AnotherLacan

JacquesAlainMiller
AuthorsBio
Inthetimeallottedtome,IwilltrytopresenttoyouanotherLacan.
The Venezuelan newspapers report these days in their headlines
Lacans axiom that the unconscious is structured like a language.
This is fine. We could not expect to keep this to ourselves since the
factisobviousintheanalyticexperienceaswellasinthewritingsof
Freud.Thequestionratherseemstobewhynobodynoticeditbefore
Lacansaidit.
As the unconsciousstructuredlikealanguage becomes a public
truth, the time has come, perhaps, for a slightly different accent.
Who then is this other Lacan? One who says, for instance, that the
unconscious is not structured like a language? Certainly not. This
other Lacan is the Lacan that you know. However, he has drawn
from his famous hypothesis a number of consequences that are not
always recognized. A number of difficulties recently encountered in
the psychoanalytic community are a result of this distortion, which
alsoaccountsforthecurrentstagnationoftheory.
These unrecognized consequences concern specifically the end of
analysis,andthereforethemomenttermedthepass.Iwouldliketo
delineatethiscomplexquestionforyouasIcan.
The pass, Lacans term, refers to the impasse which, according to
Freud,isthenormalendoftheanalyticexperienceforanysubject.
There is an end to the analytic experience, but this end is an
impassethisisthelegacywhichFreudhasleftusfromhispractice,
notably in his article Finite and Infinite Analysis. Every
psychoanalysis, according to Freud, eventually encounters an
insuperableresistance.
The existence of this block does not in any way depend on the
clinical particulars of the patient or on the lack of skill of the
practicianitisnotbecausethesubjectistooneuroticortheanalyst
incompetentthatthisblockisencountered.Freuddefinesthisrather
strangeoccurrenceasastructuralimpasse,validforeverysubject.
In fact, according to Freud, the further the analysis is pursued and
the more competently and in conformity with his procedures it is
conducted,themoreevidentwillbetheimpasse.
You are familiar with the Freudian term for this impasse. It is the
castration complexfor woman, penis envy, which is, if I may say
so, her thorn in the flesh. This block, according to Freud, is not
contingent but occurs necessarily the impasse occurs not de facto
but de jure. The most careful handling of the treatment cannot but
rundirectlyontothisrock,whichistherebyrevealedasareef.
According to Freud, the analytic experience therefore comes to a
close, despite those who value only openended experiences
Questionsmustremainopen!Thisclaustrophobiaisaheritageof
phenomenology, the extension of which to psychoanalysis cannot be
takenforgranted.
There is here an irony, a paradox: The analytic experience has an
idealending,distinctfromanyaccidentalinterruptionortermination
forpersonalreasons,andthisidealendingamountstoafailure.The
finalclausecanonlybethecastrationcomplex.
So, to take up Lacans debate with Freud, it is clear that Lacan
means to push his analyses beyond what Freud saw as the
irreducibleresidue,thecaputmortumoftheexperience,beyondthe
Freudian ending. Lacan therefore speaks of the pass where Freud
discoveredanimpasse.
Thus, Lacan and Freud agree that the analytic experience is finite.
But Lacans final clause is entirely different from Freuds, since it
meansthetransformationofanalysandintoanalyst,areversalfrom
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one position to the other. The question thus concerns not only the
analyst,butalso,andforemost,theanalysand.
The word pass can be used in many ways as a glance at the
dictionary will reveal. Is the pass a passage beyond the castration
complex? That would be a nice title, but perhaps a little too neat. I
would prefer to emphasize Lacans allegiance to Freud, the Freudian
LacanmorethantheLacanianLacan.
Whatisitthatblockstheexperience?What,accordingtoFreud,does
notcometopass?Itistheclausewhichprescribestoamanhowto
be a man for a woman, and to a woman, how to be a woman for a
man. Freud finds that this clause, which he anticipates, fails to
appear, and therefore he posits the castration complex as
irreducible.
ButwhatdidFreudexpectoftheexperienceifnotaformulaforthe
sexual relation? He hoped to find it inscribed in the unconscious
hencehisdespairatnotfindingit.
AndafterFreud,whathappened?Inattemptingtosolvethequestion
of the end of analysis, analysts have again and again proposed
formulas for the sexual relation. To cast the end of analysis in the
event of a possible sexual relation has necessarily led them to rub
outthecastrationcomplexwiththegenitaleraser.
Lacan,ontheotherhand,istruetoFreudwhenhestatesthatthere
is no sexual relation. This formula preserves the irreducibility of
what Freud designated as castration, but it also suggests that the
question of the end of analysis cannot be posed in terms of the
sexualrelationwhichdoesnotexist.
