THE LETTER
Editor
Heiena Texier
Editorial Board:
Cormac Gallagher
Jean KflcuDai
Scientific Committee:
Aisling Campbell, Olga Cox, Mary Cullen, Nellie Curtm, Mae\e Daly, Nlartn Daly,
Mary Darby, Anne Jackson, Patricia McCarthy, Tom McGrath, 'laeve Nolan^
Gerry Sullivan, Rob Weatherill.
Corresponding Editors:
Marcel Czermak (France)
Claude Dumezil (France)
Guy Le Gaufey (France)
Christiane Lacote (France)
Charles Melman (France)
John Muller (U.S.A.)
C. Edward Robins (U.S.A.)
Filip Geerardyn (Belgium)
Gertrudis Van de Vijver (Belgium)
Paul Verhaeghe (Belgium)
Advisory Board:
Yves Baumstimler, Professor of Psychopathology, Universite de Paris XHI, FRANCE.
John Forrester, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge,
ENGLAND.
William Richardson, Professor of Philosophy, Boston College, U.S.A.
Noel Walsh, Professor of Psychiatry, University College, Dublin and St. Vincent's Hospital,
Dublin, IRELAND.
All manuscripts, letters and other communications should be addressed to: The Editor, THE
LETTER, Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies, LSB College, 6-9 Balfe Street, D ublin 2,
Ireland, or fax: +353-1-6794205.
THE LETTER is produced by the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies in association with the
School of Psychotherapy, St. Vincent's Hospital, Dublin 4 and the Association for
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland (APPI).
Articles will be accepted on computer disk (see back page for details). All papers will be
subject to blind-peer review.
The Editor thanks The Board of Trinity College, Dublin for permission to use a reproduction
from the Book of Kells.
THE LETTER
EDITORIAL NOTE
This issue of the journal is given over to a collection of articles
submitted by the various authors as a tribute to Cormac Gallagher on the
occasion of his sixtieth birthday. This is the fourteenth issue since the
inaugural conference of the European Foundation for Psychoanalysis
which was held in Dublin, the left-overs of which were to constitute the
ingredients of the Irish Stew we are still consuming as our basic diet in
THE LETTER. It w ill soon become apparent to the reader that the theme of
that conference, The Unconscious and Language(s), finds itself echoed in the
format of this birthday present, -literally.
Admittedly, this is a strange sort of a gift since one is not usually
obliged to share one's birthday treats with all and sundry. However, since
the man himself has set the trend by graciously sharing his many gifts
with whoever showed an interest in psychoanalysis, we can excuse
ourselves by saying he has only himself to blame. Perhaps amends can be
made if, in addition, we send him something special for himself,
something from the heart of psychoanalysis, -a wish!
Long life and nappiness!
From the Editorial Board
(Jean Kilcullen, Rik Loose, Helen Sheehan and Helena Texier)
BY WAY OF AN INTRODUCTION
Mary Darby and Noel Walsh
It is an honour to introduce this issue of The Letter and particularly
to celebrate with Dr. Cormac Gallagher on the occasion of his Sixtieth
Birthday. We owe much to Cormac for the years of service and
scholarship that he has dedicated to our Department of Psychiatry at St.
Vincent's Hospital. He has instructed us in the works of Sigmund Freud
and Jacques Lacan, introduced us to eminent European psychoanalysts
and broadened the academic horizons of our medical students and
psychiatric trainees. With his energy and commitment, he encouraged us
to establish the School of Psychotherapy to which he has brought great
distinction in his role as Director.
The Department of Psychiatry at St. Vincent,s was established in
1971 when Noel Walsh returned to Ireland from Montreal where he had
trained in psychiatry at McGill University and was supervised by the
eminent psychoanalyst Dr. Karl Stem. This background in psychiatry and
psychoanalysis influenced the therapy and the teaching in the new
psychiatric unit which welcomed Cormac when he joined the hospital staff
as Senior Clinical psychologist in 1975. He maintained his links with
psychoanalysis in Paris, began his translations of the work of Jacques
Lacan and generously shared his experience with medical and nursing
staff through reading groups and supervision.
In 1974 Noel Walsh became Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at
University College Dublin and St. Vincent's and a larger in-patient unit
was opened in 1977. Doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists and
counsellors were attending case conference and academic sessions and in
the early 1980s discussions began regarding the establishment of more
formal academic training programmes.
In 1982, after he was awarded a PhD from University of Paris VII,
Cormac drew up a discussion document recommending the introduction
of a training course in psychoanalytic psychotherapy at St. Vincent's. We
worked with the help of Therese Brady of UCD, Michael Fitzgerald of the
Eastern Health Board and Conal Larkin of St. John of Gods's Hospital in
drafting the syllabus for this first course. Niall Crowley, Chairman of
Allied Irish Banks with Ivor Kenny and Liam Connellan of the business
community assisted us in raising funds to establish the School of
Psychotherapy.
With a strong academic programme supported by a firm clinical
base we approached UCD with a proposal for a Masters' Degree in
Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy which was enthusiastically welcomed by
the President, Dr. Tom Murphy and accepted by the Medical Faculty. The
first intake of students was in 1984. We were particularly pleased when
the Departments of Psychology and Social Science later offered their
Master's degrees to our graduates.
Cormac's commitment to the teaching of psychoanalytic
psychotherapy was also the catalyst that brought together the Institute of
Group Analysis London and the School of Psychotherapy in a joint
venture introducing a training programme for the Diploma in Group
Analysis which began in 1986. In 1993 we were honoured to be invited by
Cormac and by Jean Kilcullen to assist in the establishment of the Centre
for Psychoanalytic Studies at LSB College and to be involved in the
development of their innovative BA in Psychoanalytic Studies.
From the early reading groups in the Department of Psychiatry at
St. Vincent's to the current wealth of teaching programmes, Cormac has
played a significant role in the training of a large number of Irish
psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists,
teachers and supervisors. Many retain their links with him through their
work, their research and their membership of the Association for
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy in Ireland. Attendance at the annual
Congresses and the standard of scholarship demonstrated in the
presentations is ample testament to his teaching and influence as is "The
Letter" which was conceived at the first congress of the European
Foundation for Psychoanalysis held at St. Vincent's at the invitation of
Cormac who is a founder member.
We wish to acknowledge our debt to Cormac for the service he has
given to the Department of Psychiatry at St. Vincent's. We have all
benefited from his administrative skills and academic excellence and his
influence has fostered the highest standards of patient care. We thank him
for his loyalty and friendship and join with all our colleagues in saying
'Happy Birthday Cormac'!
Address for correspondence:
St. Vincent's Hospital
Elm Park
Dublin 4
THE LETTER
TABLE OF CONTENTS
W illiam J. Richardson
Lacan for Beginners
1
W illiam J. Richardson
The Subject of Ethics
3
Marcel Czermak
Peut-on Parler de Psychose Sociale?
27
Helen Sheehan
The Follower
39
Claude Dumezil
Symptome, Ethique et Desir D'Analyste
62
Rik Loose
A Review of Freud's Early Remarks on
Addiction: From an Ideal to Masturbation
65
Trauma and Hysteria Within Freud and
Lacan
87
Paul Verhaeghe
Tom McGrath
Psychology and Psychoanalysis -A
Scientific Paradigm
106
Lecture Raisonn6e et Critique des CEuvres
de Freud et de Lacan
120
Lacan and Dali -An Anamorphic
Encounter?
134
Christiane Lacote
Une Torpeur Ordinaire
Ib l
Helena Texier
We Can Remember It For You Wholesale
165
Guy Le Gaufey
The Tight-Rope Walkers
182
Charles Melman
Olga Cox Cameron
LACAN FOR BEGINNERS
October 1, 1998.
Dear Cormac,
It is time for celebration, and I have been invited to take part. I do so with pleasure
and with embarrassment: pleasure, because it is indeed gratifying to look back
over the years and realise how much you have achieved for the cause of
Psychoanalysis—not only in Ireland but for us Anglo-Saxons in America,, toosince you definitively left Paris for home; embarrassing; because I have nothing to
offer by way of gift at the present time that is sophisticated enough to merit
publication in a professional review of quality such as The Letter. But the most
recent issue contained an Appendix of sorts (containing two short contributions
of your own), entitled Lacan for Beginners. When I saw it, I said immediately
'That's for me'.
For my most recent endeavour was an attempt to respond appropriately to
an invitation from the 'Division for Psychoanalysis' of the American
Psychological Association to deliver the keynote address at its Annual
Convention, dedicated to the theme, 'The Ethics of Psychoanalysis.' Specifically,
I was asked to present as cogently as possible a philosophical understanding of
what ethics is. All my psychologist friends urged me to be as simple and
straightforward as possible, proceeding on thè supposition that many professional
psychologists in America could have gone through their entire educational process
without any experience of philosophy, let alone formal exposure to ethics. The
presentation should be a cram course in Phil 101 that would bring everyone up to
speed in forty minutes. That is how the following piece came about: an effort to
make acceptable sense to a group of highly educated and experienced people
material that, when all was said and done, remained on a beginner's level.
This is all I have to offer as contribution to the party and I am afraid it will
have to suffice. Yet there is something to be said for beginnings. Husserl is
reported to have said aver and over in effect, 'we are always only beginners' - one
way of understanding, I suppose, Eliot's 'in my end is my beginning\ In any
1
case, let the piece, such as it is, serve to ivish you well, in the hope that another
birthday be not the sign of years gone by but of a fresh beginning ~ beginning of
what still remains in advent of power, and light and peace.
Sincerely,
William ]. Richardson
THE SUBJECT OF ETHICS
William J. Richardson
It was the time of the Lie. The following reflection was born in the
moment when an entire nation held its breath in anticipation of its
President testifying before a Grand Jury about an alleged denied of an
alleged sexual liaison with a White house intern in a pre-trial deposition
concerning another alleged sexual liaison (also denied), and allegedly
encouraging the intern in question to lie about it. To ask about the subject
of ethics under these circumstances was to ask about what was most
deeply at stake in the whole unhappy brouhaha.
Arthur Schlessinger, Jr., had claimed in an Op Ed piece in the New
York Times1 that 'every gentleman lies about his sex life. Only a cad would
tell the truth.' It may be so, but this is not an ethical issue - it is a
sociological one. On August 14* the national press reported that the
President's advisors were designing a strategy by which he would admit
the liaison but deny that he had encouraged the intern to lie about it.
Shrewd enough, perhaps, but this was not an ethical issue. It was a
political issue, perhaps, or at most a legal issue, but had nothing to do
with ethics. The previous week's New Yorker had carried a fine article by
Jeffrey Rosen entitled The Perjury Trap, in which he distinguished eight
different kinds of 'lie,' including: kidding, exaggeration, fudging, halftruth, bent facts, white lies, falsehood, and perjury.2 But this was not the
ethical issue either. For Rosen it was another version of the legal issue.
But it does imply an ethical issue. For the ethical issue is: ought a human
being - or ought he not - abstain from lying under any circumstance? If he
ought, then the ethical question becomes: why? If he ought not, then
1 A. Schlessinger, Jr. 'Presidency Under Siege: Enough is Enough' in New York Times, August,
1998.
2 J. Rosen. 1The Perjury Trap' in The New Yorker LXXIV/23 (August 10,1998), pp. 28-32.
3
Rosen's spectrum of 'liesf from kidding to perjury suggests a way to
differentiate various modalities of a ’lie1and differentiate accordingly the
various levels of 'ought* that may pertain to them. Ethics is all about
Ought.
Psychologists/psychoanalysts clearly have their own kind of
Ought. On April 19th, 1998, the front page of the Sunday Metro section of
the New York Times, bore a bold headline that read: Child Psychiatrist and
Pedophile, with the subhead: His Therapist Knew but Didn ' t Tell; a Victim Is
Suing. The ethical question: ought he have told? The essential facts:
Denny Almonte (21) is the son of struggling immigrant
parents from the Dominican Republic. When he was 10
years old, abnormally depressed and troubled by suicide
thoughts, he was brought by his parents to Connecticut State
Hospital for treatment. There he was sexually molested by a
Dr. Joseph De Masi, a 31 year old resident in child
psychiatry on a 4-month hospital rotation at that time. Now
21 years old, Amante is bringing suit against New York
Medical College, where De Masi was trained, and against
Dr. Douglas Ingram, De Masi's therapist while in training,
who was aware of De Masi's pederastic tendencies at the
time. The suit holds New York Medical College liable for
having failed to supervise and evaluate De Masi properly,
and Dr. Ingram liable for having failed to inform the proper
authorities of the latent danger De Masi presented to the
children he was preparing to treat. The case will be heard in
the First District Court in Bridgeport, and the trial is
scheduled to begin September, 1998.3
The family argues that Dr. Ingram had an obligation to oppose New York
Medical College's approval of De Masi as a child psychiatrist, because,
although he was De Masi's therapist, he had a special responsibility
3 New York Times, pp. 4/19/98: A35-40.
4
toward the College inasmuch as he was, when the treatment began, also
member of the Faculty of the College, whose consensual approval of De
Masi's qualification to be a child psychiatrist would be decisive.
Moreover, there was more than one way to make such opposition effective
without revealing privileged information about the patient.
Dr. Ingram, of course, sees the matter differently, and he is no naive
apprentice. He finished a term as President of the American Academy of
Psychoanalysis in 1998, has been editor of the American Journal of
Psychoanalysis and is leader of a Manhattan Task Force on psychiatry and
confidentiality for the American Psychiatric Association. He reports in his
deposition that when De Masi first reported pederastic tendencies in 1986,
he immediately terminated formal psychoanalysis of the patient on the
grounds that psychoanalysis is incompatible with unrepentant pederasty
(szc) but continued a more generalised psychotherapy with the purpose of
challenging his thinking, managing distress and trying to make sure that
he did not act out his desires. For his part, De Masi continued to defend
these desires, presenting Dr. Ingram with a dubious study that
presumably proved that children were not harmed by sex with adults.
And besides, what about the Greeks? They survived, even flourished, and
they did it all the time. Dr. Ingram took all this to be a sign of progress,
inasmuch as De Masi was at last reflecting on the issue 'intellectually,' etc.
Dr. Ingram claims to have 'agonised' over his decision, consulting both
lawyers and several other psychiatrists for advice. In the end, though, he
judged De Masi's pederastic interests to be rather a matter of 'attitude'
than a plan for action, and did nothing to block his promotion
But where is the Ought in all this? How does it arise? Whence
comes its force? What is its scope? How does it function in the conjunction
of the many factors just mentioned: the intention of the agent in making a
decision, the nature of decision-making process, and of the responsibility
that follows from having made it? Such questions as these are the stuff of
ethics.
They are essentially reflective (some would call them
’philosophical') questions that probe the deeper sources of human activity
in its very humanness. If 'theory' (from the Greek theorem, meaning to
'behold' or 'look at') means to take a look at things from a distance in order
5
to see them more dearly, then ethics may be called a theoretical
examination of human life in that activity involving the Ought that we
have come to call 'moral'. Given the constraints of the present context, I
propose to review, however sketchily, the general course that such
theorising has taken over the years so as to understand more clearly the
kind of challenge it poses for us today. Since the question about the 'ethics
of psychoanalysis' has been brought into focus by Jacques Lacan in his
seminar entitled, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-60),41 shall take as foci
those philosophers of the tradition with regard to whose ethical thought
Lacan has chosen to position his own ethical reflection, principally
Aristotle and Kant. With this much to clarify what is meant by the subject
of ethics in general, I shall then consider the 'ethics of psychoanalysis' in
particular, asking whether this means something more than the
application of general ethical norms to the problems of a specific
profession ('professional' ethics, as it is called), and if so, how so.
* * * * *
The experience of Ought is much older than the word. Among the
ruins of Pompeii there is a mural that portrays Agamemnon as he is about
to sacrifice his daughter at Aulis. You will recall that, according to the
myth, he is Head of State and General of the Armies whose responsibility
it is to lead the Grecian assault against Troy. But the ships are becalmed
and cannot move. Consultation with the seer informs him that the ships
will remain becalmed until he offers his daughter, Iphegenia, as a human
sacrifice to the gods in reparation for some ancestral sin. In the mural,
Iphegenia is bound for the sacrifice and turns her eyes pleadingly to
Agamemnon, begging for her life. Agamemnon refuses to meet her gaze
and looks off into the distance, steeling himself for the decision he feels he
has to make. For the Danish philosopher, Sdren Kierkegaard (1813-55),
this mural serves as paradigm for every ethical dilemma. Agamnenon is
4J. Lacan. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (1959-1960), ed.
by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans, by Dennis Porter. New York: W.W. Norton, 1992.
bound by two forms of Ought that oppose each other: one obliges him as
chief of state to expedite the liberation of his ships as efficiently as
possible; another obliges him as father of his family to nurture the child he
helped bring into the world and defend her from all harm. Yet choice
between the two is necessary - it can not be evaded.
Kierkegaard stresses the difference between the ethical dilemma
confronted by Agamemnon and the religious dilemma confronted by
Abraham when commanded by God to offer up his only son Isaac in
sacrifice. With Agamnenon, the decision and act are his own. For
Abraham, the authorisation for the act comes from God; Abraham merely
acquiesces to it in religious faith. Let that say that ethics is a specifically
human enterprise whose only instruments are human reason, knowledge,
language and honesty. Moral issues based on religious faith of any kind,
together with the notion of 'sin,' ‘redemption,1etc. they often comport, are
left to theologians and philosophers of religion to discuss.5
The moral sense dramatised so powerfully by Aeschylus (525-456
BC) and Sophocles (496-406 BC) in sixth and fifth century B.C. Athens was
based on sheer intuition, unconscious if you will, into the nature of the
human predicament. Ethics as we know it would have to wait for the
reflections of the philosophers. First among these, was Socrates (469-399
BC). We know him best as gadfly to the Sophists, the spin-doctors of his
day. Their function was to teach people to 'live well,1that is, to 'do well1in
the law courts, trading and political structures of the thriving City-State.
Socrates took as his task to sting them into clarity about some of the
ethical notions they bantered about so easily, like piety, justice, and the
like. But in the final days of his trial and its aftermath that preceded his
death, it became evident that the deepest question for him personally was
what it meant for a human being to 'live well' simply as human. His
answer: 'To live well means the same thing as to live honorably or
5 See S. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. and trarts. by H. V. and E.H. Hong. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University, 1983. pp. 1-123.
rightly'.6 To keep asking this question is 'the best thing that a man can do'.
Without such examination, 'life. . . is [simply] not worth living'.7
For Socrates, then, ethics meant asking about what it means to 'live
well', that is, 'honourably and rightly', in the society in which he found
himself—in other words, in a properly human way. In its essence, that is
what ethics still means today. Everything turns around what we conceive
a human being to be. But Socrates did little more than articulate the
problem. It was Aristotle (384-322 BQ who addressed it formally,
Aristotle who first elaborated ethics into a system that remains the
baseline for all ethical thinking up to our own day.
Aristotle poses the question in his master work, the Nicomachean
Ethics, named after his son, Nicomachus, who edited the text after his
father's death. In approaching the question, Aristotle first makes it clear
that ethics as he deals with it here, with the focus on individual human
life, is only part of, and propaedeutic to, a much more comprehensive
science which deals with human life in its social and political dimension,
the science of politics, 'truly the master art'.8 Let that say that every ethics
worthy of the name implies a correlative political theory congruous with
the social nature of the human phenomenon, even if it is impossible to
retain that aspect of the problematic here.
