Index of this post
Headings as given by Jacques-Alain Miller – Editor
Published
Published in French Pas tout Lacan & transcript
Information on Session 25th May 1955 & its Mathemes Lutecium
References
Citations
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Headings as given by Jacques-Alain Miller – Editor (1988)
25th May 1955 : Introduction of the big Other : Chapter XIX
Subheadings:
Why the planets do not speak,
Post-analytic paranoia,
The z-shaped schema,
The other side of the wall of language,
Imaginary re-membering [Note: ‘remembrement’, which does not have connotations of memory in French, and, in fact, is often translated as ‘regrouping’; the passage in the Seminar being referred to discusses the reaggregation of the limbs (cf. ‘dismembering)] and symbolic recognition],
Why one trains analysts
Published
‘The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book II: The Ego in Freud’s theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis: 1954-1955’, Translated Sylvana Tomaselli, With notes by John Forrester, Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, Published and date: Cambridge University Press, 1988
Seminar II available from www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Texts by request. General notes & references at Seminar II The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis (1954-1955) : from 17th November 1954 : Jacques Lacan, this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19541117 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Published in French, Pas tout Lacan & transcript
UNEDITED
– Published unedited, from transcriptions of tape recordings, at http://staferla.free.fr / Séminaire 2 : Le moi
Leçon 20 25 mai 1955, see http://staferla.free.fr/S2/S2%20LE%20MOI.pdf
The primary sources for this working paper are:
– ‘Le moi…’, available on the E.L.P. website (stenotype).
– ‘Le moi…’, a document in “university thesis” format.
-An image of the stenographer’s typed manuscript,
École lacanienne de psychanalyse – E. L. P. – (http://ecole-lacanienne.net ) / Lacan-Bibliothèque
/at http://ecole-lacanienne.net/bibliolacan/stenotypies-version-j-l-et-non-j-l/
And here https://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1955.05.25.pdf
EDITED
-Le Séminaire, Livre II, Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la psychanalyse, Texte establi par Jacques-Alain Miller, Paris: du Seuil, 1978
Information on Session 25th May 1955 & its Mathemes Lutecium
From Topologos Lutecium, Les Mathèmes de Lacan, Recherche, Table des Matières, de Jacques B. Siboni
See https://www.lutecium.org/mathemes/node115.html for Seminar II
https://www.lutecium.org/mathemes/node135.html for 25th May 1955
Mathemes
Jacques Lacan’s Mathemes
Here is the English version via the internet of a Mathematics Thesaurus taken from written texts and from Dr. Lacan. It covers all the texts written by Lacan and all the seminars he held in 1953 at 1979. Accompanying this thesaurus, there is a search tool allowing to visualise the citations comprising one or more mathemes, these appearing in chronological order.
A Mathematics Thesaurus for 25th May 1955
Translated via the internet and reproduced without the links given on the site
2.20 Qu’est ce que je vais vous raconter … ; 25 mai 1955
2.20 What am I going to tell you…; May 25, 1955
Points derived from the text [Lac55, May 25, 1955]
The Ego (moi) is an other who is its image.
The Ego (moi) is an other with whom it stands in a mirror-like relationship.
The Other and the other are distinct.
The Other is the Ego (le moi).
It is the Other that is at stake when we consider the function of speech.
* The abyss that is constantly encountered in the psychoanalytic treatment of obsessive neurosis is the emergence of psychosis.
Paranoid madness is the greatest imaginary disturbance there is.
* The ego is an imaginary construct.
A madman is someone who is completely absorbed in his imagination.
In the L-schema of Figure 2.20.1, S is the analytic subject.
The analytic subject is the subject in his opening.
The subject does not know what he is saying.
* Language is just as well suited to grounding us in the other as it is to radically preventing us from understanding him.
The subject does not know what he is saying because he does not know who he is.
The analyst’s ego must be absent.
Where the Id (Es) was, that is where the Ego (Ich) must be. (JE notes, See category – Wo Es war; soll Ich warden (3 Sigmund Freud/13000000 Quotations from Sigmund Freud))
Paranoia is always linked to an imaginary alienation of the ego (moi).
Figure 2.20.1: The L-Schema
References
These are a work in progress…. JE March 2026
Citation
25th May 1955 Seminar II,
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p235 of Sylvana Tomaselli’s translation,
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-Gray Discourse : 1st December 2018 (Brussels, Belgium) : Guy Briole, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Briole or Index of authors’ texts)
P247 Briole, In his seminar The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psycho-analysis, Lacan underlined a recurring tendency to “reason about men as if they were moons,[28] calculating their masses and gravitation.” He added that Mein Kampf “dealt with relations between humans as if they were relations between moons.”[29] Excluding a part of humanity from a possible relationship to otherness is tantamount to regarding it as a mass. It remains to define the criteria of what constitutes that mass in order to split them away as a group, and carry on relentlessly with the program. There are no more limits.
