Circulated on the New Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis’ Messenger, as [nls-messager] 3009.en/ TIDBITS – Reginald Blanchet – Towards the NLS Congress 2019 ‘Urgent!’, on 9th March 2019.
Available below
or http://www.amp-nls.org/page/gb/49/nls-messager/0/2018-2019/3651 or www.LacanianWorksExchange.net /Authors A-Z (Blanchet)
Index
The Text
References
Location/Availability of references
Sasha Nacht & Jacques Lacan – some notes
Further texts
.
The Text
From: NLS-Messager
Subject: [nls-messager] 3009.en/ TIDBITS – Reginald Blanchet – Towards the NLS Congress 2019 ‘Urgent!’
Date: 9 March 2019 at 08:23:41 GMT
What is concealed by the so-called “Cht” and why?
Reginald Blanchet
What these three letters conceal is someone’s identity. “What a Cht told me.” [1] “Cht” is thus his name here. Inadmissible to the register of proper names in French, it is thus an improper name. Consequently, the person who it refers to goes unnamed. Such was the steadfast decision held by Lacan regarding the person concerned ever since the split from the Société Psychanalytique de Paris, which set them in violent opposition. [2] Beyond that time, one cannot find a single mention of this proscribed name in the whole of the Lacanian corpus. Lacan will only make an exception to this on one single occasion, this being the hapax of the jaculation of disobliging consonants, “Cht,” used in the “Preface.”
Lacan gives very precise indications regarding the identity of the author who becomes the object of his constant criticism in the fifties, but he always does so indirectly. Footnote 6 on page 541 of Écrits (as well as pages 491 and 492), [3] indicates that this person is the one responsible for the article entitled “La thérapeutique analytique”, which appeared in the first volume of La Psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui (1956). He is also the “doctrinaire of the psychoanalyst’s being” and of the “innate gift,” which would be required in cash. He is also the person who did not fail to flatter Lacan, while still a colleague, close friend and even valued ally, for being a born analyst [d’être analyste-né]. And he is ultimately the person that Lacan vilifies by relegating him definitively to anonymity when he announced in his 1976 address that “An idiot submitted to analysis always becomes a scoundrel.” [4]
The mystery of the “Cht”, can be easily cleared up as one knows without a shadow of a doubt who Lacan is referring to in this series of allusions. It is Sacha Nacht. The “Cht” is thus a cipher drawn from the proper name now under censor [5]. Its function is to be the barb of a proper name that becomes improper to name from the moment its bearer is assigned to the register of the unnamable.
Translated by Philip Dravers
References
1 Citation referred to: “What a Cht told me is that I was one, a born one.” Lacan, J., “Preface to the English Edition of Seminar XI,” tr. R. Grigg, The Lacanian Review6, “¡Urgent!,” NLS, Paris, 2018, p. 25, translation modified here by RG.
2 See the letter of 21 July 1953 to Heinz Hartmann in, La scission de 1953. Documents édités par Jacques-Alain Miller. Note Liminaire de Jacques Lacan, Lacan, J., Navarin, Paris, 1990, p. 136.
3 Cf, “The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power,” Écrits, Lacan, J., tr. B. Fink, W.W. Norton, New York/London, 2006.
4 [Lacan, J., “Note liminaire à la présentation de La scission de 1953,” op. cit., and also in Ornicar ?1976, p. 3.] To find who he is talking about one only has to follow the indications given by Lacan in his Note liminaire, his introductory note to the volume cited above: a single individual, the same, appears throughout the entire volume of this correspondence as the main instigator of the split, an insatiable maneuverer of power, utterly unscrupulous and mediocre theoretician to boot, thus an idiot.
5 [TN: the French “cht” is the equivalent of the English “shh,” the interjection used to urge silence.]
Location/Availability of References
- Preface to the English-language edition of Seminar XI : 17th May 1976 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19760517 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts) for references to Sacha Nacht. Translations by Alan Sheridan & Russell Grigg are given.
- Letter to Heinz Hartmann : 21st July 1953 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19530721 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
- The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power/ The Rules of the Cure and the Lures of its Power : 10th-13th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19580710 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts) : Translation by Cormac Gallagher available www.LacaninIreland.com.
