Confusion over publication date :

There are two dates : April 1973 and 1974. This was probably put in place when published in French in 1982. I suspect that April 1973 is correct so this date is given.

Translated in English

– Translated by Jack W. Stone – dated April 1974. Formerly published University of Missouri at http://web.missouri.edu/~stonej/Italian_Note.pdf

– Translated by Cormac Gallagher as ‘Letter to three Italian Lacanians: Contri, Drazien and Verdiglione’, published at www.lacaninireland.com, see http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Italian-note-1973.pdf

– In French, together with Jack W. Stone’s, Cormac Gallagher’s & Susan Schwartz’s translation, see www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (150. AUTRES ÉCRITS: – Note to the Italians—3 translations)

– Note to the Italian Group, transl. by Russell Grigg in Analysis No.7, Centre for Psychoanalytic Research, Melbourne, 1997.

Published in French :

– La lettre mensuelle de l’École de la cause freudienne 9 (1982) – dated 1974

– Note italienne : p5 of Ornicar? 25, 1982, Seuil – dated April 1973

– at www.psicoanalisis.org : available here : dated 1973

– in French & Italian at Patrick Valas’s website, see http://www.valas.fr/Lettre-de-Jacques-Lacan-aux-Italiens-francais-italien,036 : dated April 1974

– p307-311 of Autres Écrits : 2001 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (20010101 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

Background & quotation

This letter was addressed by Lacan in April of 1973 to three Italian psychoanalysts: Muriel Drazien, Armando Verdiglione, and Giacomo Contri, who wanted to create a group linked to the E.F.P. (from www.Freud2Lacan.com)

It was first published in Italian in Spirale (No. 9, 1981)

This text affirms the importance of ‘la passe’ to any Lacanian school and briefly describes other tenets crucial to the formation of an analyst and the importance of ‘les passeurs’ in the procedure of ‘la passe’. Although this is usually translated as the Italian Note, it is more accurate to state ‘Note to the Italians’

“…does not for all that imply that just anyone is an analyst.

For what it enunciates it is that it is the analyst that is at stake, it presupposes that there is one of them.

To authorise oneself is not to auto-ri(tual)ise oneself.

For I have posed on the other hand that the analyst depends on the not-all.

Not every one (pas-tout être) who speaks can authorise himself to act as an analyst. The proof is that an analysis is necessary for it, even though it is not sufficient.

The analyst alone, in other words not just anyone, is authorised only by himself. “

Quoted from Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.LacaninIreland.com

Further Background

This is one of three texts where Jacques Lacan deals with the structure of a psychoanalytic organisation:

  • 1964: a) The founding act b) Adjunct to the founding act c) Preamble to the founding act- See Founding Act : 21st June 1964 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19640621 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
  • 1967: The proposal on the analyst of the School: See Proposition of 9th October 1967 on the psychoanalyst of the School : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19671009)
  • 1973: The Italian note

From Cormac Gallagher, www.lacaninireland.com

Further Quotations

P1 of Jack W. Stone’s translation, www.Freud2Lacan.com

The analyst said to be of the School (École), A.E. is thenceforth recruited from submitting himself to the test called call the passe to which however nothing obligates him, since the School also delegates certain who do not offer themselves to it, with the title analyst member of the school, A.M.E.

The Italian group, if it wishes to understand me, will owe it to name those who will postulate their entry on the principle of the passe taking the risk that there not be one.

This principle is the following, which I have said in these terms.

The analyst is only authorized by himself, this goes by itself. Little matters to him a guarantee that my School gives no doubt under the ironic cipher A.M.E.1 It is not with this that he operates. The Italian group is in no state to furnish this guarantee.

1 TN The letters A.M.E. spell the French word for soul, âme [trans.]

What it has to watch for is that only the analyst be authorized by himself.i

i RGK What it has to watch out for is that to authorize oneself there is only the analyst.

For my thesis, inaugurative of a break with the practice by which the so‐called Socieities make of analysis an aggregation, does not for all that imply that just anyone can be an analyst. 307

For what it states is that it is a question of the analyst. It supposes that there be one there.

To authorize oneself (S’autoriser) is not to auto‐ ri(tuali)ze oneself.

