Published IJPA Vol 34 (1958) p598-613
Download at www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /5 Other Authors A-Z (Szasz)
Cited by Jacques Lacan
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-In Memory of Ernest Jones – On His Theory of Symbolism : January to March 1959 : Jacques Lacan, See Écrits : 1966 : see this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19661001 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts),
P3 of Nessa Breen’s translation, www.Freud2Lacan.com, This is why no consideration of power, let it be the most legitimate where the professional structure [1] is concerned, can possibly intervene in the discourse of the analyst without affecting the very purpose of his practice at the same time as its medium.
Jacques Lacan’s 1966 Note [1]. The demise of power is articulated as such for the degradation factor which it brings to the analytic training in an article which appeared in the Nov.– Dec. number (58) of the I.P.J. under the signature of Thomas S. Szasz. It is indeed the same demise whose impact on the direction of the cure we denounced in our report to the Royaumont Congress* last July. The author quoted above [probably Ernest Jones] traces the effects of this in the external organization of the training, notably in the selection of the candidates, without going into depth about the incompatibility with the psychoanalytic treatment itself, that is with the first stage of the training.
*See The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power/ The Rules of the Cure and the Lures of its Power : 10th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19580710 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
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-Seminar X : 30th January 1963, this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19621114 or 19630130)
PX99-100 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, www.Lacaninireland.com, I think that you will not confuse, after today’s discourse, this remark with the one which is usually made about frustrations. Something else is involved. What is involved is the frontier, the limit where the place of the lack is established.
A continuous, I mean varied reflection about the different, metonymical forms in which there appear in clinical practice the focal points of this lack, will constitute the continuation of our discourse. But we cannot but treat it ceaselessly along with the putting into question of what one can call the goals of analysis. The positions taken up in this respect are so instructive, educative that I would like at the point that we are at, that besides this article to which it would be appropriate to return, to follow it in detail, you should read another article by someone called Szasz on the goals of analytic treatment, “On the Theory of Psychoanalytic Treatment”, in which you will see that there is advanced the following: it is that the aims of analysis are given by its rule. And that its rule, and at the same time its aims can only be defined as promoting as a final goal of analysis, of every analysis whether it is didactic or not, the initiation of the patient into a scientific point of view – that is how the author expresses himself – concerning his own movements.
Is that a definition? I am not saying that we can accept it or reject it, it is one of the extreme positions, it is undoubtedly a very singular and specialised position. I am not saying: is it a definition that we could accept? I am saying: what can that definition teach us?
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