Index of this post
Headings as given by Jacques-Alain Miller – Editor
Published in English translation
Published in French Pas tout Lacan & transcript
Information on Session 14th January 1970 & its Mathemes-Lutecium
References
Citations
Related text
Commentary
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Headings as given by Jacques-Alain Miller – Editor (1988)
14th January 1970 : Knowledge, a means of jouissance
Subtitles
How am I translated
Dominants and facts of structure, repetition and jouissance
The production of entropy
Truth is impotence
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Published in translation
UNEDITED the recommended text
Translated by Cormac Gallagher from tape-recordings as
Wednesday 14th January 1970 : Session 4 : p51-68 [pIV 1-?]
Title: ‘The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: Psychoanalysis upside down/The reverse side of psychoanalysis’
Dates: 1969-1970
Published at www.lacaninireland.com /Translations /Seminars
This text is unedited and therefore includes many more of the interventions than the edited version.
Introduction by Cormac Gallagher
Quote, … There is no critical French version of this seminar [XVII] to compare with … But when the official French text is compared to the ‘pirate editions’ that have been widely used by students over the years, a number of rather curious editorial decisions come to light. Here are the most obvious:
The four replies to the questions of ‘Radiophonie’ read by Lacan to his seminar are omitted.
Only one of Lacan’s memorable visits to the University of Vincennes is reported.
The discussion on ‘Hosea’ with Professor André Caquot has been truncated and omits many of the lively exchanges with Lacan.
A number of passages in the ‘pirate’ editions ring truer and are certainly more vivid than the corresponding ones in the official version. …
b) Translated by Russell Grigg, Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, Chapter V The Lacanian field p69-85 in
Title: ‘The Other side of psychoanalysis: The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII’
Published: W.W. Norton & Co: 2007
***
Published in French-Pas tout Lacan & transcript
UNEDITED
– Published unedited, from transcriptions of tape recordings, at http://staferla.free.fr / Séminaire 17 : L’envers at http://staferla.free.fr/S17/S17.htm
Séance 3 14 Janvier 1970, p22-32 of Séminaire 17. http://staferla.free.fr/S17/S17%20L’ENVERS.pdf
The primary sources for this working document are:
– *L’envers de la psychanalyse*, a reproduction from 1970–71 (no further details provided)
– *L’envers de la psychanalyse*, a stenotype transcript from the E.L.P. website
– *L’envers de la psychanalyse*, MP3 audio files from the Patrick Valas website or UBUWEB
Bibliographic references prioritise the most recent editions. The diagrams have been redrawn.
N.B. Text enclosed in square brackets [ ] is not by Jacques Lacan.
– École lacanienne de psychanalyse – E. L. P. – (http://ecole-lacanienne.net ) / Lacan-Bibliothèque
/at http://ecole-lacanienne.net/bibliolacan/stenotypies-version-j-l-et-non-j-l/ / 1969-1970 (L’envers de la psychanayse/version J.L. OR 1969-1970 : La psychanalyse à l’envers/version M. Chollet)
EDITED BY JACQUES-ALAIN MILLER
Le Séminaire de Jacques Lacan, Livre XVII, L’Envers de la Psychanalyse, 1969-1970, by Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1991
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Information on Session 14th January 1970 & its Mathemes
From Topologos Lutecium, Les Mathèmes de Lacan, Recherche, Table des Matières, de Jacques B. Siboni
See https://www.lutecium.org/mathemes/node499.html for Seminar XVII
For 14th January 1970, https://www.lutecium.org/mathemes/node502.html
Mathemes
Jacques Lacan’s Mathemes
Here is the English version via the internet translation of a Mathematics Thesaurus taken from written texts and from Dr. Lacan. It covers all the texts written by Lacan and all the seminars he held in 1953 at 1979. Accompanying this thesaurus, there is a search tool allowing to visualise the citations comprising one or more mathemes, these appearing in chronological order.