For Aristotle to ask what it means for a human being to 'live well' is
to ask what we want most out of life. Whatever it may be, Aristotle calls it
a 'good', meaning by that something that 'suits' us or 'fits' us, hence,
somehow 'right' for us and, to that extent, satisfying. What we want most
and would find most satisfying, would be some supreme good, exceeding
all others, of which all other goods are but a shadow or an anticipation.
Specifically, what is it? Aristotle examines the obvious options (wealth?
honour? pleasure?, etc. - pleasure is very nice, of course, but far too
ephemeral to be considered supreme among the rest) and settles on what
6Plato. 'Crito' 48b, in Plato: Collected Dialogues, ed. by E. Hamilton and H. Cairns. New
York, Pantheon, Bollingen Series DOG, 1961.
7Plato. 'Socrates' Defence (Apology)' 38a. op.cit.
8 Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. by R. McKeon. New
York,: Random House, 1941.1094 a 225 - b 5-10. Hereafter: NE.
8
he calls eudaimonia (lit. to be blessed with a good daimon, that is, genius, or
guiding spirit), which is normally translated 'happiness'. This is how he
defines it:
Human good turns out to be activity of the spirit [for our
purposes, understand this as 'self'] in accordance with
excellence [that is, at the highest pitch of that activity, at its
peak) and if there is more than one kind of excellence, in
accordance with the best and most complete [of these]. But
we must add 'in a complete life.' For one swallow does not
make a summer.9
Aristotle has often been criticised for calling the supreme good for human
beings 'happiness,' as if this were some fantasised pie in the sky when you
die. But that misses the point completely. What human beings want most
out of life, he claims, is some stable condition in which it is possible for
them to flourish as being everything they can be, within the limits (that is,
the risks and vulnerabilities) that are indigenous to human life as such.10
The nine books of the Nicomachean Ethics that follow analyse in
detail how one ought to lead one's life in order to achieve this kind of
fulfilment. Aristotle qualifies these excellences of the spirit as either
'intellectual' or 'ethical,' the first formal use of the word 'ethics' that we
have. Here the word derives from the Greek ethos, meaning 'custom' or
'habit', in the sense of those habits that gradually form character in a
human being. A lot happens here all at once: the Greek word for 'habit'
(ethos) translates into Latin as mos, moris, giving us the word 'moral' (hence
the confusing overlap between the words 'ethics' and 'morality' - Freud
used the two terms interchangeably and we need not take time to insist
upon a difference here), and the Greek word for 'excellence' (arete)
translates into the Latin virtus, meaning 'strength', 'power'/
9 ibid, 1098 b 15-20.
10See M. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge, University Press, 1986. pp. 31842.
9
’empowerment' giving us the English 'virtue'. Sometimes Aristotle’s ethics
is referred to as a 'virtue' ethics, meaning that the power of Ought is
mediated through the traction that these virtues/excellences/powers
exercise in the self.11
At this point, Aristotle elaborates what he understands by moral
excellence. First of all it is 'a stable state of character, that is, a permanent
disposition, as opposed to spontaneous impulse or passing phase, like the
blue' phase of a Picasso, which then may yield to a subsequent phase of
development. It has the following characteristics:
1. It includes the power of choice to perform a given action.
2. The appropriateness of this action is determined by a norm conceived as
a mean between two kinds of extreme (that is, between excess and defect
in the action itself): for example, for that tedious but de rigueur official
reception, one ought not have too little to drink lest one appear
unsociable, yet not too much either, lest one be thought a fool - just
enough to wedge one’s way through the evening with a minimal amount
of pain. Note the flexibility of such a norm: its measure is relative to the
agent who discerns it here according to the circumstances that occasion the
party, to one’s capacity to handle alcohol, to one's physical condition at the
time (fatigued? empty stomach?), as well as to circumstances that are
purely external (for example, one's status as the evening's 'designated
driver').
3. This choice must be a rational one, passing muster before the court of
human reason - before a logos, therefore, and Aristotle sometimes adds
orthos, that is, upright reason, with all the rigor that that implies.
Heidegger has called our attention to the fact that logos in Aristotle also
means 'speech,' suggesting that Aristotle's definition of human being as
zdon logon echon, normally translated 'an animal having reason1 (that is,
'rational animal'), could also be translated 'animal having language' (that
11NE, n, 1,1103 a 15-19.
10
is, 'speaking animal'). This legitimates Lacan's reading of logos in this
context as 'discourse'. In any case, ethics for Aristotle is the business of
intelligence articulated in language, not simply of feeling or affect of any
kind.
4. This reason must be such that a prudent man, the man whose wisdom
in dealing with practical matters has been earned through long, hard years
of experience, would concur with it. The opinions of the ‘best and the
brightest' are not good enough here. What is needed is a fought for
wisdom that is dearly won on the battlefield of life itself.
To gain a concrete (though maybe simplistic) sense of what
Aristotle means by moral excellence, recall the story of the 'Unabomber'.
By all accounts, the mother and father of the Kaczyinski boys were 'good
enough' parents as measured by the standards of our time. Apparently
they did their best to instil good habits in their sons. Both boys were
bright (eventually each would take an Ivy League degree), both reflective
and reserved in manner (though from the beginning Ted was the more
withdrawn of the two). Despite the seven-year age difference, the two
related fairly well to each other, sharing a love of nature and life in the
wild, a disdain for the excesses of technology as threatening the
destruction of mankind, and a compelling sense of justice.
After a successful stint as a high school English teacher, followed by
several years as a solitary living close to nature in a desolate corner of
Texas, David finally shaved, clipped his hair, pared his nails and returned
to normal living in 1990. He trained as a social worker, married his high
school sweetheart and became a counsellor to troubled adolescents in
Albany, an unspectacular but well respected member of the community.
As for Ted, the seeds of the family training fell upon rocky soil.
Despite brilliant promise as a mathematician, he became more and more
alienated through his academic career that began at Harvard and ended at
Berkeley. In 1970 he dropped out completely and withdrew into a hut
built by himself in the recesses of the Montana forests. Except for
11
occasional short trips to mail his bombs, there he remained until his
capture in 1996.
In the summer of 1995, David's suspicions were aroused when
newspaper reports surmised that the Unabomber had associations in
Chicago, Berkeley and Salt Lake City - all places where he knew Ted had
been. When the Unabomber's manifesto appeared in the New York Times,
David could hear the echo of Ted's voice in peculiar turns of phrase, He
brought his suspicions to Susan Swanson, childhood friend of his wife
then working for a local detective firm. She engaged the help of Clinton
Van Zandt, behavioural scientist and formerly the FBI's chief hostage
negotiator, who ran a security consulting firm. He, in turn, engaged a
psychiatrist and a linguist, and together the three compared the
Unabomber's manifesto with two of Ted's earlier letters to his family.
Their conclusion: a 60% probability that all 3 were the work of the same
author. As further confirmation, two more communications specialists
reviewed the material and raised the probability ratio to 80% - 90%. At
that point, Swanson turned to Anthony Bisceglie, respected Washington
attorney, who then in guarded fashion approached the FBI* A month
later, he persuaded David to talk directly to the agents, who promised a
discreet and unobtrusive investigation. We know the rest of the story.
Convinced that his brother was the Unabomber, David had several
extreme options available: He could have remained completely silent out
of visceral loyalty to his own flesh and blood ('My brother is my brother is
my brother'). The other extreme could have been to go straight to the FBI
on the first suspicion, with no precaution for his family’s privacy or heed
to second thoughts, to stake a claim on the reward and hire an agent to
negotiate the book contract. In fact he chose a mean between these two
extremes, first by confirming his suspicions through a second, third,
fourth, sixth and even seventh judgement (the issue was serious enough to
warrant such care), then by seeking the discretion and mediation of the
man of proven practical wisdom, a savvy Washington lawyer. Only then
did he allow himself to be persuaded to reveal what he knew to the FBI. If
one were to ask him why he did what he did, he might be surprised by the
question. Whatever the pain and shame to his family and himself, the
12
lives of other possible victims, and with them the common good of society
at large, all of these were at stake - reason enough to motivate a man of
true moral stature, as Aristotle conceives him to be.
As for the Unabomber himself, he, too, can be seen through
Aristotelian eyes. However well intentioned by a sense of justice and
justified anger at the abuses of technology, he chose a solution that was an
extreme one, a mad one. Indicted and convicted, he nonetheless received
a very Aristotelian sentence, for he was spared the death penalty.
Aristotle saw very clearly that actions compelled from the outside, or
proceeding from overwhelming passion or ignorance (here: insanity) do
not proceed from an agent in a responsibly human way. A responsible
choice is a deliberate choice. As Aristotle puts it: 'Choice will be a
deliberate desire of things within our power; for when we have decided as
a result of deliberation, we desire in accordance with our deliberation'^
By this standard, Ted Kasczynski's choice was not a properly deliberate
one, hence he can not be held fully accountable for his action. The
'insanity defence' is as old as that, as valid today as it ever was and for a
constantly Aristotelian reason.
Does Aristotle have anything to say about lying? Not very much.
In discussing various kinds of virtue in Book IV, he speaks, among other
things, of love for the truth. 'The lover of truth' he writes, 'eschews lying
as [a] shameful [thing],' and, indeed, 'in itself' (kath auto) - I take him to
mean, apart from any circumstances or motivation that might mitigate iU3
If asked for comment on CNN, he might have wished for the sound-bite
wit of a Samuel Johnson to be able to say: 'Even the devils themselves do
not lie to one another, since the society of Hell could not subsist without
truth anymore than the others'.14 In any case, Aristotle's point presumably
would have been the same.
*2 Aristotle, NE, III, 4,1113 a 10-15.
13 Aristotle, NE, IV, 7,1127 b 5.
14S. Johnson. 'The Adventurer' 50 (28 April 1753), in Selected Essays from The Rambler,
Adventurer, and Idler, ed. by WJ. Bate. New Haven, Vale University, 1968. Cited by Sissela
Bok in Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. New York, Pantheon, 1978. pp. 18-19.
What, then, may we retain as the essentials of Aristotelian ethics?
At least this much:
1. The Ought for Aristotle is exercised through the power by which every
human being strives toward the supreme good of being all one can be
within the ineluctibie limits of one's finitude.
2. This implies that an ethical act is a specifically human act, in which
one's essential humanity (including intelligence and power of choice) is at
stake.
3. What constitutes the norm of human propriety is clearly 'situational'. It
is discernible in a unique situation as a mean between extremes relative to
a single individual agent, yet it escapes the arbitrary and approximates the
universal to the extent that it is determined by right reason as confirmed
by the judgement of the man of practical wisdom.
4. The ethical agent is responsible for his decisions and is to be held
accountable for them.
* * * * *
If Aristotle is the most important ethical thinker of the ancient
world, it is Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) who holds that distinction for
modernity. I take ’modernity' here to refer to that historical epoch that
began in the sixteenth century when human attention shifted from focus
on the external world of a theocentric universe to the subject's awareness
of itself as fundamental reference point for all thought and action. We all
know about the lightning-bolt effect of Descartes' discovery that an
unshakeable ground of truth and certainty could be found in one's
certainty about one's own existence as verified in the very questioning of
it. This turn towards the subject reached its apogee two centuries later in
what we know as the Enlightenment, and Kant was its brightest star.
14
Springboard of Kant's thought was his confrontation with the
English philosopher, David Hume (1711-1776), who argued that we can
have no valid knowledge beyond what the evidence of sense impressions
leaves us. What we call 'ideas' are representations of these impressions in
the mind but fainter than they. Abstract or general ideas are clusters of
individual ideas united by association with each other, but truly universal
ideas, that is, one single meaning (for example, 'water') that can be
predicated univocally of many inferiors, are impossible. Yet there was
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) using universal ideas initially grounded in
empirical data to formulate the universal and necessary laws of
mechanics. Kant's challenge was to reconcile the apparent contradiction.
This meant exploring on a much deeper level than Descartes had been able
to do the fundamental structure of the human subject's power to know in
the very roots of its possibility. In the simplest terms, he admitted with
Hume that there are indeed data presented to us by the world outside us
that are 'sensibly' perceived, but the perceiving of them presupposes that
these data first be registered on a perceptive apparatus constituted by
radar systems of space and time. These sense perceptions are then
processed through certain organising systems of the understanding called
'categories' that enable the understanding itself to supply to its
judgements the universality and necessity that constitute the 'law'
character of Newton's scientific discoveries.
But Kant did not stop there. With this much momentum, he
proceeded to examine still more abstract ideas of reason in its purest form,
that is, stripped of any relation at all to sense experience such as the laws
of science can claim. Such ideas are found on the turf where
metaphysicians feel most at home and like to claim as their own: ideas
such as the world itself (as distinct from the things that are in it), the
immortality of the soul, and the existence and attributes of God. But
without any connection to sense experience, such ideas have no ground to
stand on. Ungrounded, they are without validity. Invalid, they serve at
best to regulate our thought processes, giving them order and orientation but nothing more. This whole examination he called a 'critique', in the
sense of a 'determining of the limits' of human reason in its purity (that is,
independent of sense experience), hence the title of his epoch-making
work: Critique of Pure Reason.
Deprived of the God of metaphysics, Kant was nonetheless the son
of Pietist parents with a deeply moral sense of Ought. Whatever must be
said about Reason in its speculative function, it has a practiced function
too, in our daily moral life. In the order of practical activity, pure Reason
is referred to as pure Will and, as such, the Law of all morality. Elsewhere
he tells us that 'nothing in the world - indeed nothing even beyond the
world - can possibly be conceived which could be called good without
qualification except a good will1.15 That human will is good, then, that
conforms to pure Reason as Will, that is, as Law, and, indeed, motivated
solely by reverence for the Law, which Kant calls 'duty'. This is a hard
saying, of course. Kant is aware, to be sure, that many other motives stir
us to action - for example, sensual pleasure, hope of reward, love,
compassion, and above all desire for happiness, but none of these suffice
to make an act morally good. Kant gives the example of the honest
shopkeeper. If the reason for his honesty is that it is good for business,
that is not enough to make his behaviour moral. Duty alone must be the
motive, if an act is to be considered conformed to pure Reason as Will as
Law.
The good news is that since the Law is Reason itself as it is
inscribed in every rational being, hence in every human being, Reason
may be said to be the giver of the Law, that is, to be the Lawgiver that
gives the moral Law to itself. This is what Kant calls the 'autonomy' of the
moral subject. For a human being to submit to the Law that its own reason
imposes upon itself is already a profound form of freedom.
But how is one to know whether a given act is conformed to the
Law or not? Kant proposes a rule of thumb that he calls the 'categorical
imperative.' That's the bad news. This is a command ('imperative') of
conscience that is unconditional ('categorical') in its demand for obedience.
This is what Freud takes to be the paradigm of what he calls the 'super151. Kant. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by L.W. Beck. New York, BobbsMerrill, 1959. p. 9.
16
ego1. Kant opposes this to a 'hypothetical' imperative, based upon a
condition to be fulfilled (for example, if you wish to qualify for third-party
payment, you ought to [must] have proper professional accreditation). A
categorical imperative is unconditional and may be formulated as follows:
'So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a
principle establishing universal law'. In other words, if the maxim that
guides an action can be considered valid for every human being without
inconsistency or contradiction, then its very universalisability is a
guarantee that it is in conformity with universal Law/Reason.
Take, for example, the issue of promise-keeping. If my maxim is
that in making a promise I implicitly affirm that I am not bound by this
promise, that is already a contradiction in itself. Stretched to the universal
level, the maxim would permit no social organism to survive. Again, with
regard to the lie, let the maxim be: ’I have a right to lie if I have a good
reason to do so’. Now Kant assumes that the natural purpose of the
speech acts in which lying occurs is the ’communication of one's
thoughts'.16 To tell a lie, even for a good reason, contradicts the very
nature of a speech act: 'It cannot hold as a universal law of nature that an
assertion should have the force of evidence and yet be intentionally false'.17
Again:
The man who communicates his thoughts to someone in
words which yet (intentionally) contain the contrary of what
he thinks on the subject has a purpose directly opposed to
the natural purposiveness of the power of communicating
one's thoughts; [he] therefore renounces his personality and
makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of a man.18
161. Kant. Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by Mary Gregor. Cambridge, University Press,
1991. pp. 225-7/429-30. Hereafter: MM.
171. Kant. Critique of Practical Reason, trans. by L.W. Beck. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill,
1956. p. 45/44.
18Kant, MM, pp. 226/429.
17
This sounds pretty rigorous and it is. The acid test is a classic case, which,
transposed into terms of the Anne Frank era, would read: if a Gestapo
officer were to inquire of a Dutch householder whether there were any
Jews inside his house, might the householder lie to save an innocent
person's life? Kant himself will say 'no,1on the ground that obligation to
speak the truth is an obligation to society at large as a guarantee of its
integrity and harmony. 'Here is an unconditional necessitation through a
command (or prohibition) of reason, which I must obey; and in face of it
all my inclinations must be silent1.19 Opposition to this rigorism has been
all but universal, but some nuance is available in Kant's reflection on rules
that conflict with each other. Since all moral obligations are absolute, one
cannot say that one obligation is more binding than another, but rather
that the stronger ground of obligation should prevail. Hence:
When two such grounds conflict with each other, practical
philosophy says, not that the stronger obligation takes
precedence ..., but that the stronger ground of obligation
prevails ...20
Thus, in the case in question, protecting another person's life provides a
stronger ground of obligation than that of telling the truth. Hence, in this
case, following the rule against lying would in fact be 'contrary to our
duty'.21
However austere Kant's position may be, in fairness we should add
that he does not want us to take the negative injunction that one must
never lie as identical with the positive injunction that one must always tell
19 Kant MM, pp. 270/481. This position was confirmed when challenged by HenriBenjamin Constant who had argued that one has a duty to tell the truth but only to
someone who has the right to the truth, and then only when it will do no harm to others.
Kant's repudiation of the idea in Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic Motives (1797) was
adamant. See Sullivan, pp. 173-7.
20 Kant, MM, pp. 50/224.
21 R. J. Sullivan. Kant's Moral Theory. Cambridge, University Press, 1990. p.177.
Hereafter: KMT.
18
the truth, 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth’. There are many
verbal interchanges that do not purport to tell the truth, and prudent
reserve is an essential part of daily living. Besides, Kant points out
elsewhere that there are many morally acceptable ways by which we may
avoid telling the truth without lying: for example, silence, mental
reservations, noncommittal answers, evasions, equivocations, and the
like.22 Case in point: would a statement, made in a deposition in a civil
suit, that is 'legally accurate' but, by the standards of ordinary language,
factually untrue qualify as a justifiable mental reservation? Or as a lie? If
it be a lie and made under oath, is it subject to the charge of perjury?
What precisely constitutes perjury? Is it a legal fault or a moral one? What
is the relationship between the legal order and the moral order? What is
the difference? These are the kinds of questions that pertain to the subject
of ethics.
But there is more than one formula for the categorical imperative.
