speecl1 and desire of the founder of psychoanalysis. What d istinguishes 1953 from 1964-apart from the stylistic differences of these returns, which indicate different theoretical presuppositions--is that in 1953, Lacan had not given up trying to

14

LACA N AN D LEVI-STRAU SS OR THE RETURN TO FREU D ( 195 1- 1957>

be a part of the IPA, just as he had not yet ceased to believe that the image of the (professional) body of Freud's heirs could achieve a new wholeness. Therefore, from 1953 to 1963, at the hospi tal of SainteAnne, he gave a seminar that was "addressed to psycho-analysts" (Seminar XI, p. 1). Starting in 1964, the Ecole normale superieure (ENS) and the Ecole des hnutes etudes en sciences socinles (EHESS) provided the framework for the seminar, which he no longer addressed only to psychoanalysts, since he had given up believing in the unified image of an analytic group in the IPA. Lacan and Levi-Strauss

On 15 Jan ua ry 1964, Lacan began his seminar, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycl10analysis, in the position of someone w ho has been excommtmicated, but also at a point of intersection between the teaching of philosophy (ENS) and the social sciences (EHESS). Claude Levi-Strauss was present at this inaugural session. Can we see his presence as a confirmation that Lacan is speaking to a wider audience and of the persistence of the bond between the two men that had been forged in 1949? Perhaps. In any case, and despite the fact that Levi-Strauss attended Lacan's seminar only once, his resea rch had held a crucial place for Lacan since 1949, and Lacan's first return to Freud- d uring the 1950s--crumot be understood without relating it to the texts of Levi-Strauss. They provided Lacan w ith a style for read ing Freud's work-the style of the return to Freud and the return to Freud's desire- at a point of acute crisis, both theoretical and institu tional, for psychoanalysis. Lacan was hoping to effect a metamorphosis of psychoanalysis. In the second part of this book, we shall see how, in the series of texts that accompanied the first seminar of 1953-1954-Presentntion on Transference (Ecrits, pp. 176-185), Tl1e Neurotic's Individual Myth (1953), the Rome Report (Ecrits, pp. 197-268), etc. -Levi-Strauss' work infiltrates Lacan's research, especially w hen the latter concerns the theory of the w1conscious subject, as well as his read ings of Freud's case histories: Dora, the Rat Man, etc. Then, in the third part, I shall

examine Lacan's final readings of the case histories and his structuralist accow1ts of the psychoses (Seminar Ill) and phobia (Seminar IV). Such advances would have been unthinkable w ithout both his interest in Levi-Strauss' texts and the invention of the theory of the

I NTRO D UCTION

15

Na me-of-the-Father; in my opinion, his fonnulations concerning the latter also owe a great debt to Levi-Strauss. I shall examine the clinical scope of this theory. At the end of the third part, I shall have finished this instalment of my continuing research on Lacan and the social sciences. This research seeks to provide the reader w ith a way to w1derstand La can' s work and the sources of his thought, which he often does not make explicit. In order to make my conclusions clear, I shall proceed by commenting on the movement of Lacan's research and what is at stake in it for psycl1oanalysis; I shall also show w hat this movement owes to the social sciences.

Situating THIS research By failing to recognize lacan's Durkheimian stage, readers have not been able to see the logic that made his return to Freud necessary in 1951, especially in relation to the cmcial question of the father. Thus many conunentaries on lacan's return to Freud begin by considering only the texts written after 1950, all of which date from the return itself. Likewise, readers who are unaware of Durkheim's influence on Lacan will not see what is behind the abandonment of all references to the father of French sociology, in favour of levi-Strauss. These two insufficiencies are cmmected and, even today, the influence of the social sciences on psychoanalysis is largely neglected, as is the fact that both Freud and Lacan treated psycl1oanalysis precisely ns a social science. If my work seeks to lift this epistemological repression, it is in order to bring to light both the " forgotten" part of the symbolic network of the texts that precede lacan's return-a part without which this return cmmot be understood-and the cause of the return. To do so will enable us to get our bearings in the "Freudim1 thing". If we really wm1t to understand the return to Freud, we must follow what lacm1 said in 1957, the final year of the period that we are analysing in this book (1951-1957):

[It) would be absurd to isolate our field completely and to refuse to see what, in it, is not analogous but directly connected, in gear, with a reality that is accessible to us in other disciplines, other human sciences. Establishing these connections seems to

16

LACA N AN D LEVI-STRAU S S OR THE RETURN TO FREU D ( 195 1- 1957>

me to be indispensable if we are to situate our field and even simply to re-find ourselves in it (Seminar IV). In the conclusion of this work, by following Althusser, I shall interpret the repression of Levi-Strauss' importance by readers of Lacan. These readers proffer to us a doxn that idealizes Lacan's philosophical references excessively; one of the effects of the latter is to "set aside"-in the sense of a Verdriingung the contribution of the social sciences to Lacan's teaching, his speech and his desire.

CHAPTER ON E

The transcendence of the imaginary by the symbolic or the mirror stage and the symboli c function

s we shall see later, we can agree with Lacan that his return to Freud was publicly inaugurated by his Presentation on Transference, which was given at the congress of Romancespeaking psychoanalysts in 1951, while he was s till a member of the SPP and the IPA. This presentation is the first of the readings that Lacan will give of Freud's case histories between 1951 and 1957. Here he examines the case of Dora, the young Viennese woman of 18, who was divided between her perception of herself- which was on the male side- and her place as a woman, which she owed to the automatism of the symbolic fw1ction that determined the group to which she belonged. In d iscussing this case, Lacan immediately stresses the epistemological axis that orients his return to Freud. He does so in order to account for the way in which the subject is d ivided between the imaginary register, which fotmds her first identifications-those of the mirror stage-and the symbolic. In the latter register, Lacan locates the Oedipus complex and, more generally, the symbolic hmction, which he borrows from Frencl1 anthropology and which includes this complex. This epistemological axis, in1aginary-symbolic, is to a large extent co-extensive with the one that had oriented his research 17

A

18

LACAN AN D l~V1·STRAUSS O R THE RETU RN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 1957>

during his Durkheimian period, when he raised the father to the level of a familial operator, one who was able to extract the child from the imaginary captu re; through his intervention, the child ceases to be grasped by the matemal imago (the weaning complex) and then by the brother (the intmsion complex). During the retum to Freud, w hat goes beyond and organizes the in1aginary register are the mles of the symbolic function, rather than the actual father. In discussing the structuring of the tmconscious subjectand th us of its symptoms-Lacan now rejects Durkheim's laws and adopts, instead, the laws of speech and language, w here the symbolic organization of societies, and thus of the family, is located; he adopts them in a structural form that had been completely recast by Claude Levi-Strauss who, since his return to France from the United States, and since his 1947 thesis, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, had thoroughly tumed the social sciences upside do\Vll. We can consider the return to Freud as a moment of mutation or of metaphor, one that, in terms of Lacan's clinic, made Levi-Strauss' version of the mles of the symbolic ftmction prevail over Durkheim's version of family life. This is precisely the subject of our research: Lacan's theoretical presuppositions, the consequences that they had on his return to Freud, and the metamorphosis of Lacan's work. As we shall see, it is in his return to Freud that Lacan situates the cause- in the strong sense of the term-of the painful experiences that led him, on 16 June 1953, to resign from his position as president of the SPP. As early as 1951, Lacan claims that something in Freud's speech, by returning in his own mouth, aroused the fear of the other practitioners: Whereas Freud assumed responsibility for showing us that there are illnesses that speak (tuilike Hesiod, for whom the illnesses sent by Zeus come over men in silence) and for making us hear the truth of what they say, it seems that this truth inspires more fear in the practitioners who perpetuate this technique as its relation to a historical moment and an institutional crisis becomes clearer (Presen/aliOif 0 11 Transference, p. 177).

Despite this sense of isolation, which would soon make his very existence itself w1bearable to the group, Lacan continued his reading of Freud's text w ithin the framework of the SPP w1til his resignation in 1953.

THE TRA NSCENDENCE OF THE IMAGINARY

19

Next, at Sa inte-Anne, in the department of his friend Jean Delay••, Lacan would contin ue " in o p position to everyone" his return to Freud by a nalysing Freud's technical papers. It is w ith this seminar that we shall begin to analyse Lacan's work, since the sessions of 1953-1954 were published in 1975 as Book I of the seminar, under a title that has been translated into English as Freud's Technical Papers. We shall respect Lacan's wish to count this as the first of his 24 seminars, even if, as we have said, his return to Freud dates from 1951. We are going to begin the first part of o ur project by reading Seminar I, which Lacan began in a utumn 1953, after his resignatio n from the SPP: after the test that made him, in his own words, a psychoanalyst who was endowed w ith a "kind of faith" . This faith was based particularly on the fact that "I know better and better what it is mine to say about an experience w hich I have only these last years been able to recognize and solely thereby to master." Because of this, he has become "a man more convinced of his duties and his d estiny" ,.. It is in a state of certainty that Lacan begins his new read ings of Freud's texts. Thus Lacan, w hose technique had led him to be thrown out of Freud's association, chose to continue his work by giving a commentary on Freud's papers on technique, a commentary that led him to the heart of the psychoanalytic clinic, and which had provided the "coord inates" of his offence and the motives for the accusations brought aga inst him. We are now going to see what this reading of Freud's technical papers owes to a renewal of the questioning that had begtm with his "d iscovery" of the mirror stage (1936). He will now examine how the structuring of the tmconscious subject takes place at the conjtmction between the imaginary and the symbolic. What is new for La can is not such q uestioning itself, but rather his response to the radical changes brought abo ut by the use of the symbolic function, which he had just encountered in the recent work of Levi-Strauss. Returning to Freud's " Jean Delay (1907-1987), a French psychian·ist and student of Pierre Janet. He was

ana.lysed by Edouard Pichon, a friend ot Jacques Lacan's. He became a member of

the Acndrmie frnnrnise in 1959 .1nd was the pre-eminent representative of the postwar school of biological psychiatry. He was the author of Tile Youth of A11rlr<' Girle. Lacan

commented on this work in Serifs, pp. 623-644. '" h1 Letter to Rudolph Loewenstein.l In : Te/evisio11/A CIJnlle11ge to fire PsyciJomrnlytic Eslnblislllllmt, pp. 64, 65. We shall examine tl1is lette r in the second part of this book.

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LACAN AND l~V1·STRAUSS O R THE RETURN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 1957>

teclmical papers, Lacan will show what both Freud's tecluuque and the tmconscious formations--
Freud and resistance In the lecture given to the College of Physicians in Vierma on 12 December 1904 and entitled On Psychotherapy, Freud dissolves the common confusion between psychoanalytic technique and hypnotic suggestion by d istinguislung their relation to resistance. Suggestion conceals from us all insight into the play of mental forces; it does not permit us, for example, to recognize the resisl11nce with which the patient clings to his disease and thus even fights against his own recovery; yet it is this phenomenon of resistance which aloue (my emphasis) makes it possible to understand his behaviour in daily life." Freud·s abandonment of hypnotic suggestion, far from being the product of a "liberal or libertarian affect" as Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen suggests in The Freudian Subject, was actually motivated by the fact

~ jacques

lacan, Freud's Pnperson Tecllnique, 1953-1954.

"Sigmund Freud, Ou Psycllotl~empy, 1904, p. 261 .

THE TRA NSCENDENCE OF THE IMAGINARY

21

that hypnotic s uggestion prevented him from seeing resistance, "which alone makes it possible to understand [the patient's ] behaviour in daily life". Freud did not refuse suggestion (only) because of ethical objections to the hypnotic method; he rejected it on scientific grounds because it was teclmically incompatible with the exploration of resistance. The second lecture, The Future Prospects of Psycl•o-ann./ytic Therapy, dates from 1910 and was intended for a different public: those who attended the second psychoanalytic congress in Nuremberg. In this lecture, Freud says that analysts have made cons iderable progress in understanding their patients' unconscious and are therefore better able now to confront resistance. Analysts are no longer content simply to urge the patient to pursue his free associations, since they now provide "the intellectual help w hich makes it easier for him to overco1ne the resistances between conscious and unconsciotts 1122 • The knowledge acquired in the course of analytic experience makes treating patients easier. Freud now seeks to bring out the "structure of the neuroses", since such knowledge will make it easier to foil the patients' resistance. Lifting this resistance is not only a part of Freud's strategy in treating each individual patient; it is also c01mected with a knowledge of the structural organization of the neuroses, whicl1, w hen taken into account in transference, will enable w hat is opposed to the progress of the analysis to be weakened, even if it is precisely by having defeated the resistance appearing in each individual treatment that the common s tructure of the neuroses- and their modalities-can appear. In other words, the case-by-case approach allows us to ream the general character of the psychic structures-or complexes- and this systematic knowledge, in tum, helps the analyst in treating each ind ividual case. " ... Our work is aimed d irectly at finding out and overcoming the 'resistances', and we can justifiably rely on the complexes coming to light without difficulty as soon as the resistances have been recognized and removed" (Future Prospects, p. 144). Once the screen of resistance has been removed, the kernel of

the experience should be isolated. Yet not all the resistances have the

~ Sigmund

Freud, TI1e Future Prospects of Psycho-an alytic Therapy, 1910, p. 142.

22

LAC AN AN D l~V1·STRAUSS O R THE RETU RN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 19 57>

same cha racter; in noting this, Freud asks his colleagues to classify them and to see the way in which, for men, "the most important resistances in the treahnent seem to be derived from the fathercomplex and to express themselves in fear of the father [and] in defiance of the father" (Future Prospects, p. 144). Thus Freud goes back to the question of how to treat the father-complex. The father-complex: The moto r of resistance

Situating the father-complex as one of the specific motors of resistance to ana lysis, Freud asks w hat authority is necessary to defeat this obstacle. In other words, Freud wonders what kind of authority the analyst should have in order to vanquish the resistances linked to the father-complex, especially if this authority is not that of suggestion. Before answering this question, Freud defines the scope of what must be defeated: "Only very few civilized people are capable of existing without reliance on others or are even capable of coming to an independent opinion. You cmmot exaggerate the in tensity of people's inner lack of resolution and craving for authority" (Future Prospects, p. 146). There are no illusions in this diagnosis. The need for authority always seeks a way to be satisfied, and it motivates the resistancesjust as it does repression- that are required by the father's heirs: the social authorities whose power of suggestion hobbles analytic efforts. According to these lines, the father-complex and the need for authority are the main motors of resistance; they thus foreshadow the later texts of Freudian anthropology, such as The Future of nn Illusion and Civilisation nnd its Disrontents23; particularly in the latter work, Freud shows that the nostalgia for the father is a source of dependency m1d is the decisive mainspring of illusions, which are always more or less religious and whim impede the progress of truth. The need fo r authority, the power of truth, the analyst's choice

In 1910, in relation to the father-complex, which feeds the resistance to psychoanalysis on the levels of both the individual case and the social, Freud says that the analyst must increase his authority.

Both texts are found in Sigmund Freud, The S/mrrlarrl Edition of the Complete Psyc/rologiml Works of Sigrrrrmd Frerrd Vol XXI.

~

THE TRA NSCEND ENCE OF THE IMAG IN ARY

23

What is to be expected in this situation? First, there will be a long wait, for from the perspective of the social authorities, psychoanalysts are subject to two charges: • •

They are accused of d amaging ideals by destroying illusions By showing how the social order is responsible for neuroses, they are protesting against it.

It is not obvious that there can be an alliance with the social authori-

ties. Nevertheless, Freud assures us that "The harshest truths are heard and recognized at last, after the interests they have injured and the emotions they have roused have exhausted their fury" (Future Prospects, p . 147). "We must be able to wait" (Future Prospects, p. 148), and it would be easier to treat patients if an alysts' authority were less contested socially; the resistances would not be backed up by collective illusions, and truth could emerge more easily. Freud's prophecy ai ms far beyond the clinic of the individual case, s ince it suggests that s uch trea tment would be facilitated if the social authorities gave up their virulent attitude toward s psychoanalysis; the social progress of truth, in tu rn, would weaken both theca uses and the morbid mainsprings of the neuroses. Freud sketches out for his companions the scope of his analytic project and what could be expected if unconscious tntth were brought to light collectively: "The s uccess which the treatment can have with the individual must occur equally with the comm unity. Sick people w ill not be able to let their various neuroses become known-thei r anxious over-tenderness which is meant to conceal their hatred , their agoraphobia which tells of disappointed ambition, their obsessive actions which represent self-reproaches for evil intentions and preca utions aga inst them-if all their re latives and every s tranger from whom they w ish to concea l their mental processes know the genera l meaning of s uch symptoms, and if they themselves know that in the manifestations of their illness they a re producing nothing tha t other people crumot instantly interpret. The effect, however, will not be limited to the conceal-

ment of the symptoms which, incidentally, it is often impossible to carry out; for this necessity for concea lment d estroys the use of being ill. Disclosure of the secret w ill have attacked, a t its most sensitive point, the 'aetiological equation' from w hich neuroses arise" (Future Prospects, p . 148- 9).

24

LACAN AND l~V1·STRAUSS OR THE RETURN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 19 57>

We see once again that Freud's ambition does not lie in a clinic of the ind ividual case, but aims instead at the masses; Lacan reaffirms this to his disciples, in order that, in the days before their second congress, they will not forget this part of their collective adventure. What should we retain from this? First, that to reach the goal-the "aetiological equation" of the neuroses-Freud is not really counting on reinforcing the institutional authority of psychoanalysis or on obtaining more social recognition; instead, he is betting that the secret that motivates neuroses will come out into the open and that illusions will be weakened. He is also wagering that the resistances that, especially in men, come from the father-complex, will be weakened. The power that Freud cotmts on to reach the heart of the neuroses is less that of an institution than of truth . The question of the collective, once again, is not so much an extension of his clinical practice, but is instead active in the very aetiology of the neuroses; therefore, illusions, the suggestions made by the powers that be, and the chronic need for authority are met with in the analyst's office as well as in the rest of the social field. TI1e year in which Freud made these statements, 1910, was crucial in the history of the analytic movement. On 30 March of that year, Freud, along with Sandor Ferenczi'"' had fotmded the first international Freudian association (the lnternntionale psyclroannlytisclte Vereinigrmg). TI1is group would keep this name untill936, when it became the IPA. If it is necessary to choose between the authority of truth and that of the analytic institution, the Freudian perspective would choose the symbolic power of tmconscious tmth, w hich alone is able to reduce both neuroses and the collective sense of discontent. In these texts, the psychoanalytic institution is a secondary base of analytic power. The true master of the Freuclian orientation is the tmconscious text and the tmth that lies in the symptom: "We must not forget that the analytic relationship is based on a love of truth-that is, on a recognition of reality- and that it precludes any kind of sham or deceit.""

" Sandor Ferenczi (1873-1933). He was bom in Hungary into a family of emigran t Polish Jews. Analysed by Freud, he devoted himself to the psychoanalytic cause. Witl1 Freud, he founded the ln temational Psychoan alytic Association in 1910 an d cre.1ted the Budapest Psychoanalytic Society in 1912. Amember o f the secret commiltee beginning in 1913, he participated in directing the Freudian movement. In 1919, he started to try to reform psychoanalytic technique and invented the uactive technique" before retuming to the theory ot trauma. He was Freud's favourite disciple. ~ Sigmund Freud, Analysis Terminable and Interminable, 1937, p. 248.

THE TRA NSCEND ENCE OF THE IMAG IN ARY

25

At this point, I have said enough to make it possible to see why Lacan, in his return to Freud, and particularly in his seminar that addressed Freud's papers on technique in 1953-4 (Seminar /), struggles with the outcome of resistance, the resistan ce that, if progress is to occur, forces the analyst to choose w hich authority to rely on; it must be the authority of the ego or of truth. Two paths, two lines: according to Lacan, the practitioner who seeks to use the register of the ego to go beyond the resistances is departing from Freud's desire; s/ he leads the analysis into an impasse by ensuring that it w ill s tagnate in the imaginary. Now, it is precisely by deciphering the symbolic envelope of the symptom that Freud's desire can operate. Yet for Lacan in 1953, who is Freud? Lacan's transference to Freud

TI1e inauguration of the return to Freud coincides w ith the begilming of the ulStitutional splittu1g that would lead Lacan-as we shall see later-to leave the analytic association that Freud fow1ded in 1910. We need to exami11e w hat he says about his relation to Freud duru1g this period and what makes Freud's speech authoritative for him, w hile also asking: What, for him, gives its authority to the Freudian discovery? In the Freudian field, one of the names for authority is the superego. In the first session of the seminar (that of 18 November 1953, w hich ended on 7 July 1954), La can mentions the super-ego ill order to rethil1k it by linking it, not-as he had done from 1938 to 1950-to the first imagu1ary identifications of the mirror stage26, but to language: The super-ego is a law deprived of meaning, but one which nevertheless only sustains itself by language. If I say you tum to the right, it's to allow the other to bring his language into !me with mine. l think of what goes through his head when I speak to him. This attempt to find an agreement constitutes the communication specific to language. This you is so fundamental that it arises before consciousness. Censorship, for example, which is intentional, nevertheless comes into action before con-

See discussion in Lac:an et les sciences sociales o f the root image, good form and the Lacanian super-e-go.

;,i

26

LACAN AND l~V1·STRAUSS OR THE RETURN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 19 57>

sdousness, functioning with vigilance. You is not a signal, but a reference to the other- it is order and love" (Semi11nr /, p. 3). This recasting of the super-ego makes it an operator of order and love that is prior to consciousness; it situates its efficacy in the register of language. We shall not be surprised to read, in the second session of the seminar, that Lacan admires Freud's texts. This declaration indicates that he is ready to harmonize his language with Freud's: "If we are under the impression that we are here to stand back in admiration of the Freudian texts and marvel at them, we will certainly be well satisfied" (Sernil'lar /, p. 9). Admiring and marvelling at the father's speech, he says in The Neurotic's Individual Myth, that "one must have confidence in him" (p. 407). Lacan th us situates Freud's authority in a problematic zone that goes from the super-ego to the ego ideal. To be both more general and more precise, at the same time that he is commenting on Freud's texts, Lacan is also questioning and discreetly analysing his transference to Freud. He examines his transference from the start, not only by indicating for his students what the Freudian theory of authority is- the super-ego-but also by d iscussing his own relation to Freudian authority. Admiration, marvel, !ntst, order, love. Next, and by beginning to analyse the other post-Freudians' teclmical options, he is also starting to lay bare their relations to Freud. In this first year of the seminar, Lacan clarifies the place of his return to Freud in the analytic field and also situates himself in relation to his psychoanalytic "brothers". His return to Freud is thus characterized by a double concern: • •

With Freud's foundational texts, which he comments on . \Nith the texts of his contemporaries, the post-Freudians, whose work he measures in terms of both Freud's doctrine and his desire.

:-; Here we find the same logic of the patemal function that Lacan developed in his lecture, Tlte Neurotic's llrdividunl Mytlt, \·vhere he says "Freudian theory stressed in the existence of the father a function which is at once a function of speech and a function of love," before adding,"And one must have confidence in" Freud, that is, must reintrOOuce death and the dead father as the crucial operators in analytic experience, for wan t of which it would stagnate in the d ual register (pp. 423, 407).

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27

Al though Lacan shows his admiration for Freud the author, he has more reservations about Freud's institutional use of his a uthority in the analytic movement: It is the long-sufferi ng side of his personality, the feeling he has of the necessity of authority, which in his case is not without a certain fundamental deprecia tion of what anyone who has something to communica te or teach can expect from those who listen to and follow him. ln many a place we come across a measure of profound contempt for the manner in which these things are made use of and understood. As you will see, l even believe that one finds in him a very specific disparagement of the human raw material made available to him by the society in which he lived. Undoubtedly this is what allows us to catch a glimpse of why Freud, in contrns/ to what happens in his writings (my emphasis), mobilised the full weight of his authority so as to assure, so he believed, the future of analysis. He both excluded all manner of doctrinal dissensions-quite real dissensions- which emerged, and at the sa me time was qui te imperious as to what could be organised around him as the means for the transmission of his teaching (Seminar/, p. 10). Whereas his writing was weighted down less by his authority, Freud, within the institution, was excl usive and imperative, and he depreciated those who surrounded him; he was suspicious about how his texts were read and applied and about how his disciples were using his teaching. Lacan does not confuse Freud's research w ith the effects of transmission; on this second point, Freud had recourse to his own authority. Lacan returns to Freud by reading his texts and authorizes himself to do so by means of Freud's distrust of his disciples, who were not able to handle Freud's doctrine. Lacan's d iagnosis is in harmony with the distrust imputed to Freud and he claims that this gives him the authority to return to Freud's texts--which he does . To be even more precise, Lacan inaugurates his seminar orr and by Freud's teclmical writings by seeking to throw light on both Freud's relation to authority and other analysts' relations to his work, just as

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he indicates discreetly the character of his own relation to Freud's authority. He reads Freud in the context of a transference to him, which he then analyses obliquely, throughout the seminar. If we w ish to understand the progression of the seminar and, first of all, Lacan's reading of Freud's papers on technique, we must try to see the transferential relation with Freud that underlies this work. Freud's epistemology requires that we reveal Lacan's transference in order to understand his work better; it can seem unreasonable, however, to consider that Lacan, in his return to Freud, occupies a sort of position as Freud's ana lysand and that his seminar is nothing more than the text of his analysis w ith Freud. Yet it is Lacan himself who designates the proximity between commenting on a text and the analytic experience, which aims at rendering intelligible what is not immediately so: That is why the method of textual commentary proves itself fruitful. Commenting on a text is like doing an analysis. How many times have I said to those under my supervision, when they say to me-l had the impression he me1111t this or that-that one of the things we must guard most against is to understand too much, to understand more than what is in the discourse of the subject. To interpret and to imagine one understands are not at all the same things. It is precisely the opposite. l would go as far as to say that it is on the basis of a kind of refusal of understanding that we push open the door to analytic w1derstanding (Seminar I, p. 73). Here, Lacan gives us one of the keys for interpreting his seminar and with it, we can try to read his seminar as the text of his analysis with Freud, even if this can seem bizarre. In doing so, we need to be careful to remain within Lacan's own epistemological logic and not to use this approach as the basis for some sort of novelistic history or psychological account of Lacan's relation to Freud. "Commenting on a text is like doing an analysis." Our research project is to read what cotmects Lacan's research to the social sciences of his time and to show how his research includes the truths of these disciplines;

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this can be done by sit uating the seminar as a kind of analysis w ith Freud. If his seminar and its accompanying texts show the major effects of his analysis with Freud, and thus his "conversion" into a Freudian analyst, then they are the equivalents of the work that he would later expect of those w ho had finished their analyses and were in a position to teach analytic theory: the Analysts of his School (AE, nnnlyste de /'ecole). In other words, Lacan's seminar is the text of his pass.28 If we remember that his 1967 text on analytic training recommends "extracting" the analyst's authority "from fiction" (p. 13)-in my opinion, the hypnotic or fantasmatic type that is to be found in "A Child is Being Beaten"-we shall not be surprised that Lacan approaches the question of the analyst's authority and resistance in 1953. Lacan does so because, in pursuing something like an analysis with Freud, he has to situate himself in relation to the latter's institutional and textual authority. To sununarize our subject and our position as reader, we can say that Lacan's reading of Freud- as made explicit in the seminarneeds to be re-examined by emphasiz ing what he says about his own transference to Freud and w hat the text shows about his desire as analyst. The text also indicates something about his judgement- or interp retation---of his colleagues' theoretical and teclmical choices and their own-transferential -relations to Freud and his teaching. By testifying publicly about his return to Freud in his seminar, Lacan is evaluating his desire as analyst, just as he judges the desires of the other post-Freudians, by measuring them against Freud. :s~ On the sensitive point of the pass, see Jacques Lacan,

"Proposition of9 October 1967 on the Psych oanalyst of the School," A11alysis 6 (1995): 1- 13. It "commenting on a text is like doing an analysis" we cannot be blind to the fact that by commenting on Lacan's text, we are, in tum, placed in the position of being a sort of analys..1nd of Lacan's. \Vhat "sort" this is needs to be clarified, but there seems to be a community of readers who share this view. See, for example, Erik Porgel Les noms du pen, clrez Jacques Lacan: pouctuations et problbuatiques (Eres, 1997). Porge says that "In trying to folJow Lacan's joumey, it seems to us that we are writing a unrmtive iH such a way that the narrative itself is Ute place of the mcowzter tlmt is in question iu lite narrative, and this is what defines a psyd\oanalysis" (p. 22). Porge notes next that,

with this statement, he is approaching a definition of analysis that Lacan gave in the session of 1July, 1959 of his seminar, HLe desir et son interpn;tatiou (Seminar VI, Desire and Its Inte rpretation)" (unpublished).

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The Post-Freudians' resistance to Freud Defence of the ego and resistance

In the 1950s, a consensus seemed to exist in the analytic field: if resistance in analytic experience is not equivalent to the system of ego defence, there is a sort of elective affinity between the notions of ego defence-including repression- and of the resistance to psychoanalysis, since this resistance supposedly uses the same mecl1anisms as the ego's defence.29 For this reason, everyone understood the importance of the notion of resistance in Freud's work as well as in Freudian technique. This question is also present in La can's seminar and according to several participants-including a certain Monsieur Z. (we do not know why he has lost his identity in the published version of the seminar); according to him, it was Freud's authoritarian personality that motivated the d iscovery of the notion of resistance, because Freud could not bear it when his patients resisted his treatment. Unlike Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, who argued that Freud's liberal feelings led to the d iscovery of resistances, M. Z. thinks that it can be explained by Freud's authoritarianism. Lacan disagrees with M. Z. and argues that Freud was much less authoritarian than his teachers-such as Charcot, for example--and that it is precisely because he gave up suggestion and hypnosis that he discovered resis tance, both as an obstacle to the analytic work and as a way to gain access to the process of repression. In other words, according to Lacan, resistance appeared to Freud when it no longer quite functioned; when it had already become degraded, as we would say in order to rem ain within the logic of Lacan's epistemology"'. Yet what must be w1derstood is that according to Lacan, Freud did not sit uate the d rama of resistance between the analyst's and the analysand's egos in the hie et 111mc of the session, as some of his inheritors seem to have been willing to do. Lacan comments in these terms on Margaret Little's article on cow1ter-transference.

See the articles UResistance" and uoetence .Mechanisms" in Jean Laplanche and ). B. Pon talis, The Language of Psyclroanalysis, pp. 394-397, 109-111. "' On the Lacanian epistemology ot discovery throug h degradation, see Lacnn et les sciences sodnles. ::0.

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How does [the analyst] act? What are the implications of what he does? For the authors in question, for Margaret Little, nothing else matters but the recognition by the subject, hie et mmc, of the intentions of his discourse. And his intentions only ever have value in their implications hie et nunc, in the immediate exchange. The subject may well describe himself taking on the grocer or the hairdresser-in fact, he is bawling out the person he's talking to, that is to say the analyst. There is some truth in that (Seminar /, p. 30). The analyst here believes himself authorised to offer what l will call an interpretation from ego to ego, or from equa l to equa l-allow me the play on words-in other words, an interpretation whose foundation and mechanism cannot in any way be distinguished from that of projection (Seminar I, p. 32). It is best to abstain from offering this interpretation of the defence, which I will call from ego to ego, whatever value it may eventually have. In the interpretation of defences, there should always be at least a third term (Seminar/, p. 33). Thus the analysis of resis tances organizes-but in a way that misses the point- the activity of Anglo-American analysts, who interpret the s peech of their analysands in terms of what is happening in the session and of the dual relation between ana lysand and analyst. Aimie Reich, Arma Freud, Fenichel and the others consider the ego as the individual operator that would be both the ana lyst's only interlocutor and also as wha t defends itself aga inst interpreta tions; it slows down the p rocess of awakening to consciousness. This is the source of Anna Freud's interest in the defence mechanisms and the title of her book, The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936). The Freud ian imperative to weaken resistance led Anglo-American analysts to put too m uch of an accent on the place of the ego in the treatment and therefore on the influence of their own person, thus ma king the experience an imaginary enclosure, where two egos

would battle each other.' 1 Apart from the "fort\mate" case in which "'The resistance of the ego, like the logical necessity of analysing this obstacle, is indicated in these terms by Anna Freud: ''111e patient transgresses the fundamental rule

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the ego makes common cause with the analyst, Aru;a Freud distinguishes two attitudes of the ego in regard to the analyst: The ego is antagonistic to the ru;alysis, in that it is unreliable and biased in its self-observation .... Finally, the ego is itself the object of analysis, in that the defensive operations in which it is perpetually engaged are carried on w;consciously .... Since it is the aim of the ru;alytic method to enable ideational representatives of repressed instincts to enter consciousness ... the ego's defensive operations against such representatives automatically assume the character of active resistance to analysis. And since, further, the analyst uses his perso11nl influence (my emphasis) to secure the observance of the fundamental rule which enables such ideas to emerge in the patient's free associations, the defense set up by the ego against the instincts takes the form of direct opposition to the analyst himself (pp. 22-31). The bond wi th the practitioner therefore leads back into this logic; the defence against the drive and w hat is at stake in the treatment play their roles within a transferential duality in which the analyst must use. the influence of his person . Now, as La can reminds us,Freud-asearly as in his Studieso11 Hysteria (which Didier Anzieu" outlined in the sessions of Lacan's seminar on 20 and 27 January 1954), and then in his metapsychological essays--indicates "that the strength of the resistance is inversely of analysis, or, as we say, he puts up 'resistances.' l11is means that the inroad o f the id into the ego has g iven place to a counterattack by the ego upon the id. Theobsenrer's attention is now diverted from the associations to the resistance, i.e. from the content of the id to the activity of the ego" (p. 14). ~ Didier Anzieu (1923-1999) received his agregatiou in philosophy in 1948, moved towa rd psychology and became a teacher (assistant) at ~1e Sorbonne in 1951. The son of Marguerite Anzieu, who was the original ot "Aimee", whose case Lacan presented in his medical thesis "De In psyclwse paranotnque dnus ses rapports avec In persomwlitf' ("On paranoiac psychosis in its relation to personality"). He undertook a first analysis with Lacan which he ended in 1953. He joined the Societi frauraise de psycltmralyse in which he worked until1963, the date ,;t which he helped set up the As:;ocinlio/1 de 1»y· clranalyse de France (APF) and separated from Lacan. A specialist in the psychoanalytic theory of groups, he published numerous works on literary creation (Pascal, Beckett) and on artistic creation (B..1con).

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proportional to one's d istance from the repressed centre" (Seminar I, p. 22). Resistance would therefore grow "the closer the subject comes to a discourse which would be the ultimate one, the right one, but one which he absolutely refuses" (Seminar /, p. 22). It is finally a "succession of phonemes" (Seminar/, p. 22) tha t is refused because it threa tens to reveal the "mystery", tha t is, the unconscious truth of which the ana lysa nd wants to know nothing. Resista nce, more than being the fact of opposition in the dual relationoftransference, would find a place in the field of language, and it is when the patient's d iscourse begins to speak in a genuine way that resistance manifests itself. This is almost a paraphrase of the Freud of Studies on Hysteria, who presented the psychic material of this neurosis as an edi fice s tructured accord ing to the logic of a kernel of traumatic memories enveloped by other memories or memory s trata; all of these are classified according to the set of themes constituting the kernel, w hich both s tructures and is s tructured by symptomatic formations. Let us listen to Freud: It was as though we were examining a dossier that had been kept in good order .... I have described such groupings of simi-

lar memories into collections arranged in linear sequences (like a file of documents, a packet, etc.) as constituting 'themes'. These themes exhibit a second kind of arrangement. Each of them is-1 can not express it in any other way- stratified concentrically round the pathogenic nucleus. It is not hard to say what produces this stratification, what diminishing or increasing magnitude is the basis of this arrangement. The contents of each particular stratum are characterized by an equal degree of resistance, and that degree increases in proportion as the strata are nearer to the nucleus .... The deeper we go the more difficult it becomes for the emerging memories to be recognized, till near the nucleus we come upon memories which the patient disavows even in reproducing them." Here, Lacan is certainly following d irectly in Freud's path. ~ Joseph

Breuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies ou Hysteria, pp 288-289.

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Resistance and d iscourse

order to know where it is happening loti rase passe), what the material, biological foundation is, Freud quite straightforwardly takes the discourse to be a reality in its own right, a reality which is there, a sheaf, a bundle of proofs .... The notion of a material support of speech, singled out as such, was not yet available to Freud. Today, he would have taken the succession of phonemes which make up a part of the subject's discourse as the basis of his metaphor. He would say that one encounters greater and greater resistance the closer the subject comes to a discourse which would be the ultimate one, the right one, but which he absolutely refuses (Seminar /, p. 22). [n

Lacan's reading of Freud th us radicalizes the way in which d iscourse as such is taken into account." Lacan is led by the objectthe unconscious and translation as a mistmnslation, according to the Freud of 1896--to use the metaphor of linguistics. And it is by approaching the pathogenic kemel of signification that resistance is experienced. From that point on, the analysis of d iscourse has had to find its place in analytic experience; it must obv iously go beyond analyses in biological tenns, but also go beyond Anglo-American ego analysis. For Lacan, w hat resists is not the ego of the patient, which the person of the analyst must influence, but the statement [e11once) of a d iscourse that is in close proximity w ith unconscious truth. The tmconscious or its formations are thus conceived as the set of phonemes that must be sought through the analysand's s peech. It is precisely because the talking cure is homogeneous with the repressed material (phonemes) that it can be effective. According to Lacan, the subject of the repressed- the subject of the unconscious- is therefore to be brought forth through speech and this

~

Whereas as early as the Jetter to Fliess of 6 December 1896, Freud, in d etaching himself (at least in part) from the language of the physiology of nerves- as tl1e trans-

lator of this letter notes-
Wil/re/m Fliess, 1887-1904, p. 208.

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requires that the unconscious be "thought" as a set of signifiers; the intersections of these signifiers must be followed, for they leadbeyond the ego that is present in the here and now- to the heart of the repressed signifiers. Analytic experience that follows this path goes beyond the fascinations of the ego and mobil izes the history of the subject and of his/her group. Therefore, what is in question here is the unconscious position of the subject w ho is loca ted in a symbolic situation and not the individual reduced to the limits of his/her ego. Th us, at the same level in the logic of analysis, we find symbolic systems of language, discourse, and social exchange in which the subject has always been situ ated, and to w hich his/her symptoms testify; these symptoms supply us w ith the ultimate d iscourse of his unconscious truth and of the historic sit uations that have engendered it.

Consider [the subject] ilt its singullrrity, what does that mean? That means essentially that, for him, the interest, the essence, the basis, the dimension proper to analysis is the reintegration by the subject of his history right up to the furthermost perceptible limits, that is to say into a dimension that goes well bet;ond lite limits of the individual (my emphasis) .... What reveals this dimension is the accent that Freud puts in each case on those points that it is essential to overcome by means of the technique and which are what I will call the bearings [situations] of the history (Seminar I, p. 12). What is to be worked on in analysis is not the hie et nuttc of transference, but "past time", not as an historian's investigation would understand it, but in the sense that it requires an analysis of the labour of historical reconstruction made by the subject in relation to his/her historical bearings. When we return to the origin of the Freudian experience- when I say origin, I do not mean historical origin but point-source .... What matters is what he reconstructs of it. Can you see where this is all leading to? It leads, within Freud's own conception, to an idea that what is involved is a reading, a qualified and skilled !raJ1Slation of the cryptogram representing what the subject is conscious of at the moment ... of himself

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and of everything else, that is to say of the whole of his system (Seminar/, pp. 13-14). Analysis progresses by following the threads of speech, by reading and translating the cryptogram ("something written in secret characters", according to U ttn') represented by w hat the subject possesses of his system- his archives. Lacan, as a reader of Freud, therefore describes the (unconscious) subject as resembling a cryptogram that must be read and translated. The closer the reading of this cryptogram approaches to the "unconscious treasure," the stronger the resistance becomes. Let me emphasize that reading and translation are terms connected with work on the letter and come from Freud himself. 1/Ve can also see that the "unconscious" is situated in tenns of an historical reconstruction of the past and of a system of rewriting the subject: a rewriting of her / himself and of the situations in which s/ he is placed (see Fliess Letters, pp. 207- 215). In opposition to the Anglo-American versions of analysis, which give the ego a key position, Lacan highlights both the discovery of the systems of rewriting historical situations and the deciphering of the phonemic groups that has led to them. Likewise, in reading Freud, he "reinvents" the status of the analyst as both translator and reader of the linguistic intersections from which unconscious subjectivity and its troubles can be deduced: Can one claim that, in our discourse, right now, the ego is the master of everything that these words harbour? The symbolic system is extraordinarily intricate, marked as it is by this Verscii/ungeniieit, property of criss-crossing, which the translation of the papers on teclmique has rendered as complexity, which is, and how, much too weak. Verscii/rmgeniieit designates linguistic criss-crossing (Seminar/, pp. 53-54). For Lacan, the source of authority in analytic experience is therefore not the analyst's influence, which would aim at diminishing the patient's hostility, but rather the linguistic capacities of a practitioner

who is able to read the signifiers-the phonemes-of the symptom. Let us recall that as early as the Rome Report- which we shall ana lyse in detaii- Lacan stated clearly that the symptom is organized in terms of signifiers and that Freud reads it in these terms:

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A symptom here is the signifier of a signified that has been repressed from the subject's consciousness .... It was by deciphering this speech that Freud rediscovered the first language of symbols, still alive in the sufferings of civilized man (Das Unbehngen in der Kultur (Civilization nud Its Discontents]). Hieroglyphics of hysteria, blazons of phobia, and labyrinths of Zwangsneurose (obsessional neurosis] (Ecrits, p. 232). What the analyst must therefore know is not how to red uce resistance by intimidating or seducing the analysand, or by pushing him/ her to an ego identification; instead, s/ he must translate and read what the subject says, for the solution to the unconscious rebus of the cryptogram is not to be fotmd in the goodwill of the patient's ego, which is always overwhelmed by the meaning of the words that lead to the heart of this cryptogram. For the Freudian orientation, as Lacan recalls, the subject is that of a symbolic system that must be reconstmcted; it is also the subject of historic situations that are to be deciphered in the cryptogram, which encloses the set of phonemes that forms the kernel of the truth of repressed d esire, which is what most resists unveiling. Resistance to analysis emanates from this kernel of phonemes and if one lets it speak, it has some chance of emerging into consciousness. In the present case, the analyst's authoritarian use of suggestion to make the ego pass from the patient's into the analyst's camp carmot bring this phonemic set to light.

Second stage Lacan also recalls Freud's refusal of suggestion on another occasion in his seminar: on 10 February 1954, after he had asked Jean Hyppolite" to give a commentary on Freud's 1925 article, Die Vemeinung [translated under the title "Negation"], a text that opened up the myth of the genesis of language for the subject. Before the analysis of this text, which Hyppolite translates into French as "dtilufgntion", rather than the more customary term, "negation", Lacan reminds the

~ jean Hyppolite (1907- 1968), a philosophe r and Hegel specialist, the French translator of Tht, Phenomenology of Spirit. He was the professor o f, among others, Jean l.aplanche and Michel Foucault.

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audience of the help that Hyppolite had given, for a brief moment, several sessions earlier to another participant (Monsieur Z.), w ho had explained the discovery of resistance by referring to Freud's authoritarian character. Lacan remembers that what was at issue, if you remember, was to find out what was Freud's basic, intentional attitude with respect to the patient, when he claimed to have substituted the analysis of resistances by speech for the subjugation that operates through suggestion or through hypnosis. I showed myself to be extremely guarded on the question of knowing if there were at this point signs of combativeness in Freud, indeed of domil1ation, vestiges of an ambitious style which we might see betrayed in his youth (Semi11nr l, p. 56). By returning to this point a second time, Lacan shows how important it is for him. Hyppolite then d istances himself from Monsieur Z. What foUows is the philosopher's exp osition of the subjective genesis of language, a development that is judiciously entitled, il1 the published version of the seminar, "Discourse analysis and ego analysis". Lacan reminds his listeners that one must choose between the rigorous deciphering of signifiers and the analysis of the ego. This choice has essential implications on the level of the relation with the other both in groups and the treatment. And this is w hat il1terests Lacan. A nna Freud's fault

Thus it is rather curious to notice that the seminar progresses through a critica l analysis of a text by Alma Freud, a text that recounts a part of a treatment in w hich she placed herself il1 an impasse by "approach [ing] the material from the perspective of the d ual relation between the patient and herself" (Seminar I, p. 64). For Lacan, "She should have d istinguished between the d ual il1terpretation, in which the analyst enters il1to an ego to ego rivalry with the analysand, and the interpretation w hich moves forward in the direction of the symbolic structuril1g of the s ubject, w hich is to be located beyond the present structure of this ego" (Semina.r I, p . 65). Actu aUy, A1m a Freud "confesses" il1 her text that she had permitted herself

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to become entangled with the analytic situation to the point that it allows the emergence in the patient of the memory of "her [dead] father, whom she had loved dearly" (Mechanisms of Defense, p. 37; quoted in Seminar I, p. 64), in Anna Freud's own words. The s ituation was unblocked, if we are to believe Am1a Freud, by reintroducing the father in the narrative of the analysand's history, but also-let us add- in the transference: in the analytic situation between the two rival daughters, Arma Freud and her patient. This reintroduction of the dead father into Freudian experience is--let me repeat this- Lacan's very project- the return to and of Freud-and, from this perspective, he even emphasizes the limitations of Freud's own daughter's practice. To focus our attention on a fault concerning the dead father in the daughter's practice may seem to the reader to be a mere detail in relation to the importance of the theoretical continents that have been approached, but in this case, we are following Freudian epistemology for this example places the analyst on the trail of the "thing itself". If we follow the paths of the transference from Freud to Lacan, lacan's critical reminder of the fault that leads the daughter astray becomes part of the way that he expresses his own transference to Freud. This, at least, is my hypothesis: reintroducing the dead father involves reintroducing not the father's person, but rather his symbolic value, his speech, and his desire: those of Freud the analyst. The reminder of the dead father

In the seminar, lacan reads and listens to Atma Freud. Arma Freud writes that "Historically this mode of defense by means of ridicule and scorn was explained by her identification of herself with her dead father, who used to try to train the little girl in self-control by making mocking remarks w hen she gave way to some emotional outburst. The method had become stereotyped through her memory of her father, w hom she had loved dearly" (Mechanisms of Defense, p. 37; quoted in Seminar I, p. 64}. 36 lacan adds that Am1a Freud interpreted the patient's aggressiveness toward her as a reproduction, in transference, of the s ituation that the patient had experienced earlier. Anna Freud's analysis of this case can be found in Tlte Ego nnd tlu.' Meclmnisms of Defense, pp. 35-38.

!0>

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He judges that while this is not false, it leaves out what has stntctured the situation historically and has passed into the tmconscious. According to Lacan, reintroducing the identification with the dead father allows the treatment to progress because it opens up a point of view on the subject's tmconscious structure and its symbolic organization; this reintroduction constitutes ipso facto the way out of this stagnation in the dual register of the imaginary." What is at stake, then, Lacan says, is know ing what kind of consent opens the pact and allows the analysis to progress. From the first encounter, the analyst is responsible for resistance, for if he engages the patient in a dual relation, he ensures the renewal of repression. In such a case, the pact would not be Freudian. If, on the other hand, the analyst takes Freud's desire upon himself, he will commit himself to a read ing of the unconscious material of which he himself knows nothing, since "we are ignorant of the symbolic constellation dwelling in the subject's unconscious" (Seminar /, p. 65). It is this symbolic cons tellation, Lacan concludes, that forms what is at stake in these "s tructured, organised, complex situ ations. Freud gave us the first model of it, its standard, in the Oedipus complex" (Seminar/, p. 65). Alm a Freud, in forgetting the place of the dead father when she directs the treatment, appears, from this perspective, to have made a double mistake (which is really only one): • •

s:

A mistake against the progress of her patient's analysis because it does not provide the key to her Oedipal organization A mistake against her own father, for as analyst and as daughter, she is forgetting, on this occasion, to "harmonize her language with his own ", according to the logic required by the super-ego, which Lacan had mentioned earlier and according to which the "you"-
Anna Freud writes, "As the analysis went deeper, however, we found that these

afte<:ts (contempt and ridicule! did not represent a transference reaction in the true sense ot the term and \Vere not connected with the analytic situation at all" (Meclmllisms of Defense, p. 36; quoted in Seminar I, p. 64). Tims she indicates herself the Jimit of a dual conception o f transference, whidl she knew how to go beyond in practice, leaving L.1can to take the trouble to bring out its technical ulesson".