A Mathematics Thesaurus for 14th January 1970
Translated via the internet and reproduced without the links given on the site
17.3 On m’a mis de la craie rouge …, 14 janvier 1970
17.3 One has put some red chalk…, January 14, 1970
Points established based on the text [Lac70e, Jan. 14, 1970]
* Language is the condition of the unconscious.
* There is such a thing as the psychoanalyst.
The object *a* designates what constitutes effects of discourse.
In the master’s discourse, S1 occupies the position of the dominant, of the law.
The law is in the dominant position in the master’s discourse.
In the hysteric’s discourse, the dominant appears in the form of the symptom.
The hysteric’s discourse is organized around the symptom.
The law is called into question as a symptom.
In the analyst’s discourse, the dominant position is occupied by the object *a*.
In the master’s discourse, the object *a* functions as surplus value.
Repetition necessitates *jouissance*.
The pleasure principle is the principle of the minimal tension that must be maintained for life to sustain itself.
* Repetition is grounded in a return of *jouissance*.
It is within repetition that something—a lack, a failure—occurs.
* Within repetition itself, there is a loss of *jouissance*.
Everything that interests the analyst as knowledge originates in the unary trait.
A signifier represents nothing other than a subject for another signifier.
The signifier functions by representing a subject to another signifier.
The inaugural repetition in the structure of the signifier is a repetition aimed at *jouissance*.
In repetition, and in the form of the unary trait, knowledge proves to be the means of *jouissance*.
Where there is a loss of *jouissance*, something introduced by repetition emerges: the function of the lost object, *a*.
* The signifier enters as an apparatus of *jouissance*.
It is only on the basis of *jouissance* that the division is established by which narcissism is distinguished from the relation to the object.
*Jouissance* enters the dimension of the subject’s being.
*Jouissance* acquires status only through an effect of entropy, of loss.
* Apathy is hedonism.
It is through knowledge as a means of enjoyment that this work takes place.
Truth is accessible only through “half-saying.”
Truth cannot be spoken in its entirety.
Beyond half the truth, there is nothing to say.
The cause of the love of truth lies in the truth’s lack-of-being—the lack of forgetting.
A lack of forgetting is the same thing as a lack-of-being, for to be is nothing other than to forget.
* Love is indeed giving what one does not have.
The analyst is the one instituted as the subject supposed to know.
* Analysis is what is expected of a psychoanalyst.
What is expected of a psychoanalyst is to make his knowledge function in terms of truth.
* Where there was the *plus-de-jouir*—the *jouissance* of the Other—that is where I, insofar as I enact the psychoanalytic act, must come.
Referenced by Jacques Lacan
These are a work in progress…. JE June 2026
***
pIV 3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation – Anika Lemaire is referenced
-p40 of Russell Grigg’s translation : pIV 3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : This point comes up here then in connection with a thesis, which, faith, was produced at the frontier of the French language area, where people are valiantly struggling to maintain its rights. It is at Louvain that a thesis has been written on what is called, perhaps inappropriately, my ‘work’. Let us not forget that this thesis is a university thesis and that things must be put forward in a university style, and the least that can be said is that my ‘work’ lends itself badly to it. That indeed is why it is no bad thing that right up front of such a proposition, of a university thesis, there should be put in their place what university-style contributions had already been made in terms of being a vehicle of the aforesaid ‘work’, still in inverted commas. This moreover is why one of the authors of this Bonneval report (Antoine Vergote) is also put in the forefront of it, and in a way this meant that in my preface I could not avoid pointing out that some distinction should be made between what is eventually a translation of what I state and what I properly speaking said. In the little preface that I wrote for this thesis which is going to appear in Brussels – and it is obvious that a preface from me will give it a lift – I am forced to point out clearly – this is the only useful thing about it – that it is not the same thing to say that ‘the unconscious is the condition of language’, and to say that ‘language is the condition of the unconscious’. Language