Originally published in Les Feuillets du Courtil, Issue 20, 2002, p7-15;
Re-printed in Halleux, B. de (ed.), Quelque chose à dire à l’enfant autiste Pratique à plusieurs à L’Antenne 110, Éditions Michèle, Paris, 2010, p219-222;.
Published Hurly-Burly, Issue 7, May 2012, p223-226,
Download, translated by Adrian Price at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Laurent (2002)

References

Laurent p223, Lacan states somewhere that the psychotic has a “normal” relation to the Other.[1] He is sensitive to the “mental automatism” to which we are submitted as spoken subjects. The same could be said about the relation to writing. We have an example of this when the young autistic subject, or the psychotic subject in his autistic dimension, writes.

[1] Lacan, J., “Un signifiant nouveau”, the lesson of 17 May 1977 from Le séminaire XXIV, L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue s’aile à mourre, in Ornicar ?, lssue 17/18, Spring 1978, p.22.

See 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) or Session of Seminar XXIV : 17th May 1977 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19770517)

P125-126 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation of Seminar XXIV, www.LacaninIreland.com, That is to introduce the following, in connection with which we pose questions. The definition of neurosis, we must all the same be sensible and notice that neurosis depends on social relations. We shake up the neurosis a little, and it is not at all sure that in that way we cure it. Obsessional neurosis for example, is the principle of conscience. And then there are also bizarre things. There is someone called Clérambault who noticed one day, — God knows how he found that! – that there was somewhere mental automatism. There is nothing more natural than mental automatism. That there should be voices, – voices, where do they come from? They come necessarily from the subject himself – that there are voices which say: ‘She is wiping her bottom’, one is stupefied that this derision – since to all appearances there is derision –, does not happen more often. For my part, I saw, at my presentation of ill people, as they say, if in fact there are ill people, I saw a Japanese, a Japanese who had something which he himself called a thought-echo. What would a thought-echo be if Clérambault had not pinpointed it? He calls this a serpigineu (billhook-like?) process. It is not even sure that it is a serpigineux process there where it is judged to be the centre of language. I for my part, I said all the same that this Japanese who had a very lively taste for the metatongue, namely, that he took great enjoyment in having learned English, and then French afterwards. Is this not where the slippage was? He slipped into mental trauma from this fact that, in all these metatongues that he managed to handle rather easily, well then, he could not find himself in them. I for my part advised that he should be given some room and that one should not stop at the fact that Clérambault had invented, one fine day, a thing called mental automatism. Mental automatism is normal. If as it happens I do not have it, for my part, that is by chance. There are all the same, all the same somethings that can be called bad habits. If one starts saying things to oneself, as the aforesaid Japanese expressed himself textually, if one starts to say things to oneself, why would that not slide towards mental automatism because it is all the same quite certain that, according to what Edgar Morin^^ says in a book which was recently published and in which he questioned himself about the nature of nature, it is quite clear that nature is not as natural as all that, it is even in this that there consists this rottenness which is what is generally called culture. Culture seethes, as I pointed out to you in passing. Yes.

^^La nature de la nature, Book by Edgar Morin Published 1977. Method: The Nature of Nature is the first of several volumes exposing Edgar Morin’s general systems view on life and society. The present volume maintains that the organization of all life and society necessitates the simultaneous interplay of order and disorder.

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Laurent p223, For such a subject, this is one object he cannot do away with. He picks up a pen and massacres a piece of paper until it is riddled with holes. He has not symbolised presence and absence. The Fort-Da^^ is not functioning, and therefore he has no possibility of writing somewhere that his mother has left. There is no “rehashing of the leftovers”[2] after his mother’s departure.

^^ Fort-Da The game of ‘Fort-Da’ is quoted from SE XVIII p14-17, Beyond the Pleasure Principle : 1920g : Sigmund Freud, see this site /3 Sigmund Freud (19200101 or Index of Sigmund Freud’s texts)

[2] Lacan, J., “Lituraterre”, in Autres écrits, Seuil, Paris, 2001, p. 1 1.

Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

Lituraterre : 12th May 1971: Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19710512 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)

P7 of Dany Nobis’s translation, www.Freud2Lacan.com, The question is whether what the textbooks seem to be displaying, namely that literature involves cooking up leftovers, is a matter of collocating in written form [l’écrit] what would first be chant, spoken myth, dramatic procession.

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Laurent p224, The fundamental hyperkinesis of the subject who may be catted autistic or psychotic is an attempt to eliminate a “Thing” that encumbers him, to finally pierce a hole in its presence. This clinic of the letter can only be put in its proper place by drawing on “Lituraterre”[3]. lt is in the letter’s relationship with jouissance that one may understand the pathology of writing articulated with an excess of presence”. We manage to bring relief to these children by producing absence, by inscribing the roundabout path of absence, which affords them a chance of writing.

[3] [TN, (Adrian Price) The title of Lacan’s l97l text combines the Latin litura, an ‘erasure’, a “blot” or a “smear”, and the French terre, “terrain”, by inverting the second and last vowels of litérrature.]

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