From Reginald Blanchet’s text : indicates that this person is the one responsible for the article entitled “La thérapeutique analytique”, which appeared in the first volume of La Psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui(1956). He is also the “doctrinaire of the psychoanalyst’s being” and of the “innate gift,” which would be required in cash. : See La thérapeutique psychanalytique (Psychoanalytic Therapy) : 1956 : Sacha Nacht at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Nacht or Index of Authors’ texts)
1. The quote “An idiot submitted to analysis always becomes a scoundrel.”
As translated by Mario Beira, www.Freud2Lacan.com : A weakling, subjected to psychoanalysis, always turns into a scoundrel. Let it be known. See Introductory Note of 11th October 1976 : The split of 1953 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19761011)
In French
From Pas-tout Lacan – Ecole Lacanienne de psychanalyse and available http://ecole-lacanienne.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/1976-10-11.pdf
Quote from 1976-10-11 NOTE LIMINAIRE A LA PRESENTATION DE « LA SCISSION DE 1953 » : Jacques Lacan, Parue dans La scission de 1953 (supplément à Ornicar ?) 1976, n° 7, p.3.
(3) J’ai gagné sans doute. Puisque j’ai fait entendre ce que je pensais de l’inconscient, principe de la pratique.
Je ne vais pas le dire là. Parce que tout ce qui est publié ici, notamment de ma plume, me fait horreur.
Au point que j’ai cru l’avoir oublié, ce dont celui qui m’édite témoignera.
Ne plus vouloir y penser n’est pas l’oubli, hélas.
Le débile, soumis à la psychanalyse, devient toujours une canaille. Qu’on le sache.
Jacques Lacan Ce 11.X. 76
Full translation
Translated by Mario Beira, from www.Freud2Lacan.com /Lacan
I without doubt have won; for I have made known what I thought of the unconscious, principle of the practice.
I will not say it here; because everything that is published here, particularly from my pen, horrifies me.
To the point that I thought I had forgotten it, my editor will testify to it.
Not wishing to think about it is not forgetting it, alas.
A weakling, subjected to psychoanalysis, always turns into a scoundrel. Let it be known.
______________________________________________
Sacha Nacht & Jacques Lacan
_______________________________
From Dossier on the Institutional Debate, An Introduction : 1990 : Joan Copjec. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Copjec or Index of Authors)
This is an introduction to a published collection of texts which were previously published, along with others, as supplements to Ornicar?, the journal of the Champ freudien: La scission de 1953 appeared in October 1976 as supplement to no. 7 and ‘L’excommunication’ in January 1977 as supplement to no 8. The “Introduction to the Names-of-the Father” was published in this collection for the first time. (See Introduction to the Names-of-the-Father Seminar : 20th November 1963 (Paris) : Jacques Lacan, at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19631120 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts))
Sacha Nacht & Jacques Lacan :
From Wikipedia : Société Française de Psychanalyse : Despite wishing himself to avoid a split, Lacan was drawn into the dissident movement led by Daniel Lagache, as a result of his own separate dispute with the president Sacha Nacht over his practice of “short sessions”.
La psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui : 1956 : under the direction of Sacha Nacht is criticised by Jacques Lacan in
Seminar IV : 21st November 1956 . See Seminar IV The Relation from Object (La relation d’objet) & Freudian Structures (1956-1957) : from 21st November 1956 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19561121)
&
also The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power/ The Rules of the Cure and the Lures of its Power : 10th-13th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19580710 or Index of texts by Jacques Lacan)
Note : there is further reference to Sacha Nacht in
Seminar X : 12th December 1962 & Seminar X : 30th January 1963. See Seminar X From the Anguish (De l’angoisse) (1962-1963) : from 14th November 1962 : Jacques Lacan at this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19621114)
Notes & references for Jacques Lacan’s Seminar IV 28th November 1956 : 2nd July 2017 : Julia Evans. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of texts by Julia Evans)
The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power:10th-13th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan or here
References to Sacha Nacht
in The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power/ The Rules of the Cure and the Lures of its Power : 10th-13th July 1958 : Jacques Lacan.
