Interview, The Psychoanalyst’s Point of View, “Neuroses and Psychoses – Where Does Abnormal Begin?” : Published on 13th May 1968 : Jacques Lacan

Published in French

Le point du vue du psychanalyste au dossier de Tonus : « Névroses et psychoses. Où commence l’abnormal ? » in Tonus, n° 331, pp 2-3.

Electronically at École Lacanienne de la Psychanalyse http://www.ecole-lacanienne.net/pastoutlacan60.php and available: http://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1968-05-13.pdf

Published in French & English,

translated by Duane Rousselle, at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (134. Le point du vue du psychanalyste au dossier de Tonus : « Névroses et psychoses. Où commence l’anormal ? »)

Jacques Lacan’s References

– On a question preliminary to any possible treatment of psychosis – two most important parts of Seminar III : December 1955-January 1956 [1958]) : Jacques Lacan. See this site (4 Jacques Lacan or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

Quote from this text:

Question: For fifteen years you’ve held a seminar at the Ecole Normale, Sainte-Anne. During the first two quarters of the 1955-1956 school year, you examined the possibility of a treatment for psychosis. You have placed the most important parts of what you have given in your seminar within an article from your Écrits[1] under the title “On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis” …

Lacan: Indeed, I examine the question concerning the articulability of psychoanalytic knowledge with regard to psychosis. A half-century of Freudianism applied to psychosis leads us to continue to rethink this question, or else we have only the status quo.

– On Narcissism – an Introduction : March 1914 : Sigmund Freud. See this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19140301)

Quote from this text:

Question: You wrote, with respect to “On Narcissism: An Introduction” by Freud: “It is used as a suction pump, sucking and discharging according to the various stages of the theory, of the libido by way of the percipiens [roughly, ‘he who is seeing’ from Merleau-Ponty], which is thereby capable of inflating and deflating a balloon-like reality.” … **

Lacan: Freud gave the first theory of the way in which the ‘I’ is constituted after the little other [note that the ‘a’ in ‘l’autre’ was put in bold] in the new subjective economy, and determined by the unconscious: there where the ‘I’ responds is the reunion of the good percipiens and along with it the security of the function of synthesis.

**From Lacan December 1955-January 1956 [1958] : Freud has since provided the article ‘On Narcissism’. This text has been put to the same use) namely, a sort of pumping in and out of the libido by the percipiens, according to every twist and turn of the psycho-analytic party line. The percipiens is thus entitled to inflate and deflate a dummy reality.

Freud provided the first theory of the way in which the ego is constituted according to the other in the new subjective economy, determined by the unconscious: one responded to it by acclaiming in this ego the rediscovery of the good old fool-proof percipiens and the synthesizing function.

Is it surprising that no other benefit should have been derived from it for psychosis than the definitive promotion of the notion of loss of reality?

– Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis : 1924 : Sigmund Freud, SE Vol 19 p181-187, Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Homepage (The Loss of Reality in Neurosis)

Quote from this text:

Question: You stated that it is not surprising that we have not advanced our understanding of psychosis beyond this notion of a loss of reality. Are you sure about this? This surprises me – I do not understand …

Lacan: Well! I am not surprised by it. But this is not everything. In 1924, Freud wrote a decisive article entitled “The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis.” He brings particular attention to the fact that the problem [for psychosis] does not have to do with a loss of reality, but rather with that which substitutes reality. This is a speech for the deaf since the problem is already resolved; the storehouse of answers is on already on the inside [of Freud’s text] and then we use what we need from it.

From Lacan December 1955-January 1956 [1958] This is not all. In 1924, Freud wrote an incisive article, ‘The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis’, in which he draws attention to the fact that the problem lies not in the reality that is lost, but in that which the very beginning of his work, under the heading of the sexual theories of childhood?

Is it not clear that we left all that behind long ago in an educative naturism that has no other principle than the notion of gratification and its obverse, frustration, which is nowhere mentioned by Freud.

Quote from this text:

Question: In a chapter from your Écrits titled “On a Question Prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis,” you wrote: “Moreover, what problem would still constitute an obstacle to the psychoanalyst’s discourse, when the involvement of a tendency in reality is indicative of regression in the couple thus formed? What could possibly make people more weary than to let them talk about regression, without distinguishing between structural regression, historical regression and the decline in history, and regression in [psychical] development. Freud always differentiates things topologically, temporally or genetically.” …

Lacan: I pointed out in this passage that we give ground here to any number of confusions. It is written for those we train, and so it would not interest others.

– The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power/ The Rules of the Cure and the Lures of its Power : 10^th-13^th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19580710 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

Quote from this text:

Question: In your Écrits, under the title “The Direction of the Treatment and the Principle of its Power,” which is your report to the international conference at Rayaumont, at the invitation of the French Psychoanalytic Society, on July 10-13th 1958, you wrote: “We take it for granted that analysis concerns the characteristics of the analysand as a person. It is thought that the analysand is being too bold if they are interested in the analyst’s effects on the analysis. This at least explains why it is that a shudder runs through us [analyst’s] when certain trendy remarks are made about countertransference, which no doubt contribute to masking our conceptual impropriety: think about how great we believe our thinking to be when we demonstrate to them that we are made of the same clay as those we knead…” [See p226 of Alan Sheridan’s translation]

Lacan: And I pointed out that we ought not be moved to condemnation, except with respect to today’s anti-Freudianism. For, in this, we must nonetheless be grateful to them for removing the mask of our pride, which conceals what we do not know, and which retains the doctrine of Freud enough to articulate an experience which is obscure. But we intend to demonstrate the failure to genuinely support a praxis has to do – as is common in human history – with the exercise of power.

Julia Evans2024-08-24T17:55:37+01:00