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Alm a Freud forgets the reference to Freud's desire, which indicates for all analysts the path to the unconscious symbolic structures. Lacan picks up on the forgetting of the dead father in Alma's technique less to criticize her for a lack of daughterly piety (she has forgotten the patient's dead father and her own) than for her offence against the father of psychoanalysis himself and his speech, in which we "must have confidence", as he had s tated some months previously (Myth, p. 407). Freud should be trusted because he was the one w ho placed death and the father's symbolic function- whid1 is "a function of speech and ... love"- at the heart of analytic experience (Myth, p. 423). In forgetting both the analysand's father and her own, A1m a Freud reduces the treatment to a d ual rivalry, thus prohibiting her patient any access to the symbolic forms that organize the unconscious, among the most im portant of w hich is the Oed ipus complex. By this criticism of Freud's daughter's clinical practice, Lacan brings us back to the dead father, his desire as analyst, his texts, his teclmique, his discovery, and in this sense, he presents himself as the most faithful "son"; the one who forgets neither the dead father nor the Oedipus complex. He is the one who does not forget Freud's desire, even if- as we have seen- Lacan does not share Freud's universalist point of view concerning the Oedipus complex. Indeed, in 1953, the Oedipus complex remains "the model, the standard", accord ing to Lacan, of a symbolic schema that had not yet been developed sufficiently, even if it is ftmdamental for any "symbolic realisation by the subject, of the id, of the w1conscious- which is a self [soi-merue] and not a set of unorganised drives" (Seminar /, p . 67). In other words, Lacan reaffirms, the unconscious is organized symbolically and the Oedipal myth's capacity for structuring is considerable-as is shown by his conunentary on a clinical case presentation by Melanie Klein'"-but what is important for him is the symbolic fw1ction incarnated by the Oedipal myth, more than its realization in this myth . From this point of view, Lacan maintains his reservations about Freud's conception of the Oedipus complex as lU'Iiversal.

~ Semi11nr I, pp. 67-68. In tl1is session of 17 February

1954, Mile Gt'linier g ives an exposition of the case of little Dick, whid l Melanie Klein analyses in ''The Importance of Symbol-Formation in tl1e Developm ent of the Ego'' (In Love, Guill, mrrl Re[lllrnfiou, n11rl Other Works, 1921-1 945, pp. 219-232).

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LACAN AND l~V1·STRAUSS OR THE RETURN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 1957>

From the Oedipus complex to the triad of the imaginary, symbolic and real

For Lacan, what cow1ts is the symbolic integration of the subject and the Oedipus complex is only a key to this. It really is the key- a very elementary key. I have already pointed out to you that there most probably was a whole bunch of keys. One day perhaps I will give you a lecture on what we gain in this respect from the myths of primitive peoples- ] wouldn't say inferior, because they aren't inferior, then know much more than we do. When we stud y a mythology, for example one that might perhaps appear with respect to a Sudanese population, we discover that for them the Oedipus complex is just a rather thin joke. It is a very tiny detail within an immense myth. The myth allows the cataloguing of a set of relations between subjects of a wealth and complexity besides which the Oedipus complex seems only to be so abridged an edition that in the end it cannot always be used. But no matter. Us analysts have been satisfied with it up to now. Certainly, one does try to elaborate it a bit, but it is all rather tin1id. One always feels terribly tangled up because one doesn't distinguish easily between the imaginary, symbolic and real (Seminar l, p. 86).

If Lacan, in Book I of the seminar, reminds us of the speech of the dead father and the requirements of the symbolic, he ind icates that the Oedipus com plex, as Freud describes it, is o nly one means of organization within a much vaster system, and that it is necessary to look less for the universality of the complex than for its form: that of the symbolic ftmction and of its order. We no te that Lacan speaks here of symbolic situations and indicates clearly the passage to the three orders of the imaginary, symbolic, and real . If Lacan th us recognizes the dead father, his speech and his place as the key to the Freudian orientation, it is to do even better and to go beyond the crucial but no t universal figure of Oedipus, by means of the symbolic fwKtion, which he promotes in the field of psychoanalysis, and which is universal. For Lacan, the Oedipus complex is a symbolic situation. From the subject's family situation, as Lacan defined it from 1938 to 1950, and the "social conditions of Oedipalism" to the

TH E T RANSC ENDENCE O F THE IMAGINARY

43

new imperative of recognizing- if analysis is to progress-the situation that the subject occupies in the symbolic order, there is a rupture that should be emphasized once again: "Nothing other than this is at stake in analysis-recognising what hmction the subject takes on in the order of the symbolic relations which covers the entire field of h uman relations, and whose initial ceU is the Oedipus complex, where the assumption of sex is d ecided " (Seminar/, p. 67). The Oedipus complex : A symbol ic remai nder

To speak in anthropological terms, according to which the change in the constitution of the subject is a hmction of socia l changes, I would say that, for Lacan, the subject of the Oedipus complex or the modern subject is, in 1953-1954, less the effect of a family core (the Lacanian and Durkheimian theory of 1938), than the effect of a mythic core. This core, indeed, is rather pale in relation to other symbolic systems, such as those of the Sudan, which Lacan mentions."' "" l11is unspecified ethnological reference is probably to the research of Marcel Griaule, who a year late r, on the evening of 15 l\•1arch 1955, would give a lecture to which Lacan listened, a nd which he commented on the next day in the following \vay: "What did you get out o f M. Griaule's lecture yesterday evening? "M. Griaule made a rapid allusion to the Islamisa.tion of an importan t segment of the populations of the Sudan, to the fact tha t the latter continue to function with a symbolic register while belonging to a style o f re ligious credo clearly d issonant with this system. Their d emand on this level is manifested in a very precise manne r, tor instance, when they ask to be taug ht Arabic, because Arabic is the language of the Ko ran. That's a tradition \·vhicl"' goes a long way back, is very much alive ... . You mustn' t get the impression that Sudanese civilisation doesn't d esenre its name .. .. The conditions in which these people Jive may at first sight seem rather harsh, rath er precarious from the point o f view of comfort a nd of civilisation, but they seem nonetheless to receive very powerful s upport in the symbolic function, isolated as s uch. It has taken a long time for us to be capable ot e nte ring in to communication with them. TI1ere's an analogy here with our position vis-il-vis the s ubject" (Seminar II, p. 161). Lacan indicates that the ethnologist's research e mphasizes the power of the symbolic function that is the focus o f the research er's work, but this function also seems to isolate the population of the Sudan from other social formations, such as those tha t produce ethnologists. It is as if, from the point ot view of the masses, a civilization awaiting its analyst rejoiced at the foreignness of the cryptogram. An ethnological a na lyst s hould put aside Western identifications in order to recog-

nize the work of the symt>olic function at the heart of Sudanese civilization, just as an ana.lyst must set aside an adh erence to his ego in order to d ecipher the symbolic intersection that inh·oduces us to the analysand's s ubjective structures of in telligibility. .Marcel Griaule (1898-1956) was the p recursor in France of a new method of in vestigation founded on observing ethnological systems an d analysing the "indigenous"

44

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At this moment, the hmction of the Oedip us complex is, for him, a "simple" symbolic situation that is present in mod emity. It is neither universal nor mythically rich. The subject of the unconscious is therefore Jess a subject of the Oedipus complex than of mythic systems. The w1conscious subject is the subject of the symbolic system as a whole, and this is why he returns to Freud wi th the help of the social sciences and the works of Levi-Strauss. If the seminar is the public inauguration of his return to Freud and if Lacan calls upon psychoanalysts to identify their d esire with that of the founder- a desire that he deciphers in Freud's writings and not through what he knows about his biographyLacan a lso gauges, as we have seen, the d is tance that separates Freud's doctrine from the formula tions of other analysts. Yet we can see that Lacan himself, in 1953-1954, on the cntcial point of the Oedipus complex, does not always take the same position tha t Fre ud does, since he continues to reject universa lism in favour of the symbolic function, upon which the structuring of the subject of the unconscious depends. Lacan borrows this notion o f symbolic function from French ethnology, and especially from the work of Ma rcel Mauss, to whom Lacan begins to refer in 1950-as I have shown"". In this text, Lacan re-examined the clinic of psychopaths wi th the notions of fragmented symbol ism and comp Jete symbolism suggested by Marcel Mauss. Yet as far as the more general symbolic function is concerned, it is, instead, the reading of Levi-Strauss' introduction to the posthumous ed ition of Mauss' Sociologic et antltropologie"1 that is cntcial for Lacan. This text is crucial, first, because, as I shall argue, Lacan d iscovers in it the theoretical operator that he will transform into the Name-of-the-Father; it is also important because it is here that Levi-Strauss effects a dazzling reversal of the problematic of Marcel Mauss, w ho had sought in vain to provide a sociological theory of symbolism. Levi-Strauss, on the other hand, concl udes that "It is

representa tions that account for them. His chosen ground \Vas mainly that of the

Dogons of the Niger ~nd. The holder of the first d1air in ethnology at the Sorl>onne, he was also an adviser to the French Union from its foundation in 1946. ..., ln Lncau et les scieuct>s sociales, pp. 95-146, I discussed the article by lacan and cenac, "A Theoreticallntroduction to the Functions of Psychoanalysis in Criminology#. u Claude Levi-Strauss, Jutroduction lo tile Work of Marcel Mauss 1950.

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45

obvious that what is needed is a symbolic origin of society" (Mauss Introduction, p. 21). By recognizing the primacy of the symbolic function over societies, Levi-Strauss opens the way to a new anthropology, one that is "a system of interpretation accotmting for the aspects of all modes of behaviour simultaneously, physical, physiological, psychical, and sociological" (Mauss Introduction, p. 26). On this point, it should be noted that according to Levi-Strauss, interpretation can only be proven by the mind : So it really is tnte that, in one sense, any psychological phenomenon is a sociological phenomenon; that the mental is identified with the social. But on the other hand, in a different sense, it is all quite the reverse: the proof of the social carmot be other than mental; to put it another way, we can never be sure of having reached the meaning and the function of an institution, if we are not in a position to relive its impact on an individual consciousness (Mauss Introduction, p. 28). What makes "the mental and the social ... one and the same"? (Mauss Introduction, p. 21). Nothing other than the symbolic origin of both of them, or rather the power of induction of the "effectiveness of symbols"'', as developed by Levi-Strauss in his article of 1949, the importance of w hich Lacan saw irmn ediately. It is this article that we are now going to examine, for in it is to be found a theory of resistance, , and the trea tment; in short, it is a "paper on technique", which we need to know in ord er to be able to understand La can's reading of Freud's ted mical writings. II. The effectiveness of symbols: From Anna Freud to Claude Levi-Strauss

Tl1e Effectiveness of Symbols is the first of Levi-Strauss' texts to which Lacan refers; Lacan cites his work for the first time by referring to it in his presentation at the Sixteenth International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Zurich on 17 July 1949, a presentation entitled "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I Function as Revealed in

Claude Levi-Strauss, "L'efficacite symbo1ique," 1950, Rerme d'flistoire des reUgions, pp. 5-27. Available in Eng lish in Structural Aulllropology, 1977, pp. 186-205.

c

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LACAN AN D l~V1·STRAUSS O R THE RETU RN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 1957>

Psychoanalytic Exp erience (Ecri/s, pp. 75-81). Claude Levi-Strauss had introduced the notion of the effectiveness of symbols several months before Lacan's lecture on the mirror stage. Lacan uses this notion by read ing the experience of the mirror in a somewhat mysterious way: "Indeed, for imagos-w hose veiled faces we analysts see emerge in our d aily experience and in tlte penumbra of symbolic effectiveness (my empltasis)-the specular image seems to be the threshold of the visible world, if we take into accow1t the mirrored disposition of the imago of one's own body in hallucinations and dreams, w hether it involves one's individual features, or even one's infirmities or object projections; or if we take note of the role of the mirror apparatus in the appearance of doubles, in w hich psychical realities manifest themselves that are, moreover, heterogeneous" (Ecrits, p. 77). In the seminar of 1953-1954, Lacan will throw light on this new use of "The Effectiveness of Symbols", or rather of its "pen umbra", which envelops the imagos at the threshold of the world; this seminar proposes a new version of the mirror stage that harmonizes it- as we shall see- with the optical d evice that Freud developed in Tl1e Interpretation of Dreams" but also with Levi-Strauss' account of the symbolic h mction. First, before coming to Freud, let us see how, in this article, Levi-Strauss develops a theory of the treatment that pivots entirely on the symbolic axis; according to him, this d istingu ishes the shaman's treatment from medical treatment, but also allies the former with Freudian experience. The treatment according to Levi-Strauss

Levi-Strauss notes that med ical treatment in the West separates the objective cause of the illness-bacteria, for example--from the patient's s ubjective world, while the shaman d oes not make this opposition. This is what, according to him, allows this treatment to succeed , s ince the cause of the illness-the monster- remains, accord ing to this paradigm, a part of the same symbolic material as the sick person's subjective representations. In this way, symbolic practice gains a grip on the cause .

.._, Signnmd Freud, The Iuterprelntiou of Drenms, in The Standard EditioH of the Complete Psyclrologicnl Works of Sigmund Freud Vol. IV arrd 1', Iran. james Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953).

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Illness: A relation between signifier and signified

Levi-Strauss a rgues that The relationship between monster and disease is intemal to his mind, whether conscious or unconscious; it is a reJation between symbol and thing symbolized, or, to use the terminology of linguists, between signifier and signified (my emphasis). The shaman provides the sick woman with a language, by means of which unexpressed, and otherwise inexpressible, psychic states can be immedia tely expressed . And it is the transition to this verbal expression ... which induces the release of the physiological process, that is, the reorganization, in a favourable direction, of the process to which the sick woman is subjected."' He thus makes it explicit that the shaman's interpre tation is a recasting of the subject's symbolic universe, and he already refers, a t the begimling of 1949 (as Lacan wiU do, but much later) to the work o f lin gu ists in order to situate this interpretation within the register of the signifier.•• Yet if Levi-Strauss distinguishes the sham an's interpretation from Weste rn medical treahnent, he also like ns it to analytic expe rience: In both cases, the purpose is to bring to a conscious level conflicts and resistances which have remained unconscious, owing either to their repression by other psychological forces or-in case of childbirth-to their own specific nature, which is not psychic but organic or even simply mechanical. In both cases also, the conflicts and resistances are resolved, not because of the knowledge, real or alleged, which the sick woman progressively acquires of them, but because this knowledge makes possible a specific experience, in the course of which conflicts ma terialize in an order and on a level permitting their free development

.u

Claude Levi-Strauss, Structuml Anthropology, 1958, Claire Jacobson and Brooke

Grundfest S<:hoepf (Trm1S.). Trm1Siation altered. Levi-Strauss' translators rendered the words "signifimzt" and "signifte", which are usually translated as "signifier-'' and "signified", as "sign" and umeaning" (frmrs/11tor's uole.) " l acan, indeed, states in 1953 in the Rome Report that "A symptom ... the signifier o f a s ig nified that has been repressed" (Ecrits, p . 232).

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LACAN AND l~V1·STRAUSS OR THE RETURN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 1957>

and leading to their resolution. This vital experience is called abreaction itr psychoanalysis. We know that its precondition is the unprovoked intervention of the analyst, who appears in the conflicts of the patient through a double trmrsferetrce (my emphasis) mechanism, as a flesh-and-blood protagonist and in relation to whom the patient can restore and clarify an initial situation which has remained tmexpressed or unformulated . All these characteristics can be found in the shamanistic cure (Structural Anthropology, p. 198). Thus, according to Levi-Strauss, resistance is lifted in transference by an interpretation whose signifiers will reorganize the patient's symbolic universe. How can we give a more general definition of Lacan's conceptio n o f analysis in his return to Freud, a conceptio n based o n his reading o f both Freud and U.vi-Strauss? The importance of the notio ns of language, resistance, and interp reting through signifiers is explicit in Levi-Strauss' text, which must be taken as cntcial to Lacan's research . Levi-Strauss does not, however, confuse the shaman's treatment with psychoanalysis. Let us continue reading Levi-Stra uss' article: All of these characteristics can be found in the shamanistic cure. Here, too, it is a matter of provoking an experience; as this experience becomes structured, regulatory mechanisms beyond the subject's control are spontaneously set in motion and lead to an orderly functioning. The shaman plays the same d ual role as the psychoanalyst. A prerequisite role-that of listener for the psychoanalyst and of orator for the shaman~stablishes a direct relationship with the patient's conscious and an indirect relationship with his unconscious .... The patient suffering from neurosis eliminates an individ11al myth (my emphasis) by facing a "real" psychoanalyst; the native woman in childbed overcomes a true organic disorder by identifying with a 'mythically transmuted' shaman.

The parallelismdoes not exclude certain differences .... Actually the shamanistic cure seems to be the exact counterpart to the psychoanalytic cure, but with an inversion of all the elements. Both cures aim at inducing an experience, and both succeed by

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49

recreating a myth which the patient has to relive. But in one case, the patient constructs an individual myth with elements drawn from his past; in the other case, the patient receives from the outside a social myth which does not correspond to a former personal state (Structurnl Alffhropology, pp. 198-199). The notion of the neurotic's individual myth, which Lacan w ill begin to use in 1953, appears in Levi-Strauss in 1949 as a symbolic formation w hose position in analytic experience is the reverse of that of the social myth, which the sick person receives in the sham an's treatment. Yet because interpretation in the two typ es of treatment is cut from the same symbolic doth as the symptom, it is effective in both cases. Next, Levi-Stra uss reads Ma rguerite Sechehaye's account of her treatmen t of a schizophren ic.' 6 He claims that "It is the effectiveness of symbols whid1 guarantees the harmonious parallel development of m yth and ac tion .... In the schizophrenic cure, the hea ler performs the actions and the patient prod uces his myth; in the sha manis tic cure the healer s upplies the myth and the pa tient performs the actions" (p . 201). Opera tions-interpretations, manipulations-and mythic formations thus function together in both shamanism and analysis, accord ing to Lev i-Stra uss, but they are distrib uted in a reversed fashion between doctor and pa tient accord ing to the type of practice. According to Levi-Strauss, in the analytic treatment of schizophrenia, it is up to the patient to prod uce this m yth, and therefore this production becomes a crucial type of s ubjective progress. This formulation also anticipates, as we shall see in the third part, Lacan's later discussions of symbolic constructions that stand in for the failed paternal function, constn•ctions tha t motiva te the organization of phobias or the prod uction of d elusions. Levi-Strauss adds that manipulating symbols can also mod ify the organism. What is specific about symbolic effectiveness is that its in ductive property allows interrelations between the d ifferent

~

Marguerite 5echehaye (1887- 1964), a Swiss psychoanalyst who specialized in

schizophrenia and based her method on "symbolic realiz.. "'ltion". She published

journal d'wre schizop!Jrt!ne; auto-observatiou d'wze sclzizoplzrhte pendant le traitemmt psyc/wtlrerapique (1950).

50

LAC AN AN D l~V1·STRAUSS O R THE RETU RN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 1957>

materials and stages of the living being. With both shamanism and anaJysis..

It would be a matter ... of stimulating an organic transformation which would consist essentially in a structural reorganization, by inducing the patient intensively to live out a myth~ither perceived or created by him-whose structure would be, at the unconscious level, analogous to the structure whose genesis is sought precisely in this "inductive property", by which formally homologous structures, built out of different materials at different levels of life-organic processes, unconscious mind, rational thought-are related to one another (Structurnl Arrthropology, p. 201). Symbolic effectiveness can be deduced from the homology between structures that organize the living being and this principle of induction cormects them with each other. This is the source not only of the power of symbolic interp retation of every symbolic manipulation and symbolic invention, but also of the scientific weight that, surprisingly, he gives to Rimbaud's ideal. "Poetic metaphor provides a familiar example of this inductive process, but as a rule it does not transcend the LUKonscious level. Thus we note the significance of Rimbaud's intu ition that metaphor can change the world" (Structurnl Anthropology, pp. 201-202). This inductive value gives power and s tat us to symbolic effectiveness and enables psychoanalytic interpreta tion to be rethought; it revises the symbolic organiza tion from which the subject and its symptoms are deduced, and also gives us a model for thinking the organic modifica tions that can be d educed from a symbolic event. It can also help us rethink the opposi te movement, from the organism to the symbolic. U.vi-Strauss confirms the heuristic value of bringing the organic and the symbolic closer together and the speci ficity of the shamanistic and analytic interpreta tion and calls for a new reversa l in psychoana lysis. This reversal is d ialectical and aims a t a decisive point: the fundamental concept of the

"unconscious": The comparison with psychoanalysis has allowed us to shed ligh t on some aspects of shamanistic curing. Conversely,

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it is not improbable that the stud y of shamanism may one day serve to elucidate obscure points of Freudian theory. We are thinking specifically of the concepts of myth and the unconscious.

We saw that the only difference between the two methods that would outlive the discovery of a physiological substratum of neurosis concerns the origin of the myth, which in the one case is recovered as an individual tmrsury (my emplrnsis) and in the other case is received from collective tradition (Structuml Arrthropology, p. 202)." Levi-Strauss is the refore aiming a t a genuine theory o f the un conscious and its fo rmations, a theory that w ill cla rify th e sta tus of the myth and the symptom as a tre asury. What d oes this treasury consist o f? Situated in the Other of structure, and the re fo re to be fo und in the n e urotic, it is the treasury of the signifier" as Lacan w ill la ter ca ll it. Whom, then, is U .v i-Stra uss addressing in this text? He is addressing both e tlmologists and ps ychoanalysts, since with his next ste p, he push es aside the resistance o f analysts who would object to his theory by a rguing fo r the real histo ry o f the traumas e ncounte red by their patients. But we should ask ourselves whether the therapeutic value of the cure depends on the actual character of remembered si tuations, o r whether the trauma tizi ng power of those situa tions stems from the fact tha t a t the moment when they appear, the subject experiences them immed ia tely as living myth. By this we mean tha t the traumatizing power of any si tuation can not result from its intrinsic features b ut must, rather, result from the capacity of certain events, appearing within an appropria te psychological, historical, and socia l context, to induce an e motiona l crysta llization which is

Translation altered. I have rendered Levi-Strauss' word, ''tresor'' as "h·easury," instead o f as "possession", whidl was Jacobson's and Grundfest Schoepf's original ~

translation. "' "This other is essentially a symbolic place. The Other is precisely a p lace of the treasury/ let us say of the phrases, even of the received ideas without which the joke cannot take on its value and its scope." Lacan, l.J! semiuaire livrr V: les formations de l'inconscient, pp. 116-117.

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mou lded by a pre-existing structure. In rela tion to the event or anecdote, these structures- or, more accurately, these structural laws-are truly atemporal .... These structures as an aggrega te form what we call the unconscious (Structurnl Anthropology, p. 202). Lacan was obviously convinced by this argument, s ince on 24 May I961-more than ten years later- he repeated very precisely LeviStrauss' distinction between myth and trauma, w hich the theory of the unconscious depends on. What does Lacan say in 1961? Myths are developed figures that can be brought back, not to language, but to the implication of a subject caught up in language-and to complicate the matter, in the play of speech. From the subject's relations with any signifier whatsoever, ligures develop with points of intersection, which are, for example, those that I tried to depict in the graph .... This figure, this graph, these reference points, and also attention to the facts allow us to reconcile the (my emphasis) true function of what trauma is with our experience of development. Isn't trauma simply something that erupts at a moment, and breaks up a structure that has been imagined to be total, since this is what certain people have used the notion of narcissism for? Trauma is that certain events come to be situated at a certain place in this structure. And in occupying it, they take on the signifying value that is attached to it in a particular subject. This is what gives an event a traumatic value. This is the reason for our interest in returning to the experience of myth." This return will allow Lacan in 1961 to put into a new perspective a series of historically interlocked myths that have, he thinks, presided over the unconscious fates of people in the West and have provided symbolic coordinates for their symptoms: Oedipus, Hamlet, then CJaudel's Co(afontaine trilogy, a work that is dominated by the h umiliated father. In Lncan et les sciences sociales, I presented the humiliated father as a d egraded figure of the paternal hmction, "" Jacques Lacan, Le seminaire livre VJJJ : le transfert. p. 380.

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a figure of the paternal fw1ction, a figure that gives rise to the "great contemporary neurosis," that Lacan had diagnosed in 1938. With The Effectiveness of Symbols, Levi-Strauss produces a stmcturalist definition of the unconscious, one that for both him and Lacan goes beyond anything related to a psychological definition of the unconscious and of what is ineffable in it. In relation to this definition, Levi-Strauss examines what he has learned from Freud and gives a radical critique of it."' Let us now move to the end of the ar ticle in order to see how Lacan will reread Freud by means of Levi-Strauss' own criticisms. These passages w ill help us understand w hat methodological tools the latter 's work has provided him with on a crucial point: the theory of the unconscious. Levi-Strauss' unconscious and Freud's: The social and the individual

To get a sense of how Levi-Strauss' theory of the unconscious served Lacan as a tool for reading Freud, we must grasp how the former rejects what he sees as ineffable in Freud's theory, in order to substitute for it the rules of the symbolic function as an operator for producing the w1eonscious. First, let us listen to Lev i-Strauss as he defines the unconscious in 1949: The unconscious ceases to be the ultimate haven of individual peculiarities-the repository of a unique history which makes each of us an irreplaceable being. It is reducible to a functionthe symbolic function, which no doubt is specifically human, and which is carried out according to the same laws among aU men, and actually corresponds to the aggregate of these laws (pp. 202- 203). Lacan, four years later, confirms that Nothing other than this is at stake in analysis- recognising what function the subject takes on in the order of the symbolic

On this point, see Alain Delrieu, U vi-Slrauss, leeleur de Freud: le droit, l'inceste, le pt!re ef /'eclrange des femmes (1999).

:u

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LACAN AND l~V1·STRAUSS OR THE RETURN TO FREUD ( 195 1- 19 57>

relations which covers the entire field of human relations (Seminar I, p. 67), and

Consider [tile snbject] in its singuU!rity, what does that mean? That means essentially that, for him, the interest, the essence, the basis, the dimension proper to analysis is the reintegration by the subject of his history right up to the furthermost perceptible limits, that is to say into a dimension that goes well beyond the limits of the individual .... What reveals this dimension is the accent that Freud puts in each case on those points that it is essential to overcome by means of the technique and which are wha t I will call the bearings [situations] of the history (Seminar /, p. 12). In the Lacan of 1953-1954 and the Levi-Strauss of 1949, th e unconscious goes beyond the history of the indiv idual. It is the symbolic structures that organize the un conscious formations an d provide a traumatic character, if necessary, to the situations that the individual en cow1ters. Levi-Strauss then indicates tha t, in approachin g the inscriptio n and the deciph ering of each life, one must be able to distinguish the place wh ere events have been deposited in a sort of dictionary, a d ictionary wh ich is n o t the unconscious, but w hich maintains w ith the latte r the same sort of relation that vocabulary has with the laws o f d iscourse. [I]t will probably be necessary to re-establish a more marked distinction between the unconscious and the preconscious than has been customary in psychology. For the unconscious, as a reservoir of recollections and in1ages amassed in the course of a lifetime, is merely an aspect of memory. While pereru1ial in character, the preconscious a lso has limitations, since the term refers to the fact that even thoug h memories are preserved they are not always available to the individual. The unconscious, on the other hand, is a lways empty-or more accurately, it is as alien to mental images as is the stomach to the foods which pass through it. As the organ of a specific function, the unconscious

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merely imposes structural Jaws upon inarticulated elements which originate elsewhere-impulses, emotions, representations, and memories. We might say, therefore, that the preconscious is the individual lexicon where each of us accumulates the vocabulary of his personal history, but that this vocabulary becomes significant, for us and for others, only to the extent that the unconscious structures it according to its laws and thus transforms it into language (discourse) (Structural Arrthropologtj, p. 203).

On this point, Levi-Strauss is very clear and asks that the subject's symptomatic particularities be analysed according to unconscious laws, w hich have shaped the even ts of his/her life into the form of a discourse o r has made them into symptoms. Since these Jaws are the same for all individuals and in all instances where the unconscious p ursued its activity, the problem which arose in the preceding paragraph can easily be resolved. The vocabulary matters less than the structure. Whether the myth is re-created by the individual or borrowed from tradition, it derives its sources-individual or collective (between which interpenetrations and exchanges constantly occur)-only from the stock of representations with which it operates. But the structure remains the same, and through it the symbolic function is fulfilled. If we add that these structures are not only the same for everyone and for all areas to which the function applies, but that they are few in number, we shall tmderstand why the world of symbolism is infinitely varied in content, but always limited in its laws. There are many languages, but very few structural laws which are valid for all languages. A compilation of known tales and myths would fill an imposing number of volumes. But they can be reduced to a small number of simple types if we abstract, from among the diversity of characters, a few elementary fwlctions. As for the complexes-those individual mythsthey also correspond to a few simple types, which mould the fluid multiplicity of cases. Since the shaman does not psychoanalyse his pa tient, we may conclude that the remembrance of things past, considered

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by some the key to psychoanalytic therapy, is only one expression (whose value and results are hardly negligible) of a more fundamental method, which must be defined without considering the individual or collective genesis of the myth. For the myth form takes precedence over the content of the narrative. This is, at any rate, what the analysis of a native text seems to have taught us. But also, from another perspective, we know that any myth represents a quest for the remembrance of things past. The modern version of shamanistic technique called psychoanalysis thus derives its specific characteristics from the fact that in industrial civilization there is no longer any room for mythical time, except within man himself. From this observation, psychoanalysis can d raw confirmation of its validity, as well as hope of strengthening its theoretical foundations and understanding better the reasons of its effectiveness, by comparing its methods and goals with those of its precursors, the shamans and sorcerers (pp. 203-204). Accord ing to this logic, neurosis is to be interpreted as a mythical formation. Because of the prevalence of socially shared symbolic organizations, and in order to respond to the d ifficulties encountered in the particularities of his history and in his mythical, symbolic inscription, the s ubject produces symptoms and complexes. A neurosis has a mythica l s tructure for it is nothing other than an individual version of the difficulties that the s ubject encounters in his own symbolic situatio n. Therefore Levi-Strauss sees the neuroses as so many individual myths, w hich are strictly complementary to the socially shared mytl1ic organizatio ns. In 1953, Lacan endorses tl'lis perspective by describing obsessional neurosis as "The Neuro tic's Individ ual Myth".Is it really necessary to emphasize everything that, in Levi-Strauss' essential text of 1949, will reappear in Lacan's rereading of Freud? In Ius return to Freud, Lacan takes up various aspects of Levi-Strauss' theory of the symbolic fw1ction in order to resolve a question that he found very difficult during that period: How are the imaginary, symbolic, and real related to each other? What concerns us in tl'lis questio n is the turn from the imaginary to the symbolic registers. If the 1949 lecture on the "Mirror Stage" had already mentioned the mysterious presence of the " penumbra of symbolic

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effectiveness" that envelops the specular image at the threshold of the visible world, it is precisely this penumbra that Lacan is now seeking to lift. He wants to throw light on the ways in which the subject is structured by the quilting beh'/een the imaginary of the mirror s tage- the visible- and the effectiveness of the symbolic ftmction, which Levi-Strauss has emphasized. In 1953, Lacan is no longer satisfied that his theory of the mirror s tage can account for the subject's primal identifications, and he undertakes a theoretical revision fow1ded on Levi-Strauss' concept of symbolic effectiveness. If his return to Freud is a transferential rectification concerning Freud's desire, his theoretical revision involves the introduction of a ne.w version of the mirror stage, one that excludes neither the dead father of psychoanalysis nor his speech: neither the totem nor the symbolic father towards whom he is now returning. This new emphasis requires-and enables-the m irror experience to be transformed into the inverted bouquet, which he will now explain. It is necessary to understand that this transformation is a theoretical revision that is based on Levi-Strauss' Tl1e Effectiveness of Symbols; this text infiltrates Lacan's transferential rectification, even if it is precisely by adopting the notion of the symbolic ftmction tha t he can maintain the distance between his handling of the Oedipus complex and Freud's. The experiment of the inverted vase is a new version of the mirror stage and we have seen w hat is at s take in the latter in my earlier work: nothing less than a rethinking of the origin of subjective structuring and of the movement from nature to culture. This shows that Lacan continues his dialogue w ith Levi-Strauss as weU as w ith anthropology, at the point where it deals wi th the enigma of enigmas.

Ill. From the mirror stage to the inverted bouquet From the mirror stage to the bouquet: Lacan, Freud and Levi-Strauss

From the s tart, Lacan retums to Freud by examining both what is beyond and what falls short of the Oed ipus complex, and reads the structuring fw1ction of the Oedipal myth in terms of the knotting of the imaginary, symbolic and real. In other words, subjective

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maturation is no t only to be perceived in fine in a ttaining the Oedipal operation, but more generally in the kno tting of which the Oedipus complex actualizes o ne possibility. Without these three systems to guide ourselves by, it would be impossible to understand anything of the Freudian technique and experience (Seminar /, p. 73). [T)he whole problem is that of the juncture of the symbolic and of the imaginary in the constitution of the real (Seminar I, p. 74). Lacan explains that he has "concocted a little model for you, a substitute for the mirror-s tage" (Seminar I, p. 74), and which his readers now know as the inverted bouquet. This new model aims to cla rify tl1e solution that Lacan had been providing, since 1936, with the mirror s tage, to what he saw as a shortcoming in Freud's theory o f the earliest identifications (see Lncan et les sciences wciales). 1n doing so, he was seeking to clarify the "root identification"-the Lacanian super-ego, which is formed before the ego-and thus to throw more light o n the mirror s tage; this is also the moment when the anthropological e nigma o f the transition from nature to culture becomes real. The constitution o f the subject of the unconscious is thus no longer to be grasped, for Lacan, by means o f the mirror stage or the Oedipus complex; instead, it is to be a pproached in tenns o f both tl1e mirror s tage as "reread" with Levi-Strauss' symbolic functio n and a new optical device that Lacan borrows from the Freud of The

Interpretation of Drmms. Now that we have read Levi-Strauss' The Effectiveness of Symbols, we a re going to study the way in which Lacan returns to the psychoanalytic clinic and uses the insights gained there and from The Interpretation of Drmms to refo rmulate his mirror stage in terms o f the o ptical schema. Let us remember first that in The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud compares the instrume nt used in psychic productions to a sort of complicated manuscript or camera. In the session o f 24 February 1954, Lacan says: To clarify things a little for you, I've concocted a little model for you, a substitute for the mirror-stage .... Optics could also have its say. At this point l find I'm not in disagreement witl1 the tradition established by the master- more than one of you must have

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noticed in the Trnunuleutung, in the chapter "The psychology of the dream-process", the famous schema into which Freud inserts the entire proceedings of the unconscious .... I will read it to you as it is to be found in the Trnunufeutung (Seminar l, pp. 74-75). After begiiming to quote Freud's text, Lacan adds his own comments and then continues his citation:

What is presented to us in these words is the idea of psychiml locality-what is at issue here is precisely the field of psychical reality, that is to say of everything which takes place between perception and the motor consciousness of the ego. l shall entirely disregard the fact that the mmtal apparntns with which we are here concemed is also known to us in the form of an anatomical preparation, and I shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine psychical locJtlity in any anatomical fashion. I shall remain upon psychologiml ground, and I propose simply to follow the suggestion tlrat we should picture tire instrument which carries out our mental functions as resembling a compound microscope or a photographic apparatus, or something of the kind. On that basis, psychicallomlity will correspond to a point inside the apparatus at which one of the preliminary stages of an image comes into being (Seminar/, p. 75). He seeks a better way of representing his understanding of how unconscious s ubjectivity is constituted, while also continuing to criticize the tmiversalism of the Oed ipus complex; with the optical schema, he is able to achieve both these o bjectives ii1 a way that includes the power of the Oedipus complex to stntcture the subject by knot ting the three orders together. He thus uses the authority of The lnterpre/atiou of Dreams to construct the new schema of the inverted vase (Seminar/, pp. 76, 77, 78). He mentions optics: For there to be an optics, for each given point in real space, there must be one point and one corresponding point only in another space, which is the imaginary space. This is the fundamental structural hypothesis .... without it one cannot write even one equation, nor symbolise anything (Seminar l, p. 76).

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The real, imaginary and symbolic are articula ted. "For there to be an optics" -certainly, but what must be there in order for there to be a subject? Let us look at the schema:

The experiment of the inverted bouquet TI1e image of the vase in the inverted bouquet51 is equivalent to the image of the body in the mi rror in the mirror s tage. By distinguishing the image of the vase, from the real of the flowers, the optical model depicts the advent of the ego in the imaginary register, while the real of the objects of d esire is distinguished from the imaginary, even if in the mirror, the object and the body image are joined. In other words, this device allows us to situate what pertains to the ego and what does not. Well then, Jet us say that the image of the body, if we locate it in our schema, is like the imaginary vase which contains the bouquet of real flowers. That's how we can portray for ourselves the subject of the time before the birth of tire ego (my emphasis) and the appearance of the latter (Seminar /, p. 79). Lacan, while resolutely dismissing any d evelopmental psychology, claims that the subject is prior to the ego; through this new device, he can take up not only the question of the primal identification, the "root identification"-which I studied in my earlier work-or the question "'' On the optical mcxlel of the person's ideals.. see Jacques-AJain Miller, "Commentary on tl1e Graphs", Ecrits, pp. 859-861.

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of the appearance of the envelope of the ego, which dialectically includes the real; he also indicates that this dialectic operates on condition that the eye, which looks, is sit uated in the right place. The imaginary and the real symbolize each other through an inside-outside relation that calls for the symbolic's discriminating function to be maintained. In this device, the eye symbolizes the subject and in order for the knotting to be done correctly, the eye must be well situated. The position of eye, and thus of the subject, "is essentially characterised by its place in the symbolic world, in other words in the world of speech" (Seminar /, p. 80). According to this logic, a fortunate "Development only takes place in so far as the subject integrates himself into the symbolic system, acts within it, asserts himself in it through the use of genuine speech" (Seminar /, p. 86). In this schema, Lacan, following Freud, uses the laws of optics to suggest a new model of psychic structuring, and the knotting of the three registers depends on the way that the eye is positioned in it. In the same way, whether or not the subject finds himself in the dialectic of inside/outside, which knots the imaginary to the real-the image of the body to the real of desires or the drive-depends on the position that the subject is given in the symbolic. If Lacan inherits the reference to the laws of optics from Freud, the power of the symbolic ftmction comes from Levi-Strauss; this, in clinical terms, is not unimportant, for when the dialectic fails, the subject does not distinguish what is his own from what is not. We could say, then, that there is no correct way for the ego to arise, and this is because of a failure of the subject's position in the symbolic. Because of this, all one's clinical attention should be directed to this subjective position, even, and perhaps especially, when a subject articulates only a few words, as is the case of little Robert, which was presented in Lacan's seminar by one of his students, Rosine Lefort. Robert seems knotted to speech only in w hat he does not " know how to say": "Madame! TI1e wolf!" Before seeing how Rosine Lefort uses the optical model, let us note that Lacan is careful to apply it, in the first place, to an analysis of the position that he and his students occupy in the analytic movement. The right d istance from the m irror and from Freud

We need to remember that Lacan has just profited from Freud's authorization to move from Wallon's experiment on the mirror stage

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to that of the inverted bouquet'', indicating in particular that the root image can arise only if the eye is the right d istance from the mirror. The eye is the metaphor for the subject. Lacan makes the aim of his commentary explicit to his listeners: the course of our dialogue, you have been able to get acquainted with the ambition which rules our commentary [i.e., 011r analysis] namely that of reconsidering the fundamental texts of the analytic experience. The moving spirit of our excavation is the following idea- whatever in an experience is always best seen is at some remove. So it is not surprising that it should be here aud now (my emphasis) that we are led, in order to understand the analytic experience, to begin again with what is implied by its most immediate given, namely the symbolic function, or what in our vocabulary is exactly the same thingthe function of speech. We rediscover this, the central domain of analytic experience, signalled throughout Freud's oeuvre, never named, but signalled at every step. l don' t think I am pushing it when l say that that is what can be immediately translated, almost algebraically, from any Freudian text. And this translation yields the solution of a number of antinomies which become apparent in Freud with that honesty which ensures that any given one of his texts is never closed, as if the whole of the system were in it" (Seminar I, p. 89). [n

It is one thing to authorize himself, through Freud, to develop an opti-

cal experiment as a "metaphor" of subjective structuring, and then to transmit it to his s tudents for a clinical presentation. Lacan goes further, however, since he clarifies for his listeners where they are, and even where he himself is; he does so by applying the experiment of the inverted bouquet to the analytic movement. Lacan argues that he is situ ated at the right d istance from Freud, at the exact point wheretuuike the Anglo-American disciples-he can translate Freud's text and give the solution to the contradictions that Freud, in his honesty, did not cover up. His transferential position is at the right distance On the experiment by Henri Bouasse, see joel Dor, IutroductioH to the RmdiHg of Lncan: Tile Uncon scious Struc/urerl Uke a Language (1997).

le

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from Freud, and he can therefore do the work of an analyst on themtranslate them-in order to bring out Freud's contrad ictions, which are symptoms that he transmitted within psychoanalysis and which remain active even within analysts' clinical activity. The analysis is thus itself turned inside-out: Lacan's commentary becomes Freud's analysis with Lacan. Yet the question of the desire that is to be imputed to Freud as an individual is of little importance here; what is in question, instead, is the desire of the analyst, who was incarnated by Freud and to which Lacan seeks to return. More than Freud's or Lacan's own particular desires, w hat Lacan is elucidating is the desire of the analyst. If Lacan must, as a preliminary, be in the right place in his relation to Freud in order to be able to translate Freud's symptomatic contrad ictions, a second condition for making progress in this project is Freud's own honesty, which must be complete if the system that explains the symptom is adequate. And the completeness of the system is nothing other than that of the symbolic system itself. Thus, the key to Freud's contradictions is, accord ing to Lacan, the symbolic function: the hmction of speech and its laws. Lacan is both Freudian and Uvi-Straussian. The w rong distance and stagnation in the imaginary

Why is Lacan located at the right distance from Freud? Because he is not located at the wrong distance; for example, he is not in the place of A1ma Freud, w ho "forgets": 1. 2.

The dead father or her own father, and Freud's desire as analyst and the Freudian d iscovery, which demonstrate that the dead father is the key for w1derstanding the symbolic fw1ction as sucl1.

To forget this is to forget Freud and the symbolic hmction in analytic exp erience. By reintroducing the function of death and the dead father in analytic experience, Lacan shows that he is located at the right distance from Freud, the d istance where he can decipher the

contradictions of Freud's speech, and both find the key- the symbolic fw1ction- and remind analysts of their duty to handle the function of speech appropriately in analytic exp erience. He is calling upon analysts to remember the dead father 's desire and the right

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"Freudian" use of Freud's s peech and of speech in general, as the analytic ideal and the rule of the super-ego. Yet in order to be able to make this good use, there must be a suitable conception of the function of speech, w hich "is exactly the same thing" as the symbolic function, as Lacan in dicates (Semi11nr I, p. 89). If he can give its true value to this function, w hich is d irectly in Freud's orientation, it is thanks to the work of Levi-Strauss and French anthropology. This enables Lacan, as we shall see, even in the most clinical moments, to mobilize the place of speech in a symbolic system rather than to flatten the interpretation onto the regis ter of the family, as he had once done, before the change in his approach. It is necessary, Lacan insists, to go back to the drawing board with the Freudian experience in order to understand it; he must start again with the symbolic function and with speech. Let us see how this pays off: 1. 2.

In clinical experience with Robert On the level of the change from the mirror stage to the inverted vase; this is a radical theoretical change, since the mirror stage of 1936-1949 was the theory of an imaginary capture without speech; the inverted vase, on the other hand, combines the mirror stage wi th Levi-Strauss' theory of the symbolic function in order to establish a link between the imaginary and the symbolic in the very first moments of subjective matu ration .

Let us start with Robert, whose case shows us what happens w hen this symbolic function does not place the subject in a position in which he can see his own image: when this function is exercised in a degraded way. The wolf: The mother or the totem?

After clarifying his transferential relation to Freud, Lacan gives the floor to Rosine Lefort to discuss the Robert case, a case that ar ticulates the deficiency of the ego from which the child suffers, in terms of the

logic of the inverted vase. Then there is a short dialogue between Lacan and Jean Hyppolite concerning the scope of the word "wolf". Rosine Lefort seems to understand the figure of the wolf as the heir of the devouring maternal imago. Far from giving credit to this

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idea, Lacan re-situates the wolf's place in the symbolic system and reorganizes the reading of the case on this basis: "Nat mally the wolf raises all the problems of symbolism: it isn't a hmction wi th a limit, since we are forced to search out its origin in a general symbolisation" (Serninar I, p. 101). Lacan tums away from a reading that places too much focus on the "family complexes" and makes the wolf into the imago of the "devouring mother". Instead, he emphasizes its place in the general symbolic system: its anthropological place as a totem. Let us listen to Lacan: Why the wolf? We are not particularly familiar, in this part of the world, with this character. The fact that it is the wolf who is chosen to produce these effects ties us straight away to a broader function on the mythical, folkloric, religious, primitive plane. The world is part of a complete filiation, which connects up with secret societies, with everything that implies in the way of initiation, either in the adoption of a totem (my emphasis) or in the identification with a character (Semiunr I, p. 101). From the "devouring mother" to the question of the totem: we see how Lacan opens the s ituation up to an analytic interpretation of the wolf, the concern with the dead father, the social bond and the symbolic function as such. Lacan's rectification moves the interpretation of the "wolf" from the matemal imago to the dead father; he claims that the subject identifies with it, in a sort of "sacred" ritual over w hich this anthropological figure of the wolf looms. The wolf, then, is nothing other than a version of the ideal or of the Freudian super-ego. Lacan indicates that he still has to clarify and d istinguish between these two instances of subjective stmcturing. Totem, super-ego and ego ideal in transference

The super-ego is constraining and the ego-ideal exalting. These are things that one tends to gloss over, because we move from one term to the other as if the two were synonymous. It is a

question which is worth pursuing in relation to the transference relationship. When one looks for the basis of therapeutic action, one says that the subject identifies the analyst with his ego-ideal or on the contrary with his super-ego, and, in the same text one

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substitutes one for the other in accordance with the unfolding of the demonstration, without really explaining what the difference is. Certainly I will be led to examine the question of the superego. l should say from the start that, if we don' t limit ourselves to a blind, mythical usage of this term, this key-word, this idol, the super-ego is essentially located within the symbolic plane of speech, in contrast to the ego-ideal. The s uper-ego is an imperative. As is indicated by common sense and by the uses to which it is put, it is consonant with the register and the idea of the law, that is to say with the totality of the system of language, in so far [as) it defines the situation of man as such, that is to say in so far as he is not just a biological individual" (Seminar/, p. 102). In this clinical fragment, the wolf as a core of speech incarnates the function of language, which " ties [the child) to th e commun ity o f mankind" (Seminar/, p. 103). This "summary o f a law", according to Lacan, aUov.rs, in treating a child, an "extraordinary elaboration, brought to a close by this touching self-baptism, w hen he utters his own Christian name. At that point we come to the fw1damental relation, in its most reduced form, o f man to language. It is extraordin arily moving" (Semiruzr /, p. 103). Lacan's emotion highlights the en ormous scope that he g ives to th e child's only speech . This speech is the totemic expressio n of a law of the s uper-ego that enable the child to christen hin1self. By doing so, the s ubject experiences the surface o f his body and makes his ego appear in a wa y that may be unstable, but which is n evertheless effective. It is the most reduced, and th erefore the most va luable, fragment of the treasury o f signifiers that allows the subject to be bound- in the quasi-religious sense o f the term- to the human corrunw1ity. Lacan thus turns away from interpreting the anim a l in terms of the devouring mother in order to remind his studen t of the a lmost sacred wealth of the to temic core o f speech that animates the subject. What must be understood is the fruitfulness of the totem: the wa y in which the fath er functions in the analytic practice with the "Wolf Child", as well as in the analyst's transferential relation w ith Fre ud himself. 1Ne can n ow see the direction in which Lacan is moving in this seminar. Solidly anch ored by the symbolic function, which h e

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owes to the anthropologists, Lacan begins a double movement of analysing 1. 2.

