Time-line: This presentation was given on September 28, 1946, at the psychiatric conference held in Bonneval. It was published in [Evolution Psychiatrique Xll, I (1947): p123-65, and in] a volume entitled Le Problème de Ia psychogenèse des Névroses et des psychoses (“The Problem of the Psychogenesis of the Neuroses and Psychoses”), by Lucien Bonnafé, Henri Ey, Sven Follin, Jacques Lacan, and Julien Rouart (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1950), p23-54
This text (Presentation on Psychic Causality) is implicated in the ‘Preface to Number Thirteen and the Logical Form of Suspicion’ : March 1945 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan
Translation Note : Jacques Lacan’s phrase the ‘unfathomable decision of being’ : p177 of French Écrits, p145 of the English Écrits, Bruce Fink translates as ‘unsoundable decision of being’. This is a mistranslation.
Further problem of translation
P144 of Bruce Fink’s translation gives : “Not just anyone can go mad” [ “Ne déviant pas fou qui veut”] More literally “Not deviating mad who wants” – ‘déviant’ is probably the present participle of ‘dévier’ – to deviate or to swerve. It is probable that ‘deviate’ should replace ‘can go’ – possibly ‘(Those) who want mad(ness) (do) not deviate.
Published,
-in French
At https://ecole-lacanienne.net/en/bibliolacan/pas-tout-lacan-2/, Download https://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1946-09-28.pdf
Introduction – « Propos sur la causalité psychique » fut prononcé aux Journées Psychiatriques à Bonneval le 28 septembre 1946 et paru dans l’Évolution Psychiatrique, 1947, fascicule I, pp 123-165 (sans l’allocution de clôture). Cette première version est ici proposée.
Internet translation : “Remarks on psychic causality” was delivered at the Psychiatric Days in Bonneval on September 28, 1946 and appeared in Psychiatric Evolution, 1947, booklet I, pp 123-165 (without the closing speech). This first version is proposed here.
– in translation
Écrits, Jacques Lacan, The first complete edition in English : translated by Bruce Fink : W.W. Norton & Co : 2002 : p123-187
Translated by Bruce Fink : Available www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (September 1946)
Also see Écrits : October 1966 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (October 1966) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
Jacques Lacan’s References
Mirror Stage – 16th June 1936 (Paris), 3rd August 1936 (Marienbad), 1938, 17th July 1949 (Zurich), 1966 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19360803) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
Family Complexes in the Formation of the Individual : March 1938 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
The Case of Aimée, or Self-punitive Paranoia : 7th July 1932 : Jacques Lacan’s thesis. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19320707) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (de Clérambault)
Jacques Lacan also cites the following : Charles Blondel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Ernest Jones (See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z), Maurice Merleau-Ponty with others.
Jacques Lacan cites de Gaétan Gatian Clérambault
Full quotes given at : Psychoses of passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault, see this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (de Clérambault)
p124 Bruce Fink’s translation of Écrits & p152 French Écrits :
It is here that the structures of the madman’s knowledge must reveal themselves to us. And it is odd, though probably not coincidental, that it was mechanists like Clérambault and Guiraud who outlined them best. As false as the theory in which these authors included them may be, it made them remarkably attuned to an essential phenomenon of such structures: the kind of “anatomy” that manifests itself in them. Clérambault’s constant reference in his analysis to what he calls, with a slightly Disfoirus-like term, “the idiogenic,” is nothing but a search for the limits of signification. Employing a method involving nothing but comprehension, he paradoxically manages to display the magnificent range of structures that runs the gamut from the so-called “postulates” of the delusions of passion to the so-called basal phenomena of mental automatism.
This is why I think that he has done more than anyone else to support the hypothesis of the psychogenesis of madness; in any case, you will see what I mean by this shortly.
Clérambault was my only master in the observation of patients, after the very subtle and delectable Trénel, whom I made the mistake of abandoning too soon in order to seek a position in the consecrated spheres of professorial ignorance.
I claim to have followed his method in the analysis of the case of paranoic psychosis discussed in my thesis; I demonstrated the psychogenic structure of the case and designated its clinical entity with the more or less valid term of “self-punishing paranoia.”
p141-142 of Bruce Fink’s translation of Écrits, p173-174 French Écrits, : I suspect Clérambault would have recognised this reply as having more to do with a delusion of passion than with love.
