\SSWXQ Jacques Lace * yiad Ne Seminar 4, Jacques NEteont moet yore a py aD SV DloR AQ wy Vil The topic of the imaginary { ggperation ox ornies ve small talk | willoffer you today was announced under the ttle “The topic of the imaginary’. Such a subject is quite enough to fill up several years of teaching, but since several questions concerning the place of the imaginary in the symbolic structure crop up while following the thread of our discourse, today's chat may justify its ttle ‘¢ wasn't without some preconceived plan, the rigour of which will, I hope, become apparent as it is revealed in its entirety, that last time [brought your ‘attention to a case whose particular signiticance resides in its showing in tniniature the reciprocal interplay of those three grand terms we have already hhad occasion to make much of - the imaginary. the symbolic, and the real Without these three systems to guide ourselves by, i would be impossible to Understand anything of the Freudian technique and experience. Many Uificultes are vindicated and clarified when one brings these distinctions to bear on them. This is indeed the case with the incomprehensions Mle Gelinier remarked upon the other day when dealing with Melanie Klein's text. What tatters, when one tries to elaborate upon some experience, isn'tso much whit tone understands, as what one doesn’t understand, The value of Mille Gélinier’s report is precisely to have highlighted what, inthis text, cannot be understood ‘That is why the method of textual commentary proves itself fruitful, Commenting on a texts like doing an analysis. How many thnes have I said to those under my supervision, when they say to me ~ [ual he impression he: this or that -that one ofthe things we must guard most agains isto understand too much, to understand more than what isin the discourse of the subject. To interpret and to imagine one understands are not at al the same things. tis precisely the opposite, 1 would go as far as Lo say that itis on the basis of a kind of refusal of understanding that we push open the door to analytic understanding, It isn’t enough for Ito seem to hang together, # text. Obviously. it hangs together within the framework of pat phrases we've grown used to — sant Ber8 on Pechnigue 1953-1954 instinctual maturation, primitive aggressive instinet, oral, anal sadism, etc And ye. in the register that Melanie Klein bringsinto play. there appear several wvontrasts, whieh Tam going to return to in detail Lverything turns on what Mlle Gélinier found to be peculiar, paradoxical contradietory’in the ego's fanction ~ too developed. it stops all development, ‘but m developing. it reopens the door to reality. How is i that the gate to reality is reopened by a development of the ego? What is the specific function of the Kleinian Interpretation, which appears to have an intrusive character, a superinnposing upon the subject? These are the questions that we will have to towel upon again today ‘You should have realised by now that, inthe case ofthis young subject. real imaginary and symbolic are here tangible, are flush with one another. I have taught you to identify the symbolic with language ~ now, isn’t it im so far as, say, Melunie Klein speaks, chat something happens? On the other hand, when Melanie Klein tells us that the objects are constituted by the interplay of projections, introjections, expulsions, reintrojections of bad objects, and that the subject, having projected his sadism, seesit coming back from these objet and. by this very fact, finds himself jammed up by an anxious fear, don't you Ihave the feeling that we are in the domain of the imaginary? From then on the whole problems that ofthe juncture ofthe symbolic and of the imaginary in the constitution of the real, il ‘oclarify things litle fr you, I'veconeveted alittle model for you. a substitute for the mirror-stage As [have often underlined. the mirror-stage ts not simply a moment in development, Italso has an exemplary function, because it reveals some of the subject's relations to his image. in so far as itis the Urbild of the ego. Now, this tmirror-stage. which no one ean deny, has an optical presentation ~ nor can anyone deny that, Is i a coincidence? ‘The sciences, and above all those sciences in labour, as ours is, frequently bocrow models from other sciences. My dear fellows, you wouldn't believe what you owe to geology. IFit weren't for geology. how could one end up thinking that one could move, on the same level, rom u recent to a much more ancient layer? t wouldn't be a bad thing, Il note in passing, iFevery analyst went out fund bought a stall book on geology. ‘There was once an analyst geologist Leuba, who wrote one, | can't recommend you to read it too highly. Optics could also have its Say. AU this point tind that I'm notin disagreement with the tration established by the master - more than one of you must have noticed in the Traumdeutung, in the chapter “The psychology of the dream process’. the famous scbema into which Freud inserts the entire proceedings of the unconscious, The topic of the imaginary 7s aye Non Maen! Moen” ALLL_N Freud's scheme! Inside, Freud places the different layers which can be distinguished from the level of perception, namely from the instantaneous impression ~ Mnem. ‘Mnem, ete, both image and memory. These recorded traces are later repressed into the unconscious. It isa very pretty schema, which we will come back to since it will be useful to us. But I'd like to point out that itis accompanied by @ commentary which doesn’t appear to have ever attracted anyone's attention, ‘even though it was used again in another form in Freud’s quasi last work, the Outline of Psyeho-analysis | willreadit to you as itis to be found in the Traumdeutung. What is presented to tus in these words isthe idea of psychical locality — whrat is at issue here is precisely the field of psychical reality, that is to say of everything which takes place between perception and the motor consciousness of the ego. I shall entirely disregard the fact that the mental apparatus with which we are here concerned i aso Inown to us inthe form of an anatomical preparation, ane I shall carefully avoid the temptation to determine psychical locality in any anatomical fashion. {shall remain upon psychological ground, and I propose simply to follow the suggestion that we should picture the instrument which carries out our mental functionsas resembling a ‘compound microscope or « photographic apparatus, or something of the kind. On that basis, psychical locality will correspon to. point inside the apparatus at which one of the preliminary stages of an imuge comes into being, Inthe microscope und telescope, as we know component of the apparatus is situated, 1 see mo necessity to apologise for the imperfections of this or of any similar tmagery. Analogies of this kind are only intended to assist usin our attempt to make the complications of mental functioning intelligible by dissecting the function and assigning its diferent constituents to diferent component parts of the apparatus. So far as I know, the experiment hus not hitherto been made of using this method of dissection in order to investigate the way it which the mental instrument i pu together, and Lean see no harm in it. We are justified, im my view, in giving free rein co our speculations so long as we retain the ‘coolness of our judgement aril lo not mustake the scaffolding forthe building. And these occur in part at ideal points, regions in which no tangible 90) SEV 586 Frou!’ Papers on Technique 1953-1954 ‘our fistapproach to something unknown all that we nei is the assistance of provisional ideas, 1 shall give preference in che first instance to hypotheses af the ‘radest ad most concrete description, Tdon'chhave to tll you that, sevin tice then we haven't missed an opportunity of taking the scaffolding for the building, On the other hand, the authorisation which Freud gives us to make tse of supplementary relations so as to bring us closer to an unknown fact invited me into myself manilesting a certain luck of deference in constructing & ws advice s given so as not tobe followed, Something almost infantile will do for us today. an optical apparatus much, ler than u compound microscope ~ not that it wouldn't be fun to follow up the comparison in question, but that would take us a bit far out of our way, | cunniot urgeyou too strongly to a meditation on optics, Theodd thingis that «an entiresystem of metaphysics has been founded on geometry and mechanics. by looking to them for models of understanding, but up to now it doesn’t seem ‘as though optics has been exploited as much as it could have been. Yetit should fend itself toa few drewms, this strange science which sets ise to produce. by means of apparatuses, that pecullar thing called images, in contrast to other seietices. which import into nature a cutting up. a dissection, an unatomy. ‘Don’t think that, having said this, | am trying to make you believe that the moon is made of green cheese, of to muke you Lake optical images for those images with which weare concerned. But allthe same. itis not for nothing that dey shure a name, ‘Optical innages possess a peculiar