Title: Some Moral Failings Called Depressions: February 1997:

Author: Pierre Skriabine

Translated by Jack Stone

Published by www.lacan.com in The symptom Issue 1, https://www.lacan.com/depressionf.htm

Available www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors A-Z or Authors by Date

Originally published: Le bonheur, une vertu : La dépression, bon heur du subjet? : Pierre Skriabine, in ECF’s La cause freudienne: no 35: Feb 1997

Jack W. Stone’s Notes

1. Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” (1915), SE. XIV- 243-258.”

2. Jacques Lacan, Television (1973) (Paris: Editions du Seuji, 1973) p. 39. Translator’s note: for the sake of~greater precision, I have diverged slightly from the generally excellent translation by Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss, and Annette Michelson in “Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment”, ed. Joan Copjec (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1990), p. 22.

3. Television, p. 54.

4. Translator’s note: pulsional, or pulsionelle, is the adjectival form of pulsion, the standard French translation of Trieb, or drive. In this text, Skriabine refers both to this jouissance pulsionelle and a jouissance de la pulsion. I have translated the latter expression, where it occurs, as “jouissance of the drive.”

5. Jacques Lacan, Radiophonie, Silicet 2/3 (Paris: Edilions du Seuil, 1970), p. 86.

6. Television, p. 48.

7. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents.

8. Jacques Lacan, Note aux Italiens (1974), Ornicar?, 25 (Paris: Navarin editeur, 1982), p.8.

9. Jacques-Alain Miller, Le banquet des analystes (1989-90), lesson of 4/4/90, unpublished course transcript.

10. Eric Laurent and Jacques-Alain Miller, L’Autre qui n’existe pas et ses comites de ethique (1996-97),

lesson of December 4, 1996, unpublished except for the meeting of November 20, 1996, in La Cause freudienne, 35 (Paris: Navarin/Seuil, 1997), pp. 3-20.

11. In English in the original.

References to Sigmund Freud or Jacques Lacan’s texts:
Sigmund Freud:

Mourning and Melancholia : 1915 [published 1917e] : Sigmund Freud, SE XIV p238-259, Published bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Freud : The Metapsychological Papers, Papers on Technique and others (10. Mourning and Melancholia)

Civilisation and its Discontents : 1929 : Sigmund Freud, SE XXI p58-145 : See this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19290101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts). Download bilingual at www.Freud2Lacan.com /Freud/Philosophy (31. CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS (Das Unbehagen in der Kultur)

For the availability of other of Freud’s texts, see the index on this site /3 Sigmund Freud.

Jacques Lacan:

Note 3, p54 & Note 7, p48 of Television : 1974 : Jacques Lacan : See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19740131 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

Quote p5 of Jack W. Stone’s translation, Skriabine states : This plus-de-jouir animates the subject; it is necessary for the turning of the mechanism, Lacan notes in Radiophonie, 5 but there must not be too much of it: if there is, the subject finds himself delivered up to the gourmandise8 of a ferocious superego that requires him to renounce this pulsional satisfaction and thus give up on his desire. This is precisely the source of the discontent in civilization analyzed by Freud: a “giving up on desire” that does not go without depressive effects. [See Freud (1929) reference above]

Note 5 p86, Radiophonie: 9th April & 5th June 1970: Jacques Lacan : See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19700408 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts) Probably p5-6 of Jack W. Stone’s translation, www.Freud2Lacan.com, It is on the contrary from being in progress over university discourse that the discourse of the analyst would permit it to specify (cerner) [97] the real of which its impossibility makes a function, in that it would indeed like to submit to the question of the plus-de-jouir that already has its truth in a savoir, the passage of the subject to the signifier of the Master.

This is to suppose the savoir of structure, which, in the discourse of the analyst, has the place of truth.

This is to say with what suspicion this discourse must sustain all that presents itself at this place.

For impotence is not the disguise of which the impossible would be the truth, but it is no more the contrary: impotence would render the service of fixing the gaze if truth were not seen there on the point of vanishing . . . into thin air.

We must cease these games of which truth makes the expense ridiculous.

It is only in pushing the impossible in its deductions (retranchements) that impotence takes on the power of turning the patient into the agent.

It is in this way that it comes into act in every revolution in which structure might have a step to make, so that impotence changes its mode, of course.

In this way language makes a renewal (novation) from what it reveals of jouissance and makes arise the fantasy that realizes a time. [JE, translation modified]

Note 8, Ornicar 25, p8, ‘The Italian Note’ 1973 : Jacques Lacan : See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19970201) NOTE it has not been possible to trace this reference in this text. A possible contender is : p2 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.LacaninIreland.com :

For my thesis, inaugurating in that it breaks with the practice by which the so-called Societies make of analysis an aggregate, does not for all that imply that just anyone is an analyst.

For what it enunciates it is that it is the analyst that is at stake, it presupposes that there is one of them.

To authorise oneself is not to auto-ri(tual)ise oneself.

For I have posed on the other hand that the analyst depends on the not-all.

Not every one (pas-tout être) who speaks can authorise himself to act as an analyst. The proof is that an analysis is necessary for it, even though it is not sufficient.

The analyst alone, in other words not just anyone, is authorised only by himself.

Further details of these references:

Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” (1915), SE. XIV, p243-258.

Sigmund Freud: Civilization and its Discontents: 1929: Translated by Strachey, J. (1961). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XXI (1927-1931)

Jacques Lacan: Television (1973) (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1973) p. 39 or

Translated by Denis Hollier, Rosalind Krauss, and Annette Michelson in “Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment”, ed. Joan Copjec (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1990), p. 22

Jacques Lacan, Radiophonie, Silicet 2/3 (Paris: Edilions du Seuil, 1970), p. 86.

Jacques Lacan, Note aux Italiens (1974), Ornicar?, 25 (Paris: Navarin editeur, 1982), p.8.

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