Analytic teclmique, and The transference to Freud, or rather, the way in which Freud's flaws explain how analytic practice has gone astray.

Along with Lacan-and with the. paternal function clearly in mindwe must find the right d istance from Freud if we are to produce analysts who w ill be able to let themselves be guided by the dead father's desire; such analysts will need to be capable of undoing his symptoms and his contradictions, and to admit the crucial position of the symbolic function and of speech in constituting the subject in transference. Not to find this right distance in relation to Freud is to have a blurred vision and to go astray in the register of the imaginary- the register of d uality and its impasses-w hich governs Anglo-American practice. Not to take the. right d istance is to be unable to see the Freudian heritage, its rules from the super-ego, its ideals, its totem: Freud. It is, consequently, to stagnate in the imaginary. Analysis progresses through the fullness of the Freudian lesson, but it progresses thanks to the anthropological depth of the symbolic function, w hich Lacan takes from Levi-Strauss and w hich enables him to use the paternal hmction to analyse cases. It enables him to displace the interpretation of the wolf from an emphasis on its maternal voraciousness to an analysis of totemic paternity and what the latter can produce. He returns to Freud. From the bouquet to the thing or the invention of the ego

In the treahnent, the child's handling of the totem of the dead father-the wolf- makes his ego, the s urface of his body and his body's psychic image appear. And d isappear. His pa rticular position in the symbolic does not make him absent to the totem, but he entertains an alternative relation to it, one that is badly situated, and w hich impedes his development and that of his ego, which

appears to him at the time of his self-christening. This is why the symbolic hmction is interesting, as are optics and the return to the dead father of psychoanalysis. This return can also be seen as a sort of self-christening, not only for Lacan but for his followers, who no

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longer derive their authori ty as analysts from the group that they had just left. Lacan ret urns thus to his Freudian heritage. " Freud had already constructed something similar, and quite speci fically pointed out to us in the Traumdeutrmg and the Abriss53 that the psychic agencies should (my emphasis) be conceived of on the basis of imaginary phenomena" (Seminar I, p. 144). It is necessary to tntst Freud, he repeats, accentuating the register of theoretical "duty". Before contin uing the analysis of Lacan's reading of Freud, let us stop for a moment to emphasize how the analysis of the child's self-christening shows Lacan's extraordinary clinical precision; here he is rethinking his theory of both the super-ego and the ego ideal, since defects in both these agencies seriously affect the way that the subject can-<>r cmmot- perceive his ego, from w hich he projects himself imaginarily. Six years later, brought by clinical experience to the very origin of humanization, Lacan will point out that the ego ideal and the super-ego are born in the same primal moment of subjective structuring. " How can we conceive of the concrete origins of the ego ideal? ... these origins cmmot be separated from those of the super-ego, for while they are distinct from the latter's, they are coup led to it," as Lacan says on 7 June 1961 (Seminar Vlll, pp. 406, 409). In order to see oneself in the right position in the mirror, the relation to the totem- the dead father, the super-ego, and the ego idealm ust be internalized. How CaJl we understand the s tability of the psychic function that allows us to perceive the ego if we do not see what transfers the symbolic function from the outside to the inside? In 1961, in his seminar, Transference, Lacan examines this question of the movement from outside to inside by using the Freudian notion of the introjection of the super-ego-and even of the ego ideal, s ince Freud does not make a s trong distinction between the two terms. He does so through the solution of the totem meal, w hich fixes the totem in the body of the brothers (Totem and Taboo) after the m urder of the father, or in that of the sons (after each Oedipus complex). Then he will advance a second Freudian solution . Let tts follow its sequence: "The notion of an interior is a crucial topological function in analytic thought, since even introjection refers to it" (Seminar Vlll, p. 408), Lacan first assures us, and then

~ Sigmund Freud, An Outlin e of Psycho-Analysis, 1964, 141-208.

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he indicates the first Freud ian solution: "the introjection--after the murder-of an imperative, interdictive, essentially conflictual object" (Seminar VIII, p. 410), which is modified , by narcissistic investment, into the internalized ego ideal. By being introjected, it enters- this is a first Freudian themethe sphere which would only be interior; it is thereby made sufficiently narcissistic, and perhaps becomes the object of libidinal investment for the subject. And it is easier to make oneself loved by the ego ideal than by the object that was, at one moment, its original" (Seminar Vlll, p. 411). Th us Lacan indicates Freud's first solution. The second solution is also Freudian: Prior to even a first step toward the Oedipal situation, there is a first identification with the father as such. Did the father trot around in his head? Freud allows the subject to take a first step in identifying with the father, and he develops a terminological refinement here by calling it exquisit Jtulrrnlich, "exquisitely manly" (Semirrar V/ll, p. 416). Disappointed by the mother, the s ubject returns to this primal identification through a regression. These two identifications-primordial and regressive- w ith the father, derive from a process that is prior to the Oedipus complex and which makes one of the object's traits into a sign (not into a signifier) that comes from the O ther; it occurs on the optic plane and comes from the one whom the subject turns to in the mirror in order to be sure of who he is. And of what he is for the O ther. It is necessary to look at oneself from the viewpoint of the O ther in order to be able to recognize oneself after having been recognized. This point is tl1e I of the ego ideal, as Lacan explains. It is w hat tl1e chi ld misses when he w ishes to be recognized. We must conceive of gaze of the Other as being interiorised by a sign. That is enough. £in einziger lug. There is no need for a whole field of organization and a massive introjection. This point I of the single trait, this sign of ru1 assent to the Other, of the choice of love, on which the subject can work, is there somewhere, and is dealt with in the sequence of the mirror-play. It is

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enough for the subject to coincide with it in his relation with the Other for this little sign, this einziger Zug to be a t his disposal. One has to make a radical distinction between the ego ideal and the ideal ego. The first is a symbolic introjection, whereas the second is an imaginary projection (Semiunr V111, p. 418). TI1e instability o f the projection o f the image of his own ego-the ideal ego-for the Wolf Child results from a defect in symbolic introjectionthe ego ideal~ince for some reason, his s ubjectivity d id no t coincide with the O ther of symbolic recognition. As a consequence, the child's christening can only be self-proclaimed , a self-dtristening: unstab le, s ubject to th e s uper-ego, and w ithout a fixed cmm ection with his own in1age. We shall n ote both the enormo us clinical scope of th e case an d also its effects on the seminar, for if it is fntitful to refer to Seminar vm in order to un derstand this fragment of Seminar I, it is in Seminar I that Lacan indicates that the q uestion of th e super-ego is worth being asked in cmmection with the transferential relation. Six years later, in the seminar on transference, he will examine th is question by referring once again to th e theory of the inverted vase. Wh a t can be sa id about the seminar of 1953-1954? Accord ing to Lacan in this seminar, the c linical analysis shows that: 1.

2.

3.

A theory o f the regis te r o f the image---or o f the imaginary-is necessary in Freudian exp e rie nce, for what this ch ild suffers from is the lac k of an im age of himself, the lack o f an ego" The image of the ego can emerge and be stabilized o nly if the s ubject has a t his d isposal a positio n from which he can project a lovable-
These conclusions enable us to understand an imp o rtant aspect o f the laws that govern th e s ubject's psychic functioning: these laws, which d efine the p lace that s/ he takes in th e symbolic and

~

Here, Lacan follO\VS Freud's own logic; he recalJs in his seminar that Freud" ... den(ies] the psyd1otk access to the imaginary. And since in general Freud knows wh..1t he is saying, we will have to find a means o f fiUing in what he meant on this topic" (Seminar/, p. 116).

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the imaginary and condition her/his link to the real, derive from optics- the image- and from the symbolic (totem, super-ego, ego ideal). For this reason, we need a new version of the mirror stagethe inverted vase- which is authorized by Freud and w hich is in consonance w ith Levi-Strauss' theory of the symbolic function.

From nature to culture: From the mirror stage to the inverted bouquet What has changed between the period of 1938-1950 and the first year of the seminar? What has changed is that the Wolf Child brings us, in 1954, to the origins of humanization-the jtmcture of nature and culturewhich, previously, had been explained by the mirror stage without any reference to the symbolic ftmction. In the text of 1938, Lacan had promoted the Father as absolute Other who introd uces the alterity that is necessary to resolve the intrusion complex, which itself had provided the solution to the weaning complex. For want of the "Father", the child remained trapped, according to these formulations, in the image of his own brother, and even of the terrible imago of the mother. According to Lacan, this imaginary capture provided the basis of the super-ego, where the mother plays a role that was stronger than the father's, who had had this ftmction for a longer time. The imaginary, but unconscious power of the super-ego was cotmterbalanced by that of the ego ideal, w here the father was more powerful than the mother. By maturing in this way, the subject could reach a sexually and socially adjusted s ubjective position . Despite this, we remember that on the collective level, the father's social d ecline was reputed to impede the good fw1ctioning of the Oedipus complex, and therefore the happy development of the sons of modernity, who were left in the grip of the "character" neuroses. In 1950, Lacan used this theory again by making the decline of the father and, more generally, family circumstances, the conditions for the degrading of the Oedipus complex and of the s uper-ego. This final degradation allowed Lacan, as he said, to invent the "Lacanian" super-ego, w hich he d istinguished from the Freudian super-ego in the following ways: 1.

It was quite precocious and appeared well before the Oed ipus

complex, since it found its coordinates in the biological d isarray of prematuration .

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2.

3.

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It d epended on the social cond itions of the fa mily.

hence his clinic of character neuroses and of the neurotic character, which Lacan developed in 1950 ("The Functions of Psychoanalysis in Criminology"), but also that of the super-ego, whether bearable or not, and that of the passage to the act as the psychopath's attempt at a solution. It p ut the clinician on the trail of acts that expressed, according to Mauss' terminology, a fragmented symbolism, w hich was opposed to the complete symbolism of the ordinary structuring of s ubjectivity.

In 1950, Lacan had already grasped the notion of a symbolism divided- particularly in Mauss-into the categories of complete and fragmentary, and had used this notion to account for the clinic of psychopaths and the super-ego; we remember that what was necessary for a successful symbolization or for the exit from the imaginary prison was a metamorphosis of the brother into the father, which would be brought about by the Oed ipal drama. What changes in Lacan's retun1 to Freud is that he now uses the symbolic fw1ction in relation to a ver y early s tage of subjective stmcturing and he gives the super-ego a symbolic stat us that has its roots in the symbolic exchanges that preceded even the birth of the subject. Now, the s uper-ego becomes a symbolic function that comes from the Other of culture; it is a symbolic fonnation, and indeed, a linguistic formation that determines the child's situation in relation to the symbolic system as it had existed before his birth . The d ifficulties that the subject inherits no longer derive from his "worth" or his faults; they depend on what was played out in his social group before he came into the world: the father's unsettled debt, etc. The subject's symptoms are thus d ecided even before his birth. As for the relation between the super-ego and the ego ideal, let us recall that, according to Lacan, the dialectic of introjection enables the subject to turn from the super-ego to the ego ideal. From this idealized point, the s ubject can see himself: he can project an image of

his bod y- the typical ideal ego, When this point does not exist, the subject does not see himself, and this is the case of the Wolf Child; this boy, w ho has not achieved symbolic s tability and whose egoimage has failed, discovers in his self-christening the presence of a totemic figure-the wolf- which is still active and which binds him

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to the human community. The wolf can do so despite the fact that the ego ideal has not come into existence and the (projective) image of the ego has not been stabilized. It is very moving to see this happen. This case history not only enables us to understand the subjective position of a being who can see himself solely by the movements of alternative projections; it also shows us how this being, who is stagnating pathetically at the threshold of culture, discovers, through his self-christening, w hat ordinary subjective maturation is. The child's deed is poignant because it is doomed to vanish repeated ly. It is therefore through a child who has no image of himself, a child without an ego, that Lacan intends to provide a new solution to the anthropological enigma; he knots the faceless son to the totemic father at the conjunction of nature and culture and of the human and language. This knot ting is valid for everyone, whether the subject knows it or not, and analysts must be able to recognize it in the primal figure of the super-ego, which Lacan now situates in the symbolic register of speech. If we remember how Lacan had sought, in "The Mirror Stage" and "The Function of Psychoanalysis in Crim inology" to resolve the enigma of how a human animal becomes a human being, we can understand that to encounter this transforma tion in the selfchris tening of an egoless child touches him deeply. Does he t urn this lost and blind little boy into an Oedipus, the appropriate hero for analysts? Let us say that the Wolf C hild testifies to the persistence of the symbolic effectiveness that subjects him to language, even if only its "most reduced" form is available to him. Yet d oes this ch ild 's response provide an answer for Lacan? On 30 March 1955, d uring the second year of the sem inar, Lacan s tates s pecifically that the question that has motivated his resea rch in these two semina rs is: '"W!tat is the subject?', in so far as it is, technically speaking, in the Freud ian sense of the word, the unconscious subject, and by way of that, essentially the subject who s peaks" (Serninar 11, p . 175). Can we not see then that although the child may not be the brother of Oed ipus, he is perfectly emblematic of the subject w ho has fallen short of the ego. Without an ego, without an image of himself, the Wolf C hild , the son of the totem leads us toward the subject in its pure state: a simple function of the sym bolic system. What is in question in such a case is very much the subject of the unconscious, the s ingular subject of a history that he must

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integrate into analytic experience up to a d imension that goes far beyond individual limits, for it is a matter of " the aggregate of his symptom" which is archived in the symbolic tangles of his symptomatic cryptograms.;; Incarnating the Freudian figure of subjectivity, the egoless child demonstrates-to his own misfortw1e-that the weaker the imaginary projection is, the more isolated is the symbolic function from which the unconscious subject proceeds. Thus, it is s triking to see that, while returning to the texts of the dead father of psychoanalysis, Jacques Lacan encounters the son of the totem in terms of the pathetic case of a child who has no in1age of himself. This empty-eyed child is a function of the symbolic system that has engendered him and he shows, at best, that the truth of his being is to be the son of the symbolic function itself. Freud's desire incarnates the figure of the dead father for the analytic field; it can be returned to only through the desire of his sons, if they are able to maintain a distance from the projections of the ego, projections that handicap the ability to incarnate the founder's desire. By not allowing hin1self to be dazzled by the imaginary and thus diverted from his course, Lacan returns to the speech of the dead father; he sees himself as being subjected to all the symbolic that has preceded hin1, just as he precedes all the other analysts and, on the level of the treatment, the sons' being in the world. Yet even Lacan cmmot understand this laying bare of Freudim1 subjectivity as the effect of the symbolic fw1ction without also understm1ding what the symbolic function is, m1d understm1ding its effectiveness and that of speech, which are "exactly the same thing" (Seminar l, p. 89). This is the reason for his theoretical alliance w ith French anthropology and the very early reference to the effectiveness of symbols in 1949 ("The Mirror Stage"). This alliance differs from the mirror stage because it recognizes that the very origin of being in the world depends not on an in1aginarized super-ego, but a symbolic super-ego that is prior to the ego and gives a "symbolic circumstance" to the s ubject's being; this circumstm1ce decides by a formative introjection of the ego ideal whether or not the being wilt be able to see the image of his body: his ego. This primal subject of

the primal subjection is the subject of language; it is the "strangers"

~ See

Seminar II, pp. 175-187.

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who- whether he wants it or not and knows it or not-engender his unconscious desire. These strangers include the father, his speech, his voice, but also all the symbolic exchanges that preced e the subject's coming into the world; in short, the symbolic organization from which his life comes and to which he remains indebted.56 This symbolic organization is the O ther, w hich has finally been designated as the place of the symbolic effectiveness that was mysteriously mentioned in 1949. The subject's desire proceeds from this symbolic O ther and yet, by perceiving his ego projectively, it is, first, in the mirror of his ego--or in the unage of his brother-that he believes that he can locate his own wishes. This is why the specular unage casts a shadow over the symbolic hmction, at the threshold of the visible world, and why there is a sort of penumbra that is then ii1habited by symbolic effectiveness. This is the major metamorphosis effected by Lacan's return to Freud: shining a light into this primal penumbra, he makes a rad ical separation between the ego and the subject of the unconscious. Lacan could not have begun this return without Levi-Strauss. The transition from the mirror stage to the experiment of the inverted vase. can now be shown as what it really is: an illustration of this metamorphosis. In this experiment, Lacan now knots the in'lagu1ary register of an optical machii1ery- used this time by Freud rather than Wallon-to the symbolic function, whose effectiveness was brought out by Levi-Strauss. What is u'\ question u'\ Lacan's research? He is seeking to become better acquainted with the desire of the analyst, which tries to throw light on an analysand's desire. This is, indeed, the desire of the analyst, but is it Lacan's desire or Freud's? It is Lacan's desire in that- as we have seen- he is on the track of Freud's own desire, and Levi-Strauss' research has led him to decipher this desire in tenns of the symbolic. Yet, at this moment of the seminar, it is not d ear to w hom one can attribute the desire that comes from the Other. Is it the desire of the subject? The desire of the Other? Lacan's desire? Freud's d esire? The best way to learn how to attribute desire will be to read Freud's texts; in them, we can locate the symbolic mark- the accent of tmth-that allows hun to

~ On the

anthropology o f d ebt, see Ma rcel Ma uss (1922), The Gift: Tire Form and Reason

for Excllnnge in Archnic Societies.

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attribute d esire in his interpretations of the d ream image. To do so is to address the traces and formations of the unconscious. This is the analyst's task.

The return to Freud with Levi-Strauss Freud's dream or attributing desire

By means of Freud's optical mod el, lacan has authorized himself to construct the model of the inverted vase: "Freud had already constructed something similar, and quite specifically pointed out to us in the Traumdeutung and the Abriss that the psychic agencies should be conceived of on the basis of imaginary phenomena" (Seminar I, p. 144). Here, Freud's schema is no longer taken up only in terms of a logic of anticipation, w hich would authorize lacan's recourse to the optical model; it now designates for Lacan the imaginary order on the basis of which the psychic agencies must be conceived. What was merely the example of Freud becomes the thing itself. Psychoanalytic epistemology is respected. In relying on Freud's text, lacan encounters an imperative in it: the psychic agencies are to be conceived in terms of the imaginary. Lacan thus rereads the experiment of the bouquet alongside that of the mirror, but he also rereads Hegel's theme of the imaginary register of desire along with Freud's self-analysis; w hat these rereadings show us is how the image in the d ream, in being made opaque, indicates the place of the libidinal investment of the imaginary, w here the ego comes to represent itself through the other. On 7 Aprill954, after a remark by Hyppolite, lacan s tates: l shouldn't begin by reminding you of the fundamental Hegelian theme-man's desire is the desire of the other. That is exactly what is made plain in the model by the plane mirror. That is also where we again come upon jacques Lacan's classical mirror phase (Semin11r /, p. 146). Lacan explains: Desire is first grasped in the other, and in the most confused form .... The subject originally locates and recognises desire through the intermediary, not only of his own image, but of the

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body of his fellow being. It's exactly at that moment that the human being's consciousness, in the form of consciousness of self, distinguishes itself. It is in so far as he recognises his desire in the body of the other that the exchange takes place. It is in so far as his desire has gone over to the other side that he assimilates himself to the body of the other and recognises himself as body (Seminar l, p. 147). When the body of the other is perceived as complete- another child at the breast, for example-the subject feels that he has been made incomplete and experiences a push of desire to reach the total body form that he sees. This leads both to the fundamental register of aggressiveness, which was presented in 1938 as the fraternal intrusion complex, and to the Hegelian formula; the latter emphasizes the conhtsion in "identities" in specular desire and the mortal impasse of this alienation in the brother. Yet does this imaginary capturing of desi re constitute all of desire? The libido always goes through an imaginary stage, as Lacan indicates, and here we find the projective logic of desire at work in dreams. In order to establish the certainty of the alienation that leads the subject's desire to appear in the other, Lacan tums to Freud's text, "A Meta psychological Supplement to the Theory of Drearns." 57 Fran~ois Perrier" presents this text and says that he is perp lexed by Freud's judgement that "the principal protagonist is always the sleeper'' (Serninar l, p. 152). Why not, indeed, simply endorse the d ream's manifest presentation, which attributes to those who are close to the sleeper a set of roles that, according to Freud, should always be referred to the d reamer 's desire? Lacan answers by saying that "The h trther we get the more we see how inspired these initial approaches towards the meaning of the dream and its scenario actually were" (Seminar I, p. 152). In one of his dreams, Freud recognizes his own ambition, which he projects onto a colleague. Lacan ~ Sigmund

Freud, A Meta psychological Sup plemen t to the Theory of Dreams, 1957, pp. 217- 235. ~ Fran~ois Perrier (1922-1990), a French psychiatrist a nd psychoanalyst. An alysed by laca n, he participated in the SFP, and then in the Freudian School of Paris (EFP), which he left in 1969 beca use of a dispute ove r the pass. He helped crea te the French Language Psycho.."'lnalytic Organization (Organisation psyclumnlytique de langue frm rraise, OPLF), which is also called the Fo urth Group.

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reaffirms Freud's genius, thus reconfirming his own transferential position. In analysing Freud's sense of certainty, Lacan makes a remark about a term that Freud uses to situate the person w ho plays the main role in the dream: the Viermese word, "agnosieren". This could seem to be an tminteresting detail, but it is not, for we must always follow the epistemology of the detail. Lacan moves forward in his commentary by selecting a word-a signifier-precisely because it throws light on how desire, in its imaginary aspect, is attributed; it is as if this word gave both the text and Freud's own self-analysis not only its Viem1ese accent, but also its accent of w1eonscious truth. According to Lacan, an expression from the language of Freud's childhood imposes itself on his pen at the very moment w hen he must leave no d oubt about whom to at tribute the dreamer's desire to. And let us repeat, this is not just any term, since it refers to the recognition of the person : "agnosieren", in the Viennese dialect, means "recognized". At the moment when the subject of the dream's d esire must be recognized, what imposes itself on Freud is Vie1m ese speech. Indeed, it is interesting, the significance of the Viennese milieu. In this connection, Freud gives us a very deep sense of his relation with the fraternalcharacter, with this friend-enemy, who he says is a character absolutely fundamental to his existencethere must always be someone masked by this sort of Gegenbild. But, at the same time, it is with this character as go-between, embodied by his colleague from the laboratory ... through the intermediary of ... his acts, of his feelings, that Freud projects, brings to life in this dream what is its latent desire, namely the claims of his own aggression, of his own ambition .... It is right at the heart of the dream's consciousness, more exactly at the heart of the mirage of the dream that we have to search, in the person who plays the leading role, for the sleeper's own person. But the point is that, it is not the sleeper, it is the other (Seminar I, pp. 152-153). To comment on a text is like doing an analysis. The past history, the lived history, of the subject, which we try to get at in our practice ... [w ]e can only get at it ... through the

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adult's childish language .... In magisterial fashion, Ferenczi saw the importance of this question-what is it in an analysis which makes the child within the adult participate? There is no doubt about the answer-whatever is verbalised in an irruptive fashion (Semi11nr I, p. 219). Lacan analyses Freud's text by picking up on the accent of tmth that breaks into the German text through the language of Freud's childhood. Why does this word provide us with the accent of truth? Why does this symptom of Freud's make him certain that he is recognizing his own des ire in the dream? The dream, according to Freud, is an unconscious formation that is always to be taken as a realization of an infantile desire; it is not surprising, therefore, that the symbolic universe of Freud's childhood breaks into his text in order to account for and to fonnulate the desire of that period of his life-which motivated the dream- in the language of that period. And this goes beyond Freud, since this linguistic symptom shows his unconscious activity, even while he is analysing the dream. It is as if Freud's self-analysis were adjusted so well to its object-the unconscious- that it placed an element of the unconscious right under our noses. Following the trail of Freud's desire, Lacan isolates the symptomatic trait and situates its symbolic place in order to show how Freud's self-analysis allowed him to attribute all the roles in the dream to the dreamer's des ire, to Freud's desire. Lacan also shows that what is in question in this particular case is the Freudian paradigm of the way in w hich unconscious desire is attributed. Thus, in order to be able to situate the dialectic of d esire, one should neither doubt Freud's suggestions, as Fran~ois Perrier did, nor allow oneself to be blinded by the invasion of the other's image. lacan contin ues: l talked to you about the exchange that takes place between the

subject's image and the image of the other in so far as it is libidinalised, narcissised, in the imaginary situation. By the same token, in the same way as in animals, certain parts of the world are rendered opaque and become fascinating, it too is rendered thus. We have the capacity to ngrwsieren in the dream the sleeper's own person in a pure state. The power of understanding of the subject is expanded in proportion. On the contrary, in

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the waking state, a t least if he hasn't read the Trmmrdeuturrg, he won't be able to perceive in its sufficiency those bodily sensations capable of telling him, while he is sleeping, about something intemal, something coenaesthetic. It is precisely in so far as the libidinal obscuring in the dream is on the other side of the mirror, that his body is, not felt any the less, but perceived better, understood by the subject. Do you grasp the mechanism here? In the waking state, the body of the other is reflected back to the subject, he thus fails to recognise lots of things about himself. That the ego is a capacity to fail to recognise [mecorrnaissance] is the very foundation of the technique of analysis. This goes a very long way. As far as structuring, organisation and by the same token scotomisation-here, I am happy enough to use the term~1nd all manner of things, which are so ma ny pieces of information which can be passed from ourselves to ourselves-a special game which reflects back to us our corporeality, tha t corporeality which also has an alien origin. Even as far as- Tireylrave eyes ilr order rrol to see (Seminar I, pp. 153-154). The o ptical experiment is no lo nger being used as a metaphor for the way in w hich the s ubject is s tructured; what is in question, instead, is to grasp how desire is stntctured, first of all, in the imaginary register. This analysis of Freud's own analysis of d reams allows Lacan to show his liste ners the mechanism of the mirror that leads the dreamer- through the other- to discover what mo tivates his own pe rson, which has been projected into the other. In other words, with his eyes closed, the d reame r has access to the image o f his body through the other who has been recognized (agnosieren). In the dream-on the scene of the w1conscious-the d rea me r 's body is represented very purely in the in1age of the other; once awake, however, we are dazzled or distracted by the o ther's in1age and are therefore less able to perceive w hat is happening to us. Let us summarize. For Lacan: 1.

2.

The psychic agencies must now be conceived in the imaginary register Freud says this and must be trusted

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3.

4.

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He must be followed word fo r word- and the word, in this case, is Viennese; we must follow the trail o f his symbolic universe in order to follow his d esire as analyst The place o f his colleague, which Freud analyses in his d rea m is the same thing: it is the place o f the other in the d ream. This other is o n! y a mask fo r the internal process of the dreamer's w1conscious desire.

Th us, the d esire of the d ream uses the o ther's body. There is a sort o f d ialectic be tween the ego and the other, but this d ialectic pertains to the register o f language and of the symbolic: the ope rations o f d isplacement or of condensation in the d rea m. Lacan then offers a punctuatio n: " [W ]hat makes up the d ream is something which we must look fo r, and which truly belongs to the unconscious" (Seminar I, p. 155). The register of the in1aginary d ialectic of d esire-between the ego and the o ther- must not be confused with the compositio n o f the unconscio us, whose rules come from the symbolic because the human being, very early o n, is subjected to langu age and the symbolic relation. The subject becomes aware of his desire in the other, through the intermediary of the image of the other which offers him the semblance of his own mastery .... But there's no escaping the fact that he's a human being, born in a state of impotence, and, very early on, words, language were what he used to call with, ru1d a most miserable call it was, when his food depended on his screams. This primitive mothering has already been related to his states of dependency. But really that is no reason to hide the fact that, no less early, this relation to the other is named, and is so by the subject. That a nrune, however confused it may be, designates a specific person, is exactly what makes up the transition to the human state. If one has to define the moment at which man becomes human, we can say that it is the moment when, however little it be, he enters in to the symbolic relation. As I've already e mphasised, the symbolic relation is eternal. And not simply because effectively there must always be three people- it is eternal because the symbol introduces a third party, an element of mediation, which brings the two actors

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into each other's presence, leads them on to another plane, and changes them (Seminar I, p. 155). Lacan insists on the way that language goes beyond the imaginary dialectic and he indicates the way in which the symbolic is cmmected to the imaginary; these ideas allow him, next, to formulate a way of directing the treatment by using these reference points. So, the dialectic of the ego and the other is transcended, is placed on a higher plane, in relation to the other, solely through the function of language, in so far as it is more or less identical, and at all events is fundamentally linked up with what we should call the rule, or better still, the law. At each instant of its in tervention, this law creates something new. Every situation is transformed by its intervention, whatever it is, except when we talk to no purpose (Seminar I, pp. 156-157). Language can transcend the d ialectic of the ego if speech is full. "Here we are, introduced to this elementary level where language immediately adheres to our first experiences. Because it is a vi tal necessity which makes of man's environment a symbolic one" (Semil'lnr I, p. 157). The h uman environment depends on the prematuration of the species, and no longer on the family group and the mother 's care, as it had in his ea rlier work. Lacan has gone beyond the epistemology of his formulations of 1938 or of the mirror stage. The symbolic function is now situated at the very origin of subjective s tructuring. The transcendence of the ego and the symbolic system of the symptom

Let us ret urn to the optical experiment: my little model, in order to conceive of the incidence of the symbolic relation, all you have to do is assume that it is the introduction of linguistic relations which produces the swings of the mirror, which will offer the subject, in the other, in the absolute other, the various aspects of his desire. There is a cotmection between the imaginary dimension and the symbolic system, so long as the history of the subject is inscribed in it .... [n

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All human beings share in the universe of symbols. They are included in it and submit to it, much more than they constitute it. They are much more its supports than its agents. It is as a function of the symbols, of the symbolic constitution of his history, that those variations are produced in which the subject is open to taking on the variable, broken, fragmented, sometimes even unconstituted and regressive, images of himself (Seminar I, pp. 157-158). The subject thus sees himself in a series of images that depend on the symbolic circumstances of his history. The absence of the selfimage characterizes certain subjective positions, as shown by the Wolf Child, who also demonstrates by his self-christening that, even in that situation, the image could make a transitory appearance. If there is a diachronic determination of the self-im age, there is also a synchronic determination, through which the s ubject can perceive himself in a p lace w here he had not seen himself earlier, and w here he will no longer see himself later. Conversely, the stability of the image of the ego depends on the stability of the symbolic relations that regulate it, and the first of these relations is language. The result of this is that a d eregulated use. of language-Freud's idea of free association-sets aside the ordinary s tanda rds that regulate his speech; free association allows the subject to perceive, in his transference, all the in1ages of his ego, w hich he had not known previously. For the subject, the uncoupling of his relation to the other causes the image of the ego to fluctuate, to shimmer, to oscillate, renders it complete and incomplete. So that he can recognise all the stages of his desire, all the objects which have given consistency, nourishment and body to this image, he has to receive it in its completeness, to which he has never had access. Through the successive identifications and revivals, the subject must constitute the history of his ego (Semit~ar I, pp. 181-182). If this maximal narcissistic projection of the s ubject- w hich leads to transference love- results from the lifting of the ordinary rules

to which speech is bound and confirms the subordination of the image to language, we will be right to cmmect certain absences of the images of the ego with certain "holes in mem ory" that characterize the subject's narrative. For example, an ea rly traumatic scene

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that breaches the subject's imaginary register will be repressed some time later, when the subject has been introd uced sufficiently into the register of language and can read its sexual significatio n. Rather than integrate this scene, he prefers to give up the fragments of discourse that would give meaning to it. At this specific moment, something of the subject's becomes detached in the very symbolic world that he is engaged in integrating. From then on, it will no longer be something belonging to the subject. The subject will no longer speak it, will no longer integrate it. Nevertheless, it will remain there, somewhere, spoken, if one can put it this way, by something the subject does not control. In other words, there is no essential difference between this moment in the analysis which l have described to you, and the intermediary moment, between the stamp and the symbolic repression. There is just one difference, which is that at that particular moment, there is no one there to give him his cue. Repression begins, having constituted its original nucleus. Now there is a central point around which symptoms, successive repressions, and by the same token-since repression and the return of the repressed are the same thing-the return of the repressed will later be organised (Seminar l, p. 191). This trauma is in the register of sight: what corresponds to the imaginary breech in the symbolic is repression, and w hat is repressed returns in the symptom. Since this is the case, it is the symbolic register that inherits the mark of the s pecular trauma. The symptom incarnates the insistence of a speech that has been "muzzled " and is " latent in the subject's symptoms" and which the analyst must " release" (Serninar /, p. 185). The pain of the eyes--a s pecular trauma-is inscribed in the symbolic register of the symptom, and there is thus a movement from imaginary to symbolic. Lacan also demonstrates that the o pposite movement can occur: an injury in the

symbolic can have a mysterious correspondence on the level of the image of the bod y, which breaks down . In this cmmection, he mentions an Islamic analysand, whose symptoms are related to "the use of the hand" (Seminar /, p. 196).

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The symptom 's grasp over this body part has nothing to do with any guilty activity of childhood, as lacan indicates; instead, it points, through the bod ily image, to the fault of the father, who was suspected of theft. We know that the Koran prescribes the sacrifice of the body part that has slimed. Al though the son clearly misunderstands this law, as Lacan explau1S, the problems with the hand poil1t to a failure of inlagu1ary i11tegration, w hich can be explained by the cultural coordinates of the drama of the father. "One should not fail to recognise the symbolic appertil1ances of a subject" (Seminar I, p. 197). Somethil1g concernil1g the inlage of the body has not been integrated. In the course of analysis, as I have pointed out to you, it is when

the traumatic elements-grounded in an image which has never been integrated~raw near that holes, points of fracture appear in the unification, the synthesis, of the subject's history. l have pointed out how it is in starting from these holes that the subject can realign himself with the different symbolic determinations which make hinl a subject with a history. Well, in the same way, for every human being, everything personal which can happen to him is located in the relation to the law to which he is bound. His history is unified by the law, by his symbolic universe, which is not the same for everyone. Tradition and language diversify the reference to the subject (Semirrar l, pp. 197-198). If the son's hand i11dicates the father's wrongdoi11g, this means that the traumatic symbolic event has left a trace in the in1agi11ary register of the sufferil1g bod y. The body linage and the symbolic register are linked for better and for worse in s ubjective maturation. The trace of the fault can th us move from one register to the other through the logic of an ilwersion of the place of trauma, w hether inlagi11ary or symbolic. The symptom- u1asmuch as it is a part of analytic experience-must always be read in the domai11 of the symbolic. Repression takes place after the ilnagi11ary breach: after an inscription of the symbolic fault in the body image, We also see that ill the clinic of i11dividual cases, the subject that is in question in analysis is not the i11dividual, si11ce, however much integrity the son may have, he must nevertheless pay with his body for the father's

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unsettled debt from the preceding generation.'" Whether the effect of the trauma manifests itself in the body im age or in symbolic repression, it is useless to deal with the image in order to make the analysis progress; this is the case because the symptom, even when it finds a mark in the body image, results from a symbolic formation, either directly- through a fault in the symbolic--or ind irectly- through repression and the return of the repressed following the trauma. Thus it is necessary, if the analysis is to progress, to deal less with the dialectic between the register of the iinage and the other- the imagii1ary- than with the symbolic system of the symptom, which in every case, is the location of the return of the repressed. The hmctioning of language in structuring the subject "transcends" the dialectic of the ego and enables the sorrows that are encotmtered ii1 the scopic register to "speak" symptomatically. Such sorrows are troumatiques60, as Lacan w ill say later. The sufferings of the ego result from a cmmection with the symbolic, as Lacan assures his listeners. What, indeed, is the ego if not a sort of object, about w hich it would be too much to say that the subject maintains a relation with it. Instead, since the subject is "always already" caught up in language, it is through this inter-subjective relation with the other of language that the sufferings of the ego are to be interpreted. Such sufferings include the pain of not existing, as is the case of the Wolf Child. The regulation of the imaginary depends on something which is located in a transcendent fashion, as M. Hyppolite would put it- the transcendent on this occasion being nothing other than the symbolic connection between human beings. 1·\~\at is the symbolic connection? Dotting our i's and crossing our t's, it is the fact that socially we define ourselves with the law as go-between. It is through the exchange of symbols that we locate our different selves [mois) in relation to one

Having isolated the patemal function from the father$s person, Lac-an, ten years later, states this distinction in both a general and a precise way. "The father, the Name-of-the-father, sustains the structure ot desire with the structure ot the law-but ~

the inheritance of the father is what Kierkegaard designates for us, namel)>his sin (Seminnr XI, p. 34). "' "\'\'e invent a 'thingie' (true) to fill up a hole (lrou) in the real. Where there is no sexual relation, there is a 'troumntisme'." Jacques Lacan, Us JIOH·rlupes errenl, unpublished seminar, 19 February 1974. (fhis untranslatable pun combines the idea of the traumatic with that of the hole. Trmrslaior's uot.e.)

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another-you, you are Mannoni, and me Jacques Lacan, and we have a certain symbolic relation, which is complex, according to the different planes on which we are placed, according to whether we're together in the police station or together in this hall, or together travelling. In other words, it's the symbolic relation which defines the position of the subject as seeing (Seminar I, pp. 140-141). Robert does not see himself because of a defect of the symbolic relation with the totemic other. Can we imagine a greater pain for the ego? The child, always confronted too early w ith a traumatic scene, gives up on the memory, which always returns again through the symbolic. The symbolic relation d efines w hether the subject sees, does not see, or sees incompletely; by being burdened with a father's unpaid debt, a son must give up a part of the image of his own body. None of this is to be found in the register of the son as an individ ual, and therefore it is necessary in the treatment to follow the w hole of the symbolic system, which accounts for the troubles of the ego. The ego's sufferings and the father's fault

Treating the ego as an object leads Lacan to undertake a critique of Michael Balint's6 1 analysis of object relations in transference. Bal int indicates what this owes to the mother/ child relation, which becomes the ideal type of the primary love relation, by which an object can satisfy the subject's needs htlly. Lacan criticizes this imaginary theory of a maternal object that can complete the subject because Balint also argues that analysis aims at supporting the subject in a genital love. Such genital love is supposed to be the acme of object relations, and is characterized by the subject's ability to get off on his partner as on an object, while also satisfying the partner's subjectivity: by respecting his/ her desire. As a consequence, Lacan says, the object loses its status as object and becomes a s ubject, and nothing in Balint's theory explains how the object in primary Jove ., Michael Balint (1896-1970). Bom in Budapest, he studied medicine, then worked in Berlin while undergoing his psychoanalytic training with Karl Abraham and Hans Sad1S, and later with Ferenczi. After the \var, B.."llint set himself up in London, where, from 1948- 1961, he worked a t the Tavis tock Clinic. A s pecialis t in "narcissis tic" cases, he was interested in psychosomatic medicine a nd soug ht to apply psychoanalysis to

medical training.

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could metamorphose into a subject in geni tal love. If the ego is an object that is passed off, in the register of the image, as a subject, it must be detached from the imaginary capture that it produces in order to bring ana lysis to the heart of the symbolic relation; it is this relation that detennines the ego image, and even its absence, as the Wolf Child teaches us. [f the ego is an

imaginary function, it is not to be confused with the subject (Seminar /, p. 193). The ego acquires the status of a mirage, as the residue, it is only one element in the objectal relations of the subject .... Are we to understand that there where the id was, in A, the ego must be? That the ego must move to A [tire pla11e mirror) and, at the end of the most refined of ideal analyses, no longer be there at all? That is quite conceivable, since everything pertaining to the ego must be realised in what the subject recognises as himself (Semi11nr /, p. 195). If the first phase of analysis involves the maxin1al projection of the subject, this should not let the analysand stagnate in an im aginary mirage or in the transference love that can be inferred from it; instead, it should lead him to perceive everything in the history of his im aginary fixations that results from the s ubject's symbolic circtnnstances. Only symbolization, the reconstructed history of these circumstances and these relations, allows w hat the subject is to be recognized. The historical reconstruction of these circumstances allows the s ubject to detach himself from his fascination with his ego and to recognize what he is-and what his ego depends on-as a son or a function of the symbolic universe of language and the law, which greeted him when he came into the world. For Lacan d uring this period, the end of an analysis implies the destitution of the ego in favour of the recognition of the subject. This is what he envisages in a case in w hich the ego is missing, a case in w hich the imaginary breach is inscribed in the unconscious by deferred action and determines the formation of the symptom; the latter expresses symbolically the right of the repressed to return. This is also what he envisages when the image has been cut from the body, the condition that affects the son of the man who had not settled his debt. TI1is entire clinical perspective d emonstrates that the s ubject of

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the sympto m results from somethin g that develops in the imaginary register. This can happen by defe rred actio n, in the case of an im agina ry breach. This is a lso w hat occ urs when the iinage o f a body has been wilhtlly m isrepresented and has lost its unity; this is a morbid consequence of th e obstruction of th e rules of social exchange that govern the world o f the subject before his birth . We can admit that a fathe r's unpaid debt can be incarna ted ii1 what disrup ts a son's iinage only if we d etach o u rselves from an mdividualist conceptio n o f beii1g, which is the ego's own conception; we must s ubstitute for it a conceptio n of a s ubject that must be a pproached m its sin gularity. Analysis goes "right up to the furthermost perceptib le limits, th at is to sa y in to a d iine nsion that goes weU beyon d the !units of the ii1d ividual" (Seminar /, p. 12). How can we better show the disjunction beh,•een the s uffe rmgs o f the ego and their symbolic cause than by analysing h ow a p roblem in the use o f a hand arises from a s us p icion con cernmg the father? Does what has been sto le n h ave a hold over the body? lacan borrows here from the conception o f the symbolic h mction that Marcel Mauss elaborates m his essay o n The Gift (2002). ln listenmg to Maori law, Mauss concludes that: What imposes obligation in the present received a nd exchanged, is the fact that the thii1g received is not inactive. Even when it has been abandoned by the giver, it still possesses something of him. Through it the giver has a hold over the beneficiary just as, being its owner, through it he has a hold over the thief. This is because the tao11ga is a nimated by the hau of its forest, its native heath a nd soil. It is truly "native": the IIau follows after anyone possessing the thii1g .... In this system of ideas one clearly and logically realizes that one must give back to another person what is really part and parcel of his nature and substance, because to accept something from somebod y is to accept some part of his spiritual essence, of his soul. To retain that thing would be dangerous and mortal, not only because it would be against law and mortali ty, but also because that thing coming from the person not only mora lly, but also physically and s piritually, that essence, that food, those goods, whether movable or immovable, those women or those descendants, those rituals or those acts of communion- all exert a magical or religious hold over you (pp. 11-12).

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Whether what is in question is Maori law or a religious ntle, it is always in the name of the spirit of things-the "!tau" and the "mann" -or in the name of the dead fa ther of monotheism that the sacred regulation of social exchanges ta kes place; it is also in this name that sentences are pronounced on an offence or a crime. And nothing can depart from this. The logic of the symbolic includes the members of the family or dan in the list of debtors as weU as those who have caused the anger of the spirits that are incarnated in w hat has been stolen. In the mirror of his hand, the son perceives the s uspicion that dishonours his father. The spirit of things- the luw or the mana, or its monotheistic version, such as the dead father of Islam62- requires that a pound of flesh be taken from the father's or the family's body in order to find peace. For some reason, the law of the Koran has broken down here. The son's ign orance of it does not prevent him from being led unconsciously to settle his father's debt. The symptom resul ts from a sort of sacrifice to the dead father of Islam, even if the subject of the sacrifice continues to mis understand the law. He pays, although no punishment has been pronotmced and w ithout knowing wha t the Koran says. AU of this is unconscious. The symptom, if it is deciphered, is the only trace of the unconscious sacrifice caUed for in the subject's symbolic tmiverse. The son's symp tom should not be treated as his own sin, or even as an organic malfunction; the subject of the symptom must be conceived of as the subject of a symbolic universe whose ntles he does not necessarily know, but which weigh upon him, and do so even more ferociously when he does not know what they are. What claims its due here is the symbolic order, to which Lacan devotes the session of 25 June 1954, where he says that "In every analysis of the inter-subjective relation, w hat is essential is not what is there, what is seen. What stntctures it is what is not there" (Seminar/, p. 224). What can not be there and yet stmcture the

t.:

We knO\v that the Koran separates the divine figure from paternity. In refen ing to

the dead father of Islam, we are referring to the way in which Freud evokes the "recuperation" of the primal father by Islam and, more structurally-as we shall see laterto the theoretical operator that supports any symbolic network, whatever the name that receives "the spirit of things" -to use Levi-Strauss' words-may be.

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subject's sufferings, if not the symbolic universe, which calls for the son's sacrifice? The subject w ho is sacri ficed receives his condemnation from the other of the Koran, a text that he does not know. There is thus a sharp distinction between the subject of the unconscious- which receives its message from the symbolic Otherand the dialectic of the ego, which is not eliminated, but which is modified and transcended by the symbolic hmction, which requires its d ue. From that perspective, it is impossible to conhtse the stmcturing, the determination, the inveshnent of the ego in the imaginary register, with that of the s ubject of the unconscious, w hich is entirely constituted by the symbolic order, even if there is a cormection that subordinates the first to the second. If the schema of the son's body has been blocked, it is because he has been condenmed instead of the father. 1Ne must understand how incredibly cruel the unconscious tribunal"' is if we are to make sense of how the son's symptom is to be related to the father's fault. This can be done only by separating the son's ego from his subjectivity, and by remembering, w ith the etlm ologists, the weight of the symbolic h mction and of debt on the lineage of someone who has not honoured the-always sacredobligations of social exchange. If the experiment of the inverted bouquet allows Lacan to illustrate how tl1e imaginary is cormected to the symbolic register, he maintains clearly, in this first seminar, that the subject of the w1conscious comes from the symbolic; this s ubject is a product of language and the social structures that include the system of laws and of mythic or religious social exmange tl1at regulate his/ her cultural universe. Lacan, following H yppolite, takes as his point of departure the Hegelian fonnula that throws light on the imaginary dialectic of desire- " desire is the desire of the other"- in order to complete the experiment of the inverted bouquet. We must now end tllis compact commentary on it by accounting for subjective structuring, since we have seen that the subject's unconscious desire results from this very symbolic wliverse. The axis of the imagina ry dialectic that links the ego to the other will be complicated the following year by an axis that links the subject to the Other of the symbolic. The following "' See Markos Zatiropoulos, Tristesse dans In modem it.e : de !'ideal plmrmacologique ii Ia

clinique freudiemre de In me/nnco/ie (1996).

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graph, the L Schema, represents the relation between the imagina ry and the tmconscious.64

L Schema

If this unconscious message comes from the Other of the symbolic to the subject, in what s tate does it arrive? "In an inverted form," Lacan answers in the Rome Report, which he wrote even before the seminar that we have just studied in order to throw light on the penumbra of symbolic effectiveness a t the first moments of the primal identification. "The s ubject receives from the Other his own message in an inverted form": Lacan's readers have often commented on this formula, frequently highlighting its Hegelian tmderpimlings. For those who wou ld li ke a fuller development of the experiment of the inverted vase, we can refer tl1em to tl1e work of joel Dor65, which gives a clear exposition of it. Dor reads Lacan's return to Freud by giving a short introduction to the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Hegel, who, in his opinion, inspired Lacan. This is all very well, but does tl'lis theory of the unconscious as an inverted message tl1at comes from tl1e Other of tl1e symbolic really derive from these sources? We mus t now examine this crucial point.

,.. Lacan, Seminar JJ, p. 243. For further commentary on the LSchema, see JacquesAlain Miller, "Commentary on U1e Graphs," Ecrifs, p. 859.