- Jacques Lacan, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book II, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli (New York/London:Norton, l99l),235.
- lbid.,235.
25th May 1955 Seminar II, p235 of Sylvana Tomaselli’s translation,
Last time, I left you with a somewhat strange question, but one which came ‘directly out of what I was saying to you – why don’t the planets speak?
1
We aren’t at all like planets, that’s something we can have a sense of whenever we want, but that doesn’t prevent us from forgetting it. We always have a tendency to reason about men as if they were moons, calculating their masses, their gravitation.
That isn’t an illusion peculiar to us, us scientists [savants] – it is quite especially tempting for politicians.
I am thinking of a work which has been forgotten, though it wasn’t that unreadable, because it probably wasn’t written by the author who signed it- it had the title Mein Kampf. Well, in this work by the said Hitler, which has lost a great deal of its topicality, relations between men are spoken of as being like relations between moons. And there’s always the temptation to construct a psychology and a psychoanalysis of moons, whereas all you need do to see the difference is refer directly to experience.
For instance, I am rarely altogether happy. Last time, I wasn’t at all happy, no doubt because I tried to fly too high – I wouldn’t have engaged in all that flapping of’ wings if everything had been well prepared. However, several kind people, those who accompany me to the door, told me that everybody was happy. Rather an exaggeration of the position, I imagine. No matter, that’s what I was told. Moreover, at the time I wasn’t convinced. But why not! So I said to myself – if the others are happy, that’s the main thing. That’s where I am different from a planet.
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– A Tearing up of Time : 26th July 2016 (France) : Guy Briole, interviewed by Noa Farchi, see this site 5 Authors A-Z (Briole or Index of Authors’ texts)
Briole, In the paper you are alluding to, I was in fact reflecting on the concentration camp with the help of Jacques Lacan’s teachings. In chapter 19 of Seminar 2, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis, Lacan was pointing out the tendency there is: “(…) to reason about men as if they were moons, calculating their masses, their gravitation”*. In Mein Kampf he added, “relations between men are spoken of as being like relations between moons”.
25th May 1955 Seminar II, p235 of Sylvana Tomaselli’s translation, see above for quotation.
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25th May 1955 Seminar II, p243 of Sylvana Tomaselli’s translation, Schema L
Schema L developed out of Lacan’s study of Poe’s story “The Purloined Letter” in his seminar of 1954-55 : Schema L is developed throughout Seminar II and a version appears on p243
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– Lacan and the Discourse of the Other : 1968 : Anthony Wilden, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Wilden or Index of Authors’ texts)
Wilden refers to Schema L as follows:
P160-161 of Wilden, In the “schema L” (t.n. 49), Lacan shows the dual relationship between moi and other as a dual relationship of objectification (and, inevitably, of aggressivity) along the lines of Sartre’s analysis of our sadomasochistic relationship to the other who is an object for us, or for whom we make ourselves an object. Aggressivity is intimately linked to identification, notably in paranoia, where the subject’s persecutors may turn out to be those with whom he had once identified himself: the other we fear is often the other we love. The moi is thus another, an alter ego. In Lacan’s interpretation, perception is certainly primary in human existence, but it is the notion of self, rather than that of subjectivity, which perception generates. The child’s release from this alienating image, if indeed he is released from it, will occur through his discovery of subjectivity by his appropriation of language from the Other, which is his means of entry into the Symbolic order in the capacity of subject. (As will be clear presently, he is already constituted in it as an object, from before his birth.) He begins that crucial moment of entry through the phonemic organization of reality evident in the Fort! Da!, which Lacan has never ceased to stress. Later the child will appropriate personal pronouns for himself and others, along with the whole category of what linguists call “shifters.”
P162 of Wilden, The Schema L, for example, is obviously ambiguous in that it seeks to represent both an initial and a later relationship, as well as a dynamic process. The ambiguity is of course ultimately inherent in what the schema seeks to represent. But at the same time the whole notion behind the structural approach is that any structural metaphor must be multivalent if it is to have any value at all. In other words, since the emphasis of the structural view is upon relationships rather than upon objects, the various loci of an algorithm like the Schema L must perform the algebraic function of allowing all sorts of substitutions, whereas the functions represented by the relationships between these loci remain more or less constant.
