This text was presented at the cartel day of the London Society, on 2nd of October 2021. Published p4-6 of 4+One The NLS Cartels’ Newsletter n° 18, July 2022, https://www.amp-nls.org/newsletter-4one/
Also available on www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Other Authors A-Z (Conway)
Editorial from 4+One The NLS Cartels’ Newsletter, 18
Each text in this issue whilst a singular product of work with its own theme of interrogation demonstrates how each one is confronted with one’s own particular relation to the psychoanalytic cause emerging as it does here via the device of the cartel. This lonely crowd of the school paradoxically is nevermore evoked for each than via the work of the cartel, a grouping of 4 plus one that goes against “blind universalism”1 and which disturbs, provokes, anguishes and mobilises.
Sarah Birgani (Initiative of Vienna) and Joanne Conway both consider the loneliness, desire and crisis at stake in terms of the founding of the school and by extension in its device of the cartel.
References
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Quote from Conway : We could say that it was his “explosive desire” that, not only cemented his fate in the IPA which ended with his Excommunication as he termed it in 1963,
See Seminar XI : 15th January 1964 (Excommunication) : Jacques Lacan, from Seminar XI The Four Fundamental Concepts (1963-1964) : from 15th January 1964 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19640115 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts) Download from www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Lacan (15th January 1964)
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Footnote 2
Conway : Lacan says something very particular in the opening of The Founding Act and I quote, “As alone as I have always been in my relation to the psychoanalytic cause […]”
F/n 2. Lacan, J. (1964). “The Founding Act”. See Founding Act : 21st June 1964 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19640621)
See also « Acte de fondation » (1965 [juin 1964]), Autres écrits, Seuil, Paris 2001, p. 229. Autres Ecrits : 2001 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (20010101 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
From p1 of The Letter; Issue 44 (Summer 2010), pages 1‐31, Cormac Gallagher’s translation, I found ‐ as alone as I have always been in my relation to the psychoanalytic cause – L’Ecole Française de Psychanalyse, of which, for the four coming years in which nothing in the present forbids me to answer for, I will personally assure the direction.
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Footnotes 3 & 4
Conway : Via his invention, Lacan institutes “a collective formation”3 that paradoxically operates, as Miller names it, as a “lonely crowd”4 of solitudes,
- Miller, J.-A. (2010/2019). “The Turin theory of the subject of the School”, Psychoanalytical Notebooks n° 33, The real and the social bond, p. 96.
- Miller, J.-A. (2010/2019), “The Turin theory …”, op. cit., p. 99.
See The Turin Theory of the Subject of the School : 21st May 2000 (Turin) : Jacques-Alain Miller on this site /5 Authors A-Z (Miller)
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Footnote 5
Conway : Via his invention, … , a new form of social bond5. One by one …
5. Cf. (i) Frank Rollier’s text in 4+one : The formula of a new mode of social bond. 4+One The NLS Cartels’ Newsletter n° 16.
Also (ii) Laurent, É., “The real and the group”, Psychoanalytical Notebooks n° 33, The real and the social bond, p. 65. & P45-46 of Psychoanalytical Notebooks no.4, Spring 2000, Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis.
-See (i) 4 PLUS ONE – The Formula of a New Mode of Social Bond : 26th June 2020 (Athens) : Frank Rollier, at this site /5 Authors A-Z (Rollier or Index of Authors’ texts)
P6 of Rollier, What counts in between is what Lacan will call “the non-sexual relationship as a hole” which is “at the beginning of every social knot.” Thus, can he say that “even if there are only three of you, that makes four”.9
Footnote 9 (Rollier). Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXII, RSI, lesson of the 15th April, 1975. Unpublished.
See Seminar XXII R. S. I. (1974-1975) : from 19th November 1974 : Jacques Lacan, at this site (4 Jacques Lacan (19741119 or 19750415 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts.) Seminar XXII : 15th April 1975 : p61 of Jack W. Stone’s translation or p16 of Anthony Chadwick’s translation : quote, have you heard talk of identification? Identification in Freud is quite simply genius. What do I want? Identification with the group because it is certain that human beings identify with a group: when they don’t identify with a group they are fucked, they are to be locked up.
