This is the start of a redesign of the Seminar posts which will take years – still a start was made in January 2025.
Full information about Seminar III – notes, references, etc
See Seminar III The Psychoses (1955-1956) : from 16th November 1955 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19551116 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Jacques-Alain Miller’s Chapter Headings
Seminar III : 6th June 1956 :
Ch XXI – The quilting point (Point de capiton) : p258-270
Subheadings:
Sense and scansion,
The full circle and segmentation,
“Yes, I come into his temple…” ,
The fear of God,
The Father – a quilting point (Point de caption)
Reference
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P269 of Russell Grigg’s translation, I’m not saying that this is the source of the mechanism of psychosis, I’m saying that the mechanism of psychosis manifests itself here. Before outlining this mechanism we must make an effort to recognize at the different stages of the phenomenon the points at which the quilting is omitted. A complete catalogue of these points would enable us to discover some surprising correlations and appreciate that it isn’t just in any old way that the subject depersonalizes his discourse.
In this respect there is an experience within hand’s reach. Clérambault recognized it. He alludes somewhere to what happens when all of a sudden we are gripped by an event from our past that we find difficult to tolerate being affectively evoked. When it’s not a question of commemoration but of the resurgence of affect, when, recollecting being angry, we are very close to being angry, when, recollecting a humiliation, we relive the humiliation, when, remembering the destruction of an illusion, we feel the need to reorganize our equilibrium and our meaningful field, in the sense in which one speaks of social field – well then, this is the most favorable moment, Clérambault notes, for the emergence, which he himself calls purely automatic, of scraps of sentences sometimes taken from one’s most recent experience, and which have no kind of meaningful relationship with the matter at hand.
These phenomena of automatism are in fact admirably observed – but there are many others – and having the adequate schema is sufficient for one to situate oneself in the phenomenon in a way that is no longer purely descriptive but properly explanatory.
– See Psychoses of Passion : 1921 : Gaétan Gatian de Clérambault, at this site /5 Authors A-Z (de Clérambault)
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Citation
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p261 of Russell Grigg’s translation
– A Vision of the Streaming (ruissellement – trickling down) of the One : 1st March 2021 : Éric Laurent, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent)
P50 Laurent : But above all, this streaming from between the parting clouds comes to echo the diagram presented by Saussure, in which other types of flow and flux[l2] were represented between clouds. [12] Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book III, The Psychoses, 1955-1955., trans R. Grigg, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997, P. 261.
Seminar III 6th June 1956, p261 of Russell Grigg’s translation : The opposition between the signifier and the signified lies, as you know, at the basis of Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic theory. It has been expressed in the famous schema of the two curves.[5][5 Course, 112]
At the upper level Saussure locates the series of what he calls thoughts – without the slightest conviction, since his theory consists precisely in reducing this term to that of the signified insofar as it is distinct from both the signifier and the thing – and he insists above all upon the aspect of amorphous mass. It’s what, for our part, we shall provisionally call the sentimental mass of the current of discourse, a confused mass in which appear units, islands, an image, an object, a feeling, a cry, an appeal. It’s a continuum, whereas underneath is the signifier as a pure chain of discourse, a succession of words, in which nothing is isolable.
How can I show you this through an experience?
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P50 Laurent : These traits pass through clouds of sorts coming to represent the “amorphous mass”[14] of the signifier with the amorphous mass of significations in order to momentarily segment the current. [14] ibid. p.261
Seminar III 6th June 1956, p261 of Russell Grigg’s translation : See above
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p262 of Russell Grigg’s translation
P50 Laurent : Lacan spoke in this way in his 1956 seminar, when he established the “quilting point” in the fundamental sliding of the flow of the signified beneath the flow of the signifier: “Saussure tries to define a correspondence between these two flows that would segment them […] his solution is inconclusive, since it leaves the locution and the whole sentence problematic.”[13] [13] ibid. p.262
Seminar III 6th June 1956, p262 of Russell Grigg’s translation : A step forward has to be taken in order to give what is involved here a sense that is really usable in our experience.
Saussure tries to define a correspondence between these two flows that would segment them. But the sole fact that his solution is inconclusive, since it leaves the locution and the whole sentence problematic, clearly shows both the sense and limitations of his method.
Well then, I think to myself – What does one start with?
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P267 [p243] of Russell Grigg’s translation
-‘The irreducibility of a form of transmission’ : a case study : 15th March 2018 : Julia Evans, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of Julia Evans’ texts) quotes
-P267 [p243], The power of the signifier, the effectiveness of this word fear, has been to transform the zeal at the beginning, with everything that is ambiguous, doubtful, always liable to be reversed, that this word conveys, into the faithfulness of the end. This transmutation is of the order of the signifier as such. No accumulation, no superimposition, no summation of meanings, is sufficient to justify it. The entire progress of this scene, which would otherwise be worthy of the Deuxieme Bureau* resides in the transmutation of the situation through the intervention of the signifier.
* The French Secret Service.
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– Lacan’s Seminar on “The Purloined Letter” – Overview : 1988 : John P. Muller and William J. Richardson, See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Muller or Richardson or Index of Authors’ texts)
The notes quote the definition of a quilting point. This paragraph follows directly on from the one above.
-P267[p243-244], Whether it be a sacred text, a novel, a play, a monologue, or any conversation whatsoever, allow me to represent the function of the signifier by a spatializing device, which we have no reason to deprive ourselves of this Point around which all concrete analysis of discourse must operate I shall call quilting point.
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