Session of Seminar XIXa I’ve been Talking to Brick Walls : 6th January 1972 : Jacques Lacan

Notes

This session has Lacan’s neologism amur which combines mur and amour [see p103-104 of the Seuil edition where it is indicated that it should be written: (a)mur]

In Cormac Gallagher’s translation the use of a(mur) follows from Seminar XIXa : 6^th January 1972 : pIII 6. The sentence ‘It is obvious that the walls make me enjoy!’ is at the bottom of pIII 7. : See quotes below.

There are three references to Aimée in this session. (CG) pIII 9 & 11 : See below.

Publication & availability of 6^th January 1972

-translated by Adrian Price

4^th November 1971, 2^nd December 1971 and 6^th January 1972 – p71-103 of Talking to Brick Walls, A Series of Presentations in the Chapel at Sainte-Anne Hospital : Jacques Lacan : Translated by Adrian Price (AP/J-AM) : Polity Press 2017 :

Originally published as Je parle aux murs, Entretiens de la chapelle de Sainte-Anne : Éditions du Seuil, 2011

– Translated by Cormac Gallagher (CG)

Book 19a: The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst, Seven Talks at Sainte-Anne: 1971-1972

This comprises 7 talks given by Jacques Lacan at Sainte-Anne Hospital.

Date of sessions: 4-11-1971; 2-12-1971; 6-1-1972; 3-2-1972; 3-3-1972; 4-5-1972; 1-6-1972 [OR 04-6-1972]

Published at Lacan in Ireland, Chapter III p1 of http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/?page_id=123

Available http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Book-19a-The-Knowledge-of-the-Psychoanalyst-1971-1972.pdf

– In French : Jacques Lacan : Je parle aux murs, : Paris : Seuil, 2011. This book comprises the sessions Jacques Lacan gave at St Anne Hospital on 4^th November 1971, 2^nd December 1971 & 6^th January 1972.

Related texts

Seminar XIXa The Savoir of the Psychoanalyst or The Psychoanalyst’s Knowledge (1971-1972) : from 4^th November 1971 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19711104 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

Seminar XIX …Ou pire …Or worse (1971-1972) : from 8th December 1971 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19711208 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

Account (Summary or Report) of Seminar XIX -… Or worse : July 1973 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19730701 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

References

pIII 6-7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Reference to Plato – see quote below.

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pIII 9 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Seminar XIX : 6^th January 1972 : pIII 9 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : 2^nd paragraph:

One of three references to Aimée.

See On Paranoid Psychosis in its relationships with the personality, followed by first writings on Paranoia (Aimée) : 7^th July 1932 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19320101 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

pIII 9, In a word, and to pay tribute to her for something that she is not at all personally responsible for, it is as everyone knows, around this patient that I pinpointed by the name of Aimée – which was not hers, of course – that I was drawn towards psychoanalysis.

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pIII 10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Reference to Seminar XVII and Aimée

Seminar XVII, Psychoanalysis upside down/The reverse side of psychoanalysis/The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969-1970) : from 26th November 1969 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19691126 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

pIII 10, What I can say, is that it is from a certain angle which is that of a logic that I was able in a journeying which, to start from my patient Aimée, culminated at my second last year of seminar, to state under the title of four discourses towards which there converge the target of a certain actuality, that I was able, along this path to do what?

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pIII 11 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation :

3^rd reference to Aimée

pIII 11, What I can say, is that it is from a certain angle which is that of a logic that I was able in a journeying which, to start from my patient Aimée, culminated at my second last year of seminar, to state under the title of four discourses towards which there converge the target of a certain actuality, that I was able, along this path to do what? To give at least the reason for walls.

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pIII 11 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Reference to Remarks on psychic causality

See Presentation on Psychical Causality : 28th September 1946 (Bonneval Hospital, Paris ) : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19460928). Also in Écrits : 1966 : Jacques Lacan.

pIII 11, And that in my Écrits, one can see collected something that I made understood, before 1950, under the title of Remarks on psychic causality, I rose up against any definition of mental sickness which took cover behind this construction made of semblance which, in pinpointing itself as organo-dynamic left nonetheless entirely to one side what was involved, in the segregation of mental illness.