But I am not saying by that to which point of the group they are to identify. The start of every social knot is constituted, I am saying, by the sexual non-relationship as a hole, not of two, at least three. And that what I want to say is that even if you are only three, that will make 4. The “plus one” will be there, even if you are only three, as this schema here precisely shows: [diagram] this one giving the example of the fact that it would make a borromean knot if one started from the idea of the cycle such as is made with two knotted ones.
-See (ii) The Real and the Group : 2000 : Éric Laurent, See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent of Index of Authors’ texts)
P45-46 of Laurent : Lacan determinedly breaks ‘new pathways’. He evokes a psychiatrist-psychoanalyst taking in hand the global dimension of what in social relations can ‘have an influence on mental hygiene’. Lacan draws the consequences from the proposition vigorously supported in his thesis that psychosis is a pathology of the social bond. He formulates it as follows: “The delirium of interpretation is a delirium of the floor, of the street, of the forum”. This conception led him to psychoanalysis and in 1947 he addresses the psychiatrists of the future by assigning them a mission of ‘the floor, the street, the forum’. This task implies collaborating with non-medical psychologists, outside the hospital.
Probable references (Laurent):
‘his thesis’ may refer to one of the following
The Problem of Style and the Psychiatric Conception of Paranoiac Forms of Experience : June 1933 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19330601)
On the Problem of Hallucinations : 7/8 October 1933 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19331007)
Motives of Paranoiac Crime : December 1933 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19331201)
‘in 1947’ to
British Psychiatry and the War : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19470101 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
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Footnote 6
Conway : Eric Laurent, in his paper The Real and the Group, specifies that if the School is the “base of operations against the discontents of civilisation”, the cartel is the “base of an institution for psychoanalysis”6.
F/n 6. Laurent, É. “The real and the group”, op. cit., p. 65. See The Real and the Group : 2000 : Éric Laurent, See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent of Index of Authors’ texts)
P37 of Laurent, It is thus that Lacan begins by defining* the context as that of a ‘realism of struggle’ in order to then turn to the techniques for adaptation that he saw operating in all their efficiency. If psychoanalysis is presented in its dimension of social efficiency, it is in so far as it is an instrument for the struggle against the death at work in Civilisation. Already, one sees the emergence of the mission that will be ascribed to a School of psychoanalysis: that of being ‘a base of operations against the discontents of civilisation’. And it is in this context that we read this text today. We read it as a link in the chain which will culminate in Lacan’s ‘doctrine of the School’, as J.-A. Miller named it. We read in this text one of the threads of a genealogy of the small Soup which Lacan will name ‘cartel’. He will make it the base of an institution for psychoanalysis.
* Probably British Psychiatry and the War : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19470101 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
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Footnote 7
Conway : As Laurent specifies, the cartel “[…] is an instrument in the struggle against blind universalism.”7
F/n 7. Ibidem, p. 69. See The Real and the Group : 2000 : Éric Laurent, See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent of Index of Authors’ texts)
P39-40 of Laurent : The stake is to constitute homogeneous groups in their simple relation to a norm of efficiency so that “grouped amongst themselves, these subjects [may] prove themselves to be infinitely more efficient”^. Lacan extols the virtues of pragmatism in so far as it is an instrument in the struggle against blind universalism. Group psychology is thus considered as a ‘revolution’.
^ p13-14 of British Psychiatry and the War : 1947 : Jacques Lacan, see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (1947 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts), All the same, as soon as they are grouped together, these subjects prove themselves to be infinitely more efficient through a liberation of their good will correlative to a sociability that is now well matched; even the sexual motivation of their infractions diminishes as if to demonstrate that they do not so much depend upon a so-called prevalence of instincts as represent a compensation for their social isolation.