is the condition of the unconscious: that is what I say. This way it is translated stems from reasons that certainly could be completely justified in detail, by strictly university motives – and this certainly would take us far, and will perhaps take you far enough this year. From strictly university motives, I am saying, there flows the fact that no one who translates me, who has been formed in the style, the kind of requirements of the University discourse, can do anything other, whether he believes or not that he is commenting on me, than to reverse my formula. Namely, give it an implication, it has to be said, strictly contrary to the truth and without the slightest homology to what I put forward. Undoubtedly, the difficulty attached to translating me into university language is also what will strike all of those who for whatever reason attempt it, and in truth, the author of the thesis I am speaking about was animated by the best of reasons, those of an immense goodwill. This thesis, which is going to [pIV 4] be published then in Brussels, nonetheless retains all its value, its value as an example in itself, its value as a example also by what it promotes in terms of an almost obligatory distortion by reason of the translation of something that has its own laws into University discourse. I have to trace out these laws, they are those that claim to give at least the conditions of a properly analytic discourse. Naturally, this remains subject to the fact that, as I underlined last year, the fact that I am stating it here from a podium on high involves in effect a risk of error, an element of refraction, which means that from some angles it falls under the influence of the University discourse. This results from the fact that there is fundamentally something out of synch. I assure you that every time I come here to bring you the word, what is at stake for me is certainly not what I have to say to you, or what am I going to say to the this time? In this respect I have no role to play, in the sense that the function of the one who teaches can be seen in terms of role, of a place to occupy which is, incontestably, a place of some prestige. That is not what I demand of myself, but rather something that is a putting into order which imposes on me the duty to submit this exploration to this test. Like anyone else, I would, of course, avoid this putting into order when confronted with this sea of ears among which there is perhaps a critical pair, having, with this dreadful possibility, to give an account of the path my actions have taken with respect to the fact that something of the psychoanalyst exists (qu’il y a du psychoanalyste). That is my situation and the status of this situation as such has not been regulated, up to the present, in any way that is appropriate to it, except by imitating, except by encouraging, a resemblance to numerous other established situations. In the event, this leads to hypersensitive selection (of) practices, to a certain identification to an image, to a way of behaving, even to a human type that nothing seems to suggest should be obligatory, even to a ritual, indeed to some other measure that, at a better time, a time long past, I compared to that of a driving school, without moreover provoking from anyone any protest whatsoever. There was even someone close to me among my students of that time, who pointed out to me that this was in truth what was desired by anyone who became committed to an analytic career – to obtain a driving license just like at a driving school, along well mapped out paths involving the same type of examination.
See Preface to ‘Jacques Lacan’ by Anika Lemaire : 25th December 1969 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19691225 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Related text
Anika Lemaire : General Purport of a conversation with Jacques Lacan : 1970. See this site /Authors A-Z (Lemaire or Index of Authors’ texts) Download at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net
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pIV 18 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation – Wo Es war soll Ich werden, Lecture XXXI is referenced
-pIV 18 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, It is to the analyst and to him alone that there is addressed this formula that I so often commented on, the Wo Es war soll Ich werden*. If the analyst is able to occupy this place on the top left that determines his discourse, it is because he is absolutely not there for himself. It is to where surplus enjoying was, the enjoying of the Other, in so far as I am producing the psychoanalytic act, that I for my part must come.