Much more significant to psychologists and psychoanalysts is a formula
that emerges when Kant argues as follows: since every human being is
autonomous, that is, its own Lawgiver, it is by the same token irreducible
and unique, that is, an 'end' in itself. Thus, he can express the categorical
imperative by the following formula: 'Act so that you treat humanity,
whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and
never only as a means'23 - a formula that permits us to understand the
entire human community as a 'Kingdom of Ends'.24 This formula
expresses the acme of Kantian ethics - it makes the whole long climb
22 See Sullivan, KMT, 172. It should be noted that Kant's Lectures on Ethics, trans. by L.
Infield (Indianapolis, Hackett, 1963) are sets of notes largely taken down by students from
his lecture courses at the University of Königsberg, 1775-80, which were largely
commentaries on Alexander Baumgarten, Initia philosophiae practicae primae (1760) and
Ethica philosophica (3rd ed., 1763). They are more familiar in style and less rigorous in
argument (for example, he expresses a certain tolerance for the 'white lie' here) than CPrR
and MM. They may not be taken, then, as representing his definitive position on these
matters. See L.W. Beck, 'Foreward' to Kant, Lectures on Ethics, ix-xiv.
231. Kant. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. by L.W. Beck (New York: BobbsMerrill, 1959. pp. 47/429.
24 ibid., pp. 51/433.
19
worthwhile. Let the words be said again and carved in stone: 'Act in such
a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of
another, always as an end, never only as a means'.
What, then, is the subject of ethics? Taken in the sum of its history,
it is a theoretical reflection upon moral action, which has as its
fundamental question: what ought one do to lead a decent human life,
that is, in terms of one's own humanity and that of one's fellow humans,
including the broader community in which one lives. Its essentials are a
theory of Ought and an accountable subject that responds to that Ought.
Every ethical principle derives from the conception of what makes a
human being human from which it starts. For a capstone formula, we
can't do better than Kant: Act in such a way as to respect humanity,
whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and
never only as a means.1 Given all this we are in a position to evaluate the
conception of ethics proposed by Edwin Wallace, in an otherwise excellent
article on Freud as Ethicist:
The definition of 'ethics' by Abelson and Nielson25
approximates as closely as any to what I mean by the term:
'(1) a general pattern or 'way of life,' [No! That is the
work of sociology or anthropology. Ethics is reflection on the
Ought that lies at the basis of such a pattern];
(2) a set of rules of conduct or ’moral code1 [No!
Reflection on the Ought implies consequences that follow,
but not a 'set of rules' imposed, as it were, from outside
human being as such];
(3) inquiry about ways of life and rules of conduct
[No! That may make for sociological research or
25 R. Abelson and K. Nielson. 'History of Ethics' in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by P.
Edwards. New York, Macmillan, 1967. pp. 81-117. Cited by Edwin R. Wallace, IV, 'Freud
as Ethicist,' in Freud. Appraisals and Reappraisals, ed. by Paul E. Stepansky. Hillsdale, N.J.
Analytic Press, 1986. pp. 83-141.
20
investigative journalism but it implies no reflection at all
upon the meaning and implications of Ought]'.26
* * * * *
What, then, is the subject of the ethics of -psychoanalysis? General
principles must be translated surely into the specifics of daily life and,
more particularly, into terms appropriate to the various circumstances and
problems proper to different professions. Result: 'professional ethics.'
Basic paradigm for this would be the ethics of the medical profession as
formulated in the stentorian tones of the Hippocratic Oath:
You do solemnly swear, each man by whatever he holds
most sacred, that you will be loyal to the profession of
medicine and just and generous to its members; that you will
lead lives and practice by our art in uprightness and honor;
that into whatever house you shall enter, it shall be for the
good of the sick to the utmost of your power, you holding
yourselves far aloof from wrong, from corruption, from the
tempting of others to vice; that you will exercise your art
solely for the cure of your patients and will give no drug,
perform no operation for a criminal purpose, even if
solicited, far less suggest it; that whatsoever you shall see or
hear of the lives of men which is not fitting to be spoken,
you will keep inviolably secret. These things do you swear.27
Is the ethics of psychoanalysis anything more than a general ethics
adapted to the particularity of psychoanalysis, as the Hippocratic Oath has
been applied to the practise of medicine? If so, then why make an issue of
it now? Psychologists are already amply guided by the ’Ethical Principles
26 E.R. Wallace. 'Freud as Ethicist,1 in Freud. Appraisals and Reappraisals, ed. by P.V.
Stepansky. Hillsdale, N.J: Analytic Press, 1986). pp. 83-142,83.
27Columbia Encyclopedia. New York, Macmillan, Columbia University, 1950.
21
and Code of Conduct' of the American Psychological Association, and the
American Psychoanalytic Association has had its own set of guidelines in
place for years. If not, how does it differ from all other forms of
professional ethics so as to need a version all its own?
The 'Code of Conduct' for psychologists in my copy runs to
fourteen pages, includes eight sections, one hundred and ten entries,
dealing with: the clinical or counselling practice of psychology, research,
teaching, supervision of trainees, development of assessment instruments,
conducting assessments, educational counselling, organisational
consulting, social intervention, administration, and other activities as well.
Reduced to simplicity, the code echoes and re-echoes the following
themes: regarding the psychologist, the crucial word is ’responsibility,'
first toward oneself in developing and maintaining one's professional
expertise, then toward the profession, then toward the community at
large, and last but most of all toward the client(s), and this primarily in the
form of ’respect'. Respect for what? Again and again the word 'dignity'
recurs, and this keeps referring to 'rights', 'values', 'autonomy1, ‘privacy1,
'confidentiality' etc. Taken in the sum, these indices add up to a
conception of the human being that far transcends the impression given
by some of the literature: for example, that a human being can be
understood basically as a bundle of stimuli and responses, or as a
computer that can be programmed if only we can develop the right
software, or as a substance that, in principle, is totally quantifiable.
Responsibility, dignity, rights, autonomy, privacy - none of these can be
quantified, assessed by statistics or displayed on a graph. Vet these are
heart and soul of the psychologist's ethical code.
The 'Ethical Principles' of the American Psychoanalytic Association
essentially overlap those for psychologists. Differences are largely matters
of detail: the Code for psychologists includes reference to the rubrics of
testing, etc., while the Code for psychoanalysts refers to consultations
between analysts, the setting of fees, etc. Both Codes are equally adamant
against sexual relations between therapist and client. Does not all this
suffice to handle the problems of a Dr. Ingram? Of course it does. Why,
22
then, speak about an ethics of psychoanalysis now as if it were something
new and unique?
If we turn to Freud, we find no answer - there is no mention at all of
an 'ethics of psychoanalysis' as such. To be sure, he speaks a great deal
about ethical (more precisely, ’moral') issues, and often in radical fashion,
but none of this adds up to a formal ethics. And we know that in his
personal life his morals were quite conventional - even austere.28 True
enough; he was opposed to repression of any kind (though he realised it
was inevitable), but the closest thing to an ethics one can find in his work,
perhaps, is what Philip Rieff called an 'ethics of honesty1.29
No, it is Lacan, and Lacan alone, who forces the issue of an ethics of
psychoanalysis upon us and won't let us turn away. His claim is that
Freud's fundamental insight was of its very nature an ethical one, and
implied the opening up of a new dimension of ethics that far transcends
any of its traditional forms:
... The deep dissatisfaction we find in every psychology including the one we have founded thanks to psychoanalysis
- derives from the fact that it is nothing more than a mask,
and sometimes even an alibi, of the effort to focus on the
problem of our own action - something that is the essence
and very foundation of all ethical reflection. In other words,
we need to know if we have managed to do anything more
than take a small step outside ethics and if, like the other
psychologies, our own is simply another development of
ethical reflection, of the search for a guide or a way, that in
the last analysis may be formulated as follows: 'Given our
condition as men, what must we do in order to act in the
right way?'30[-question as old as Socrates!]
28 E. Wallace, 'Freud as Ethicist,' pp. 128-36.
29 P. Rieff. Freud: The Mind of the Moralist 3rd ed, Chicago, University Press, 1979. pp.30028. See also E. Wallace, 1Freud the Eihicist' in Freud: Appraisals and Reappraisals ed. by P.
Stepansky. Analytic Press, 1986. pp. 82-141.
30J. Lacan, op.cit., pp. 19/27-28.
23
[But Freud] has changed the problems of the ethical
perspective for us to a degree that we are not yet aware o f ...
... [His] discourse facilitates something that allows us to go
farther than anyone has gone before in a domain that is
essential to the problems of morality .. .31
What is it in Freud's experience that has such profound ethical import,
despite his failure to generate any proper ethics in its own name? The fact,
claims Lacan, that for Freud the unconscious comports the function of
desire:
Analysis is the experience which has restored to favour in
the strongest possible way the productive function of desire
as such. This is so evidently the case that one can, in short,
say that the genesis of the moral dimension in Freud's
theoretical elaboration is located nowhere else than in desire
itself.32
The entire Seminar on The Ethics of Psychoanalysis becomes, then, the
orchestration of an ethics of desire.
For Lacan, psychoanalysis opens up an entirely new dimension of a
human being (the unconscious), which challenges every conception of
what makes human beings human that the ethical tradition has
considered. Until now, every ethics has taken into account only the
conscious subject; no ethics has taken into account the unconscious as
Freud conceived it. That is why an ethics of psychoanalysis cannot be
simply an application of general ethical principles to a specific practice - a
professional ethics like the rest. It must be formulated precisely as an
31 ibid., pp. 36/47.
32 ibid., pp. 3/11. Cp. 38/48,84/101,133/159,152/182,291/338,312/360
24
ethics of desire as such. We cannot take the question any further here and
must be content with Lacan's own formulation of his project:
... It is because we know better than those who went before
how to recognise the nature of desire, which is at the heart of
this experience, that a reconsideration of ethics is possible,
that a form of ethical judgement is possible, of a kind that
gives this question the force of a Last judgement: Have you
acted in conformity with the desire that is in you?
We are left with certain questions, however, that an elaboration of such an
ethic must sooner or later confront:
1. Lacan hints at the first question himself, when he says in the
closing session: 'If there is an ethics of psychoanalysis - the question is an
open one - it is to the extent that analysis in some way or other, no matter
how minimally, offers something that is presented as a measure of our
action - or at least claims to'.33 But what can be the measure of desire
except desire itself? Does this mean that desire is unlimited by any Ought
that constrains it? In the analytic situation, we have in fact not one desire
but two: desire of the analyst and desire of the analysand. For the analyst,
the desire is constrained by an Ought that binds one to yield to the
exegencies of the analytic process as such, that is, to do everything in one's
power to allow the unconscious of the analysand to manifest itself to itself,
so that he may acknowledge and assume it as his own. But what Ought
'measures,' that is, constrains, the desire of the analysand? If the measure
of the analysand's desire is desire itself as metonymied through language,
how are other essential ingredients in the analysand's life (for example, the
needs, demands, desires, legitimate rights of other subjects -like spouse,
children - dependents of any kind) to be factored in as limits to the
analysand's desire?
2. How does an ethics of desire as described account for the subject
of that desire? The nature of desire emerges as the subject reconstructs the
33 ibid., pp. 311/359.
25
narrative of her past slowly (painfully) recognising it as her own and
accepting responsibility for it, eventually acquiescing to the castration that
must be embraced. But this implies a continuity in the subject that the
process itself supposes. How are we to understand that continuity - 1 do
not say substantiality - but con-sistency and co-herence of the subject
necessary for the analytic process itself to take place, when the most that
can be said for the subject of psychoanalysis is, in Lacan's own words, as
follows:
My hypothesis is that the individual who is affected by the
unconscious is the same individual who constitutes what I
call the subject of the signifier. That is what I enunciate in
the minimal formulation that a signifier represents a subject
to another signifier. The signifier in itself is nothing but
what can be defined as a difference from another signifier.
The subject is never more than fleeting (ponctuel) and
vanishing, for it is a subject only by a signifier and to another
signifier.34
How can so fleeting a subject abide long enough to accept responsibility
for anything, that is, be an ethical subject at all? Yet without an
accountable subject, there is no ethics, and an ethics of psychoanalysis no
more than chimera. The whole enterprise would have to be rethought,
then - or call itself something else.
Address for correspondence:
Boston College
Chestnut Hill
MA 02167
U.S.A.
34 J. Lacan. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan XX. Encore. On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love
and Knowledge (1972-1973), ed. by J.-A. Miller, trans, by B. Fink. New York, W.W. Norton,
1998. pp. 142/129-30.
26
PEUT-ON PARLER DE PSYCHOSE SOCIALE?
Marcel Czermak*
xLe Maître modem se fiche éperdument du savoir. De toute façon,
le savoir est à son service. Il lui suffit que ça marche. Et plus le
savoir (S2) veut se faire reconnaître comme savoir, plus il conforte
(SI), le Maître. Ce qui explique la phobie institutionnelle
Le praticien est fondé à divers titres d'intervenir dans le débat si
aigu soulevé par notre conjoncture sociale et la subjectivité qui s'y forme.
Dans cette conjecture, il est un élément essential: la référence générale au
développement de la science dont le 'discours' semble faire autorité pour
tous. Or, ce qui fait ses fondements, son universalité comme sa
communicabilité tient essentiellement au rejet de toute question
ontologique, de toute interrogation sur le sujet. Est-il envisageable qu'un
discours qui étend son filet sur toute la planète, à la condition que nous
venons de repeler, ne voie pas ces questions réapparaître ailleurs, sous
forme de réponses étranges et déguisées? Ce n'est pas parce que l'on a
appuyé sur le bon bouton, qu'il n'y a pas de réponses ailleurs due là où
elles sont attendues, qui cachent leur nature de réponse.
C'est en tout cas ce que la psychanalyse enseigne, puisque c'est ce
sujet éliminé de la Science (forclos, disait Lacan) dont elle a à traiter,
quand il lui fait retour en ses plaintes et symptômes. Et, dès lors, ce que la
psychanalyse aborde, c'est la vérité comme cause - cause de la souffrance là où la Science en exclut le terme pour la réduire à l'opposition du vrai et
du faux. En effet, si la vérité est contestable, c'est moins par défaut que
par structure: elle concerne toujours un rapport à ¡'Autre dans lequel nous
sommes tous pris. C'est-à-dire que l'une de ses moitiés git dans cet autre
même, ce qui la rend impossible à dire toute.
*This article appeared originally in Passage - la férocité sociale, fevrier 1995, No. 67.
27
L'exactitude, qui fonde le vrai et le faux, est d'un autre tonneau: elle
tient à une axiomatique qui, par définition, se passe de cet Autre. La
Science est sans adresse. Au point de soulever la question de savoir si elle
peut être dite discours, puisqu'y est évacué le problème du fantasme (ce
qui rend le plaisir apte au désir). Alors mieux vaudrait dire ce qu'elle sert:
actuellement, il est clair que ce sont les discours de la maîtrise.
Et cependant, Science comme maîtrise se révèlent supportées par
un fantasme de totalisation, d'universalisation don't l'une des
conséquences est de masquer le manque-à-être central de 1' être parlant,
divisé par le langage. N'énonçant ses formules qu'en évacuant toute
division, elle installe un pur sujet, sujet absolu. Ce qui, d'ailleurs,
n'empêche pas ce drame de certains savants, chez qui la vérité fait retour.
Comment alors peut-on créditer la Science d'une 'ambition de
comprendre1 ... 'besoin primaire de l'humanité' (A. Lichnerowicz) quand
toute l'experience analytique nous enseigne qu'il n'est nulle pulsion
épistsémologique, mais bien au contraire que l'on ne fait jamais que
s'empresser d'oublier, méconnaître ce que l'on a appris. Au point que la
Science puisse être qualifiée de cas local de la logique du fantasme: celui
où l'on se débarrasse des soucis ordinaires de l'humanité. Mais les façons
ne manquent guère de vouloir arriver à de telles fins. En tout cas la
Science y échoue, ce qui ne signifie pas qu'elle puisse avoir du bon, mais
pas sans les maladies afférentes. D'autant que d'un bien peuvent surgir
des maux encore plus grands que ceux qu'il s'agit de combattre. En effect,
quand A. Lichnerowicz conclut: 'Ainsi la physique nous offre-t-elle un
conception du monde'^id), celle-ci est pour le moins curieuse puisqu'elle
ne traiterait de rien d'essentiel: qu'est-ce qu'un père, une filiation, la
jouissance, le courage et la lâcheté, enfin tout ce qui fait que les hommes
tournent autour d'insaisissables, qui cependant les actionnent quand ils
s'illusionnent d ’une quelconque maîtrise, là-même où ils ont évacué
l'interrogation sur l'objet qui causerait leurs désirs?
1 A. Lichnerowicz. Les Scientifiques parient, sous la direction d’A. Jacquard. Hachette,
1987.
28
Cet objet, qui n'est pas celui de la Science, quel est'il? Car il faut
bien se prononcer làdessus: toute la vie sociale y prend appui, comme s'en
détermine. Et quel en est le corrélat, sujet de cet objet? Pour autant que
c'est de la chute de cet objet énigmatique liée à l'incidence du signifiant,
que surgit un sujet qui n'est nulle hypostase, ni homoncule dans l'homme.
Le sujet divisé
Les questions sont liées et incontournables: quelle sorte de sujet
devons-nous concevoir? Le simple fait de l'inconscience, qu'il y ait un
discours qui parle en nous sans que nous en ayons la moindre idée,
indique assez son caractère divisé. Parfois il se manifeste dans les lapsus,
mots d'esprit, actes manqués, rêves. Plus souvent, il agit dans les déboires
que nous nous sommes préparés, sans avoir la moindre notion des raisons
pour lesquelles ils nous adviennent. Et un sujet divisé n'est nulle entité, il
faut le répéter.
Aussi, dès lors que la Science vaut pour maîtresse, il devient vain
de prôner amélioration de l'enseignement, de l'information voire de la
formation: puisque la transmission de ce savoir y est conforme à ses
prémisses d'exclusion subjective, la suite ne peut qu'y être conforme, soit
alimenter ses conséquences inaperçues: à l'intrusion galopante et
triomphale de la science, répond l'injonction terrible du triple champ de la
crainte, de la culpabilité et de la haine (E. Jones). Déploiement des magies,
des guerres de religion et des phénomènes ségrégatifs de tous ordres.
Là oû la Science collabe besoin et demande rejetant ce qui, dans
toute demande, relève du désir, on aboutit à un 'faisable' que ne bride
aucun 'souhaitable'.2. C'est-à-dire qu'on tombe sous le coup d'un impératif
généralisé. Alors resurgit cette magie qu'il ne suffit pas de traiter de
'fausse science', puisque le qualificatif laisse intact le questionnement sur
sa cause efficiente, qui ne doit rien à la physiologie, mais inciterait plutôt à
s'interroger sur ce qui est au principe du moindre effet de
commandement, et pour chaque homme. Resurgit également, forclos du
2 C. Castoriadis, Les Scientifiques parlent, op.cit.
symbolique de la science, un sujet absolu qui inonde le réel: ce Dieu de la
religion, à qui est laissée la charge de la cause, cependant que le religieux
formule sur le mode impératif les désirs supposés de ce Dieu dont il
recherche les bonnes grâces.