See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19580710 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
– p1 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation, quote : What nobility of soul we display when we reveal that we ourselves are made from the same clay as those we mould!
Now that‘s a nasty way of putting it. But it lets those it is aimed at away lightly, since they shamelessly confess, in the name of psychoanalysis, that they are working on the ‘emotional re-education of the patient‘ [22].
P.D.A.- a work entitled: La Psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui [Psychoanalysis today] published by P.U.F., to which I refer to only because of the naive simplicity with which it presents the tendency in psychoanalysis to degrade the direction of the treatment and the principles of its power. A work for outside consumption no doubt, but also an obstruction inside. Therefore I will not quote the authors, who make no properly scientific contribution in it.
[22] PDA: see successively p. 133 (emotional reeducation), and p.133 (the PDA’s opposition to Freud on the primordial importance of the two-person relation), p.132 (on the cure “from the inside”), p.135 (what is important… is not so much what the analyst says or does as what he is), p.136, etc., passim, and also p.162 (on saying goodbye at the end of the treatment), and p.149 (on dreams) [Bruce Fink’s note : Sacha Nacht, “La clinique psychanalytique. La relation d’objet”] (See La thérapeutique psychanalytique (Psychoanalytic Therapy) : 1956 : Sacha Nacht at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Nacht or Index of Authors’ texts) )[Note : See Clinical analysis : 1956 : Maurice Bouvet at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Bouvet) for details of P.D.A. whose overall editor is Sacha Nacht for details of P.D.A. whose overall editor is Sacha Nacht]
– p3 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : Let those who wish me well in my struggles not be concerned at the thought that I am exposing myself here once again to opponents who are always only too happy to send me back to my metaphysics.
Because at the heart of their claim to be satisfied with effectiveness, the statement is made that ‘the analyst cures not so much by what he says and does but by what he is‘ [22]. Nobody, apparently, demands an explanation for such a statement, nor does anyone appeal to their author‘s sense of shame when, with a tired smile at the derision he incurs, he falls back on goodness, his goodness (we must be good, no transcendence implied), to put an end to the fruitless debate about the transference neurosis.5 But who would be cruel enough to question someone bent double under the weight of his suitcase, when the way he is carrying it already shows that it is full of bricks?
Jacques Lacan’s note [22] is reproduced in the above point.
– P4 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : This does not prevent people believing that they are really getting somewhere when they discover the learned notion that psychoanalysis must be studied as a situation involving two. It is no doubt hedged about by conditions that restrain its movements, but it remains that conceiving the situation in this way serves to articulate (and with no more artifice than the emotional re-education referred to above) the principles of a training of an ego described as ‘weak‘, by an ego that people like to believe has the energy, on account of its ‘strength‘, to carry out such a project. That it is not expressed without a certain embarrassment is shown by the strikingly clumsy regrets that are offered, like the one specifying that there must be no compromise on the need for a ̳cure from within‘ [22][Footnote 6]. But it is all the more significant to observe that the assent of the subject, referred to in this passage, comes only secondarily, as an effect of what was first of all imposed.
It is not for fun that I point out these deviations but rather so that their danger may serve as beacons on our route.
[22] is given above.
Footnote 6 : I promise my readers not to weary them any more in what comes, with such foolish formulae, which here have really no other use than to show where people have got to in the analytic discourse. I apologised to my foreign listeners who no doubt have just as many available in their own tongue [langue], but perhaps not at quite the same level of platitude.
– P6-7 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : We recognise here a down-at-heel mirage that has already been rejected as untenable by the most academic psychology of introspection. Yet this regression is celebrated as a return to the fold of ‘general psychology‘.
However, it does solve the problem of the analyst‘s being.[Footnote 7] A team of egos no doubt less equal than autonomous (but by what stamp do they recognise one another in the self-sufficiency of their autonomy) is offered to Americans to guide them towards happiness, without upsetting the autonomies, egotistical or otherwise, that pave with their non-conflictual spheres the American way of getting there.