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Footnote 8
Conway : There is another presence that the hole of the cartel evokes, and this pertains to jouissance. I will refer once more to Laurent’s text entitled The Real and the Group. As he points out, the cartel “[…] is an instrument in the struggle against blind universalism”. … This is also the case in the experience of the cartel.
Laurent says it very well in terms of the cartel and the master discourse; “[…] these small groups, which through their work will have to struggle against the malaise of an identification with the master. They will have to remedy this malaise of ‘having to go through his signifiers’”.8
8. Ibidem, p. 76. See The Real and the Group : 2000 : Éric Laurent, See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent of Index of Authors’ texts)
P43 of Laurent, In the same way when Lacan founds a School he chooses to support it by means of these small groups which through their work will have to struggle against the malaise of an identification to the master. They will have to remedy this malaise of ‘having to go through his signifiers’.
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Footnote 9
Conway : The Plus one occupies the position of one who interprets, that is interprets the inevitable group effects that will materialise. The place of interpretation here is in terms of mobilising the work of the cartel, supporting cartelisands to focus on the work of the cartel rather than its dynamic9
9. Ibidem. See The Real and the Group : 2000 : Éric Laurent, See this site /5 Authors A-Z (Laurent of Index of Authors’ texts)
P43-44 of Laurent, In the experience of the ‘group without a leader’, Bion had separated the necessity of the function of the leader from hierarchical authority as such. Lacan goes a step further towards this dismantling of the massiveness of the leader. He insists on the function of rotation leaning for this purpose on the structuralist models proposed by Lévi-Strauss. He reduces this rotating leader to a plus-one function which he no longer calls leader, and this disengages even more the function from the old concretion called leader. It extracts all the better the irreducible function of the master signifier. There we have a special function which must be incarnated by someone, but which must then be rotated, thereby preventing an identification of the person with the function.
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Footnote 10 & 11
Conway : Desire is interpretation. Miller also evokes Lacan’s opening declaration in The Founding Act10 “[…] as alone as I have always been in my relation to the psychoanalytic cause […]”. Here, says Miller, Lacan places centre stage the solitude “[…] of a subject in relation to a cause to be defended and promoted”11. [See above]
- Lacan, “The Founding Act”, op.cit. Lacan, J. (1964). “The Founding Act”. See Founding Act : 21st June 1964 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19640621)
- Miller, J.-A. (May 2000), “The Turin theory …”, op. cit., 33, p. 96.
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Footnote 12
Conway : Rather what is founded is a collective formation of solitudes, whose singular desires revolve around and have a relation to an ideal, an ideal that is the psychoanalytic cause. Miller is clear that this ideal must operate in order to sustain the community of the School. However Lacan’s interpretation in respect of subjective solitude and the analytic cause, “sends each one back to the relation that each one has with the Master signifier of the Ideal beneath which he situates himself”12.
F/n12. Ibidem. See The Turin Theory of the Subject of the School : 21st May 2000 (Turin) : Jacques-Alain Miller on this site /5 Authors A-Z (Miller)
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Footnote 13
Conway : In closing, I would like to refer to a particular statement of Miller’s in the same text. Miller formulates that the School is a subject that can and must be interpreted. He also states that “[a] School in formation is a dynamic unit […]”13
F/n13. Ibidem, p. 89. See The Turin Theory of the Subject of the School : 21st May 2000 (Turin) : Jacques-Alain Miller on this site /5 Authors A-Z (Miller)
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Footnote 14
Conway : The School as a subject in formation then is a subject borne from desire, and remains so on the basis of “sustained elaboration in small groups”14.
F/n 14. Lacan, “The Founding Act”, op.cit. See Founding Act : 21st June 1964 : Jacques Lacan, on this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19640621)
P1 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation of ‘The Founding Act’, For the execution of the work, we shall adopt the principle of an elaboration supported in a small group. Each of these (we have a name to designate these groups) will be composed of three people at least, of five at most, four is the right measure. PLUS ONE charged with the selection, with the discussion and with the outcome to be reserved to the work of each.
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