Et l'on n'a même pas ébauché la réflexion sur les effets, en général
glorifiés, de l'universalisation de la Science - car nous bafouillons - effets
fracassants par leur immixtion dans des montages symboliques qui lui
sont hétérogènes, mais plutôt des réponses dans le réel, et souvent
déconcertantes quand elles ne sont pas dramatiques.
La science et son maître
La Science a basculé du côté du Maître. Elle le sert. Le Maître y a
mis du sien: nos politiques, administrateurs et gestionnaires répètent à
l'envi: ’Nous ne sommes que vos représentants. Dites-nous ce qu'il faut
faire'. Eludant la charge de leur position d'agents, ils font proliférer
commissions et comités de sages sur la recherche, l'enseignement,
l'éthique, organisent des Etats Généraux de la Sécurité sociale. Et nous
disent: 'Vous êtes des gens formidables mais vous ne donnez aucune
réponse immédiate. Rien n'est résolu, alors nous qui sommes dans
l’action, il faut bien que nous décidions'.
Passe-passe où, la Science comme les autres savoirs et savoir-faire,
passés aux mains du Maître lui permettent - dans la dénégation, la
dissimulation de son pouvoir - d'exercer des lois dont il n'a jamais à
rendre compte du savoir d'où elles procéderaient.
Le Maître a
actuellement d'autant moins de comptes à rendre (quand voit-on un
ministre démissionnaire pour cause d'incompétence se suicider, ou
simplement aller en prison?) qu'il a embobiné tout le savoir, passé à son
service, cependant qu'il est dispensé de produire son savoir propre, lequel
n'est pas celui de la Science.
Quant à l'université, il est devenu clair que, quoiqu'elle en aie (y
compris dans ses refus de collaboration, car le refus peut être aussi une
collaboration), elle a également basculé au service du Maître: elle produit
des unités de ’valeur', cependent que les citoyens sont saisis par les
30
'valeurs' boursières. Et la vérité crie à côté de nous: en décembre 1986, ces
étudiants qui récusaient d'être réduits dans leur valeur d'usage,
demandaient simultanément que leur soit garantie - dans leur angoisse leur valeur d'échange sur le marché: valeur comptable de plus-value, en
économie 'libérale'. Ceux qui veulent leur place dans la société la
réclament dans les termes mêmes dont ils pâtissent, ce que l'on qualifie en
termes actuels: 'Il faut savoir se vendre1et avec 'un plus' (capitalisable de
préférence).
En URSS, la chose était claire: pour être professeur, il fallait servir le
parti qui est le Maître. Les choses sont plus camouflées pour nous:
l'université prépare les plusvalues, seraient-elles incarnées.
En ce joint de cauchemar et d'angoisse, que la Science élude, rien ne
sert d'y faire appel à une bonne volonté quelconque: les hommes n'ont
jamais, pour la plupart, voulu connaître autre chose que ce qui les
arrangeait. Le problème est affaire de structure. Et ce qui les arrange est
cause du discours qui les fait produire. Mais la vérité est ailleurs que dans
la production, et - de surcroît - refoulée. C'est ça qui est à examiner.
Alors, dans cette tâche, où trouverons-nous notre cap? On peut douter
que la culture nous y aide: C. Jullien,3 dans son premier article de la série
du Monde diplomatique sur: 'Des sociétés malades de leur culture', relevait
bien comment sous Vichy, des hommes de même culture pouvaient, les
uns sombrer dans la barbarie (que ce soit par souci d'être du côté du
manche, ou par capture par le Dieu obscur qui réclamerait le sacrifice
ségrégatif, ou encore pour dormir tranquille) et ceux qui, dans un
courageux regard toisaient en face le monstre, au risque le leur vie.
La question relève de ce qu'un homme peut apprécier des objets qui
le déterminent, soit s'en conforter, soit pour s'en déprendre.
Alors, pensée sans objet? Se demandait-il? Il ne me semble pas: la
pensée n'est pas une catégorie. Lacan disait qu'elle serait davantage du
côte de l'affect; soit la façon dont nous pâtissons des discours qui nous
traversent. Et, comme tout affect - d'angoisse spécialement - elle n'est pas
3 C. Jullien.'Des sociétés malades de leur culture1in le Monde diplomatique. Manière de voir,
no. 1,1987.
sans objet, même si ce dernier est dur à nommer. Ainsi, dans la société
capitaliste s'appellera-t-il plus-value, à quoi se ravalent tous les plus-dujouir dégradés, ou encore Souverain-Bien. Mais ces plus-du-jouir
n'existent que dans un réel dont la saisie nous est impossible, même s'ils
nous déterminent.
Alors, société sans projet, se demandait-il encore? Certes pas: ces
objets nous conduisent le plus sûrement du monde vers les pires
désagréments, par des voies réelles et fléchées, quand bien même serionsnous sans projets articulables. Ils nous tirent: voix, regards, apparences,
look divers, media.
Le réel comme tel n'est qu'effet des discours qui le produisent, dans
lesquels nous sommes tous pris.
Alors quelle action mener? Au moins, situer cette part d'impossible
à démontrer qu'emporte avec lui tout discours, cette part qui est son réel
et sans l'appréciation duquel nos actions ne valent pas pour actes, mais
pour chimères et semblants.
En tout cas, le monde moderne ne s'est certainement pas
complexifié: il est devenu d'une clarté brutale, sinon aveuglante. Mais
nous sommes ses aveugles.
Férocité sociale
Tout cela est parfaitement conforme à l'atmosphère économique où nous
sommes: crainte pour la survie, compétition effrénée, rivalités
exténuantes. Le Maître moderne étant aveuglé, il ne sait même plus qu'il
sert lui-même la plus-value qui le commande. Quant aux institutions,
nous savons qu'elles sont avant tout, des phénomènes d'écriture
fabriquant des places et qui manœuvrent les identifications.
De fait, cette méconnaissance, refoulement, camouflage, les
institutions tombent en plein dans ce que Legendre appelle la férocité
sociale. Le juridisme accru des rapports sociaux et l'appel de l'Etat, comme
à l'Administration témoignent alors d'une soumission remarquable à ce
monstre qui s'appelle l'amour social, dont la seule finalité est de faire en
sorte que les sujets se reproduisent à moindre frais pour faciliter la
circulation des objets ready-made de la consommation qu'ils sont d'ailleurs
devenus eux-mêmes.
Il s'agit alors bel et bien d'une guerre pour la maîtrise de la
distribution des places dans l'échange, et cette guerre ne va pas sans un
goût étrange du contrôle et de la frénésie organisationnelle. Fureur à
produire de l'institution, labelisée, garantie.
Et dans cette guerre, il s'agit, comme souvent dans les guerres,
beaucoup moins d'oppositions des uns aux autres, que d'identification des
uns aux autres. Car on est toujours plus ou moins captif des voies et des
enjeux que l'on a promu soi-même, en ignorant qu'ils ne sont que la
réitération d'enjeux sociaux, économiques, culturels qui nous gouvernent
à notre insu. Lacan disait: 'Li'nconscient, c'est le social'. Formule qui a pu
heurter nombre de psychanalystes. Pourtant l'inconscient nous est
extérieur, c'est le Discours de l'Autre, anonyme, impersonnel, qui n'est nul
sujet mais une grande gueule et qui nous gouverne, cepedant que, comme
il n'y a dénonciation collective, les énoncés prolifèrent.
Lacan disait: 'Dans la névrose, le rapport à l'Autre a toute son
importance. Dans la perversion, le rapport au phallus a toute son
importance. Dans la psychose, le rapport au corps propre a toute
importance'. Or, ce que nous voyons se développer est bel et bien cecci:
(1) Le rapport à VAutre fait de moins en moins problème, puisque
tous les sujets deviennent eux-mêmes les objets interchangeables d'un
échange économique généralisé et unifiant. La problématique est donc de
moins en moins névrotique;
(2) Le rapport au phallus prend de plus en plus d'importance dans
la captation du désir de la clientèle. On se présente comme l'Autre dont la
maîtrise phallique peut capter son désir. C'est 'le plus' (je psychanalyse
'plus', je lave 'plus' blanc, je gère ‘plus', mon père est 'plus', etc.) et donc la
perversion s'amplifie;
(3) Avec comme conséquence rétroactive, circulaire, une exclusion
de l'Autre. Les citoyens sont alors d'autant plus fragmentés qu'ils sont
gérés par un monstre monobloc, sans division subjective, mais que - cette
opération - elle est passée réellement en eux. Coup que nous appellerons:
celui de se faire passer pour l'Autre de l'Autre. Opération de forclusion
du Nom-du-père, c'est-à-dire verwerfung de la castration, propre au
capitalisme;
(4) Le centralisme - particularité française, auparavant - va
croissant sous la forme de multinationales supra-gouvernementales qui
sont les vrais centres décideurs de la vie économique, sociale et culturelle;
(5) Du coup le Maître (SI) en est conforté et le savoir (S2) passe à
son service.
Le moi bon pour la casse
Le Maître moderne se fiche éperdument du savoir. De toute façon, le
savoir est à son service. Il lui suffit que ça marche. Et plus le savoir (S2)
veut se faire reconnaître comme savoir, plus it conforte (SI), le Maître. Ce
qui explique la phobie institutionnelle, publique et poltique de beaucoup
de psychanalystes qui n'osent même plus ouvrir la bouche sur leur vie
collective et leur vie de citoyens, mais de cela ils payent le prix, comme
Fenichel et ses amis. On lira avec intérêt le livre de Russel Jacoby sur
Fenichel. Le titre original était: Destins de la gauche freudienne.
A voir ce panorama - et il est certain que je suis en-deça de la main,
étant mal au fait des dernières subtilités de la vie économique - il devient
clair que c'est le social qui prend prévalence d'un réel, au point que le nom
propre y devienne valeur monnayable, comme les autres fragments du
corps.
En somme, ce qu'il s'agit de sauver, c'est le moi, mais en l'occasion
c'est l 'objet a que le moi sert, c'est-à-dire que le moi lui-même ne sera pas
sauvé: il ne peut être que déclassable, bon pour la casse, selon la
conjoncture du marché.
Les mystères de l'Etat, seraient-ils psychanalytiques, sont peut-être
insondables, mais passon cœur, et son amour vous est garanti. Les
événements de 1989 en Chine illustrent bien la collusion du maoïsme avec
le familialo-centrisme chrétien identifiant dans sa pente totalitaire le Nom
avec le texte sacré et le corps. On pourrait appeler érotomanie d'Etat ce
type de montage, conduisant à la chaîne de scenarii divers, dont - entre
autres - une psychanalyse prêt-à-porter, psychanalyse de confection,
comme la psychiatre d'ailleurs - et davantage encore.
It faut remarquer par exemple, du côté des hôpitaux, comment en
France, l'une des mesures de tel gouvernement des dernières années a été
de subordonner les médecins à leur directuer administratif, cependant que
se développait la notion d'hôpital-entreprise. Quant à la psychanalyse,
elle risque fort de devenir une 'psychanalyse-entreprise' avec comme
discours dominant, celui bien connu dans les Forces armées: celui du
'rendre compte', 'justifier', 'garantir', ’assurer'.
Ce discours, au service de l'évaluation et de la quantification, croit
dans une science qu'il a mal digérée - parce que la Science n'y croit pas
elle-même - cependant que la Science est mise à son service.
L'actualité paranoïaque ...
Vous l'avez compris: ce jeu de fictions institutionnelles rédigées par
la fausse Science et l’Administration n’apporte de réponses qu'aux
questions fictives posées. A question fictive, réponse fictive, cependant
qu'à côté le réel prolifère comme réponse vraie, mais méconnue.
Tout se passe comme si nous assistions à la tentative
d'homogénéiser:
1. Le réel de l'entreprise;
2. Le réel de celui qui fait savoir;
3. Le réel de qui a le savoir-faire. Je m'explique: le réel de qui a le savoirfaire s'abdique devant le réel de celui qui fait savoir, sous couvert de ce
qu'ils auraient besoin l'un de l'autre. Quant au réel de celui qui fait savoir,
il s'abdique devant le réel de l'entreprise sous couvert de ce qu’ils auraient
besoin l’un de l'autre. în fine, conjoncture obscurcissante où c’est le savoirfaire comme éthique qui - devenu esclave - fonctionne au service d'une
entreprise qui se prend pour une culture.
Il est vrai que si le discours dominant est celui de la recherche du
meilleur rapport qualité/prix, s'il faut ’en donner à chacun pour son
argent', et si - en plus - il faut savoir se vendre, cela augure très précisément
des combats que nous aurons à mener. Pour me résumer: l'actualité est
paranoïaque, c'est-à-dire que le monde devient sans trou et que tout doit y
être prévu. Autant par son extension que les phénomènes sociaux de fond
qui y poussent. D'une part: désagrégation des modalités symboliques qui
assuraient dans les groupes humains transmission et génération, en
garantissant la stabilité de leur horizon, mondialisation sans butée des
échanges et des phénomènes migratoires. D'autre part - et l'un ne va pas
sans l’autre - montée en force de la science véhiculant l'exigence et la
certitude qu'elle nous débarrasse de toutes contigences cependant que rejetant le sujet - elle en fait le plus contingent des objets. Bref:
décapitonnage.
Alors voit-on monter les phénomènes ségrégatifs, tensions jalouses
et revendicatives, guerres de religion cependant que nul Dieu ne vient
répondre à l'appel érotomaniaque d'élus qui - dans un appel sans
médiation à l'Autre - ne peuvent qu'éprouver la déception de leurs
espoirs, comme leurs compensations imaginaires exaltées.
Parallèlement, les fractures générationnelles accentuées rejettent
pères et fils dans une position radicalement autre, les mettant en posture
de ne s'autoriser que d'un discours - la science comme bien commun en
fait partie - qui va jusqu'à invalider et court-circuiter les gouvernements:
ce sont les Biens qui gouvernent, par la promesse d'une jouissance Autre,
cependant, que les responsables eux-mêmes se réduisent à l'état de
fantoches artificiellement animés.
Sommés de répondre aux tension, ils n'y parviennent que sous la
forme d'idéologies unificatrices et unitaires, imposant la multiplication des
règlements, procédures de contrôle, législation 'communes'. Mais la
demande est assurément de 'plus de droit'. Mais de quel Droit s'agit-il?
Du droit d'un sujet à bénéficier d'une existence pacifiée parmi les siens, à
quoi aucun droit ne peut répondre? Ou du Droit du code, comme
prothèse sans cesse augmentée, à la carence du droit symbolique? Dans ce
cas, elle n'y apporte qu'une réponse quantitative sur le mode impossible
d'une jouissance qui devrait être également répartie et identique pour
tous, pendant que la sexualité, comme la sexuation - ordonnées
phalliquement - en prennent un coup.
36
Quand au lieu, évidé, de la vérité, il se comble d'un vrai dont la
forme de bien de consommation prend la place de Maître aveugle et
anonyme de Tout et que nulle butée ne vient plus interrompre sa tyrannie.
Le corps des hommes n'y échappe pas, dont chaque partie,
désormais démembrable, transplantable, voire fécondable, l'offre à une
capture monnayable et que chacun - juridiquement - doit tenir le discours
que sa place dans l'administration des biens lui assigne.
Ainsi se véhiculent des énoncés sans énonciation, collaborant le lieu
de l'Autre à celui du code (devenu civil et pénal) imputant à chacun une
castration collective inexistante, cependant que - dans un réel projectif prolifèrent oppositions et conflits effectifs en réponse à l'Un.
A la jubilation mégalomaniaque qui fait de chacun le citoyen d'un
monde qui gravite autour de lui, répond pour le même citoyen
l'effondrement micromaniaque par où il témoigne que, dans ce monde, il
n'est rien, avec l'agression narcissique concomitante.
... et hypocondriaque
Quant à la faute et à la dette: elle est devenue impayable (cf: le tiersmonde), renvoyé à l'Autre incarné, le voisin le plus proche, dont ne me
sépare plus nul continent ni mer, cependant qu'elle est pour moi-même
éludée au titre des dommages irréparables que j'ai subis: sans auteur et
sans objet, s'y substituent la crainte, la haine et le tremblement.
Alors, faute de castration, l'objet a, non échu, incarcéré dans le
langage le rend inapte à l'échange cependant que - faute de coupure
signifiante, liée au Nom-du-Père - c'est la décollation capitale qui prévaut:
de même que chacun est tenu de produire sous la forme d'un 'plus' ce qui
met en souffrance son discours, il ne peut le faire qu'au nom d'un 'mon
père est plus', selon l'heureuse expression d'Elie Doumit, fiction qui
recreuse dans le réel le manque dans le symbollique qu'elle était supposée
combler.
Si l'actualité que nous rappelons est juste, c'est alors une actualité
sans limites ni spatiales, ni temporelles, ni corporelles. C'est l'actualité
hypocondriaque de l'objet qui ronge - névrose actuelle - celui qui ne
parvient pas à s’en diviser et cherche dans l'autre la frappe - réelle celle-là qui ne parviendra pas à opérer soulagement d'une complétude intolérable.
Actualité d'un sujet universel qui - dans son hypocondrie planétaire - tend
à sa fission, éventuellement nucléaire.
Address for correspondence:
Association Freudienne
Internationale
15 Rue Bouchardor
75010 Paris
France
38
THE FOLLOWER*
Helen Sheehan
As the President of the United States of America William Jefferson
Clinton signed the new Electronics Treaty at Gateway Computers in
September of this year, we are reminded that home may no longer be a
space we occupy in language but a glint in the smooth seductions of a
radar beam. Kathym Holmquist, in The Irish Times, put it succinctly thus:
'The Irish Dream of the 1990's celebrates the computer and seeks a better
quality of life through the profitable movement of information through
cyberspace'.1
It is almost a commonplace now to say that profound social
changes are underway in the Ireland of the 90's.2 We can say that these
changes began in the 1960's. An Ireland on the run like Richard Kimble, in
The Fugitive, as exemplified in Michael O'Louglin's poem of the same
name, published in 1982.3
In the hour before the metro opens
I remember you, Richard Kimble
with my hands dug deep in my jacket pockets
walking the streets of a foreign city.
I am indebted to my colleagues at the Milltown Institute of Theology and Philosophy,
Brid O'Brien and Brendan Woods S. J. for pointing me in the right direction.
1K. Holmquist in The Irish Times. September 9th1998. p.12.
2 It is interesting to note that, as J.J. Lee remarks, the 60's were marked in actual terms in
Ireland by a reduction of one third in terms of emigration/ compared to the 50's. J.J. Lee.
'Emigration, a contemporary perspective' in Migrations: The Irish at Home and Abroad. Ed
Richard Kearney. Dublin, Wolfhound Press, 1990 p.33
3M. O'Loughlin. 'The Fugitive' in Atlantic Blues. Dublin, Raven Arts, 1982 p.38.