The question of the end of analysis cannot be solved if such a
solution requires the sexual relation. It can only be solved on the
basisofitsabsence.
It is a fact that psychoanalysis does not bring about the sexual
relation. For Freud this was cause for despair. Eager to redress this
state of affairs, the postFreudians have been attempting to
elaborate a genital formula. Lacan brings these attempts to a close.
The end of the analytic process cannot be tied to the emergence of
the sexual relation. It depends rather on the emergence of the
sexualunrelation.
Thequestionoftheendofanalysistherebyfindsasolutioninaway
that was previously inconceivable. The solution appears on the side
of the objectthe object dismissed as pregenital by the post
Freudiantrend.
It is not the object that obstructs the emergence of the sexual
relation,astheexpectationofitseventualcomingmightleadoneto
believe. On the contrary, the object is that which stops up the
relation that does not exist, thereby giving it the consistency of the
fantasy. lnasmuch as the end of analysis supposes the advent of an
absence, it depends on breaking through the fantasy and on the
separationoftheobject.
These are the problems of the pass. However difficult its
implementation may be in analytic groups (the cole Freudienne
certainly did everything possible to pervert its procedure), the pass
isandremainsoneofLacansmajoradvances.Itconfirmsandsums
upthefundamentalsofhisteaching.
The unconscious knows nothing of the relation of man to woman or
ofwomantoman.Provisionallyitcanbesaidthatthetwosexesare
strangerstooneanother,exiledfromeachother.
Butthesymmetryimpliedbythisstatementisslightlymisleading.In
fact, the missing sexual knowledge concerns only the female. If
nothing is known of the other sex, it is primarily because the
unconscious knows nothing of woman. Whence the form: The Other
sexmeaningthesexwhichisOther,andabsolutelyso.
Indeed, there is a signifier for the male and that is all.weve got.
This is what Freud recognized: just one symbol for the libido, and
thissymbolismasculinethesignifierforthefemaleislost.Lacanis
thus entirely Freudian in stating that woman as a category does not
exist.ItisFreudthenwhoisnotcompletelyFreudian.
Thisexplainswhythesubjectwhoenterstheanalyticdeviceisbound
to go through a structural hysteria. He not only experiences himself
as split by the eHects of the signifier, but also finds himself thrust
willynilly into the search of the signifier for woman on which the
existenceofthesexualrelationdepends.Thepsychoanalystneednot
inscribe on his door, Let no one enter here who seeks not the
woman,Itforwhoeverenterswillseekheranyway.
The absence of the signifier woman also accounts for the illusion of
the infinite, which arises from the experience of speech, even while
that experience is finite. Indeed the diacritical structure of language
by which anyone signifier points to another (S1 S2) accounts for
theveryrecursivenessofspeechthefactthatlastwordscannotbe
said.
Naturally, if the Other signifier, that of woman, existed, it could be
assumedthatthingswouldcometoanend.
The analysand therefore appears as a kind of Diogenes with his
lantern,butinsearchofwomanratherthanaman.Formenarenot
hard to find. One might even take one for another without making
muchofamistake.
The passion for things symbolic has no other source. Science exists
because woman does not exist. Knowledge as such substitutes for
knowing the other sex. This formula can be readily applied. For
instance, the question why everyone now plays with pyramids can
now be given a scientific answer: everyone is mad about pyramids
becausewomandoesnotexist.
The series S1 > S2 provides the rational basis for the illusion of
infinite analysis. The very absence of the sexual relation leaves the
hop.ethatwhatisstillabsentwillcomeinalittlewlrile.
However, the unrelation grows ever weightier as the experience
goes on. Lacan contends that the unconscious shouts but one
message, the absence of the relation. It may thus be said that the
Freudiandevicerepresentsthisabsence.
Somewhere,Quevedosaysofyoungvirginsthattheyarevestidasin
noli me tangere. Its a delightful image. The analyst, no doubt,
cloaks himself in noli me tangere, and this accounts for his (and
especially her, the woman analysts) tendency to identify more than
isfitwiththeLadyofcourtlylove.
Another point should now be mentioned: what are the implications
foranalyticinterpretationofthefactthatanyonesignifierhasvalue
only with reference to another? It follows that interpretation is both
possible and infinite. In other words there is no dosing formula for
the analytic experience. This is what Freud considers the navel of
the dream. It means that interpretation proceeding from the
retroaction of S2 on S1, can never end. Analysis then must be
interminable.
Butletusnotforgetthatinmattersofinterpretation,religionisour
teacher.Asisthepsychoticsdliredinterpretation.
