Presentation of the ‘Memoirs’ of President Schreber in French translation: November 1966: Jacques Lacan, translated by Andrew J. Lewis, published in Analysis: vol 7: p1-4 1996
Available
– at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
– Available bilingual, translated by Andrew J. Lewis, www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan /246 Autres Écrits (Présentation des Mémoires du president Schreber )
In French:
-Présentation des ‘Mémoires du Président Schreber en traduction française: 1966: Jacques Lacan: Ornicar? 1986 vol 38, juil-sept, p5-9.
-Published at École Lacanienne de la Psychanalyse/pas tout Lacan (1960-1969),
https://ecole-lacanienne.net/bibliolacan/pas-tout-lacan/
Available here: https://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1966-11-00.pdf
-Autres Écrits, Paris, du Seuil, 2001: p213-218, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (20010101 or Index of texts by Jacques Lacan)
Introduction by Jacques-Alain Miller
Circumstances learning that M. Paul Duquenne had undertaken the translation of President Schreber’s Memoirs I arranged for their publication, in serial form, in the journal of the epistemological circle of the École normale supérieure, ‘Cahiers pour l’analyse’. I asked Jacques Lacan for this presentation which appeared in number 5, nov-dec 1966. The complete text, reviewed by Mme Nicole Sela, appeared in 1975, in the collection of the Champ freudien (Seuil). – J-A. Miller
Texts cited by Jacques Lacan
–P2 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, quote, This is why this seminar which takes its title from the fourth of the said five great psychoanalyses of Freud, could not better enlarge its base than to stress the very text which served as its object. To our knowledge, we were the first to do this to such an extent.
Not of course that Mrs Ida Macalpine does not present in pre- and then in post-face a-psychoanalysis of this text which aims at correcting Freud.[l] But it only appeared in the final two seminars of the year (27th June – 4″ July)* that I could restore Freud to his rightful place, returning to this issue just two years later in an article where, in a construction which proved very decisive for what followed, we condensed close to two thirds of the material covered in that year. I refer you to the article: “On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis”.[2]
1 [See Ida Macalpine and Richard A. Hunter, “Introduction” and “Translators’ Analysis of the Case” in Daniel Paul Schreber, Memoirs of my Nervous Illness, p369-411. Translated by Ida Macalpine and Richard A. Hunter. 1955: 2nd edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1988. Trans. Note]
Ida MacAlpine & Richard Hunter: Translator’s introduction & analysis of the case of D. P. Schreber. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (MacAlpine or Hunter or Index of Authors’ texts)
2 Appeared in La Psychanalyse,_vol 4. Reprinted in Écrits, p.531-583 [Écrits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan, p.179-225
On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis – two most important parts of Seminar III : December 1957-January 1958 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19580101 or Index of Jaques Lacan’s texts)
* See Session of Seminar III ”Thou art” : 27th June 1956 : Jacques Lacan, at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19560627 or 19551116 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Session of Seminar III The phallus and the meteor : 4th July 1956 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19560704)
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P2 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, Certainly Freud would not repudiate this text’s being placed on his ledger, when it is in the article where he promotes it to the rank of a case that he declares that he thinks it neither unworthy, nor even risky, to let himself be guided by such a radiant text; even if he should be exposing himself to the reproach of sharing the sick man’s delusion, which scarcely seems to disturb him.
Case history of Schreber : 16th December 1910 : Sigmund Freud, see this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19101216 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)
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P3 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, When one reads in what follows in Schreber’s hand that he himself gives support to God or the Other enjoying his passified being (être passive), …
Memoirs of my nervous illness : 1903 : Daniel Paul Schreber, See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Schreber or Index of Authors’ texts)
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P3 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, In actual fact this translation clarifies this most recent discourse, precisely. As it did Freud’s initial discourse.
Perhaps this will allow us to take up again the thread which leads us to the Freudian venture. That is, this pathway (tranchée) which opens with my thesis, the case of Aimée which I did not include in the collection of my Écrits.
Perhaps one will note, mentioned, at several points in this collection, this phase of our reflection, which was firstly that of a psychiatrist, which armed itself with the theme of paranoiac knowledge (connaissance paranoïaque). To aid us in this collation, someone has already noted that we hardly clarified this notion which has left very few traces.
…
Certainly paranoiac knowledge is of everything that parades as knowledge, the least obscure, but this is not to diminish its obtuseness.