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Neologism

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pIII 7-8 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Just suppose that Plato’s cave is the wall where my voice makes itself heard. It is obvious that the walls make me enjoy! And that is why you all enjoy, each and every one of you, by participation. Seeing me talk to the wall is something that cannot leave you indifferent. And think about it: if you suppose that Plato was a structuralist, he would have noticed what was really involved in the cave, namely, that it is no doubt there, that there language was born. Matters have to be turned upside down, because, of course, man has been crying for a long time, like any other one of those little animals who mew for their mother’s milk. But to notice that he is capable of doing something, which of course, he understands for a long time – because in the babbling, in the confusion, everything happens – but in order to choose, he must have noticed that K’s resonates better from the back, the back of the cave, from the back wall, and that B’s and P’s come out better at the entrance, this is where he heard their resonance.

I am letting myself go this evening, because I am talking to the wall.

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pIII 17 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Love, the love that this communicates, that it flows that it fuses, that it is love! Love [l’amour], the good that the mother wants for her son, l’amur, it is enough to put in the (a) to rediscover what we put our finger on every day, it is that even between the mother and the son, the relationship that the mother has with castration, counts for something!

Perhaps, to have a healthy idea of what is involved in love, we should perhaps start from that which, when it is played out, seriously, between a man and a woman, it is always castration at stake. This is what is castrating. And what passes by this defile of castration, is something that we will try to approach along paths that are a bit rigorous: they can only be logical, and even topological.

Here I am talking to the wall, indeed to (a)murs, and to (a)murs-sements. Elsewhere I am trying to account for it. And whatever may be the use of walls for keeping the voice in good shape, it is clear that the walls, no more than the rest, can have this intuitive support, even if we have all the resources of the art of architecture.

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Citations

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pIII 7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Two Forms of Body : 7^th July 2021 (Zoom exchange between two cartels) : Julia Evans, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of Julia Evans’ text)

Evans states, Lacan stated (Seminar XIXa : 6th January 1972[1]) : And that walls, … it is designed to circumscribe a void[2].

[1] Seminar XIX a is also published as Talking to Brick Walls, A Series of Presentations in the Chapel at Sainte-Anne Hospital by Jacques Lacan, Polity 2017 : See Seminar XIXa (1971-1972) The Savoir of the Psychoanalyst or The Psychoanalyst’s Knowledge – Seven Talks at St Anne’s Hospital : from 4th November 1971: Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19711104 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

[2] pIII 7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation (my preferred one) ; Published at www.LacaninIreland.com

pIII 6-7, People forget too often that architecture, whatever effort is made to avoid it, is designed for that: to construct walls. And that walls, faith…it is all the same very striking that since what I was speaking about earlier, namely, Christianity, leans perhaps through it a little bit too much towards Hegelianism it is designed to circumscribe a void. How we can imagine that this is what the walls of the Parthenon and some other baubles of the kind whose ruined walls remain to us fulfilled is very difficult to know. What is certain, is that we have absolutely no testimony of it. We have the feeling that throughout this whole period that we pinpoint with this modern etiquette of paganism, there were things which happened on different feast days that are called, whose names have been preserved because there were Annals which dated things like that: “It was at the great Panathemes that Adymant and Glaucon…etc” you know what follows “encountered someone called Cephal”. What was happening there? It is absolutely unbelievable that we don’t have the slightest idea about it!

(43) On the contrary as regards the void we have a very good idea, because everything that has been bequeathed to us, bequeathed by a tradition that is called philosophical, puts the void in a very special place. There is even someone called Plato who made his whole idea of the world pivot around that, make no mistake, he is the one who invented the cave. He made a dark room of it. There was something happening outside, and all of this, passing through a little hole, created all the shadows. It is curious, it is here perhaps that we might have a little thread, some little trace. It is obviously a theory that allows us to put our finger on what is involved in the o-object [a-object].

