This lecture took place on the 9th May 1957 in the Descartes Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne, at the request of the philosophy group of the Fédération des étudiants ès Lettres. The lecture was written up 14th-16th May 1957 and published in volume titled ‘Psychoanalysis and the Sciences of Man’, then in Écrits : 1966.
Translated into English
1) Translated by Jan Miel : as The Insistence of the Letter in the Unconscious : Yale French Studies, Vol 36/37, 1966 ,p112-147 : Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /lacan
Reprinted in Jacques Ehrmann (ed) : Structuralism : 1970 : NY Anchor Books : p101-137 : Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /lacan
2) Published in Écrits : 1966 : Jacques Lacan : Information at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (1966) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
– Translated by Alan Sheridan as ‘The agency of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud’ : p146-176 of Jacques Lacan, Écrits – a selection, Tavistock, 1977. Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
– Translated by Bruce Fink as ‘The instance of the letter in the unconscious or reason since Freud’ in Écrits, Jacques Lacan, The first complete edition in English : W.W. Norton & Co : 2002 : p412-444
Published in French:
a) La Psychanalyse III : 1957 p47-81, See this site /by date May 1957) or www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan (15. La Psychanalyse, Vol. 3 (1957) Re: L’instance de la lettre dans l’inconscient…)
b) Écrits : 1966 : Information at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (1966) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
c) Pas Tout Lacan :
Published at École Lacanienne de la Psychanalyse – Pas Tout Lacan [ https://ecole-lacanienne.net/en/bibliolacan/pas-tout-lacan-2/] : available, in French, https://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1957-05-09.pdf
Commentaries:
– Translator’s note, Bibliography Note : 1977 : Alan Sheridan & Classified index of the major concepts, Commentary on the graphs : 1966 : Jacques-Alain Miller : from ‘Écrits: a selection’. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (May 1957) or /Other Authors A-Z (Sheridan)
– A Reader’s Guide to Écrits: 1982: John P. Muller and William J. Richardson : See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Muller or Richardson) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan or /5 Other Authors A-Z
– A Reader’s Guide to Écrits -Chapter 5, The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud : Available at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
Further information :
Écrits : 1966 : Jacques Lacan : Information at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (1966) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan
References
Presented at the panel on Technical Implications of Ego Psychology at the midwinter meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, New York , December 1948. Published in Psychoanalytic Quarterly: Vol 20: 1951
Information – See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Kris) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Kris)
Citations:
-Towards the XIV congress of the World Association of Psychoanalysis, Everyone is mad, 22th to 25th February 2024 (Zoom), https://congresamp2024.world/en/, p437-438 of Bruce Fink’s translation, p173-174 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : Kern unseres Wesen, the nucleus [core] of our being [p196 of An Outline of Psychoanalysis : 1938 [1940] : Sigmund Freud, SE XXIII p 141–207], but it is not so much that Freud commands us to seek it as so many others before him have with the empty adage ‘Know thyself’ – as to reconsider the ways that lead to it, and which he shows us.
Or rather that which he proposes for us to attain is not that which can be the object of knowledge, but that (doesn’t he tell us as muchl) which creates our being and about which he teaches us that we bear witness to it as much and more in our whims, our aberrations, our phobias and fetishes, as in our more or less civilized personalities.
Madness, you are no longer the object of the ambiguous praise with which the sage decorated the impregnable burrow of his fear; and if after all he finds himself tolerably at home there, it is only because the supreme agent forever at work digging its tunnels is none other than reason, the very Logos that he serves. Circulated From: Congrès AMP 2024, Subject: Everyone is Mad – Quotation #14, Date: 24 January 2024 at 07:01:13 GMT
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-P150 of Alan Sheridan’s translation quoted in Performative Jouissance and Analytic Act [1] : 6th October 2022 : Éric Laurent, see this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Laurent)
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A Vision of the Streaming of the One : December 2021 : Éric Laurent, see this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent)
p49 (Laurent), According to Lacan, the dit-mansion* of the letter implies a certain instance) a certain insistence, a certain forcing in order to be included in the signifying weft, and the significations that are deduced from it. The instance, highlighted in the text “Instance of the Letter,” [7] [ 7] Lacan, J., “Instance of the Letter or Reason since Freud”, 1957, Écrits, The First Complete Edition in English, trans. B. Fink, New York/London, Norton & Co., 2005.
P 163 of Alan Sheridan’s translation, Section title : The Meaning of the Letter
P169 of Alan Sheridan’s translation : Through this, one sees that an essential element of the spoken word itself was predestined to flow into the mobile characters which, in a jumble of lower-case Didots or Garamunds, [14] render validly present what we call the ‘letter’, namely the essentially localized structure of the signifier.
With the second property of the signifier, that of combining according to the laws of a closed order, is affirmed the necessity of the topological substratum of which the term I ordinarily use, namely, the signifying chain, gives an approximate idea : rings of a necklace that is a ring in another necklace made of rings.
Such are the structural conditions that define grammar as the order of constitutive encroachments of the signifier up to the level of the unit immediately superior to the sentence, and lexicology as the order of constitutive inclusions of the signifier to the level of the verbal locution.
…
For the signifier, by its very nature, always anticipates meaning by unfolding its dimension* [dit-mansion] before it.
[14] Names of different type-faces [Tr.]
* JE notes, This is almost certainly a translation of Lacan’s neologism ‘dit-mansion’ – literally translated, said-mansion or building.
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-Towards the 11th Clinical Study-Days: Conference “The Ego Of The Obsessional” : 22nd October 2017 (New York) : Gil Caroz. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Caroz) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
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-A preliminary engagement with Dany Nobus’s ‘Psychoanalytic Violence: An Essay in Indifference in Ethical Matters’ : 30th July 2017 : Julia Evans (Includes references to Wo es war, …) See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Evans) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors A-Z
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-Presentation of Jacques Lacan’s Seminar VI (2nd part) : 26th May 2013 : Jacques-Alain Miller . See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
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-The Purloined Letter and the Tao of the Psychoanalyst : 10th March 1999 (Paris) : Éric Laurent. See this site /Other Authors A-Z (Laurent) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent
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-KNOT The Theory of the Knot Outlined by Jacques Lacan : July 1996 : Jean Michel Vappereau. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Vappereau) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors A-Z
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-Interpretation and Truth : 1st July 1994 : Éric Laurent. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent
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-Lacan’s Seminar on “The Purloined Letter” – Overview : 1988 : John P. Muller and William J. Richardson. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Muller or Richardson) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z [or here]
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-Lacan’s Seminar on “The Purloined Letter” – Notes to the Text : 1988 : John P. Muller and William J. Richardson. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Muller or Richardson) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
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-A Reader’s Guide to Écrits : 1982 : John P. Muller and William J. Richardson. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Muller or Richardson) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
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-Translator’s note, Bibliography Note : 1977 : Alan Sheridan & Classified index of the major concepts – Commentary on the graphs : 1966 : Jacques-Alain Miller : from ‘Écrits: a selection’. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Sheridan) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
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-Lacan and the Discourse of the Other : 1968 : Anthony Wilden. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Wilden) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z
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-Écrits : 1966 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (1966)
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-The Purloined Letter : 1844 : Edgar Alan Poe. See this site /texts by Date (1988) – The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida and Psychoanalytic Reading : 1988 : John P. Muller and William J. Richardson (Editors & Authors) or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors A-Z (Poe)
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