Available

https://nlscongress2026.amp-nls.org/en/history-myth-and-fiction/does-the-unconscious-lie/

or with notes, www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Haney)

Circulated
By New Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis
From: NLS Messager
Subject: Varité / Varity #21
Date: 15 April 2026 at 08:06:14 BST
Towards the XXVth NLS Congress, Varity, Variations of truth in psychoanalysis, in Paris, 27th & 28th June 2026/ History, Myth and Fiction

Does the Unconscious Lie?
By Janet Haney
This writing is the first lie! It is made in the unconscious by an energetic agency seeking a more acceptable representative or symbol, the first one having been repressed (…)

Footnotes

  1. Freud, S., “Project for a Scientific Psychology” (1950), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume I, London: Hogarth Press, 1966, pp. 353–356. ↑
  2. An idea found in Aristotle: “first falsity,” or “first lie.” ↑

NOTES – Julia Evans

Footnote 1

SE I p353-356, PART II PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

[4] The Hysterical Proton Pseudos

See The Project for a Scientific Psychology (Entwurf) : 23rd & 25th September & 5th October 1895 : Sigmund Freud at this site /3 Sigmund Freud (September 1895 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)

***

– Haney states, Emma is “subject to a compulsion of not being able to go into shops alone.” [a] … She ran away in an “affect of fright.”[b] … Oddly, she adds that one of them had “pleased her sexually.”[c] In what way does this constitute the first lie?

She makes an “associative link”[d] between the two scenes: the “laughing”[e] shop assistants reminded her of the “grinning”[e] shopkeeper. Freud deduces something else. The earlier scene was lived before puberty and was invoked after puberty. The earlier scene retrospectively gets a sexual charge during the second scene. This quantity of energy is transformed into angst [JE, not anxiety][f], providing the motor discharge to propel Emma out of the shop.

[a] SE I p353,

[b] SE I p353, und lief in irgendwelchem Schretkaffekt davon.

[c] SE I p353, und dass ihr einer sexuell gefallen habe.

[d] SE I p353, We only need an associative link between the two./ Wir brauchen nur eine assoziative Verbindung zwischen. beiden.

[e] SE I p354 the laughing of the shop-assistants had reminded her of the grin with which the shopkeeper had accompanied the assault./ Im Laden lachen die beiden Kommis, dies Lachen ruft (unbewusst) die Erinnerung an den Greissler wach.

[f] SE I p354 The memory aroused what it was certainly not able to at the time, a sexual release, which was transformed into angst [not anxiety]. With this angst [not anxiety], she was afraid that the shop-assistants might repeat the assault, and she ran away./ Die Erinnerung erweckt, was sie damals gewiss nicht konnte, eine sexuelle Entbindung, die sich in Angst umsetzt. Mit dieser Angst fürchtet sie, die Kommis könnten das Attentat wiederholen, und läuft davon.

For comment on the translation of Sigmund Freud’s term ‘angst’, see

Angst translated as Anxiety in Sigmund Freud’s texts : 26th February 2025 : Julia Evans, see this site /Authors A-Z (Evans)

Note on Translating Angst & L’Angoisse as Anxiety : 20th February 2025 : Julia Evans. See this site /Authors A-Z (Evans))

Footnote 2

Jacques Lacan uses Aristotle’s ‘first lie’ in Intervention on the Transference (Paris), Seminar on ‘Dora’ (1950-1951) : 16th October 1951 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19511016 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)