diversity ~ some of them are purely subjective, theseare the ones we call virtual, whereas others are reul, namely in sonte respects, behave ike objects and can be taken for such, More peculiar stil ‘we ean make virtual images of those objects which are real images, In such an sequite rightly has the name of virtual instance. the object which is thereal in vubject ‘here isin truth something which is even more surprising, which is thi vuptics is founded on a mathematical theory without which it ts absolutely impossible to structure it. For there to bean optics, for each given point in real space, there must be one point and one corresponding point only in another ‘pace, which is the imaginary space. This is the fundamental structural hypothesis. I gives the impression of being overly simple, but without it one cannot write even one equation, nor symbolise anything ~ optics would be impossible. Even those who are not aware of this coulda’t do a thing in optics if it didn't exist. Here. too, the imaginary space and the real space fuse. Nonetheless they have w be conceived of as different, When it comes to optics, there are many 190) GT AN 541; Stal 1512586 ¥ 586 The top of the imaginary n opportunities for employing certain distinctions which show you the extent to which the symbolic source counts in the emergence of a given phenomenon. (On the other hand, theres in optics a set of phenomena which can be said to be altogether real since we are also guided by experience in this matter, but in ‘which, nonetheless, subjectivity is implicated at every moment. When you see 4 rainbow. you're seeing something completely subjective. You sec it at a certain distance asifstitched on tothe landscape. Itisnt there, Itisa subjective phenomenon, But nonetheless, thanks to a camera, you record it entirely “objectively. So, whats i? We no longer have a clear idea, do we, which is the subjective, which is the objective. Or isn't it rather that we have acquired the habit of placing a too hastily drawa distinction between the objective and the subjective in our little thought-tank? isn’t the camera a subjective apparatus, entirely constructed with the help ofan x and ay which take up residencein the domain which the subject inhubits, that is to say that of langu: will lave these questions hanging, to move straight on to a small example that I will try to get into your heads before I put it on the blackboard, because. there is nothing more dangerous than things on the blackboard ~ it's always & bit Hat ILis a classical experiment, which used to be performed in the days when physics was fun, in the days when physics was really physics. Likewise, as for us, we find ourselves at # moment in time when psychoanalysis is really psychoanalysis. The closer we get to psychoanalysis being funny the more it real psychoanalysis, Later on, it will getrunin, it willbe done by cutting corners, ‘and by pulling tricks. No one will understand any longer what's being done, justas there isno longer any need to understand anything about opticsto make ‘a microscope. So let us rejoice, we are still doing psychoanalysis Put a vast cauldron in place of me ~ which perhaps could quite happily stand informe on some days, asa sound-box ~a cauldron as close as possible ta being, ‘a haifsphere, nicely polished on the inside, in short a spherical mireor. If itis, brought forward almost as far as the table, you won't see yourselves inside it ~ hence, even if were turned into a cauldron, the mirage effec that occurs from, time o time between meand my puplls would not come about here. A spherical ‘mirror produces a real image. To each point of a light ray emanating from any point on an object placed at a certain distance, preferably in the plane of the: sphere's centre, there corresponds, in the same plane, through the convergence of the rays rellected on the surface of the sphere, another luminous point which yields a real image of the object 1 am sorry that { haven't been able to bring the cauldron today. nor the experimental apparatuses. You'll have to represent them to yourselves. ‘Suppose that this sa box, hollow on this side, and that i's placed on a stand, at the centre of the halfsphere. On the box, you will plac Beneath it, there is @ bouquet of lowers. So, what is hapy vase, areal one, ning?8 breud’s Papers on Technique 1953-1954 the experiment of the inverted bouquet ‘The bouguet is eellected in the spherical surfuce, meeting at the symmetrical point of huninosity. Consequently, areal image is formed. Note that the rays do ‘not quite cruss perfectly in my schema, but that is also true in reality. and forall Uuptical instruments one only ever getsan approximation. Beyond theeye, the rays continue their movement, and diverge once again. Butfor the eye, they are convergent, and give t real image, since the characteristic of rays which strike the eye in a convergent form is that they give a real image, Convergent in imceting the eye, they diverge in moving away from it. Ifthe rays happen to -nwvet the eye i the opposite sense, then a virtual image is formed, This is what happens when you look at an image in the mirror ~ you see it where it isn't Here. on the contrary, you see it whereitis on the one condition that your eye be in the field of the rays which have already crossed each other at the corresponding point At that moment, while you do not see the real bouquet. which is hidden, if ‘you are in the right field, you will see a very peculiar imaginary bouquet ‘appear. taking shape exactly in the neck of the vase. Since your eyes have to ‘move linearly in the same plane. you will have an impression of reality. all the ‘while sensing that something is strange, blurred. because the rays don’t quite cross over very well T play. anil the more complete the illusion will be. Thisis a fable we will put toa great deal of use, To besure, this schema has no pretension to touch on anything which bas a substantial relation to anything we deal with in anilysis, the so-called ccal or objective relations, or the Imaginary relations. But it allows as to illusteate in a particularly simple way what follows on from the strict intrication of the imaginary world and the real world in the psychic economy ~ now you are going to see how. e further away you are, the more parallax comes into 2 ‘his little experiment pleased me, It is not me who invented it, it bus been around for a long time, known as de experiment of the inverted bouquet. AS i The topic ofthe knaginary 79 stands, in its innocence — these authors didn’t make it up for us ~it seduces us: with its contingent details, the vase and the bouquet. Indeed, the specitic domain of the primitive ego. Uriel or Lustich, is constituted by a splitting, by adiflerentiation from the external world what is included inside is differentiated from what is rejected by the processes of exclusion, Aufstossung, aad of projection, From then on. ifthere are any notions: which ure placed at the forefront of every psychoanalytic conception of the primitive stage of the ego's formation, it is clearly those of container and contained, This is how the relation of the vase tothe lowers that it containscan. serve us as a metaphor, « most precios one at that, You know that the process of his physiological maturation allows the subject, at a given moment in his history, to integrate effectively his motor funetions. and to gain acess to a real mastery of his body. Except the subject, becomes awareofhisbody asa totality priorto thisparticular moment. albeit im a correlative manner. That is what [ insist upon in my theory of the mirror stage~ the sight alone of the whole form ofthe human body gives thesubject an imaginary mastery over his body, one which is premature in relation to reul mastery. This formation is separated from the specific process of maturation land is not confused with it, The subject anticipates on the achievement of psychological mastery. and this anticipation will leave its mark on every subsequent exercise of eflective motor mastery This s the original adventure through which man, for the Hest time, has the experience of seeing himself, of reflecting on himself and conceiving of himself as other than he is ~ an essential dimension of the human, which entirely structures his fantasy 1 In the beginning we assume there to be all the ids, objects, instincts, desires, tendencies, ete. That is reality pure and simple then, which is not delimited by anything, which cannot yet be the object of any definition, which is neither ‘good, nor bad, but is all at the sume time chaotic and absolute, primal. ‘This is the level Freud is referring to in Die Verneinung, when hie talks about judgements of existence - either itis, or isnot, And itis here that the image of the body gives the subject the first form which allows him to locate what pertainsto theego and what does not. Well then, let ussay that the image of the body. if we locate it in our schema, is ike the imaginary vase which contains the bouquet ofreal flowers, That's how we can portray for ourselves the subject of the time before the birth of the ego, and the appearance of the latter. I'm schematising, as you're quite well aware. but developing