Seminar XV – The Psychoanalytic Act (1967-1968) : from 15th November 1967 : Jacques Lacan

See Session of Seminar XV : 19^th June 1968 : Jacques Lacan, this site  /4 Jacques Lacan (19680619)

Seminar XV 6^th December 1967

-Lacan with D. W. Winnicott : 25th June 2011 (Dublin) : Joanne Conway, see this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Conway or Index of Authors)

p20 Conway, Lacan had a particular response to Winnicott’s notion of the true and false self – The false self he equated to the imaginary constructions of the ego, identifications that are dissolved during an analysis whilst the false self was a concept of Winnicott’s which for Lacan proved problematic in that it attempted to define the subject in terms of a final truth. Lacan says;

Behind the false self there is waiting what? The true to start up again? Who does not see when we already have in analytic theory this Real Ich, this Lust Ich, this ego, this id, all the references already articulated enough to define our field that the definition of this self represents nothing other than as it is avowed in the text with false and true, the truth? But who does not also see that there is no other true-self behind this situation than Mr. Winnicott himself, who places himself there as the presence of the truth. (L’acte psychanalytique, 1967-1968).

IV p11-12 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation (p35 of Staferla), This self that he speaks about as something that is there from all time, behind everything that is happening before even the subject is mapped out in any way, something is capable of freezing, he says, the situation of lack. When the (74) environment is not suitable in the first days, in the first months of the baby, something may function which brings about this freezing, this gelation. Undoubtedly, this is something which only experience can settle. And there again there is, with respect to these psychotic consequences, something that Winnicott saw very clearly. But behind this freezing, there is, Winnicott tells us this self which is waiting. This self which, by being frozen, constitutes the false self that Mr. Winnicott has to return to by a process of regression whose relation to the acting (agir) of the analyst it will be the object of my discourse the next time to show. Behind this false self there is waiting what? The true to start up again. Who does not see, when we already have in analytic theory the Real lch, the Lust lch, the ego, the id, all these references already articulated enough to define our field, that the addition of this self represents nothing other than, as it is avowed in the text with false and true, the truth? But who does not also see that there is no other true-self behind this situation than Mr Winnicott himself. who places himself here as the presence of the truth.

P57-58 Staferla, pVII 11 [See Laurent 2022 for full quote] We must quite simply try to do better.  I point out to you that if this logic of Aristotle has remained un-punctured for long centuries up to our own, it is because of the objections that were made to it of being, as they said, a logic which did not notice that it was doing grammar.

-Performative Jouissance and Analytic Act [1] : 6th October 2022 : Éric Laurent, see this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent), states “Lacan authorises a rereading of Aristotle, which he quotes and comments on explicitly in the Seminar XV” [Footnote 11] See Laurent 2022 for full quote.

P69 Staferla, pIX 1 of Cormac Gallagher,  Will it be, to take the inaugural reference of Aristotle, at the moment when, as I evoked, he takes the decisive steps from which there is instaured*, as such, the (146) logical category in its formal form [fonnal species]? Is it a matter of an approach with a demonstrative or dialectical intention? The question, as you are going to see, is secondary.

* “Instaured” is a rare or obsolete past-tense verb meaning to renew, restore, or establish something. It comes from the Latin word instaurare.

P70 Staferla, pIX 2 of Cormac Gallagher, … the handling of what is designated by this term logic see-saws in such a way, a way which truly makes, as I might say, not always more difficult, but makes us more and more confused before Aristotle’s starting point.

P71 Staferla, pIX 3 Cormac Gallagher, [Fuller quote at Laurent 2022] Namely, the question of what is initial, initiating, in positing any signifier whatsoever, by introducing it as representing the subject.  For this is, and this is since Aristotle, what is essential about it and what alone allows there to be situated in its correct place the difference between this first bipartition, the one which differentiates the universal from the particular, and the second bipartition, the one which affirms or which denies.