"' Joel Dor, Introduction to the Rending of Lnam: Tlte Unconscious Struclured Like n Ln11g11age (1997).

C HAPTER T WO

The subject receives from the Other his own message in an inverted form: An investigation

everal mo nths before inaugurating his seminar at Sainte-Atme, Lacan w rites in the Rome Report:

S

The form in which language expresses itself in and of itself defines subjectivity. Language says: "You will go here, and when you see this, you will tum off there." In other words, it refers to discourse about the other (discours de l'autre]. It is enveloped as such in the highest function of speech, inasmuch as speech commits its a uthor by investing its addressee with a new reality, as for example, when a subject seals his fate as a married man by saying "You are my wife." Indeed, this is the essential form from which all human speech derives more than the form at which it arrives. Hence the paradox that one of my most acute auditors believed to be an objection to my position when I first began to make my views known on analysis as dialectic; he formulated it as follows: "Huma n language would then constitute a kind of communication in which the sender receives his own message back from the receiver in inverted form." I could but adopt this

93

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objector's formulation, recognizing in it the stamp of my own thinking (Ecrits, p. 247). At the very moment when he states the formula for commwucation that would fix, for a long time, the analysis of subjectivity as an effect of the relation to the other, Lacan indicates in a remark whose epis temology is im peccable that his own statement obeys this ntle of production, since it was first made by "one of my most acute listeners", who was objecting to what he was saying. In other words, "the sender receives Ius own message back from the receiver in an inverted form" is not a formula that Lacan created himself. Instead, he took it from a listener; it is a response from the Other. It will be interesting, for this archaeology of Lacan 's thought, to d iscover who tlus exceptional objector was: "one of my most acute listeners", a figure of the Other who spoke to Lacan with the voice of his own unconscious. It is also necessary to understand tlus formula, why it was coined, and the circumstances in which it was written for the first time (spring 1953). Yet is this formula so important? Yes, for-as we have seen-in what would become tl1e first book of the seminar, Lacan was seeking to d efine a theory of the s ubject that would be compatible w ith what Freudian experience had taught hin1. Lacan's first public seminar deals w ith Freud's papers on teclmique, and it is important not to lose tl1e thread of his analysis, since the subject that he is seeking to define is tl1e subject of analytic experience. By reading Freud's most teclulical texts, he made progress in answering the question of what a subject is for, and in, analytic experience. Lacan responds to tlus question in the Rome Report: subjectivity is what is d efined by a form, a simple form. Yet this time, and unlike the answer that is elaborated in the texts of 1936-1948 on the mirror s tage, it is a form in w hich language expresses itself. In 1953, Lacan changes Ius conception of subjectivity, which is s till, however, defined as a s imple term. It is a form, but not just an y form; it is not the "prinlordial form" of the root identification of the nlirror stage, which "sit uates the agency kn own as the ego, prior to its social

determination", not this sort of "ideal-1" or this "total form of his body, by w hich the s ubject anticipates the maturation of his power in a mirage" which "is given to hinl only as a gestalt .... [The] power [pnignnnce]should be considered linked to the species" (Ecrits, p. 76).

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Far from being a gesta lt of the bod y, it is a form "in which language expresses itself", and is "essential" since "all htmlan speech derives" from it and "d efines subjectivity" (Ecrits, p. 246). In 1953, Lacan, still seeking the answer, encounters something. What can be deduced from this encounter is that subjectivity receives its definition from an operation that is now situated in the register of language- the symbolic- rather than from the bod y im age. It took Lacan 17 years- from 1936 to 1953- to alter the form that defines subjectivity; it changed from the imaginary to the symbolic, from the body image to a parad oxical expression of langu age. Although this s im ple d is placement could appear w1interesting to o ur readers, we should note the family resemblance between the two formulations. Let us reread the first formula (that of 1936-1949): For the total form of his body, by which the subject anticipates the maturation of his power in a mirage, is given to him only as a gestalt, that is, in an exteriority in which, to be sure, this form is more constitutive than constituted, but in which, above all, it appears to him as the contour of his stature that freezes it and in a symmetry that reverses it (Ecrits, p. 76). For this first moment of the elaboration, the fonn given to the subject is: 1. 2. 3.

In an exteriority More constit utive than constituted In a symmetry that reverses it.

The formal identity that defines the subject certainly does not allow the two forms to be confused with each other: one concerns what comes to the s ubject from the symbolic, while the other derives from the imaginary. One reveals what w ill give him the ideal image of his body. The other gives him the signifiers of his fate, or in anthropological terms, what is imposed symbolically, w hen his place in the network is taken into account. Yet this formal kinship must not escape us for it shows us the stamp of Lacan 's thought'6: in both cases, the "'for an overview o f Lacan's thought, see Paul-Laurent Assoun, I.Acfw (2003).

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human being receives, from what is outside himself, both his body image and the symbolic coordinates of his fate. These coordinates will or will not allow him-as we have seen with the Wolf Child-to perceive his image and to develop with a greater or lesser number of symptoms in his subjective life, as well as in his network of social exchanges. Recognizing the stamp of lacan's "thought"-a thought that my archaeology is seeking to read- in this handful of traits s upposes that I am authorized, first, to use this tenn, w hich some colleagues, who rely on lacan's later teaching, d isparage; they object that my research gives too large a place to the register of thought in the analyst. Yet without discow1ting this objection, I am going to remain faithful to a more or less chronological method. Yes, there is a recognizable thought behind the various moments of his teaching, and the fragments of the Rome Report, whose presuppositions we are examining, make it clear that the lacan of 1953 believed that his thought had a sort of "stamp". In order to understand lacan's quest for a theory of the subject that would be congruent with analytic experience, one should read "The Mirror Stage" with the Rome Report; we should consider the passage that has been cited from the latter text less as a new response to vvhat motivates Lacan's analysis than as a nevv version of the answer that he s upplied from 1936 to 1938. This answer had aimed, through the mirror stage, to "make up" for w hat is missing in Freud's doctrine of the first identifications.67 La can's new answer combines se.v eral versions of the mirror stage with what can be deduced from the objection to his method; it is necessary, however, to emphasize that it is not at just any moment that lacan can see that "Human language would ... constitute a kind of communication in w hich the sender receives his own message back from the receiver in inverted form." This formula arises from the O ther precisely "when I first began to make my views known on analysis as dialectic"; it has the value of an interpretation that can produce a change because it had been made at the right time. How long had lacan been making his views on analysis as dialectical known? What does this new formula mean? What is the relation between the mirror stage, the dialectic of ana lysis and the progress

t-7

On this point, see Lacmz et les sdmces sociales, pp. 44 tf.

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in symbolization? Is all of this not too intellectualized and does it not move too far from Freud's text, and even from the experience of the treatment? Not at all, since it is precisely in his 1951 text, Presentation on Transference that Lacan offers his colleagues a reading of a paradigmatic text from Freud's clinic, the Dora case, in which he described the treatment of the patient as a d ialectical experience. If Lacan conceives of analysis as a dialectical progression, his goal is not to " intellectualize" it to the detriment of clinical truths, because Freud's treatment of Dora was itself d ialectical. The treatment, when directed dialectically, leads us the closest to subjective truth and Lacan recalls the salutary value of Freud's orientation, which allows the message that comes from the O ther to be W1knotted in an inverted form. I. Presentation on Transference (1951) The Dora case or Freud's dialectic

Finnly ruling out any psychologizing orientation for psychoanalysis, since he criticizes its danger of objectifying the individual, Lacan suggests, in his presentation to a conference of Romance-language psychoanalysts in 1951, a conception of the Freudian experience that is characterized by a sort of dialogue; in this d ialogue, the subject is constituted by a discourse whose only law is that of tntth, which introduces a change into reality. "(P ]sychoanalysis is a dialectical experience, and this notion should prevail w hen raising the question of the nat ure of transference" (Ecrits, p. 177}; this statement is crucial for analytic tedmique. Shortly afterwards, he makes it clear what his dialectical conception of analysis means by discussing some models from Freud's ov.rn \•v ork.

[T]he case of Dora., is laid out by Freud in the form of a series of dialectical reversals .... What is involved is a scansion of structures in which truth is transmuted for the subject, structures

"' Ida Bauer (1882-1945). Freud's first great psychoanalytic case, Dora and her history remain a classic ot analytic literature. Born in Vienna into a \veil-off Jewish bourgeois famil)> she was the sister of Otto Ba uer (1881- 1938), one of the great figures o f the Aush·ian intelligentsia between the two \\'Orld wars. Her case is one of the most commented upon in the psychoanalytic literature.

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that affect not only her comprehension of things, but her very position as a subject, her "objects" being a function of that position. This means that the conception of the case history is idmtiarl to the progress of the subject, that is, to the reality of the treatment (Ecrits, p. 178). According to Lacan, Freud 's dialectic, far from screening out the reality of the treatment and the emergence of subjective truth, is guided by its concern with them; it is precisely when analysts recoil from this dialectic, out o f a fear of Freud's discovery, that they objectify the subject, forever forbidd ing her access to tme speech and to subjective progress. In this connectio n, what can be said about Dora?"' When Freud first meets her, she is 18 yea rs old. According to him, Low spirits and an alteration in her character had ... become the main features of her illness. She was clearly satisfied neither with herself nor with her family; her attitude towards her father was unfriendly, and she was on very bad terms with her mother, who was bent upon d rawing her into taking a share in the work of the house" (Dora, p. 23). She had frightened her parents by writing a farewell letter in which she warned them that she wanted to d ie. When, one day, she fainted in front o f her father, he took her to Freud. Freud d iagnoses her as a case of '"petite hysterie' with the conunonest of all soma tic and mental symptoms: dyspnoia, tussis 11ervosa, aphonia, and possibly migraines together with depression, hysterical WlSociability, and a taedium vitae which was probably no t entirely gen uine" (Dora, p. 23-4). Nothing, then, was extraordinary abou t Dora's case, which Freud, however, made famous. He a rgues that "What is wanted is precisely an elucida tion o f the commonest cases and of their most frequent and typical symptoms" (Dora, p. 24), and his disciples have never stopped commenting o n this case, for better or worse. In 1951, Lacan's commentary locates itself within this psychoanalytic traditio n, which it will revolutionize. Let us ta ke a look a t this case. Dora complains to Freud that her father has abandoned

"' The reader will profit from referring to Freud's text, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, 1953, pp 1-122.

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her by leaving her in the hands of his mistress, Frau K., and that he has done so in order to facilitate his adulterous affair. According to Lacan, far from d isabusing the young woman of her belief, Freud takes cognizance of the circuit of exchange, but his response is free of the compassion that she had been seeking; instead, he makes "(a] first d ialectical reversal", which requires that she recognize her own part in contin uing the "disorder" about w hich she is complaining. What follows is a "development of truth", as Lacan says: Namely, that it was not on the basis of Dora's mere silence, but of her complicity and even vigilant protection, that the fiction had been able to last which allowed the relationship between the two lovers to continue. What can be seen here is not simply Dora's participation in Herr K.'s courtship of which she is the object; new light is shed on her relationship with the other partners of the quadrille by the fact tha t it is caught up in a subtle circulation of precious gifts, which serves to make up for a deficiency in sexual services. This circulation starts with her father in relation to Frau K., and then comes back to the patient through Herr K.'s consequent availability, in no way diminishing the lavish generosity which comes to her directly from the first source, by way of parallel gifts-this being the classic manner of making amends by which the bourgeois male manages to combine reparation due his lawful wedded wife with his concern for passing on an inheritance (note tha t the presence of the figure of the wife is reduced here to this lateral link in the chain of exchanges) (Ecrits, p. 179). Let us note the procedure. Freud, as Lacan argues, begins Dora's analysis w ith a first dialectical reversal-a subjective rectificationwhich leads to the birth of a tmth. We shall emphasize that this tmth is etlmological, since it is incarnated, according to Lacan, in the circuit of social exchange that governs Dora's world and assigns her a plac~as object of exchange- that she rehtses, but which remains,

nevertheless, her own. This case illustrates Lacan's subject perfectly, since it shows how Dora aids, without knowing it and thus unconsciously, the message. of the social O ther, w hich assigns her a precise place in the d1ains of social exchange.

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Freud's first d ialectical reversal makes Dora see how she accomplishes unconsciously the " mission statement" that comes to her from the other and which, once deciphered and placed in the father's mouth, would be something like the following: "You are the woman whom I exchange w ith Herr K., as quid pro quo for the woman whom he is giving to me (Frau K )." This circuit of the exchange of women, which provides Dora w ith the coord inates of her unconscious activity, could have contin ued without a snag if the yow1g woman had consented to participate in it as an object- that is, as a woman. Yet Dora objects precisely to this and rebels, Lmder the cover of a jealousy of Frau K, against her own role. This is the second d ialectical reversa l, in which Freud unmasks, beneath this jealousy, an tmconscious interest in her, an interest that, if it is to be brought to light, requires Dora's complaint to be reversed once again . This is a new development of truth, but now the truth is sullied by Freud's own prejudices, since, accord ing to Lacan, wha t motivates Dora's jealousy are not her own Oed ipal wishes, which would see Frau K as a rival, since she is the father's mistress, and an object for men who sta nd in for him: Herr K. and Freud. Instead, a correct d evelopment of tmth would have led Freud to recognize, in Dora's attaclunent to Frau K., not a jealousy that derives from identi fication, but a homosexual object investment that is decid edly pre-Oedipal. This root identification comes to her from the mirror stage and results from a primal masculinity; th is masculinity constitutes her own femininity as a mystery, and even as a symptom-and works against fate, which has assigned her a woman's place in social exchanges. What fascinates Dora about Frau K is, as Freud recognizes, "her 'adorable white body"' (Dora, p. 61) and as Lacan says, "the mystery of Dora's own ... bodily feminini ty" (Ecrits, p. 180). In other words, for Lacan, she has not been able to recognize her own femininity. To do this, "she would have to asstm1e [asswner) her own body, fa iling which she remains open to the functional fragmentation (to refer to the theoretical contribution of the mirror stage) that constitutes conversion symptoms". Now, her only means for gaining this access was via her earliest imago, which shows us that the only path open to her to the object was via the masculine partner, with whom, because of their difference in age, she was able to identify, in that

TH E SU Bj ECT RECE IVES F ROM TH E OTH ER H IS OWN MESSAG E

10 1

primordial identification through which the subject recognizes herself as I ... (Ecrits, p. 181). In writing these ellipses, Lacan invites the reader to switch to the 1949 text on the mirror stage, w hich provides the theoretical foundation of his 1951 analysis of Dora's identifications. Because she has identified, from the first moment of her life in front of the mirror, with the primal image of a male partner who is older than she is, Dora, according to Lacan: 1.

2. 3. 4.

5.

Cmmot accept her own female bod y Falls prey to the fragmentation that motivates her conversion symptoms Sees Frau K.'s body as a fascinating mystery Identifies w ith her father and th us makes Frau K. the object of her desire, since she identifies w ith the inheritors of the paternal gestalt (Herr K., Freud) Objects to the message that she receives from the social other, a message that assigns her a place a mong the women w ho are to be exchanged.

In other words, Dora's malaise can be explained entirely by the fundamental disharmony that exists between the imaginary and its identifications- that of the mirror s tage, which places her on the masculine side- and the unconscious message, which she receives from the social Other, her network, which orders her to take her place as woman in the circuit of exchange. Dora or the emblem of the feminine condition

Beyond rectifying the problems of the case, Lacan, in order to give a paradigmatic explanation of the Freudian clinic of hysteria, also connects, on the epistem ological level, two elements: 1.

2.

What he borrows from etlmologists concerning the m1alysis of the gift and exchange, and especially from Levi-Strauss' analysis of the exchange of women What he had been formulating since 1936, concerning how the mirror stage makes up for what is missing in Freud's theory of primal identifications.

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LACAN AND LEVI -STRAU SS OR T HE RETUR N TO FREU D (1 95 1- 195 7)

What is in question here is not simply a secondary clinical problem. Let me emphasize that with this text: L 2. 3. 4.

Lacan criticizes Freud's assumptions about the prevalence of the father in the Oedipus complex He treats these assumptions as Freud's resistance to the analysis He makes the analyst's biases the place of the resistance to analysis, and He shows us finally what is not only Dora's fate, but that of all the "petites hysteries", all of w hom object to the symbolic system that assigns women their place as ethnologically determined exchange objects.

Is the feminine cond ition not profound ly d ivided-and its symptoms motivated-by w hat may be a structural disharmony: on the one hand, there is a primal identi fication w ith a gestalt, which is less outside sex than generic- the root or paternal identification"'and on the other, a social fate that ordains that they take the place of the object of exchange? Lacan answers: As is true for all women, and for reasons that are at the very crux of the most elementary social exchanges (the very conditions Dora names as the grounds of her revolt), the problem of her condition is fundamentally that of accepting herself as a man's object of desire, and this is the mystery that motivates Dora's idolization of Frau K. (Ecrils, p. 181). Lacan reads Freud w ith Levi-Strauss and makes the exchange of women the place w here Dora's unconscious mission is expressed. Her primal identifications make her see herself as a man and she is guided towards a homosexual object choice that Freud cmmot understand, since he remains fixed to his theory of the Oedip us com plex.

;uSee Lncau et les sdeHces socialt.'S, where I re-examined the question of the root iden-

tification in Lacan in relation to Freud's theory of the dead father. Lacan's reading of

the Dora case does not contradict my U1esis that the root identification is a gestalt of the fatl>er, and we shall see fu rther that that with the seminar of 1956-1957, Object Relnlions (Semillllr IV), Lacan reconfirms my interpretation by indicating more generally what in the hysteric's homosexual object "choice" goes back to this primal identification with the father.

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l would say that this has to be ascribed to a bias, the very same bias that falsifies the conception of the Oedipus complex right from the outset, making him consider the predominance of the paternal figure to be natural, rather than normative-the same bias that is expressed simply in the well-known refrain, "Thread is to needle as girl is to boy" (Ecrits, p. 182). Because of his Oedipal bias, Freud misses the third d ialectical reversal, w hich would have allowed him to bring out the " imaginary mold in which all the situations orchestrated by Dora d uring her life came to be cast- a perfect illustration of the theory, yet to appear in Freud's work, of repetition automatisms. We can gauge in it w hat woman and man signify to her now" (Ecrils, p. 180). Next Lacan says that In order for her to gain access to this recognition of her feminin-

ity, she would have had to assume [assumer) her own body .... Now, her only means for gaining this access was via her earliest imago, which shows us that the only path open to her to the object was via the masculine partner, with whom, because of their difference in age, she was able to identify, in that primordial identification through which the subject recognizes herself as I ... (Ecrits, pp. 180-181). According to the Lacan of 1951, w hat Freud lacked in order to situate himself better in Dora's analysis was the theory of the mirror stage. This theory would have allowed him not to expect Dora to be dominated by late Oedipal identifications; such an expectation only shows the weight of Freud's prejudices about the father's prevalence--as object-in structuring the daughter's desire." Lacan's 1951 Presentation thus seeks both to demonstrate Freud's dialectical genius and to illustrate the clinical wealth of the Lacanian replacement, the mirror stage, which is knotted here to Levi-Strauss' theory of the exchange of women, th us making Dora's unconscious

" We can see that l.acan's epistemological charges against Freud on the question of the father is still very much present in 1951, like his concem with demonstrating the clinical richness of what had been, since 1936, his contribution to the theory of narcissism, as well as his theoretical replacement of what does not suit him in Freud's theory of the fi rst identifications.

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LACAN AND LEVI ·STRAU S.S OR THE RETURN TO FREU D (195 1- 1957)

mission understandable. On the level of directing the treatment, Lacan indicates that what psychoanalysis is concerned with-the unconscious message and the mode by w hich it is stmcturedrequires a dialectical reversal so that the symptomatic cryptogram can finally yield its tru th . For him, the dialectical conception of the treatment is not a philosophical affectation, but a response that has been adjusted to the way by which the unconscious message is produced: it is a message from which the truth can be extracted after its structure has been reversed. In this case, there is therefore no choice. Because the unconscious message arrives from the Other in an inverted form, the transferential manoeuvre inverts the terms of the symptomatic complaint and requires s ubjective rectifications; these rectifications lead the ana lysand to see what she is creating or maintaining unconsciously in her complaints. We can understand better now how this text throws light on the historical circumstances in w hich the fonnula of s ubjectivity was produced. We can see w hy, in Lacan's own words, "when I first began to make my views known on analysis as dialectic", he received from his exceptional listener the formula, "Human language would then constitute a kind of communication in which the sender receives his own message back from the receiver in inverted form" (Ecrits, p. 247). Lacan says in the Rome Report that this form is that "in which language expresses itself", the form that "in and of itself defines subjectivity. Language ... refers to d iscourse about/ from the other [discours de /'autre ]. It is enveloped as such in the highest function of speech, inasmuch as speech conunits its author by inves ting its addressee with a new reality, as for example, w hen a subject seals his fate as a married man by saying 'You are my wife"' (Ecrits, p. 246). Only the dialectical production of an antithesis can then allow the unconscious message to be re-established. This can easily be understood in the analysis of individual cases; on the level of the analysis of the masses, precisely because it is, in Freud's words, a paradigmatic case of "petite hystt!rie" and thus one of the "simplest'' and most frequent cases, it can be considered as a general analysis of the feminine condition . Presentation em Transference can thus be read as both a text on Freudian technique and a work that throws light on the experience of the treatment, but it is also--on the crucial point of femininity- a contribution to psychoanalytic anthropology: the clinic of the masses. This

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double virtue is eminently Freudian; it shows that Lacan is an orthodox Freudian and that he has produced a clinic of the individ ual case that is ipso facto a clinic of the social. Yet although it is di fficult to dispute that Lacan, in his return to Freud, follows the Freudian ethic, this should not prevent us from observing that he begins this return by commenting on Freud and uses theoretical fotmdations that are not entirely those of Freud's own work: his own research on narcissism- the mirror stage- as well as w hat he has learned about the symbolic order from French etlmology. That he treats the exchange of women as the governing principle of Dora's unconscious mission shows how crucial Levi-Strauss' research is for him; it is crucial not only in terms of his psychoanalytic anthropology, but also as a way of throwing light on Freud's paradigmatic cases. This is true of Dora in 1951 but it is also true, as we saw in our earlier work, of her masculine counterpart among Freud's cases: the Rat Man. Lacan re-examined this case at Jean Wahl's" College philosopl1ique under the title of The Neurotic's Individual Mytlt. Levi-Strauss' influence is clear here, since, as mentioned earlier, he used the term " individual myth" in 1949. Lacan returns to Freud by commenting on his cases, and does so because he wants to remain dose to the latter's clinical experience. To understand tl1is return, one must do more than fix its date or sinlply to repeat, once again, tllat Lacan returned to Freud in the 1950s. We must see tllat this return involves a commentary tllat has a specific style: tllat of a profow1d respect for Freud's ethics but also of a critical testing. Through this testing, Lacan verifies the fotmdation of Freud's theses, which he does not hesitate to develop, w hen he thinks that it is useful to do so, by relying on sources that are external to Freud's theory. If this return allows him to decipher Freud's method as analyst and to locate and use what is hidden within Freud's texts concerning every analyst's subjective mission, Lacan does not develop the elements of Freud's work tl1at seem to impede the development of truth. Lacan's project is not religious; his "return" can insist on the letter of Freud's text but it can also set aside Freud's "biases", which ~jean Wahl (1888-1974), philosopher an d poet. He had an ngrignfiou in philosophy and began to teach a t the Sorbonne in 1936. The president o f the French Philosophical Sociel)\ he also headed the College pfli/osopflique.

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LACAN AN D LEVI-STRA USS O R T HE RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

functioned as a resistance to analysis. In other words, when Lacan encounters elements of psychoanalytic theory that he judges to be obsolete, he does not insist dogmatically on maintaining them; he never hesitates to highlight, in opposition to Freud's own resistance, the perspective of the Freudian ethic, which aimed at bringing out the truth . In rereading the Dora case, what Lacan judges to be biased is nothing less than Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex; Freud's own biases created a resistance to Dora's analysis and provoked the final transferential rupture. As a consequence, what he proposes to substitute for Freud's inadequate conception is the antagonism between a series of identifications, the model of w hich is both Dora's " root identification"- the theoretical contribution of the mirror stageand the symbolic function . He believed that the latter includes but goes beyond- both generically and clinically- the Oedipus complex in both the process that constitutes the subj ect and the unconscious messages that organize his symptoms. Lacan th us reads Freud with Freud, since he rehtses to compromise whatever helps move us towards the truth; the price for this is to "sacrifice" Freud- or his guilty blin dness-in order to find a substitu te in the work of the French etlmologists, w ho allow him to decipher the message hidden in Dora's symptoms. If Lacan can argue that Dora's symptoms can be ded uced not from the Oedipal wishes for her father, but from the message of the father, who offers his da ughter up to the network of exchange of goods- a network to which he owes a woman- it is because he has learned this not only from Levi-Strauss, but also from older etlmologists, such as Marcel Mauss. What they taught him was that a debt contracted symbolically in social excl1anges must be honoured, and that if it is not, misfortune will strike whoever has not repaid it or his allies."' He can therefore argue that Dora's misfortunes result not from unconscious Oedipal guilt, but from something that is very different: a symbolic debt that, w1consciously, is unpaid. Confronted w ith the range of these etlmological theses, and his own theory of the mirror stage, Lacan believes tl1at his return to "' We have also seen that it is the logic of this unpaid debt that informs l.acan's analysis, in the first year of his seminar, of the symptom that impeded the use of a hand by the son whose father was s us pected of theft.

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Freud must go beyond the Oedipus complex. Does Lacan make this critical commentary on Freud's text in the sa me spirit in which he retum s to Freud? To answer this question, we must: 1.

2.

Ask Lacan Read his text of 7 November 1955, "The Freudian Thing or the Meaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis" (Ecrits, pp. 334-363).

II. "The Freudian Thing or the M eaning of the Return to Freud in Psychoanalysis" From the introduction to this lecture, which was given at the Vie1ma Neuropsychiatric C linic, Lacan uses the expression " return to Freud", several times. He says, first, that he is its "herald" (Ecrits, p. 401) and indicates that he has d evoted "the past four years" to a seminar on Freud's texts that is held "every Wednesday from November to July" (Ecrits, p. 336). This lecture was given in November 1955, and thus Lacan is letting it be known that his own return to the study of Freud's texts in a seminar d ates from 1951, the year of the Presentation on Transference. This reading of Dora thus inaugurates this return. Is this a homage to hysteria? A homage to the position of truth? A respect for the diachrony of Freud's d iscovery, which was first motivated by the hysteric's experience? Certainly, but according to this clarification of 1955, it could also be said that the theoretical tmder piimings of the 1951 text-both the mirror stage and the ethnological contributions to the st udy of the symbolic fw1ction- are the scientific bases of Lacan's return to Freud, bases that are external to Freud's texts. Yet if La can d ates his "public" return-his return in the sernii1arto 1951, w hy d oes he only herald it in 1955? Because what is in question is not only his own return to Freud but,in his own terms,the act of "callii1g for" a return (see Ecrits, p. 401) and of making a slogan whose political resonance-in the sense of the politics of psychoanalysis- he has now truly accepted and w hich he is now

trying to bring to bear both collectively and internationally in the psychoanalytic field. Where better to mmounce his retu rn to Freud than Vierma, where psychoanalysis was invented? Yet if Lacan makes his " return to Freud" ii1to a slogan at this moment, he s till

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LACAN AND LEVI-STRAU SS OR T HE RETURN TO FREU D (195 1- 1957)

has to formulate what its character is and what it requires. From this double point of view, Lacan sheds light on things from the beginning of his lecture. What makes his return to Freud necessary, in his opinion, is that psychoanalysts themselves have "denied " Freud's work. The denial of Freud or the rejection of history and myths

Why this denial? Because, according to Lacan, the very people whom Freud had asked to safeguard his discovery have had to sacrifice it through the forced choice of emigration; his disciples fled Nazi persecution to the United States, which is characterized by its "cultural ahistoricism" (Ecrits, p. 335). Now the function of the psychoanalyst, as Lacan explains, "presuppose[s) history as its very principle". The analytic discipline is " the one that had reconstructed the bridge between modem man and ancient myths" (Ecrits, p. 335).u In Lacan's work, there are many ways of defining Freud's discovery and its denial. Yet we shall note that this denial, whose causes are seen as socio-historical, is related to the rejection of history and the rupture of the bridge that psychoanalysis has " reconstructed" between modern man and the universe of ancient myths. On the epistemological level, the two obviously go together, but w hat Lacan is referring to, in particular, is the Oedipal myth and its prevalence in Freud's work, as opposed to what he now calls the "preoedipal mess to w hich the analytic relationship can be reduced, according to our mod em analysts" (Ecrits, p. 339). What characterizes Lacan's return most surely is his rereading of the Oedipal path in analytic experience and, more generally, as we have seen with the Dora case, of the symbolic- where the directives of the w1conscious arise. Yet what Lacan also tells us is that this reh tm, on the collective plane, is determined by the history of psychoanalysis and the denial of Freud's texts. This return also requires the community of psychoanalysts to make use of "the antithesis constituted by the phase that has passed in the psychoanalytic movement since Freud's death" (Ecrits, p. 336).

' This is Lacan's complete sentence: "Whence stems this contradiction between the preoedipal mess, to which the analytic relationship can be reduced, according to our modern analysts, and the fact that Freud wasn't satisfied until he had reduced it to

7

the Oedipal position?" (p. 339).

THE SU Bj ECT RECE IVES FRO M TH E OTH ER H IS OWN MESSAG E

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The retu rn to Freud is thus no t, in Lacan's tenn s, "a return of the repressed" b u t rathe r: 1.

2.

A " reversal" o f w hat analysts have done since Freud's dea th (Ecrits, p. 127) A rectificatio n of the psychoanalysts' position, which would be the antithesis of their denial and its p resuppositio ns: the rejectio n o f history and mythologies.

More generally, the retum to Freud becomes a return to "Freud's meaning" (Ecrifs, p. 126), as "it is a ttested to in a body of written work of the most lucid and organic kind" (Ecrits, p. 336). All of this aims at restoring tmth to the heart of the analytic commmtity and its cllitical practice. The meaning of a return to Freud is a retum to Freud's meaning. And the meaning of what Freud said may be conveyed to anyone because, while addressed to everyone, it concerns each person. One word suffices to make this point: Freud's discovery calls truth into question, and there is no one who is not personally concerned by truth. It must seem rather odd that I should be flinging this word in your faces-a word of almost ill repute, a word banished from polite society. But isn't it inscribed in the very heart of analytic practice, since this practice is constantly rediscovering the power of truth in ourselves and our very flesh? Why, indeed, would the unconscious be more worthy of being recognized than the defenses that oppose it in the subject, so successfully that the defenses seem no less real than it? ... But I am asking where the peace that ensues in recognizing an unconscious tendency comes from if the latter is not truer than what restrained it in the conflict (Ecrits, pp. 337- 338). Analytic experie nce aims at recognizing unconscious truth and Presentation on Transference shows us that d irecting the treatment to obtain this result involves a dialectical moveme n t that must precede it; first, there is a subjective rectificatio n and then there is a d evelopme nt of the truth. The retu rn to Freud on the level o f the analytic group, wltich Lacan heralds in Vie1ma, in volves the same s teps as an analysis: a promotion

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LACAN AN D LEVI -STRAU SS O R T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

of the antithesis, a reversal of resistances on the analysts' side and subjective rectifications, and the development of tm th- that of Freud's speech or of his lucid writings-which demonstrates the onmipresence of the symbolic ftmction in relation to the tmconscious. Once the symptom's signifying structure is "deciphered, it is plain to see and shows the onmipresence for human beings of the symbolic ftmction stamped on the flesh" (Ecrits, p. 346). Th us, Lacan's return, on the level of the analytic group, is strictly equivalent to the dialectical method that he advocates in d irecting the treatment. In both cases, the d ialectical reversal of positions must lead to the recognition of truth, which is deduced from symbolic effecti veness. The subject, its symptoms and its malaise are d educed from such a function; this is done both in individual analytic treatments and in a group: in society, w hether or not it is an analyt ic society. In bringing his arguments about the group to Vie1ma, Lacan relies on ethnological knowledge and highlights subjective truth as the cause of the discontents within societies. The subjective causality of group discontents

What distinguishes a society grounded in language from an animal society, which even the ethnological standpoint allows us to see-namely, the fact that the exchange that characterizes such a society has other foundations than needs (even if it satisfies them), specifically, what has been called the gift 'as total social fact'-can then be taken much further, so far as to constitute an objection to defining this society as a collection of individuals, since the in-mixing of subjects makes it a group with a very different stntcture. This reintroduces the impact of a truth as cause from a totally different angle and requires a reappraisal of the process of causality" (Ecrils, p. 346.) Further on, he says that "If all causality evinces the subject's involvement, it will come as no surprise that every order conflict is attributed to him " (Ecrits, p. 346). Lacan applies to the analytic group what he d oes in the clinic, because he has learned from Mauss and Levi-Strauss to recognize the symbolic fw1ction as the fow1dation of societies. This ftmction:

TH E SU Bj ECT R EC EIVES FRO M TH E O TH ER H IS O W N ME SS AG E

1. 2. 3.

1 11

Governs subjectivities that have been gathered into a collective Treats subjectivi ty as the cause of conflict in the g ro up, and Design ates the subjective tmth which causes the sense o f d isconte nt that, w hether against his will or not, La can incarnated in French analysis and in the 1953 split.

Thus, it is necessary for both political and episte mological reasons, to re mind his listeners that a na ly tic intervention in the ind ividual treatme n t o r in the g ro up must ru le out a ny individualist perspective. He states tha t "The terms in which I a m posing the p roblem o f psychoanaly tic intervention make it s ufficien tly clea r, I think, that its e thics are not individualistic" (Ecrits, p . 346). Whether o r not it has been brough t together into a collective, the subject is never the ego; if a nalysts want to reach the ca use embodied in the symptoms, they m ust pay a ttention to the s ubject and its truths in both the individual t rea hnent a nd the group . If Lacan and his return to Freud a re symptoms in the psychoanalytic group, it is because, as he says, his speech incarnates the Freud ia n truths d enied by the other post-Freud ia ns. For this reason, he o ffe rs his incred ible fo rmula, "1, truth, spea k" (Ecrits, p. 340). This e n tire lecture on the re turn to Fre ud is d eveloped in terms o f the essentia l theoretical bases tha t Lacan p romotes in the readings o f Freud 's texts that ma rk his retu rn. The theoretical bases of 7955

What a re they? 1.

The d isjunction between the ego and the subject: For the subject of whom I was just speaking as the legatee of recognized truth is definitely not the ego perceptible in the more or Jess immediate data of conscious jouissnnce or the alienation of labour (Ecrits, pp. 346-347).

2.

The reminder that subjectivity is constituted by the form of inverted language, a form that is specific to the symbolic ftmction: It is not about [the subject) that you must speak to him, for he can do

this well enough himself, and in doing so, it is not even to you that he speaks. While it is to him that you must speak, it is literally about

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LACAN AN D LEVI -STRAU SS O R T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

something else-tha t is, that about some-thing other than what is at stake when he speaks of himself- which is that thing that speaks to you. Regardless of what he says, this thing will remain forever inaccessible to him if, being speech addressed to you, it cannot elicit its response in you, and if, having heard its message in this inverted form, you cannot, in re-tu rning it to him, give him the twofold satisfaction of having recognized it and of making him recognize its truth

(Ecrils, p. 348). 3.

The re minder of his theory o f narcissism and the mirror stage (Ecrits, p. 355) and of im aginary alienatio n: This passion brings to every relation with this image, constantly represented by my counterpart, a signification which in terests me so greatly-that is, which ma kes me so dependent on this image-that it links all the objects of my desires to the other's desire, more closely tha n to the desire they arouse in me (Ecrits, p. 355).

4.

The reminders that the symbolic is the basis both of how the treatment is to be conducted and of the d iscoveries made by Freud and Levi-Strauss: This is why I teach that there are not only h"o subjects present in the analytic situation, but two subjects each of whom is provided with hvo objects, the ego and the other (Ecrils, p. 357).

And also: Freud's discovery went right to the heart of this determination by the symbolic law, for in the unconscious-which, he insisted, was quite different from everything that had previously been designated by that name-he recognized the instance of the laws on which mnrringe nud kiuship (my emphasis) are based, establishing the Oedipus complex as its central motivation already in the Trnumdeutlmg. This is what allows me to tell you why the motives of the unconscious are limited to sexual desire, a point on which Freud was quite clear from the outset and from which he never deviated. Indeed, it is essen tially on sexual rela tions [liaison]-by regulating them according to the law of preferential marriage alliances and forbidden relations-tha t the first combinatory for exchanges of women between family lines

TH E SU Bj ECT R EC EIVES FRO M TH E O TH ER H IS O W N ME SS AG E

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relies, developing the ftmdamental commerce and concrete discourse on which human societies are based in an exchange of gratuitous goods and magic words (Ecrits, p. 359).75 Once again, Lacan c01mects Freud's work with Levi-Strauss' a t the precise point of the question of sexual desire in the Oedipus complex and of how it is regulated socially. This leads to the text's conclusion, where Lacan suggests that fuhtre analysts should be introduced to the methods of " the linguist, the historian, and ... the mathematician"; this is part of an institutional reform, in w hich the analyst would maintain a "constant conunw1ication with disciplines that would define themselves as sciences of intersubjectivity or by the term 'conjechtral sciences"' (Ecrits, p. 362). In short, psychoanalysis would communicate with the appropriate social sciences, a communication whose outcome Lacan would still be seeking several years later. What is especially important about this text is that it clarifies what the "return to Freud" means for Lacan, at the moment when he is heralding it to the international psychoanalytic conununity. He takes a very strong attitude towards the psychoanalysts of the IPA, blaming them for a blatant "denial" and for choosing what was obviously a political option. Yet we need to recall that what Lacan was aiming at in this rehtnl was a return to Freud's meaning, a return to the founding texts, w hich had to be evaluated in terms of their capacity to stand up to the test of conunentary. What this test reveals is that His texts prove to be comparable to those that, in other times, human venera tion has invested with the highest qualities, in that they withstand the test of the discipline of commentary, whose virtue one rediscovers in making use of it in the traditional way-not simply to situate what someone says in the context of his time, but to gauge whether the answer he gives to the questions he raises has or has not been superseded by the answer one finds in his work to current questions (Ecrils, p. 336).

" On the exchange of women.. see Claude Levi-Strauss, T!Je Eltmumlnry Structures of Ki11s!Jip (1947).

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LACAN AN D LEVI-STRAUSS O R T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

If this reference to the texts of the father of psychoanalysis d oes not lack religious connotations, we shall note that the discussion of the function of commentary emphasizes that it allows L

2.

A text to be re-contextualized by restoring its historical presuppositions, and in order for this to be done, one must be freed from the "cultural a historicism" that can only imped e an w1derstanding of both Freud's texts and analytic practice A verification that Freud's theses are not obsolete.

These reflections will prove useful for my own commentary. Inscribed at the heart of Lacan's work is a definition of commentary whose analytic references are perhaps less direct than the ones that characterize his formula of 1953, a formula that, from my perspective, is crucial: "Conunenting on a text is like d oing an analysis." We must not, however, be mistaken about what Lacan was trying to do: to bring out the Freudian "truth effect", as he makes d ear from what he says in this lecture about his own practice as commentator : Who, among the experts in disciplines other than psychoanalysis whom I have guided in reading these texts, has not been moved by this research in action-whether it is the research he has us following the Traunufeutung ... the case study of the Wolf Man, or Beyond the Pleasure Principle? What an exercise in the training of minds, and what a message to lend one's voice to! And what better confirmation could there be of the methodical value of this training and the truth effect this message produces than the fact that the students to whom you transmit them bring you evidence of a transformation, occurring sometimes overnight, in their practice, which becomes simpler or more effective even before it becomes more transparent to them (Ecrits, p. 337). The em otion, the tntth effect, the encounter that changes us: do not all of these participate in analytic experience? Certainly, and if in 1955, as in 1953, the reh.m1 to Freud involves a commentary on Freud's texts, it is because a psychoanalyst must know how to find his/her own place in the history of psychoanalytic thought. Further, it is because it is not only necessary to know whether a text is obsolescent, but also because "Conunenting on a text is like

TH E SU Bj ECT RECE IVES F ROM TH E OTH ER H IS OWN MESSAG E

1 15

doing an ana lysis". This is especially the case with Freud's text, which prod uces messages that link analysts symbolically, and thus unconsciously, with Freud's voice.

The tidings brought to the group If in 1955, Lacan can make h imself the hera ld of this style of a return to Freud, it is because he has himself had the experience of commenting on Freud's work and this commentary has functioned like a psychoanalysis. It is also because he bea rs the responsibility, as he says in 1955, for what d ivides the psychoanalytic field in the " order conflict" (Ecrils, p. 346), a conflict that derives from Freudian truth as a cause; this indicates his own subjective implication, w hich he has perceived since 1953 as a "fate". Indeed, if Lacan can become the herald of the group's retum, it is because he has been tmdergoing this experience s ince 1951 and it has changed him; he is, as it were, going through the pass, which leads him to reopen Freud 's work as the solution to the cr ucial problems of psychoana lysis a t that time. In returning to the desire of the father of psychoanalysis, Lacan had allowed the deluge of Freudian truths to engulf him, thus modifying irreversibly his being as an analyst who had become truly Freudian for the first time. This subjective change can be seen as the cause of the conflict that brought about the institutional division in Paris in 1953, and which led him to be frozen out of the International Association of Psychoanalysis. Thus, although he may not have intended to move away from the IPA, it was in relation to his conversion to Freud's work- which became ever stronger, and to the crystallizing of Freudian truths-which he incarnated every more clearly, that Lacan experienced the splitting of 1953. For him, this rupt ure, far from being the trimnphant achievement of an institutional calculation that had arisen from some sort of will to power, was a nightmarish test. If this analysis is correct, Lacan formulated this rupture in terms not of his opposition to a group but of his heroic recognition that his fate was to decipher Freud's work; this task of deciphering led hi m away from the father's house, although he had intended only to make Freud's own voice heard there once again. The importance that Lacan's teaching took on in the analytic movement indicates

1 16

LACAN AN D LEVI -STRAU SS O R T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

that the members of the IPA were perfectly correct in rejecting him; in doing so, they were designating, witl1out knowing it, the man who would become the most influential analyst of his generation, and of several succeeding generations. Those who were on Lacan's "side" were more willing to see- and still see-that this charge was a pretext for rejecting him, out of a will to power that left analysis to stagnate in the register of the ego. In making this judgement, Lacan's followers are, nevertheless, neglecting the lesson on group conflicts tl1at he gave them in 1955 and are making an unconvincing argument. Whether in 1951, 1953 or 1955, Lacan 's ret urn to Freud was both rejected and fruitful, even if it took him several years to recognize his own fate in the history of the psychoanalytic movement and the m ission that had been returned to him by Freud's texts; this recognition was not painless for him. In order to understand this, and in following his own formulations about his return, we must apply Lacan to Lacan; we must grasp the disjunction, in Lacan, between "his majesty the ego", and his own subjective position in 1953, which had come into being tluough suffering, according to the symbolic logic of Freud's work. In 1955, Lacan's "metamorphosis"'• and the recognition of the truths of Freud's message that constit ute his desire as analyst, lead him to designate that Freud's own speech is the place of tmth and to pronow1ce, in the latter's name, a fonnula that has a t roubling polysemy: "1, truili, speak" (Ecrits, p. 340). This indicates that 1.

2. 3.

By incarnating Freudian tmth, Lacan can state the secret that he recognizes Freudian truth can be d eciphered in Freud's text This truth concerns Freud's desire-to decipher the truth of w1conscious desire- and is the sol ution to both the burdens of the symptom and the question of what Freudian analysts d esire; this was Lacan's desire when he formulated it in 1955, just as in 1953, he had been through the ordeal of its painful recognition.

Now, let us move back to 1953.

Jam using the term "metamorphosis" in the sense in which- as we have seen in an earlier work-Lacan mentions the identification with the father as a solution to the )'I>

subjective impasses of identifying with tl1e brothers.

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1 17

Ill. 1953

This was the yea r that Lacan gave his lect ure on the Rat Man, The Neurotic's Individual Myth, a lecture tha t showed his determina tion to review the Freud ian clinic by using both the mi rror stage and the symbolic ord er 's ntles-which d erived from his interpreta tion of French ethnology and especially of Lev i-St rauss. It was also the year of the first rupture of the. French analy tic community: the exact moment when Lacan had to pay the. political price for h is return to Freud. I am going to remind readers of the main reasons for this spli t, but we shall a lso read Lacan's own descriptions of it, in ord er to analyse the. turbulent situ ation in which he found himself.

The split" How can we. make a quick evaluation of the association of French psychoanalysts before the split? At the end of the Second World War, d uring which its analytic activities were s uspended, the Paris Psychoanalytic Society (SPP) went back to work. Depending on the International Psychoanalytic Association, it was dominated by the influence of the Anglo-American analysts who, according to Lacan in 1955, had deviated from Freud's work. At the time, it brought together about 20 titular members, most of whom were physicians, and 70 students who were. in training. Begirming in 1947, Dr. Sacha Nacht'-. was the president of this society and he hoped to provide. it with an institute that would teach psychoanalysis. For a short time in 1953, Lacan succeeded him as president. In this context, Nacht had the SPP adopt, in June 1952, a plan for the institu te according to which he would direct it for five years, and it would grant a d iploma for psychoanalysts, a d iploma that would be reserved for physicians. ~On

this point, the reader will profit by referring to La scission de 1953 (1976). In this work, Jacques-Alain Miller has collected the texts that are essential for understanding this rupture and its context ~ Sacha Nacht (1901-1977), a Romanian immigrant. He was especially concerned

with obtaining tl1e recognition of tl1e International Psychoanalytic Association for his Paris Psyd1oanalytic [nstitute, which he had foLmded and o f which he was the first director. After an analysis with Rudolph Loewenstein, Lacan's analyst, he undertook a second analysis with Heinz Hartmann and promoted the latter's notion of the "autonomous Ego".

1 18

LACAN AND LEVI-STRAUSS OR T HE RETURN TO FREU D (1 95 1- 195 7)

This plan violently d ivided the members, and led to an opposition between tlt e supporters of Nacht's medical and authoritarian "line" and tlte more "liberal" position of Professor Daniel Lagache, w ith which Lacan was affiliated. The year 1953 began with Lacan's election as president of tlte SPP and then, in March, the opening of tlte Institute under Nacht's direction. The students felt a sense of discontent, w hen confronted w ith Nacht's bureaucratic power, the excessive cost of the teaching, the unpleasant inequality of their assignments to tile Institute's courses, and finally the new requirements for qualification inlposed on them, despite the fact tl1at many of them were already recognized psychiatrists or tllerapists. The convergence of tile students' revolt and the teachers' internal d ivisions led to the resignation, on 16 Jtme 1953, of Lagache"', Fran~oise Dolto"", and Juliette Favez-BoutOJmier'". These three, having rejected for one last tinle tlte opinion that the malaise in the group was "entirely cormected witlt tlte personal actions of the current president of the Society, Dr. Lacan" (LA scission, p. 87) resigned and announced the creation of the French Psychoanalyt ic Society (SFP). On that same day, Lacan left his ftmctions as president of tile SPP in order to join the new society. Togetller witlt the students who had followed !Item, they sought to have tlteir group recognized as quickly as possible by the IPA; they also tried to rejoin this association, from w hich they had separated witltout really being aware that they had done so. In order to do this, during tlte following month-July 1953---Lagache, the president of tlte SFP, sent the decision-making bodies of the International Association a memorandum dealing w ith

Daniel Lagache (1903- 1972). An alunmus of the &ole uormnle supirieure, he was analysed by Rudolph Loewenstein and was a psydliatrist and a member of the second generation of French analysts. He founded the SFP in 1953 and was tl1e co-founder o f the APF in 1964. He also founded the psychoanalytic series published by the Presses uuiversilaires de France. ~ Fran<;oise Dol to (190&-1988). A p hysician an d psychoanalyst who took her inspiration from Christianity, she specialized in child analysis. She always, except in 1980, took the side of Lacan, especially du ring the period of tl>e Freudian School of Paris. N

One of her important theoretical contributions was an elaboration of the unconscious body image. " juliette Favez·Boutonnier (1903-1994). A French psychoana lyst, she had an agrega· lion in philosophy, studied medicine and was analysed by Rene Laforgue. Along with Lagache, she foun ded the SFP in 1953 and tl1e APF in 1964.