But if the 1960's are remembered as the fugitive years in more ways than
one, the 1970's are characterised by the particular modernisation of
Ireland and are marked also by being a decade of the return. The
symbolic verification of Ireland's entry into the 20th century was
acknowledged when on January 1st 1970, half crowns went out of
circulation to be replaced by the new 50 pence coin.4
On March 21st of that year All Kinds of Everything sung by a certain
Dana won the Eurovision Song Contest in Amsterdam. Ireland had
indeed arrived in the new Europe. 1970 was also the year in which the
Catholic Bishops announced that it was no longer obligatory to abstain
from eating meat on Fridays and the hierarchy's ban on Catholic
attendance at Trinity College was lifted. It was also the year in which
Martin O'Cadhain, regarded as the greatest modem writer in the Irish
language died. For some the fugitive years were apparently over in
earnest - after being found not guilty in the Arms conspiracy trial Charles
Haughey called on Jack Lynch to resign as Taoiseach. There was a lot of
movement that year too, some less conspicuous than others. The Irish
School of Ecumenics was inaugurated in Milltown Park, Dublin. St.
Vincent's Hospital moved to its new £5,000,000.00 site at Elm Park, after
136 years in St. Stephen's Green. The final phase of the transfer was to
move 73 patients by ambulance.
That was the year Cormac Gallagher went to Paris, France.
In 1974, Jacques Lacan came to Ireland. He came not merely in a
personal capacity nor on a flying visit to see for himself the land of the
sinthome about which he has said:
In so far as the unconscious is knotted to the sinthome which
is what is proper to each individual, that it can be said that
Joyce, as we read somewhere, identifies himself with the
individual. He claims the privilege of having gone to the
4 J. O'Donnell. Ireland - the past 20 years. An illustrated Chronology 1967-1986. Institute of
Public Administration, 1967 - 1986. Dublin, 1986 p. 22 Unless otherwise noted all
information regarding the events of 1970 and 1974 are from this source.
40
extreme to embody the symptom in himself, by which, he
escapes all possible death by being reduced to a structure,
which is that of the LOM (man).5
It looks as if he came to stay. Analysing the effects of this visit by this
important but then largely unknown visitor to our shores in 1974 will
need more time than the scope of this present paper allows, but the least
we can say is that he continues to leave his mark.
This very modem link to France provides a kind of lifeline for
many who have been traumatised by an altogether too incestuous
relationship with our neighbouring island, where for too many Irish
people England has for too long been a reminder of how close we are to
that first stranger who is so near but who is also so hostile.
John Hume’s call in 1988 for a 'new republicanism’ bears witness to
this oppressive relationship and our need to forge new kinds of links.
The real new republicanism (is) the development of
processes which will allow people to preserve their culture,
rights and dignity; to promote their well being and have a
means of controlling the forces which will affect their lives;
rather than being any reversal of the national destiny this
will allow us better to fulfil our potential as a people; to
contribute to our world; to rediscover the cultural
interaction between Ireland and Europe; to re-involve
ourselves in political relations with those on the continental
mainland and to properly enjoy the inchoate European
outlook and vision which was lost in our oppressive and
obsessive relationship with Britain.6
5 J. Lacan. Seminaire Du 16 Juin 1975. 'Joyce le Symptôme I' in Joyce avec Lacan.. Ed.
Navarin, Paris, 1987 p. 28. 'Lom' is the homophone of the French 'Vhomme' (my
translation)
6 J. Hume. 1Europe of the Regions' in Across the Frontiers, Ireland in the 1990's, Ed. R.
Kearney, Dublin, Wolfhound Press, 1988. p.56
41
1974 was a very busy year. Brian Faulkner resigned as Leader of the
Unionist Party, but continued to lead the pledged Unionist Group in the
Northern Ireland assembly.
The McCormick report, The General
Practitioner in Ireland published that year, recommended a comprehensive
state health service. Seanad fiireann refused the second reading of Mary
Robinson's Family Planning Bill. Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy of the Kilkenny
Social Services Centre was appointed to chair the new advisory committee
to initiate and co-ordinate pilot schemes to combat poverty while Charles
J. Haughey bought Inishvickillane, a mile long uninhabited island in the
Blasket archipelago, as a summer home. In May 1974 a young couple
succeeded in their High Court action to have declared unconstitutional
that Section of the 1952 Adoption Act, which prohibited them from
adopting the wife’s son, who was bom before her marriage, because his
religion differed from that of his mother. Also in May of that year the five
month old Northern Ireland Executive collapsed because of deep
divisions between Unionist and S.D.L.P. ministers over whether to
negotiate with the organisers of the Loyalist anti Surmingdale strike, and
the Northern Ireland Secretary Merlyn Rees refused the request of Brian
Faulkner and his five fellow Unionist Ministers to negotiate with the
Ulster Workers Council.
Some people were incarcerated that year for their crimes. Dr. Rose
Dugdale was sentenced to nine years imprisonment at the Special
Criminal Court in Dublin for receiving nineteen stolen paintings from the
home of Sir Alfred Beit. She pleaded 'proudly and incorruptibly guilty'.7
Ritchie Ryan, Minister for Public Service, announced that Irish was
no longer obligatory for entry into the Civil Service or for promotion
within it. Roy Jenkins, Britain's Home Secretary, introduced tough new
measures in the Prevention of Terrorism Bill; proscription of the I.R. A., the
arrest without warrant of suspected persons, and control of travel from
the Republic and Northern Ireland to Britain. In December of that year
7 The Irish Times, June 25th 1974. p.3.
42
eighty delegates in Dublin decided to break away from the official I.R.A.
and to form the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
Cearbhall O'D&laigh was installed as President of Ireland following
on the death of Erskine Childers. Liam Cosgrave was Taoiseach. Ireland's
soccer team defeated the Soviet Union 3 - 0 at Dalymount Park, in a
European Nations Cup game. Don Givens scored all three goals.
Kilkenny won the all Ireland hurling final defeating Limerick by 3.19 to
1.13.
That year the Rev. Ian Paisley announced 'we do not accept the
word of the slanderous bachelor who lives on the banks of the Tiber'.8 It
was also the year in which Donal Foley writing in Man Bites Dog
remarked;
a family who claimed direct descent from Brian Boru tried
last night to take over Aras an Uachtarain. They were
rejected on the grounds that the official records made no
mention of the Boru family. The spokes man for Ireland
appealed to the people yesterday to make their claim in an
orderly fashion. There would be plenty of pay back for
everybody he said. He announced that a national hooley of
thanksgiving would be held at Tara.9
That was the year Cormac Gallagher returned from Paris, France.
Cormac Gallagher, no more than the rest of us may not be able to
claim descent from Brian Boru but the records tell us the name Gallagher
goes back further than that. In Sloinnte Gaedeal is Gall, O'Gallcobair10 is
8Ian Paisley in Sayings of the Year, the Irish Times Review, December 23rd 1974. p.2.
9D. Foley. 'Man Bites Dog' in The Irish Times 4thJune, 1974. p.10
10 The Punctum, in Irish 'Bualadh1, which initially in Irish Orthography was used to
express the lenition of T and 's’ and later in free variation with 'h' in various digraphs
began in the 19th century to replace 'h' altogether, in the printed text. With the advent of
the New State, Roman type, (an C16 Romhinach) began to be used extensively in
publications, and with the reforms, proposed in Litriti na Gaeilge, the bualadh
disappeared.
listed as 'the name of a numerous and once powerful family in Tirconnell,
who derive their descent from Maolchoba, King of Ireland in the 7th
century. As Marshals of O'Donnells' forces the O'Gallaghers took a
prominent part in all the military movements of Cineal Conaill during the
14th and subsequent centuries1.11
According to McLysaght;
... the name of this sept. O'Gallchobhair in Irish signifies
descendant of Gallchobhar or Gallagher, who was himself
descended from the King of Ireland who reigned from 642 654. The O'Gallaghers claim to be the senior and most royal
family of the CinSal Connaill. Their territory extended over
a wide area in the modem baronies of Raphoe and Tirhugh
Co. Donegal and their chiefs were notable as marshals of
O'Donnells' military forces from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century. The principal branch of the sept were
seated at Ballybeit and Ballynaglack.12
What's in a name? Psychoanalysis knows something of the price one pays
for one’s name. Moses learned that too at the burning bush when he said
to God 'I am to go, then, to the sons of Israel and say to them 'the God of
your fathers has sent me to you1. But if they ask me what his name is what
am I to tell them? And God said to Moses 1 am who I am'.13 Freud in his
monumental Moses and Monotheism tells us in the very first lines how
important is the act of naming:
To deprive a people of the man whom they take pride in as
the greatest of their sons is not a thing to be gladly or
11 Rev. P. Woulfe. Sloinnte Gaedeal is Gall, Mac an Goill agus a Mhac, Baile Atha Cliath,
1923. p. 538
12 Ed. McLysaght. Irish Families, their names, arms, and origins. Dublin, Allen Figgis, 1972 pp. 1
154.
n Exodus. 3.13-14. The Jerusalem Bible. London, Darton Longman and Todd, 1966.
44
carelessly undertaken least of all by someone who is himself
one of them. But we cannot allow any such reflection to
induce us to put the truth aside in favour of what are
supposed to be national interests; and moreover, the
clarification of a set of facts may be expected to bring us a
gain in knowledge.14
There are four very important issues mentioned by Freud here in the very
first lines which set the tone for all of what is to follow. The first thing we
notice is that Moses is the greatest of Israel's sons. The Bible does not call
Moses a father. The Book of Genesis tells us: 'Yahweh appeared to Abraham
and said: 'It is to your decesendants that I will give this land'.15 So that
Abraham is the ancestor of the chosen people, but the question for Freud
as for all of us is how does a son become a father, or, to be more precise
Freud calls Moses a 'father figure' by that he means that Moses is a name
of the father for Freud. Secondly, Freud too is a Jew, thirdly this still
being the case, he continues, I am not going to put the truth aside in
favour of any kind of nationalism or ethnicity, and fourthly let us do a
little bit more work and let us see whether we can get some more
clarification, some new insight into the matter. Now, some interpreters of
Freud have seen in this Freud's total identification of himself with Moses.
I don't think this is the case. We see he sees both himself and Moses as
'sons'. Here, we have Freud calling Moses the greatest of the sons of
Israel. Freud would have known that to call a person by his name - to
know the proper name - was to give power to the person named and it
seems to me that Freud wanted to start at the beginning - before the name
- and find out if he can call him by his proper name. In this way it's as if
Freud is really beginning an analysis because when we first go into
analysis we are not able to recognise things and people properly - that is
by their proper name.
14S. Freud. (1939 [1934-38]) Moses and Monotheism: Three Essays. S.E., XXIII, p. 19.
15 Genesis op rit, 12:7:8
James Plastaras (a Christian exegete) tells us: 'Moses was the first
of the prophets and the prototype of the prophetic office'.16 So too Freud
recognises that Moses is the greatest of Israel's sons, who set the Jewish
people free, who gave them their laws and founded their religion. So,
although he regards himself as a son of Israel we cannot say that he
identifies with Moses. Look at what Moses did for the Jewish people.
This Freud says and accepts. There are other important issues raised in
Part I, Moses an Egyptian. The first thing that fascinates Freud is Moses'
name. What does the name Moses mean? He is obsessed with trying to
find out what this name means and he quotes the Biblical interpretation as
'he who is drawn out of the water', that is, in the passive sense. But, he is
not happy with that interpretation because he argues that it can only mean
'he who draws out', that is, in the active sense. He believes that the name
Moses is derived from the Egyptian vocabulary. Yet he concludes this
part of section I by saying: 'it emerges that the recognition that the name
of Moses is Egyptian has not been looked upon as affording decisive
evidence of his origin and that no further conclusions have been drawn
from it'.17 This Egyptian background of Moses is Freud's starting place for
his construction of the prehistory of Judaism. Freud does indeed take this
Egyptian name seriously, as he tries to come to terms with the
consequences of this name. Plastaras tells us 'the name Moses is really of
Egyptian origin, meaning 'bom of' or 'son of' - because names were
supposed to 'say something' the Semite would always be puzzled by a
foreign name or a loan word and would always try to find an etymology
for it in terms of his own language'.18 Freud believes in Moses as an actual
historical person and he is not for example just a legend as someone like
Ed Meyer, the historian, would have him.
Why was Freud so obsessed with the name - Moses1name? Freud
somewhere knew that to name someone, to know him by name was to
16 J. Plastaras. The God of Exodus, The Theology of the Exodus Narratives. Milwaukee, The
Bruce Publishing Company, 1966. p.5.
17S. Freud, op.cit., pp.9-10
18 J. Plastaras, op.cit., p.42
46
define him. Freud knew that to name someone is the first Symbolic act
par excellence. Even before we are bom we are named - our parents have
(hopefully) been thinking about us and have invested us with all sorts of
unconscious desires and motivations, but in giving us a name they have
anchored us in the Symbolic order. Of course, the Bible tells us that
Yahweh says to Israel 'Do not be afraid for I have redeemed you. I have
called you by your name, you are mine'.19 As Jacques Hassoun notes 'To
name is the first act, Symbolic par excellence that the Biblical myth gives
as a privilege to us humans; Adam does not designate, He names. From
then on we can say that naming comes from language itself, which
precedes the Imaginary part of representation'.20 Only Yahweh can
designate because to designate involves indicating one's destiny. To
designate means to indicate the whole function and destiny of a subject.
On the contrary to name means that you can understand it, control it.
In Semitic thought, knowledge of a name gave power over the
thing named; to know God's name was to be able to call on Him and to be
certain of a hearing. The true God does not make himself man's slave in
this way by revealing a name expressive of his essence; this refusal to
reveal is contained in the formula, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (I am who I am, I am
what I am) having an active dynamic presence, which in the third person
becomes Yahweh 'He is'.
Yahweh means that he is there ready to act, ready to help. Yahweh
is part of the verb 'to be' from Raya - to be.21 If we understand it in this
way the name does not define God; for the people of Israel, it will always
call to mind God’s great deliverance of His people and the divine
generosity, fidelity and power that prompted it. In Christian thought this
interpretation brings out the transcendence of a God for whom man can
never find a worthy name. Biblical tradition has preferred to take Ehyeh
19Isaiah. 43:1-2 op.cit.
20]. Hassoun. 'Des Noms du père' in Che Vuoi? Actualité de Totem et Tabou, No. 3 Revue du
cercle Freudien, Editions L’Harmattan, ( my translation).
21 I am grateful to my colleague at Milltown, Paddy Byrne. C.M. for careful advice on the
theological implications of Moses and Monotheism.
asher Ehyeh as meaning ‘I am the One who is, I am who am': the name
Yahweh would then express not necessarily the absolute nature of God's
essence but at least God's unlimited existence as opposed to the
'nothingness' of the Gods.
Lacan states in The Psychoses:
Indeed it's one of the most profound characteristics of the
mental foundation of the Judaeo-Christian tradition that
against it speech clearly profiles the being of the I as its
ultimate ground. On all the essential questions the subject
always finds himself in a position to justify him as L The I
who says I am the one who am, this I, absolutely alone, is the
one who radically sustains the thou in his interpellation.22
André Chouraqui says in his Moïse that this is not a sufficient translation
because 'Ehyeh asher Ehyeh', may be rightfully translated as being in the
past and the future as well as in the present. Therefore Chouraqui
suggests ’that I am who I am seems to be saying to a questioner who is too
curious: you wish to know my name? You will not know it. I am who I
am, or I will be who I will be1. But, Chouraqui continues;
... the text says exactly the contrary of this interpretation. In
effect the asher which joins these two Ehyeh is the most subtle
of conjunctions. It could also be translated in a more
accurate way by two points, thereby eliding this equivocal
who; I am: I am.23
Raymond Abba, remarks: 'the origin of the name has been the subject of
much controversy and there is as yet no general agreement among Old
22 J. Lacan.. The Psychoses. Book HI trans. R. Grigg, London, Routledge, 1993. p.287.
23 A. Chouraqui. Moise. Edition du Rocher, Paris 1995. p.148 (my translation).
48
Testament Scholars'.24 Abba suggests that the name is extremely ancient
and there is thus considerable support for the Biblical tradition that the
use of this divine name goes back to primeval times. The link between
Yahweh and the God of the Patriarchs is made in Exodus. 'Yahweh is the
God of your fathers'.25 And by virtue of this already existing bond he can
speak of Israel 'as my people'. Abba also says:
The divine name is always associated with a sense of
mystery as well as of presence. Yahweh is not thought of as
dwelling at Sinai as some have maintained; he 'comes down1
upon the mountain to the accompaniment of thunder and
lightning, fire and cloud. His presence is unapproachable As the Holy One of Israel, he is the Wholly Other. He is
unapproachable even for the seraphim who sing trisagion
with covered faces and feet. This is best understood as a
plural of intensity expressing Yahweh's dominion over all
the powers in heaven and on earth.26
S. Mowinckel, in Two Sources of the Predeuteronomic Primeval History says
'Yahweh is not telling his name to one who does not know it - the whole
conversation presupposes that the Israelites know this name already'.27
Similarly E. Jacob says 'We do not have in the Exodus narrative the
revelations of a new name but the explanation of a name already known
to Moses, which in that solemn hour is discovered to be charged with a
content the richness of which he was far from expecting'.28
24 R. Abba. The Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. LXXX, Society of Biblical Literature,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania U.S.A p.320.
25 Exodus. 3:13:-16.
26 Abba, op.cit, p.327.
27 Abba, op.cit., p.323.
28 E. Jacob. The Theology of the Old Testament trans. A.W. Heathcote and P.J. Alcock,
London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1958. pp. 49-50.
49
The revelation given to Moses at the burning bush was not
therefore the revelation of a new and hitherto unknown name 'it was the
disclosure of the real significance of a name long known'.29
What of the name O’Gallchobhair?
The first mention of the name O'Gallchobhair or O'Gallagher in the
Annals O f The Four Masters is in 1231 A.D., which describes it thus:
O'Gallchobhair or O'Gallaghers, derived from Gallchobhair,
a warrior, were a clan of note in Donegal in the baronies of
Raphoe and Tirhugh and had a castle at Ballyshannon and
also possessed the castle at Lifford and were commanders of
O'Donnells army.30
It is interesting to note that Lacan refers to the four Masters in Joyce le
Symptome I when he says 'I am not an academic, contrary to what is said
about my being a professor or master or other such banter. I am an
analyst. This surely is a homophony of the Annals of the Four Masters of
which Joyce in Finnegan's makes much, and which are the basis of the
Annals of Ireland. I am another sort of analyst'.31
An 'ancestral impulse' as Professor Richard Kearney puts it,32
exciting as it may be, could also prove dangerous if not tempered by the
Symbolic.
Thus, love of a country.
Begins as attachment to our own field of action
and comes to find that action of little importance
though never indifferent. History may be servitude
History may be freedom, see now they vanish
29 Abba, op.cit, p.323
30 The Annals of Ireland. Trans, from the original Irish of The Four Masters by Owen
Connelan. Dublin, Brian Geraghty, 1845. p.53.
31 Joyce avec Lacan, op.cit., p.23.
32 R. Kearney. Migrations: The Irish at Home and Abroad. Dublin, Wolfhound Press. 1990.
the faces and places, with the self which, as it could, loved
To become renewed, transfigured, in another pattern.33
Historians like Myles Dillon, former senior Professor at the Dublin
Institute for Advanced Studies, says that with the fifth century we enter a
new phase of history. The prestige of written research claims to displace
oral tradition and though we now know that our written annals and many
records of institutions of the early millennium are themselves based on
oral tradition;
... the fact of their subsequent written form when
incorporated into the annalistic histories gives them a place
for the first time in the historiography of Europe. How far
these records are to be depended upon is a very difficult
question and one which is at the moment much debated.34
Seatrun Ceitinn, in his celebrated Forus Feasa ar Eirinn (the foundation of
knowledge about Ireland), mentions O’Gallchobhair for the first time in
Volume III when he is describing how the Kings after the time of St.