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pIII 10-11 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation.

Walls and Holes in Psychiatric Institutes – Some One to Talk to (LRO 201) : 8^th January 2020 : Yaron Gilat, see this site /Authors A-Z (Gilat or Index of Authors’ texts)

Gilat, In three sessions on 4th November 1971, 2nd December 1971, and 6th January 1972, Jacques Lacan gave a series of talks in the Chapel at the Sainte-Anne Hospital, for an audience of junior psychiatrists. In this text, “Je Parle Aux Murs” [4], Lacan said that “for anyone who dwells here within these walls, the walls of the clinical asylum, it would be as well to know that what situates and defines the psychiatrist as such is his situation in relation to these walls.”

pIII 10-11 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, It is a very grave question, that I have only seen seriously formulated, outside of this poet, by mathematicians. Namely, what reason – that we will be satisfied for the moment to grasp as part of the grammatical system – has to do with something that is necessary – I am not saying intuitive, because this would mean falling back onto the slope of intuition, namely, something visual – but with something precisely that resonates.

Is what resonates the origin of res [JE’s note 1] of what makes reality? It is a question, a question that touches very properly speaking on everything that w can extract from language, under the heading of logic. Everyone knows that it is not enough and it required some time – one could have seen it coming for sometime, since Plato precisely – to bring mathematics into play. And it is there, it is there that the question is posed of where to centre this real to which logical questioning makes us have recourse to and which is found to be in mathematics. There are mathematicians who say that one can in no way orientate oneself on this junction that is described as formalism, this logical mathematical point of junction. That there is something beyond, to which after all homage is only rendered by all these intuitive references from which this mathematics believed it could purify itself and which seeks beyond for what réson, to have recourse to for what is at stake, namely, the Real. This evening is not the time, of course, that I am going to be able to tackle the matter here.

What I can say, is that it is from a certain angle which is that of a logic that I was able in a journeying which, to start from my patient Aimée, culminated at my second last year of seminar, to state under the title of four discourses towards which there converge the target of a certain actuality, that I was able, along this path to do what? To give at least the reason for walls. Because whoever inhabits these walls, these walls here, the walls of a clinical asylum, it would be well to know that what is situated and defined by psychiatry as such, is its situation with respect to these walls, these walls through which the lay world brought about in itself the exclusion of madness and what it means. This can only be tackled along the path of an analysis of discourse. In truth, analysis was so little designed before me that it is true to say that there was never on the part of psychoanalysts the slightest discordance that arose with regard to the position of psychiatry. And that in my Écrits, one can see collected something that I made understood, before 1950, under the title of Remarks on psychic causality[JE’s note 2], I rose up against any definition of mental sickness which took cover behind this construction made of semblance which, in pinpointing itself as organo-dynamic left nonetheless entirely to one side what was involved, in the segregation of mental illness. Namely, something which is different, which is linked to a certain discourse, the one that I pinpoint as being the discourse of the Master.

[JE’s note 1] From A.I., 8^th June 2026, The word res originates from the Latin noun rēs, which translates to “thing,” “matter,” “affair,” or “property”. Tracing its roots back further, it derives from the Proto-Indo-European reh₁ís (wealth, property, or goods). Historically, the term has been deeply woven into legal, political, and academic contexts. Several foundational English phrases and concepts directly stem from this Latin root

Common Legal and Philosophical Phrases

Res publica: Meaning “public affair” or “public thing,” it is the etymological origin of the word republic.
Res ipsa loquitur: A Latin phrase used in tort law meaning “the thing speaks for itself”.
Res judicata: Translates to “a matter already judged,” referring to a case that has been decided by a competent court and cannot be pursued further.
Res gestae: Translates to “things done,” used in law to refer to events or statements so closely connected to an event that they are admissible as evidence.
Res (Trust Law): In trust law, the res is the actual property, money, or assets that are being held and managed for the benefit of someone else.