a metaphor, a thinking apparatus, requires that from the start one give a sense of what is use is. You will see that this apparatus here possesses a versatility which allows for all sorts of movement. You can invert the experiment’s conditions ~ the pot ‘could just as well be underneath and the flowers on top. You coukd make what is real imaginary at your discretion, on condition that you retain the relation of the signs, + ~ + or ~ +so Freud's Papers 1 Vecbnigue 1953-1954 For there to bean illusion, for there to be a world constituted infront ofthe eye looking. tm whieh the imaginary can include the real and, by the same whet. fashion it iv whieh the real aso ean include andl, by the same token, Jocate the imiginury, one condition must be fulilled ~ as [have said, the eye ust be ina specific position, it must be inside the cone, nits outside this cone, it will no longer see what is imaginary, for the simple sunt thal nothing trom the cone of emission will happen to strike it. Ht will see iu thei real state, entirely naked, tht is to say, suf, empty pot. or some lonesome flowers, depending on the case. You might say ~ We aren't am eye. what is this eye which wanders around? the box represents your own body, the bouquet, instinets and desires, the ubjevts of desire whieh rove bout. And the cauldron, what's that? That could wellbe the cortex. Why not? would be fun - we'lldiseuss that some other day lis the middle of this, your eye doesn't rove abou, itis ixed there, like a Uiillating litte appendage of the cortex. So, why am I telling you that it roves ‘around and that, avcording to its position. sometimes it works, sometimes it loon ‘The eye iy here. as so often, symbolic of the subject. The whole of science is based on reducing the subject to an eye, and that is twhy itis projected in front of you. that isto say objectivated -F explain that to ‘you another Une. hn relation to the theory of the instincts, some time back sumicone proposed a very bewutiful construction, the most paradoxical that 1 have ever heard professed, which emttied the instinets. At the end, nota single ‘one was lelt standing, and it was, just on this account, useful to undertake this slenuoustration, In order to reduce us for a moment to being only an eye, we had {to put ourselves in the shoes of the scientist who can decree that he is just an eye. and cur put a notice an the door ~ Dy not disturb the experimenter. tn life, things are enticely different, because we aren't an eye, So, this eye, what doesit He means that, in the relation of the imaginary and the real, and in the ‘constitution uf the world such as results from it, everything depends om the position ufthe subject, And the position ofthe subject ~- you should know, I've bees repeating t forlongenough -isessentially characterised by its place inthe symbolic world. in ather wordsin the world ofspeech. Whether he has the right to, or i prohibited Irom, calling himself Pero hangs an this place. Depending, tun what is the ease, he is within the field of the cone o he isn't. ‘hat is what you have to get into your heads, even if seems a bit much, to understand what follows 3 We must accept Melanie Klein's text for what itis, namely the write-up ofan experiment The topic of the imaginary “I Here's boy. who, we are told. Is about four years old, whose general level of developmen ‘and eighteen months, That is a question of detinition, and you never know what is meant. What Is the instrument of measurement? Specification is often omitted. An affective development of fiteen to eighteen months, this notion reniainseven more fuzzy than the image ofa flower in the experiment I just set up for you. The child possesses a very limited vocabulary, more than just limited in fat, incorrect. He deforms words and uses them inopportunely most of the time, whereas at other times itis clear that he knows their meaning. Mel insists on the most striking fact ~ this child has no desire to 1 understood, he doesn’t try to communicate, his only activities playful, are emitting sounds noises. ‘Even so, this child possesses something of language ~ otherwise Melanie ‘Klein could not mike herself understood by him, He has some of the elements of thesymbolic apparatus at his disposal. On the other hand, Melanie Klein, from this rst, so crucial, contact with the child on, characterises his attitude as one ‘ol apathy, indifference. He is nonetheless not lacking in direction. He does not tive the impression of being an idiot, far from it, Melanie Klein distinguishes him from all the neurotic children she had previously seen by observing that he gave no sign of anxiety, even in the disguised forms which it assumes in neurotics, either explosion or else withdrawal, stifiness timidity. It could not escape the notice of this therapist, with all her experience. ‘There he is, this child, asif nothing was going on. He looksat Melanie Klein ashe would look ata plece of furniture. {am underlining these aspects because I want to highlight the uniform character of reality for him. Everything is equally real for him, equally indifferent. This Is where Mlle Gélinier's quandaries begin. ‘The child's world, Melanie Klein tellsus,is manufactured out ofa container— this would be the body ofthe mother -and out ofthe contents of the body ofthis ‘mother.’ In the course ofthe development of his instinctual relations with this privileged object, the mother, the child isled into instigating a series of relations of imaginary incorporations. He can bite, absorb the bady of his mother. ‘The style of this incorporation is one of destruction, In this maternal body. the child expeets to encounter a certain number of objects, themselves possessing a specific unity, though ubjects which may bbedangerous for him are included amongst them. Why dangerous? Forexactly the sume reason whereby he is dangerous for them, Mirroring them, as one ‘might well say, he clothes them with the same capacities for destruction as Teter Lacan useais‘cntemt which cuversbuth the ngs comtents beter Klein wes see op ie 232 und paticularly 221) ann contained, wich i the Engh ern teat Sppmiplate or some ofthe tes 10 whi aca pling the term this emiasz Freud's Papers on Pechungue 1953-1954 Uioxe of which he feels himself the bearer. Its in virtue ofthis that he will come toaccemtuate theiresteriority in relation tthe initial limitations of hisego, and roject then Tike bad. dangerous objects. poo-pow. Cevtainly these objects will be externalised, isolated, from this primal ‘universal contaite. from ths primal large whole thats the fantasised image of the muther’s body. he entire empire of the primal infantile reality. But they will nevertheless always be endowed with the same maleicent accent which, ‘marked his frst relations with them, ‘That is why he will reintroject them, and witch his attention to other, less dangerous objects, For example, he will vonstruct what is called the equation jteces-urine. Diflerent objects from the ‘external world, more neutralised, will be set up as the equivalents of these first ‘ones, vill blinked up with them through the imaginary - Tam underlining it ae, the symbolic equation thut we rediscover between these sv alterniuting mechanism ofexpulsion and introjection, of projection and absorption, that is to say from an imaginary interplay. Iti specilically this interplay that | am trying to symbolise for you in my schema through the imaginary inclusions of eal objects, or inversely, throught the capturing of imaginary objects within a real enclosuce. In Dick's case, wesee clearly that therels the skeleton of imagination, if may. say. of the external world, Its there ready to surface, but only ready to, Dick plays with the container and the contained. Already. he has quite uaturally entified in several objects, the litle train for example, a certain number of tendeneies, of persons even ~ himself as litle train, in comparison With his father who is the big tain, Moreover, the number of objects of signiticane is, surprisingly, for him very limited, limited to the minimal signs capable of expressing the inside and the outside, the contained und the ‘container, Hence the dark space is straightaway assimilated to the inside of the ‘motlice's body, in which he seeks refuge, What doesn't happen isthe free play. the conjunction between the diferent forms, imaginary and real, of objects ‘hat is why, when he seeks ecfuge in the empty. dark inside ofthe maternal boady there are no ubjects there, to Mlle Gélinier’s great surprise. For one simple reason ~in his case, the bouquet and the vase cannot both be there at the same tiane, ‘That is the key. Alle Gelinier’s astonishment is bused on the fact that, for Melanie Klein, everything takes place on u plane of equal reality -ofunreal reality,* asshe puts it. which, in fact, doesn't facilitate our conceiving the dissociation of diferent sels" of primitive objects. Melanie Klein has neither a theory of the imaginary nor a theory of the ego. It is up 10 us to introduce these notions, and to ‘understand that, in so far asone part of reality isimagined, the other s real and inversely. in so far as one partis reality, the other becomes imaginary. One ean + tag the