Patrick were inaugurated.
Now on the occasion of the their being inaugurated the
chronicler came forward bearing the book called the
Instruction for Kings, in which there was a brief summary of
the customs and laws of the country, and where it was
explained how God and the people would reward the doing
of good, and the punishment that awaited the king and his
descendants if he did not carry out the principles of justice
33 T.S. Eliot 'Little Gidditig' in Collected Poems 1909-1962. London, Faber and Faber, 1967.
p.219.
34 M. Dillon and N. Chadwick. The Celtic Realms, London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson,
1967. p.59.
51
and equity, which the Book of Kings and Instructions for
Kings direct to put into practice’.35
Ceitinn continues:
It was the Chronicler’s function to place a wand in the hand
of each Lord on his inauguration, and, on presenting his
wand he made it known to the populace that the Lord or
King need not take up arms thenceforth to keep his country
in subjection, but that they should obey his wand as a
scholar obeys his master.
For, as the wise scholar loves and obeys and is
grateful to his master, in the same way subjects are bound to
their Kings, for it is with the wand of equity and justice that
he directs his subjects and not with the edge of the weapon
of injustice. The wand which the ollamh places in the King’s
hand is altogether white, as a token of truth as symbolised
by the whiteness of the rod, since whiteness is likened to
truth and blackness to falsehood.
The reason why the wand is straight is to signify to
the people and the tribes that the King is bound to be
straight and faultless, without bias in his words and
judgements between friends and enemies, between the
strong and the weak, as if there were a contention between
both his hands.
It was at Tara on Leic na Riogh that every one of the
Kings of Ireland who possessed the kingdom of all Ireland,
by the consent of the ollamhs and the nobles, used to be
inaugurated before the Faith and by the consent of the
Church and of the ollamhs ever since the faith.
35 S. Ceitinn. Foras Feasa Ar Eirinn. An Treas imleabar, ina fbuil An Dara Leabar den Stair.
Cumann na Sgribeann Gaedhilge, London, 1908. p. 10.
52
At Cill Mic Creann&in, O'Domhnaill was inaugurated
and it was O'Fiorghail who inaugurated him and
O'Gallchobhair was his marshal of the hosts.36
It is important to note that Seatrun Ceitinn's work is regarded as an
apologia against the detractors of Ireland in the form of a history of the
Country from pre-Christian times down to the Anglo Norman invasion of
1169. This being said, his work was hugely influential and informed
generations of ordinary people about their history in a way that gave
them a better sense of their beginning and their destiny.
Padraic 6 Conaire's poignant description of a tormented and
displaced man, called Miche£l, at a social gathering in a part of London
called Little Ireland bears witness to the power of Forus Feasa or Eirinn.
There would be a man there who could relate the contents of
Keating's History of Ireland as well as a man who knew
nothing about it. And if somebody were to disagree with
anything the savant said, he would just go to the big trunk
he had brought with him from Ireland and take out a parcel
wrapped in linen. He would open the parcel and take out a
large book in manuscript. And how careful he was of that
book. He would show you in black and white where you
had been wrong. And when he closed the book to put it
away he would look at you as if to say 'now, what have you
to say for yourself?' But, he never said a word ,37
A noticeable aspect of An Ceitinneach's description of this inauguration
ceremony is the Symbolic one. In fact the Real, Symbolic and Imaginary
aspects are woven so closely together here that they do indeed form a
knot. This is the inauguration of a King, not a crowning so there is
something of an initiation at work. We are safely in the Symbolic. The
36 ibid, pp 11-13.
37 P. O'Conaire. Deoraiocht. (Exile) trans. G. MacEoin. C16 Iar Chonnachta, 1994. p.104.
Real is most poignantly attested to in the marriage-like aspect of King and
Country, watched over by God and the people. The wand is something
light, so the King will not rule with a rod of iron. The weapon will be the
word. It is also interesting to note that God and the people work together.
The power of the word is stressed and the King is reminded of his duties
and that there will be a Judgement. The Ollamh or the one of highest
degree among the learned caste held the father's function and it was he
who spoke the words. In a curious way, the more deeply Symbolic
aspects of the ceremony are in the Imaginary or are capable of so
becoming. After all 'whiteness is likened to truth' only if one wishes it to
be so. The truth may be very black indeed. The Symbolic if insisted upon
too much is in danger of becoming the Real and the only possible exit then
becomes a reverie of a future which never comes. This eternal aspiration
of the dawning of a new age is embodied in the word, passed down to the
King who from the time of his inauguration will rule with justice and
truth.
As Brendan O'Buachalla, says;
The heroic age of Irish literature was celebrated from within
an ideoogy of Kingship and from the oldest texts we have
available to us down to the poetry of the 19th century the
golden age is always saved with the coming and the reign of
the rightful king.38
The great Niall Noighiallach was one such King. 'Niall of the nine
hostages' was high King of Ireland A.D. 379-40539 and from him
O'Gallchobhair can claim descent. Niall has, as Thomas O'Rahilly
explains, 'the distinction of being the ancestor of all but two of the long
38 B. O'Buachalla. Aisling Ghear, An Clochomhar tta. Baile Atha Cliath, 1996. p.467 (my
translation) I have translated 'C6ir', by 'rightful' but it also implies the notions of 'just',
'proper' and 'duty1.
39 Historians are not totally agreed on these dates. According to Dillon these dates are a
matter of considerable uncertainty.
54
line of kings of Ireland that ruled from the second quarter of the 5th
century down to the Battle of Clontarf'.40 Therefore through a rather
circuitous route it is possible to trace the Cin^al Conaill from which the
name Gallagher descends back to a time earlier than the 7th century,
contrary to what Woulfe and McLysaght state. Niall had four sons,
Loegaire, Eogan, Enda and Conall. The Cineal Conaill is descended from
the latter.
Niall Noighiallach got his name because 'he obtained a hostage
from each of the five provinces of Ireland and four from Britain or
alternatively, five from Ireland, one from Alba (Scotland) and one from
the Saxons, one from the Britons and one from the Franks, for Niall went
to Letha and to Italy to seek a kingdom'.41 O'Rahilly advises us: ‘we may
safely leave the foreign hostages out of account as a later embellishment
and take it that Niall's nine hostages were Irishmen’.42
According to Ceitinn, Niall sent 'a fleet to Brittany in France, which
is called Armorica for the purpose of plundering that country and they
bought two hundred noble youths as captives to Ireland with them; and it
was in this captivity that they brought Patrick, who was sixteen years old
with them, and his two sisters Lupida and Darerca and many other
captives besides'.43
While historians like Francis John Byrne agree that the tangled
chronology of St. Patrick is 'inextricably linked with that of Niall'44 he
would not go so far as to agree with Ceitinn that it was Niall who first
brought the saint here. The link between these two great men of action
will have to be left for another day.
Niall Noighiallach is therefore fascinating from many points of
view. But from a psychoanalytic viewpoint the story of his birth,
upbringing and how he came to be called King is what proves most
40 T.F. O'Rahilly. Early Irish History and Mythology. Dublin, The Dublin Institute for
Advanced Studies, 1946. p.217.
41 F,J. Byrne, op.cit., p.76.
42 T.F. O'Rahilly, op.cit., p.232.
43 S. Ceitinn, op.cit, Vol II. p. 375.
44 F.J. Byrne, op.cit, p. 78.
interesting. T.F. O'Rahilly dismisses this story as 'mythology, pure and
simple',45 while J. F. Byrne says 'of Niall's historicity there is little reason
to doubt'.46
As regards the relationship between historical truth and material
truth Freud himself had some very important things to say. This was a
subject which much puzzled him during the writing of Moses and
Monotheism. One could say that Moses is at least in part an attempt to
come to terms with this relationship.
He has above all shown that in writing the history of Moses he is in
fact writing a name of the father, by which he has come to terms with both
the external difficulties which were raging all around him at the time and
internal difficulties of his own. Lacan too has shown the importance of
writing, because as he says the unconscious has ’already been written
down elsewhere'.47
As Lacan reminds us, we gain access to the unconscious 'in part in
traditions and even in the legends, which, in a heroicized form bear (my)
history'.48 As Niall Noighiallach is calling us, let us take a closer look at
this period of Irish history which, according to Myles Dillon 'forms a
bridge between the older purely oral records of prehistoric Ireland and the
later written records. It is with the rise of Niall and his family to the chief
power in central and northern Ireland that Irish history really begins'.49
The following is the story of Niall as taken from four principal
sources."50 Eochu Mugmed6n, High King of Ireland, had five sons; Brian,
Ailill, Fiachna, Fergus and Niall (the youngest). Mionnfionn was his
queen and the mother of four sons, but Niall was the son of Caireann
Chasdubh, the curly black haired daughter of Sachell Balb, King of the
45 T.F. O'Rahilly, op.cit, p.217
46J.F. Byrne, op.cit., p.71
47J. Lacan. Ecrits, Trans. A. Sheridan. London, Tavistock Publications, 1977. p.50
48 ibid, p.50.
49 M. Dillon,, op.cit. p.59.
50 (1) O'Rahilly, op,cit. (2) Byrne, op.cit . (3) Dillon, op.cit. (4) K. Meyer. Eriü. The
Journal of the School of Irish Learning, Dublin. Vol. IV. Ed. K. Meyer., and O. Bergin.
Dublin and London, 1910. p.91. All poetic citations are from the latter.
56
Saxons. Princess Caireann had been carried off on a raid and was kept as
a slave. Mionnfionn, daughter of Fldeach the King of Munster was a
bitter, jealous and ambitions woman, who set her heart upon having her
favourite son Brian succeed his father as Ard Righ. Niall's brothers
conceived deep envy towards him, through Mionnfionn's influence. It is
also said that they loved their mother greatly but 'small love had they to
Niall's mother'. Mionnfionn inflicted much hardship upon Caireann, who
was compelled to draw water from the well. Even when she was
pregnant with Niall she was compelled to do it and the child was bom in
the open as she lay beside her pail. She dared not take up the child but
left it there and none dared take it up for fear of Moinnfionn. Then Torna
Eices, the Munster poet, also known as Toma the learned, came by and
took up the child and he foresaw all that was to come. He took him up,
reared and educated him 'keen, vigilant his government, he fostered him
till he was nine years old1.
When he had reached budding manhood Toma brought him back
to Court to take his rightful place - much to his father's joy. Then Niall
showing strength of character even in his early youth took his mother
from her menial task and restored her to her place. 'Fresh as the grass
about the Brugh, of rapid rushing waters full, was Niall's shining mantle
about his shapely back, on the lordly height of Taillte's hill'.
Mionnfionn was angry and called upon Eochu to judge between his
sons as to who should succeed him. He referred to the matter to Sitchenn
who was his drui and a prophet.
Sitchenn set fire to the forge in which the five sons were at work.
Their father, observed with interest Niall's distinctiveness of character, his
good sense and judgement. While Brian saved the chariots from the fire,
Ailill a shield and a sword, Fiachna the old forge trough and Fergus only a
bundle of firewood, Niall carried out the bellows, the sledges, the anvil
and anvil block - thereby saving the soul of the forge and the smithy from
ruin.
Then his father said 'it is Niall who should succeed me as Ard
Riogh na h-Eireann'.
57
What is most striking about this legend is its utter dissimilarity to
the description given by Otto Rank in his myth of the birth of the Hero.
Rank's account is as follows:
The hero is the child of most distinguished parents usually
the son of a King, His origin is preceded by difficulties, such
as continence, or prolonged barrenness, or secret intercourse
of the parents due to external prohibition or obstacles.
During or before the pregnancy, there is a prophecy in the
form of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth and
usually threatening danger to the father (or his
representative). As rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a
box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people
(shepherds) and is suckled by a female animal or by a
humble woman.
After he has grown he finds his
distinguished parents, in a highly versatile fashion. He takes
his revenge on his father on the one hand, and is
acknowledged on the other. Finally, he achieves rank and
honours.51
Niall, as in Rank's account, is indeed the son of a king but there the
analogy ends. Niall was not brought up by 'lowly' people but by a
distinguished poet, who adopted him and reared him as his own. This
custom, which is typical of Irish legends according to Clemence Ramnoux,
'represents a semi instinctive defense of primitive man against the dangers
felt from relationships between men and women of the same blood within
a closed family group'.52 Rank points out: 'it is noteworthy in the first
place that the hostile attitude of the hero towards his parents concerns
51 O. Rarik. The Myth of the Birih of the Hero, and other nmtings. P. Freund (Ed), New York,
Vintage Books. Random House, 1932. p. 65
52 C. Ramnoux. 'La rivalité entre père et fils dan la legende Irlandaise' in Psyché Revue
Internationale de Psychanalyse et des sciences de l'homme. Numéro 13-14 Paris 1977
p.1357 (my translation).
especially the father'.53 This is not the issue in Niall's case. The cause of
the problem is a woman but she is not Niall's mother. Here, the Oedipal
threat is kept at a distance - is in fact foreclosed. As Ramnoux says
(speaking about Irish legends in general) 'There is no equivalent of an
Oedipal legend which brings in all the dramas and all the horrors'.54
This has far reaching implications for psychoanalysis. After all, if
Oedipus has never entered fully into Irish legend does this not imply that
at some fundamental level the mother remains all powerful, untouchable,
and on the other hand reviled? Does this mean that the incestuous wish is
so strong that it cannot be talked about, and yet woman (always the other
woman) is dangerous and evil? If we regard the sacred marriage between
the King and his country as important, we must not also forget that Irish
myth has always insisted that the woman is the body of Ireland.
It is interesting to note that the worship of Mionnfionn persisted
right down through the centuries and is still preserved today in Gaeltacht
na Rinne, where at Halloween children say as they knock on each door:
Anocht oiche Shamhrta
Muingfinne banda
(tonight is Halloween, we are of blondly haired feminine Mionnfionn.)
But all this was not proof enough of Niall's claim to the Kingdom. He had
to prove himself yet again. Another legend tells us how he did this.
One day, the five sons went hunting and they lost their way in the
forest and were enclosed on every side. They lit a fire and cooked some of
their game and ate till they were satisfied. They wanted water and Fergus
set out in search of it. He found a well but there was an old woman
guarding it. 1A mouth she had into which a hound would fit, her spiked
tooth-fence about her jaws, was more hideous than all the goblins of Erin'.
53 Rank, op.cit. p.77
54 ibid. p. 1371.1 am indebted to Dr. SeAn O'Dumn Lecturer Un Lean Diichais, University
of Limerick who adds that at the present state of research we can say that there is no
direct Oedipal story within the Irish tradition, but that the legend of Lughaidh Riamh
Dearg comes close enough to it, while not containing all the Oedipal elements.
59
She asked Fergus to kiss her but ’fear and terror lay hold of him, he
returned to the others and said he had found no font, that Erin's water
was hidden from him'. Two of the other brothers (Fiachna and Ailill)
went to win a triumph over Fergus, but they came back without a single
drop.
The brothers then bade Niall go, 'out of hatred to his mother - in
hopes they were of some fell assault’. As soon as he reached the stream ...
... he beheld her there, that hideous shape, thin-shanked,
grey headed, bushy-browed. When the hag asked him for a
kiss, around her he closed his arms, he strained her to his
breast and bosom as she were forever his own spouse.
When he looked up - blooming her countenance in hue as
the crimson lichen of Leinster crags, clear like crystal was
her throat, her locks were like Bregon’s buttercups.
Arise O'Niall, said she, then thou art the princely heir
of Tara; who are you, said Niall. King of Tara, I am
Sovranty. I shall tell you its virtue. Your seed shall be over
every clan.
The legend may have a 'clear political aim'55 as Brendan O'Buachalla
attests, and it may be ’Ui Neill dynastic propaganda',56 but at a
psychoanalytical level it displays, once again the unconscious relationship
between men and women. The guardian of the well may be an ugly
woman but she is also ’Flaitheas na Riogh' - the Kingdom of Kings. She is
the heavenly Queen - the Goddess - her power is great in that not only can
she grant the High Kingship of Ireland to Niall but she also can withhold
the source of life from him. Therefore she is mOther. And his part in all
of this? He has to be desirous enough and fearless and so unlike his
brothers as to kiss her on the mouth, - to break the taboo; but he can only
55 B. O'Buachalla, op.cit., p.372. (my translation)
56 ibid, p.472
60
do that on condition that she becomes something Other - a beautiful
young maiden. So, once again the Oedipal motif is kept at a distance.
Niall's father Eochti, high King though he may have been, seems
impotent in the face of such a woman and yet she is revered. This leads us
to ask what is the paternal function or more precisely where is it? Of
course sibling rivalry is also at work in this legend but once again it is
removed; it is not between the same 'clan' but against the 'foreign one/ in
their midst, Niall. Adoption is highly valued in this legend. Toma was
not a humble person but a distinguished poet who brought Niall up
wisely and well. Did our adoption laws seek to incarnate something of
that aspiration, down through the years?
We note also that Caireann Casdubh, she of the lovely black hair, is
a foreigner, and this allows the others to be cruel to her. The incestuous
wish towards woman takes not the form of wishing to be close to her, but
to kill her - the foreigner.
And so it goes on - perhaps even more so today in a country where
the foreigner is still villified - where the Department of Justice has rejected
'approximately 85% of the 655 asylum applications processed to the end of
August this year'57and in a Europe which is rapidly closing it ranks to the
idea of the stranger and where the possibility of 'plurabilities1is in danger
of ending with a single European ... it is no accident that the name
Gallagher signifies 'of foreign help1. (Gall-Chobhair)
When he came back from Paris in 1974, Cormac Gallagher brought
something of the foreigner back with him, not as a 'hostage1 but as a
permanent call to wake up from the bonds of servitude in its myriad
forms. The father always carries something of the foreigner with him.
Address for correspondence:
The Milltown Institute of
Theology and Philosophy
Milltown Park
Dublin 6
57Magill Magazine. Ed. Vincent Browne. October. Dublin, 1998. p.42
61
SYMPTOME, ETHIQUE ET DESIR D'ANALYSTE
Claude Dumézil
J'évoquerai la boutade de Lacan: 'La Psychanalyse, c'est le
traitement que l'on attend d'un psychanalyste'. D’une telle formulation se
dévoile une conception de la psychanalyse comme structure, celle de la
cure.
Ce point est déterminant dans l'abord de la question du symptôme,
aussi bien en clinique que dans ce que peut dire le psychanalyste du
malaise, celui de la psychanalyse ou celui de la civilisation.
Le psychanalyste incarne une fonction, presque au sens
mathématique du terme (et non au sens d'un fonctionnaire). L'opératoire
de cette fonction dans la cure s'éclaire en considérant celle-ci comme une
structure dynamique résultant de la rencontre, dans un espace
transférentiel donné, de la structure initiale d'un patient avec un désir
d'analyste.
