Session of Seminar XXIV : 19th April 1977 : Jacques Lacan

This session given on Wednesday 19^th April 1977 is the 10^th session of Seminar XXIV which comprises the last 12 sessions given by Jacques Lacan.

Published

-p109-116 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation from original tapes at www.LacaninIreland.com /Seminars.

-‘La Variété du symptôme’, second chapter of Vers un signifiant nouveau, text established by Jacques-Alain Miller in Ornicar ?, Issue 17/18, Spring 1979, p. 15-16.

-In French, available at École lacanienne de psychanalyse (http://ecole-lacanienne.net ) / Lacan-Bibliothèque /at http://ecole-lacanienne.net/bibliolacan/stenotypies-version-j-l-et-non-j-l/

An internet translation of the Introduction to Lacan-Bibliothèque, titled, Seminars – Jacques Lacan – J.L. and not J.L. versions

The École lacanienne de psychanalyse’s library makes all of Jacques Lacan’s seminars available to the Internet public, in the basic form of available stenotypes. A stenotypist assisted Jacques Lacan in each of his seminar sessions, from 1953 to 1980. At the end of each session, she typed up the stenotype tapes, in duplicate or triplicate, using a process that had been famous for a century: carbon paper.

For most of the seventies, J.L. versions were supplemented by others which, whatever their merits, were not of the same quality. While they sometimes correct errors, it is never out of the question for them to add others of their own, which are all the more difficult to perceive since, unlike J.L., their texts often have a typographical quality that is not matched by an equal critical effort.

It goes without saying that all these documents are in image format (.pdf).

– Three sources of transcription are used to produce a French transcription at http://staferla.free.fr /Séminaire XXIV

Information about Seminar XXIV is available at

Seminar XXIV : ‘L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue s’aile à mourre’ : 1976-1977 : begins 16th November 1976 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19761116 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

References

-P110 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : I point out to you that there are sociologists who have enunciated under the patronage of someone called Robert Needham, who is not the Needham who has busied himself with so much care with Chinese science, but another Needham – the Needham of Chinese science is not called Robert – this one, the Need ham in question, imagines that he is doing better than the others by making the remark, which is moreover correct, that kinship is to be questioned, namely, that it involves in fact something else, a much greater variety, a much greater diversity than that which, – it has to be clearly said, this is what he refers to – than what the analysers say about it. … p111 La parenté en question (Kinship in question) – this is a book published by Seuil
NOTE : Rodney Needham (1923-2006) challenged the conceptual foundations of kinship studies in a colloquium he organized in Bristol in 1970 and the publication that followed: Rodney Needham, Ed., Rethinking Kinship and Marriage, London, Tavistock, 1971. French translation: La Parenté en question, Paris, Seuil, 1977. His hundred-page Introduction marked an epistemological turning point.

–

Citations

– VARITY, Variations of Truth in Psychoanalysis : 15^th July 2025 : Patricia Bosquin-Caroz

Presentation of the NLS Congress Theme 2026

Circulated From: NLS-Messager Subject: [nls-messager] 5273.en/ Presentation of the NLS Congress Theme 2026 Date: 15 July 2025 at 00:09:02 BST

Available, https://www.amp-nls.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ARGUMENT-NLS-CONGRESS-2026-PBC.pdf

Bosquin-Caroz, The 24th NLS Congress proposes to examine the variations of truth in psychoanalysis. Lacan condensed the variations in truth that occur respective to successive revelations in an analysis into the neologism varity [varité].[1] He states that we should be open to the dimension of truth as variable, and he adds that what the analysand says is not the truth, but the vari(e)ty of the sinthome. Throughout his teaching, Lacan never abandoned the reference to truth, whether first approaching it as The truth, or later as plural, variable and lying truth. However, one constant remains: the articulation of truth, or the effects of truth, with the structure of language and speech, or even with the “language broth”.[2]

1. Lacan J., “L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue s’aile à mourre”, lesson of 19 April 1977, unpublished, “bouillon de langage”.
2. Ibid.

p111-112 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, The fact that he talks only of that, is in a way something that chokes up all the nuances of its specific relation, so that La parenté en question (Kinship in question) – this is a book published by Seuil – that the kinship in question highlights this primordial fact that it is lalangue which is at stake. It has not at all the same consequences if the analyser talks only of that because his close relations have taught him lalangue, he does not differentiate what specifies his own particular relation with his close relations. It would be necessary to perceive that what I will call on this occasion the function of truth, is in a way deadened by something prevalent, and it must be said that culture is here stifled, deadened, and that on this particular occasion, one would do perhaps better to evoke the metaphor, since culture is also a metaphor, the metaphor of the agri of the same name. It would be necessary to substitute for the agri in question the term of cultural soup, it would be better to call culture a soup of language.

What does it mean to free associate? I am striving here to push things a little bit further. What does it mean to free associate? Is it a guarantee – it seems all the same to be a guarantee – that the subject who enunciates is going to say something which has a little bit more value? But in fact everyone knows that rationalisation, what is called that in psychoanalysis, that rationalisation has a greater weight than reasoning. What have what are called enunciations to do with a true proposition? One would have to try, as Freud enunciates, to see on what is founded this something, as Freud enunciates, to see on what is founded this something, which only functions by attrition, from which the Truth is supposed. One would have to see, to open oneself up to the dimension of truth as variable varité, namely, of what, in condensing like that these two words, I would call the varité, with the little silent é, the varité.

For example, I am going to pose something which has indeed its price. If an analysing subject slips into his discourse a neologism, like the one I have just made for example in connection with varité, what can one say about this neologism? There is all the same something that one can say, which is that the neologism appears when it is written. And it is precisely why that does not mean, like that, automatically, that it is the Real; it is not because it is written, that this gives the weight to what I evoked earlier in connection with au pied de la lettre. In short, one must all the same raise the question of whether psychoanalysis,- I beg your pardon, at least I beg the pardon of psychoanalysts – is not what one could call an autism à deux? There is already a thing which allows this autism to be forced, this precisely that lalangue is a common affair and it is precisely there that I am, namely, capable of making myself understood by everybody here, this is where the guarantee is – this is why indeed I put on the agenda the transmission of psychoanalysis – this indeed is the guarantee that psychoanalysis does not limp irreducibly from what I called just now autism à deux.

Related text from Jacques Lacan

This seems to be one of the planks on which ‘varité’ is built. JE. January 2026
From Science and Truth (Opening session of Seminar XIII) : 1^st December 1965 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19651201 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts). P24 of bilingual text at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan. Only those places which do not seem to make sense have been translated.