orginal 2 gli the orginal ‘The topic of the imaginary es see why. in the beginning, the conjunction of different pats bbe accomplished. Here. we are in the mirror relation, We call this the plane of projection. But can one designate the correlate of projection? One has to find another word than introjecto, AS we tse Hin ‘analysis, the word “intrdjection’ is not the opposite of projection. It is almost only ever used, you will notice, when it isa question of symbolic introjection. It isalways accompanied by a symbolic denomination. Introjection is always the introjection of the speech of the other, which introduces an entirely different «dimension from that of projection, Around this distinction you can disc rate between what is function of the ego and what pertains to the order of the ‘dual relation, and what isa function ofthe super-ego. Its not for nothing that they are distinguished within analytic theory. nor that itis accepted that the super-ego, the authentic super-ego. is a secondury introjection in relation to the fametion of the ideal eg. ‘These are asides. I'l return to the case described by Melanie Klvin, “The child is there. He has a certain number of significant registers at his disposition, Melanie Klein ~ we can follow her at this point ~ underlines the extreme restrictedness of one of them ~ the imaginary donvain. Normally its through the possibilities of play in the imaginary transposition that the progressive valorisation of objects comes about, on the plane that we ‘commonly designate as affective, through adiverstication, a fanning-out uf al the imaginary equations which allow the human being tobe the only anal to have at his disposition an almost infinite number of objects - objects marked with the value of a Gestalt in his Unwelt, objects isolated as to their Forms, Melanie Klein underlines the poverty f the imaginary world, and, by the same token, the Impossibility of this child entering into an effective relation with objects qua structures. An important correlation to grasp. if we now sum up everything that Melanie Klein deseribes ofthis child's attitude, the significant point is simply the following ~ he makes no call he call ~ this is @ notion that Fask you to retain, You are going to say to yourselves ~ Of course, being Doctor Lacan, he uses this to go on about language ‘again, But the child already has his own system of language, quite sufcient ‘The proof is that he plays with it, He even makes use of it to play a game of ‘opposition against the adults’ attempts to intrude. For example, hebebiavesin a way which is said in the text to be negativistic.* When his mother suggests 2 ame to him, one he is capable of reproducing in a correct manner, he reproduces it in an unintelligible, deformed manner, which cannot be of any uuse whatever. Here we rediscover the distinction to be drawn between nnegativism and negation ~ as M. Hyppolite reminded us, thus demonstratingMt Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954 hot only bisculture, but also that he has seen patients with his own eyes. As to Dick, he uses Tanga: ‘onsequence, in introducing the cal, it isn't language that [am covertly slippingin, Iwill even go further —not only isn titlanguage, but it isn'ta higher age. if we're talking of levels. You liave ony to observe a pet to see that a being deprived of fanguage is quite capable of making calls on you. calls to draw your attention to something ‘which, in some sense or other, it lacks. To the human call further, richer evelopment is reserved, because iL takes place precisely in a being who has already reached the level of language. in a strictly negativistic manner level of language. [1s in lact beneath lang Tet us be schematic 4 certain Karl Bubler put forward a theory of language. which is neither Unique, nor the most complete, but in it you'll find something of interest ~ he ditierentiates three stages in language. Unfortunately he located them in which do not make them very comprehensible First ofall, the level of the statement as such, which is almost a level of the ‘natural datum, lam at the level ofthe statement when I say the simplest thing to someone, for example an imperative. Isat this level ofthe statement that everything concerning the nature of the subject must be placed. An officer, professor. wil not give an order in the same language as a worker or foreman \ctlie level ofthe statement, from itsstyle to its very intonation, everything learn bears on the nature of the subject In auy imperative, there’s another plane, that of thecal. Iisa question ofthe tone in which the imperative is uttered. The same text can have complete Uilerent imports depending on the tone. ‘The simple statement step can have, depending on the ciecumstances, completely diflerent imports as a call “The thitd level fs communication properly speaking ~ what is at issu reference to the totality of the situation, With Dick we are at the level ofthe eall.'The call acquires its weight within the already acquired system of language. Now, what is erucial here is that this chil does not voice any call, The system whereby the subject comes to locate hhimselfin language isinterrupted, atthe level of speech. Language andl speech aretiot the sume thing ~thischildis, up wna certain point, amaster of language, but he doesn’t speak, There isa subject here who quite literally does not reply ‘Specel has not come to him. Language dida’t stick to his imaginary system, whose register is extremely limited ~ valorisation of trains, of door-handles, of the dark. His faculties. not of communication, but of expression, are limited to that. Vor him, the real and the imaginary are equivalent. Hence Melanie klein here hus to give upon technique, She has the minimum, ‘of material, She doesnt even have games ~ this child does not play. When he picks up a little train for a while, he doesn’t play. he does it in the same way he moves through the air — as if he were an invisible being, or rather as if everything were, in a specific manner, invisible to him, ndits The topic of the imaginary 85 Melanie Klein here doesn't, as she is vividly aware, offer an interpret ation, She starts off, she says, from ideas she already has. which are well known. as to what happens at this stage. I won't beat about the bush, tus tll him — Dick litle train, big train daddy-tra. ‘Vhereupon, the child starts to play with his littl train, and he saysthe word, station,’ Cructal néoment, when the sticking of language to the subject's imaginary begins to sketch isel. Melanie Klein plays this back to him ~ The station is mummy. Dicks going into ‘mummy. Brom this point on, everything starts firing. She'll only feed hinn these kinds oflines, and no others. And very quickly the child makes progress. That's a fact. So what did Melanie Klein actually do? ~ nothing other than to bring in verbalisation, Shesymbolised an effective relationship. that ofane named being, with another. She plastered on the symbolisation of the Oedipal myth. to give it its real name, I's from that point on that, alter an inital ceremony. taking refuge in thedark in order to renew contact with the container, something new awakens in the child ‘The child verbalises a irs call ~ @ spoken call. He asks for bs nurse, with ‘whom he came in and who he had allowed to leave as fit were nothing to hin For the lirst time, he reacts by calling, which ts not simply an affective call ‘mimed by the whole being, but a verbalised call, which from then on inches reply, ‘This is his rst communication in the strict, technical sense of the term, "Things then progressto the point where Melanie klein brings into play all the other elements of & situation which is from then organised, right up to and including the father himself, who comes to Lake his own part. Outside of the sessions, Melanie Klein says, the child’s relations unfold on the plane of the Oedipus complex. The child symbolises the reality around him starting, from this nucleus, this litte palpitating cell of symbolism which Melanie Klein gave hi. ‘at is what she later culls ~ gaining access (0 his unconscious. ‘What did Melanie Klein ever do, which would reveal the least comprehen sion of any kind of process, which might, in the subject, amount to his unconscious? She aecepts it from the start, out of Habit, Do all read the ease again and you will seein it the spectacular demonstration ofthe formula that 1 tam always giving you ~ the miconscious is the discourse of the other. Here isa case where itis absolutely apparent.’There is nothing remotely ike fan tinconscious in the subject, It is Melanie Klein's discourse which brutally rafts the primary symbolisations of the Oedipal situation on to the initial ego related [moique] inertia of the child, Melanie Klein always does that with her subjects, more or less implicitly. more or fess arbitrarily. In the extreme case, in the case ofthe subject whe hast taceeded to human, > Fgh in the orginal fen” the pase stake fan Klis pope tp. 229%ot Preuu’s Papers on Technique 1953-1954 not only his cultuee, but also that he has seen patients with his own eyes. As to Dick, he uses language in a strietly negativistic manner. In consequence, in introducing the eall it isn’t language that fam covertly slipping in. will even go fuether not only isn'tit language, butitisn’ta higher level of language. I is in fact beneath language. if we're talking of levels. You have only to observe a pet to see that a being deprived of language is quite capable of making calls on you. calls to draw your attention to something whieh. in some sense or other. it lacks. To the human call a further. richer lovelopment is reserved, because it takes place precisely in a being who h already reached the level of language. Let us be schematic. 