Footnote 7 : In France the doctrinaire of being, quoted above, went straight to this solution: the being of the psychoanalyst is innate [c.f. P.D.A., I, p136] [JE notes see [22] above for quote from p136]
– P13 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : 6. In this perspective, transference becomes the analyst‘s security, and the relation to the real the terrain on which the combat is decided. Interpretation, which had been postponed until the consolidation of the transference, now becomes subordinate to its reduction.
As a result, interpretation is reabsorbed into a ‘working through‘, which might very well be translated as transference work, which serves as an alibi for a sort of revenge taken for the initial timidity, that is to say, for an insistence that opens the door to all kinds of forcing, put under the flag of ‘strengthening the ego‘ [21-22].
For [22] see above.
[21] PDA. (Abbreviation given above), p. 51—52 (on “pregenitals” & “genitals”, passim (on the strengthening of the ego & the method for doing so), and p102 (on distance from the object as the principle of a method of treatment) [See Clinical analysis : 1956 : Maurice Bouvet at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Bouvet)]
– p23-25 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : This ectoplasmic conception of the object soon revealed its dangers when it became degraded into the crude dichotomy expressed in the opposition of the pre-genital character and the genital character.
This over-simplified thematisation is summarily developed by attributing to the pre-genital character the accumulated features of projective unreality, of greater or lesser degrees of autism, of restriction of satisfaction by the defences, of the conditioning of the object by a doubly protected isolation from the destructive effects that connote it, in other words an amalgam of all the defects of object relations with a view to showing the motives for the extreme dependence that results from them for the subject. A picture that would be useful despite its inveterate confusion, if it did not seem made to serve as a negative to the puerility of “the passage from the pre-genital form to the genital form”, in which the drives “no longer take on that character of a need of uncoercible, unlimited, unconditional possession involving a destructive aspect. They are truly tender, loving, and even if the subject does not show himself to be oblative, that is to say disinterested, and even if these objects” (here the author recalls my remarks), “are as profoundly narcissistic as in the previous case he is capable of comprehension and adaptation to the other. Indeed the intimate structure of these objectal relations shows that the object‘s participation in his own pleasure is indispensable for the subject‘s happiness. The proprieties, the desires, the needs of the object” – what a mess! – “are taken into consideration to the highest degree.”
However this does not prevent the ego from having “a stability that runs no risk of being compromised by the loss of a significant Object. It remains independent of its objects.”
“Its organisation is such that the mode of thought that it uses is essentially logical. It does not spontaneously present regression to an archaic mode of apprehending reality, affective thinking and magical belief, playing only an absolutely secondary role; symbolisation does not grow in extent and importance beyond what it is in normal life.” (!!) ―The style of the relations between the subject and the object is highly evolved.” (sic) 10
10 Parentheses by the author of the present report.
This is the promise held out to those who ―at the end of a successful analysis…realise the enormous difference between what they once believed sexual joy to be and what they now experience.” [21, p55]
We are led to understand that for those who have this joy straight off, “the genital relation is in short, untroubled” [21].
Untroubled except for conjugating itself irresistibly in the verb to bang your behind against the chandelier, whose place here seems to me to be marked for the future commentator to have time of his life.
See [21] above
– P29 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : But that an animal odour should find its way into a technique that is conducted largely by ̳following your nose‘, as they say, is not just ridiculous. Students from my seminar will recall the smell of urine that marked the turning point in a case of transitory perversion, which I used as a criticism of this technique. It cannot be said that it was unconnected with the accident that motivates the observation, since it is in spying, through a crack in the wall of a public lavatory, on a woman pissing that the patient suddenly transposed his libido, without anything, it seemed, predetermining it: infantile emotions bound up with the phantasy of the phallic mother having until then taken the form of a phobia [23].
It is not a direct link, however, any more than it would be correct to see in the voyeurism an inversion of the exhibition involved in what is correctly diagnosed as an atypical phobia: as the patient‘s anxiety had been teased for being too tall.