[JE’s note 2] Presentation on Psychical Causality : 28th September 1946 (Bonneval Hospital, Paris ) : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19460928)

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pIII 17 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

The Unconscious and the Speaking Body : 17th April 2014 (Paris) : Jacques-Alain Miller, see this site /Authors A-Z (Miller or Index of Authors’ texts)

Miller, So here we are again, up against the same wall. Mur, the French word for “wall”, is the word that has occurred to me, and this is evocative of the neologism that pokes fun at amour: is it to amur [2] that I owe the invariable honour that has been bestowed upon me of setting the tone of the symphony, the symphony that the members of the WAB whom we are, will have to compose over the next two years before we meet again? Is this the doing of transference, a transference that is brought back to the one to whom fell the onus of founding our association so long ago? But as I’ve just reminded you, the onus of setting a title, a name, or at least a theme, was something that I had assumed before, at the time of the first International Encounter that was held in Caracas, in Lacan’s presence[3]. If there is amur, I would not refer it to the function of the founder, which nothing in our statutes sanctions, I would rather it were referred to the function of a guide, which is a function that I ascribed to myself by giving my Course the title Lacanian Orientation.

Amur means above all that the wall of language has to be pierced through anew each time in order to try to grasp more tightly, let’s not say the real, but rather what we do in our analytic practice. In the end, though, to orient myself in Lacan’s thought has been my concern, and I know that this is something we share. In fact, the World Association of Psychoanalysis has no other cohesion but this. At least, this concern is the fundamental principle behind the gathering that we form, above and beyond the statutes and the insurance systems, and even beyond the ties of friendship and sympathy that have grown between us over the years.

[2] Lacan’s neologism amur combines mur and amour. See Lacan, J., Je parle aux murs, Paris: Seuil, 2011, pp. 103-104, where he indicates that it should be written: (a)mur.

[3] See Lacan, J., “Overture to the First International Encounter of the Freudian Field” pp. 17-20. : See Seminar XXVII Dissolution! Overture to the First International Encounter of the Freudian Field : 12^th July 1980 (Caracas, Venezuela) on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19800712)

pIII 17 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, 6^th January 1972

Love, the love that this communicates, that it flows that it fuses, that it is love! Love, the good that the mother wants for her son, l’amur, it is enough to put in the (a) to rediscover what we put our finger on every day, it is that even between the mother and the son, the relationship that the mother has with castration, counts for something!

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pIII 19 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation

Walls and Holes in Psychiatric Institutes – Some One to Talk to (LRO 201) : 8^th January 2020 : Yaron Gilat, see this site /Authors A-Z (Gilat or Index of Authors’ texts)

Gilat, Towards the end of the last session he held that the first thing that psychiatrists could get from the reflection of his voice off these brick walls is to know what specifies them as psychiatrists as well as hearing something other than his voice, which can lead to the point of forming an accurate idea of what is involved in the object a.

pIII 19 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, It is very curious, this introduction of danger into the discourse on which the social order is established. What is this danger? “Dangerous to themselves” anyway, society only lives by that, and “dangerous for others”. God knows that in this sense total liberty is left to each one.

When I see protests arising in our day against the use that was made – to call things by their name and to go quickly, it is late – in the USSR of asylums, or of something that ought to have a more pretentious name, to shelter there, let us say, opponents, but it is quite obvious that they are dangerous for the social order in which they are inserted.

(51) What separates, what distance is there, between the way of opening the doors of the psychiatric hospital in a place where the capitalist discourse is perfectly coherent with itself, and in a place like ours where it is still babbling? The first thing that perhaps psychiatrists, if some of them are here, can receive, I am not saying from my word, which has nothing to do with the business, but from the reflection of my voice from these walls, it is a matter first of knowing what specifies them as psychiatrists.

This does not prevent them, within the limits of these walls, from hearing something other than my voice. The voice, for example, of those who are interned here, because after all that may lead somewhere…even to giving rise to a correct idea of what is involved in the o-object [a-object].

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Julia Evans2026-06-10T10:30:56+01:00