4 certain Katl Buhler put forward a theory of language. which is neither unique, noe the most complete, but in it you'll find something of interest — he uiferentiates three stages in language. Unfortunately he located them in royisters which do not make them very comprehensible. First of all, the level ofthe statement as such, whieh is almost a level ofthe natural datum. Fam atthe level of the statement when I say the simplest thing tw sumenne, for example an imperative. Iti a this level of the statement that everything concerning the nature of the subject must be placed. An officer. a professor. will not give an order in the same language as « worker or foreman Atthe level of the statement, from its style tots very intonation, everything we learn bears on the nature of the subject In any imperative, there’sanother plane, that ofthe call Itisa question ofthe tone in which the imperative is uttered. The same text can have completely different imports depending on the tone. The simple statement stop can have, depending on the circumstances, completely different imports as a call, he thied level is communication properly speaking ~ what is at issue, and its reference to the totality of the situation With Dick we are at the level of the call, The call acquires its weight within, the already acquired system of language. Now, what is crucial here i that this child does not voice any call. The system whereby the subject comes (0 locate himself in language is interrupted, at the level of speech, Language and speech iarenot thesame thing ~ this childs, up to certain point, a master of language. but he doesn't speak. There is a subject here who quite literally does not reply. Speech has not come to him. Language didn’t stick to his imaginary syster whose register is extremely limited ~ valorisation of trains, ofdoor-handles. of the dark. His faculties, not of communication, but of expression, are limited to that, For bim, the real and the imaginary are equivalent. Hence Melanie Klein here has to give up on technique. She has the minimum ‘of material, She doesn't ever have games — this child does not play. When he picks up a litle train for a while, he doesn't play, he does it in the same way he moves through the air ~ as if he were an invisible being, or rather as if ‘everything were, in a specilic manner, invisible to him. The topic of the imaginary Melanie Klein here doesn't, as she is vividly aware, offer an interpret- ation. She starts off, she says, from ideas she already hus, which are well known, as to what happens at this stage. -won't beat about the bush. just tell tim — Dick titee train, big train dly-train. Thereupon. the child startsto play with hislitte train, and he saysthe word. station.” Cracial moment, when the sticking of language to the subject's imaginary begins to sketch itself Melanie Klein plays this back to him ~The station is mummy. Dick is quing into ‘mummy. From this point on, everything starts fring, She'llonly feed him these Kinds oflines, and no others. And very quickly the child makes progress. That's a fact. So what did Melanie Klein actually do? ~ nothing other than to being in verbalisation, She symbolised an effective relationship, that ofone named being with another. She plastered on the symbolisation ofthe Oedipal myth, togive it its real name. I's from that point on that, after an initial ceremony, taking refugein the dark in order to renew contact with the container, something new awakens in the child. The child verbalises a first call ~ a spoken cull, He asks for bis nurse, with whom he came in and who he had allowed to leave as it were nothing to him, For the first time, he reucts by calling. which is not simply an affective call, mimed by the whole being, but a verbalised call, which fron then on includes a reply. This is his lirst communication in the set, technical sense ofthe term, ‘Thingsthen progress to the point where Melanie Klein brings into lay all the other elements of a situation which is from then organised, right up to and including the father himself, who comes to take his own part, Outside of the sessions, Melanie Klein says, the child's relations unfold on the plane of the Oedipus complex. ‘The child symbolises the reality around him starting from this nucleus, this litte palpitating cell ofsymbolism which Melanie Klein gave him, That is what she later calls ~ gaining aevess fo his wneonsvivas.” What did Melanie Kl sion of any kind of process, which might, in the subject, amount to his unconscious? She accepts it Irom the start, out of habit, Do all read the ease n ever do, which would reveal the least comprehen= ‘again and you will see in it the spectacular demonstration of the formula that 1 am always giving you — the unconscious is the discourse of the athe: Here is a case where itis absolutely apparent. There is nothing remotely like ‘an unconscious in the subject. I is Melanie Klein’s discourse which brittally grafts the primary symbolisations of the Oedipal situation on to the initial ego- related [moique| inertia of the child. Melanie Klein always does that with her subjects. more or less implicitly, more or less arbitrarily In the extreme case, in the case of the subject who hasn’( acceded to human > Bglsh in the origina * ‘gate ouvert Nas pores de son monster” ~ the phrase Se tukem from Klein's papor (p. 229.so Freud's Papers on Vechnigue 1953-1954 reality. since ny call ean be heard from him, what are the effects of the symbulisations introduced by the therapist? ‘They specify an initial position rom which the subject ean introduce an interplay between the imaginary and the real and master his development. He is swallowed up in a series of cquivalences. in a system in whieh objects are substituted one for the other. He runs through an entire sequence ofequations which drive him out of the space between the doors where he had gone to seek refuge in the absolute darkness of ue total container, to those objects which he substitutes forit - the wash-basin, for example. inthis way he unfolds and articulates his entice world. And then, trum the wash-basin, he moves on to an electric radiator, on to objects whieh jure more und more complex. He aecedes 10 richer and richer contents [voutenus), such as to the possibility of detining the contained [contenu] and the non-cuntained [nan-contenu} Why speak in this case of the development of the ego? always, the ego and the subject. Development only takes place in so far as the subject integrates himself into the symbolic system, acts within it, asserts himself in it through the use of xenuine speech, It isn’t even essential, you should note, that this speech be his ‘own, In the couple that is temporarily constituted in what is, however, its least allectivated form, between the therapist and the subject, genuine speech can be brought forth. To be sure, not any old speech ~ that’s where we perceive the virtue of the symbolic situation of the Oedipus complex. I ceally is the key ~ a very elementary key. have already pointed out to you that there most probably was a whole bunch ofkeys. One day perhaps | will give you at lecture on what we gain in this respect from the myths of primitive peoples wouldn't say Inferior, because they aren’ inferior, they know much mote that) we do. When we study @ mythology, for example one that might pethaps appear with respect to a Sudanese population, we discover that for them the Oedipus complex is just rather thin joke. ftisa very tiny detail within jan immense myth. The myth allows the cataloguing of a set of relations hetween subjects of a wealth and complexity besides which the Oedipus ‘compley seems only to be so abridged an edition that in the end it cannot always be used. it’s to confuse, as Bui no matter. Us analysts have been satilied with it up to now. Certainly. ‘ne does try to ekaborate it a bit, but itis all rather timid, One always feels twiribly tangled up because one doesn’t distinguish easily hetween the imaginary, symbolic and real Now [ want to bring the following to your attention. When Melanie Klein bflers him the Oedipal schema, the imaginary relation which the subject lives, though extremely impoverished, is already complex enough for us to say that lhe has a world of his own, But for us this primitive real is literally ineffable. As Jongas he doesn't ell us anything about it, we have no means of gaining access the topic of the imaginary s7 tot, except through symbolic extrapolations which constitute the ambiguity of all systems such as Mclanie Klein's she tells us for instance, that within the empire of the maternal body. the subject isto be found with all hisbrothers, not to mention the father's penis, ete. Really? [doesn’t matter, since we can thus grasp in any case how this world is et in motion. how the imagtnary and real begin to be structured, how the successive investments develop. investments which delineate the variety of human, thats rnameable, objects, All of this process has its point of departure in this initial fresco constituted by a significative speech, formulating a fundamental structure which, in the law of speech, humanises man. How can I put this in yet another way? Ask yourselves what the call represents in the fied of speech. Well, it’s the possibilty of refusal, 1 say the possibility. The call doesn't imply refusal. it doesn’t imply any dichotomy, any bipartition. But you can see for yourselves that it ts when the call is made that dependency relations establish themselvesin the subject. From then on he will ‘welcome his nurse with open arms, and in deliberately hiding himself behind thedoor, he will all at once reveal in relation to Melanie Klein theneed wo have a companion in this cramped corner which he occupied fora while, Dependency will come in its train In this observation, then, you see, quite independently. the set of pre-verba sand post-verbal relations at play in the child, And you realise that the external world ~ whut we cull the real world, which is only a humanised, symbolised ‘world, the work of transcendence introduced by the symbol into the primitive reality ~ can only be constituted when a series of encounters have occurred in the right place ‘These positions belong to the same order as those which, in my schema, cause given structuration ofthe situation to depend upon aiven position of the eye I will make further use of this schema, For today I only wanted to introduce a bouquet, but one can introduce the other. Starting from Dick's case and by employing the categories of the real, the symbolic und the imaginary, I showed you houw it can happen that # subject who has all the elements of language at his disposition, and who has the possibility of making several imaginary moves that allow him to structure bis world, might not bein the real, Why isn'the in it? -simply because things didn't happen in a specific order. The figure is In its entirety upset. No way of giving this entirety any development w! ‘Are we dealing with the development ofthe ego here? 100k at Melanie Klein's text again. She says that the ego had developed in too precocious a manne, in such a way that the child has too real a relation to reality, because the imaginary could find no place there ~ and then, in the second part of her sentence, shesays that tis the ego which halts development. Thissimply means that the eye cannot be Iruittully employed as an apparatus in the structuring of8s Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954 this eaternial world. For on simple reason — be doesn’t appear. Lut the vase be virtual. The vase doesn’t appear, and the subject remains in a reduced reality, with a similarly reduced imaginary baggage. ‘the core ofthis observation, which is what you must understand - the virtue ‘ospeech, in so faras the act of speech is a mode of functioning coordinated toa symbolic system that is already established, typical and significant. Itwould be worth your while to ponder the questions, toreread the text, also tw get the feel ofthis litte schema so that you could see for yourselves what use you could put it to. What I've given you today is a theoretical discussion in complete contrast with the set of problems raised last time by Mile Gélinter. The title of the next session, which will take place in two weeks time, will be ~ The transference ~ the dlffevent levels on which it should be studied. : 1use of the poor position of the eye. the eyo quite simp! 24 February 1954 The wolf! The wolf! In the course of our dialogue, you have been able to get acquainted with the ambition which rules our commentary, namely that of reconsidering the fundamental texts of the analytic experience. ‘The moving spirit of our excavation is the following idea ~ whatever in an experiences always best seen is al some remove, So it is not surprising that it should be here and now that we are led, in order to understand the analytic experience, to begin again ‘with what is implied by its most immediate given, namely the symbolic function, or what in our vocabulary is exactly the same thing - the function of speech, We rediscover this, the central domain of analytic experience, signalled throughout Freud's oeuvre, never named, but signalled at every step. { don't think | am pushing it when I say that that is what can be immediately translated, almost algebraically. from any Freudian text. And this translation Yields the solution ofa number of antinomies which become apparent in Frewd with that honesty which ensures that any given one ofhis texts isnever closed, as if the whole of the system were in it For the next session, | would very much like someone to undertake to give a commentary on a text which exemplifies what I've just been saying, This textis to be found between “Remembering, repeating and working-through’ and ‘Observations on transference-love', which are two of the most important texts in the collection of Papers on Technique. I am referring to ‘On narcissism: an introduction’ Iisa text that we cannot but bring into our course, as soon as we have touched on the situation of the analytic dialogue, You will agree with that. if you know the further implications of these terms, situation and dialogue dialogue in inverted commas. We tried to define resistance within its own field. ‘Then, we formulated a Uefinition of transference. Now, you will be well aware of the great distance which separates ~ resistance, which keeps the subject from this full speech which analysis awaits from him, and which is a function of that anxiogenic100 Freud's P apers on Technique 1953-1954 According to our inclination and the idea each of us has of schizophrenia, of lus mechanism and of its fundamental source, we cam include or exclude this case trom the category of schizophrente illness. tis clear that it isn’t schizophrenia in the sense ofa state, in us much as you have showed us its significance and its movement. But there is here a schizophrenic structure of the relation to the world and an entire set of phenomena that we could, ifneed be, bring into line with the catatonic set of phenomena. To be sure, strictly speaking there is no symptom of it, so that we can place the case, us Lang did, in any one given category, only in order to give ian approsimate location, But some deliciencies, some failures in adaptation tw the human, point towards something which later, analogivally speaking, would present itself as a schtzophrenia, think that one can’t say any more about it, except that itis what one calls an evemplary case. Alter all, we have no reason to think that the nosological ccategories have been there all along, awaiting us from eternity. As Péguy suid, the little pegs always fit into the litle holes, but there comes a time when the litle pegs no longer correspond to the litle holes. That it is a question of phenomena of a psychotic nature, more exaetly of phenomena which may {exminate in psychosis, seems indisputable to me, Which doesn't mean that all psyehoses have analogous beginnings. Leclaite, I'm asking you specifically to work out something for next time from ‘On narcissism: an introduetion’, which is (o be found in volume IV of the Collected Papers, or in volume X ofthe complete works. You'll see that whatis at issue are the questions raised by the register of the imaginary, which we are in the course of studying here. 10 March 1954 IX On narcissism ‘ Forthose who weren't here last time, lam going to appraise the utility as I see it of bringing Freud's article “Zur Eifdhrany des Narzissmus’ in at this point. 