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1 19

the divisions among the French analysts and asked that the SFP be granted an affiliation with the IPA. The memorandum begins by stating that "There was no questioning of either the fundamental principles of psychoanalysis or its practice, w hich have been consolidated in the forms that have commonly been described as 'classical' or 'orthodox'; in particular, there has been no divergence in principle concerning the duration of psychoanalytic treatment or the frequency and duration of thesessions" (La scission, p . 102). Lagache tried to account for the rupture by contrasting the SPP's authoritarian and scientifically unconvincing theories with the "liberal and democratic s pirit" of the founders of theSFP. The first paragraph of the memorandtml explains that there is no divergence concerning the duration of sessions, and Lagache returns to this issue four pages later, where he describes what had happened : Since 1951, objections had been made to the Teaching Commission concerning Lacan's introduction, in his tra ining analyses, of a procedure that shortens the sessions; in 1951, he could not normalize this situation ... and in 1952, Lacan's technique had stopped being discussed. Then at the beginning of 1953, three of his students went before the Teaching Commission, in order to be admitted to supervisory analyses. Everyone agreed in rejecting Lacan's technique .... The discussion finally ended with the adoption of general measures that were intended to settle these questions once and for all: no candidate would be allowed to practice superv ised analyses without having undergone, for at least 12 months, a tra ining analysis that could consist of three sessions of at least 45 minutes each week. Starting in January, Lacan, by professional discipline, had normalized his trai ning analyses (La scission, p. 107). Certa inly by discipline he had; but history w ill show that his

theoretical discipline led Lacan to enlarge his practice of variablelength sessions and tha t the s truggle over the 45 minute sessions concealed a much more general theoretical opposition to La can's return to Freud.

1 20

LACAN AN D LEVI -STRAU SS O R T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

Once seen in this perspective, the "authorita rian faction", as Lagache calls it, by focusing the "order conflict" on lacan, took a political position that, in retrospect, is rather precise. These circumstances obliged Lagache to mention that the conflict had been organized arow1d La can's name, despite the fact that he supported him and was seeking, instead, to highlight a conflict of sensibility between liberalism and authoritarianism . According to his analysis, it was this d ifference that could accoLmt for the division of French analysts, a d ivision that, according to him, had not been brought about by theoretical divergences. The blindness and the "d enial", which may not be disinterested, on this point is o bvious. Here is how Lagache rettm1s half-heartedly to the lacan case: Lacan's technique and personality have been mentioned so often by the authoritarian fraction that it is impossible not to say a word about them. For years, the Paris Psychoanalytic Society owed a large part of its life and activities to him; his seminars on Freud's texts have won Lacan the admiration and recognition of a number of students (Ln scission, p. 107). Lagache thus repeats that Lacan was at the centre of the conflict, since so many s!ttdents admired his reading of Freud's works, and his return to Freud. Readers, w ho by now have a good understanding of the theoretical scope of this return, should conclude from the weakness of the testimony of Lagache, who seemed not to see (or not to want to see, or not to want to make others see) that w hat was at stake in the return to Freud was profoundly analytic-both theoretical and clinical- and that this was what motivated lacan's s tudents' transference to him and his rejection by his peers. Perhaps lacan's earlier intellec!ttal proximity to Ma rcel Cenac, when they were w riting their article, "A Theoretical Introduction to the Functions of Psychoanalysis in Criminology" (1950)82 had made him a better judge of what Lacan had come to incarnate; it may also have enabled hin1 to see what had proved to be unbearable for some

members of the "authoritarian fraction",

~.: See

Lacan etles scitntces socinles, chapter 3.

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vVe can read the following in the memorandum: At the session of the Paris Psychoanalytic Society for 2 June, Lacan was the object of a rather serious indictment made by Dr. Cenac, in which various grievances were articulated; the main one was that Lacan was the muse (my emphasis) of the students' revolt ... (O)ne of the partisans of authority went so far as to say that, even if Lacan had not inspired the conflict, he was responsible for it, by the very fact of his existence (Lil scission, p. 110). Lagache fin a lly, and in s pite o f himself, indica tes th at Lacan's existence is the s u bjective cause of the Fre nc h a n a lysts' social n1alaise. Let us apply Lacan to Lacan and ask who is this bein g who had become unbearable to the other members of the group? Who is he, if n ot the incarnation of the Freudian truths that filled the analysts with fear? Let us remember these stateme nts by Lacan: Whereas Freud assumed responsibility for showing us that there are illnesses that speak (unlike Hesiod, for whom the illnesses sent by Zeus come over men in silence) and for making us hear the truth of what they say, it seems that this truth inspires more fmr (my emphasis) in the p ractitioners who perpetua te this technique as its relation to a historical moment and an institutional crisis becomes clearer (Ecrits, p. 177). Later, Lacan will add th at the psychoanalyst has a horror of his act, just as he cla ims he re th at his analytic peers feel a growing fear o f the Freudian truth and will state in 1964 that he sho uld o nly re-examine the d imension o f the unconscious w ith great care (Seminar XI, p. 23). Thus, perhaps, during these years of crisis, the psychoanalysts wh o were the most sensitive to w hat Lacan had come to embody we re the on es wh o condemned him the most v iolently; in their horror and fear, his being had become w1bearable to th e m. We can understan d how, in this painful position, Lacan could discover and claim that the bu rden of the socia l "order conflict" alwa ys returns to the subject. It retu rned to him to g ive flesh an d consistency to this s ubjective cause o f the conflict. There is n o doubt that it is a lso because o f this

1 22

LACAN AND LEVI-STRAUSS OR T HE RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

experience that he could argue in Vielma in 1955 that something in subjectivity helps cause social crises. If Lacan encow;tered the teaching of French etlmology concerning this point, it is not only because he had read Levi-Strauss; it is also because he constmcted a sort of clinic of the social on the basis of his own subjective position, which he deciphered not as a free individual choice, but as a subjective fate that came to hin1 from the Other- here, Freud's work. Athough, in his opinion, this fate frightened other analysts, the painful ordeal that he was going through was, for him, a moment of theoretical maturation. It provided him with his theory of subjectivi ty, and more precisely, with the theory of subjectivity in history, which he formulated at that time, and which his letter to Loewenstein confirms." Lacan's letter to Loewenstein

On 14 July 1953, Lacan wrote a letter to his analyst, Rudolph Loewenstein, letting him know that Lagache was going to visit him in order to discuss the file on the split. Lacan makes it clea r that These pages were not written in order to add to that file-but in order to transmit to you, in the frank tone that our particular relationship allows us, the kind of living testimony without which a history cannot be written. No objectivity can be achieved in human matters without that subjective basis." These lines, located at the conclusion of the letter, are crucial, since they reaffirm the necessity of reaching the subjective fow;dation of what motivates human history. The only person who could take upon himself the responsibility for the students' revolt and for the sense of discontent and division in the group recounts his ordeal to his analyst.

~ Rudolph Loewens tein (1898-1976). A psychiatris t and psychoanalys t, he was born to

a jewish family in Lodz, emigrated to Zurich and arrived in Paris in 1925, where he

helped found the Gro111>e rle /' f<.'C/ulioll psyclrialrique and tlw SPP. He w,;s tl1e analyst of Sacha Nacht, Daniel Lagacheand Jacques Lacan. He later e migrated to tl1e United States,

where he held several important positions in the Americ.."'ln Psychoanalytic Association. Jacques Lacan, "A Letter to Loewenstein".. Television/A C!JnlleHge to tire Psyclromralytic Establishment.

Ill

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123

Nothing was spared by (Nacht] in his attacks on me. An old discussion engaged on the terrain of theory and practice- and which bore on a technique that (be it justified or not) I had defended publicly, to wit the systematic use of shorter sessions in certain analyses, and in particular in training analyses, in which the specific nature of the resistances seemed to me to justify the technique .... The number of my students was turned into an objection against me by claiming that that was the sole motivation for the reduction in the time devoted to each one. And further on: Everything was set up so that my students might leave me (Letter,

p. 63)

Lacan was not averse to recalling the theoretical suppositions that separated him from the other analysts, even, as we shall see, in the case of the short sessions, a teclmique that he assures Loewenstein that he had given up. Yet everything in this letter indicates that by aiming at his activities of transmission, his critics were really targeting both the conceptions underlying his commentaries on Freud and the d irection of the treahnent as implied by this commentary. What motivated their ind ictment of him was the entire return to Freud, and with it, and through his students, the proliferation of Freud's desire, which according to Lacan, aroused a sacred horror in his colleagues. The result was the manoeuvres that ain1ed at rejecting him and his followers and at disqualifying the analysts w hom he had train ed and taught. In these circumstances, what s upport could he find other than that of Freud's s peech, whim, as he says, had given him a kind of warning? "I have seen what can happen in a society of 'analysed' individuals, and I knew from Freud himself that it goes beyond anything one might imagine: and indeed I would never have inlagined /Ita/" (Letter, p. 64).85 TI1e reference to Freud is troubling by its find the following, ratherpessimistic remark in Freud's letters: ''11-tatanalysis has not made the analysts themselves better, nobler oro f strongercharacter remains a disappointment for me. Perhaps l was wrong toexpecl it." In fames facksvu Putuam auri Psyclroannlysis; Lett.ers Bettueen Putnam and Sigmund Freud, Emest }ones, WU!iam }ami!'S, Sandor Ferenczi, aud Morton PriHce, 1877-1917, pp. 163-4. On Freud's conception of the qualities o f a psycho.ln alyst, see the heading '""Psychanalyse/Qualites personneltes du ... " in Alain Delrieu, Signumd Freud: iudex 1/u!matique (2001). ~'~'~ \'\'ecan

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LACAN AN D LEVI-STRAU SS O R T HE RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

presence. In it, there is a sense that something in the imaginary has been tom: "I would never have imagined thnt" . His mobilization of Freud's s peech is striking, for only it seems to be able to absorb the traumatic effect of the breach in the imaginary, a breach that is accompanied by "melancholic pains": nightmares, a wish to die, frightful emotions. Let us read the text again : l have seen what can happen in a society of "analysed" individuals, and l knew from Freud himself that it goes beyond anything one might imagine: and indeed I would never have imagined /hnt: I now see, having brought a few of its features back to life for you, what these nightmarish months may have been for me, and that, in truth, I have been able to survive them only by virtue of continuing, through all the frightful emotions these months afforded me, my seminars of reading and supervision, without having either missed them a single time or, l believe, having allowed their inspiration and quality to wane. Quite to the contrary, this year has been particularly fruitful, and I believe I have brought genuine progress to the theory and techniques specific to obsessional neurosis. Yes, l have managed to live thanks to that labour, which was at times executed in true despair" (Letter, p. 64) Faced with despair, nighhnares, betrayal, abandonment, the imaginary breach that characterizes his position as a banished object, Lacan "survives" by relying on what he finds in his marriage, but also by using Freud's speech: "I knew by Freud hin1self ...."He survives through his commentary on Freud's work and, in short, his analysis with Freud. We can understand why this is a true fate, s ince what has precipitated his fall-his retu rn to Freud- is also what now guarantees his survival. The ordeal is dreadful and Lacan feels that he is being trapped within something that resembles a Stalinist show trial:

What is most wrenching for me is perhaps the attih1de of a certain number of titular and adhering members. Thank God, the youngest of them showed themselves to be of a different stamp, as I told you. But among those who knew the Occupation and

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the years preceding it, I observed with terror a conception of human relations revealed in the style and forms that can be seen flourishing in the people's democracies. The analogy was striking, and the group effects resulting from it have taught me more about the problem, which has always fascinated me, of the so-called Prague-type trial than all my reflections-which had advanced rather far, all the same~n the subject (Letter, p. 64). Beyond the authoritarian group's manoeuvres to preserve the power to name analysts, Lacan shows us, in the s upposi tions governing the split of which he was himself the cause, both the horror of the truths that he was returning to his colleagues and the terror that inhabited him at the most d ifficult moments of the crisis."'

The Prague tria Is The "conception of h uman relations revealed in the style and forms that can be seen flourishing in the people's democracies" reminds Lacan, on the one hand, of " those w ho knew the Occupation and the years preceding it", and on the other of the fascinating problem, the Prague-type trial, which has led Lacan to "reflections- which had advanced rather far ... -on the subject" (Letter, p. 64). 1/Ve know nothing of Lacan's reflections, but I can provide some essential historical coordinates in order to give readers a good idea of the political and judicial world to w hich he was referring. Let us remember that in 1948, Tito separated from the rest of the Soviet "bloc" and was condemned by Cominform for a "nationalist deviation"; described as an "agent of imperialism" and excommunicated by the Conununist International, he had to answer his Stalinist "prosecutors" in the language of communism. Yet he did not give in. Terrorized by the possibility that the Yugoslav example would contaminate other countries, Stalin activated a new wave of purges, which aimed at leaving the levers of the empire in the hands only of those who were allied unconditionally w ith the USSR. This

""' "Such is the fright that seizes man when he discovers the true face of his power that he tums away from it in the very act ... of laying it bare .... One can trace over the years a growing aversion regarding the functions of speech and the field of lang uage." l.acan makes this s uggestion in the Rome Report (Ecrils, p. 201).

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rule was applied by all the communist leaders. "lito was the major exception .... Everywhere else, the golden ntle of uncond itional solidarity with the USSR continued to be applied to militants who had become heads of government, the majority of whom had spent the war years in Moscow. 'Applied' is an understatement," as Fran<;ois Furet (1999) noted.87 Furet examines this period in a work that draws its title from Freud's work on religion, The Future ofan 11/usion, but in an inverted form, The Passing of an 11/usion. In 1952, Rudolph Slansky- the secretary of the Czech communist party- was accused of opposition to Stalin and Titoism as well as of being the head of an international Zionist plot; 14 people were indicted with him, ten of w hom were Jews, w ho were designated as such in the accusation. Slansky was condemned to death and hanged a long w ith ten of the other people who had been on t rial. This trial can be placed in a series of "show" trials that sought to intimidate the populations of the people's d emocracies, which were d ivided between their nationalist feelings and their attachment to the conun un ist movement. It is also a repetition of the Moscow trials, which from 1936 to 1939, purged the directing circles of figures w ho were accused of " Trotskyis m", as they would later be of "Tttoism", because of the postwar preoccupa tion w ith the nationa l question . Lacan, writing to Loewenstein on Bastille Day, was not insensitive to this occurrence, just as he was not w1aware of the fact that the man to w hom he was writing was a Jew, like those exterm inated in the Sl1oalt and put on tr ial in Prague. Yet it can be hypothesized that what fascinates Lacan about the Stalinist trials is what has fascinated everyone who has conunented upon them. What was new in this procedure was "the use of confessions, by which the accused simultaneously d emonstrated their guilt and the clairvoyance of their interrogators, spelling their own death .... The absurdity of what was said in front of these rigged tribunals, w hich tried only broken men, did not change believers' minds" (Furet, p. 298). It would be interesting to know Lacan's feelings about this sort of sed uction, w hich seems to call upon the spectator to aid

fO!:

Fran<;ois Furet, The Passing of mr Jllusiou: Tlte Idea of Commwrism in tlte Tlllrmtietlt

Ctmfury.

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the executioner, by offering up to the shadowy God-here, the Communist International- the broken but consenting bod ies of its finest activists. Yet Lacan says no more her e, and we must content o urselves simply w ith noting that the best minds d o no t always resist this sort of seduction, as Furet also testifies: l remember reading, around 1947, Koestler's Dnrkness nt Noou with great excitement, although it did not dissuade me from eventually joining the Communist Party. l admired the idea that the judge and the accused could agree to serve the same cause, the first as executioner and the second as victim. What ! liked about this philosophical version of the Moscow trials was the march of historical reason, whose barbarous cult Koestler sought to denounce (1999, p. 418). We m ust remember, of course, the radical d istance between the Com munist International and the psychoanalytic International fro m w hich Lacan found himself separated. This reminder of the international situation of that period allows us to understand better w hat he was asking abo ut the cause of the purge, and especially what leads o r d oes not lead a subject to be guided by a morbid attractio n to servit ude. Finally, there is a melancholy tha t is common to Lacan's letter and the historical circumstances that he mentioned, and Furet, far from d isputing it, observes a historical analogy. This was the "backgrotmd of all the politica l or judicial 'affairs' that, secretly or o penly, bro ught the po pular democracies into conflict w ith their Soviet 'protector'. Those sad events revealed the inequality of the adversaries, o ne of which was virtually bea ten in advance; Tito was the major exception" (Furel, p. 411). In a no te, the histo rian adds tha t , Another exception was Kostov, an old Comintern militant from Bu lgaria who was tried for 'treason' in Sofia in December 1949 and who retracted his confessions and p rotested the charges" (Furet, p. 550, note 21). Lacan, defeated politically, ended up the victor of the 1953 duel, since he writes in 1976, as the epigraph of the collection, La scission de 1953: Doubtless I won. Since I made it understood what l thought of the unconscious, the principle of practice.

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l am not going to say it here. Because everything that is published here, especially when it comes from my pen, inspires me with horror. To the point that l thought l had forgotten what the person who publishes me testifies to. No longer wanting to think about it is not, alas, to forget it. The weak-minded person who is subject to psychoanalysis always becomes a scowtdreL Let this be known. The crossing

Lacan testifies here to a moment in w hich he has crossed a subjective threshold; after he has done so, things would never be the same fo r hi m: "! can also tell you that w hat this o rdeal has taug ht me of the manoeuvres and the weaknesses of men is such that a page of my life has now been turned" (p. 64). Faced with Stalinist terror, Lacan relies, in his own terms, on a "sort of faith", to which he will testify in Rome. Does this mean that he chooses Catholic exaltation over Stalinist ho rror? l think of the kind of faith which carries me now beyond all that, which almost makes me forget it; yes, it is composed of a capacity for forgetting which is a function of that precious audience of those who followed me- who would never have forgotten me, even if l had been alone in walking out-of what lam going to write for Rome, my report on the function of language in psychoanalysis, of the fact that I know better and better what it is mine to say about an experience which l have only these last years been able to recognize and solely thereby tnily to answer. l hope to see you in London. Whatever happens, rest assured that you will encounter there a man more convinced of his duties and his destiny (pp. 6~5). With this letter, Lacan has said what is important. Lacan has recognized his destiny and can now be sure that group conflicts derive from subjective causality. Yet can we be mistaken about what he is the bea rer of? The faith that he experiences is not the same one that Claude! brought to rescue the Father of the Catholic Church, who had been htuniliated by the "resistance" of Israel; instead, it is what he has received from the speech of the father of psychoanalysis, and

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it allows him to recognize with certainty not only his own destiny, but also what seals each person's fate: the rules of speech and language, the " form in which language expresses itself .... Language says: 'You will go here, and when you see this, you will tum off there."'"" We shall now follow Lacan on the path to Rome, w here those who had decided to join the new French Society of Psychoanalysis and accompany his retu m to Freud were awaiting the speech that would give psychoana lysis a new foundation. IV. The Rome Report: " The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis'' or testifying to a pass (September 7953)

What, according to Lacan himself, is the Rome Report? It is a "revam p(ingj" of the fotmdations of psychoanalysis inasmuch as "our discipline derives from language" (Ecrils, p. 198). Because of its historical position, this report can be thought of as a work that gives a theoretical foundation to the new French Society of Psychoanalysis. For Lacan, this text derives from the ordeal of the separation and deals, in his own words, with the "current problems of psychoanalysis" (Ecrits, p. 201). If w hat these problems have in common is the abandonment of speech as the fotmdation for psychoanalysis, they can be located: 1.

2. 3.

In the imaginary register, where Lacan places fantasies and the constitution of objects at the different stages of psychic development Around libidinal object relations and conducting the treatment, which call for a retum to "the pivotal technique of symbolization" Around the theory of counter-transference, of training analysts and ending the treatment.

These cr ucial questions for analysis--including the end of analysis and the movement to the analytic position-are the themes of this speech w hich he gave at the conclusion of this ordeal; they could be

• E.crits, p. 247. As f showed in my previous work, Lacan owed all his ideas about the humiliation of tl>e fa ther, which he loca ted in 1938 as the cause of the "great contemporary neurosis", to Paul ClaudeI. I also showed how he sacrificed this diagnosis

in the theoretical upheaval that led him, in 1953, to substitute the father's symbolic value for his social value in analytic experience.

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considered, after the fact, as examples of w hat Lacan would later expect from those who have become analysts at the end of their analyses, and w ho would now be in a position to resolve the crucial problems of psychoanalysis and even to develop a way of teaching these questio ns. The Lacan who produced this work has been metamorphosed by his ret urn to Freud, his commentary on Freud's work and his "analysis", which led hi m unswervingly towards both the 1953 split and the refounding in Rome; in this text, he commits himself to resolving the cmcial problems encountered by psychoanalysis, as he would do througho ut the 25 years of his seminar. In short, it is a work that testifies that he has become a Freudian analyst. If, according to him, analysts' resistance culminates in their abando ning of speech as the fow1dation of psychoanalysis, La can, faithful to his dialectical strategy, can only develop an antithesis in Rome by relying on this movement: "[P)sychoanalysis has but o ne med ium: the patient's speech. The o bviousness of this fact is no excuse fo r ignoring it. Now aU speech calls for a response" (Ecrits, p. 206). Hence the title of the report, and I shall now quote its subtitle. Empty speech and full speech in the psychoanalytic realization of the subject

With iliis title, Lacan mm ounces a first d evelopment, which d istinguishes between empty speech- the most arid element of speech, tl1e model of which is the o bsessional's speech, w hich foregrounds the ego- and tme speech. In empty speech: "[T)he subject seems to speak in vain about someone w ho-even if he were such a dead ringer for him ilia! you might confuse. them- w ill never join him in the assumption of his desire" (Ecrits, p. 2 11). Analysis, on the other hand, encourages a verbalization in w hich the subject "learns to read tl1e symbols of a destiny on tl1e mard1" (Ecrits, p. 212). let's be categorical: in psychoanalytic anamnesis, what is at stake is not reality, but truth, because the effect of full speech is to reorder past contingencies by conferring on them the sense of necessities to come, such as they are constituted by the scant freedom through which the subject makes them present (Ecrits, p. 213). Lacan can now give a condensed definitio n of psychoanalysis: "This assumption by the subject of his history, insofar as it is cons titu ted by

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speech addressed to another, is clearly the basis of the n ew method Freud called psychoanalysis" (Ecrits, p. 213). Thus Lacan redefines the concept o f the unconscious, its symptomatic formations and th e transformation that the s ubject undergoes when s/he e mbarks upo n the Freudian method. [W)hen a subject begins an analysis, he accepts a position that is more constitutive in itself than all the orders by which he allows himself to be more or less taken in .... For I shall take this opportunity to stress tha t the subject's act of addressing [nllocutionJ brings w ith it an addressee [allocutaire)- in other words, that the speake r [locuteurJ is constituted in it as inter-subjectivity. Second, it is on the basis of this interlocution, insofar as it includes the interlocutor's response, that it becomes clear to us w hy Freud requires restoration of continuity in the subject's motivations .... The true basis of the Freudian discovery of the unconscious becomes clear in its position as a third term. This may be simply formulated in the following terms: The unconscious is that part of concrete discourse qun transindividual, which is not at the s ubject's dis posal in re-establishing the continuity of his conscious discourse .... The unconscious is the chapter of my history that is marked by a blank or occupied by a tie: it is the censored chapter. But the truth can be refound; most often it has already been written elsewhere. Namely, •

•

In monuments: this is my b ody, in o ther words, the hyste rical core o f neurosis in which the hysterical symptom manifests the structure of language, an d is d eciphered like an inscriptio n w hich, o nce recovered, can be d estroyed witho ut serious loss In archival docume nts too: these are m y childh ood memories, just as impenetrable as sucl1 documents are w h en I d o n't know their provenance (Ecrits, pp. 214, 215).

Th e subject of analysis is thus con s tituted by her/ his entry into the method , in which s/he is completed by a psychoanalyst, w h o occupies the p lace of th e O ther, and w ho punctuates her/ his d iscourse--ending the session s, for example-and g iving sense to it. This is the theoretical bas is of the teclmique of the sessions which,

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rather than simply being "short", are of variable length, because the analyst ends them on the basis of a logic of interpretation. The unconscious is to be loca ted in the d iscontinuities of d iscourse or the m issing chapters o f history, chapters that are crystallized in symptoms, which awa it a retrospective deciphering, not in order for an element of reality to be restored, but according to a logic of the symbolizing of inter-s ubjective truths that is made current i11 and by the ana lytic method. Is this then a s im ple artefact of analysis? No, since, for exa mple, as Lacan indicates h umorously: "The anal stage is no less purely historical when it is actually experienced than when it is reconceptualized, nor is it less grounded in inter-subjectivity" (Ecrits, p. 217). This indicates, more harshly, that the analytic method is structurally homologousinter-subjectively- with moments that have been experienced historically. Thus it is proper to help bring them to light, in the form of substituting one discourse for another (inter-subjective) one; the ways in which this can be done include the response of the analyst, who prov ides the unconscious- w hich has been deciphered- w ith its status: the discourse of the other. "The fact tha t the subject's unconscious is the other's d iscourse appea rs more d early than anywhere else in the stud ies Freud devoted to w hat he called telepathy, as it is manifested in the context o f an analytic experience" (Ecrits, pp. 219-220). Having thus situated w hat is at stake in speech in analysis, Lacan goes back to Freud's word, to see. the hold that symbolic structures have over the constit ution of unconscious formations; he opens up this perspective in order to cormect psychoanalysis w ith the other human sciences, among the most important of which is anthropology. "Symbol and Language as Structure and Limit of the Psychoanalytic Field"'"

We need to remember that in the preface to the report, Lacan atm ounces that, in returning to Freud's concepts, he is seeking a sort of equiva lence with anthropology:

""' This second subtitle has been borrowed from "TI1e Function and Field", Ecrits, p. 220.

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In a discipline that owes its scientific value solely to the

theoretical concepts Freud hammered out as his experience progressed-concepts which, because they continue to be poorly examined and nevertheless retain the ambiguity of everyday language, benefit from the latter's resonances while incurring miswtderstanding-it would seem to me to be premature to break with the traditional terminology. But it seems to me that these terms can only be made d earer if we establish their equivalence to the current language of mrtJ~ropology (my emphasis) (Ecrits, p. 199). By establishing the equivalence between Freudian and anthropological concepts, Lacan is trying to return Freud's work to its scientific rigour, which had been blunted since his death by cmde and uncritical use. To rediscover, within the unconscious, the realnl of symbolic stmctures and language w ill involve a scientific restoration of Freudian concepts, w hose equivalence w ith anthropological concepts must be shown. How are they equivalent? We must thus take up Freud's work again starting with the Trnumdeuluug ... to remind ourselves that a dream has the structure of a sentence or, rather, to keep to the letter of the work, of a rebus- that is, of a form of writing, of which children's dreams are supposed to represent the primordial ideography, and which reproduces, in adults' dreams, the simultaneously phonetic and symbolic use of signifying elements found in the hieroglyphs of ancient Egypt and in the characters still used in China (Ecrils, p. 221). In order to make itself heard, unconscious desire borrows the voice of the dream, which was forged in the universal heritage of an ideographic writing; the presence of such a writing can be found on the pediments of Egyptian monuments. This heritage is the basis of an equivalence between Egyptology and the psychoanalytic interpretation of dreams. What dreams and hieroglyphs have in common is a primal ideography that reappears at night, in all its alterity, to modern people; this prim al writing can also be found on the hysteric's body and, in a petrified form, in the stereotypes of madness. For the latter, "the subject ... is spoken instead of speaking; we

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recognize here the symbols of the unconscious in petrified forms that find their place in a natural history of these symbols alongside the embalmed forms in which myths are presented in our collections of them" (Ecrits, p . 232). According to Lacan, madness d emonstrates what must be heard in the discourse of the other, and it is incarnated, unfortunately and excessively, in the paranoiac subject. It is a mark of Lacan's greatness that he sees the value in this subject, who incarnates to the point of martyrdom, the petrified fonns of unconscious symbols; this is not a humanist greab1ess, which would itself be very respectable, but rather the greamess of a profow1d certainty that what fotmds all our subjective existences lies in a symbolic community, whose forms are variable but w1iversal."" Lacan posits the existence of a universal human community, which could be deciphered in archaeological d igs as well as in dreams, delusions, and symptoms. What is comm on to everyone is the primal language of symbols, and this is precisely what Freud brought to light in analysing the sense of discontent in cult ure: A symptom here is the signifier of a signified that has been repressed from the subject's consciousness. A symbol written in the sand of the flesh and on the veil of Maia, it partakes of language by the semantic ambiguity that l have already highlighted in its constitution. But it is fully functioning speech, for it includes the other's discourse in the secret of its cipher [ch(ffi-e]. It was by deciphering this speech that Freud rediscovered the first language of symbols, still alive in the sufferings of civilized man (my emphasis) (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur) (Civilization and Its Discontents). Hieroglyphics of hysteria, blazons of phobia, and labyrinths of Zwangsneurose [obsessional neurosis) ... these are the hermetic elements that our exegesis resolves, the equivocations that our invocation dissolves, and the artifices that our dialectic absolves, by delivering the imprisoned meaning in ways

•• l11e third chapter of Lnaw etles sciences socinles shows that Lacan~s clinic of psychopaths is based on a g roup of an~wopological suppositions tha t owes much to Marcel Mauss' notion of the degraded forms of the symbolic.

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that run the gamut from revealing the palimpsest to providing the solution [mot[ of the mystery and to pardoning speech (Ecrits, p. 232). Why, we may wonder, does unconscious desire include the other's discourse? Lacan answers that "Man's desire finds its meaning in the other 's desire, not so much because the other holds the keys to the desired object, as beca use his first object(ive) is to be recognized by the other" (Ecrits, p . 222). In other words, w1conscious desire w ants to be recognized, since w hat characterizes its formations-dreams, symptoms ... - is the insistence of a sort of" right of return" . Its best rnance of being recognized lies in taking the symbolic paths of primal forms of organization . The symptom, then, would include, in its signifying organization, a sort of universal figure for culture. What Freud realized very quickly is that once the d reamer enters into transference, the analyst comes to occupy the place that is addressed. The analysand w ill have d reams that should be interpreted in terms of the transferential situation: in relation to his or her conception, for example, of the analyst's desire. T he comm on resources of the universe of cultu re-the discourse of the other become the instrwnents used by LUKonscious desire to create messages and make itself recognized by the other. In other words, w hen the other has a precise incarnation, w1conscious desire speaks to it in the other's own language. The unconscious adjusts its productions inter-subjectively to the other 's codes: the codes of his desire and language. For this reason, Lacan reminds us, Freud can save his theory of dreams by interpreting, "as the reason for a dream that seems to rw1 cotmter to his thesis ... the very d esire to contradict him" (Ecrits, p. 222). For the Lacan of the Rome Report, w1conscious desire is inscribed as an engram, by means of a symbolic system w hose universal resources can be understood by anthropological d iscoveries, such as those of Egyptologists; these d iscoveries can throw light on situations in which the figure who is addressed is not incarnated. When this figure is present, on the contrary, the interpretation must be made in terms of w hat the d reamer calculates about what s/he wants or says. Yet varying the mrumer of the interpretation according to the influence of transferential circumstances-up to the point of telepathy-must not obscure the facts that

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The unconscious fonnations are structured "like" and by languages and symbolic systems and that They draw upon the place of the other by using what may or may not be primal symbols, which may or may not be universally shared." This suggests that the logic of symbolic systems and the symbolic combinatory is "imported" into these formations; this logic is always a part of what the other wants.

Thus, as Lacan indicates: It is already quite clear that symptoms can be entirely resolved in an analysis of language, because a symptom is itself structured like a language: a symptom is language from which speech must be delivered. To those who have not studied the nature of language in any depth, the experience of numerical association will immediately show what must be grasped here-namely, the combinatory

•• In his article, "The Antithetical Meanin g of Primal Words" (1910), Freud indicates that "the behaviour of the dream-work ... is identical w ith a peculiarity in the oldest languages known to us." According to the philologist, Ka rl Abel, the Egyptia n language was the "sole relic of a primit ive world, (where) there are a fair number of \·vords with two meanings, one of which is the exact opposite of the other" (1957, p. 156). Emile Benveniste, in "Remarks on the Function of Language in the Freudian Discovery", in Probli'mes de lingJristiquesg.?tzirnles1 mentions, in 1956, Lacan's ''brilliant text on the function and field of language in psychoanalysis" but also goes back to Freud's 1910 a rticle to invalidate the idea that "an analogy could be discovered between the dream process and the 'semantics of primitive languages"'. Later, he adds that "everything seems to separate us from any experience of a con-elation between dream logic and the logic of a real language." According to Benveniste, the symbolic property of language cannot be confused with that of the dream, since the first is local ~"'lnd learned, whereas the second has nothing to do with learning and is thus ipso facto universal For him, the symbolic of the unconscious is infra1inguistic, since its source "in a deeper region than the one in which educ~"'ltion instaiJs the linguistic and mechanism .... fit is] supraling uistic because it uses extremely condensed signs, which, in organized language, would correspond to larger units o f discourse .. .. Following this comparison would lead to fruitful comparisons bet\.veen the symbolic of the unconscious and certain typical procedures of subjectivity manifested in discourse. At the level of language, \Ve could specify stylistic discursive procedures'' such as euphemisms, antiphrasis, Jitotes, allusion, metonymy, metaphor, as they appear in myths, proverbs, or dreams. Benveniste accentuates characteristics of style rather than o f meaning. See Benveniste, Probli'mes de linguistique gfnirale (1966).

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power that orders its equivocations- and they will recognize in this the very mainspring of the unconscious (Ecrits, p. 223). In referring to numerical association, Lacan is not trying to show, for example, how whatever had grasped the subject in her childhood has undergone various transformations s ince then; instead, he is seeking to indicate what the necessary-<>r impossible- figures of an arithmetical combinatory keep hidden from her. Unconscious determination is not to be sought, in this perspective, in terms of such and such a symbol that is crystallized at the heart of such and such an unconscious fonnation; instead, it can be found in the power of the rules of symbolic organization, which govern this symbol, and w ith it, the fate of the subject. This is the case not only for arithmetical combinatories, but also for other combinatories, such as those that govern etlm ological systems. "We shall see that philologists and ethnographers (my emphasis) reveal enough to us about the combinatory sureness found in the completely unconscious systems witl1 which they deal for them to find notl1ing surprising in the proposition I am putting forward here" (Ecrits, p. 223). If the scientific rigour of Freudian language is to be recovered, tl1en its equ ivalence with tl1e conceptual series used by antluopologists needs to be established. It is possible to do so because, according to Lacan, what philologists and etlmographers share with psychoanalysts is the analysis of "com pletely unconscious systems". He is thus seeking not only to open up psychoanalysis by restoring it to its place among the h uman sciences, but also to make it the contemporary of these disciplines, by relying on their conceptua l advances; he does so not because he has a taste for being up to d ate, but 1.

2.

Because symbolic structures organize all these fields and tl1ereby place psychoanalysis and these d isciplines in a close relation with each other It is precisely this common resource that has been rejected s ince Freud's death; those who deny his d iscovery have ceaselessly refused to take the patients' speech into account.

For these reasons, there is a d ialectical im perative both to ret urn to Freud and to learn from anthropological d iscoveries. What do these "completely unconscious systems", such as psychoanalysis, share

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with etlm o logy? Referring once again to these ethnological works, Lacan shows his listene rs the o rigin o f these systems and the very birth o f the symbolic: No one is supposed to be ignorant of the law; this formula tion, provided by the humour in our Code of Laws, nevertheless expresses the truth in which our experience is grounded, and which our experience confirms. No man is actually ignorant of it, because the law of man has been the law of language since the first words of recognition presided over the first gifts-it having taken the detestable Danai, who came and fled by sea, for men to learn to fear deceptive words accompanying faithless gifts. Up u ntil then, these gifts, the act of giving them and the objects given, their transmutation into signs, and even their fabrication, were so closely in tertwined with speech for the pacific Argonauts-uniting the islets of their community with the bonds (uoeruls) of a symbolic commerce-that they were designated by its name. Is it with these gifts, or with the passwords that give them their salu tary non-meaning, that la nguage begins along with law? For these gifts are alread y symbo ls, in the sense that symbol means pact, and they are first and foremost signifiers of the pact they constitute as the signified; this is plainly seen in the fact that the objects of symbolic exchange-vases mad e to remain empty, shields too heavy to be carried, sheaves that wi ll dry out, lances that are thrust into the ground-are all d estined to be useless, if not superfl uo us by their very abundance. Is this neutralization by means of the signifier the whole of the nature of language? (Ecrits, p. 225). In this passage, Lacan relies on the work of Maurice Leenhardt92 along with that o f Ma rcel Mauss, w hich had alread y shown that the

c

Maurice l eenhardt (1878-1954). A p rotestant missional')\ Maurice leenha rdt used

his ethnological research to evangelize the populations that he studied. He spent 25 years in New Caledonia before retuming to France, where Uvy-Bruhl and Marcel .Mauss inh·oduced him into the academic \Vorld. First occupying the chair in the History of Primitive Religions, he next became the director of the lnstitut franrnis

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symbolic order lies behind social exchange (Mauss, The Gift, 1922). Through these references, Lacan can remind us of how this exchange, which escapes from the mles of a superficial utilitarianism, can transform both something that is given and the act of giving- and of reciprocating-into symbols of the symbolic pact. A useless gift can take on value in the exchange, since it can be raised more easily to the rank of a pure symbol if it is unable to serve a useful purp ose. Thus etlmology enables us to see that what imposes a circulation of goods upon a civilization is not need, but rather the mles of the system, in which everyone has a place and a name; people have these just as the.y have a series of rights and obligations, from w hich they cannot rl'Ocixmie, the d irector of the overseas department of the Mus.?e de 1'/wmmt, and a membe r of the Acadbnie des sciences d'outre-mer. Cha pters IX a nd X of his work, Do Knmo: Person and Myth in tire Melanesimz World, ·w hich Lacan mentions.. are devoted to the s tudy o f speech, which the Ca ledonians incorpora te into their symbolic practices in an exemplary manner. "Consider, for example, the sending of messages. In th is example, it is a matter of making s ure the next war ceremony will have an audience. The messenger carries a bouquet of plants knotted separately and tied together in a bunch. Each stran d removed makes the whole smaller but increases the messenger$s success by an equal amount. He retums to the chief a cting as if he were hauling a catd l of fish s h·ung on a line. l11is is a sign of the number of participan ts to be counted on, the 'string of wonds', 110 111" (p. 129). Removing its grass with out destroying the bundle-this is the opposite of a situation in which the removaJ of a sing Je one frees aiJ the others. Yet a lso, a mute man who carries out vengeance for his brother is revea]ed as "his brother's s peech ". One mus t choose between being an d having. Tradition d icta tes behaviour an d mainta ins the generations' cultura l unity an d these generations give no reason for this other than that "it is the speech of the elders" or of uthe gods". In otl1er wonds, it is the speech of the dead Name-of-the-Father. A young woman may have the fantasy of meeting a young d1ief on the basis of his re puta tion, and it may be discovered that a journey had been foreseen in one direction or anoth er between members of two fra ternal groups that can in termarry. l11e young woman is welcomed \\rith these words: "You are our granddaughter. \•Ve have been waiting for you." What happens is "the life of speech". l11e young woman's amorous uparoxysms" bring about the marriage about which she knew nothing; she is the exact opposite of Dora. \'\'e can see the extent to which/ for La can, Caledonian society, as analysed by Leenhardt, could show in an exemplary way how the rules of speech can determin e everyone's fa te. Here, th e circu]ation o f both goods and beings cannot be dissociated from that of s peech, whose name it bears a nd which can a lso mean "not to know".

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d eviate without losing symbolic face.93 These laws of the system o f exchange crumot be stated explicitly; they are the operators that write what we have called each pe rson's " Lmconscious mission", including that o f the yow1g Viennese woman whose symptoms paid for her objection to the mles o f exchange. Whatever her mirror image may claim, Do ra is symbolically a young woman and, as such, is called u pon to participate in the exchange o f women. "It is the world of words that crea tes the world o f things" (Ecrits, p. 229) he asser ts in 1953 and this is the case for what etlmology has uncovered: the marriage/ alliance rules that govem the circulatio n o f bod ies and o f sexual relatio ns [re/atio11s sexuel/es). Man thus speaks, but it is because the symbol has made him man. Even if, in fact, over-abundant gifts welcome a stranger who has made himself known to a group, the life of natural groups that constitute a community is subject to the rules of matrimonial alliance-determining the direction in which llie exchange of women takes place-and to the mutual services determined by marriage: as the SiRonga proverb says, "A relative by marriage is an elephant's hip". Marriage ties are governed by an order of preference whose law concerning kinship names is, like language, imperative for the group in its forms, but unconscious in its structure. Now, in this structure, whose harmony or conflicts govern the restricted or generalized exchange discerned in it by ethnologists, the startled theoretician refinds the whole logic of combinations; thus the laws of number- that is, of the most highly purified of all symbols- prove to be immanent in llie original symbolism. At least, it is the richness of the forms-in which what are known as the elementary structures of kinship develop- that ma kes those laws legible in the original symbolism (Ecrits, p. 229).

"Each Kwakiu tJ and Hatda noble has exactly the same idea of 'face' as has the Chinese man of letters or officer. It is said of one of the great mythical chiefs who gave

«<

no potlatch that he had a £rotten face'. Here the expression is even more exact than in

China. For in the American Northwest, to lose one's prestige is indeed to lose one's soul. lt is in fact the 'face', the dancing mask, the right to incarnate a spirit, to wear a coat of arms, a totem .... n\e obligation to accept is no less constraining. One has no right to refuse a gift, or to refuse to a tlend the potlatch. To act in this way is ... to ' Jose the weighr attached to one's name" (Mauss, Gift, pp. 39, 41).

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Being named as a girl or boy-but also as someone's daughter or son- implies that even before people are present in the world, their bodies are inscribed in the network that regulates the exchange of goods between the groups in a social system of exchange; this is what Levi-Strauss' work on the stmctures of kinship shows. The very necessity of exchange requires that a series of prohibitions or encouragements-which indicate the group's preference- limit the choice of whom to marry; this choice then becomes dependent on the group's law. From this perspective, the prohibition of incest is a minimum requirement, without w hich exchange cmm ot take place. This is w hy, according to Levi-Strauss, it is a universal operator; it is a part of both nature and cult ure, and indeed, constitutes the passageway between the two orders. As Lacan says: This primordial Law is therefore the Law which, in regulating marriage ties, superimposes the reign of culture over the reign of nature, the latter being subject to the law of mating .... This law, then, reveals itself clearly enough as identical to a language order. For without names for kinship relations, no power can institute the order of preferences and taboos that knot and braid the thread of lineage through the generations (Ecrits, p. 231). Naming governs the lineage, introduces some language to the rules of the system and d erives from the paternal fw1ction, which must exist if symbolic stmcturing is to take place; it allows everyone to find his/her place in the generations and the law of marriage and kinship to operate. The degrading of this function, on the other hand, introduces d isorientation, conhtsion, guilt, m1d s uffering: "And it is the conhtsion of generations which, in the Bible as in aU tradi tional laws, is cursed as being the abomination of the Word and the desolation of the sinner" (Ecrits, p. 161). He now leads us to understand how the discoveries of etlmology can throw light on the disturbances of the modern Western family. The clinical approach to this family still culminates in the "pathogenic effects" of the Oedipus complex, which derive from the "discordances of the paternal relation". Yet

these discordances are no longer determined-as lacan's students could have thought at the time that they heard him, at a point w hen he was still breaking with what he had argued for a long time-by tl1e decline of the father's social value in the Western family.

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When Lacan was influenced by Durkheim, he had relied on the latter's thesis of the d ecline of the Western family and of its leader in order to account for the degrading of the Oedipus complex and the development of the various forms of neuroses. With the Rome Report, we can see the metamorphosis of Lacan's theory of the father, a metamorphosis that has resulted from combining the mirror stage w ith Tl1e Elementary Structures of Kinship in part icular, and w ith anthropological studies of the symbolic function, in general (see Lncan and the Human Sciences). He now indicates that there are clinical discordances of the symbolic hmction in the family, d iscordances that can blur the generations and the kinship systems: the age gap between the generations, the death of the father, etc. What he argues, however, is the opposite of what he had taught until then: these problems do not derive from the d egradation of the paternal hmction and domestic hannony crumot be produced by the right form of paler fnmilins. Instead, he claims that this discordance is structural and is inherent in the paternal h mction, because that latter is carried out L 2. 3.

h1 the real h1 the narcissistic register: at the threshold of the visible world, w here Dora perceived a masculine in1age of herself, and finally h1 the "pemunbra of symbolic effectiveness": in the symbolic register of nanling that assigns each person a place in a particular kinship system . Tltis system contains the marriage law and the more general stntct:ures that determine the fw1ctioning of the subject's social wtiverse, just as it determines his/her own fate. lndeed, even when it is represented by a single person, the patemal function concentrates in itself both imaginary and real relations that always more or less fail to correspond to the symbolic relation that essentiaUy constitutes it. It is in the unme of thefather that we must recognize the basis of the symbolic function which, since the dawn of historical tin1e, has identified his person widl the figure of the Jaw (Ecrils, p. 230).

Is it not- as noted in my earlier work-at the threshold of historical time that Freud indicates the bir th of the symbolic father, which resulted from the parricide that introduced social regulation, in the form of the exchange of women and the history of societies? The d istribution of the paternal hmction over the three registers that now provide the basis for the Lacanian episteme- imaginary,

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symbolic, real-breaks with Lacan's previous theory of the father, which had been based on the work of Durkheim, the father of French sociology. I d evoted my last work to a critical examination of the Durkheimian Lacan and refer readers to that book. For the present investigation, it is important to note what Lacan d id in the universal city, Rome, for his reaction to it was very different from that of the dazzled Claude!. In Rome, w hile following up French anthropology's d iscoveries on the symbolic fw1ction, La can recognized , and got his readers to recognize, the name of the father as the "support" of the symbolic function . It is thus to be distinguished rigorously from the person w ho incarnates this function, with w hom the analysand has maintained various kinds of real or narcissistic relations."' Let us contin ue our reading of Lacan: "It is in the 11nme of the fnt!ter that we must recognize the basis of the symbolic function which, since the d awn of historical time, has identified his person w ith the figure of the law" (Ecrits, p . 230). What follows this statement is a clinical d iscussion that allows us to attribute the paternal fw1ction's unconscious effects to the symbolic law of marriage and kinship. It is this register to w hich the law of naming gives the subject access. There are w1conscious effects on the fate of the child, effects that must be separated from w hat appears 1. 2.

In the reality of the family group And comes back to the person of the father in the narcissistic structuring of the subj ect: This conception allows us to clearly distinguish, in the analysis of a case, the unconscious effects of this ftmction from the narcissistic relations, or even real relations, that the subject has with the image and actions of the person who embodies this function;

This distinction between the father's symbolic function and person has become even more certain today, for the works of ethnologists and historians have described social formations in which the father's symbolic function is supported by beings other than the social father or even by a man; a woman can do so. l11ere are also numer-

~

OllS societies

in which the father is not oonsictered as playing any biological role in

procreation. To repeat the Lacan of 1950, it would be judicious to ask ourselves what effects the social conditions ot the Oedipus complex have on the subjective structuring of children bom into types o f family organiU>tion that are very d ifferent from the

modern family. Concerning these different social configurations, see Alain Delrieu, Irvi-Strauss, lecl-eur rle Freud.

