Published, Lacan J. (1984) ‘Compte rendu avec interpolations du Séminaire de l’Éthique’, Ornicar? 28: 7-18

Available in French only, https://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1960-00-00.pdf

Title

Report with interpolations from the Seminar on Ethics : early 1960s : Jacques Lacan

An internet translation of the introduction:

Published in Ornicar ? revue du Champ freudien, January 1984, no. 28, pp. 7-18, with the following text as an exergue:

“Nineteen typewritten sheets bearing the title Éthique de la psychanalyse were found in a box containing Jacques Lacan’s stenography of lessons given by Jacques Lacan in 1959-1960. Corrections in Lacan’s own handwriting appear on the pages. A note appears at the bottom of the first page:

Cf. on the date of Jacques Lacan’s seminar, of which this is an account, and on its delay in publication, cf. the address given in the preface to this publication.

This “address” has not been found. It is difficult to date this text more precisely than the early sixties; the two interpolations mentioned by the author are probably from the late sixties (after 1968). These pages cannot be considered as written by Lacan; the text is obviously unfinished, but it’s much more than a draft.”

Warning from the editors of Pas-tout-Lacan: we don’t know what corrections Lacan has made. What’s more, the report in question seems to relate only to one of the very first sessions of the seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.

Citation

A Calculus of Convergence : 1987 : Nathalie Charraud. See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Charraud or index of texts waiting to be posted)

Charraud : In his abstract of his Ethics Seminar, Lacan provides us with some sound benchmarks regarding what he calls ‘reasoned interpretation’, as opposed to ‘wild interpretation’, or the ‘spontaneous interpretation’ made by the dream in the dream-work (Lacan 1984). His commentary was produced in relation to dreaming, but it seems to me equally true applied to interpretation in general. ‘Reasoned interpretation can do no better than to have appear the weakness that the phrase denotes’. Deciphering ‘shows a defect of signification, and it’s in no other way that it achieves the connotation of a desire’. ‘Anxiety [Anguish – l’angoisse] breaks up sleep when the dream is about to lead onto the real of what is desired.

The passage from this text:

Quotation

From ‘Pas-Tout Lacan’, Mais prendre ainsi la voie faible du commentaire, c’est consentir à ce qui fait de sa nature la pensée être interprétation. C’est donc risquer qu’au plus direct de la pente propre au chien de l’Écriture, elle fasse retour à l’appétit pour y prendre sa référence.

An internet translation, But to take the weak path of commentary in this way is to consent to the very nature of thought as interpretation. It means risking that, at the most direct point of the slope proper to the dog of Scripture, it will return to the appetite to take its reference from it.

Pourtant nous faisions crédit à ce dont la conscience du psychanalyste peut prendre acte : à savoir qu’il ne lui vient de l’inconscient par le rêve que le sens incohérent qu’il fabule pour habiller ce qu’il articule en manière de phrase.

And yet we give credit to what the psychoanalyst's conscience can take note of: namely, that all that comes to him from the unconscious through dreams is the incoherent meaning he fabricates to dress up what he articulates in sentence form.

Que donc ce qui lui vient par là est déjà interprétation que l’on peut dire sauvage, et que l’interprétation raisonnée qu’il y substitue ne vaut mieux qu’à faire apparaître la faille que la phrase dénote. Qu’on relise les rêves analysés dans la Traumdeutung avec cette clef.

That what comes to him in this way is already a wild interpretation, and that the reasoned interpretation he substitutes for it only serves to reveal the flaw denoted by the sentence. Let's reread the dreams analyzed in the Traumdeutung with this key in mind.

Le rébus du rêve déchiffré montre un défaut de signification, et ce n’est en rien d’autre qu’il connote un désir. Le désir du rêve n’est rien que le désir de prendre sens, et c’est à quoi satisfait l’interprétation psychanalytique.

The rebus of the deciphered dream shows a lack of meaning, and it is in nothing else that it connotes a desire. The dream's desire is nothing other than the desire to make sense, and this is what psychoanalytic interpretation satisfies.

Mais ce n’est pas la voie d’un vrai réveil pour le sujet. Freud a mis l’accent sur le fait que l’angoisse rompt le sommeil quand le rêve va déboucher sur le réel du désiré. C’est donc bien que le sujet ne se réveille que pour continuer à rêver.

But this is not the path to true awakening for the subject. Freud emphasized that anguish [l’angoisse] breaks sleep when the dream leads to the reality of desire. In other words, the subject wakes up only to continue dreaming.

À vrai dire nous avions, l’année d’avant sous le titre conjoint du désir et de son interprétation, martelé que : le désir, c’est son interprétation, sous assez d’angles pour espérer avoir pour certains débusqué ce qui du narcissisme se cramponne à la réalité comme à ce qui donne à son statut son sens.

In fact, the year before, under the joint title of desire and its interpretation, we hammered home the point that desire is its interpretation, from enough angles to hope that we'd uncovered for some what narcissism clings to reality as what gives its status its meaning.