P73 Staferla, pIX 4-5 Cormac Gallagher, [Fuller quote at Laurent 2022]This indeed is why it is necessary for me (150) to accentuate how it is demonstrated-  what is already known if one reads Aristotle’s text in an appropriate way- that the universal affirmative and the universal negative in no way contradict one another, that they are both acceptable on condition that we are in this top right hand box.  It is also true at the level of this box to state that all the strokes are vertical, or that no stroke is vertical, the two things are true at the same time, something that curiously Aristotle, if my knowledge is correct, failed to recognise.

P74 Staferla, pIX 7 Cormac Galagher, [Fuller quote at Laurent 2022]  We find ourselves here before another form of what created a problem and ended up by being articulated in the Middle Ages.  It is not there for nothing this inventio medi, from which there starts with this admirably lively step the Prior Analytics (153) of Aristotle.  Namely, the first figure of the middle term, of this middle term about which he explains to us that by being situated as a predicate, it will allow us to connect in a rational fashion this vanishing subject to something which is a predicate.  Through the middle term, this connection is possible.

P79 Staferla, pIX 8 Cormac Gallagher, Now let us try to take up again what the psychoanalysand is, this psychoanalysand, who is engaged in this curious task that I described as being supported by his abdication.  … But one does not say that-these or those or all of these or all of those are psychoanalysands.  I did not use, as you notice, the singular term.  This would be still more outrageous.  But let us leave the singular to one side, experiencing at this turning point the same repugnance that ensures that Aristotle does not use singular terms in his syllogistics.

Laurent,  Lacan wants to found an act that does not depend on the quality of the apparent agent, the psychoanalyst, but is based solely on the analysand and the subject at stake in the analytic experience. “If we follow the weft suggested to us by the use of the syllogism, what we have to arrive at is something that will join this subject to what has been put forward here as a predicate, the psychoanalyst – if there exists a psychoanalyst – and alas, this is what we lack to support this logical articulation. If there exists a psychoanalyst, everything is assured: there may be many others. But for the moment, the question for us is to know how the psychoanalysand can pass to the psychoanalyst. How it is that, in the most well-founded way, this qualification can only be supported by the psychoanalysand’s accomplished task.”[14]

[14] Lacan, J., Seminar 15, “The Analytic Act”, (1966-1967), lesson of 7th February 1968. Unpublished. See Seminar XV The Psychoanalytic Act (1967-1968) : from 15th November 1967 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19671115 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts) :

-7^th February 1968, pIX 6-7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : In effect, if we follow the thread, the web that the use of the syllogism suggests to us, what of course we ought to arrive at, is something that is going to connect this subject to what is here advanced as a predicate, the psychoanalyst – if a psychoanalyst exists. And, alas, this is what we lack to support this logical articulation. If one psychoanalyst exists, everything is assured. There can be a crowd of others.

But for the moment, the question for us is to know how the psychoanalysand can become a psychoanalyst. How does it happen that, in the most well grounded way, this qualification is only supported by the task completed by the psychoanalysand. Here indeed we see there being opened up this other dimenaion, which is one that I already tried to profile before you, about the conjunction of the act and the task. How do the two connect up?

***

-The object a is both the mark, the locus of the acephalous jouissance that animates the subject, and the result, the remainder of the accomplishment of the analyst’s task. For the subjectivation of the analysand’s sexual reality to occur, the psychoanalyst must already be the representation of that which he blocks [bouche] of this reality of the object a.[15] [15] Ibid. : 7^th February 1968, pIX 7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : What is at stake is what I called the o-object [a-object] which is for us here the true middle term that is proposed, assuredly, as a plus one, of a more incomparable seriousness by being the effect of the discourse of the psychoanalysand. And by being on the other hand, as I have stated it, in the new graph that you see me using here for the last two years, not what the psychoanalyst becomes, what is implied at the start by the whole operation, what ought to be the outcome of the psychoanalysing operation, what liberates in it something of a fundamental truth. The end of psychoanalysis, namely, the subject being unequal to any possible subjectification of sexual reality and the requirement that, in order that this truth should appear, the psychoanalyst should already be the representation of what masks, obtrudes, stoppers this truth and which is called the o-object.