In certain analytic milieus, there has developed a tendency to value
interpretation as a wealth of meanings. Set on this path,
psychoanalysis may well tum into a delirium of interpretation. The
unconsciousisaccordedafaithwhichisnotonlynaive,butprecisely
paranoiac.WemaythinkofLacansdefinition,nowsomewhatdated,
of psychoanalysis as a controlled paranoia. After all, who better to
controlaparanoiathanaparanoiac?
Thereisatrendinthisdirectionincontemporarypsychoanalysis.For
this reason, Lacan recommended preliminary interviews at the start
of an analysis. The analytic device, the device of psychoanalysis,
dearly favors the manifestation of psychosis. What classical French
psychiatry refers to as automatisme mental is really only the
subjectsupposedtoknowto know all my thoughts. At Sainte Anne
several years ago, we had a very fine case of chronic hallucinatory
psychosis in which a psychoanalyst figured as the operator of the
influencingmachine.Thecaseisnotrare.
A lot of people are being criticized here in Caracas: Melanie Klein,
the American analysts A little criticism, perhaps, could also be
given Lacan, at least to those effects of his teachings which lead to
exaltthefunctionofinterpretation.InLacanhimself,thereisnoneof
this fervor. On the question of interpretation, he is after all quite
discrete. It must be done properlythat is what he often said, and
thataboutall.
The interpretative function proceeds from the structure of language
as language of the Other: it is the receiver who establishes the
meaningofamessage.Inemphasizingthispoint,Lacangoesasfar
astocalltheanalystthemasteroftruth.Lacanusedthisformulain
1953. He did not repeat it, yet it explains well enough why
interpretation can be reduced to mere punctuation, a scansion, no
more.
Theexistenceofamasteroftruthmaybearguedonthebasisofthe
semantic retroaction of S2 on S1. So considered, S2 becomes the
mastersignifier of truth. However, the notation S1 > S2 implies
the contrary as well in that there is no signified master of truth,
since any signification depends on a subsequent signifier.
Signification essentially shifts along the signifying chain its
metonymyaccountsfortheimpossibilityofallthetruthbeingsaid.
YouknowthatLacandividestheFreudianwishbetweendemandand
desire. He thus equates desire, arising from the signifier, with the
metonymy of signification that results from the being for another.
WhenceLacansvectorialrepresentationofdesirewhichyouknow.
On this point, students of Freud found Lacan easiest to follow. Here
they found the freshness of the Freudian experience, the taste of
things new. Desire, indefinable, inconstant, elusive, changing shape,
always a function of something else, always running away, as
indestructible as the continual chain, and at the same time,
malleable to the signifierdocile yet indefatigable, submissive and
untameable.
Theverypossibilityofsublimation,itsfacilityeven,springsfromthis
plasticityofdesire.Desirenaturallyharmonizeswiththesignifierit
cannot but agree with it. just think how the image of woman has
changed over the centuries. In our days it changes from month to
month.Thephenomenonoffashionwouldnotexistifdesirewerenot
hookedtothesignifierhookedthatistotheOther.
Theverypossibilityofsublimation,itsfacilityeven,springsfromthis
plasticityofdesire.Desirenaturallyharmonizeswiththesignifierit
cannot but agree with it. just think how the image of woman has
changed over the centuries. In our days it changes from month to
month.Thephenomenonoffashionwouldnotexistifdesirewerenot
hookedtothesignifierhookedthatistotheOther.
You know Lacans title The Subversion of the Subject and the
DialecticofDesireintheFreudianUnconscious.Consider,however,
that there is nothing obvious in speaking of a dialectic of the sexual
desire.Thefactthatdesireisbothindestructibleandplastichasnot
escapedJungwhogaveitprimeimportanceasthemetamorphoses
ofthelibido.Weknowwherethisledhimtodesexualizethelibido.
This is not surprising since sublimation is indeed a transfonn of
desire.
Does Lacan offer anything else? Why did the philosophers and
scholarswhoredLacanandlearnedfromhimtorereadFreudmake
suchacaseofmetonymy?Thereasonissimple:theyfoundtherea
meanstodesexualizedesire.
Yes, they have turned Lacan into another Jung, the Jung of the
signifier. Wherever Lacans influence has been felt, his teaching has
beenusedtoexalttheplayofsignifiers.ButthisisnotwhatLacanis
about,notatall.
The ticklings of desire, its sneaky ways, its Fregolian
metamorphoses, its clowning masquerades, all these are a part of
theanalyticexperience.Analysisunquestionablyallowsthesubjecta
certain leeway, a space for straying within the path of the signifier.
This makes for the joy of interpretation. It is also what is paid for:
the gain in pleasure that analysis produces, the surplus value of
jouissancetherebyobtained.Correspondingly,theanalystcelebrates
interpretation as a passion for the word, appraises it as poetic
creation, confuses his business with that of the writer, plays Sir
Oracle,andwithallthis,imagineshimselfaLacanian.