1 How can we takestock of our findingsto date? This week, [realised, not without satisfaction, that some of you have started to be seriously concerned about the systematic usage that I recommend to you her of the categories of the symbolic and the real, You kriow that [insist on the notion of the symbolic by telling you that itis always advisable to start with that notion in order to understand what we are doing when we intervene in analysis, and especially when we intervene in a positive fashion, namely through interpretation. We have been led to emphasise that aspect of resistance which isto be located at the very level of the utterance of speech. Speech can express the being of the subject, but, up to certain point, it never succeedsin so doing. So we have now iched the point where we ask ourselves the question ~ in relation to speech how should one locate all these affects, all these imaginary references which are ordinarily invoked when one wants to define the action of the transference in the analytic experience? You have clearly perceived that itis not a matter of Full speech is speech which alins at, which forms, the truth such as it becomes established in the recognition of one person by another. Full speech is speech which performs.? One of the subjects finds himself, afterwards, other than he was before. ‘That is why this dimension cannot be evaded in the analytic experience, aand have dune for ssw His » “Deve quietest’ faireacte means toactas, toxive proto The term perlormative'tstaken Irom JL Ausi How To Dv Things With Wns, Oxon: Oxford University Press, 1962, gal fai acelow Freuu!’s Papers on Technique 1953-1954 We cannot think of the analytic experience as a game, a lure, an intrigue based ox an illusion, a suggestion. Its stake is full speech. Once this point has been made, as you might have already noticed, lots of things sort themselves ‘out and are clarilied, but lots of paradoxes and contradictions appear. The value uf this conception is precisely to bring out these paradoxes and contradi whicl doesn't make them opacities and obscurities. On the contrary. itis often ‘whiat appears to be harmonious and comprehensible which harbours some ‘opacity. And inversely itisin the antinomy. in the gap. in the difficulty, that we happen upon opportunities for transparency. Thisis the point of view on which ‘our method is founded, and so, | hope, is our progress. the first of the contradictions to appear is the remarkable fact that the analytic method. ifit aims at attaining full speech, starts offon a path leading in the diametrically opposed direction, in so far as it instructs the subject to delineate a speech as devoid as possible of any assumption of responsibility and that it even frees him from any expectation of authenticity. It calls on him to say everything that comes into his head. It is through these very means that it facilitates, that is the least one can say. his return on to the path which, in speech, i below the level of recognition and concerns the third party, the object ‘Two planes have always been distinguished within which the exchange of human speech is played out ~ the plane of recognition in so far as speech links thesubjects together into this pact which transforms them, and sets them up as human subjects communicating - the plane of the communiqué, in which one can distinguish all sorts of levels, the call, discussion, knowledge. information, but which, in the final analysis, involves a tendency to reach an agreement on the object. The term ‘agreement isstill there, but here the emphasisis placed on the object considered as external to the action of speech, which speech expresses. ‘To be sure, the object is not devoid of reference to speech. Hrom the start, itis already partially given in the system of objects, or objective system.? in which fone should include the accumulated prejudices which make up a cultural ‘community. up to and including the hypotheses, the psychological prejudices even, frum the most sophisticated generated by scientific work to the most huive and spontaneous. which most certainly do not fail considerably to influcace scientific references, to the point of impregnating them. So here is the subject invited to abandon himself entirely to this sy just as anuch the scientific knowledge he possesses ot what he can imagine on stem ~itis syste ota ow ube” bv i 2 word coined Within the technical vocabulary of pyliaalys Haber gives 1951 oss date of traduction) to describe whatever relates to the ‘bjectsimependentofthe subject seyo,"Obje i hus venerable istry, fn pilosa. agus “nloninary sage iteoreespords roughly to ‘objective schading thereu the fle neglected Dlulsphival senses at English (and nach sses as fhe abjotive if telescope’) On narcissism Los the basis of the facts he possesses as to his condition, his problem, his situation as the most naive of his prejudices, upon which his illusions are founded, including his neurotic illusions, in so far as what is at stake there is an important part of the constitution of the neurosis. It would seem ~ and this is where the problem lies ~ that this speech act can only progress along thé path of intellectual conviction which emerges from educational intervention, that is to say a higher intervention, which comes from the analyst. Analysis progresses through indoctrination, Itis this indoctrination one has in mind when one talks about the tirst pha of analysis as having been intellectualist. Of course it never existed. Perhaps some intellectualist conceptions of analysis were around then, but that doesn't ‘mean that intellectualist analyses actually took place ~ the forces authentically at work were there from the beginning. If they hadn't been, analysis would never have had the opportunity to show its mettle, and assert itself ay an obvious method of psychotherapeutic intervention. What is called intellectualisin in this context is something completely different from what is connoted were we to speak of something intellectual, The better we analyse the various levels of what isat stake, the better we willbe able to distinguish what has to be distinguished and unily what has to be unified, and the more effective our technique will be. That is what we will try to do. So, there really must be something other than indoctrination to explain the effectiveness ofthe analyst's interventions. That is whi experience has shown to be efficacious in the action of transference ‘That’s where the opacity begins ~ what, after all, is transference? In its essence, the efficacious transference which we're considering is quite simply the speech act. Each time a man speaks to another in an authentic and full manner, there is, in the true sense, transference, symbolic transference ~ something takes place which changes the nature of the two beings present But there what is at issue is @ transference other than the one which is initially encountered in analysis not only as a problem, but as an obstacle. Indeed, this function should be located on the imaginary plane. Soit isto specify 4, that the notions you are familiar with, the repetition of prehistorie situations, unconscious repetition, the putting into effect of a reintegration of history history in the opposite sense to the one I once put forward, since tis question ofan imaginary reintegration, the past situation only being experienced in the present, without the knowledge of the subject, in so far as its historical dimension is misrecognised {méconnue} by him ~ you'll note that I didn’t say unconscious. Al these ideas have been put forward so as to define what we observe, and their reward is a guaranteed empirical finding. They don’t uncover, however, the reason, the function, the signification of what we observe in the real To expect an explanation for whatever is observed is, you'll perhaps tell me,to Freud's Papers on Technique 1953-1954 tw expect too much, to manifest too great a thirst for theory. Several hard headed characters would perhaps like to impose a damper on us at this point, However it seems to me that the analytic tradition doesn’t distinguish itself by its luck of annbition in this respect ~ there must be reasons for that. Besides. ‘whether justiied or not, whether carried away or not by Freud's example, few are the psychoanalysis who have not succumbed to the theory of mental evolution, This particular metapsychological business Is in truth completely iinpossible, lor reasons which will become apparent later. But one cannot practice psychoanalysis, not even for one second, without thinking in rmetapsychological terms, just as M, Jourdain* was pretty well obliged to speak prose. whether he wanted to or not, as soon as he started speaking. This fact is truly structural to our activity Lasttime alluded to Breud'surticleon transference love. You are well aware ofthe strict economy of Freud's works. and to what extent it can be sald that he never truly addressed himself to a subject which was not urgent, indispensable for hin to deal with ~in the course of career which had almost the span of @ numa lf, especially fone thinks at what point in bis actual fe, his biological lie, he began his teaching, We cannot but see that one of the most important questions in analytic teory istoknow what isthe connection between the bondsoftransference and the characteristics, both positive and negative, of the love relation. Clinical experience vouehsates it, as does, by the same token, the theoretical history of the discussions arising around what is called the source of therapeutic cficaciousness. In short, this subject has been on the agenda roughly since the 1920 ~ the Berlin Congeess frst ofall, the Salzburg Congress, the Marienbad Congress. Since that time, the usefulness of the function of transference in the manipulation we undertake of the patient's subjectivity has never stopped being questioned. We have even separated out something wich some go soar as to call, not just transference neurosis ~4 nosological label designating what thesubjectisufected with but asecondary neurosis, an artical neurosis, an jactualisation of the neurosis in the transference, a neurosis which knots the imaginary persona of the analyst in its threads. We know all that. But the question as to what constitutes the mainspring of what takes effect in analysis remains obscure. 