Certaines analyses didactiques ou certaines 'passes' soulignent une
’symptômatisation' de ce désir dans son devenir et ses effectuations les
moins discutables. Rappelons que Lacan formalisait la réalité psychique et
le complexe d’Oedipe dans le symptôme comme quatrième élément
nécessaire pour faire tenir l'enchaînement borroméen des trois registres
Réel, Symbolique et Imaginaire dont on connaît l’incidence dans le rapport
au social et dans les variations de la clinique.
La psychanalyse, une cure analytique, ne sont en rien la
reproduction d'un modèle relationnel, social habituel. L'altérité dont a à
connaître la psychanalyse passe par la parole et rencontre la réalité de
l'inconscient comme effet du langage. Dans ce champ de l'altérité, toute
opposition entre réalité et discours est aussi partiale et idéalogique que ne
le serait une opposition entre Science, dans ses prémices et ses réalisations,
et Inconscient, dans ses formations.
L'inconscient existait bien sûr avant la découverte de la
psychanalyse: il n'y a pas d'antériorité de la réalité sur la représentation
mais combinatoire.
Un savoir sur l'inconscient estampille cette
combinatoire. Il en va de même de la notion de 'réel', disjoint du concept
de réalité.
Ce registre n'est pas spécifique à la psychanalyse mais celle-ci en a
une pratique clinique spécifique: le réel c'est ce qui échappe au sujet, ce
qui est au-delà de l'image et de la lettre, ce qui n'est pas spécularisable, ce
qui est impossible à supporter. L'enseignement de J. Lacan en a formalisé
la place dans la structure par rapport à l'imaginaire et au symbolique. Ce
qui ne peut être symbolisé apparaît dans le réel, d'où les relations
priviligiées entre le réel, le refoulé et l'inconscient. C'est en tout cas d'être
référé à ce réel et non à un idéal, que se spécifie l'éthique de la
psychanalyse. Si un discours fait lien social, l'éthique en est davantage la
conséquence que la cause. Peut-être est-ce ce qui fonde le psychanalyste à
proposer d ’ajouter aux autres éthiques son éthique de déliaison, référée au
réel de la structure.
Que la déliaison concerne bien l'inconscient, il me semble qu'on le
repère dans la pratique théorique, de Freud à Lacan, des psychanalystes
confrontés, dans la structure dynamique des cures qu'ils conduisent, à une
problématique de perte et de deuil. Le recours de Lacan aux mathèmes,
comme outils d'un intégralement transmissible atteste bien d’une matière
qui échappe au sens, comme la nouvelle approche du statut du symptôme
par la topologie des noeuds.
La structure de la cure renvoit donc au désir d'analyste qui en assure
le cap. Elle requiert une éthique autre, décalée d'un lien social courant.
Que la déliaison ait bien sa place dans le discours, c'est ce
qu'indique l'observation à l'état brut, dans le jeu de Yeinfall, des éléments
essentiels de la pensée comme le désir, la pulsion de mort ou la limite à
toute complétude existentielle ou relationnelle.
Le sujet de la science procède de cette limite d'ou il suit les contours
du sujet de l'inconscient. Humaines ou exactes, les sciences rencontrent la
question du refoulement. Mais c'est pour l'ignorer ou tendre à l'effacer.
Cette polarité naturelle des sciences vers le conscient et la réalité et non vers
le réel et Vinconscient au sens de la psychanalyse, rend à la fois celle-ci
hétérogène aux autres champs de la connaissance en même temps qu'elle
lui assigne une place à part dans une réflexion éthique. On ne peut que
déplorer l'absence de psychanalystes au sein des comités d'éthique ayant à
connaître des mutations que la science apporte à notre société, même si la
vocation de la psychanalyse n'est pas d'expliquer le monde, de conseiller
des experts ou d'en produire. Certes les savants et les autorités morales
produisent un discours propre à dépasser une réalité d'expérience mais la
psychanalyse est la seule expérience qui produise un discours qui importe
dans le réel entre la science et la vérité, la parole et le corps sexué et
mortel.
Ces remarques indiquent une direction aux sociétés ou associations
de psychanalyse dans leurs rapports aux développements des savoirs.
C'est la pratique de l'inconscient qui permet d'aborder ces questions avec
beaucoup plus de 'déliaison' que n'en permettent les discours de maîtrise
qui se tiennent en amont ou en aval du culturel, de l'institué et du
politique, notamment dans les regroupements dont la psychanalyse est
l'objet.
C'est de la mise en perspective et en tension de ces deux concepts
pivots de désir d’analyste et d'éthique de la déliaison que l'on parviendra
peut-être, entre les aléas des innovations, la clôture d'une orthodoxie ou la
complaisance d'un ancrage psychosociologique dans la 'culture', à
préserver la psychanalyse elle-même du refoulement.
Adâress fo r correspondence:
Analyse Freudienne
41 Rue de Vaugirard
75006 Paris
France
A REVIEW OF FREUD'S EARLY REMARKS ON ADDICTION:
FROM AN IDEAL TO MASTURBATION
Rik Loose
1...why isn 1t everyone a drinker?'
de Mijolla and Shentoub
Introduction
It is a remarkable fact that there is no real substantial
psychoanalytic theory of addiction, especially given that Freud had
clinical experience of working with addicts.1 This fact is even more
remarkable when you know that one of Freud's first attempts to cure
someone was his clinical intervention with his friend and colleague, Ernst
von Fleischl-Marxov. Freud had hoped that cocaine could help his friend
to get rid of an addiction to morphine. This attempt failed and eventually
von Fleischl-Marxov died from a cocaine addiction.2 Surely these clinical
1 In Peter Gay's biography of Freud we can read the following: 'From 1912 on, Freud
analysed Jones' attractive mistress Loe Kann, a morphine addict, whom everyone,
including Freud, referred to as Jones' wife. Setting aside the sacred rule of confidentiality,
he reported to Jones about her progress on the couch and the decreasing doses of
morphine she was learning to live with'. P. Gay, Freud: A life for Our Time, London,
Macmillan, 1988, pp.186-187. Also the famous analyst Ruth Mack Brunswick was
addicted to morphine and a whole series of other drugs. Freud had understood that her
addiction should be treated. She was in analysis with him, with interruptions, from 1922
to 1938. She worked as an analyst for most of her life and was very well respected by
Freud and other analysts. Eventually she moved to America where she died in 1946 from
medical complications as the result of an accidental fall which happened whilst she was
under the influence of a combination of drugs.
2 Freud's associate, von Fleischl-Marxov had become addicted to morphine which he used
to lessen the chronic pain of an infection in his thumb. In this period Freud had become
extremely interested in the 'magical' properties of cocaine. His desire to help his friend
out of his agony, in combination with his enthusiasm for cocaine, led Freud, who assisted
encounters must have aroused Freud's interest in the problem of addiction
and provoked questions regarding its metapsychology? Freud had a
curious mind and his theory and metapsychology was always developed
on the basis of his clinical work with patients. There are numerous
references to addiction in his writings, ranging from his pre-analytical
period to the end of his life, which are interesting and important but it is
nonetheless strange that he never wrote an article dealing exclusively with
addiction. Despite the many references, we can still speak of a relative
silence in Freud's work with regards to this clinical problem. Freud has
developed elaborate theories on neurosis, perversion and psychosis. Why
is there no such elaborate theory on addiction in his work? Are there any
deep-rooted psychological motives in Freud that contributed to this
neglect? These questions have been taken up by some authors and we do
not propose to deal with them here.3 It is well known that Freud's
Breuer in the treatment of von Fleischl-Marxov, to giving him the drug thinking that it
could be a harmless substitute for morphine. Unfortunately von Fleischl-Marxov
developed an addiction to cocaine and he died in miserable circumstances. Apparently he
subcutaneously injected the cocaine which resulted in 'undesirable side effects'. Peter Gay
writes in a footnote to his biography of Freud that ’this is a complicated issue: FleischlMarxov injected himself with cocaine, and Freud did not at the time object to this
procedure. Later Freud turned away from it, and denied that he had ever advocated it.' P.
Gay, Freud: A Time for Our Life, o.c. p.45.
3 In an article from 1995 Ali Magoudi argues that factors and events which contributed to
Freud's cocaine episode, as Jones called it, resulted in a theoretical position which led to a
tendency in Freud and psychoanalysts after him, to exclude addicts from psychoanalytic
treatment. Magoudi highlights the blind spots in Freud's self analysis and theory in order
to show how they functioned as obstacles to analysis of addicts and addictions. A.
Magoudi, Freud: de la cocaine au complexe d'Oedipe; Cliniques mediterranees, nr 47-48,
Clinicjues des toxicomanes, Aix-en-Provence, Centre National du Livre et L'Universite de
Provence, 1995, pp. 107-119. See further Peter Gay: 'We know that he admitted being
addicted to cigars (...) Plainly there were depths to his mind that his self analysis had
never reached, conflicts it had never been able to resolve. Freud's inability to give up
smoking vividly underscores the truth in his observation of an all-too-human disposition
he called knowing-and-not-knowing, a state of rational apprehension that does not result
in appropriate action,' P.Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Time, o.c. p. 427. See also a section
called L'episode de la cocaine (1884-1885) et le probleme de la <toxicomanie> de Freud in Didier
Anzieu's book on Freud's self-analysis. D. Anzieu, V Auto-Analyse de Freud et la Decouverte
66
relationship to drugs was ambiguous. When Freud came across cocaine in
1884 he was immediately fascinated with it, particularly its therapeutic
properties and he used it himself for a period of about ten years. He
wasn’t really interested in alcohol and only occasionally drank some wine.
Addiction problems in his practice and social environment irritated him.
He was hopelessly addicted to smoking and nicotine. He smoked about
twenty cigars a day. He needed cigars to work and lack of nicotine
plunged him into a bad mood. When he was diagnosed as having cancer
of the mouth he was informed that his smoking habit would kill him and
on several occasions he was strongly advised by his physicians to stop
smoking but he was unable to stop despite this medical advice.4 From
Freud's biographer Ernest Jones we know that for a long time Freud
refused to take analgesics against the excruciating pain produced by the
cancerous growth in his mouth. He likened taking drugs to the
embracement of death. Freud's personal and professional ambiguities
toward addiction perhaps contributed to the fact that there is no proper
de la Psychanalyse, Tome 1, Paris, P.U.F. 1975, pp. 71-78. There we can read among other
things the following remarks (our translation): ’Whilst Freud elaborated bit by bit the
psychoanalytic comprehension of most of the psychopathological manifestations,
toxicomania remained an unexplored terrain for him, sign of a ’resistance’ which is locked
into a personal flaw1(P. 75). 'One encounters in fact in Freud certain characteristics which
H. Rosenfeld (1960) showed in addicts: idealisation of the breast with which the subject
proves the need to feel united or identified (Freud became partially conscious of this), the
search for a means of artificially producing the hallucination of that ideal breast, the
return of the good reconstituting drug as bad harmful substance (Freud came close to the
recognition of this process with the discovery of ambivalence.), the disavowal of
frustration and persecutary anxiety (Freud was not conscious of this anxiety nor of his
defence against it), the identification with a sick object or death (here, in this case, grand­
father Schlomo and then the younger brother Julius) (P. 78).
4 Gay writes: 'Still, from 1923 on, Freud repeatedly developed benign or precancerous
leukoplakias, which had to be treated or excised. Pichler was skilful and kind, but the
thirty or more operations he performed - some not so minor - to say nothing of the scores
of fittings, cleanings, and refittings of Freud's prothesis, were invasive and irksome
procedures. Often they hurt him very much. The pleasure that continued smoking gave
Freud, or, rather, his incurable need for it, must have been irresistible. After all, every
cigar was another irritant, a little step toward another painful intervention.' P. Gay, Ibid.
pp. 426-427.
67
theoretical development in relation to addiction in his work. One can
therefore not depend on a coherent theoretical foundation in Freud in
order to construct a psychoanalytic theory and clinic of addiction.
Nevertheless an exploration of remarks on and references to addiction
throughout Freud's work show that there is a lot of material to work with
and on which to reflect. For this paper we propose to concentrate on his
pre-analytical period in order to show that this was a very interesting
period of Freud's work, especially in relation to addiction. We will not
include his papers on cocaine here as, in our opinion, they are so central to
the development of his work and important for an understanding of a
psychoanalytic approach to addiction that they warrant a separate
exploration.
Despite the lack of a substantial psychoanalytic theory on addiction
an enormous amount of articles and books have been written about
addiction from a psychoanalytic perspective. Excellent surveys and
reviews of the literature have been written by Crowley (1939), Rosenfeld
(1964), Yorke (1970), de Mijolla and Shentoub (1973), Limentani (1986) and
Magoudi (1986).5 This paper is to some degree based on the chapter by de
Mijolla and Shentoub which deals with Freud's pre-analytical period. This
work was chosen for its detailed description, its clarity and above all its
wide range of references.
Freud’s Cocaine Papers and remarks on addiction from his preanalytical period already show an indication of the problem with the
questions of diagnosis. What is addiction? What are the differences
between normal and abnormal usage of drugs? Are there different kinds
5 R. M. Crowley, Psychoanalytic literature on drug addiction and alcoholism,
Psychoanalytic Review, 26, pp. 39-54. H. A. Rosenfeld (1964), 'The Psychopathology of Drug
Addiction and Alcoholism: a Critical Review of the Psycho-Analytic Literature' in Psychotic
states, London, Hogarth Press, pp. 217-252, 1965. C. Yorke, 'A Critical Review of Some
Psychoanalytical Literature on Drug Addiction' in Brit J. Med. Psychol, 1970,43, pp. 141-159.
A. De Mijolla et S. Shentoub, Pour une Psychanalyse de VAlcoholisme; Paris, pb Payot, 1973,
pp. 15-100. A. Limentani, ’On the Psychodynamics of Drug Dependence1in Between Freud and
Klein, London, Free Association Books, 1986, pp. 48-65. A. Magoudi, 'Revue de la littérature
psychanalytique sur les toxicomanies' in Approche Psychanalytique des Toxicomanes (eds. C.
Ferbos et A. Magoudi), Paris, Presse Universitaires de France, 1986, pp. 7-43.
68
of addictions and on what are these differences based? Should a diagnosis
be based on different drugs and their effects? It is very difficult to define
what precisely a drug is. A common definition of a drug is of a substance
which when incorporated, is capable of producing alterations of the mind
and the body. This definition makes sense at first, but on reflection it has
no theoretical or even explanatory value. A lot of things that can be
incorporated can be a drug or act like one. It is sometimes difficult to
distinguish between what is a drug, a poison or a food. Drugs (including
alcohol) taken in large amounts can become poisons, but in limited
amounts they can function as remedies. If it is difficult to define what a
drug is, then it is even more difficult to define what constitutes an
addiction to drugs. A definition of addiction should be able to distinguish
between normal use and abnormal abuse.
These difficulties are
compounded by the facts that the same drugs and similar quantities of
drugs do not affect people in the same way. These different effects of
drugs are more than likely related to psychological features of people and
there is no doubt an extremely complex cause and effect dynamic between
the former and the latter. If drugs affect people in different ways, then to
distinguish between addictions on the basis of the kind of drug used
might not be at all valid, unless a clear and unambiguous relationship
exists between certain psychological features and particular sought after
drug effects. Demonstrating the existence of such a relationship has
proven to be extremely difficult. We certainly will not be able to answer
all of these questions, but we would hope at least to be able to show that
there is the foundation in Freud's pre-analytical period for the formulation
of an answer to them.
From an ideal material object to the disappointment of fantasy
In 1888, the year after Freud wrote his last paper on cocaine, he
published an article called Hysteria. He writes:
As factors which produce outbreaks of acute hysterical
illness may be adduced: trauma, intoxication (lead, alcohol),
grief, emotion, exhausting illness - anything, in short, which
is able to exercise a powerful effect of a detrimental kind.6
Alcohol and other intoxicants are here considered by Freud to be
potentially dangerous substances or 'foreign agents' which can harm the
psyche of the subject. Drugs are only one of a number of external factors
which can cause hysteria. Five pages later he writes in the same article:
To begin with, internal medication is to be disrecommended
here and narcotic drugs are to be warned against. To
prescribe a narcotic drug in an acute hysteria in nothing less
than a serious technical mistake.7
Four years previously Freud thought he had found a narcotic drug which
could function as an ’universal panacea* against human suffering. His
investigations in relation to the drug cocaine led him to the conclusion
that such a panacea is an illusion. Here he warns against using any kind
of drug as a cure for hysteria. Nothing in this article refers directly to
addiction. In a text from 1890 called Psychical (or mental) Treatment Freud
deals with the question of hypnotic treatment. He writes that hypnosis
should not be employed as a last resort measure, but can be employed to
all nervous diseases and morbid habits such as alcoholism, morphine
addiction, and sexual aberrations.8 In his text Hypnosis from 1891, Freud
writes that hypnosis should only be used for ...
... purely functional, nervous disorders, for ailments of
psychical origin and for toxic as well as other addictions and
that in general it should be avoided for symptoms with an
organic cause.9
6S. Freud. Hysteria (18881)), S.E., vol. I, London, The Hogarth Press, p. 50.
7 ibid., p.55.
8 S. Freud. Psychical (or Mental) Treatment (1905a), S.E., vol. VII, p. 299.
9 S. Freud. Hypnosis (1891d), S.E., vol. I, p.106.
This is interesting as it seems to suggest that for Freud the addictions
belong to those symptoms which do not have an organic cause. In a letter
to Fliess from 1895 on Paranoia and known as draft H, Freud writes the
following:
The alcoholic will never admit to himself that he has become
impotent through drink. However much alcohol he can
tolerate, he cannot tolerate this insight. So his wife is to
blame - delusions of jealousy and so on.10
Here we see a first association between alcoholism and sexuality in
Freud's thinking. Another interesting aspect of this brief passage is the
mechanism of denial in the alcoholic ('my sexual problem has nothing to
do with drink.') and its associated mechanism of not taking responsibility
by blaming others ('my sexual problem has nothing to do with me; my
wife is to blame.'). It is important to note that Freud here refers to
alcoholism in the context of paranoia. He will come back to the delusion
of jealousy in the alcoholic in his text on Schreber. In a letter to Fliess from
1896, draft K, Freud refers to drinking (dipsomania) as a secondary
symptom which can arise if the compulsions of obsessional neurosis are
transferred to motor impulses against the obsession.11 This remark is not
unimportant as drinking is considered here by Freud as a (secondary)
symptom related to obsessional neurosis. It is interesting that according
to Freud this can only happen if something of the ideational aspect of the
obsessional neurosis is translated into a motor impulse. He seems to
suggest that these motor impulses are ritual actions, protective
behaviours, brooding and so on. In other words drinking is something
other than purely ideational, or as we could say drinking is not a
symbolically structured formation of the unconscious. In Further Remarks
on the Neuro-Psychoses of Defence from 1896, Freud considers dipsomania to
be a numbing of the mind as a protective measure against obsessional
10 S. Freud. Draft H. Paranoia (1895), The complete letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess,
(tranl. and ed. J.F. Masson), Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1985, p.110.