P167-168 of Wilden, The reader will have noted to what extent the notion of transference within the dialectic of analysis is inseparable from any comprehension of interhuman relationships outside it-whether in a contemporary or genetic sense. At the most elementary level, the silent “neutrality” of the analyst (his role as “dummy”) enables the subject to project onto him the image of the significant other to whom the subject is addressing his parole vide. This alter ego of the subject is the ego of the subject himself insofar as his ego is the product of a capture by the other (ultimately reducible to the ideal of the ego). The relationship is a purely dual one for the subject; he is in fact maintaining a sort of short circuit between his narcissistic image of himself and the image of the other, in order to resist any attempts to change that image. But the analyst himself is neither an object nor an alter ego; he is the third man. Although he begins by acting as a mirror for the subject, it is through his refusal to respond at the level consciously or unconsciously demanded by the subject (ultimately the demand for love), that he will eventually (or ideally) pass from the role of “dummy,” whose hand the subject seeks to play, to that of the Other with whom the barred subject of his patient is unconsciously communicating. The mirror relationship of ego and alter ego which was the obstacle to recognition of his unconscious desires which the subject has set up and maintained will be neutralized, the subject’s mirages will be “consumed,” and it will be possible for the barred subject to accede to the authenticity of what Lacan calls “the language of his desire” through his recognition of his relationship to the Other. This relationship is represented by the broken line in the Schema L between S and A, the latter representing the unconscious or what Lacan calls “the locus of the Other.” The triangular relationship between ego, alter ego, and the analyst is mediated by the reciprocal interaction of the analyst’s unconscious and that of the patient; thus the relationship requires the four terms of the Schema L: two triangles that can be folded one upon the other. In spite of the difficulties of bringing Lacan’s algebraic metaphors into the analysis of concrete relationships, it will be seen at once how important the concept of locus is for his views. Identification and narcissism, or the relationship between ego and alter ego, are not relationships of identity; it is always a question of each trying to take the other’s place-as in what Lacan defined and demonstrated as an “inmixing of subjects” in his commentary on Poe’s Purloined Letter (1956)*. But no one can take another’s place, whereas he can be constituted there as in a locus of relationships and functions.
NOTE, There are many references to shift or shifter throughout Seminar II though ‘shift’ is not used in this session.
P243-244 of Sylvana Tomaselli’s translation
Today I would like to suggest a little schema to you, to illustrate the problems raised by the ego and the other, language and speech.
This schema would not be a schema if it yielded a solution. It isn’t even a model. It’s just a way of fixing our ideas, called for by an infirmity in our discursive capacity.
Because f think that you are already quite familiar with it, I haven’t gone over what distinguishes the imaginary from the symbolic once again.
What do we know about the ego? Is the ego real, is it a moon, or is it an imaginary construction? We start with the idea, with which I’ve serenaded you for a long time, that there is no way of grasping anything whatsoever of the analytic dialectic if we do not assume that the ego is an imaginary construction. The fact that it is imaginary doesn’t take anything away from it, the poor ego – I would even go so far as to say that that’s what’s good about it. If it weren’t imaginary, we wouldn’t be men, we would be moons. Which doesn’t mean that all it takes to be men is to have this imaginary ego. We could still be that in-between thing called a madman. A madman is precisely someone who adheres to the imaginary, purely and simply.
This is what I’m talking about.
DIAGRAM OMMITTED
S is the letter S, but it’s also the subject. the analytic subject, that is to say not the subject in its totality. People spend their time plaguing us about taking it in its totality. Why should it be a whole? We haven’t the faintest idea. Have you ever encountered whole beings? Perhaps it’s an ideal. I’ve never seen any. I’m not whole; Neither are you. If we were whole, we would each be in our corners, whole, we wouldn’t be here, together, trying to get ourselves into shape, as they say. It is the subject, not in its totality, but in its opening up. As usual. He doesn’t know what he’s saying. If he knew what he was saying, he wouldn’t be there. He is there, down on the right.
To be sure, that isn’t where he sees himself – that is never the case – even at the end of analysis. He sees himself in a, and that is why he has an ego. He may believe that this ego is him, everybody is at that stage, and there is no way of getting out of it.
What analysis teaches us, on the other hand, is that the ego is an absolutely fundamental form for the constitution of objects. In particular, it perceives what we call, for structural reasons, its fellow being, in the form of the specular other. This form of the other has a very close relation to the ego, which can be superimposed on it, and we write it as a’.
So there’s the plane of the mirror, the symmetrical world of the egos and of the homogeneous others. We’ll have to distinguish another level. which we call the wall of language.