Citations
– Towards the XIVth World Association of Psychoanalysis Congress – Everyone is Mad, 22nd to 25th February 2024 (Zoom), https://congresamp2024.world/en/category/quotations/. Circulated From: Congrès AMP 2024, Subject: Everyone is Mad – Quotation #16, Date: 7 February 2024 at 07:01:59 GMT: p135 of Bruce Fink’s translation : “[The phenomenon of madness] is inseparable from the problem of signification for being in general—that is, the problem of language for man”.
Fuller quotation : p135 to 136 of Bruce Fink’s translation : This is why we all agree that a madman is a madman. But isn’t the remarkable thing, rather, that he should know anything about them at all? And isn’t the point to figure out what he knows about himself here without recognizing himself in it?
Regarding the reality that the subject attributes to these phenomena, what is far more decisive than the sensorial quality he experiences in them, or the belief he attaches to them, is the fact that all of them—no matter which ones (whether hallucinations, interpretations, or intuitions) and no matter how foreignly and strangely he experiences them—target him personally: they split him, talk back to him, echo him, and read in him, just as he identifies them, questions them, provokes them, and deciphers them. And when all means of expressing them fail him, his perplexity still manifests to us a questioning gap in him: which is to say that madness is experienced entirely within the register of meaning.
The interest that madness thus kindles in us owing to its pathos provides a first answer to the question I raised about the human value of the phenomenon of madness. And its metaphysical import is revealed in the fact that it is inseparable from the problem of signification for being in general—that is, the problem of language for man.
Indeed, no linguist or philosopher could any longer defend a theory of Ianguage as a system of signs that would double the system of realities, realities defined by the common assent of healthy minds in healthy bodies.
– Quotation 8, towards the XIVth WAP congress – Everyone is Mad, 22nd to 25th February 2024, circulated by World Association of Psychoanalysis on 6th December 2023, as “Not only can man’s being not be understood without madness, but it would not be man’s being if it did not bear madness within itself as the limit of his freedom.” (Lacan, J. (1966), “Presentation on Psychical Causality.” In Écrits, New York: Norton, 2006, p. 144. See https://congresamp2024.world/en/quotation8/)
A fuller quote : P143-144 of Bruce Fink’s translation : Let us take one last look at Alceste who has victimized no one but himself and let us hope he finds what he is looking for, namely:
. . . some spot unpeopled and apart
Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.
I want to examine the word “free” here. For it is not simply by way of derision that the impeccable rigor of classical comedy makes it appear here.
The import of the drama that classical comedy expresses cannot, in effect, be measured by the narrowness of the action in which it takes shape, and—like Descartes’ lofty march in the “Secret Note” in which he declares himself to be on the verge of becoming a player on the world scene—it “advances behind a mask.”
Instead of Alceste, I could have looked for the play of the law of the heart in the fate that put the old revolutionary of 1917 in the dock at the Moscow trials. But what is demonstrated in the poet’s imaginary space is metaphysically comparable to the world’s bloodiest events, since it is what causes blood to be spilled in the world.
I am not thus avoiding the social tragedy that dominates our era, but my marionette’s acting will show each of us more clearly the risk he is tempted to run whenever freedom is at stake.
For the risk of madness is gauged by the very appeal of the identifications on which man stakes both his truth and his being.
Thus rather than resulting from a contingent fact—the frailties of his organism—madness is the permanent virtuality of a gap opened up in his essence.
And far from being an “insult” to freedom, madness is freedom’s most faithful companion, following its every move like a shadow.
Not only can man’s being not be understood without madness, but it would not be man’s being if it did not bear madness within itself as the limit of his freedom.
It is certainly true—to interrupt this serious talk with something humorous from my youth, which I wrote in a pithy form on the wall in the hospital staff room—that “Not just anyone can go mad” [ “Ne déviant pas fou qui veut” – (Those) who wish mad(ness) (do) not deviate].
But it is also true that not just anyone who wants to can run the risks that enshroud madness [JE This translation needs checking against the French].
A weak organism, a deranged imagination, and conflicts beyond one’s capacities do not suffice to cause madness. It may well be that a rock-solid body, powerful identifications, and the indulgence of fate, as written in the stars, lead one more surely to find madness seductive.
Presentation on Psychical Causality : 28th September 1946 : Jacques Lacan
-The Root of Segregation : 27th March 2019 (LRO 138) : Jorge Assef. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Assef),
Note : Whereelse Lacan refers to kakon is given at Jorge Assef (27th March 2019)
Assef states : It is here that we can retroactively think the scope of another of his écrits, one from his early teaching, going back twenty years in his work to the point when, during his research on paranoia, Lacan states; “… when he attempts to show that it is precisely the kakon of his own being that the madman tries to get at in the object he strikes…”[2]
P141-143 of Bruce Fink’s translation, p175-176 of de Seuil (October 1966), I believe that the question does not concern Philinte’s wisdom, and the solution would perhaps shock these gentlemen, for the fact is that Alceste is mad and that Moliere demonstrates that he is—precisely insofar as Alceste, in his ‘beautiful soul’, does not recognize that he himself contributes to the havoc he revolts against.