1 am not talking about the courses of action we sometimes undertake, but about the very source of therapeutic efivacity ‘The least one can say is that there isan enormous diversity of opinion in the analytic literature on this subject. To go back to the venerable discussions, all ‘you have todo is take a look at the last chapter of little book. f'm not often one to recommend reading Fenichel, but as far as the historical data are chet + Seep. $l abwve ‘On narcissism mt concerned, he isa very instructive witness. You will se the diversity of opinion Sachs, Rado, Alexander ~ when the question was broached at the Salzburg Congress.* You will also see the said Rado announce in what direction he intends to push the theorisation of the source of analytic effcucity, Strangely enough, having promised to spell out in black and white the solution to these problems, he never did!so. Itseems that there's some mysterious resistance at work, acting so asto keep the question in comparative darkness, not only on account ofitsown obscurity since litle glimmers of light sometimes appear in this or that researcher's work, the more reflective subjects. One really has the feeling that the question isoften caught sight of, that someone gets as close asiis possible to it, but that it exerts some sort of repulsion which forbids it being rendered into concepts. Perhaps here more than elsewhere, itis possible that the completion of the theory. and even its progress, are experienced as a threat, That isn't to be excluded. itis no doubt the most propitious hypothesis, The opinions expressed in the course of discussions on the mature of the imaginary link established in the transference bear a very close relation to the notion of the object relation, This latter idea has now come to the foreground in analytic theoretical work. But you are aware of the extent to which the theory wavers on this issue. ‘Vake forexample the fundamental article of James Strachey, which appeared in the International journal of Psycho-analysis, dealing with the source of therapeuticefiicacity. tis one of the best argued oftexts, whose entireemphasis falls on the super-ego. You can see the difficulties hat this conception gets one in, and the number of supplementary hypotheses that the above mentioned Strachey is required (0 introduce in order to sustain it. He suggests that the analyst takes on, in relation to the subject, the function of the super-ego. But the theory according to which the analyst is purely and simply the mainstay of the super-ego's function cannot stand up. since this function is precisely one of the most important sources of the neurosis, So the argument is circular. To get out of it, the author finds himself forced to introduce the idea of « parasitical super-ego ~ a supplementary hypothesis which is completely unjustified, but which the contradictions in his argument necessitate. Besides, he is obliged to 20 too far. So as to argue for the existence of this parasitical super-ego in analysis, he is obliged to posit that a set of exchanges, of introjections and projections, take place between the analysand subject and the analyst subject. which bring usto the level of the mechanisms by which good and bad objects — introduced by Melanie Klein into the practice of the English school ~ are constituted. This brings with it the risk of re-creating them aul nauseam. One can locate the question of the relations between the analysand and the * Soe p. Lo wt belowne Preuu’s Papers on Technique 1953-1954 ‘analyst on a completely different plane ~ on the plane of the ego and the non- ‘ego. that is 0 say, on the plane of the narcissistic economy of the subject. Moreover. the question of transference-love has from the start been too closely linked with the analytic study ofthe notion oflove. We are not dealing with love in the guise of Eros ~ the universal presence of a power binding subjects together, underlying the whole of the reality in which analysis is played out ~ but of passionate love, as itis concretely lived by the subject, as sort of psychological catastrophe. It raises the question, as you know, of knowing how this passionate love is, in its very essence, linked to the analytic relation, Having said something nice about Fenichel's book, let me tell you something, nasty about it. IC is as delightful as it is striking to note the sort of revolt, of insurrection even, that the extremely pertinent remarks of two authors on the relations between love and transference seem to elicit in Mr Fenichel. They emphasise the narcissistic character of the relationship of imaginary love, and show how atid to what extent the loved object is confounded, by means of one whole lacet ofits qualities, ofits attributes, and also ofits impact on the psychic economy, with the subject’s ego-ideal. One thus sees the general syncretism of Mr Fenichet's thought linked up in a curious fashion with this middle way ‘which is his and which leads him to experience such repugnance, a real phobia when faced with the paradox generated by this imaginary love. Imaginary love in its essence partakes ofillusion, and Mr Kenichel experiences a kind of horror ity thus seeing the very function of love devalued. ‘hat is precisely what is at issue — what is this love, which enters in as an imaginary mainspring in analysis? Fenichel’s horror tells us something about the subjective structure of the character in question. Well, for us, what we have to locate Is the structure which articulates the narcissistic relation, the function oflovein its widest sense and the transference iis practical efficacy here is more than one way to help you find your sense of direction in the unidst of all the ambiguities which, as I think you have become aware, make their appearance again and again at every owist and turn in the analytic literature. 1 hope to teach you new categories, which introduce essential Uistinctions. These are not external distinctions, scholastic or ever-expanding ‘ones ~ juxtaposing this or that field, proliferating bipartitions off to infinity, a rnwale of procedure which consists in always introducing supplementary hypotheses. No doubt this method is open to those who want it; but for my part | ‘am aiming at progress in understanding Lis a matter of bringing into focus what is implied by simple ideas, which already exist. There is no point in taking apart indetinitely, as one could -ashas been done in a remarkable work on the Idea of transference. | am rather inclined to leave intact the empirical totality of the notion of transference, all On narcissism the while remarking that it isplurivalent and that acts in several registers ata time, in the symbolic, the imaginary and the red These are not thee leks. Even inthe animal kingdom, you have been abe to see that i is in relation tothe same actions, the sume behaviour, that we can distinguish precisely the functions ofthe imaginary, the symbolic and the real forthe simple reason that they do not belong in the same order of relations ‘There are a numberof ways of introducing these ides. Mine has its Himits, like any dogmatic account. tits useulnessisin being eiical, thatistsay in arising just where the empirical efforts of researchers meet with a difficulty in hhundling a pre-existing theory, Thatis what makes for the value of the path of textual commentary. 2 Doctor Leclaire starts the reading and commentary om the initial pages of °On narcissison: an introduction’. Interruption. What Leclaireis saying heres quite right. For Freud there isa relation betwet a thing x which has moved on to the plane ofthe libido, and the disinvestinet ofthe external world characteristic of the forms of dementia praecox — take this in as extended a sense as you can. Now, to set up the problem in these term creates great difficulties in analytic theory, as it was constituted at that time, In order to understand it one must look at the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, where the notion of a primitive auto-crotism comes from." What is this primitive auto-erotism, whose existence Freud postulates? It is a libido. which constitutes the objects of interest, and which is allocated, through a sort of evasion, of extension, of pseudopodia, Beginning with this emission by the subject of libidinal investinents, its instinctwal development unfolds its world is built up, in accordance with an instinctual structure peculiar to it. This conception does not give rise to any difficulties so long as Freud leaves out ofthe libido's mechanism everything pertaining to a register other than that of desire as such, The register of desire is, for him, an extension of the concrete manifestations of sexuality, an essential relation maintained by the animal being with the Umwelt, its world, So you see that this is a bipolar conception = ‘on one side the libidinal subject, on the other the world, Now this conception breaks down, as Freud knew very well, if on generalises excessively the notion oflibido, because, in so doing, one neutralises it, Isn't it quite clear, moreover, that it adds essentially nothing to a understanding of the facts of neurosisif the libido functions roughly in the same way as M, Janet called the function ofthe real? On the contrary, the libido takes con its meaning by being distinguished from the real, or realisable, relations, + (19054) GW V 82-3; Stod V 8-95 SE VIE 181-25 ets