In the aftermath of the latest terrorist attacks that took place in France -in Nice on July 14th 2016 and in a church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray 12 days later-, Noa Farchi interviewed Guy Briole. Guy Briole is a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst. He is head of the medical school of military hospital le Val de Grâce in Paris.

Publication and Availability

– Published by the Lacanian Review Online on 8th August 2016 : Available https://www.amp-nls.org/lro/a-tearing-up-of-time/

– Circulated on the New Lacanian School’s Messager, Number 2192.en/ The Lacanian Review Online/ In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in France… on 8th August 2016 at 22:20 : See http://www.amp-nls.org/page/gb/49/nls-messager

– With Julia Evans’ notes at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Briole)

References

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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”.

* Seminar II : 25th May 1955 : 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?

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.

See Session of Seminar II Introduction of the Big Other : 25th May 1955 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19550525)

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-Noa Farchi & Guy Briole, N. F. : Referring to your text once more, you quote Rachel Ertel, “extermination is not death, it is a tearing of time”. This leads me back to what Freud said about time, that Time does not exist in the unconscious. But evoking a “tearing of time” is another matter…

G.B. : This sentence comes in at the end of a chapter which I would like to quote in full: “The paths of death encircle the earth in all directions, and every remnant of Jewish life has been wiped out. It is a chaotic world devoid of signs, landmarks. The temporal order, contrary to ever-changing and flexible space, is enduring in its three dimensions of present projected into the past and the future. Time, with its inexorable flow whose natural boundary is death, represents the deepest and most intimate part of human experience. Extermination, annihilation is not death. It is a tearing of time” .This “tearing of time” is what survivors testify to. They no longer believe in history.
-Time does not exist in the unconscious

Beyond the Pleasure Principle : 1920 g : Sigmund Freud, see this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19200101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)

SE XVIII p28-29, At this point I shall venture to touch for a moment upon a subject which would merit the most exhaustive treatment. As a result of certain psycho-analytic discoveries, we are today in a position to embark on a discussion of the Kantian theorem that time and space are ‘necessary forms of thought’. We have learnt that unconscious mental processes are on themselves ‘timeless’. [2] This means in the first place that they are not ordered temporally, that time does not change them in any way and that the idea of time cannot be applied to them. These are negative characteristics which can only be clearly understood if a comparison is made with conscious mental processes. On the other hand, our abstract idea of time seems to be wholly derived from the method of working on the system Pcpt.-Cs, and to correspond to a perception on its own part of that method of working. This mode of functioning may perhaps constitute another way of providing a shield against stimuli. I know that these remarks must sound very obscure, but I must limit myself to these hints. [3] [2] [Strachey, See section V of ‘The Unconscious’ (1915e). (The Unconscious (Das Unbewusste) : 1915 e : Sigmund Freud, this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19150101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)[3] [Strachey, Freud recurs to the origin of the idea of time at the end of his paper on ‘The Mystic Writing-Pad’ (1925a). The same paper contains a further discussion of the ‘shield against stimuli’.]

We have pointed out how the living vesicle is provided with a shield against against stimuli from the external world; and we must be differentiated as an organ for receiving stimuli from without. This sensitive cortex, however, which is later to become the system Cs., also receives excitations from within. The situation of the system between the outside and the inside and the difference between the conditions governing the reception of excitation impinging on it have only a reduced effect. Towards the inside there can be no such shield; [1] the excitations in the deeper layers extend into the system directly and in undiminished amount, in so far as certain of their characteristics give rise to feelings in the pleasure-unpleasure series. The excitations coming from within are, however, in their intensity and in other, qualitative, respects-in their amplitude, perhaps-more commensurate with the system’s method of working than the stimuli which stream in from the external world. [2]

SE XVIII p29 [1] [Strachey, Cf. ‘Project’, beginning of Section 10 of part I.] SE XVIII p29 [2] [Strachey, Cf. ‘Project’, later part of Section 4 of part I.]