I specify that he is mad, not because he loves a woman who is flirtatious and betrays him—which is something the learned analysts I mentioned earlier would no doubt attribute to his failure to adapt to life—but because he is caught, under Love’s banner, by the very feeling that directs this art of mirages at which the beautiful Célimène excels: namely, the narcissism of the idle rich that defines the psychological structure of “high society” [ “monde “] in all eras, which is doubled here by the other narcissism that is especially manifest in certain eras in the collective idealization of the feeling of being in love.
…
With this lovely wish and the taste he has for the song “J’aime mieux ma mie,” why doesn’t he court a salesgirl at his local flower shop? He would not be able to “show to all” his love for such a girl, and this is the true key to the feeling he expresses here: it is the passion to demonstrate his unicity to everyone, even if only in the form of the isolation of a victim, an isolation in which he finds bitter, jubilatory satisfaction in the final act of the play.
As for the mainspring of his twists and turns, it lies in a mechanism that I would relate not to the self-punishment but rather to the suicidal aggression of narcissism,
For what infuriates Alceste upon hearing Oronte ‘s sonnet is that he recognizes his own situation in it, depicted all too precisely in its ridiculousness, and the imbecile who is his rival appears to him as his own mirror image. The words of mad fury to which he then gives vent blatantly betray the fact that he seeks to lash out at himself. And whenever one of the repercussions of his words shows him that he has managed to do so, he delights in suffering its effect.
Here we can note an odd defect in Ey’s conception: it diverts him from the signification of the delusional act, leaving him to take it as the contingent effect of a lack of control, whereas the problem of this act’s signification is constantly brought to our attention by the medical and legal exigencies that are essential to the phenomenology of our experience.
Someone like Guiraud, who is a mechanist, again goes much farther in his article, “Meurtres immotives” (“Unexplained Murders”),[10] when he attempts to show that it is precisely the kakon of his own being that the madman tries to get at in the object he strikes.
Let us take one last look at Alceste who has victimized no one but himself …
Footnote 10 p158, In ‘Évolution psychiatrique’, 2 (March 1931), 25-34. See also P. Guiraud and B. Cailleux, “Le meurtre immotivé, reaction libératrice de la maladie chez les hébéfrènes,” ‘Annales Médico-psychiatrique 2 (November 1928): 352-60
P782 Bruce Fink’s translator’s end-notes, (175.3) Kakon means “bad (object)” in Greek.
– Psychoanalysis and the Post-DSM Crisis : probably July 2014 : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent) & https://www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent
Quote from Laurent : On one hand, in the name of psychoanalysis, he discards any kind of segregation of our fellow humans (for example when he defines madness as the essence of human liberty in his first Écrits [13] or when he proclaims in 1978 that “Everyone is mad”) [14] ; this is the Lacan in favor of continuism. [13] Lacan, J. “Presentation on Psychical Causality”, in Écrits, op. cit., p.121.
A fuller quote is above. P144 of Bruce Fink’s translation : And far from being an “insult” to freedom, madness is freedom’s most faithful companion, following its every move like a shadow.
Not only can man’s being not be understood without madness, but it would not be man’s being if it did not bear madness within itself as the limit of his freedom.
– See Lacanian Psychoanalysis Not Without the Body : 18th January 2020 (Dublin) : Bernard Seynhaeve (audio) – this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Seynhaeve) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z For comments on ‘unfathomable decision of being’
– Notes & references for Jacques Lacan’s Seminar IV 28th November 1956 : 2nd July 2017 : Julia Evans. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Evans Julia or Index of Julia Evans’ texts)
– Three Enigmas – Meaning, Signification, Jouissance : February 1993 : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent
– Melancholia, the Pain of Existence and Moral Cowardice : October1988 : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent
– p148 of Bruce Fink’s translation in The Body in the Teaching of Jacques Lacan : May 1984 : Colette Soler. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Soler) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
– Transfer to Saint Denis? Lacan for Vincennes! : 22nd October 1978 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19781022)
– Address on Child Psychosis (Maison de la Chimie, à Paris ) : 22nd October 1967 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19671022) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
– Teachings of the Case Presentation : 1977 : Jacques-Alain Miller. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
– Écrits : October 1966 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19661001) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan