Index of this post
Headings as given by Jacques-Alain Miller – Editor
Published in translation
Published in French Pas tout Lacan & transcript
Information on Session 25th May 1955 & its Mathemes Lutecium
References
Citations
Related text
Commentary
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Headings as given by Jacques-Alain Miller – Editor (1988)
11th February 1970 The Lacanian field
Subtitles
Freud masks his discourse
The happiness of the phallus
Means of jouissance
Hegel, Marx, and thermodynamics
Wealth, property of the wealthy
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Published in translation
UNEDITED the recommended text
Translated by Cormac Gallagher from tape-recordings as
Wednesday 11th February 1970 : Session VI p86-102 [VI 1-17]
Title: ‘The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII: Psychoanalysis upside down/The reverse side of psychoanalysis’
Dates: 1969-1970
Published at www.lacaninireland.com /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, Chapter V The Lacanian field p69-85 in
Title: ‘The Other side of psychoanalysis: The seminar of Jacques Lacan: Book XVII’
Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller
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
11th February 1970, Séance 5 11 Février 1970, p43-52 of Séminaire 17.
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 prioritize 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 11th February 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 11th February 1970, https://www.lutecium.org/mathemes/node504.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 11th February 1970
Translated via the internet and reproduced without the links given on the site
17.5 Nous allons avancer …, 11 février 1970
17.5 We are going to move forward…, 11th February 1970
Points established based on the text [Lac70e, Feb 11, 1970]
The unconscious is knowledge speaking all by itself.
What is depressing about an asshole is that one doesn’t quite know how he deals with *jouissance*.
The pleasure principle is the minimum of *jouissance*.
Repetition is the denotation of a trait identical to the unary trait.
In the work of truth, there is no discourse other than that of *jouissance*.
* Knowledge is a means to *jouissance*.
* No work has ever generated knowledge.
* By fixing the child to the mother, social connivance makes her the chosen seat of prohibitions.
In the master’s discourse, the object *a* is the surplus-*jouissance*.
The slave is the sole possessor of the means of *jouissance*.
The positions in the four discourses are [DIAGRAM NOT REPRODUCED]
Psychoanalysis is carried out by the psychoanalyst.
References
These are a work in progress…. JE June 2026
Citation
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pVI 14 to VI 15 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
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– Sur l’intelligence artificielle : 20th May 2026 : Eric Laurent (Video with English subtitles), see this site 5 Authors A-Z (Laurent)
Laurent, 9:35 minutes, The addictive uses of chatbox have been predicted by Lacan in his 1969-1970 Seminar ‘The Other Side of Psychoanalysis. He described the addiction to the jouissance derived from objects produced by science that comes to fill the fundamental lack of jouissance that drives people to adopt them in the first place
NOTE, There are several quotes which seem to relate to this observation. Two have been chosen and you are advised to follow the argument throughout Seminar XVII, in the unedited version.
[P80-81 of Russell Grigg, 11 February 1970],
11th February 1970 pVI 14 to VI 15 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, … perhaps he would have been able to recognise something about the reign of the signifier, of the signifier repeated at two levels, S1, S1 again. The first S1 is the dam. The second S1, underneath, is the reservoir that collects it and makes the turbine turn.
The conservation of energy has no other meaning than this mark of an instrumentation that signifies the power of the Master. What is collected in the fall must be conserved. That is the first of the laws. There is unfortunately something that disappears in the interval, or more exactly, does not lend itself to a return, to a restoring of the point of departure. This is what is called the Carnot-Clausius principle*, even though a certain Meyer** contributed a lot to it. Does not the analogy of this discourse, which in its essence gives pride of place to everything that concerns the beginning and the end, while neglecting everything that, in between, may relate to knowledge, does not the putting at the horizon of the new world of these pure numerical truths, of what is countable, not signify, just by itself, something quite different than the coming into play of an Absolute Knowledge? Is it not the very ideal of a formalisation where nothing is considered except as the count – energy itself is nothing other than what can be counted, the thing that, if you manipulate the formulae in a certain way, is found always to make up the same total – is this not the sliding, the quarter turn – which means that at the place of the Master there is established a completely new articulation of knowledge, one that can be completely reduced formally, (12) and that in place of the slave, there comes not something that could be inserted in any way into the order of this knowledge, but which is much more rather the product. Marx exposes this process as plundering. Only he does so without noticing that its secret is in knowledge itself – just like the reduction of the worker to being nothing more than value. When surplus enjoying has passed to a higher level it is no longer surplus enjoying, but simply inscribed as a value, to be inscribed or deducted from the totality of what is accumulated – what is accumulated from a nature that has been essentially transformed. The worker is only a credit (unité de valeur) – a warning to those for whom this term has an echo. What Marx exposes in surplus value is the plundering of enjoyment. And nevertheless this surplus value is the memorial of surplus enjoying, an equivalent of surplus enjoying. Consumer society takes its meaning from the fact, that to the element of it that is qualified as “human”, in quotation marks, there is given the homogenous equivalent of any surplus enjoying whatsoever that is the product of our industry, in a word, a pinchbeck surplus enjoying. Moreover, this may take on. One can pretend to surplus enjoying, a lot of people are still at that stage.
*From Wikipedia, June 2026, The Clausius theorem is a mathematical representation of the second law of thermodynamics. It was developed by Rudolf Clausius who intended to explain the relationship between the heat flow in a system and the entropy of the system and its surroundings. Clausius developed this in his efforts to explain entropy and define it quantitatively. In more direct terms, the theorem gives us a way to determine if a cyclical process is reversible or irreversible. The Clausius theorem provides a quantitative formula for understanding the second law.
The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on universal empirical observation concerning heat and energy interconversions. A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spontaneously from hotter to colder regions of matter (or ‘downhill’ in terms of the temperature gradient). Another statement is: “Not all heat can be converted into work in a cyclic process.” These are informal definitions, however; more formal definitions appear below.
The second law of thermodynamics establishes the concept of entropy as a physical property of a thermodynamic system. It predicts whether processes are forbidden despite obeying the requirement of conservation of energy as expressed in the first law of thermodynamics and provides necessary criteria for spontaneous processes. … The second law has been expressed in many ways. Its first formulation, which preceded the proper definition of entropy and was based on caloric theory, is Carnot’s theorem, formulated by the French scientist Sadi Carnot, who in 1824 showed that the efficiency of conversion of heat to work in a heat engine has an upper limit. The first rigorous definition of the second law based on the concept of entropy came from German scientist Rudolf Clausius in the 1850s and included his statement that heat can never pass from a colder to a warmer body without some other change, connected therewith, occurring at the same time.
**[Translation Error, This name is probably a misspelling] From Wikipedia June 2026, Julius Robert von Mayer (25 November 1814 – 20 March 1878) was a German physician, chemist, and physicist and one of the founders of thermodynamics. He is best known for enunciating in 1841 one of the original statements of the conservation of energy or what is now known as one of the first versions of the first law of thermodynamics, namely that “energy can be neither created nor destroyed”. In 1842, Mayer described the vital chemical process now referred to as oxidation as the primary source of energy for any living creature. He also proposed that plants convert light into chemical energy.
His achievements were overlooked and priority for the discovery in 1842 of the mechanical equivalent of heat was attributed to James Joule in the following year.
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pVI 15 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation
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– After Transgression: Ethics Under a Different Master : 1st June 2013 : Theo Reeves-Evison, see this site /Authors A-Z (Reeves-Evison or Index of Authors’ texts)
Reeves-Evison states, 2) A second, more interesting implication of this change in discourse is implied by the removal of the blockage between the subject and surplus jouissance. The discourse of capitalism can be read accordingly as a sequence of infinite circulation (∞), which ‘works as if on wheels’.[11] For Lacan, this is something that emerges at a specific historical juncture, and contributes to the emergence of Capital proper. Whereas in the master’s discourse surplus jouissance posed a problem that required prohibition, under capitalism the surplus is packaged up and reintegrated into circulation. ‘The important point is that on a certain day jouissance became calculable, could be counted, totalized.’[12] This logic can be seen at work in a range of contexts. Perhaps the most obvious is the way in which ‘spare time’ or ‘leisure time’ is no longer associated with inactivity, but bound up with the consumption of leisure products, and in effect bought in the first place with work. What was once a leftover is now a multi-million dollar industry.
A secondary consequence follows from this transformation of surplus jouissance into surplus value. As Todd McGowan and others point out, the saturation of the social order with jouissance leads, paradoxically, to its absence. Lacan goes as far to identify this as ‘imitation surplus jouissance’.[13] This should not be opposed to any ‘authentic’ jouissance that can be located in the social order, because the only authentic jouissance is experienced as impossibility, as a gap in the social order. To use the vocabulary of Deleuze and Guattari, under capitalism the location of this point of impossibility is constantly deterritorialised and reterritorialised. The drive to jouissance serves as a motor that continually opens up new possibilities for profit.[14] Under this regime surplus jouissance becomes a potentially infinite source of surplus value.
[11] Ibid. p11 of Jack Stone’s translation, On Psychoanalytic Discourse (Milan) : 12th May 1972 : Jacques Lacan, See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19720512)
[12] Lacan SXVII p. 177 of Russell Grigg’s translation. Session of 10th June 1970, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19700610 or 19691118 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts.)
‘because the important point is that from a particular day on, surplus pleasure can be calculated, can be counted, totalised. Here what is called “the accumulation of capital” begins.’ Cormac Gallagher’s translation, pXIV 17
[13] Lacan, Seminar XVII, p. 81.*
Todd McGowan, The End of Dissatisfaction: Jacques Lacan and the Emerging Society of Enjoyment (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004)
[14] As Zupančič puts it, ‘Drives are plastic; just let them come up with another symbolic (or imaginary) configuration of enjoyment that can then be detached from enjoyment per se.’ Alenka Zupančič, ‘When Surplus Enjoyment Meets Surplus Value’ in Reflections on Seminar XVII, ed. by Justin Clemens and Russell Grigg (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) 155-178 (p. 173.) For links see Commentaries below. Download all texts in this book at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /texts by request.
TRANSLATION ISSUE
* Evison-Reeves, Lacan goes as far to identify this as ‘imitation surplus jouissance’.[13] p81 of Russell Grigg’s translation, 11th February 1970,
There is a problem of translation. Three translations are given,
P81 Russell Grigg’s translation of Jacques-Alain Miller’s editing give, “Consumer society” derives its meaning from the fact that what makes it the “element,” in inverted commas, described as human is made the homogeneous equivalent of whatever surplus jouissance is produced by our industry-an imitation surplus jouissance, in a word.
Moreover, that can catch on. One can do a semblance of surplus jouissance-it draws quite a crowd.
pVI 15 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, Marx exposes this process as plundering. Only he does so without noticing that its secret is in knowledge itself – just like the reduction of the worker to being nothing more than value. When surplus enjoying has passed to a higher level it is no longer surplus enjoying, but simply inscribed as a value, to be inscribed or deducted from the totality of what is accumulated – what is accumulated from a nature that has been essentially transformed. The worker is only a credit (unité de valeur) – a warning to those for whom this term has an echo. What Marx exposes in surplus value is the plundering of enjoyment. And nevertheless this surplus value is the memorial of surplus enjoying, an equivalent of surplus enjoying. Consumer society takes its meaning from the fact, that to the element of it that is qualified as “human”, in quotation marks, there is given the homogenous equivalent of any surplus enjoying whatsoever that is the product of our industry, in a word, a pinchbeck surplus enjoying. Moreover, this may take on. One can pretend to surplus enjoying, a lot of people are still at that stage.
P50-51 of Staferla, C’est bien ce que que Marx dénonce dans la plus-value, ces spoliations de la jouissance.
Pourtant cette plus-value c’est le mémorial du plus de jouir, un équivalent du plus de jouir.
La société des consommateurs prend son sens de ceci, que ce qui en fait « l’élément »…
l’élément entre guillemets qu’on qualifie d’« humain »
…à ceux-là est donné l’équivalent homogène [équivalent général : la monnaie] de n’importe quel plus de jouir qui est le produit de notre industrie, un plus de jouir en toc pour tout dire.
Aussi bien, ça peut prendre : on peut faire semblant de plus de jouir, ça retient encore beaucoup de monde.
An internet translation, That is precisely what Marx denounces in surplus-value: this spoliation of enjoyment.
Yet this surplus-value is the memorial to the *plus-de-jouir* [surplus-enjoyment], an equivalent of the *plus-de-jouir*.
The consumer society derives its meaning from the fact that what constitutes its “element”—
—the element in quotation marks that we label “human”—
—is granted the homogeneous equivalent [general equivalent: money] of any *plus-de-jouir* produced by our industry; a *plus-de-jouir* that is, frankly, a sham.
For that matter, it works: one can feign *plus-de-jouir*, and that still holds a great many people in its thrall.
Conclusion
An Staferla ‘un plus de jouir en toc pour tout dire.’
becomes
Gallagher, ‘in a word, a pinchbeck surplus enjoying.’
[From Wikipedia, Pinchbeck is a form of brass, an alloy of copper and zinc mixed in proportions such that it closely resembles gold in appearance. It was invented in the early-18th century by Christopher Pinchbeck (died 1732), a London clock-and watch-maker. Later dishonest jewellers passed pinchbeck off as gold; over the years the name came to connotate a cheap and tawdry imitation of gold.]
Grigg, ‘an imitation surplus jouissance, in a word.’
Internet (Google), a *plus-de-jouir* that is, frankly, a sham.
On comparison, I prefer the internet translation as the strongest. Evison-Reeves uses the Grigg one which seems to be the weakest. Julia Evans, June 2026
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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.