Following a rhythm which we have become accustomed to, after ten years our thesis began to be read in such avant-garde places as the asylum of Saint-Albans, and of course the Clinique de Ia Faculté de Paris (1932-1942).
On Paranoid Psychosis in its relationships with the personality, followed by first writings on Paranoia (Aimée) (Lacan’s thesis) : 7th July 1932 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19320707 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
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P4 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, The inadequacy of psychoanalytic teaching had to be publicly exposed for me to become engaged in the task. 1956-1966 marks the same interval. Two years still remained before the “question preliminary” was given its complete sequel.
Difficult to be precise with to what JL is referring. The above period started with his seminar on psychosis, Seminar III The Psychoses (1955-1956) : from 16th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19551116 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
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Jacques Lacan refers to Salvador Dali,
P3 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, One need only recall the way our friend Dali knew how to unravel it.
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Jacques Lacan refers to Mathematics
P4 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, What does this mean except that we are not interested in anything other than in the training of subjects capable of entering into a certain experience that we have learnt to centre where it is.
Where it is-as constituted by the true structure of the subject-which as such is not complete, but divided, and lets fall an irreducible residue, the logical analysis of which is in process.
Now it is easy to introduce thought to this structure, as it is easy to introduce a child, at a relatively early age (in school development, if not in analytic phases) to the study of mathematics through set theory. ,
It is at the level of mathematics as it is being developed that the treatment begins.
This can give us an idea of the resistance that is encountered, amongst psychoanalysts, by the theory on which their training itself depends
Apart from the fact that this is where the psychoanalysing function gives the subject’s constitution its greatest anxiety-provoking employment.
A type of bungled action (actes manqués)-perhaps they are the only ones worthy of their name because in neurosis they are successful acts-a type of ‘bungled on purpose’ act, stands out very prominently in the midst of the theoretical transmission that the training of psychoanalysts implies.
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Jacques Lacan cites Edward Glover and Cahiers pour l’analyse
P4 of Andrew Lewis’s translation : This is, as one can imagine, the domain in which proof is at its most difficult, but how can we fail to see one in this unlikely indifference to the text of President Schreber’s Memoirs – which meant that it was published in English by an outsider (Mrs Ida Macalpine, as a student of Edward Glover’s, who adhered too strongly to the requirements of science, has not been made a member, unless recently, of the London Society), that in France it is in a particularly sensitive zone, but on the fringe in relation to a group (the one that my teaching sustains), a zone represented by the Cahiers pour l’analyse, that the Memoirs to which we have devoted such care is finally brought to light.
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Related texts:
Sigmund Freud’s examination of President Schreber’s Memoirs and related texts : 1st August 2025 (from 2nd September 2015), this index is updated on August 1st each year
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Citations
-English context of Autism in relation to Medical and other Political Formulations : 30th June 2012 (London) : Julia Evans, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Evans)
Evans writes: Quote from Jacques Lacan [xxiv] : The facility of Freud here is simply to make the decisive step of introducing the subject as such, which means that the mad are no longer sized up in terms of deficits and dissociative functions. … For to construct the subject by taking the unconscious as a point of departure is a matter of logic, as a glance at one of Freud’s books is enough to make clear…
P2 of Andrew Lewis’s translation.
[xxiv] Presentation of the Memoires of President Schreber in French translation: Jacques Lacan: translated Andrew J. Lewis: 1966: published in Analysis: vol 7: p1-4 1996: For availability see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19661101)
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-Three Enigmas- Meaning, Signification, Jouissance : February 1993 : Éric Laurent, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent or Index of Authors’ texts)
Laurent, From 1967, in the preface he writes to Schreber’s Memoirs, Lacan reformulates “Freud’s operation” on psychosis. He notes that, if Freud turns President Schreber’s memoirs into a Freudian text, it is because he introduces there “the subject as such, which means not evaluating the madman in terms of deficit and of dissociation of functions.
- J. Lacan, Présentation, Cahiers pour l’annlyse 5 (novembre/décembre 1966) p,.70.
P2 of Andrew Lewis’s translation, The facility of Freud here is simply to make the decisive step of introducing the subject as such, which means that the mad are no longer sized up in terms of deficits and dissociative functions. So simply reading the text clearly shows that in this case there is nothing of that sort.
It is, nevertheless, certainly there that genius, if it comes with such facility, still does not suffice.