[23] states R.L., “Perversion sexuelle transitoire au cours d’un traitement psychanalytique”, Bulletin d’activités de l’Association des Psych- analystes de Belgique 25, p.1—17 (118, rue Froissart, Brussels). See Transitory Sexual Perversion in the Course of a Psychoanalytic Treatment : July 1955 (Geneva) : Ruth Lebovici at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Lebovici or Index of Authors’ texts)
Note : Ruth Lebovici’s husband was Serge Lebovici, (See Notes & References for Jacques Lacan’s Seminar IV 21st November 1956 : 28th February 2017 : Julia Evans at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of Julia Evans’ texts) : who was a contributor to Sacha Nacht’s Collection : La psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui, Ruth Lebovici’s supervisor was Maurice Bouvet. One of his obsessional cases was examined in Seminar IV : 21stNovember 1965 and is included in Nacht’s collection.. See Clinical analysis : 1956 : Maurice Bouvet at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Bouvet)
– p40-41 of Cormac Gallagher’s translation : Those analysts that we can say are fascinated by the sequellae of frustration are only taking up a position of suggestion that reduces the subject to restating his demand. This no doubt is what is meant by emotional re-education.
Goodness is no doubt more necessary here than anywhere else, but it cannot cure the evil it engenders. The analyst who wants the good of the subject, repeats what he was formed by, and sometimes, even deformed. The most aberrant education has never had any other motive than the good of the subject.
A theory of analysis is conceived, which unlike the delicate articulation of Freud‘s analysis, reduces the source of symptoms to fear. It engenders a practice in which what I have called elsewhere the obscene ferocious figure of the superego is imprinted, in which there is no other way out of the transference neurosis than to make the patient sit down by the window and show him all the smiling aspects of nature, adding “Off you go! Now you‘re a good child.” [22]
V Desire must be taken literally (à la lettre)
- After all, a dream is just a dream, we hear it said today [22]. Does it mean
nothing that in it Freud recognised desire?
Desire, not tendencies. For we must read The interpretation of dreams to know what is meant by what Freud calls desire.
We must pause at the vocables Wunsch and its English translation Wish, to distinguish them from désir; nothing could less suggest concupiscence than their damp squib splutter. They are voeux.
See [22] above.
References to Sacha Nacht
From Seminar IV The Relation from Object (La relation d’objet) & Freudian Structures (1956-1957) : from 21st November 1956 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19561121)
Quoted from Notes & References for Jacques Lacan’s Seminar IV 21st November 1956 : 28th February 2017 : Julia Evans at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Evans or Index of Julia Evans’ texts)
8 ECp4 : La psychanalyse d’aujourd’hui: P.U.F ; 1956 : Mostly, this is not translated into English.
A collection published under Sacha Nacht’s direction, with M. Bouvet, R. Diatkine, A. Doumic, J. Favreau, M. Held, S. Lebovici, P. Luquet, P. Luquet-Parat, P. Male, J. Mallet, F. Pasche, M. Renaud,
Preface by Ernest Jones
Note: Ernest Jones & Sacha Nacht were present, together with others, at this meeting, where Jacques Lacan was ejected : see Minutes of the International Psychoanalytical Association meeting : 30th July 1953 : Dr Heinz Hartmann (IPA President & Meeting Chairman). See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Hartmann or Index of Authors’ texts)
Rudolf Loewenstein, who was Lacan’s training analyst from 1932 to 1938, was also Sacha Nacht’s analyst and was present at this meeting.
There is an analysis of how Miss Anna Freud & Dr Sacha Nacht, supported by Dr Ernest Jones & Princess Marie Bonaparte, attack Jacques Lacan at this meeting at this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Hartmann or Index of Authors’ texts)
The following papers, all quoted in Seminar IV, all have references to Sacha Nacht in their notes:
Clinical Analysis : 1956 : Maurice Bouvet. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Bouvet)
The Reality of the Object and Economic Point of View : 25th July 1955 (Geneva) : Francis Pasche & Michel Renard. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Pasche or Renard or Index of Other Authors’ texts)
Transitory Sexual Perversion in the Course of a Psychoanalytic Treatment : July 1955 (Geneva) : Ruth Lebovici. See this site /5 Other Authors A-Z (Lebovici or Index of Authors’ texts)
& also
Letter to Heinz Hartmann : 21st July 1953 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan (19530721 or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)
Letter to Rudolf Loewenstein : 14th July 1953 : Jacques Lacan. See this site /4 Jacques Lacan or Index of Jacques Lacan’s texts)