For I have moreover posed that the analyst arises from the not‐ all.

Not‐all beings to speak would know how to authorize themselves to become analysts. The proof is that an analysis is necessary there, yet it is not sufficient.

***

P5-6 of Jack W. Stone’s translation, www.Freud2Lacan.com

Thenceforth he knows to be a reject. This is what the analyst must make him at least feel. If he is not carried in it to enthusiasm, he can have had an analysis there, but of an analyst there is no chance. This is what my “passe” of recent date often illustrates: enough for the passeurs to bring disgrace upon themselves in it if they leave the thing uncertain, otherwise (faute de quoi) the case falls under the blow of a polite declining of his candidature.

This will have another scope (portée) in the Italian group, if it follows me in the business. For at the School of Paris, there is no breakage (pas de casse) for all that. The analyst is only authorized by himself, his fault passes to the passeurs and the session continues for the general bon heur, tainted however with depression.

***

P7 of Jack W. Stone’s translation, www.Freud2Lacan.com

The savoir in play, I have emitted its principle as the ideal point that everything permits supposing when one has the sense of the blueprint: it is that there is no sexual rapport, a rapport, I mean, that might be put in writing.

Citations

Quoted in Painful Loves – Presentation of the 2025 NLS Congress Theme : 12th May 2024 (Dublin) : Patricia Bosquin-Caroz.

Circulated on NLS Messager as [nls-messager] 4930.en/ Painful Loves: Presentation of the 2025 NLS Congress Theme by Patricia Bosquin-Caroz on 29th May 2024. See https://www.amp-nls.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/ENG.-PBC-Presentation-of-the-2025-NLS-Congress-Theme-FV.pdf : PBC states, That same year in his “Note Italienne,” Lacan expresses his wish, with regard to psychoanalysis, “to enlarge the resources thanks to which we can do without that unfortunate relation, in order to make love more worthy than the profusion of chatter that it constitutes to this day.” [11] Lacan J., “Note italienne,” Autres écrits, Paris, Seuil, 2001, p311.

As translated by Jack W. Stone from the French text in Ornicar? (No. 25, 1982), p8 of www.Freud2Lacan.com :

The savoir designated by Freud as of the unconscious is what the human humus invents for its perernniality from one generation to another, and now that one has invented it, one knows that it gives proof of a frantic lack of imagination.

One can only understand it by benefit of this inventory (sous bénéfice de cet inventaire8): that is, from leaving in suspension the imagination that falls short in it, and adding the contribution of the symbolic and the real that the imaginary knots here (this is why one cannot drop it) and trying, beginning with them, which all the same have proven themselves in the savoir, to enlarge the resources thanks to which one will succeed in dispensing with this regrettable rapport to make a love more worthy than the proliferation of chatter that it constitutes to, this day—sicut palea9, said St. Thomas in terminating his life as monk. Find me an analyst of this stature, who will connect the thing to something other that a sketched‐out organon.

8 TN A more precise juridical translation of this phrase would be “without liability to debts beyond there inherited assets”.

9 TN Like chaff.

*****

Some Moral Failings Called Depressions : February 1997 : Pierre Skriabine. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Skriabine) for a quote from Cormac Gallagher’s translation, p2 of www.Freud2Lacan.com

****

Drive & Fantasy : June 1994 : Pierre Skriabine. See this stie /5 Other Authhors A-Z (Skriabine or Index of Other Authors’ Texts)

P3 Skriabine : This is precisely the function of the object a in the drive, a function that is independent of its nature, if I can say so, independent of what Lacan would, in 1974, in his Italian Note (Ornicar? 25) call “the four episodic substances” of the object a. Lacan shows us that “the object a is wrapped up in the drive, through which everyone aims at his own heart, but misses the mark”;

Jack W. Stone’s translation, p6 of www.Freud2Lacan.com, states

I now articulate things for people who understand me.

There is the object (a). It ex‐sists now, in that I have constructed it. I suppose that one knows the four episodic substances, that (309) one knows for what it serves, from being enveloped by the drive by which each is aimed for at heart and is only attained to by a shot that misses it.

This makes a support for the most effective realizations—and to the most attaching (or clinging) realities as well.

***