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this results in a mode of comprehension that has repercussions on the very way in which interventions are made by the analyst. Practice has confirmed the fecundity of this conception to me, as well as to the students whom I have introduced to this method. And, both in supervision and case discussions, I have often had occasion to stress the harmful confusion produced by neglecting it (Ecrits, p. 230). From 1938 to 1951, Lacan had taught a social and clinical theory of the father that was very different from both this conception, and from Freud's and Levi-Stra uss' fonnulations. If in the Rome Report, Lacan highlights the emergence, at the dawn of historical time, of the name of the father as the "support of the symbolic hmction", this shows us something of the power and the potential of this ret urn. It led him, in the capital of Roman Catholicism, to change his relatio n to the Freudian theory of the father; the latter, in order to be reduced to the elegance of a name, had to be killed. Now w hat Freud located at the dawn of historical time is precisely the murder of the father, and with it, the fo und ing of taboos and the prohibition of incest. He saw the erecting of the Totem and the promotion of the father's Na me as the very principle of the rules that, after the inaugural parricide, ensured the fw1ctioning of the society of brothers.•• Here we see Lacan returning, in Rome, to Freud's theory of the primal parricide and of the dead father's presence in the founding of social rules. We can understand w hy such a gesture made some of his faithful listeners roll their eyes and turn their gaze toward Saint Peter's basilica. Yet by stating that it is o ur d uty ("we must recognize" [my emphasis]) to acknowledge a name, a single namethe father's- as the basis of the symbolic function, Lacan is no t calling fo r some fraudulent alliance w ith the papacy; rather, he is calling for the temporal sacrifice req uired by the clinical imperative of separating the name of the father from the father's person. If we want to "elucid ate" no t only the " human mystery" but its "substantific divination", we must know how to decipher-like Rabelais,who anticipated the "ethnographic ctiscoveries"-the "virtue of the Word "; this virtue is the principle behind the "Great

~ See Sigmund

Freud, Totem auri Taboo, 1953, pp 1- 161.

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Debt" that sets off the movement of reciprocities, which stabilize, at their point of equilibrium, the perpetual cycles by which men give and receive women and goods in the kinship networks, networks where they find their place as well as their name (Ecrits). What makes the letter inviolate and guarantees exchange is the "virtue of the Word", the "power of Speech", the "sacred hau" or the "onmipresent mana" whose power Mauss had taught him; he had also learned to recognize in the name of the father "what Levi-Strauss calls a 'zero-symbol', thus reducing the power of Speech to the form of an algebraic sign" (Ecrits, p. 231). In this founding speech, Lacan recognizes that the signifier of the name of the father is in the place of the exception; it is a signifier that, in Levi-Strauss' words, allows "symbolic thought to operate". It would be a mistake, however, to confuse this symptomatic expression wi th the religious uses of the term and thus to see a sort of morbidness in it. Instead, Lacan places it in a position that is close to that of the "sacred hau" and the "omnipresent mana" in the ethnological lexicon in the "names of the spirit of things". He is trying, in Rome, the capital of the Catholic symptom, to reduce this symptom, which has had such a stranglehold over us that it has prevented Freud's theory of the dead father from being w1derstood. It has also kept us from understanding the theoretical and clinical d isjw1ction between the name of the father- a symbolic hmction-and the father's person; Lacan now requires his students to separate the two. It is not because he enjoys being misunderstood that Lacan introduces his listeners to the name of the father; he does so because: 1.

2. 3. 4.

Rome's formal envelope requires him to make a statement about the monotheistic symptom His Rome Report is a found ing speech and a major moment of his return to Freud His return to Freud requires a critical and dialectical statement of the theory of the dead or symbolic father His introduction into psychoanalysis of the etlmological discoveries about the symbolic fw1ction has enabled him to recognize the

father's symbolic ftmction and its tmconsdous effects 5.

Thanks to Levi-Strauss, he can isolate the existence of a signifier that is in the place of an exception and w hose semantic function is required if symbolic thought is to operate

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LACAN AN D LEVI -STRAU SS O R T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

In bring ing together Freud's theory of the symbolic father-the totem-and Levi-Strauss' theory of the zero symbol, he can see that the totem is the foundation o f the "completely tmconscious systems" that cons titute the subjective fates of in d ividuals and make them part of a gro u p.

It is by recogniz ing the laws that govern these fa tes that psychoana-

lytic experience introduces the subject: Symbols in fact envelop the life of man with a network so total that they join together those who are going to engender him "by bone ru1d flesh" before he comes into the world; so total that they bring to his birth, along with the gifts of the stars, if not with the gifts of the fairies, the shape of his destiny; so total that they provide the words that will make him faithful or renegade, the law of the acts that will follow him right to the very place where he is not yet and beyond his very death; and so total that through them his end finds its meaning in the last judgment, where the Word absolves his being or condemns it- unless he reaches the subjective realization of his being-toward-death. Servitude and grandeur in which the living being would be annihilated, if desire did not preserve his part in the interferences and pulsations that the cycles of language cause to converge on him .... But for this desire itself to be satisfied in man requires that it be recognized, through the accord of speech or the struggle for prestige, in the symbol or the imaginary. \•\~1at is at stake in an analysis is the advent in the subject of the scant reality that this desire sustains in him, with respect to symbolic conflicts and imaginary fixations, as the means of their accord, and our path is the inter-subjective experience by which this desire gains recognition. Thus we see that the problem is that of the relations between speech and language in the subject (Ecrils, p. 231). How can we no t see Lacan's recasting of his conception o f the fathe r as the outcome of his retu rn to the speech of the. father of psychoanalysis? It is the effect of his return toward the truth, to w hich he gained access through the subjective rectification o f his transference

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toward Freud. How can we also not recognize how Lacan takes Levi-Strauss' work as a foundation, one that functions as the antithesis of the rejection of the symbolic-of language and history- that had characterized the post-Freudians' work? The ret urn to Freud rediscovers the logic of the unconscious in the combinatory systems of symbolic s tructures; from this perspective, the Oedipus complex can take its place as a crucial symbolic s tructure for the Freudian field, because it looms over all analytic experience. It provides the subject with an epistemic window that will give her a point of view on the marriage stmctures through which her fate is motivated unconsciously. This is precisely where the Oedipus complex-insofar as we still acknowledge that it covers the whole field of our experience with its signification- will be said, in my remarks here, to mark the limits our discipline assigns to subjectivity; namely, what the subject can know of his unconscious participation in the movement of the complex structures of marriage ties, by verifying the symbolic effects in his individual existence of the tangential movement toward incest tha t has manifested itself ever since the advent of a universal community (Ecrits, p. 229). From this perspective, the psychoanalyst becomes a practitioner of the symbolic hmction; he opens up, for the s ubject of modernity, an experience that allows him to clarify what, in his sense of discontent, derives from a push toward incest, a push that has been hampered by a system of prohibition, whose scope, accord ing to Lacan, is being reduced by the advent of this modernity. There is "a modern tendency to reduce the objects the subject is forbidden to choose to the mother and sis ters", a tendency that degrades the prohibition, but w hich has also allowed us to lay bare the " prohibition of incest" as the "subjective pivot" of marriage alliances and of the primal law that "superimposes the reign of culture over the reign of nature" (Ecrits, p. 229). Here, we find the essential epistemic figures of Lacan's research, a research in which the degrading of a s tructure becomes the condition that allows it to manifest itself in the clinic and thus to be discovered. The prohibition of incest no longer imped es the incestuous tendency, w hich is reduced to the protagonists of the Oedipal drama. We find

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once again here the idea that social cond itions cast doubt on the supposed mtiversality of the Oedipus complex, a complex that Lacan had refused for a long tin1e; now, however, he is no longer trying to bring out, as he said in 1950, "the social conditions of Oedipalism"first among wltich was the state of the Western fantily. Instead, what he emphasizes is the way in w hich social cond itions have reduced the prohibition of incest to the modest d imensions of the Oedipal drama. Given the scope of the choices and proltibitions that regulate marriage for societies studied by etlmologists, the Oedipus complex appears as an impoverished and regional structure, but the very fact that it is degraded has allowed it to emerge in relation to the discontents of civilization in s uch a way tha t Freud could discover it. It could thus be seen, in analytic experience, by those who suffer from it, as the form that, in the place of the structures of kinship- and thus in the place of the other- shapes their troubles in modern life. From tltis point of view, we can say that the importance of analytic knowledge abou t what symbolic s truchtres- as the discourse of the other- do to the subject, would be in proportion to the rest ricted character o f these st ructures. It rema ins the case, however, that the Oedipa l structure, which is comparable, despite its weaknesses, to the structures that organize marriage and kinsltip in the societies studied by etlmologists, is to be included in this series in order to be evaluated. According to Lacan, analysts, in examining the subjective effects of the Oedipus complex, should be able to throw light on w ha t motivates a particular subjective figure of the networks that ethnologists have analysed . Likewise, and whatever may be the scope of the subjective s tr uctures or groups that are being considered, we need to see that this perspective ma kes the combinatories of the symbolic structures of language- such as marriage alliances-the tmconscious determinations tha t constitute the subject. Etlmology has brought out the laws that organize the unconscious formation of instihttions, just as it has shown what is marshalled by the invention of symbolism. Yet beyond the group effect, these symbolic s tr uctures also organize the network tha t Freud's grandson calls upon w hen he plays with the bobbin. In the absence of the mother, this little boy is being swallowed up in the laws of speech and language.

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By remindin g us of the important place that the symbolic h o lds in the foundations o f psychoanalysis, Lacan has decided to pin his hopes o n g iv ing it a place among the reorganized sciences. As practitioners of the symbolic function, it is not surprising that we shy away from delving deeper into it, going so far as to neglect the fact that this function situates us at the heart of the movement that is establishing a new order of the sciences, with a rethinking of anthropology .... Linguistics can serve us as a guide here, since that is the vanguard role it is given by con temporary anthropology, and we cannot remain iJ1different to it (Ecrits, p. 235). According to Lacan, psychoanalysis, through its practice o f the symbolic ftmction, has a place at the heart of a new organization of the sciences; yet in order to be able to assume this position, it must take lli1guistics as its guide, because of its iJlSCription il1 contemporary anth ropology an d also because of the discoveries that constitute a quilting poil1t between, for example, Freud's analysis of the fort/da 96 and lli1guistics. The form of ma thematicization in which the discovery of the phoneme is inscribed, as a function of pairs of oppositions formed

our readers who are unfamiliar with Freud's work, "The fortj da is a symbolic couple o f elementary exclamations, whid l Sigmund Freud noticed while observing the p lay of an 18-month-old child, an d which has been used to tl1row light not only on what is beyond the pleasure principle but also on the child's access to lang uage and the dimension of loss that this implies .... Freud's obsenration itself is succinct: an 18-month -old child ... had the habit of throwing objects away from him by making the prolonged sound.. o-o-o-o, which \·vas an early ~;ttempt to pronounce the word ' fort' ('fa r' in German). One day, Freud observed the same child p laying a game that seemed more complete. Picking up a thread attached to a bobbin, he throws it into his crib, \vhile making the same sound, o - CH>- 0 1 and then pulls it back while exclaiming 'da' r here' in German). Freud easily connects this game with the child's situation at the time. Although his mother was absent for long hours and he suffered from this, he never compJained about it, despite the tact that he was very attached to her and she had brought him up by herself. The game reproduced the mother's d isappearances and reappearances" (see the article "Fort-da'' in the DictioHnnirt, de In psycltmrnlyse, edited by Rolan d Chemama and Bernard Vandermersch, 1995, p. 113). In this playful activity, the child decided on tl1e appearances a nd d isappearances of an object that represented his mother. He e njoyed mastering them through his game, but by pronouncing an opposed pair of sounds, he testified to the tact that this mastery was bringing him into the field of language. ~ For

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by the smallest graspable discriminative semantic elements, leads us to the very foundations that Freud's final doctrine designates as the subjective sources of the symbolic function in a vocalic connotation of presence and absence. And the red uction of any language [laugueJ to a group comprised of a very small number of such phonemic oppositions, initiating an equally rigorous formalization of its highest-level morphemes, puts within our reach a strict approach to our own field. It is up to us to adopt this approach to discover how it intersects with our own field, just as ethnography, which follows a course parallel to our own, is already doing by deciphering myths according to the synchrony of mythemes .... It is thus impossible not to make a general theory of the symbol the axis of a new classification of the sciences where the sciences of man will reassume their central position as sciences of subjectivity (Ecrils, p. 236). Lacan's analysis of the situation of psychoanalysis in the Rome Report is both broad and precise. It is broad because it embraces a large part of the field of the human sciences and discerns perfectly the movement that is reorganizing them around the theory of symbolism. It is precise because it draws up a programme of research fo r psychoanalysis, a programme focused on a Freudian updating of the subjective sources of the symbolic function and on advances in linguistics and etlmography. The work of Levi-Strauss had already helped Lacan lay the fow1dations of what, in 1955, he would call the Freudian thing. In order to throw light o n this thing, Lacan asks, "Isn't it striking that Levi-Strauss-in suggesting the involvement in myths of language stntctures and of those social laws that regulate marriage ties and kinship-is already conquering the very terrain in which Freud situates the w1conscious? (Ecrits, p . 236). He does not consider Levi-Strauss' research as an ideal work in a neighbouring field, one that, at best, would share only a few vague connections with psychoanalysis; instead, this research lays bare the essential structures of the Freudian unconscious. Levi-Strauss became an impo rtance influence for Lacan neither because his work was fashionable no r because they were friends. Instead, Levi-Strauss' ideas lie at the heart of Lacan's ret urn to Freud because both their structures and those of

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15 1

the Freudian unconscious are those of speech and language. In other words, in a way that is completely o pposed to the impasses in which the psychoanalytic movement had found itself since Freud's death, Lacan, in Rome, shows how Levi-Stra uss' work has advanced the deciphering of the w1conscious. At Rome, in 1953, Lacan states how the royal road indicated by Levi-Strauss leads back dialectically to Freud's clinic, w here the subject of the unconscious finally receives its baptism of being. This subject, rather than being the son of God, is m uch more like the child with the bobbin, a child who is nourished by the symbolic and receives from it the keys of speech and language; in the latter, what renews itself endlessly is the combinatory of structures that cement his destiny as the o bscure effect of the d iscourse of the other. The resonances of interpretation and the time of the subject in psychoanalytic technique

This s ubtitle is taken from the concluding part of the Rome Report, which introduces us to a theory of language and subjectivity. What is langu age? "[T]he function of language in speech is not to inform but to evoke. What I seek in speech is a response from the other. What constitutes me as a subject is my question. In order to be recognized by the other, I proffer what was only in view of what will be (Ecrils, p. 247). Here, we find once again the theory that recognition is the object of unconscious desire, w hich speaks the Other's own language to it. Ana lysis no longer aims, as we remember, at what really happened during cl1ildhood, but at the tmth of the subject, w hich is d educed from the symbolic constellation that had prod uced his/her destiny even before birth. Lacan illustrates his approach by returning to the case of the Rat Man.97

Emst Lanzer (1878-1914). Freud's second great psychoanalytic case, his analysis lasted about nine months (from October 1907 to July 1908). Freud presented his case several times at the meetings of the Wednesday Psychological Society. Born to a Viennese Jewish family, Emst Lanzer was the fourth ot seven d1i1dren. like his father,

w

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Analysis can have as its goal only the advent of true sprech and the subject's realization of his history in its relation to a future .... l shall illustrate my point here by once again returning to Freud ... to the case of the Rat Man. Freud goes so far as to take liberties w ith the exactness of the facts w hen it is a question of getting at the subject's truth .... But Freud's apperception of the dialectical relationship is so apt that the in terpretation he makes at that moment triggers the decisive destruction of the lethal symbols that narcissistically bind the subject both to his dead father and to his idealized lady, their two images being sustained, in an equivalence characteristic of the obsessive, one by the fantasmatic aggressiveness that perpetuates it, the other by the mortifying cult that transforms it into an idol. Similarly, it is by recognizing the forced subjectivization of the obsessive debt-in the scenario of futile attemp ts at restitution, a scenario that too perfectly expresses its imaginary terms for the subject to even try to enact it, the pressure to repay the debt being exploited by the s ubject to the point of delusiontha t Freud achieves his goal. This is the goal of bringing the subject to discover- in the story of his father's lack of delicacy, his marriage to the subject's mother, the "pretty but permiless girl", his wounded love-life, and his ungrateful forgetting of his beneficent friend-to rediscover in this story, a long w ith the fateful constellation that presided over the s ubject's very birth, the unfillable gap constituted by the symbolic debt against w hich his neurosis is a protest (Ecrits, p. 249). The Rat Man re aches true speech not by reconstructing his s tory'" but by brin gin g to light w h a t Lacan , several mon ths e a rlier, in borrowing once aga in from Levi-Stra uss' vocab u lary, had called

he joined the imperial arn1)\ before falling prey to obsessions tha t led him to consult Freud in Oclober 1907. His case, known as that of the Rat Man, is considered to be the only o ne with which Freud truly succeeded. • It is from this point o f view that one should examine the ''historical" objections to psychoanalysis made by modern investigators who search to contest Freud's clinic with details from the biographies of his patients.

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"the neurotic's individ ual myth". T his myth structures the s ubject's symptoms by referring to a matrix of terms that had been decid ed by the previous generation. What w as crucial was Jess the patient's birth than his father 's sense o f d ivision: he had to choose whether to ma rry a poor, pretty yotmg woman or a "young woman of good family"- a wea lthy and socia lly prestigious family- and it was the latter w ho became his wife. In playing out the confusion over this marriage in his tra nsference w ith Freud, this pa tient shows what is really in question: by considering an imaginary da ughter of Fre ud's as a possible wi fe with "gold en eyes", he discovers that every man ma rries his na rcissistic destiny; in this case, he marries the image of dea th that appea rs in the form of a woman (see "The Neurotic's Ind ividual Myth"). What he d oes with Freud is to transfer this alienating imaginary version into its symbolic mediations. For this is how the Rat Man is able to insert into his subjectivity its true mediation in a transferential form: the imaginary daughter he gives Freud in order to receive her hand in marriage from him, and who unveils her true face to him in a key dream: that of death gazing at him with its bitwninous eyes. And although it was with this symbolic pact that the ruses of the subject's servitude came to an end, reality did not fail him, it seems, in granting him these nuptial wishes (Ecrits, p. 250). This young man ended up buried in the soil of the battlefields of the First World Wa r; before this happened, however, he seems to have recognized that death was the tme mediation that would w1do his ruinous narcissistic identification with the father's person. Here we have the very model of what Lacan ind icated in the Rome Report conceming the d isjunction that must be made between, on the one hand, the father's symbolic hmction, and on the other the narcissistic identification generated by the relation with him and his real activity. What the Rat Man tells Freud is not that the father really intervened in regulating the young man's love life, but rather the

existence of "a prohibition by his dead father"- since the father had alread y died- "against his liaison with his lady-love" (faits, p. 249). Lacan indicates that this occurred at the very moment w hen his mother, who had become a w idow, suggested that he marry his

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rich cousin . It was this remark, accord ing to Freud, that brought about the patient's neurosis. "What I seek in speech is a response from the other" (Ecrits, p. 247). By includ ing the father's response, the son brings in the problems of the preceding generation, that fill his symptoms and feed this neurosis, w hich is s tructured like a myth. According to lacan, Freud cuts the knot of servitude by making the Rat Man realize that what he brings unconsciously upon himself can be recognized through his dreams: in the profile of the young woman with dung in the place of her eyes, or in other symptoms. It is up to the analytic d ialectic to decipher these unconscious formations and to dissolve their hold over the patient. Thus we can see that by incarnating the place of the other, Freud finds himself at the heart of the intrigue that knots the son unconsciously to the father's sins. It is not a matter, however, of repeating this situation in transference; if the place of the other is indeed the place where a message that responds to the son has been addressed, it is now occupied by an operator-the analyst- who is able to invert this message. Doing so can finally make the son see that he is responsible for the poisonousness of the message that had "come" from the father's mouth; this is precisely the p lace w here the son had gone to look for it. This theory of desire as desire of the O ther does not therefore involve the sorts of genuflections by which volunta ry servitude wou ld come to replace- at the end of what could not even be called an analytic experience-the unconscious servitude that motivated his symptomatic s uffering. Instead, recognizing that the tmconscious subject can be deduced from the other's d iscourse leads to a rectification that leaves the subject entirely responsible for w hat he complains about. This rectification brings him to take a stand in relation to his symptoms and to gain some freedom by giving up what he sees, in his experience, as the morbid part of the other's will. This does not make the theory of the unconscious subject-as Lacan stated and illustrated it in Rome- into a theory that would motivate some sort of return to a divine figure. It is a question, instead, of seeing the foundations of Lacan's return to Freud and w hat they owe to Levi-

Strauss; these are Lacan's answers to what motivated his research on the theory of the unconscious subject. What he owes to LeviStrauss is nothing less than the ability to see the effects of everything that he includes in the notion of the O ther: all the structures that

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form the field of speech and language, of w hich the subject of the unconscious- whether placed in a group or not- is a simple function, a subject that receives her own message in an inverted fonn. At the end of this joumey, we can now better understand the formula that defines, in new terms, w hat Lacan called the subject of the unconscious. Let us listen once again to this formula: The form in which language expresses itself in and of itself defines subjectivity. Language says: "You will go here, and when you see this, you will tum off there." In other words, it refers to discourse about the other (discours de l'autre]. It is enveloped as such in the highest function of speech, inasmuch as speech commits its author by investing its addressee with a new reality, as for example, when a subject seals his fate as a married man by saying "You are my wife". Indeed, this is the essential form from which all human speech derives more than the form at which it arrives. Hence the paradox that one of my most acute auditors believed to be an objection to my position when I first began to make my views known on analysis as dialectic; he formulated it as follows: "H uman language wou ld then constitute a kind of communication in which the sender receives his own message back from the receiver in inverted form." I could not but adopt this objector's formulation, recognizing in it the stamp of my own thinking; for I maintain that speech always subjectively includes its own reply, that "Thou wouldst not seek Me, if thou hadst not found Me" simply validates the same truth (Ecrits, p. 246). This investigation of this formula has become an inquiry into Lacan's return to Freud. What does this inquiry show us, if not the profile of Claude Levi-Strauss hanging over this return? It is now time to ask ourselves who was the exceptional interlocutor whom Lacan mentions, the one in w hom he recognized the stamp of his own thinking in 1953. Thirteen years later, in 1966, on

the first page of the overture to the Ee~·its, he recognizes this formulation as the interlocutor's own thinking: "In language our message comes to us from the Other, and- to state the rest of the principle--in an inverted form. (Let me remind you that this principle applied to

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its own enunciation since, although I proposed it, it received its finest formulation from another, an eminent interlocutor)" (Ecrits, p. 4). The Other in 1966-the date of the publication of the Ecri/s- was written with a capital letter, and the "stamp" received by the definition of the unconscious subject that Lacan formulated in 1953-and repeated ceaselessly throughout the heart of his research-has now been reversed and has become the thought of the eminent interlocutor, whose anonymity Lacan s till protects 13 years later. Was it one of his brilliant students? Was it a s pecialist in philosophy, such as Hippolyte? Was it one of the philosophers from whom he borrowed other turns of phrase? It was necessary to wait for the answer for a long time- precisely 21 years-w1til Lacan returned to Rome and finally lifted the veil over the fabulous gestnlt that has guided our return to Freud: This is the story of the message that everyone receives in an inverted form. l have been saying this for a very long time and it has made people laugh. [n truth, I owe it to Claude Uvi-Strauss (my emphasis). He leaned over to one of my good friends-his wife, Monique, to call her by her name-and said, about what l was expressing, that that was it: everyone received his message in an inverted form. Monique repeated it to me. I could not find a better formula for what I wanted to say at that time. He is the one who foisted it off on us. You see, l take what is good wherever l find it.99 In 1974, at the conference of the Freudian School of Paris, Lacan returned for a third time to Rome and ended the anonymity of the person who, in 1953, had allowed him to define the w1conscious subject and had given hin1 the key to what the O ther is: the Other of the symbolic fw1ction that structures language and all the other networks of social exchange. In this way, he finally pays the symbolic debt that he had contracted to his friend, the master of French ethnology, and without whom the return to Freud would not have been what it was, any more than Lacan's work and the radical changes that followed from it in France and elsewhere would have been what they were.

w

jacques Lacan, " La troisieme", Lettres de /'£cole freudimue 16, pp. 177-203.

CHAPTER THREE

The name of the father, psychosis and phobia

e have seen the importance of the symbolic h mction, which Lacan borrowed from French anthropology and which enabled him to articulate his definition of subjectivity in Book I of the seminar and in the cons tellation of texts surrottnd ing it. I have a lso analysed the importance of Lacan's formula-"the subject receives his message from the other in an inverted fonn"- which was coined by Levi-Strauss. In particular, I have shown how Lacan's research up to his L schema can-mutatis mutandis-be read as a form of theoretical "bricolage" in which this formula serves to p w1ctuate the mirror stage. Without reading the seminars line by line, I shall now show how Lacan's cmmection w ith Levi-Strauss will continue to mark his research profow1dly between 1953 and 1957; we shall follow the itinerary that leads him to analyse first the psychoses and then phobia: two clinical contineJlts whose maps are redrawn by means of a structural an alysis. One of thei r central operators is precisely the notion of the Name-of-the-Father, to w hich we must return,

W

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I. From the Rat Man to little Hans: The question of the Name-of-the-Father

Lacan wrote "The Neurotic's Individual Myth" in 1953, at the very moment when he "invented " the notion of the Name-of-the-Father. Ie have already shown'"" what this owed to a reading of Levi-Strauss' introduction to Marcel Mauss, since it is in this text of 1950 that LeviStrauss isolates "a semantic function, whose role is to enable symbolic thinking to operate despite the contradiction inherent in it" (LeviStrauss, Introduction, p. 63). The etlm ological lexicon of conscious expressions of this function includes mana, Wllknn or orenda, which are all names for the spirit of things, a spirit that has "characteristics of a secret power, a mysterious force"; such terms perplexed both Mauss and Emile Durkhein1, because their foundational yet preliminary methods d id not enable them, according to Levi-Strauss, to avoid reducing "social reality to the conception that man- savage man, even- has of it" (Levi-Strauss, Introduction, p. 57). Levi-Strauss examines the work of these. fotmders of French etlmology in order to restore the unconscious value of the notion tl1at he presents as a "floating signifier", one tl1at is necessary in order for the s ignifier and signified to remain in a "relationship of complementarity", without which tl1ere can be no symbolic thought (Levi-Strauss, Introduction, p . 63). Between the signifier and the signified , there is always, for Levi-Strauss, an "inadequation" that "divine understand ing alone can soak up" (Levi-Strauss, lnt1'0duction, p. 62). As the indigenous people indicate, only the power of the dead father or of mann can soak up this inadeq uation. Yet by separating itself from tl1e object, Levi-Strauss' structuralist analysis brings out-in the list of terms mentioned above- the decisive activity of a "simple form", a "symbol in its pure state", or a sem antic function that guarantees the cmmection between the signifier and the signified (Levi-Strauss, Introduction, p. 64). the system of symbols which makes up any cosmology, it would just be a zero symbolic value, that is, a sign marking the necessity of a supplementary symbolic content over and above [n

tl>.lSee Lncmr et lt,s sciences socialt!S1

pp. 217- 222.

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that which the signified already contains, which can be any value at all, provided it is still part of the available reserve, and is not already, as the phonologists say, a term in a set (Levi-Strauss, lrrtroductiorr, p. 64). Locating the linguistic and unconscious value of the "floating signifier" that allows symbolic thought to operate is what Lacan does with the notion of the Name-of-the-Father, the equivocation of which can lead those who do not know Levi-Strauss and Lacan to imagine that Lacan was trying to combine Freud's work with Roman Catholicism. We have already emphasized that, precisely to the contrary, at the very moment when he takes up the structuralist theory of the exceptional signifier, Lacan rejects all the Claudelian and Durkheimian suppositions that had previously underlain his theory of the father. Levi-Strauss says in 1952 that "Field-workers must leam to consider their research from two different perspectives. TI1ey are always in danger of confusing the natives' theories about their social organization ... w ith the actual functioning of the society" Levi-Strauss, (Social Anthropology, p. 130). For Lacan, as a reader of Levi-Strauss, it is also necessary not to confuse the value of "the Name-of-theFather" -a theoretical operator that ensures the quilting between signifiers and signifieds-with the Church's Name-of-the.-Father; the latter is a monotheist christening name, one that calls to mind the "spirit of things" that enables neurotic thought to function consciously. From this point of view, we must understand that the theoretical value of Lacan's notion of the Name-of-the-Father comes from LeviStrauss; in my opinion, Lacan borrowed a term from his own society- and more precisely from the symptom of the obsessionals who make up the Church- and then associated it with the mana or the orenda. In doing so, he made an interpre tation that has had a crucial clinical impact for psychoanalytic research. This was, quite precisely, an interpretation rather than a discovery. ln conformity w ith the epistemology that is the basis of his work, Lacan, precisely w hen

he was researching the psychoses in 1956, analysed what can be deduced from the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father as operator. He was then able to perceive, by its absence, what this version of the operator supports unconsciously in neurosis. It is thus necessary for

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the o perator to be d egraded- fo reclosed, in this case- in order for Lacan to grasp its clinical importance; in this way, he rediscovers it. How d id Lacan take advantage of his own culture to illustrate the structural and sem antic function of the Name-of-the-Father? Addressing himself to his listeners o n 6 ]w1e 1956, he mentio ns, first of all, what he considers to be Saussure's lack of success in " defin[ing] a correspo ndence" between the waves of the signifier and the signified; nevertheless, such a correspondence seems to function in the neurotic, even if "The relationship between the signified and the signifier always appears fluid, always ready to come undone." 101 Lacan then speaks somewhat theatrically about his difficulty in transmitting his ideas to his lis teners. He does so by s ubmitting to Freud's mle of free association. Well then, I think to myself-What does one start with? And I go about looking for a sentence, a bit like this pseudo-Shakespeare stuck for inspiration, who paces up and down, repeating- To be or not ... to be or not ..., stuck until he discovers that he can continue by starting at the beginning again-To beor not ... to be. l start with a Yes. And since French, not English, is my language, what comes to me next is-Yes, I come into his temple to worship

tire Etemal Lord. This means that no signifier is isolable (Seminar lll, p. 262). La can concludes by stating that "The sentence only existsascompleted and its sense comes to it retroactively. We need to have got right to the end, that is to say, to this famous Eternal Lord" (Serninar Ill, pp. 262-263). By engaging in free association, Lacan seems to come, as if by cl1ance, upo n the onmipresent figure of the Eternal Lord, which allows the loop of the signifier to be closed and situates the d ifferent elements that resonate in this unforgettable sentence. Continuing his reading of Racine's tragedy, Atha/iah102 he shows how Joad, by using

'"' jacques Lilcan, Tile Psychoses, pp. 261-262. '"' Racine's tragedy opens at the tl1reshold of the temple with an improbable faceto-face meeting between the high priest, Joad, and Abner/ one of the main officers of the king of Judah, who has become an idolater under the influence of his wife, the

bloody Athaliah.

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the signifier, "the fear of God" in such a way as to place it in the mouth of his interlocutor, Abner, rallies him to his cause. Then he continues: The power of the signifier, the effectiveness of this word fear, has been to transform the zeal at the beginning, with everything that is ambig uous, doubtful, always liable to be reversed, that this word conveys, into the faitiifull!ess of the end. This transmuta tion is of the order of the signifier as such. No accumulation, no superimposition, no summation of meanings, is sufficient to justify it. The entire progress of this scene ... resides in the transmuta tion of the situation through the intervention of the signifier. Whether it be a sacred text, a novel, a play, a monologue, or any conversation whatsoever, allow me to represent the function of the signifier by a spatializing device, which we have no reason to deprive ourselves of. This point around which all concrete analysis of discourse must operate I shall call a quilting point (Semirrar l/1, p. 267). Lacan mmounces this te rm, "quiltin g point", wh ich will have a fine future. Let us note, however, tha t while Levi-Strauss refers to a sort o f "complementarity" between s ignifier and signified, Lacan draws upo n the vocabulary of upholstery to formulate w hat cmmects the tvvo \Vaves.

When the upholsterer's needle, which has entered at the moment of God fourrd faitiiful irr all his tlumts, reappears, it's all over, the chap says, I'm goi11g to joi11 tile faithful troops. Were we to analyse this scene as a musical score, we should see that this is the point at which the signified and the signifier are knotted together, between the still floating mass of meanings

"Yes, I come into his temple to worship the Eternal Lord'' is the first line of the play, and it is spoken by Abner, who is still uncertain, but who has come to warn

)ehoiada of Athaliah's plot against him. "I fear God, dear Abner, a nd have no o ther fea r," retorts the hig h priest, before continuing and reversing the terms: "I fear God, you say ... his truth touches me. "Here is how the l ord answers you out of my mouth" (Seminar Ill, pp. 263, 265). l11e fear of God has passed from one character$s mouth to the other.

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that are actually circulating between these two characters and the text .... The quilting point is the word fear, with all these transsignificant cormotations" (Seminar Ill, p. 268). Levi-Strauss had situated a structural gap between signifier and signified that "divine understand ing alone can soak up". More generally, where he had located the semantic function of an exceptional signi fier that--
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Lacan's needle thus reappears at a crucial point of Freud's thought, the Oedipus complex, which Freud had claimed to be universal. The knot between psychoanalysis and Levi-Strauss is fastened precisely at the point of the notion of the father, a notion that is d ecisive for Freud; Lacan's stitching now transmutes this into the exceptional signifier "whose absence-or better, foreclosure" gives rise to the differential clinical traits of psychosis, among which is mental autoinatism. Rereading the case of Judge Schreber"n, Lacan argues that "To aU appearances President Schreber lacks this ftmdamental signifier called bei11g afather" (Seminar /1/, p. 293). Yet it is not only this judge's psychosis that derives from the absence of this signifier, since Lacan, in a move that has never been refttted, places this foreclosure at the heart of the psychotic clinic. Thus, in june 1956, in the space of one or two sessions of his seminar, Lacan renews the theory of the psychoses, whose structure depends on the foreclosure of the Nameof-the-Father: the absence of the zero symbol, without which the signifier and the signified cmmot be knotted together. By isolating the failure of the symbolic in the psychoses, Lacan, in an inverted and complementary way, brings out the value of the signifier whose availability allows the neurotic's symbolic thought to operate. Without even stating this explicitly, Lacm1 borrows from Levi-Strauss the notion of a zero symbol as ail operator that is indispensable for symbolization. What he then does w ith this notion is to 1.

2. 3.

Reveal the name that this operator receives in the "Roman" neurotic symptom ("In the Name-of-the-Father) Rethink the Freudian Oedipus complex as the quilting point of neurosis Reorganize the psychotic clinic in terms of the failure of this operator.

"" Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911). Bom in to a bourgeois German protesta nt family, Schrebe r became a renowned judge. In 1884, while he was presiding judge of the court of appeal in Saxony, he began to exhibit serious signs o f mental problems. He wrote Memoirs of My Nemms Illness, which he published in 1903, and died in the asylum of leipzig. Freud analysed his writings in order to demonstrate the validity of his own theory ot psychosis. See Sigmund Freud, Psycho-An alytic Notes upon an Autobiographical Account o f a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paran oides), 1961, pp. 1-82.

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Yet when he rethinks the Oedipus complex as the quilting point of neurosis, does a sort of logical necessity not lead Lacan to join Freud in proclaiming the universality of this complex? The answer to this question is no. Nobody dwells on this- it's because at the heart of the religious thought that has formed us there is the idea of making us live in fear and trembling, that the colouration of guilt is so fundamental in our psychological experience of the neuroses, without its being possible for all that to prejudge what they are in another cultural sphere. This colouration is so fundamental that it was by its means that we explored the neuroses and noticed that they were structured in a subjective and intersubjective mode (Semiunr Til, p. 288). Lacan leaves open the hyp othesis that, in other cultures, the neuroses could be structured otherwise than by the "fear of God" and could have different quilting points from those located, both in individual cases and in the social sphere, by the Freudian clinic.'"' Yet in order for a person not to be psychotic, there must be a semantic function, a "symbol in its pure state" that has "zero symbolic value" and which allows symbolic thought to take place-whatever its terms may be or w hatever colouration it may give to neurosis. Thus, for Lacan, the universality of the operator does not involve its Oedipal form, but this is w hat we must look for in order to differentiate psychosis and neurosis. Concerning the latter point, the striking proximity of Lacan and Levi-Strauss should be emphasized, since during this period, the

From this point o f vieVI.j because o f the proximity between Lacan and Levi-Strauss at that time, \·ve can mention the Bororo's "easy-going" attitude towards the supernatural, which astonished the ethnologist. We can recall tha t tl1e "temple" of Bororo society is, at the sa.me time.. a workshop, a d ub, a dormitory, and finally, a brothel. Tl\ere is an o ffhandedness that is all the more striking since Levi-Strauss wilJingly says to his reader that "My only contact with religion dated back to childhood when, already a non-believer, I Jived during the First World War with my grandfather, who 1'~

was Ral>bi of Versailles. The house was att.lched to the synagogue L>y a long inner passage_, along which it was difficult to venture without a feeling of anguish." See Tristes Tropiques, 1974, p. 230. This proves, by the \oVa}~ that there is no need to be a believer in order to experience uthe fear of God" in our societies, even it this fear really seems not to be universal.

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latter devoted particular attention to the problem atic of what he calls "zero institutional forms". These forms, which constitute a class of mysterious symbolic objects, always aroused Levi-Strauss' curiosity, even if he did not devote a specific article to them and always seems to approach them in an aside. It was left to Lacan to perceive this discovery by Levi-Strauss and to introduce it silently but inunediately into the heart of his work. Where, w hen, and how did Levi-Strauss re-examine these institutional forms of the exception? II. The institutional forms of the zero value

In 1956, the year of Lacan's seminar on the psychoses, Levi-Strauss published "Do Dual Organizations Exist?" an article in which he confirms, in an aside, his findings of 1950 on the forms of the zerovalue institution. Analysing the marriage rules of the Bororo people of Brazil, he isolates the division of this population into north and south, one that is, in his own words, "obscure", for it "has no function except that of permitting Bororo society to exist" (Levi-Strauss, Stmcturnl Ar.thropology, p. 159). Then he adds: But it would not be the first time that research would lead us to institutional forms which one might characterize by a zero value. These institutions have no intrinsic property other than that of establishing the necessary preconditions for the existence of the social system to which they belong; their presence-in itself devoid of significance-enables the social system to exist as a whole. Sociology'o; here encounters an essential problem, one which it shares with linguistics, but with which it does not seem to have come to grips in its own field. This is the problem posed by the existence of institutions having no function other than that of giving meaning to the society in which they are found (Levi-Strauss, Structural Authropologt;, p. 159). In a note, Levi-Strauss reminds the reader of his discovery of 1950 concerning zero-value instit utions: "This is the way in which I defined the concept of mar.a some time ago" (Levi-Strauss, Structural

1 have altered the original h·anslation here, since it substitutes "anthropology# for "sociology". (Tra11slator's uot.e.} ~~~

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more real than what they symbolise, the signifier precedes and determines the signified. We will encow1ter this problem again in cmmection with mana" (Levi-Strauss, Introduction, p. 37). Now Lacan takes a first step: Claude Levi-Strauss shows us everywhere that symbolic structure dominates perceptible relations .... What makes a structure possible are reasons internal to the signifier. What makes a certain form of exchange conceivable or inconceivable are reasons that are specifically arithmetical; I don't think that he would back away from this term. The zero value has an algebraic place, whose anthropological and psychoanalytic importance has already been emphasized , but also, more generally, gives a stmcturalist legitimacy to Lacan's use of his "little letters" or of algebraic series. Lacan continues: "The second step that, thanks to him, I had alread y crossed before arriving here today is the one that we owe to his developments on the mytheme, which I take as an extension of the emphasis o n the s ignifier to the notio n of myth" (Lacan, Bulletin, p . 114). Lacan mentions an article of 1955 by Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myths", to whicl1 he refers precisely a bit further o n. This crucial text offers an analysis of myths based on the no tion of the mytheme, which provides a new way of grouping together the vario us com ponents of a myth, whose structure appears then as necessary and as lacking any arbitrariness. In this essay, Levi-Strauss states that "Although it is not possible at the present s tage to come closer than an approximate" structural form ulation for myths, "which w ill certainly need to be refined in the future, it seems that every myth (considered as the aggregate of all its variants) corresponds to a formula of the following type:

"''

Fx(a) : Fy(b): Fx(b): Fa- I(y).

He then goes on to apply this fonnula to the Oedipal myth itself: "This formula becomes highly significant when we recall that Freud considered that two traumas (and no t one, as is so commo nly said)

1117

Levi-Strauss, Structural Antltropology, p. ??8.

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are necessary in order to generate the individual myth (my emphasis) in which a neurosis consists" (Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, p. 228). This article, which Lacan read very closely, is strikingly ambitious, since Levi-Strauss offers us nothing less than the fo rmula, not of a single myth, but of all myths- whicl1, he argues, must be grasped as an aggregate organized according to the law of a group of transformations. He does so while arguing that myth is culture's unique matrix'"' and he is carehtl to refer to the Oedipal myth and "the individual myth in which a neurosis consists". In this article, Levi-Strauss makes no reference to Lacan's lecture of 1953, The Neurotic's Individual Myt/1, which he had given at the invitation-once aga in-of Jean Wahl. Was he unaware of it? Was he unaware that Lacan had read neurosis in terms of the individual myth, just as he was now doing? Was he unaware oflacan's resea rch on the Name-of-the-Father, which began with this lecture? Did he know no thing abo ut this lecture? This was no t the opinion of Lacan, who on 26 May 1956, after having situated very precisely the two theoretical steps that he owes to Levi-Strauss, continues: Here is where I am with all of this now. l appreciate the outline of the thing very much, and as Claude Levi-Strauss is not uuaware (my emphasis), I tried almost immediately, and I dare to say, with complete success, to apply this grid to the symptom in obsessional neurosis and to Freud's admirable analysis of the Rat Man; this was in a lecturemlilled precisely (my emphasis) 'The Neurotic's Individual Myth'. l was able to formalize the case strictly, according to a formula by Levi-Strauss, in which an a-which is first associated with a b, while a c is associated with

Levi-Strauss' epistemological ambition was impressive for the intellectuals ot the time, as Tzvet.an Todorov testifies: uLevi-Sb·auss impressed us ... for example in the 'sh·uctural analysis of myth' ... he presented a famous formula ... which was supposed to represent the irreducible structure of every myth! I admired it very much (Devoirs et dilict>s: une vie rle passeur, 2002, p. 84). Lucien Scubla has studied the history of this formula in his doctora l thesis, a t the Ecole des Jrnutes itudes t,H scieun>s sociales, Paris, 1996. See Lire Levi-Strauss: le rleploiemmt. d'une intuition (1998). Emmanuel Desvaux has provided a tine description of this tormula in Quarlrntura Americmm, Geneva, Georg, 2001. On Levi-Strauss' application o f his structuralism to Greek myth, and particularly to the Oedipal myth, Jean-Pierre Vernant's Mytlt nnrl Society iu AJrcieut Greece may be consulted with p rofit. 1 '"'

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ad-finds its partner change in the second generation, while an irreducible residue remains in the negativation of one of the four terms, and intrudes as the correlative of the transformation of the group. What can be read here is what I could call the sign of a kind of impossibility of resolving the problem of the myth completely. In this way, the myth would be there to show us that an equation is set up, in the signifying form of a problematic that must necessarily leave something open. In doing so, this equation responds to what cannot be solved by signifying its insolubility and its looming presence is recovered in its equivalences, which provide- this would be the myth's function-the signifier of the impossible. Do I still have today, as I had earlier, the feeling of having been a bit in advance of myself? (Lacan, Bulletin, p. 116). In a s tyle in which respect is as grea t as precis ion, Lacan confirms that Levi-Strauss was not unaware that in 1953 he had applied his method to the case of the Rat Man, just as he remembers that he had rethought Ernst Lanzer's neurotic organization-Freud's parad igm for obsessional neurosis- as an individual myth . Such a formulation could not have escaped Lev i-Strauss' attention, even if we can understand what he had not been able to see: what Lacan's notion of the Name-of-the-Father owed to his own analysis of the zero symbolic value of an exceptional s ignifier. The lecture on the neurotic's individual myth did not apply this concept to psychosis, which would have thrown light on this point; indeed , Lacan would not approach this issue until 12 days after the dialogue of 26 May. These remarks show that, at this moment, Lacan and Levi-Stra uss share an epistemological perspective that considers neurosis as an individual myth. Indeed, it was Lev i-Strauss- as we have seenwho coined the expression, "individual myth" in The Effectiveness of Symbols. As for Lacan's 1953 elaboration of the neurotic's ind ividual myth, we shall note that he confirms in 1956 that he was "completely s uccessful" in reinterpreting o bsessional neurosis in the light of Levi-Strauss' work . This is also what his letter of 14 July 1953 to Loewenstein testifies; in that letter, he confided to his analyst that he had relied on Levi-Strauss' research to temper the despa ir, and even the disgust, that he felt in being discarded by the ana lytic group.

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If the historical interest of the lecture of 26 May 1956 lies in Lacan's statement of what he owes, including "subjectively", to Levi-Strauss' theories, it also clarifies how they had helped him reinterpret the case of the Rat Man. As we have seen, Lacan mentions the formula in w hich Levi-Strauss articulates the little letters, a, b, c, d. These letters seem to d irect us less to Tl1e Elementary Structures of Kinship than to the 1952 article, "Social Structures of Central and Eastern Brazil". 1n this work, Levi-Strauss re-examines the Bororo in order to bring out the homologies between the structures that regulate marriage, associations, and the mythical genesis of associations. Here Levi-Strauss analyses "Patrilateral marriage ... [which) is associated with an "alternating" terminology, which expresses the opposition of consecutive generations and the identification of alternating generations. A son marries in the direction opposite from h is father" (Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, p. 122). Like his father, the Rat Man was forced to choose between marrying the poor girl or the rich girl. Was Ernst Lanzer d ivided behveen a neurotic imposition that was homologous to what regulates Bororo marriage? Perhaps, but it is in analysing the correspondences between sociological rules and the mythic tmiverse that Levi-Strauss uses the algebraic letters. Further on, the article shows that anthropological analysis of the "mythical analysis of associations"- the analysis of the order that regulates the ritual passages and transferrals from one association to another-takes the form of a schema that articulates the little letters that Lacan mentions on 26 May 1956. The homology between this schema"" and Lacan's schema L110 is striking, as we can see in the following diagrams:

System of Generalized Exchange

Schema L

Levi-Strauss' diagram of the system of generalized exchange depicted below can be found on page 125 o f Structural Anthropology. uo l.acan's Schema Lean also be found in SemiHnr JJ, p. 243. '

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Did the 1952 article, and more broadly the s tructural analysis of the Bororo's exchange r ules directly influence The Neurotic's Individual Myth? We cannot discount this hypothesis, just as we carmot d ismiss the idea that the symbolic organization of the Bororo and its mysteries caught Lacan's attention through both Levi-Strauss' interest in them and his own interest in Levi-Strauss. The Bororo's society is located at the heart of Levi-Strauss' work and we have seen that the d ivision between north and south had been a kind of enigma for him since the 1940s; he suddenly exh umed this enigma in 1956 and resolved it decisively by making it an archetype of the zero-value institution . In my opinion, the latter had inspired Lacan's own reflections from the time that he had first read Levi-Strauss' preface to the work of Marcel Mauss. Levi-Strauss and Lacan share certain preoccupations here and this leads us to hypothesize that Levi-Strauss' "attaclunent" to the Bororo infiltrates Lacan's d ialogue w ith him . Through the intenned iary of Lacan's transference to Levi-Strauss, the psychic formations of Freud's paradigmatic cases-Dora, the Rat Man, Sclueber, and, as we shall soon see, little Hans--think tl1emselves with the symbolic formations of the Bororo, just as, according to Levi-Strauss' s triking formulation, " myths think themselves in relation to each other by the intennediary of men".111 More briefly, this transferential logic shows us that both Lacan and Levi-Strauss considered 1. 2.