*Lecture XXXI Dissection of the personality : 16th June 1932 : Sigmund Freud, SE XXII, which Lacan comments on repeatedly & in 28th November 1956. from New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis : 1932 (Published 1933) : Sigmund Freud
Information at this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19330101 or 19320616)
Or /3 Sigmund Freud (Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)
or Wo Es war; soll Ich warden (3 Sigmund Freud/13000000 Quotations from Sigmund Freud)
SE XXII p? (the last paragraph), And here is another warning, to conclude these remarks, which have certainly been exacting and not, perhaps, very illuminating. In thinking of this division of the personality into an ego, a super-ego and an id, you will not, of course, have pictured sharp frontiers like the artificial ones drawn in political geography. We cannot do justice to the characteristics of the mind by linear outlines like those in a drawing or in primitive painting, but rather by areas of colour melting into one another as they are presented by modern artists. After making the separation we must allow what we have separated to merge together once more. You must not judge too harshly a first attempt at giving a pictorial representations of something so intangible as psychical processes. It is highly probable that the development of these divisions is subject to great variations in different individuals; it is possible that in the course of actual functioning they may change and go through a temporary phase of involution. Particularly in the case of what is phylogenetically the last and most delicate of these divisions – the differentiation between the ego and the super-ego – something of the sort seems to be true. There is no question but that the same thing results from psychical illness. It is easy to imagine, too, that certain mystical practices may succeed in upsetting the normal relations between the different regions of the mind, so that, for instance, perception may be able to grasp happenings in the depths of the ego and in the id which were otherwise inaccessible to it. It may safely be doubted, however, whether this road will lead us to the ultimate truths from which salvation is to be expected. Nevertheless it may be admitted that the therapeutic efforts of psycho-analysis have chosen a similar line of approach. Its intention is, indeed, to strengthen the ego, to make it more independent of the super-ego, to widen its field of perception and enlarge its organization, so that it can appropriate fresh portions of the id. Where id was, there ego shall be. It is a work of culture – not unlike the draining of the Zuider Zee.
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Citation
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Chapter IV, p1-18 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
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Meno, Montaigne and the Docta Ignorantia-Some thoughts and comments on the weak symbolic in the 21st century : 21st January 2012 : Bruce Scott, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Scott) or https://web.archive.org/web/20210917040730/http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=245
Scott, Therefore one has to find one’s own mind, or perhaps be content in the idea that no imposed symbolic discourse can ever give one the true answer. In other words the art of conversation (and point of the dialogue) of Socrates in the Meno, is to teach the slave (of one could say the master/university discourse; see Lacan,: Seminar XVII: 14th January 1970[v]) to give his own speech its own true meaning. As Plato describes in the Meno, one cannot teach someone to find one’s own meaning/discourse, just as somebody cannot teach one good mental health, or force somebody through various techniques to be cured from mental illness, because if one did, as happens today, one would still be a slave.
[v] p39-53: ‘Chapter III: Knowledge, a means of jouissance’ of Russell Grigg’s 2007 translation, p43-59 of Paris Seuil, 1991, Or Cormac Gallagher’s translation: Chapter IV: Wednesday 14th January 1970: p1-18
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pIV 3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation (as in Jacques Lacan’s references)
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– Notes on references by Jacques Lacan to Plato’s ‘Meno’, Nicolas Cusanus, Michel de Montaigne, Bruce Scott,… : 16th March 2012 : Julia Evans, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Evans) or https://web.archive.org/web/20210225170226/http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=281
Quotes, Seminar XVII: Session 14th January 1970: p41 Russell Grigg translation:
Cormac Gallagher: …Chapter IV page 3: I could not avoid pointing out that some distinction should be made between what is eventually a translation of what I state and what I properly speaking said. In the preface (Anika Lemaire : Jacques Lacan : 1977) I am forced to point out clearly – this is the only useful thing about it – that it is not the same thing to say that ‘the unconscious is the condition of language’, and to say that ‘language is the condition of the unconscious’. Language is the condition of the unconscious: that is what I say. The way it is translated stems from reasons that certainly could be completely justified in detail, by strictly university motives – and this certainly would take us far, and will perhaps take you far enough this year. From strictly university motives, I am saying, there flows the fact that no one who translates me, who has been formed in the style, the kind of requirements of the University discourse, can do anything other, whether he believes or not that he is commenting on me, that to reverse my formula. Namely, give it an implication, it has to be said, strictly contrary to the truth and without the slightest homology to what I put forward. Undoubtedly, the difficulty attached to translating me into university language is also what will strike all of those who for whatever reason attempt it, and in truth, the author of the thesis I am speaking about was animated by the best of reasons, those of an immense goodwill. This thesis, which is going to (IV p4) be published then in Brussels, nonetheless retains all its value, its value as an example in itself, its value as an example also by what it promotes in terms of an almost obligatory distortion by reason of the translation of something that has its own laws into University discourse.
pIV 4 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation (www.LacaninIreland.com )
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– Against UK political moves towards Statutory Legislation & locking out the clinics of all practitioners who do not comply : 17th March 2019 : Julia Evans see this site /Index of Julia Evans texts or https://web.archive.org/web/20210917034039/http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=12319
Text of the letter https://allianceblogs.wordpress.com/2019/03/17/scoped_consultation_letter/
Evans , A relevant quote – on being regulated,
p IV 4 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation (www.LacaninIreland.com )
That is my situation and the status of this situation as such has not been regulated, up to the present, in any way that is appropriate to it, except by imitating, except by encouraging, a resemblance to numerous other established situations. In the event, this leads to hypersensitive selection (of) practices, to a certain identification to an image, to a way of behaving, even to a human type that nothing seems to suggest should be obligatory, even to a ritual, indeed to some other measure that, at a better time, a time long past, I compared to that of a driving school, without moreover provoking from anyone any protest whatsoever.
***
PIV 9-10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
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– Some relations between Jacques Lacan and Søren Kierkegaard: Seminars II, VII, X, XVII, XX & two Écrits : 16th December 2011 : Julia Evans, see this site /Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of Julia Evans’ texts) or https://web.archive.org/web/20210412120320/http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=209
13) Session of Seminar XVII Knowledge, a means of jouissance : 14th January 1970 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19700114)
Session of 14th January 1970: ‘Knowledge, a means of jouissance:
p46 of Russell Grigg’s translation:
PIV 9-10 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation,
What interests us in terms of repetition, and what is going to be inscribed in a dialectic of jouissance enjoyment, is properly speaking what goes against life. It is at the level of repetition that Freud finds himself constrained in a way, and this by the very structure of discourse, to articulate the death instinct. A hyperbole, a fabulous and in truth scandalous extrapolation for anyone who might take literally the identification of the unconscious and drive instinct. Which means that repetition is not simply the function of the cycles that life comprises, cycles of need and of satisfaction, but of something different, a cycle that involves the disappearance of this life as such, and is a return to the inanimate. A point on the horizon, an ideal point, a point that goes beyond the frame, but whose sense is indicated by a structural analysis, it is perfectly well indicated by what is involved in jouissance enjoyment. It is enough to start from the pleasure principle, which is nothing other than the principle of least tension, of the minimal tension to be maintained for life to subsist. This demonstrates that in itself jouissance enjoyment goes beyond it, and that what the pleasure principle maintains is the limit as regards jouissance enjoyment. As everything indicates to us in the facts, in experience, in the clinic, (8) repetition is founded on a return of jouissance enjoyment. And what is properly articulated by Freud himself in this connection is that in this repetition itself, there is produced something which is a defect, a failure. I highlighted here at one time its kinship with Kierkegaard’s remarks. [(See Søren Kierkegaard, ‘Repetition’ in his ‘Fear and Trembling; Repetition’] By virtue of the fact that it is explicitly repeated as such, that it is marked by repetition, what is repeated can be nothing other, as compared to what it is repeating, than in a state of loss (en perte). Losing whatever you wish, losing speed – there is something that is a loss. As regards this loss, from the beginning, from the articulation that I am summarising here, Freud insists that in repetition itself, there is a waste of jouissance enjoyment. It is here that the function of the lost object takes its origin in the Freudian discourse.
That’s Freud! Let us add that we do not need all the same to recall that it is explicitly around masochism, conceived of only in the dimension of the search for this ruinous jouissance enjoyment, that the whole text of Freud turns. Here now is where what Lacan contributes comes in: it concerns this repetition, this identification of jouissance enjoyment. Here, I borrow from Freud’s text the function of the unary trait to give it a sense that is not highlighted there, namely, the simplest form of mark, namely, what is, properly speaking, the origin of the signifier. And I put forward something that is not in Freud’s text, not seen in Freud’s text, but that cannot in any way be set aside, avoided, rejected by the psychoanalyst, that everything that interests us analysts as knowledge originates in the unary trait.
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pIV 14 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
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-Shame, an old-fashioned affect? : November 2009 (Paris) : Jean-Luc Monnier, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Monnier) or https://web.archive.org/web/20210922055252/http://www.lacanianworks.net/?p=12172.
p233-234 Monnier, Shame is the affect that accompanies the subject’s return to the stage by the agency of the Other, i.e., the return of a symbolic figure apt to give the measure of the imposition, stressing for this subject supported by his identifications that he is a subject of the signifier; the presence of the flagellum in the mural scene from the Villa of the Mysteries is a precise indication of the bonds that the fantasy of flagellation, shame, modesty, the phallus and the signifier’s mark on the body maintain with jouissance. Here I would refer you to Séminaire V, pages 348 & 384[14], and, by anticipation, to Seminar XVII, page 50.[15] Here we are in the register of the subjective, of pudor and verecundia, but clearly not without the Other.
[15] Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book XVII, op. cit. : The Cormac Gallagher translation is the more complete. : Seminar XVII : 14th January 1970 :
p50 of Russell Grigg’s translation :
pIV 14 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, quote : But the affinity between the mark and the enjoyment of the body itself, is precisely where there is indicated that it is only from jouissance enjoyment, and not along any other paths that there is established the division by which narcissism is distinguished from a relation to the object. There is no ambiguity about this. It is in ‘Beyond the pleasure principle : 1920g’* that Freud forcefully marks that what constitutes in the final term the true support, the consistency, of the specular image in the system of the ego, is that it is sustained within by, that it only clothes this lost object by which enjoyment is introduced into the dimension of the being of the subject. In effect, since enjoyment is prohibited, it is clear that it is only because of an initial chance, a contingency, an accident that enjoyment comes into play. The living being that operates normally, purrs with pleasure. If enjoyment is remarkable, and if it is ratified by having the sanction of the unary trait and of repetition, which establish it henceforth as mar, if that happens, it can only originate from a very slight gap in the meaning of enjoyment. These gaps, after all, will never be excessive even in the practices that I evoked earlier.
* Beyond the Pleasure Principle : 1920 g : Sigmund Freud, see this site 3 Sigmund Freud (19200101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts). This is probably the nearest quotation and there are 2 or 3 others.
SE XVIII p51-52, Advancing more cautiously, psycho-analysis observed the regularity with which libido is withdrawn from the object and directed on to the ego (the process of introversion); and, by studying the libidinal development of children in its earliest phases, came to the conclusion that the ego is the true and original reservoir of libido, and that it is only from that reservoir that libido is extended on to objects. The ego now found its position among sexual objects and was at once given the foremost place among them. Libido which was in this way lodged in the ego was described as ‘narcissistic’. This narcissistic libido was of course also a manifestation of the force of the sexual drive instinct [Sexualtrieben] in the analytical sense of those words, and it had necessarily to be identified with the ‘self-preservative drive instincts‘ [Selbersterhaltungstrieben] whose existence had been recognized from the first. Thus the original opposition between the ego-drive instincts and the sexual drive instincts [Ichtrieben und Sexualtrieben] proved to be inadequate. A portion of the ego-drive instincts was seen to be libidinal; sexual drives instincts probably alongside others operated in the ego.
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Related Texts
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Seminar XVII Psychoanalysis upside down/The reverse side of psychoanalysis (1969-1970) : from 26th November 1969 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19691126) or https://web.archive.org/web/20220903135319/https://lacanianworks.net/1969/11/seminar-xvii-psychoanalysis-upside-downthe-reverse-side-of-psychoanalysis-1969-1970-jacques-lacan/
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Commentary
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– Introduction to Jacques Lacan & the other side of psychoanalysis, (reflections on Seminar XVII) : 2006 : Russell Grigg & Justin Clemens (Eds), Published Duke University Press, 2006
See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19691126)
Download all texts in this book at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /texts by request.