It would be easy to find in Lacan authority for this enthusiasm. Yet
Lacans unconscious structuredlikealanguage does not exclusively
value the poetic signifier, just as it does not endorse the practice
basedonthisposition.
Iwouldratherbendthethingtheotherwayaround.Itisneitherfor
theanalystnortheanalysandtobeinspired.Theanalyticexperience
follows precise rules and routines there is, says Lacan, a quasi
bureaucraticstyletoit.Desirecertainlydartsandflashes,butalso,
liketheferret,itrunsinacircle.
Thiscircleiscalledthefantasy.
Ah! How much less entertaining is the theory of fantasy than the
metonymyofdesire!Thelatter,infact,isinconceiveablewithoutthe
former, if it were not merely to be a feasting on the leftovers of
scripturalexegesis.
Certainly, the subject of desire is a drifter, but it is tethered to a
fixedpoint,toastakeaboutwhichitdriftsinacircle.Itisthelittle
goatofMr.Seguin.
We have here a dimension of the analytic experience the
phenomenology of which is surely different from that of metonymy.
There one lets oneself go with the drifting subject, here we
emphasizeitsbeingtied.
Please note that S1 > S2 does not mean that the subject can find
in the signifier d specific identity, an absolute representation, his
own true name. The Other of the signifier provides no name for the
subjectoftheunconscious.
That which arrests the signifier, that to which it is tethered, is the
object.Subjectivecertainlyisalwaystiedtotheobject.
Incontrasttothesignifierinwhichtheyalldelight,theobjecthasno
Other to substitute for it. It represents nothing for another, it does
notshift.Itrulesthedesire,sustainsit,givesitconsistence.
Wecangoasfarastosaythattheobjectprovidesfortheillusionof
unity in the subject. The egos underpinnings are to be found in the
fantasy,becausethefantasyisthefunctionwhichrelatesthedrifting
subjectofdesiretotheobjectwhichholdsit.
In speech, the subject has the experience of selfloss. He
experiences the lackin being ($), especially the lackinbeing
represented by one signifier. Only in the fantasy does the subject
gainaccesstowhateverbeingthesignifiergrantshim.
Whence the paradoxical structure of fantasy, joining two
heterogeneous elementsand Lacans reference to the topology of
the crosscap to explain this structure (the crosscap consisting of a
pIeceofasphereandamoebiusstrip).
The subject of the signifier is alwaysdisplaced and lacks being. It is
never there except through the object cloaked in the fantasy. The
pseudoDaseinofthesubjectistheobjectdenotedasobjetpetita.
You may at this point understand why for Lacan the end of analysis
is played out at the level of the fantasy, specifically on the level of
theobjetpetita.
ThepassisLacansnameforthedisjunctionofthesubjectandobject
brought about by the analytic experience, for the fracturing or
breakingofthefantasy.
The fundamental structure of the fantasy is not the same as the
structureoftheformationsoftheunconscious.Relyingonthelatter,
the analytic discourse reveals the fonnerand therefore consists of
thecorrelatedpairsS1>S2and$>a.
WhenthesocalledinfluenceofLacanisusedsolelytoendorsethe
play of signifiers: it has the effect of completely disorienting the
analyticexperience.
Weidealizetheexperienceifweleaveoutthefunctionofrepetition
infantasy,theinertiawhichfantasyprovidestothedesire,its
stiflingeffectsondesiresmetonymy,thesenseofnoprogress,the
tediumofredundancywhichitgivestotheexperience.
It seems odd that the enthusiasm, even the pseudomanic fit, which
the very procedure of the pass engenders, would so often lead to
this idealization in those who should be in the best position to
counterit.
No doubt breaking through the fantasy confers wings, but what
wings:thoseofthealbatrossorthoseofPlatosdoves?
This paper was presented at the first Rencontre Internationale du
Champfreudien,Caracas,Venezuela,1980
TranslatedbyRalphChipman.
Thisentrywaswrittenbyadmin,postedonApril7,2009at2:31pm,filedunder
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OneComment
1. annashane
PostedDecember20,2010at8:07pm|Permalink
Thetruthisaboutunconsciousdesirewhichmakesforarankingofsignifiers,butwhat
abouttherealofjouissance?Doyouhaveanidea?
OneTrackback
1.ByHypertranscription:AlainBadiou,LocalizingtheVoid|dingpolitikonMay
30,2013at6:52pm
[...]Lacanaffirmsthathisideasareinspiredbyclinicalpracticeratherthanphilosophy.
Morespecifically,hisideasaredirectlyattributabletotheanalyticcureorthepass.[...]
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