Neurosis as an individual myth and The existence of institutions as a condition for neurotic symbolic thought.

As the reader has noticed, we have classified the Name-of-the-Father,

through w hich Lacan reorganizes the clinic of the psycl1oses in 1956, among the zero-value institutions mentioned by Levi-Strauss. Is this not arbitrary? No, for in the 1955 article, "The Structural Study of Myth", whicl1 Lacan mentions at the College of Philosophy in We can confirm this attachment by the "arbitrary'' selection of the myth of reference that runs throughout The Rnwnmi lite Cooked, the first volume of the Mytltologiqut!S. TI1is is the myth of the man who searches for birds, a Bororo myth in which we encounter both mother/son incest and the death of the father; this myth could be caiJed the "Bororo Oedipus", which throug h this work, becomes, for Levi-Strauss, 111

the myth tl1rough which all myths can be analysed. See Tire Rnw nnd file Cooked, 1969.

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May 1956, Levi-Strauss wonders in passing w hether there are other linguistic facts that tend toward a zero value: "A remark can be introduced at this point w hich w ill help to show the originality of myth in relation to other lingu istic phenomena. Myth is the part of language w here the formula trnduttore, trnditore reaches its lowest truth value" (Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, p. 210). Setting up an opposition beh'/een translating myth and the extremely d ifficult task of translating poetry"', Levi-Strauss claims that "the mythical value of the myth is preserved even through the worst translation . Whatever our ignorance of the language and the culture of the people where it originated, a myth is still felt as a myth by any reader anywhere in the world. Its substance does not lie in its style, its original music, or its syntax, but in the story which it tells. Myth is language, functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practically at 'taking off' from the linguistic ground on which it keeps on rolling'' (Levi-Strauss, Stmctural Anthropology, p . 210). Levi-Strauss brings out two consequences of his analysis of myth: L 2.

Myth, like the rest of language, is made up of constituent units These constituent units presuppose the constituent w'lits present in language w hen analysed on other levels-namely, phonemes, morphemes, and sememes-but they, nevertheless, d iffer from the latter in the same way as the latter d iffer among themselves; they belong to a higher and more complex order. For this reason, we shall call them gross constituent units. How shall we proceed in order to identify and isolate these gross constituent units or mythemes? ,, , (W]e should look for them on the sentence level (Levi-Strauss, Structural Anliiropology, pp. 210-211).

" We should look for them 011 the sentmce level," Levi-Strauss indicates at the end of 19.55. Is this not precisely what Lacan repeats in his session of 6 June 1956, where he produces the quilting point and comes, as if by chance upon the Eternal Lord and the fear of God?

Here, Levi-Strauss shows how close he is to Roman Jakobson, who also claimed that "Poetry by definition is untranslatable. Only creative transposition is possible .... If we \\'ere to translate into English the traditional formula, 'Tradutlon?, trndit.ore' as 'the translator is a betrayer', \ove \vould deprive the Italian rhyming epigram ot aJI its paronomastic value" (p. 238). In Roman jakobson, "On linguistic aspects of translation", in On Translation, 1959, pp. 232-239. ~~ ~

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On 6 June 1956, Lacan could not have failed to have 'The Structural Study of Myths" in his mind, for he had mentioned it 12 days earlier in the presence of Levi-Strauss. In this article, Levi-Strauss tries once again to move beyond Freud's clinic of the neuroses by including the Freudian Oedipus complex as one version of the myth of Oedipus; he argues that all the versions must be interpreted as a whole in order to bring out the s tructu re that can account for them. On this point, Levi-Strauss writes that "Although the Freudian problem has ceased to be that of autochthony versus bisexual reproduction, it is still the problem of understanding how one can be born from two: How is it that we do not have only one procreator, but a mother plus a father?" {Levi-Strauss, Structural Artthropology, p. 217). Accord ing to this logic, myth is a kind of tool that, as Jean-Pierre Vernant will comment later, mediate(s] between exclusive terms of contradictory situations. Titus, in the example of the Oedipus myth, we have on the one hand a belief in the autochthony of man (attested in the myths concerning his emergence from Mother Earth), and, on the other, his birth from the union of a man and a woman (necessary to the entire sociological code of filiation). 113 What is important here is to see the bracketing that indicates that wtder " plus a father", what is being alluded to is the w hole cod e of filiation. In other words, the "pl us a father" is the father who has a zero va lue for the neurotic, and w hose absence or foreclosure, according to Lacan, governs the psychoses. From this perspective, we could say that the d elusions of filiation can be read clinically as an attempt to make up for the absence of the Name-of-the-Father as an operator. According to Levi-Strauss, w ith this addition of the father, it is very much the whole question of filiation that is brought up by the myth. The second crucial element is that in the 1955 article, Levi-Strauss emphasizes the zero value in relation to the translation of mythic language; in the latter, language works at such a level that its "mythical value ... is preserved even through the worst translation". Myth itself could, as a consequence, play the role of these exceptional signifiers that permit thought to operate. We have placed Lacan's "invention" of the Name-of-the-Father in the class of terms that have "' jean Pierre Ve rnant, Myth and Society in Ancie11/ Greece, 1990, p. 248- 249.

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a zero symbolic value, and thus we can now grasp the "Uvi-Straussian" coherence of envisaging myth as a symbolic forma tion that can fill up the absence-or can fill up the place of a degraded Name-ofthe-Father. To follow Levi-Strauss, we could say tha t the stability of myth, which is ind icated by the ease with which it can be translated, is in proximity to tha t of the proper nam e, which ensures the d urability of identification in the set of all possible worlds."' Lacan trusted Levi-Strauss just as he trusted Freud and in the next year, he moved away from psychosis in order to reopen the question of object relations, which gave its title to Book IV of the seminar. In this seminar, he undertakes a st ructural rethinking of phobia, and especially of little Hans. His "clinical p resentation" of the latter will complete tl1e rereading of Freud's parad igm atic cases tl1at he carried out in the light of Levi-Strauss' researd1: Dora's hysteria, tl1e Rat Man's obsessional neurosis, Schreber's psychosis, and finally, little Hans' phobia. Ill. Object Relations: Book IV of the Seminar, 7956-7957

In the fi rst session of the seminar, Lacan reminds his listeners w here he is "at the end of these years of cri ticism" and alludes to his LeviStraussian sources. Our elaboration culminates in a schema, which we can call the schema, and which is the following:

Scltema L

'" In Nnmit1g nt1rl Necessity (1980), Saul Kripke shows that the proper name is a "rigid designator" that designates the same object in all possible worlds.

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First of all, this schema inscribes the subject's relation with the Other. As it is constituted at the beginning of analysis, it is a relation of virtual speech by which the subject receives his own message from the Other, in the form of w1conscious speech (Semiunr TV, p. 12). At the begumingof the seminar, we find once again the schema L and the formula ill which the inverted form that comes from the Other is transformed into " unconscious speech". Readers know w hy. In this semu1ar, Lacan embarks next on a critical review of the notion of object, as it is used ill the psychoanalytic field, whether by Melanie Kleu1, by D. W. Wumicott115 with the transitional object or by Fran~oise Dolto with the bod y image. Lacan wants to show that the object that organizes psychoanalytic experience is precisely the one that immediately captures the subject's desire: the phallus. In the first stage, the phallus is an object that captivates the gaze: a form or an image that achieves an imagu1ary presence at the moment of the subject's narcissistic mat uration. At this stage, the subject experiences the impasses of his position, from which he can exit through the Oedipus complex. The latter leads him to accept the prohibition of u1cest, his place in the fa mily lu1e and the symbolic network of social exchange. The Oed ipus complex is w hat allows subjective maturation to shift gears u1to social legislation. From that perspective, the imagu1ary status of the (phallic) object is articulated or "quilted" by the symbolic register of the laws that regulate its circulation. It is the symbolic register that "gives the law" to the unaginary form of the object of circulation. We have seen that, accordiJ1g to Levi-Strauss, this law ordau1s that men must give or receive women and makes women into the o bjects that are circulated. This gives us a Lacanian algebra of sexual d ifference in which women have the status of the imagu1ary phallus, which circulates

"' D. W. Winnicott (1896-1961). Eng lish physician and psychoanalyst. Alter pursuing studies in paediatrics and psycho.."'lnalysis, he was given a position at the Paddington Green Children's Hospital, where he worked for forty years. Analysed by james Strachey, he is considered to be one ot the founders of child psychoanalysis in Great Britain. TI1e importance that he attributes to the mother locates him within the logic of the Freudianism of the period between the two world wars, a period in which the interest in the father had been sharply reduced. His psychoanalytic technique was always incompatible with the standards of the lPA.

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between the crowds of men, whose organization derives from the sovereignty of the symbolic register. For Freud, this register is founded on the death of the father and is always a bit and rocentric. This analysis accounts for both the Oedipal clinic of the individual case and the clinic of the social; it d oes not, however, function w ithout a residue, since lacan has shown how Dora objects to her position as an object to be exchanged, a position that is not in hannony with her im aginary structuring. The latter, which derives from the mirror stage, leads her to identify with a man, her father, and to make her femininity into an enigma that triggers her fascination with Frau K. Five years after the Presentation on Transference, Lacan returns to Dora and emphasizes her love for her father, w hich is strictly correlated with his impotence. Accord ing to this logic, the absence of the father's phallus triggers love; in more structura l terms, the phallus takes on value if it is seen as lacking. This is the paradigmatic form of the object of d esire in Freud's clinic. Lacan gives two formulas for this : L 2.

The lack of object ... (is] the mains pring of the subject's relation to the world (Seminar IV, p . 36) There is no greater love than the gi ft of what one does not have (Seminar IV, p. 140).

Lacan reminds us in this seminar of the absolute necessity of d istingu ishing between the phallus and the penis, even if the imaginary figure of the phallus is confirmed by the erection of a penis that has been deprived of any other attribute. If, in love, we give something that we d o not have and if the phallic object is never more present in psychoanalysis than when it is lacking, this means that w hen there is a penis, there is not necessarily a phallus, and vice versa. A question for Levi-Strauss

Why not then imagin e a society in which women would exchange men? This question gives Lacan the idea of asking Levi-Strauss about the val ue of his thesis, since, as he reflects, the ethn ologist analyses the logic of exchange from the perspective of an androcentric postulate that does not explain the origin of its androcentrism:

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And what would happen if you went through the circle of exchange and reversed things, by saying that female lines produce men and exchange them? For we already know that this lack that we have been speaking about in women is not a real lack. Everyone knows that they can have the phallus, and what's more, they produce it; they make boys, phallophoria . Consequently, we can reverse the way that we describe exchange throughout the generations. We can imagine a ma triarchy whose law would be, "I've given a boy and l want to receive the man" (Seminar IV, p. 191). 116 Levi-Strauss' respo nse is to go to the very conditio n of the kinship system's existence, a condition that is outside the system, where he places the pate rnal institu tio n with which the reader is already familiar in the form of the zero symboL Levi-Strauss' answer is the following. There is no doubt that from the point of view of formalization, one can describe things in exactly the same way by using a symmetrical axis of reference, a system of coordinates founded on women, but then, a number of things would be inexplicable, particularly the following. In every case, even in matriarchal societies, political power is androcentric. It is represented by men and by masculine lines. Very bizarre anomalies in exchange, modifications, exceptions, paradoxes that appear in the laws of exchange at the level of the elementary structures of kinship can only be explained by referring to something that is outside kinship, and which is precisely of the order of the signifier, where the sceptre and the phallus become confused. It is for reasons inscribed in the symbolic order, transcending individual development, that the fact of having or not having the imaginary and the symbolized phallus takes on the economic importance that it has in the Oedipus complex. This is what motivates both the importance of the castration complex and the pre-eminence of the famous fantasies of the phallic mother. (Seminar IV, pp. 191-192). 116

[n Tlte View from Afar. Levi-Strauss, taking the perspective of an imaginary female reader, asks the sa.me question.

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The rules of anthropology extend beyond those of the Oedipus com plex, as he states and then confirms shortly afterwards: What is in question with the end of the pre-Oedipal phase and at the dawn of the Oedipus complex? The child must take upon himself the phallus as signifier, and in sudl a way as to make it the instrument of the symbolic order of exchange, inasmuch as it presides over the constitution of family lines. In sum, he is confronted with this order, which makes the father's function pivotal in the drama (Seminar TV, p. 200). In other words, on the level of the social, political power is andrecentric and is the condition that allows kinship structures and the exchange of women-between men-to function. This organization, however, implies that at the level of the individual case, there is a patemal fw1ction that works well: it has a zero symbolic value. This function will allow the child to take up both the value of the phallus as s ignifier and his/ her own place in the family line and social exchanges, as well as, more generally, the social institutions that, as anthropology shows, are structured like a langu age. When the paternal function has been degraded, the child can remain frozen in the imaginary-pre-Oedipal-level, where it is offered up to the voraciousness and omnipotence of the mother. In the case of the foreclosure or a total absence of the Name-of-theFather, as we have seen, the s ubject can "try" to solve the problem through a delusion. Now in Seminar IV, lacan adds a new solution.

Phobia as a solution

[Phobia) is another way of solving the difficult problem introduced by the child's and the mother's relations .... [I)n order for there to be three terms in the triangle, there must be a closed space, as a way of organizing the symbolic world, that is called the father. Well, phobia is more or Jess of this order. It concerns the bond that encloses [the world). At a particularly critical moment, when no other way is open for solving the problem, phobia constitutes a call for rescue, a call for a singular symbolic element. What does this call consist in?

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Let's say that it is always by appearing as extremely symbolic, that is, as extremely distant from the imaginary. At the moment when it is called upon to help maintain the essential solidarity threatened by the gap brought about by the appearance of the phallus between the mother and the child, the element that intervenes in phobia has a truly mythic (my emphasis) character (Seminar IV, p. 58). The hole, or the open jaws of the mother, appears in the seminar in the form of a dog that frightens the phobic child, and then takes the form of the anxiety of little Hans, 117 which is associated w ith the recurring idea of being bitten by a horse. Freud interprets tl1e horse as a sort of totem, set up by the child on tile basis of a rivalry w ith the fatl1er, one that follows an Oedipal logic that more or less duplicates the parricidal s ituation of Totem and Taboo. Lacan does not really follow Freud in cOJm ecting little Hans' phobia with the father; instead, he emphasizes the anxiety of being devoured that marks the entry into phobia. In his opinion, it should be interpreted in terms of the pre-Oedipal period in which the child was then situated. At tl1at moment, the child's investigation of who possesses or does not possess tl1e phallus is located in the s pecular register. His anxiety is triggered when he perceives that his mother lacks the phallus and he imagines that she is frustrated and has constitu ted him as "the object of [her] imaginary appetite" (SeminllY IV, p . 82). "At what moment d oes the phobia become necessary? The moment w hen the mother lacks the phallus" (Seminar IV, p. 73). According to Lacan, tile triggering of the phobia must not therefore be interpreted in terms of Oedipal parricide; far from being in a rivalry witll the father, it is precisely because the father d oes not respond that the child faces the imaginary threat of being swallowed up by the mother. When the paternal function is not working well and is w1able to legislate, the imaginary phallus is not really transmuted by a symbolic register that would fix the laws by which it '" Herbert Graf (1903-1973), son of Max Graf (1873-1958), an Austrian critic and musicologist who, after meeting Freud in 1900, participated torseveral years in the weekly meetings o f his fi rst d isciples. He rbe rt Graf was observed by his father at the age o f three. l11ese observations, which were presented to Freud, are the basis o f part of the analysis of little Hans, whom Freud spoke to d irectly on 30 March 1908. This case remains the paradigm for the Freudian anaJysis of phobias.

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would circulate; therefore the child continues to incarnate, in anxiety, the imaginary version of the object that can be engulfed by the mother. According to this logic of interpretation, the horse is the mother. Nevertheless, if the objective of phobia is to reorganize the subject's psyche, the horse carmot simply be made into a substitute for the mother; instead, it is a s ignifier that must be interpreted in terms of the way in w hich the construction of the phobia progresses. The structure of this constitution is nothing other than that of a "mythiml inciting" (my emphasis) that makes up for the failure of the Nameof-the-Father as a zero-value symbol. Referring explicitly now to Levi-Strauss' 1955 article, "The Structural Study of Myth", Lacan applies the method of analysing myths to little Hans' phobia. Readers interested in Lacan's final extended analysis of Freud's case histories should examine Seminar IV, especially its fourth part, "The Structure of Myths in the Observation of Little Hans' Phobia". Since the purpose of our investigation is to show what Lacan's reh.tnl to Freud owes to Levi-Strauss, it will be enough to recall the series of scansions that, as is obvious from its concluding commentary"', mark an exemplary moment of this return.

The horse as signi fier "As Freud says to us explicitly, we could be tempted to characterise phobia by its object-the horse in this case-if we did not perceive that the horse goes beyond being what the horse is in itself. It is much more of an heraldic figure, which is prevalent, which centres the entire field, and which has all sorts of implications-implications, above all, in terms of the signifier." Further on, he adds that "What I am trying to accentuate, and which is always and everywhere omitted, is different- what I'm emphasising is that at a certain critical moment in little Hans' development, a certain signifier is brought in and it plays an organizing and recrystallizing role. It may do so in a pathological way, but that doesn't make it Jess constitutive. The horse

"The observation of Jittle Hans is completely exaggerated. If, among the five case histories, it is the one that I have left to comment upon last, there's a reason for it" (Seminnr IV, p. 205). uK

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starts to punctuate the external world of signals. I shall remind you that Freud later, when speaking of little Hans' phobia, will speak of the horse's function as a signal. For Hans, these signals restructure the world, by marking its limits very profoundly, limits whose property and function we now have to grasp .... All this is done with this element that is a signifier, the horse (Semirwr TV, pp. 305-307).

If we recall that Levi-Strauss qualified the zero institutions as obscure, we can see why, at this point of his d evelopme nt, Lacan says, "To understand the horse's function, the path isn't to seek the horse's equivalent .... The function of the horse, w hen it is introduced as the central point o f the pho bia, is to be a term that, first of all, has precisely the p roperty of being an obscure signifier [signifinnt obscur] (my emphasis). You can also ta ke the pun that I have just made, you can almost take it in a complete way- it is, seen from certain sides, meaningless {irtsignifiant]. It is here that it has its deepest hmction-it plays the role of a kind of wedge, whose function is to plough through the real again" (Seminar TV, p. 307).

Li ttle Hans' phobia as an individual myth What have we been trying to detect up to now in this mythical inciting that is the essential characteristic of the observation of Hans? (Seminar TV, p. 304). Although the individual myth can in no way be considered to be identical with mythology as such, the two have one characteristic in common: they provide a solution to a situation that is closed and in an impasse, as is the case of little Hans in relation to his father and his mother. The individual myth reproduces, in a miniatu re form, the fundamental characteristic of the development of myths, wherever we can grasp it. It consists, in sum, of facing an impossible situation by articulating, in succession, all the forms that can be taken by the impossibility of solving it. It is in this way tha t mythical creation answers a question. The individual myth travels through the complete circle of what is presented both as a possible opening and as an opening that is impossible to take. Once the circle has been closed, something

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is accomplished, which means that the s ubject places himself at the level of the question (Seminar TV, p. 330).

H ans o r the mind of the tribe [L)ittle Hans .. . is a metaphysician. He bears the question where it is, at the point where something is missing. And there, he asks, where is the explanation, in the sense in which we might say "mathematica l explanation", for this lack of being. And he behaves, like any collective mirul of a primitive tribe [my emphasis] with the rigour of which we are aware, and goes through the possible solutions, with a battery of chosen signifiers (Seminar IV, p. 330).

Three fathers and a stand-in What does analytic theory teach us about the Oed ipus complex? .... This is a fact: in order for the situation to develop in norma l conditions ... it is necessary, on the one hand, for the true penis, the real penis, the valid penis, the penis of the father to function. On the other hand, it is necessary for the child's penis, which is comparatively s ituated a t first, in a Vergleiclumg"', to reach this function . And in order to do this, it must undergo the annulment (annulation] that is called the castration complex. In other words, it is to the extent that his own penis is momentarily annihilated (annihi/e] that the child is promised that he will be able to reach a full pa ternal function later, that is, that he will be able to feel that he is in legitimate possession of his virility. And it seems that this "legitimate" is essential to the felicitous working of the sexual function in the htunan subject (Seminar TV, pp. 363-364). The symbolic father is the name of the father. This is the essential mediating element of the symbolic world and its functioning .... The name of the father is essential to any articula tion of human language ....

11 q

A German term for "comparison".

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There is the symbolic father. There is the real father .... In order for the s ubject truly to experience the castration complex, the real father must come on board. He must assume his function as a castrating father .... It is only to the extent that the father, as he exists, fulfils what is empirically intolerable and even revolting in his imaginary function, when he makes his impact as castrator felt-that that castration complex is truly experienced .... Here is the whole problem. Little Hans mus t find a stand-in for the father who stubbornly does not want to castrate him. This is the key of the observation (Semirtnr IV, pp. 364-365). Lacan dis tributes th e pate rnal function over the three regis ters and situates the stand-in o n the level of the castrating imagin ary father. He locates the anxiety about the bite by giving the same analysis of the mother's p lace in castration that h e had a lready done in 1938, an analysis that disagrees with Freud. 120

If there is castration, it is to the extent that the Oedipus complex is castration. Yet castration, and it is no accident that people have seen, rather dimly, that castration has as much to do with the mother as with the father. Maternal castration- we see it in the description of the primal situation-implies for the child the possibility of being devoured and being bitten. What is previous is ma ternal castration, and paternal castration is a substitute for it. Paternal castration may be no Jess terrible, but it is certa inly more positive than the other, because it can be developed, which is not the case with the sense of being swallowed up or devoured by the mother. With the father, a dialectical development is possible. A rivalry with the father is possible; a murder of the father is possible; an emasculation of the father is possible. On this side, the castration complex bears fruit in the Oedipus complex, in a way that it does not on the mother'sside. This is for the simp le reason that it is impossible to emasculate the mother, because there is nothing there to emasculate (Semi11nr TV, p. 367).

l:o

See Lac,;m et les sciences socinles.

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In his article of 1938 on the family complexes, Lacan had already claimed that the mother precedes the father in the. castration complex and that she has a role in promoting the law-on the basis of the anxiety of fragmentation . Lacan takes up this model again, but now highlights the choice of the "horse as biter " as a first substitute for the mother in symbolizing Hans' anxiety. This anxiety is triggered when the child perceives himself as what the mother is missing. Anxiety is th us prior to the choice of the horse and even of the bite. In locating the sense of threat in the horse's bite, 1.

2.

The child displaces the impact of the dreaded wound and The signifier of the horse allows him to symbolize, one after the other, the mother and the father (or his absence); this figure is full of "metaphorical mediation" .

The horse: Mother, then Father

If we call capital I the signifier around which phobia enacts {ordonneJ its function, let us say tha t something is symbolized by it, which we can call small sigma, a, and which is the absence of the father, p•. Thus we have[ (up•)

This is not to say that this is everything that is contained in the signifier of the horse-far from it" (Seminar TV, p. 346). As we have seen in particular, at the dawn of the phobia, the horse

symbolizes the mother. The b ite as derived fro m the threat

(T}he maternal bite, which is taken as an instrumental element, as the substitute for the intervention of castration, is diverted from its direction, since it does not bear upon the penis, but on something else that, in the last fantasy, leads to a change. We should believe that this change already has a certain degree of sufficiency, in any case, enough sufficiency to reduce the phobia. By the end, Hans has been changed. This is what has been obtained (Seminar IV, p. 368).

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We can see w hat is at stake: the d anger has been displaced through the choice of a signifier that will be a metaphor for the mother's voraciousness. Does this task not ordinarily fall to the Name-of-theFather or the paternal metaphor? The phobi a as equivalent to the paternal metaphor

First, Lacan w rites the equation that expresses the impasse of little Hans, who has been confronted w ith his little sister, Harma. The terms of this impasse can be written as follows: (Mother + Phallus + Harma) M ~ bite + penis (his own) lacan writes:

(M + 'i' +H) M ~ m + TI.121 Then he adds that "As soon as the problem is presented to him in this way, it is necessary to introduce a metaphoric element of med iation: the horse, since there is no other. It will be noted as 'I, with the spiritus asper" (Seminar IV, p. 380). Lacan then combines the impasse and its "solution" by writing the formula for phobia as the following: 122 )M m +TI . 'I ( M+
Phobia is a mythic formation and Levi-Strauss has formalized myths, but Lacan does not stop here; instead, he comments on what he has done in a crucial concluding remark: "This formula ... is the equivalent of the paternal metapl10r (my emphasis) (Seminar IV, p. 380). For Lacan, the phobic object-here the horse--must be interpreted as a signifier that organizes the entire mythic architecture of phobia; it is clinically fruitful because it serves as a stand-in for the failed paternal fw1ction. In other words, it s tands in for the failure of the semantic hmction that enables symbolic thought to operate. Why have I examined Lacan's read ing of little H ans? I have not done so in order to d uplicate Lacan's d azzling structural 1: 1 1: :

Seminar IV, p. 380. Seminar IV, p. 380.

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interp reta tion of the small boy's phobia, and beyond that, of all phobia. Instead, I have done so to confirm how Lacan emphasizes the quasi-mythic value of phobia as an operator that is able to make up for a degraded paternal function. He does this in the same way that Levi-Strauss had highlighted how myth-at least in certain of its aspects-can be ranked in the class of zero-value institutions, along w ith the spirit of things and the signifiers of exceptions, where I myself have placed the Name-of-the-Father. The latter cond itions the quilting of the signifier and s igni fied and the very functioning of symbolic systems, just li ke the other forms of the zero symbolic value. From this point of view, the phobic myth allows the subject to participate-in his own particular s tyle--in an everyday (neurotic) way of using language and the social bonds. According to Lacan, the phobic myth sets up a s tand-in at the very place w here, in psychosis, the delusion appears as an attempt at a cure. For this reason, indeed, Lacan, in referring to little Hans' phobia, also mentions delusion and myth . What is s triking is the articulated way in which this d elirium develops. l say "delusion"-it is almost like a parapraxis, since it has nothing to do with psychosis here, but the term is not inappropriate .... We have ... the impression that the construction of the ideas ... in the case of little Hans, has its own motivation, its own plane, its own jurisdiction. Perhaps it responds to such and such a function, but assuredly not to whatever could be justified by such a drive, such an impulse, such a specific emotional movement that would transpose it, even that would express it purely and simply. What is in question is an entirely different mechanism, one that necessitates the structural study of myth (Semi11nr TV, pp. 29()..291 ). If this reading of little Hans, the last of Lacan's major commentaries on Freud's case histories, culminates in a reference to Levi-Strauss, how can we not see that the use of Levi-Strauss has been essential to the return to Freud? We need to ask w hat Levi-Strauss' structural analysis of myths allowed Lacan to see about Freud's clinical handling of myths. To do so will show us w hether or not the use of Levi-Strauss has reduced the gap between Freud and Lacan on the

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187

essential question of myth: the question of origin, and for Freudianism, the question of the father.

The myth of the dead father and what makes up for it

Totem and Taboo or the super-ego On 6 March 1957, Lacan situates what he considers to be Freud's cmcial question: "All of Freud's questioning boils down to this: What is a father?" (Seminar IV, p. 204). With the troubles of the phobic child, Lacan, once again, gives a decisive place to the paternal function in subjective structuring; if this functioning has been degraded, it can be replaced by a mythical and symptomatic elaboration that links the signi fier to the signified. In 1957, while examining Freud's texts, Lacan indicates that the work " that was his favourite, and which seemed to him to be his greatest tritttnph, is Totem and Taboo, which is nothing other than a modem myth, a myth constructed to explain what remained as a gap in his doctrine, namely, 'Where is the father?"' (Seminar IV, p. 210). Lacan suggests that Freud, in order to elucidate the question of the origin, produces a myth that transforms the question, "What is a father?" into the question, "Where is the Father?" He adds that " [I]f fathers are to continue to exist, there must be the true father, the only father, the wlique father, before the entry into history, and tllis is the dead father. Even more: it is the fatl1er who has been killed" (Seminar IV, p. 210). Lacan shows that there is a separation between fathers and the father, w ho incarnates the answer to Freud's hmdamental question, which thus becomes, "What is the Fatller?" The father is the one who was killed before the beguming of the history of the sons' societies; Freud tells tllis story in Totem and Taboo, and tllis inaugural parricide fow1ds social rules, which are activated in tl1e Name of the dead father; this parricide is also the origin of the super-ego, w hich is nothing other, according to Lacan, than the signi fier w hose pre-emii1ent hmction is to cement our relation to the signified. T he primal father "will have been killed. And why, if not to preserve him?" (Seminar IV, p . 211). This preservation takes tl1e fonn of a tyrmmical super-ego, which "alone, even a mo ng non-neurotics, represents, in1prints, )eaves o n human beu1gs the seal of their relation to the signifier" (Seminar IV,

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p. 212). Thus, according to Lacan, the spirit of the paternal "thing" takes the form of an exceptional signifier called the super-ego. He then introduces a new idea: its symptoms can be equivalent to it. " In the human being, there is a signifier that marks his/her relation to the s ignifier, and this is called the super-ego. There is even more than one; these are called symptoms" (Seminar IV, p . 212). The loop has th us been closed. Freud's myth of parricide answers the question, "What is the father?" His response is that the father is not only the dead father, but is also what can be deduced from him: the super-ego, a signifier that quilts the sons to the aggregate of signifiers, just as symptoms also do. The reader should not be surprised by this new equivalence if s/ he remembers that in the Rome Report, Lacan says that in the psychoses, myths make up for the degraded function; this degradation was given a mythical form in Totem and Taboo. Through the super-ego, this patemal function knots the human being's relation to the law and quilts the signifier to the signified.

Symptoms as mythical stand-ins The myth of Totem nnd Taboo should be read as the founding myth of both the paternal fw1ction and of the ordinary relation to the signifier. When the paternal fw1ction has been degraded, the clinic lets us see symptoms that s tand in as substitutes for it: phobias, del usions and other symptomatic forms. What it is in1portant to see is that symptomatic stand-ins respond to the d egrading of the totemic ftmction; their structural aspect indicates that only mythical formations- phobias, delusions, etc.-can fill in for the myth. Whatever his/ her subjective s tructure may be, the human being remains a mythic anim al and the symptoms in question s hould therefore be interpreted as d ifferent versions of the found ing myth; the essential function of this myth is to knot desire to the law or, in Lacanian terms, to enable the signifier to be quilted to the s ignified. From this perspective, all symptoms or mythic formations are different forms of the paternal ftmction, forms that naturally give rise to stmcturally d ifferent modes of existence: neurosis, psychosis, perversion. It should be noted that all members of the human species have this in common.

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189

This is also the first time that Lacan presents the symptom as the equivalent of the quilting introduced by the super-ego and the dead father. Much later, in Book XXITI of the seminar, which he entitled "le sinthome", he returns to this problematic of the symptom as the equivalent of the Name-of-the-Father. Yet already in 1957, according to Lacan, phobias, delusions, and more generally, symptoms also have the value of quilting points, as does the super-ego, which analysts have much more readily understood to be the result both of the marriage of desire to the law and of the primal parricide. Lacan, in treating the series of symptoms as myths that should be accotmted for with Levi-Strauss' structural logic, is doing something that is also situated at the heart of Freud's logic; this logic had already indicated what phobia, for example, owes to the currency of the child's desire for parricide. 123 Without contradicting Freud, Lacan systematizes the mythic organization of symptoms, and includes Totem and Taboo in his differential archaeology of the patemal function as a modern myth that accounts for the production of the exceptional signifier as an operator; this operator allows symbolic thought to function by means of a symptom that is social and totemic rather than individual. We could therefore say that for Lacan, as for Levi-Strauss, social myth has always guaranteed the bond between the human being and the law; for both men, symptoms are also individual myths, but La can specifies how these stand-ins enable signifier and signified to be quilted. This quilting not only allows symbolic thought to operate; but these operators also enable phobic thought, obsessional thought, and psychotic thought-each of which has a different mythic formation-to fw1ction. If the return to Freud has indeed been, as Lacan announced in 1951, the means of re-establishing, in the analytic field, the "bridge" that connects "modern man and ancient myths", we can see that he is now making a more precise analysis, since he reminds us of the mythic genealogy of the paternal fw1ction in Freud's work. Thanks to Levi-Strauss, he has brought to light the Name-of-the-Father, the operator that is necessary if symbolic thought is to take place.

>ll See Sigmund Freud, Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy(1961, pp. 1-145),

and Paul-Laurent Assoun, L.efoJts psyclmnnlytiques sur /es plwbit>s (2000).

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In treating the series of symptoms as mythic fonnations that stand in for the Name-of-the-Father, he finally offers us a d ifferential clinic of the various ways in w hich symbolic thought is expressed in analytic experience: neuroses, psychoses, perversions. From this point of view, myth appears as the operator that dontinates all htunan life as s uch, and the Oedipus complex- w hen it exists for a subject or a group-no longer seems to be anything more than a "purifying bath that renews the rebirth of the law" (Seminar VI)Y'' We can see that, at this moment, the function of the myth is of foremost importance for lacan; he continues to restrict the span of the Oedipus complex, which he, as always, considers to be limited and non-universaL Throughout his d ifferential clinic, he is much closer to Levi-Strauss than to Freud, since he is seeking to show the plurality of mythical formations on both the ethnological and clinical levels; Freud, on the other hand, had affirmed the historical and foundational character of Totem and Taboo for all humanity, just as he affirms the correlative wliversality of the Oedipus complex. In 1961, lacan will enumerate, in this same line of research, a series of myths that shows the historical development of the Western subject. This series is articulated in tenns of the knowled ge that the father has been put to death: Totem nnd Taboo, Hamlet, and the Cot1fontaine Trilogy. Where Freud claims that there are universals- Totem and Taboo, the Oedipus complex- lacan, like Levi-Strauss, sees mythological modalities and rituals, wllich are historically and geographically differentiated. His return to Freud brings him back to the symbolic hmction that is the heart of Freud's work, but by following Levi-Strauss, he shows the various ways in wllich the Freudian myth takes hold over living beings. His return is therefore not dogmatic, 1:.~

TI1is is the context in which L"'lcan makes this statement: "It is too obvious that this crime-the primal murder o f the father-\..•hidl, for [Freud), is required and must always reappear, whidl forms the horizon, the final bar o f the problem of orig ins .... 11-te primal murder of the father, which is the origin of the horde and the origin of the Judaic tradition obviously has the character of a mythical requirement .... Quite another thing is the relation between the primal law and the primal crime/ and what happens when Oedipus-the tragic hero, who is also, in essence, each of us in some point of his being-reproduces the Oedipal tragedy, when by killing the fa U1er, he sleeps '"•ith the mother. In doing this, he renews, as it were, on the tragic plane/ in a sort of purifying bath/ the rebirth of the law." In Le disir et S<JII iuterpretntiou [Dtsirt?nmi Its Interpretation} (1958-1959), Book VI of the semina r (unpub lished).

TH E NA,\otE OF THE FATHER, PSYCHOS IS A NO PHOBIA

19 1

any more than is his alliance with Levi-Strauss, since as I shall indicate in a postlude, certain differences of opinion would soon separate the two figures. This would occur w hen Lacan discovers the object (a), a d iscovery that would lead him to make the universe of objects incomplete, like the world itself. Yet before begim'ling to analyse tl'lis new period of Lacan's research, it is necessa ry to take tl1e time to show everytl'ling that Lacan's retun1 to Freud owed to Levi-Strauss, as well as the radical changes that resulted from it in the psychoanalytic field.

CO NCL U SIO N

The doxa: Its ideals and the repression of Levi-Strauss

To conclude, we need to sit uate our analysis of Lacan's return to Freud in relation to other readings of it, for these readings constitute a doxa that accounts for this Lacanian moment by the influence of the philosophical or linguistic works that he mentioned d uring this period: essentially Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in Geneml Linguistics (1915). First of all, let us confi rm that Lacan did indeed listen attentively to the seminar that Koji:we 125 devoted to Hegel for three years at the Ecole des f1autes etudes en sciences sociales, just as it is easy to show that Jean Hyppolite was present at the first year of Lacan's seminar (1953-1954). It should also be noted that Hyppolite was the French

·~Alexandre

Kojeve (1902- 1968). Bom Alexandre Kojevnikov in Moscow, he emigrated to Germany and then to France. ln 1933/ while he was a student at the Sorbonne, Alexandre Koyre d lose him as a substihlte lecturer for his courses at the Ecole des /mutes .?tudes en sciences socinles. [n Paris, his commentary on the Phenomenology of Spirit produced a powerful renewal of the reading of Hegel Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, Jean Hyppolite, Raymond Queneau and Jacques l.acan were among his listeners.

193

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LACAN AN D LEVI-STRAU SS OR T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

translator of the Phenomenolog~; of Spirit. Lacan refers frequently to Hegel during his return to Freud, especially in relation to the theory of "desire as the desire of tl1e otl1er", which immediately puts the seeker of sources on the track of HegeL Thus in Lncan, La formation du co11cept du sujet, Bertrand Ogilvie writes: To desire is not to desire the other, but to desire the other's desire: Kojeve and his reading of Hegel gave Lacan the means to formulate the idea that the subject's reactive structure is connected to the situation that has created him, not in an accidental but in an essential way, since the situation already contains the structure in itself. The subject is not prior to the world of forms that fascinates him: he is constituted, first of all, by them and in them. 126

This remark is apposite, and there is no reason to cast d oubt on this Hegelian infl uence, but tl1e point at which it had an im pact and its function need to be clarified: Lacan had taken up tl1e impasse of desire as the other's desire in 1938, in the clinical form of the intrusion complex, w hich goes along w ith the mirror stage and the imaginary register of subjective structuring. It is true that at this date, Lacan had constructed "the sol ution by means of the father'': the son's metamorphosis into the father allows the Oedipal subject to go beyond the im passe and to extract his subjective maturation from the paranoiac stage in order to be able to produce cultural goods. If Lacan's formulation of the impasse of the m irror stage d oes not lack Hegelian inspiration, the way out of this impasse, as form ulated in 1938 or 1950 is less so, since Hegel would have situated death as tl1e "solution" in the master /slave dialectic, which according to him, constitutes the moment of subj ective impasse. Is there a solution, tl1en, by means of tl1e father or by death? Let us go forward w ith Lacan: starting witl1 his return to Freud,which Bertrand Ogilvie does not stud y,Lacan changes the conceptual galaxy that surrounds the question of the father and exchanges the actual father- who had constituted the sol ution in 1938-for the symbolic version of the father, whose value is all the more convincing s ince he is dead. This "epistemological" murder of the actual father is '"Bertrand Ogilvie, wean, Ia formation du concept de sujet: 1932-1949, (1987, pp. 105-106.

CONC LU SI ON

195

certainly the act by which Lacan, without quite disclaiming Hegel, reconciles himself w ith Freud; with his theory of the forgotten parricide, Freud had understood that the operator that regulates jouissnnce is the aggregate of the social nrles formulated in the name of the dead father. Taking as his basis both Hegel's meditation on death and Freud's theory of the dead father, Lacan can, in 1953, in The Neurotic's Individual Myth, introduce both death and the dead father as analytic operators that are indispensable for the progress of the treatment. It is not by chance that the expression, "Name-of-theFather" appears for one of the first times in this lecture. Yet if, at this d ate, he allied himself with the desire of Freud,the desire of the dead father of psychoanalysis--in w hom, as he sa id, we must trust, it is also the moment when he can see beyond the profile of the dead father,which can be found everywhere in the clinic of the paternal ftmction- the place of the symbolic function as such, as the place w here the unconscious desire of the subject, which comes from the other,is prod uced . If desire is s till, at that time, the other 's desire, we must not fail to notice that the fonns that produce the subject have cl1anged. The texts on the mirror stage situate this form in the imaginary, while the return to Freud allows Lacan- after reading Freud's texts, sucl1 as the case history of Dora- to see that the unconsciousness of desire is motivated by a form of language through which the subject receives his own message from the other in an inverted fonn, accord ing to the formula coined by Levi-Strauss. This displacement of the Lacanian and Durkheimian laws of the family in favour of the rules of speech and language-borrowed from Levi-Strauss--disru pted Lacan's point of view on the Freudian theory of the symptom and prod uced a real mutation of his theory of the unconscious subject. Yet at this very moment, there is a sort of condensation in the theoretical architecture that is being constructed, since both the subjective impasse and the subjective solution can be formulated in the same way: "man's desire is the other 's desire". In his retun1, Lacan doubles and even triples the register of the analysis of subjective structuring; in this double form, the impasse-" man's desire is the other's desire"-remains imaginary, while the solution"man's desire is the other's desire"- is symbolic. Thus, we need to be clear, w henever we use this form ula, whether it is located in the in1aginary-the intrusive other-or the symbolic- the other of

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language. A failure to perceive this s tructural separation will prevent us from understand ing what Lacan's return to Freud implies and will lead us to read it in terms of the simple Hegelian formulations of the preceding period. This is not all. An examination of the doxa of Lacan's readers shows a recurrent reference to the influence of Saussure, w ho s upposedly enabled Lacan to undertake a return to Freud that emphasized the symbolic. For this style of reading, the alliance of Hegel and Saussure would be sufficient as the theoretical sources of the theory of the subject that Lacan put together a t this moment of his analysis. This is why the work of Joel Dor- which mus t be read if one wants to follow the development of the schema Lin Lacan's work-quickly introd uces the reader to w hat s/he must know about the Pltettomenology of Mind and the Course in General Linguistics in order to make sense of Lacan's retun1 to Freud. That Dor does so does not detract from the quality or the usefulness of his work, but, from my point of view, the absence of the reference to Levi-Strauss is a symptom of the theoretical repression of La can' s use of French etlm ology, especially of Levi-Strauss. For the best readers of Lacan, this presence seems to have been ruined by tl1e shadow of philosophers and linguists. Two supplementary references can confirm this: Philippe Julien's jacques Lacan's Return to Freud, w hich was first published in French in 1985, 127 never mentions the name of Levi-Strauss, any more than does Erik Porge's s tudy, Les noms du pere chez jacques Lacan (The Names of the Father in jacques Lacat1).128 ln these works, the deafening Hegelian and Saussurian references fw1ction as a theoretical ideal tl1at is mentioned ceaselessly; Levi-Strauss' influence, in t urn, is repressed. Why is there such a deafening reference to these other figures? Let us remain measured about tl1is question, since Alain Juran ville has, since 1986, been approaching Lacan's references to Hegel and Saussure in a nuanced way; his n uances set him apart from the consensus, which he regularly introduces in his text, Lacan et Ia philosophic (Lacan and Philosophy) with the excellent expression, " It is well known that ...."

Philippe Julien, jacques Lllcmr's Ret11m to Freud: 17te Rrul. the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. ·~ Erik Porge.. Les noms du p(re cltez Jacques Lncau: pouctuatimrs et problfmntiques (1997).

m

CONCLU SI ON

197

It is well known that Lacan founded much of his presentation of psychoanalytic theory on Hegel's thought. People have not hesitated to reproach him for it. In fact, Lacan's relations to Hegel do not seem very simple: if there is indeed a "dialectic of desire" in Lacan's conception, it still needs to be made dear that because desire is the "ontological" translation of the phenomenon of the signifier, this dialectic cannot unfold in quite the same way that it does in Hegel-it is inseparable from a "subversion of the subject", which creates an initial difference between Lacan's and Hegel's subjects."' Precisely. Juran ville highlights the logic of the signifier, and therefore desire as the desire of the other of the symbolic, which is situated at the point of separation between Lacan's and Hegel's theories. Here again, Juranville wan1s us aga inst the doxn: It is well known that Lacan justified his foundational work

on the basis of Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic theories. It is also known that linguists have often cried out that he misLmderstood them. And Lacru1 himself ended up speaking of his "linguistricks", as if he had had to recognize that he had performed a theoretical diversion of Saussure's formulations. What did he do to them? (1984, p. 41). This is Juranville's answer : "In Lacan, it is not the case, ns it is in Smtss11re, that the signified precedes the signifier, it is the signifier that is first. The pure signifier'' (1984, p. 47). "[T]he signified is produced by the signifier" (p. 48). "This is w hat must be accepted , if one wants to follow Lacan" (p. 47). Juranville takes the critical d istance from comm on sense that is necessary for all research . His formula, "It is well known that ..." s tresses the resistances and prejudices that are the marks of ignorance, and even repression. It remains true, however, that Juranville leaves aside Levi-Strauss' contribution to Lacan's work, especially in terms of its relation to Lacan's formulations about the logic of the signifier; as we have seen, it was not Lacan who made the elegant reversal of Saussure's algorithm and asserted that the signifier dominates the signi fied. Instead, it was

m

Alain juranville, /.omt1 ella plli/osopllie (1984).

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Levi-Strauss w ho did so, as Lacan himself indicated in his 1956 dialogue with the former, a t Jean Wahl's College de pltilosophie. Here again, the repression o f Levi-Strauss continues, in favour of Saussure, wh ose work was s upposedly reth ough t directly by Lacan, who would tints have been responsible for the crucia l epistemological act--<:mcial for both psychoanalysis and an thropologyo f inverting the Saussurian algorithm in order to symbolize the d o minance o f the signifier over the signified. This act was a tme th eoretical revolution, whid1 gave the signi fier its inlperial sovereignty and e nabled Lacan to "ret urn" to Freud, his theory and his great cl inical cases. On this point, we should no te that, to our knowledge, among Lacan's readers, Guy Gaufey is on e of the very few wh o does n o t attempt to bury Levi-Strauss, an attempt tl1at is influen ced by the idealizatio n of Lacan's philosophical an d linguistic references, particula rly in terms of th e genealogy o f the no tion of tl1e symbolic. This Course was not what triggered Lacan's work. Much more decisive was the intermediary of Claude Levi-Strauss and his notion of a symbolic system where only pure differences were articulated, a system that, according to him, derived from Troubetskoy, the model, if it was so, of the structural constructions that would follow.'"' This is true. G uy le Gaufey says no more about this, since his study, Le lasso imaginaire (Tite Imaginary Lasso) is, in its own terms, "not the place to examine the delicate Lacanian genea logy of the symbolic" (1997, pp. 225- 226). It is up to us, then, in o ur analysis, to examine this repression o f the social sciences, a repression that extends to the influence o f Durkheim as well as of Levi-Strauss. From the moment we d iagn osed this repressio n in the doxa of the reading o f Lacan, we have been trying to see how deep it is, to show its impact and to design a te its presupp ositions. We shall not go back to Durkheim, who was set aside by La can himself- after 15 years-in favour o f Levi-Strauss." '

· ~ G uy

Le Gaufey, Le las.so spfc:u/aire: line €tude traversiere de l'tmiti imaginaire (1997,

pp. 225-226). • ~• See my I.Aciw et les scieuces S<Jdnles.

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What could account for the "fall" of Claude Levi-Strauss' research in favour of the philosophical ideal in accounts of the genesis of Lacan's work, and especially of his return to Freud, which was a crucial modification of the field of psychoanalysis in France and the world? Is the importance of Lacan's philosophical references so great that it justifies the neglect of the social sciences? How can we decide, if not by turning to a philosophical master, whose qualifications will allow a reasonable evaluation of w hether the doxa concerning Lacan's philosophical sources is well-founded? Why not Louis Althusser? 132 This is not a bad idea, since he was welldisposed to Lacan and took the trouble to examine the philosophical references that Lacan had made during his return to Freud. Louis Allhusser's point of view

In 1964, Althusser vigorously took a position on this return in an article in La Nouvelle Critique, the journal of the commmlist intellectuals w hose importance for all of French intellectual life was crucial at the time. Althusser wrote: So a return to Freud today demands: 1. Not only that we reject the ideological layers of the reactionary exploitation of Freud as a crude mystification 2. [B]ut also that we avoid the more subtle ambiguities of psycho-analytic revisionism, sustained as they are by the prestige of certain more or less scientific disciplines 3. [A ]nd finally that we commit ourselves to a serious effort of historico-theoretical criticism in order to identify and define, in the concepts Freud had to use, the true epistemological relatiou between these concepts and their thought content. '" Louis Althusser (1918-1990). A major philosophical and political reference, the \\•ritings of Louis Althusser had a sb·ong hold on communist intellectuals in France and beyond d uring the 1960s and 1970s. His research was concerned essentially with rereading Marx$s texts and inaugurated a return to Marx/ whose correspondence with Lacan's retum to Freud is obvious. A professoro f phiJosophy at the Ecole uormnle suphieure, he was the teacher of the young students who next became involved with Lacan, particularly jacques-Alain Miller, who has played an important role in the development of the Lacanian field both na tionally and internationally. Following the dismissal of the charges of murdering his wife, Althusser wrote his autobiography, The Future Lasts Forellt'r: A Memoir.