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-Laurent, Lacan introduces a radically new dimension into the performative logic. The one who has supported the operation finds himself at the end of it, excluded, rejected. “For if at the end of the finished psychoanalysis, this object a, which is undoubtedly always there […] it is nevertheless only at the end of the operation that it will reappear in the real, from another source, namely as rejected by the analysand.”[16] [16] Ibid. :

7^thFebruary 1968, pIX 7-8 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : Note well, in effect, that I will return at length to the essential of what I am articulating here, the essential is not at the end of the psychoanalysis, as some people imagine – I saw it from the questions posed – the psychoanalyst becomes the o-object for the other. This “for the other” here curiously takes on the value of a “for oneself”, in as much as , as subject there is none other than this Other to whom the whole discourse is left. It is neither for the Other, nor in a for oneself which does not exist at the level of the psychoanalyst, that there resides this o. It is indeed an in itself (en soi), an in itself of the psychoanalyst. It is in as much as, as the psychoanalysts themselves protest moreover – it is enough to open the (154) literature on it to see the testimony of it at every moment – they are really this breast of the “oh, my mother Intelligence”, of our Mallarmé; that they are themselves this waste product, presiding over the operation of the task, that they are the look, that they are the voice. It is in so far as they are in themselves the support of this o-object that the whole operation is possible. There is only one thing that escapes them, which is the degree to which it is not metaphorical.

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-Laurent, The subject ends up separating itself from its cause. The knot of the analytic task and the act defines the psychoanalyst as a rejection in the real, produced by the analytic task. “This is what is the production quite comparable to that of such and such a machine that circulates in our scientific world and which is, strictly speaking, the production of the psychoanalysand.” It is here that Lacan makes an offbeat reference to Austin in a piquant play on words. “What is it after you have so transformed the object an into a production line, if the psychoanalyst produces the a like an Austin?” It is not clear that Austin noticed that his passion for doing things with words had something to do with the homophony of his name with a car. :

Seminar XV 7^th February 1968, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19671115) pIX 10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : The extraction, the absence of this dimension means that there is a being, the being of the psychoanalyst who can make everything that is at stake in the fate of the psychoanalysing subject turn, by being himself in the position of the o. Namely, in truth, to make his relation to him turn purely and simply around these terms of an algebra which are in no way concerned with a crowd of existing and more than acceptable dimensions. A pile of givens, of substantial elements in what is in operation, in place and breathing there on the couch. Here is a production that is altogether comparable to that of one or other machine which circulates in our scientific world and which is, properly speaking, the production of the psychoanalysand.

Here is something original. Here all the same is something that is rather tangible, which is not all that new, even though it is articulated in a way that nay appear striking to you. Because what does it mean if one asks the psychoanalysis not to bring into play in analysis what is called counter-transference? I would defy anyone to give it another sense than the following. That there is no place either for “I like you”, or “I do not like you”, after having defined them as I have just done. But then we find ourselves up against the question of what is involved, after having transformed the o-object for you at this point into an assembly line production, if the psychoanalyst produced the o like an Austin. What can the psychoanalytic act mean, if in effect the psychoanalytic act is, all the same, committed by the psychoanalyst?

-Performative Jouissance and Analytic Act [1] : 6th October 2022 : Éric Laurent, see this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent), states “Lacan authorises a rereading of Aristotle, which he quotes and comments on explicitly in the Seminar XV” [Footnote 11] See Laurent 2022 for full quote.

P103 Staferla, pXIII 3 Cormac Gallagher, Psychoanalysis let us start then from what is for the moment our only firm point: that it takes place with a psychoanalyst.  “With” must be understood here in the instrumental sense, or at least I am proposing that you should understand it in that way.

How does it happen that there exists something that cannot be situated except with a psychoanalyst.  As Aristotle says, not at all that one should say, he assures us, “the soul thinks” but “man thinks with his soul” indicating explicitly that this is the sense that should be given to the word “with”, namely, the instrumental sense.  A strange thing, when I made an allusion somewhere to the Aristotelian reference, things seem rather to have brought effects of confusion to the reader, for want no doubt of recognising the Aristotelian reference.

It is with a psychoanalyst that psychoanalysis penetrates into this something that is at stake.

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