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Without this triple labour of ideological criticism (1, 2) and epistemological elucidation (3), which, in France, has been initiated in practice by Lacan, Freud's discovery in its specificity will remain beyond our reach."' Althusser uses the expression, "return to Freud", which Lacan had been using as a slogan s ince 1951 and recognizes that Lacan had opened the path back to Freud's work. From this point of view, Louis Althusser is in harm ony w ith Lacan about w hat is essential. Yet what, here, is essential for AI!husser? It is the retum begun by Lacan to a Freudian "maturity": a return to a moment when, freed from any d isciplinary "attachment", psychoanalysis takes its position as "A new science w hich was the science of a new object: the unconscious" (1964, p. 150). Althusser explains that "If psycho-analysis is a science because it is the science of a distinct object, it is also a science with the structure of all sciences: it has a theory and a technique (method) that make possible the knowledge and transformation of its object in a specific practice" (p. 150). Allying himself in his style with Lacan's struggle, Althusser borrows an expression from Lenin's Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder'" in order to attack the International Psychoanalytic Association; he speaks of "the theoretical infantilism, the relapse into childhood in which all or a part of contemporary psycho-analysis, particularly in America, savours the advantages of surrender"(1964, pp. 152-153)."' According to Althusser, the mark of this infantilism lies in the fact that, in the IPA, psychoanalysis is not sustained by its "own object", the unconscious, but by d oubtful alliances with "psychology, whether behaviourist (Dalbiez), phenomenological (Merleau-Ponty) or existentialist (Sartre); to a more or less Jacksonian bio-neurology (Ey); to 'sociology' of the 'culturalist' or 'anthropological' type (dominant in the USA: Kardiner, Margaret Mead, etc.) and to philosophy (cf. Sartre's 'exis tentialist psychoanalysis', Binswanger's 'Dnseinnnnlyse', etc." (p. 153).

Louis Althusser, Freud and [..,can, in Essays 011 Irleology (1964). Lenin, Vladimir ll'ich. Left-wing Conmumism, mz lnfnntile Disorder. '" The original translation, which used "childishness" rather than "infantilism", has been altered in order to bring the passage into line with the author's reading of it. (Trnnslntor's note.) ou

•:-.~

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Althusser claims that, in contrast, " Lacan's first word is to say: in principle, Freud founded a science. A new science which was the science of a new object: the unconscious" (1964, p. 150). As opposed to the "compromise alliances sealed with imaginary ties of adoption but very real powers", Lacan "defends the irreducibility of analysis against these 'reductions' and deviations, which dominate most contemporary theoretical interpretations; he defends its irred ucibility, w hich means the irreducibility of its object" (pp. 153, 155). Al thusser is particularly precise on the point of alliances and we must be very attentive to this, since for him, defending the irreducibility of the object of psychoan alysis, the unconscious, does not imply the necessity of a splendid isolation. "Lacan would be the first to admit that his attempted theorization would have been impossible were it not for the emergence of a new science: linguistics" (p . 159). Then Althusser continues his reading- which has been repeated and has now become the orthodox one--<>f the genesis of the Lacanian theory of the unconscious subject, a theory that d erives from a reading of Freud through a Sa ussurian lens: Herein no doubt lies the most original aspect of Lacan's work, his discovery. Lacan has shown that this transition from (ultimately purely) biological existence to human existence (the human child) is ad\ieved within the Law of Order, the law I shall call the Law of Culture, and that this Law of Order is confounded in its formal essence with the order of language (1964, p. 150). Here again, we find Sa ussure in the place where Levi-Strauss has been repressed, despite the fact that his work is mentioned soon afterwards when Althusser asks: How can we rigorously formulate the relation between the formal structure of language, the absolute precondition for the existence and intelligibility of the W\COr\Scious, on the one hand, the concrete kinship structures on the other, and finally the concrete ideological formations in whid\ the specific functions implied by the kinship structures (paternity, maternity, childhood) are lived? Is it conceivable that the historical variation of these latter structu res (kir\Ship, ideology) might materially affect some or other aspect of the instances isolated by Freud? (1964, p. 169).

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Althusser does not seem to see everything that Lacan, in listening to Lev i-Strauss, had a lready fo rmulated a bo ut this point. We s hall a lso n ote that he me n tions the Oed ip us complex as the drama tic structu re, the "theatrical machine" imposed by the Law of Culture on every involuntary, conscripted candidate to humanity, a s tructure containing in itself not only the possibility of, but the necessity for the concrete variants in w hich it exists, for every individual who reaches its threshold, lives through it and s urvives it .... These variants can be thought and known in their essence itself on the basis of the s tructure of the Oedipal invariant (1964, p. 168). Here Althusser is m ore Freu dian than Lacan, who, in agreeing with Levi-Strauss, does no t tre at the Oed ip us complex as an invarian t. O n what is essential, however, Althusser d oes agree with the Lacan o f the return to Freud, whom h e had s tarted to s upport publicly in the s ummer of 1963. One year before "Fre ud and Lacan", h e h ad written the fo llowing: Marx based his theory on the rejection of the myth of the "homo oeconomicus", Freud based his theory on the rejection of the myth of the "homo psyclwlogicus". Lacan has seen and understood Freud's liberating ru pture. He has understood it in the fullest sense of the term, ta king it rigorous ly at its word and forcing it to produce its own consequences, without concessions or quarter. It may be that, like everyone else, he errs in the detail or even the choice of his philosophical bearings; but we owe him the essential (1964, p. 147).""' The hom age is q uite stron g : "We owe him th e essen tia l." On the other han d, Alth usser makes several in cidental stateme nts that a re centra l to us, beca use, in them , he does no thing less than eval uate what dete rmines Lacan's choice o f his p hilosop hica l guid es, a choice that, he s uggests, involved a ce rtain wandering and grop in g. We wa n t to be w1ders tood here: what is essential This statement, whid'l appears in a note to "Freud and Lacan", is a citation from a text that Althusser had published in the Revue de l'mseiguemenf plli/osopllique, June/ Ju ly 1963. •~

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is that Althusser was generous in his support for lacan . Yet we would like to highlight that even in June and July 1963, a moment of acute political struggle-the moment that lacan would call his excommunication-Althusser judged that it was useful to express some discreet reservations about these philosophical guides. These reservations are all the more striking since they contrast with the automaton of the doxa of lacan's readers, who almost compulsively refer to these philosophical masters as his sources. Such readers would be tempted to neglect Althusser's small reservation, which appears in a tactful note at the bottom of the page. Indeed they could, but it happens that during the next year, 1964, precisely when lacan was stnrggling against the analysts of the IPA, which was regressing to infantile psychoanalytic positions and relying on very heterogeneous scientific authorities, Althusser confirmed his reservations about reducing all of psychoanalysis to "the primitive experience of the Hegelian struggle, of the phenomenological for-others, or of the Heideggerian 'gulf' of being" (1964, p. 154). Shortly afterwards, Althusser is even more explicit, since he describes Lacan as "a man of the besieged vanguard, condenmed by the cnrshing strength of the threatened structures and corporations to forestall their blows". He then goes on to link this situation to "the often paradoxical resort to the security provided by pltilosoplries completely foreign to !tis scientific undertaking (Hegel, Heidegger) (my emphasis), as so many intimidating wib1esses thrown in the faces of part of his audience to retain their respect; and as so many wib1esses to a possible objectivity, the natural ally of his thought, to reassure or educate the rest" (p. 155). The endorsement has now ended and Althusser makes an evaluation without nuance: for Lacan, Hegel and Heidegger are learned gua rantees that are utterly foreign to his scientific enterprise. According to him, lacan only refers to them in order to gain respect from his adversaries. Then he adds: As this resort was almost indispensable to sustain a discourse addressed from within to the medical profession alone, one would have to ignore both the conceptual weakness of meclical studies in general and the profound need for theory felt by the best medical men, to condemn it out of hru1d (1964, pp. 155-156).

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Perhaps, but if we agree with Althusser that Lacan's use of his philosophical guides is opportunistic, it is necessary, w ith him, to avoid "condemn[ing) it out of hand"; this is especially tme since, at the time, Lacan could very well have been constrained to adopt this s trategy, which aimed at impressing, not philosophers, but physicians, whose theoretical knowledge Althusser considers to be rather modest. Yet do we not also find- without any criticism- a similar idealization of these same philosophical guides in the current doxa of Lacan's readers? Are those w ho have formed current opinion and have produced this doxn better educated theoretically than Althusser? Are they better able to evaluate Lacan's reference to these emblematic figures? Lacanian psychoanalysts are often physicians or psychologists and they usually seem less theoretically competent than Althusser to evaluate Lacan's heuristic use of philosophical references. If my thesis about the repression of Lacan's anthropological infl uences is correct-especially in relation to the work of Levi-Strausswe could find in Althusser an acceptable analysis of what led to this repression: the idealizing of the philosophical gu ides mentioned in Lacan's texts. According to this analysis, Lacan referred to them less for w hat they enabled him to produce than for what Althusser called, in order to condemn them, "compromise alliances sealed with imaginary ties of adoption but very real powers" (1964, p. 152). The repression of Levi-Strauss in the name of idealizing the philosophical references- a repression that occurs not in Lacan's own texts but in the minds of his readers- appears then as an effect of retroaction that Lacan himself could not have controlled; this effect has occurred because, since 1951, he had chosen to refer to philosophical authorities in order to maintain the respect of the physicians of the IPA. It would have been difficult for Lacan to foresee that these philosophical guides-which he had used to build a rampart of respect that was indispensable for his retum to Freud- would later fascinate the physicians in his own camp and lead them astray in their readings of his texts. We need to be clear here, for it would be reductive to deny that various philosophers contributed to Lacan's research; both ltuninaries such as Hegel and the much less glorious figure of Heidegger made their contributions. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Althusser's suggestion that Lacan used his philosophical guides as political instruments has never really gained the attention of Lacan's

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readers. Althusser's judgement is quite good, since Levi-Strauss' influence on Lacan has d isappeared from histories of both the latter's tho ught and of psychoanalysis. If my thesis is correct, what is at stake is not trivial. I therefore need to be even more precise and to return to the situation in which Althusser took a stand o n Lacan's work, and see whether the Lacan of 1964 really coincides with Althusser's formulations concerning hinl.

The essential: Lacan's point of view On the essential, first of all, we have seen that Althusser highlighted the scientific requirement of Lacan's return to Freud- w hich does not rehtte my own analysis-but it is necessary to remember that in January 1964, w hen he wrote "Freud and Lacan", Lacan was being "excommunicated" by the IPA. At that moment, he exchanged the inteJlded theme of the 11th year of his seminar-the Names-of-theFather- for an examination of the foundations of psychoanalysis; this examinatio n was supposed to make the scientific character of psychoanalysis less into a certainty than a question. Leaving aside the religio us version of psychoanalysis, Lacan does not quite dismiss the idea that psychoanalysis has an object and a specific experience. It is nevertheless true, as he remarks, that no o ne q uestions the desire of the physicist in order to characterize physics as a science; o n the other hand, the inlpact of the desire of the analyst is so strong that it must be analysed in order to see what follows from it in both analytic experience and the elaboration of the o bject of this experience. In this way, a properly scientific object could be produced. Concerning this point, he states, in the first sessions of the seminar, that "something, in Freud, was never analysed" (Seminar XI, p. 12). It was precisely in order to bring out w hat, in Freud's desire, had enabled hin1 to open up the experience of the unconscious that Lacru1 had hoped to give a seminar o n the Names-of-the-Father. In s uspending his analysis of the origin of psychoanalysis, Lacan leaves in the shadows what analytic experience and its object owe to Freud's desire."' The effect of the absence of this analysis is to leave

'" TI1e result of this, as J have already said, is the etemal return of the thesis of the

decline of the father as a mythic fonnation. This formation makes up for the hole that Lacan maintained in the analysis of the origin of psychoanalysis.

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the scientific character of psychoanalysis as a question that must be resolved, since Lacan does not throw light on the founder's desire, as he had mmounced that he would; only such an analysis could have separated psychoanalysis from its founder's desire in order to give a scientific theory of it. There is thus a gap between Althusser and Lacan, a gap that should have been noted, since, in 1964, Lacan seems less enthusiastic about a scientific ideal for psychoanalysis than Althusser, who had thought that this ideal was being realized in the ret urn to Freud. Was this moment, however, still a part of Lacan's return to Freud? Perhaps, but no longer in the sense in which he had done so from 1951 to 1957, the years that we have been studying. In 1964, Lacan, having been excommun icated by the IPA, has been constrained to take up the question of the status of psychoanalysis in the s implest tenns; he must ask not only "what is psychoanalysis?" but also "what has changed" in his own position, since "it is not wholly inside, but whether it is outside is not known" (Seminar XI, p. 3). Let me emphasize again that in this very difficult situation, Lacan does not deny his position, and undertakes a new analysis of psychoanalysis; we cmmot say yet whether this new m1alysis is really a second return to Freud. Althusser, in January 1964, also could not say this, but everything s uggests that as far as the "essential" is concerned- the characterization of Lacanim1 psychom1alysis as a science-it is precisely at the very moment when Althusser becomes its " herald" that Lacan himself starts to question it. This does not make Althusser's judgement of Lacan's work before January 1964 less well-founded, but it does suggest that w hen he mentions the scientific value of the return to Freud, he is examining the earlier years of Lacan's work and that Lacan was beguming to question what seemed to be a given for Althusser. Thanks to Levi-Strauss

From this poii1t of view, we could say that the Lac an of 1964 is more Althusserian than Althusser and that he has m uch more rigorous requirements for making psychoanalysis into a science than Althusser had. On the scientific value of his return to Freud or on what is "essential", we could say that while Alth usser spea ks

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for a past Lacan, Lacan himself is looking towards the future and reintroducing a heu ristic doubt a bout this scienti fic ideal. In other word s, La ca n w as not the d upe of the philosopher who had entered in to the fray at his s ide, and who was trying to s trike a blow against all those who were impeding Lacan's research and h is t ransmissio n of psychoanalysis. We do no t think that Althusser, in these conditio ns, cou ld himself have been the dupe of his role as "bodyguard", a role that he sha red with Hegel and Heidegger, since he a nalysed it h imself; ins tead, he consented to it lucid ly. What kind of political support did Lacan receive from Louis Althusser? Elisabeth Roudinesco's account of this moment shows that w hen the rupture with the IT'A occurred in October 1963, Lacan asked Althusser to "find a solution to his problem": to ensure the " transplantation" of his seminar into the Ecole normnle superieure.',. She also reminds us that Althusser had put Lacan's work on the syllabus of his course, thus introducing his work to students who would later help expand Lacan's renown . Concerning this new beginning, which would enable Lacan to found the Ecole freudiemte de Paris and achieve cultural success, Roudinesco concludes that "Lacan owed everything to Althusser" {Roudinesco, p. 380). What returns here is precisely Althusser's formulatio n concerning Lacan: "It may be that, like everyone else, he errs in the detail or even the choice of his philosophical bearings; but we owe him the essential." And from the perspective of the analysis of this debt, Lacan does not contradict Althusser, fo r in the first session of his seminar of 1964, he thanks everyone w ho had helped him since his excommunication, but says nothing about Althusser."• On 15 January 1964, at the beginning of a new period for Lacan, he thanks Fernand Braude], the chair of the section of the Ecole pratique des ltautes etudes that had provided an institutio nal framework

•:u. Elisabeth Roudinesco, jacques I..nm11 & Co.: A History of Psychoanalysis in France,

1925-1985, (1990, p. 378). ' :t9 Guy Le Gaufey claims that it was Lucien Febvre who, at A1thusser~s request, enabled him to obtain a room at the Ecole normale superieurr. Along with Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre was the co-founder of the Amznles and was the director of the encyclopaedia for which Lacan wrote his text of 1938, "l..t>s complexes fnmiliaux'' which was commented upon at length in Lncmr et Jes sciences socinles.

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fo r the seminar. He speaks of Braudel's "nobility in providing me with a means of continuing my teaching" (Seminar XI, pp. 1- 2). He also thanks Robert Flaceliere, the director of the Ecole normale superieure for put ting a room at the d isposal of the Hautes Etudes so that Lacan could give his seminar there. Finally, he also gives special thanks to someone who has been present everywhere in the return to Freud, and who was also present on this occasion : Claude LeviStrauss. I shall emphasize this: Lacan stresses Braudel's no bility, since "Nobility is surely the right word for his welcome to someone in my position-that of a refugee." Lacan also says that " M. Braude) extended this welcome to me as soon as he had been alerted by the vigilance of my friend Claude Levi-Strauss, whom I am delighted to see here today and who knows how precious for me this evidence of his interest in my work is--in work that has developed in parallel with his own" (Seminar XI, p. 2). These expressions of thanks say everything. Yet none of this indicates that Lacan thought that w hat he owed to Althusser was negligible--<>r more precisely, what he owed to Althusser's aura, which enveloped his research with a respect that was helping it to progress. Yet everything happens as if, at the very moment w hen Lacan is beguming to teach once again, what he chooses to emphasize is the debt that he had owed to Levi-Strauss for 15 years. 1Ne can see that, as far as the bond between Lacan and Althusser was concerned, nothing indicates that either of them was the dupe of the debt that brought them together ii1 1963 and 1964. If Lacan, at the crucial moment when the problem of his excommunicatio n was beii1g resolved, chose not to mention the political support that Althusser had given him ii1 order to highlight the parallels between his work and that of Levi-Strauss, this says no thing about what the future of these parallels would be. The fate of these parallels has not yet been d iscussed, but all of this confirms:

• • •

The strength of the bond between Lacan and Levi-Strauss throughout these long years The power of the repression of this bond ill readings of Lacan's work, and The urgency of the need to lift this repression, w hich even today handicaps.

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This reading, the analysis of the symbolic filiation of Lacan's work, and also the analysis of Lacan's return to Freud, which was one of the most radical changes that both French and international psychoanalysis have experienced, in terms of both the theoretical and clinical dimensions of its activity and the organization of its institutions. Beyond the history of Lacan's thought, w hich needs to be written without any repression of the parallels between the social sciences and his texts, it is clear that this suppression has prevented the elaboration of a true psychoanalytic anthropology. The goal of the latter would be to throw light on both the clinic of the individual case and on societies. Only this elaboration will finally enable us to take up not-or not only- the w hole of Lacan's project, but also the whole of the Freudian project at this crucial moment for the clinic. It will also enable us to analyse the social symptom, at a time w hen it is necessary to elaborate a knowledge of it. Yet in order to lay the foundations for this psychoanalytic anthropology, it is necessary, first, to analyse its archaeology and more precisely, to analyse w hat Lacan owes to the social sciences, to Durkheim-as we have already seen in my earlier work-and to Levi-Strauss.

POSTLUDE

Making the world i ncomplete As soon as we show how the Name-of-the-Father helps stabilize subjective identity through the fruitfuh1ess of the unary trait-for example, in the exp erience of the mirror- we can say that the subject is a h mction of the O ther of the unary trait; or, in other words, the son of the dead father. We can see clinical evidence for this stabilizing function in the responses to the degrading of the Name-of-theFather in psychosis, where a stand-in- the delusion-.is elaborated, and in phobia, w here there may be a mythic s tand-in, such as little Hans' horse. Myth and delusion emerge when the trait's unary function fails and the body is not un ified. This is why, in the seminar on identification, Lacan returns to little Hans to emphasize that the horse is produced as a s ignifier that is not only a defence against being captured in the mother's world but also "a mooring poin t w here the subject is constituted"; this is the role of the exceptional signifier or of a concatenation of substitute signifiers, such as myth or delusion . Freud tl1eorizes this exceptional signifier as the dead fatl1er. In Levi-Strauss, this s ignifier is what allows symbolic thought to 211

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operate and is given the value of zero. In Lacan, as we have seen, this signifier is the Name-of-the-Father. When we read Freud with Levi-Strauss, it becomes easy to suggest that the dead father is the zero-value institution that allows neurotics' symbolic thought to take place and their societies to function . Levi-Strauss places the names of the Father- the names of the spirits of things-of these societies into a series: the mana, the orenda, etc. Lacan-and this is our thesisadds the Name-of-the-Father of monotheistic neurotics to this list. We can see immediately that if the Name-of-the-Father is an operator that provides a mooring for the subject and for which there must always be a stand-in if it is degraded or absent, it has always had to be conceived in the plural. Yet we do not wish to leave our readers w ith the illusion that Lacan produced a theory of the unconscious subject where wha t would be found at the place of the O ther-or at the place of the Names-of-the-Father- would be a solid mooring, from which the subject would derive a stable identity. This type of identity defines the sons of the dead father, those who are faithful to the divine Other, faithful to the mana or the orenda, or more generally to the spirit of things.

The lack in the other Yet Lacan is not a dupe and soon begins to emphasize the idealized value of this Other, w hich does not exist, as well as the fact that there is a lack in the place of the Other. In his algebra, this lack is written in 1960 as S(A) and is read as the "signifier of a lack in the Other".""' and he says, as if with regret, "It is already significant that I had to situate here ... the dead Father in the Freudian myth" (Ecrits. p. 693). Lacan must therefore begin again: For my part, I will begin with what the abbreviation S(A) articulates, being first of all a signifier. My definition of tl1e signifier (there is no other) is as follows: a signifier is what represents the subject to anotl1er signifier. This latter signifier is therefore tl1e signifier to which all the other signifiers represent the subject-which I ~~:>

ln 'The Subversion of the Subject and the Dia]ectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious''.. in l crits, pp. 671-702.

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means that if tllis signifier is missing, all tlle other signifiers represent nothing. For something is only represented to. Now insofar as the battery of signifiers is, it is complete, and this signifier can only be a line that is drawn from its circle without being able to be counted in it" (Ecrits, p. 695). The exceptional s ignifier in Lacan is therefore less the signifier of the Other- and of the list of Names-of-the-Father- than that of the lack in the Other, S(A), and even that of the lack of the Other. Because of this change, Lacan-in his theoretical development-mus t now return to his Lev i-Straussian filiation in order to d istinguish him self from it in terms that the reader can now evalua te correctly: let us observe carefully, therefore, what it is that objects to conferring on my signifier S(A) the meaning of mana or of any such term. It is the fact that we cannot be satisfied to explain it on the basis of the poverty of the social fact, even if the latter were traced back to some supposedly total fact. Claude levi-Strauss, commenting on Mauss' work, no doubt wished to see in mana the e.ffect of a zero symbol. But it seems that what we are dealing with in our case is rather the signifier of the lack of this zero symbol. This is why, at the risk of incurring a certain amount of opprobrium, I have indicated how far I have gone in distorting mathematical algorithms with my own use of them: for example, my use of the symbol, ~' also written i in the theory of complex numbers, can obviously be justified only if l give up any claim to its being able to be used automatically in subsequent operations" (Ecrits, pp. 695-696). lacan's logic is relentless. At the moment when he distinguishes himself from his filiation, he also exhibits it. Yes, he states in 1960, there is an exceptio nal signifier: "It is ... unprono unceable, but its o peratio n is not, for the latter is what occurs whenever a proper name is pronounced. Its statement is equal to its s ignification" (Ecrits, p . 694), like the name of the Hebrew God. Yes, there is a sig-

nifier without which "all the other signifiers represent nothing"as in psychosis, where the Na me-of-the-Father is foreclosed. Yes, there is a "trait": the unary tra it, without which subjectivity would drift and the unity of the body would be fragmented. Yes, there is

214

LACAN AN D LEVI-STRA USS O R T H E RETUR N TO FREUD (1951- 1957)

an exceptional s ignifier that allows symbolic thought to operate, as Levi-Strauss had already written in 1950. Yet Lacan, w1like Levi-Strauss, does not give a zero value to the signifier that has been uncovered by structural analysis, for what is in question is not the dead father any more than the ma1111 or the terms that are similar to it; instead, it is their absence, which is covered up by the "false window" of the ego ideal, whose consistency nonetheless engenders certain subjective truths. From now on, this exceptional signifier is to be given not a zero value but the imaginary value brought by the theory of complex mm1bers: i = ~. Lacan borrows this theory from the 16th-century Italian theorists of algebra, such as Gerolamo Cardano who, in inventing imaginary numbers, provided methods of calculation that obtained results that were true, even if they remained "mysterious". Thus Lacan can indicate the way in which the truths of the unconscious subject- its identifications-tum out to be, at least in part, so many functions of an ego ideal that is incomplete or of a signifier of the incompleteness of the Other, S(A) =~'without w hich the ordinary neurotic caru1ot function. Lacan as a critic of Levi-Strauss

Thus, at the same time that he believes that he is going beyond LeviStrauss-at the risk of "disgrace"-Lacan confirms that there is, for him, a risk whose religious n uance is obvious, but he also and especially confirms that Levi-Strauss' work had hmctioned for him, at least until then, as a sort of quilting point. Without it, neither his return to Freud nor the Name-of-the-Father could be understood; the latter, indeed, was nothing other than a regional, monotheistic version of Levi-Strauss' exceptional signifier. In 1960, Lacan maintains the notion of an exceptional signifier, but by writing it in a new way, as the signifier of the lack in the O ther, he separates himself from the thinker who has infl uenced him so deeply; in doing so, he does not fail to note the element of anxiety involved not only in telling the Other of this separation, but also in signifying that the O ther is lacking. What is included in this anxiety is, in more general terms, the irreducibility of the lack in the Other. The risk of disgrace may give this subjective rectification a religious aura, thus demonstrating the power of the transference that had bound him to Levi-Strauss. Yet in an act that designates

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that "Moses' tomb is as empty for Freud as Christ's was for Hegel" (Ecrits, p . 693), he opts for excl uding the "sham[s]" or lures, an excl usion that, according to the Freud of 1937, places the love of truth at the very heart of the analytic relation."' The critical rereading of Levi-Strauss' texts can begin. A new period o pens up in the less complete universe that contains the S(A). Lacan will even go to the point of criticizing a naive materialism that makes Levi-Strauss see a "doublet" between the s tructures of thought, the brain, and even of the world (in Seminar X, L'nngoisse (Anxiety), 1962-1963).'" He shows his s tudents how social exchange

"' Sigmund Freud, Ana lysis Te rminable and In te rminable, (1964, p. 247). ·~~ ult we have approached what is in question in Levi-Strauss' The Savage Mimi, it is to mark the sort of progress cons tituted by the use of psychoanalytic reason, inasmuch as it responds p recisely to the gap where more than one o f you a re, for the moment, s tuck: the one shown by C laude Levi-Strauss throughout his development, when he creates an opposition between what he calls analytic reason and d ialectical reason(.) l11e fi rst s tage is that there is the world . Analytic reason, to which Levi-Strauss tends to give the primacy, concems the world as it is. \'\lith this primacy, he, gives it a homogeneity that is quite curious, when aU is said and done; this homogeneity is what sca nd alizes a nd troubles th e most lucid among you. You cannot fail to d iscem that this allows for the return of what could be called a primary materialism (my emphasis). When this d iscourse is pushed to its limits, the very play of s tructu re, of the combinatory, which Levi-Strauss articulates so pm.verfully, links up with the s tructure o f the brain itself and even of matter, and would re present, in th e terms of 18*h-century ' materialism', only its doublet, not even its lining !doublure ) .... Now the dimension of the s tage-its d ivision or lack of d ivision from the m undane world, cosmic or not, where the specta tor is-is there to give us an image of the radical d imension of the place whe re things-the things o f the world-come to be S
Freudian staging by means of .1nother gap, one that results from the effectiveness of a real object that s h·uctures, from the "outside-world (ltors-mmrde)" the (fantasmatic) rela tion between the unconscious subject and the world. Consequently, Lacan also indicates-particularly in tenns of how analytic interpretation operates-the ins ufficiency o f the th eory ot intra-s tructural induction that Levi-Sh·auss had posited since 1949 as the very principle of symbolic e ffectiveness.

216

LACAN AND LEVI-STRAUSS OR T HE RETUR N TO FREU D (195 1- 1957)

should be. reread in terms of the circulation of the. phallus, which can be incarnated by women. 143 This is the end of the transferential honeymoon.

The sublime excommunicant In 1964, when he was threatened with being "bartered " by his s tudents for an affi liation with the IPA, Lacan- warned by Freudangrily refuses to be the totemic sacrifice that they-man y of whom Excommunicated the following year into the uoutside-world'' of ana lysts, he undertakes, in The Four Fundnmeutnl Concepts of Psydro-Annlysis, a critique o f the body of work that, according to what he says in the session of 20 j une 1962 of his semina r on identification, constitutes "the soul of 1962": the work of Levi-Strauss, w ho had published Totemism and Tile Savage Mind tha t year. •u The s taging of the world is carried out under the p rimacy of the la\ovs o f the s ignifier, which, as we have seen, impose their system on the imagina ry register of s pecular identification. ''This investment o f the specular image is a fundamental stage o f the imaginary relation, funda mental in that it has a limit. Not all libid inal investment goes through the specular image. l11ere is a remainder ... the phallus. '111is means that ... for anything tha t is located in the imaginary, the phallus appears in the fonn of a lack, ] -~p]. (T]he phallus ]is] ... cut ott fro m the specular 1mage .... u Anxiety arises \vhen a mechanism makes something-wha t I w ilJ call the -<pappear ... at tl1e place occupied by tl1e object a o f desire" (L'augoisS<', pp. 50, 51, 53). T11ere is thus a system o f social exchange whose conditions for func tioning mask the circulation of the object of d esirel-fp, by a specular equivalent: women. l11e phallus "inca ma tes the most alienating function ot the subject in exchange, in social exchange].] The male subject runs a round there, reduced to be ing the beare r of the phallus. This is what makes castration necessary tor a socialized sexuality where the re a re doubtless prohibitions, but a lso, and above a ll, p references, as Levi-Stra uss has rema rked. The h·ue secret, the truth of what he makes revolve around the exchange of women, is that under this exchange, the p hallus is going to t ill them up. It must not be seen that the p ha llus is w ha t is in q uestion. If we see that, then the re is anxiety .. .. In [this] field, there a re two kinds of objects: those that can be shared and those that can't .... TI>e p ha llus ... its equivalents ... the scybala, the nipp le ... when they e nter freely into the field where they only have to be shared , \·vhen appear in it and become recognizable ... anxiety signals the particu larity o f their sta tus. T11ey a re, indeed, objects that are prior to the constitution of the common, communicable, socialized object. They a re what is in question in the object n" (L'augoisse, pp. 105-6, 107-8).

Lacan's invention of the object (a)-his "discovery"-separates him radically fi·om Levi-Strauss, tor he now sees th e latter as the analyst of a universal staging in which nothing is Jacking; what Lacan confronts, on the other hand, is the incompleteness o f the universe as the real part (of the body) which ordinarily does not enter tl1e theatre of the world, unless it is imported into it as the cause of anxiety.

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were Catholic physicians-wanted to make of him. He found refuge at the Ecole des /mutes etudes en sciences socinles with the help of Claude Levi-Strauss, who did no t fail him when he needed help. At that moment, he fulminated against those who, because they were doctors and Catholics, had been ready to get rid of him: But I'm not surprised at your attitude, all of you. Nearly all of you are doctors, and there's nothing to be done with doctors. What's more you're not Jews, and there's nothing to be done with non-Jews. You all have problems with your fathers, and that's why you join together against me. But in the future, let me tell you, I shan't fight against Lagache and the two Favezes but against all who've profited by my teaching and then betrayed me. And when you get hit you can be sure who dealt the blow. And now we have nothing more to say to one another."' What this seems to show us is that, warned by Freud, Lacan could locate the band of sons as they advanced, armed with the to temic threat. He flew into a rage and decided not to give the seminar on the Names-of-the-Father- not in reaction, fundamentally, to the Jewish analysts of the IPA, whose "fault" would have been not to have died in the Nazi exterminatio n camps. He was reacting, instead, to the Catho lic psychoanalysts who, in his opinion, had betrayed him because of their relation to the father, and to whom he indica ted drily that that he had nothing mo re to say to them.'"' Nothing, and especially not what he wanted to tell them in his seminar on the Names-of-theFather, which would never be given by the man who saw himself as a sort of sublime excommunicant or as a Jew among Jews.

·~

Elisabeth Rouctinesco, fncqH<'5 wwr, p. 256,

•u This is the argument of Erik Porge, who concJudes that "the 'people' whom Lacan designates as having prevented him from speaking about the Name-of-the-Father are the jewish an alysts of the IPA, who had escaped from tl1e concentration camps". Les noms du pfre clzez jacqut"S Lncmr, p. 130.

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INDEX

Abra ham, Ka rl 5, 87 Acliologica I equation 23-24 Althusser, Louis 199-205 formulations 205 judgement 205 suggestion 204 American ethnologists 5 American Psychoanalytic Association 122 Androcentrism 176 Anglo-American analysts 10, 117 activity of 31 Anglo-American disciples 62 Ang lo-American ego analysis 34, 36 Anzicu, Didier 32 Anzieu, Marguerite 32

Assoclntiou de psyclmnnlyse de Frn11ce (APF) 32 Balint, Michael, object relations in transference 87

Bauer, Otto 97 Benedict 5 Boas, Franz 5 Bolk, Louis 5 Botch-jacobsen, Mikkel 20,30 Bororo's society 171 Braude!, Fernand 207 nobility 208 Budapt-'St Psychoanalytic Society 24 Caledonian society 139 Carda no, Cerolamo 214 Catholic physicians 217 Character ke rnel 4 Chcmama, Roland 149 CiviliS/Ilion n11d its Discottlmts 22 Claude], Paul 6, 129 CoUfontaine trilogy 52 Comintern militant 127 Communist Intemational125, 127

225

226

I NDEX

Contemporary neurosis 4 Counter-transference, theory of 129

Cryptogrnm 36--37 Czech communist party 126

Das Urrbehagen in tier Kultur 37 Delay, Jean 19 Delrieu, Alain 53, 123 Developmental psychology 60 Diachronic determination 83 Dolto, Fran~oise 118, 175 Dora analysis 99 attachment to Frau, K. 100 case 97- 101 emblem of the feminine condition 101-107 fate 102 identifications 101 idolization of Frau, K. 102 malaise 101 root identification 106 symptoms 106 theory of the mirror stage 103 unconscious mission 105 unconscious 103 Dor, Joel 92, 196 Doxa, ideals and repression of Levi-Strauss 193-199 Duclos, Denis 7 Durkheim, Emile 158 influence on Lacan 15 sociology of 5 theory of 1938 43 theory of the contraction 7 understand the theory of Lacan 7 work 7 Durkheimian period 6, 9, 18

Ecole des /mutes etudes err sciences sociales (EHESS) 14

Ecole normale superieure (ENS) 14 Effectiveness of symbols 45-46 Ego and resistance, defence of 30 defence30 ideal in transference 65-67 identification 37 sufferings 87 transcendence 82 Egyptian monuments 133 Egyptologists 135 Egyptology 133 Empty-eyed child 74 Epistemological murder 194 Epistemology 6, 30, 94 Ethnographers 137 Ethnology 148 False window 214 Father-complex, motor of resistance 22 Favez-Boutonnier, Juliette 118 Febvre, Lucien 207 Federn, Paul 10 Fenichel, Otto 10 Ferenczi, Sandor 5, 24 First World War 153 Flaceliere, Robert 208 Floating signifier 158 Foucault, Michel 37 French analytic community 117 French analytic scene 11 French anthropology 17, 64, 157 French etlmology 105, 156, 196 French Language Psychoanalytic Organization 77 French Philosophical Society 105 French Psychoanalytic Society (SFP)

11, 13, 118 liberal and democratic spirit 119 Freud, Anna 10,31 analysis 39-40

INDEX

effectiveness of symbols to Claude Levi-Strauss 45-46 fa ul t 38-41 Oedipus complex 41 reminder of the dead father 39-41 symptomatic contradictions 63 Freudian analyst 29 analysts desire 116 clinic of hysteria 101 clinic 176 discovery of the unconscious 131,215 figu re of subjectivity 74 heritage 68 language 137 maturity 200 Oedipus complex 163, 173 of primary narcissism 5 orientation 24 sense of the word 73 solution 69 super-ego 65, 71 theory 6 truth effect 114 truths 111, 116 unconscious 150-151 Freudian Sd1ool of Paris 156 Freudianism 187 Freud, Sigmund 4 abandorunent of hypnotic suggestion 20 admirable analysis 168 ambition 24 and resistance 20-22 Anglo-American heirs 13 assumptions 102 attributing de-sire 76 authoritarian personality 30 authority 26 "biases" 105

227

concept of equivalence w ith anthropology 132 concepts and analyst's desire 12 crucial question 187 death 108 dialectic 97-101 dialectical reversal100 discovery 98, 107, 112 distance from Lacan 4-9 doctrine 26-27, 96 dream 76 ethic 6, 105-106 founding desire 12 genius78 ideas 9 in psychoanalysis 107 inadequate conception 106 institutional use 27 liberating rupture 202 method as analyst 105 mirror stage to bouquet 56-57 myth of parricide answers 188 observation 149 optical model 76 paradigmatic cases 174 Rat Man case 105 relation to authority 27-28 resistance and discourse 34-37 right distance from 61-64 self-analysis 76 sense of discontent in culture 134 socio-historical relativism 6 s trategy in treating 21 symptomatic contradictions 63 Teciinical Papers 19 teclmique 20-30 theory of dead father 102

theory of primal identifications 101, 144

two traumas 167 universalism 6

228

INDE X

Fure t, Fran ~ois 126 Fulurt' Pros,...cts 23 Gaufey, Guy 198 Graf, Herbert 179 Graf, Max 179 Gria ule, Mar cel4 3 Hans, littl e phobia as an indi vid ua l myt h 181 the min d of the tribe 182 Har tmarm, Heinz 117 Hegel Phc'llomenology of Spirit 193 return to Freud 194 Hegelian formula 77, 91 stru ggle 203 Heideggerian 'gul f' of bein g" 203 Homo oeconomicus 202 Hom o psychologicus 202 Hor se, signifier 180 mother, then father 184 Hyp och ond riac al neuroses 3 Hyp poli te, Jean 37, 64, 156 ldeo grap hy 133 Indi vidu al myth 169 Internationa l Psycho.1nalytic Associa tion (lPA) 11, 24, 115, 117- 118, 200, 207, 216-217 Intrusio n complex 2 Inverted bouque t, mir ror stag e 57 Jew ish patriarc hy 4 judg e Schrebe r 163 Jura nville, Ala in 196-197 Klein, Melanie 5, 175 case of little Dick 41

Kojeve, Alexand re 193 Kor an 90-97 Kripke, Saul, Namitrg anti Necessity 174 Lflcanian

algebra of sexual difference 175 mom ent 193 psychoanalysis 206 psyc hoan alys ts 204 psycho.1nalytic field 8 sup er ego 71 theory of 1938 43 L1ca n, Jacq ues 1951 Prt'SI'trlallon 103, 117 anthropological influences 204 as a critic o f L~v i-Strauss 21-1-216 authorit aria n fraction 120 clinic of psyc hop aths 134 com plet ely unc onsc ious systems 137 conjectural sciences 113 COIUleCtion With 1.£vi-Straus 157 Course iu General Linguistics 196 dev ouri ng mot her 65 diag nosis 27 distance from Freu d 4-9 dou ble mov eme nt of analysi ng 67 Dur khe imia n stage 15 election 118 epis tem ological char ges aga inst Freud 103 epis tem olog y 6, 30, 94 exceptional signifier 213

excommunication 11-12 extr aord inar y clinical prec ision 68 form ulat ions 4

INDEX

Freud's dialectic 98 Freudian theory (Lacan's point of view)195 greatness 134 Hegelian form u Ia 91 heuristic use of philosophical references 204 letter to Loewenstein 122-125 madness 134 metamorphosis 116 mirror stage to bouquet 56-57 needle 163 own descriptions 117 own epistemological logic 28 paternal function 183 Phenomenolog~; of Mirrd 196 philosophical and linguistic references 198 philosophical references 16 philosophical sources 199 phobic object 185 position in relation to Freud 11, 28 psychoanalytic theory 106 psychoses 173 relation to knowledge 9 research 204 return to Freud 9-10, 76- 82,120, 150,154,193,196,199,209 Rome Report 94, 104, 135 schema L 170 small boy's phobia 186 stitching 163 subject 99 subjectivity 94 symbolic register 91 teaching 16 T1te Neurotic's /rulivilfunl Myth 195 the structural study of myths 173 the young 1-4

229

thought 95, 209 transference to Freud 25-30 transferential rectification 57 Lacan's work, critical archaeology of 7 lagache, Daniel 118, 122 language93 La nzer, Ernst 151 neurotic organization 169 l eenhardt, Maurice 138 Lefort, Rosine 61, 64 Robert case 64 Lenin's Left-wing Communism~ nn lnfnntile Disorder 200 l evi-Strauss, Claude 10, 18, 45-49 concept of symbolic effectiveness 57 "Do Dual Organizations Exist?" 165 epistemological ambition 168 exceptional signifier 214 filiation 213 formalized myths 185 formulations 144 ideals and repression of193-199 ideas 150 Lacan as a critic 214-216 Lacan's transference to 171 mirror stage to bouquet 56-57 name-of-the-father 189-190 q uestion for 176--178 research 199 sources 174 striking formulation 171 structural analysis of myths 186 Structuml Anthropology 165,168, 170,172

structural study of myths 167 thanks to 206--209 theory of symbolic function 56, 64,71

230

I NDEX

theory of the zero symbol 146 theory of unconscious 53 treatment according to 46 unconscious and Freud's 53 vocabulary 152 work 141 work as a founda tion 147 Little Hans' phobia as an individual myth 181-182 Little, Margaret, countertransference 30-31 Loewenstein, Rudolph letter from Lacan 122-125 on Bastille Day 126 Lord, Eternal160 Malinowski, Bronislaw 5 Masculinity 100 Maternal castration 183 Maurras, Charles 6 Mauss, MarcelS, 44, 106, 138-139, 158, 171 Mead, Margaret 5 Meheust, Bertrand 7

Memoirs of My Neroous 11/r~ess 164

Mental structure 2 A Metapsychological Supplemen t to the Theory of Dreams 77 Miller, Jacques-Alain 10, 199 Mirror Stage 56 imaginary alienation 112 right distance from 61-64 Rome Report 96 to bouquet 57 to inverted bouq uet 71-76 Mirror stage a nd symbolic function 17

Mistranslation 34 Morbidness, social and clinical 4 Moscow trials 126

Nacht, Sacha 117, 122 bureaucratic power 118 medical and a uthoritarian 118 Name-of-the-father 158-166, 168-169,171, 174,186,189- 190, 195, 205, 211 as operator 159, 173 church's 159 in Freudian myth 212 in psychosis 211 of monotheistic neurotics 212 signifier 212 solid mooring 212 Narcissism notion of 5 theory of 112 Nazi extermination camps 217 New York Psychoanalytical Society 11 Nobility 208 Oedipal drama 72, 147 formula 167 guilt 106 myth 108, 167 organization 40 parricide 179 solution 3 structure 148 subject 194 Oedipalism 4, 6, 42, 148 Oedipus complex 2-3, 5, 7, 17, 41, 57-59, 71, 102-103, 106, 112, 141-143,148,164,175, 178, 183, 190,202 super ego 71

symbolic remainder 43-46 to triad of imaginary 42 Ogilvie, Bertrand 194 Ou Psyciiotiierapy 20

INDEX

Paris Psychoanalytic Society (SPP) 13, 18, 117, 121 authoritarian 119 Paternal castration 183 PIIerwmenologt; of Spirit 194 Phobia as a solution 17S-180 equivalent to paternal metaphor 185--187 formula for 185 mythic formation 185 name of the father 157 Poetic metaphor 50 Post-Freudians 111 resistance to Freud 30 Prague tria ls 125-128 Pre-oedipal phase 178

Presenl111ion on Trnnsference 17,97-101,104,109,176 Psychoanalysis completely unconscious systems 137 crucial problems of 6 current problems of 129 dead father of 195 definition of 130 foundation for 129 foundations of 149 origin of 205 psychologizing orientation for97 resistance to 22, 30 scientific character of 206 speech and language in 129 Psychoanalytic anthropology 104 in terpretation of dreams 133 notes 163 realization of s ubject 130- 132 society 5 resonances and time 151-156

231

Psychoanalytic field symbol and language as structure and limit 132 Psychosis and phobia, name of the father 157 Psychopathies 4 Quasi-religious sense 66 Racine's tragedy 160 Rat Man case 105, 151 to Little Hans 15S-165 Reich, Atulie 10, 31 Reich, Wilhelm 11 Repression 85 Resistance and discourse 34-37 Resonances of interpretation 151-156 Rigid designator 174 Rimbaud's ideal 50 in tuition 50 Roman Catholicism, capital 144 Roma nce-language psychoanalysts 97 Rome Report36, 92-93, 96, 126, 129, 142, 150, 153, 188 Root identification 60 Roudinesco, Elisabeth 207 Sachs, Hans 87 Saussure, Ferdinand de, Course in General Linguistics 193 Saussurian algoritlun 198 Schizophrenia treatment 49 Schreber, Daniel Paul163 Scubla, Lucien 168 Sechehaye, Marguerite 49 Second World War 117 Sexual fetishis m 3 s ignification 84

232

I NDEX

Shamanism 50 Sixteenth ln temational Congress of Psychoanalysis 45 Slansky, Rudolph 126 Socia l Structures of Central and Eastern Brazil170 Speech, e mpty and full13()-132 Sta linist "prosecutors" 125 Structural Anthropology 165 Structu ralis t theory 159 Subjective causality of group discontents 11().-111 Subjectivity 94, 11().-111 empty speech a nd full speech in 130-132 psychoanalytic realization of 130-132 theoretical bases of 1955 111- 115 tidings brough t to group 115-116 time of 151-156 Subject message, inverted form 93 Super-ego 5, 25, 65-68, 187- 188 exceptional signifier 188 Lacanian 25 new conception 6 ru le of 64 Supplementary symbolic content 158 Symbol and language as structure and limit 132 Symbolic effectiveness 50, 75 function 17 interpretation 50 manip ulation 50 organization 75 s uper-ego 74 Symbolic system of symptom 82 Synchronic determination 83

The Effectiveness of Symbols 58, 169

The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense31 The Elementary Structures of Kinship 18, 142, 170

The Freudian Subject 20 The Future of an lllusion 22, 126 The Future Prospects of Psychoanalytic Therapy 21 The Gift 89 The Interpretation of Dreams 46, 5S-59

The Neurotic's Individual Myth 26, 56, 117, 153, 168, 171 in 1953158

The Passing ofanlllusion 126 Titoism 126 Todorov, Tzvetan 168 Totem 65-67 Totem and Taboo 179,187- 188 Transcendence of imaginary 17 Transference 68 nature of 97 Trotskyism 126 Unconscious message 104 Unconscious subjectivity 36,59 real mutation 195 Unconscious systems, completely 137 Unconscious treasure 36 Utilitarianism, superficial 139 Vandermersch, Bernard 149 Vernant, Jean-Pierre 168, 173 Vienna Neuropsychiatric Clinic 107 Viennese crisis 3 Jewish family 151

INDEX

Wahl, Jean 105, 166, 168

College de pltilosophle 198 Wallon, Henri 5 experiment61 Weaning complex 2-3 Winniroll, D. W. 175 Wolf child 66, 70-71, 73, 86,

88,96

Zafiropoulos, Markos 8, 91 Zero institutional forms 165 Zero-symbol145, 177 theory 146 Zero symbolic value 164, 174 Zero value, institutional forms of 165-17-1 Zionist plot 126

233