11 S. Freud. Draft K. The Neuroses of Defence (1896), op.cit, p. 166.
71
affects. Here again he places drinking amongst the secondary symptoms
in obsessional neurosis where it functions as an anaesthetic.12In a letter to
Fliess from 11 January 1897, Freud refers to a case of dipsomania about
which he says that 'dipsomania arises through the intensification or,
better, substitution of the one impulse for the associated sexual one'.13 He
also writes there that the same idea applies to the gambling mania of
another patient. This is the first time Freud suggests that addictions like
toxicomania or gambling can be substitutions of repressed sexual
impulses. It is only thirty one years later in his paper on Dostoyevsky that
Freud will come back to his idea of gambling as a substitute satisfaction
for unsatisfied sexual impulses. In this paper he will link the addiction to
gambling to masturbation. This is not the first time that Freud establishes
a connection between addiction and masturbation. The first time Freud
writes about masturbation in the context of addicition is towards the end
of 1897, a year in which he made some of the most important discoveries
in psychoanalysis on foot of his self-analysis, such as unconscious
fantasies as falsification of the truth.
Important discoveries
In order to illustrate the importance of this crucial period in Freud's
thinking it might be helpful to provide this year with a brief historical
context.14 . During his 'cocaine period* (1884-1887) Freud had become
interested in hysteria. He greatly admired the famous physician and
expert on hysteria, Charcot, and visited him in Paris in 1885. In 1893,
Freud breaks away from Charcot's thinking. In that year he writes an
article called: Some Points for a Comparative Study of Organic and Hysterical
12S. Freud. Further Remarks on the Neuro-psychoses of Defence (1896b), S.E., vol. HI, p.173.
13 S. Freud. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, op.cit., p.222.
14 Paul Verhaeghe's book, Does the Woman Exist?, has been of great help as a guide in our
exploration of this brief historical context. P. Verhaeghe, Does the Woman exist? (translated
by Marc Dury), London, Rebus Press, 1997, pp. 10-29.
72
Motor P a r a l y s i s In this article, Freud came to the conclusions that
hysterical paralyses are not the same as organically caused paralyses and
that hysterical symptoms of paralyses do not follow the laws of anatomy.
In that same year, Freud and Breuer wrote their Preliminary Communication
as an introduction to what later would become their famous Studies on
Hysteria.16 This is the moment the trauma theory is bom. Hysterics have
experienced some traumatic events and the representations of these events
have a pathological effect because they cannot be abreacted. What cannot
be abreacted? The affect or energy that is contained within these
representations. Why can this not be abreacted? Because there is a
'splitting of consciousness', a dissociation between the group which forms
the pathological representations of the traumatic events and the rest of the
psyche which defends itself against these representations. The result of
this split is that the affect or energy cannot be wom-away or abreacted via
the ego or what perhaps should be called here the rest of the 'normal'
conscious associations. What is this affect or energy? It is a quantity of
something and Freud defines it, in 1894, in what is known as the Qhypothesis:
I refer to the concept that in mental functions something is to
be distinguished - a quota of affect or sum of excitation which possesses all the characteristics of a quantity (though
we have no means of measuring it), which is capable of
increase, diminution, displacement and abreaction, and
which is spread over the memory-traces of ideas somewhat
as an electric charge is spread over the surface of a body.17
15 S. Freud. Some Points for a Comparative Study of Organic and Hysterical Motor Paralyses
(1893c), S.E., vol. 1, pp. 160-172.
16 S. Freud. On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication
(1893a), S.E., vol. H, pp. 3-17.
17 S. Freud. The Neuro-Psychoses of Defence. An Attempt at a Psychological Theory of Acquired
Hysteria, of many Phobias and Obsessions and of certain Hallucinatory Psychoses (1894a), S.E.,
vol. ID, p. 60.
73
Freud's concept of quantity here is important. This quantity is something
that cannot be measured but it can be changed and distributed. It is
something that can be related to ideas or representations. It is clearly
something that, according to Freud, can be harmful when it exists in
isolated form or when it accumulates. Freud's psychotherapy of hysteria
is an attempt to set this energy or quantity free from the clutches of the
isolated/ repressed group of representations by establishing a link
between this group and the rest of the psyche and by allowing this energy
to be wom-away via associations. Freud's idea of how this quantity
functions is based on the constancy-principle from nineteenth century
energetics. This will form a framework for much of his thinking (at least
till 1920) and it forms the justification for his concept of the pleasureprinciple, which, in simplified form, says that the accumulation of energy
causes pain and its reduction leads to pleasure. Freud was confronted
with the problem of quantity for the first time in his work on cocaine,
where he tried to understand the peculiar relationship between the effect
of cocaine and a quantity of energy contained within the body.
In 1895, Freud's Q-hypothesis helps him to to establish the
beginnings of a differential diagnosis. In an article on anxiety neurosis he
explores the relationship between anxiety and sexuality in terms of the
dynamic between the psyche, the soma and quantities of energy.18
Normally a quantity of energy which originates from the soma reaches a
certain treshold of intensity with the result that it can be ’picked up' and
processed by the psyche in such a way that it is properly abreacted. This
process can go wrong in three different ways which will lead to three
different pathologies: 1) There is a conflict in the psyche with the result
that the energy, after having been processed, cannot be adequately
abreacted and is therefore sent back to the soma where it leads to
conversion symptoms; 2) there is a 'psychical insufficiency' through which
accumulated somatic energy cannot be psychically processed; it remains,
therefore, somatic and subsequently becomes harmful; 3) there is an
18 S. Freud. On the Grounds for Detaching a Particular Syndrome from Neurasthenia under the
Description 'Anxiety Neurosis* (1895b), S.E., vol. Ill, pp. 90-115.
'inadequate disburdening' of the somatic impulse, through for instance
masturbation, with the result that a proper abreaction of the energy has
become impossible and again becomes harmful. The first possibility
indicates the mechanism at work in the psychoneuroses, whilst the second
and third possibilities refer to anxiety neurosis and neurasthenia
respectively, which belong to the category of the actual neuroses. This
third possibility in particular is interesting for us here because Freud, as
we said, would establish a connection between masturbation and
addiction for the first time towards the end of 1897. But before we
continue this exploration of Freud's references to addiction with this
comment about masturbation in relation to addiction, we need to
complete our exploration of the historical context of that crucial year in
Freud's pre-analytical period.
We can infer from what Freud writes about quantity of energy in
his article on anxiety neurosis that this quantity exists in somatic form and
in a psychic form. The latter is the result of a psychic processing of the
somatic form and is called sexual libido. The originally somatic or
material form of energy is turned into a psychic or non-material kind of
energy. Libido is the result of the transformation of somatic energy into a
form of psychic excitation which becomes attached to psychosexual
representations. Freud subsequently discovers that this quantum of
psychic energy can be displaced over these representations. Displacement
will later become one of the mechanisms of the primary process of the
unconscious. But before this Freud was beginning to realise that this
displacement of energy often concerns a wish or a psychosexual desire
about which hysterics don't want to know anything and against which
they vigorously defend themselves with symptoms. Paul Verhaeghe
considers this discovery of Freud to be the true point of departure for
psychoanalysis. He writes:
From that point on, hysteria was no longer determined by
some mysterious trauma, but by an inarticulable desire that
kept on being displaced. On 27 October 1897, Freud
generalised this point and made it the most fundamental
characteristic of hysteria: 'Longing is the main character-trait
of hysteria, just as a current anaesthesia (even though only
potential) is its main symptom.'19
Here we find an important argument for considering 1897 as a crucial year
for Freud. In order to be able to put this argument into its proper context
we will need to go back a couple of years. In Studies on Hysteria (1895)
Freud argues that certain psychological experiences cannot be adequately
abreacted, mainly because the patient represses certain painful ideas. The
result of this repression is that this group of ideas is cut-off from the rest of
the psyche and abreaction of the painful affect or energy via the rest of the
psyche has become impossible.
This strangulated affect becomes
pathological. The unconscious group of ideas forms, as it were, a
disturbing 'foreign body' within die psyche against which the patients
need to defend themselves and which becomes the object of therapeutic
effort. Is there no connection at all between this repressed group of ideas
and the rest of the psyche? There are connections. Patients suffer
symptoms and these symptoms are determined by this unconscious group
of ideas or representations. Freud says that an unconscious representation
is wrongly related to a conscious representation and he calls this
displacement a 'false connection'.20 In other words, symptoms are false
connections between unconscious and conscious representations. The
patient has no knowledge of this connection because of the displacement
that has taken place. Freud mentions another connection between the
unconscious and the rest of the psyche. He writes: 'The psychical material
in such cases of hysteria presents itself as a structure in several dimensions
which is stratified in at least three different ways'.21 This is how Freud
begins his discussion of the threefold order arrangement of mnemic
material in hysteria.22 There is a traumatic nucleus in which 'the
pathogenic idea has found its purest manifestation'. Around this nucleus
19P. Verhaeghe, op.cit., pp. 15-16.
20S. Freud. Studies on Hysteria (1895d), S.E„, vol. II, p. 67, footnote.
21 ibid., p. 288.
22 ibid., pp. 288-289.
76
we find the different layers of mnemic material. The first layer is of a
chronological order. The most recent memories lead to earlier ones and
eventually the train of associations will end up with the most traumatic
ones with which the series began. Similar memories constitute themes
and these themes form a second kind of arrangement; they are
concentrically arranged around the pathological nucleus. Each stratum is
characterised by a similar kind of resistance against penetration of the
traumatic nucleus and the closer you get to it, the higher the resistance.
Freud indicates that the third kind of arrangement is the most important
one but also the most problematic one to comprehend. It is an
arrangement according to thought-content and the connections are made
by logical links which take irregular and twisting paths to the nucleus and
back to the surface. He writes:
It contains nodal points at which two or more threads meet
and thereafter proceed as one; and as a rule several threads
which run independently, or which are connected at various
points by side-paths, debouch into the nucleus. To put this
in other words, it is very remarkable how often a symptom
is determined in several ways, is 'overdetermined1.23
What Freud's discussion of hysteria shows here is that the unconscious
and symptoms are structured and that this structure is situated in relation
to a point which remains outside it or, rather, is excluded from within it.
This nucleus is the point to where all threads of associations ultimately
lead, but it is also the point where they cease to exist. As if nothing can be
said anymore beyond this border around the nucleus. In The Interpretation
of Dreams Freud calls this point 'the navel of the dream'. It is the point
where all associations in relation to the dream elements come to a halt.
Here language has no say. It is something at the core of our being which
is excluded from the Symbolic and it is what Lacan called the Real which
he conceptualised as that which cannot be grasped by the signifier.
23 ibid., p. 289.
77
Freud's hope was to find a way of trying to get his patients to articulate
something of this nucleus. He wanted his patients to penetrate this point
in order to wear away, via chains of associations, the strangulated and
therefore disturbing 'quantity of energy1 or affect imprisoned in this
nucleus. This hope was not crushed despite his therapeutic failures.
Freud’s patients did not seem to want to give up their traumatic memories
and when they did appear to have articulated some of the original trauma,
they began to produce other disturbing memories. In other words, the
cathartic method with its ideal of a complete and final solution did not
work and Freud finds himself confronted with a constant displacement of
traumas, affects and memories. This is not to say that abreaction as a
phenomenon does not exist. It is in fact used by modem therapeutic
interventions, such as scream-therapy, gestalt-therapy and even some
drug-based therapies, as their raison d'etre and therapeutic aim.
The therapeutic iaHures which resulted from the cathartic method
did not change Freud's hope for a complete therapeutic solution to the
hysterical and neurotic problems of his patients. It did however change
something else! He abandoned his dependence on the trauma or
seduction theory by introducing the theory of fantasy and infantile
sexuality. This aspect of Freud's work is so well known and so thoroughly
documented that a few words should suffice.
Before 1897 Freud believed that hysteria or neurosis was caused by
a scene of sexual seduction in childhood which he considered to be
traumatic for the infant. The infant could not comprehend this scene and
the trauma remained an inactive part of the psyche of the child until a
second scene experienced in or around puberty activated this dormant
part of the psyche with a deferred effect. Slowly, but surely, Freud begins
to realise that the hysterical symptoms contain an element of pleasure.
This made him think that the first traumatic scenes perhaps might have
been somewhat pleasurable for the infant. Freud has stumbled upon
elements of infantile sexuality. The infant must have experienced a
conflict between the pain of trauma and something pleasurable. This is
the moment when the cathartic method of abreaction begins to disappear
because the contradictory forces of conflict invalidate the idea of an
unproblematic purging of a 'toxic' quantity of energy.
Verhaeghe writes:
Or as Paul
The failure of hysterical defence was not due to a failure of
the process of discharging the memory of an external
trauma. Hysterical defence fails because it has to make a
compromise between a desire and the repression of this
desire.24
In a letter to Fliess from 6 April 1897, Freud mentions for the first time that
hysteria is caused by fantasies which are made up of things that children
have heard at a very early age and were only understood later in life.25
Freud's letter to Fliess from 2 May 1897 is a very important one. Here
Freud indicates that the cause of hysteria is to be sought in fantasies which
are related to infantile impulses and whose origins might also stem from
masturbatory activity.
In the first place, I have gained a sure inkling of the structure
of hysteria. Everything goes back to the reproduction of
scenes. Some can be obtained directly, others always by way
of fantasies set up in front of them. The fantasies stem from
things that have been heard, but understood subsequently,
and all their material is of course genuine. They are
protective structures, sublimations of the facts, embellish­
ments of them, and at the same time serve for self-relief.
Their accidental origin is perhaps from masturbation
fantasies. A second important piece of insight tells me that
the psychic structures which, in hysteria, are affected by
repression are not in reality memories - since no one
indulges in memory activity without a motive - but impulses
that derive from primal scenes.26
24 P. Verhaeghe, op.cit., p. 25.
25 S. Freud. The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud to Wilhelm Fliess, op.cit, p. 234.
26 ibid., p. 239.
79
Freud's remarks here about self-relief and masturbation are not
unimportant because they clearly hint at the possible connection between
an ’artificial’ production of pleasure and something unpleasant or
dangerous against which this pleasure forms a protection. The interesting
aspect of this connection is that masturbatory sexual pleasure can be used
against frightening sexual impulses. This is crucial for the development of
a psychoanalytic theory of addiction and we will come back to it with
Freud's remark about masturbation and addiction later in that year.
From here on Freud will elaborate his idea that something painful
or traumatic needs to be processed psychically by for instance fantasies.
The letter to Fliess from 7 July 1897 is interesting not only because Freud
feels on the verge of something new, but also because he appears to be
making progress in his own self-analysis. His understanding of his own
neurosis seems to coincide with his idea that memories and fantasies can
be falsifications of the past (and the latter also of the future.).27 The letter
from 21 September 1897 is a crucial one. This is generally considered to be
the letter in which Freud abandons the trauma theory. He writes to Fliess
that in the unconscious 'there are no indications of reality' and he suggests
that in the unconscious it is perhaps not possible to distinguish between
truth and fiction.28 Freud does not believe in his 'neurotica' anymore. In
the very same letter, Freud writes in brackets the following remark:
'...there would remain the solution that the sexual fantasy invariably seizes
upon the theme of the parents'.29 Indeed it is four letters later (15 October)
that Freud writes to Fliess (and again in the context of his self-analysis)
about the Oedipus Complex as 'a universal event in early childhood'.30 In
another famous letter to Fliess, from 14 November 1897, Freud writes that
fantasies and the repression of these fantasies have something to do with
'sexual zones'.31 This is Freud's first elaboration of a theory on infantile
27 ibid., p. 255.
28 ibid., p. 264.
29 ibid., pp. 264-265.
30 ibid., p. 272.
sexuality, a theory which he so far had only hinted at. Almost hidden in
the letter, Freud makes a throw-away remark which should arouse our
interest. He writes:
... and the final outcome is consequently that a quota of
libido is not able, as is ordinarily the case, to force its way
through to action or translation into psychic terms, but is
obliged to proceed in a regressive direction (as happens in
dreams).
In other words, a certain quantity of energy for some reason cannot be
psychically processed and, therefore, it becomes disturbing. Something is
excluded from language and has a traumatic effect. In the year 1898 Freud
mainly concentrates on his analyses of dreams and, in doing so, he is very
much relying on linguistic analyses. In his first letter from the next year (3
January 1899) Freud comes back to fantasies and infantile sexuality but
this time he includes the linguistic connection between them. He writes:
In the first place, a small bit of my self-analysis has forced its
way through and confirmed that fantasies are products of
later periods and are projected back from what was then the
present into earliest childhood; the manner in which this
occurs also emerged - once again by verbal link. To the
question 'What happened in earliest childhood?' the answer
is, 'Nothing, but the germ of a sexual impulse existed.' (...).
In the second place, I have grasped the meaning of a new
psychic element which I conceive to be of general
significance and a preliminary stage of symptoms (even
before fantasy).32
The new psychic element is the unsymbolised aspect of the sexual impulse
and Freud considers it to be a first stage in the formation of symptoms.
32 ibid., p. 338.
81
Nothing needs to have happened. These impulses (in unprocessed form)
are enough in themselves to cause trauma. It is only sometime later that
these impulses are retroactively understood with the help of fantasies
which take shape with what Freud calls 'verbal links" and which are what
we can call elements of language. It is in this latter stage that the formation
of symptoms takes place on the basis of these elements of language. For
Freud, symptoms are therefore structured like a language and contain the
'germ of a sexual impulse'. This 'germ' is something that is only
retroactively and falsely understood later on. In other words all
symptoms ultimately relate to a disturbing element of pleasure (or
satisfaction).
These last couple of years have been very fruitful for Freud. He has
discovered fantasy, infantile sexuality, the structuring effect of the
Oedipus Complex and the importance of language for our understanding
of the psyche. Above all, he has discovered that human suffering is not
caused in the first place by a clearly locatable external trauma but by a
disturbing element within the psychic economy of the subject which ex­
ists like an unprocessed remainder. Neurotics are no longer innocent
victims of an external cause; something disturbs them from within. Let us
now return to the end of that important year of 1897 when Freud
remarked on the connection between masturbation and addiction.
Masturbation and addiction: From disappointment to the quest for
something more
On 22 December 1897, he writes the following to Fliess:
The insight has dawned on me that masturbation is the one
major habit, 'the primary addiction', and it is only as a
substitute and replacement for it that the other addictions to alcohol, morphine, tobacco, and the like come into
existence. The role played by this addiction in hysteria is
enormous; and it is perhaps there that my major, still
outstanding obstacle is to be found, wholly or in part. And
here, of course doubt arises about whether an addiction of
this kind is curable, or whether analysis and therapy must
come to a halt at this point and content themselves with
transforming hysteria in neurasthenia.33
In this passage, Freud relates the addictions to drugs, alcohol and other
substances to neurasthenia via the 'primary' addiction to masturbation.
We wrote before that, according to Freud, the 'inadequate disburdening'
of the somatic impulse through masturbation can lead to a lack of proper
abreaction of the somatic energy and ultimately will result in a harmful
effect. What is an inadequate disburdening and what is a lack of proper
abreaction? The former meant for Freud (at that time) that the absence of
'normal' sexual activity could result in an inadequate release of sexual
tension or energy. The latter meant that, therefore, a certain amount of
this energy could not be properly processed and worn away by the psyche
as a result of which this somatic energy became harmful or toxic and
caused neurasthenia.
If the other addictions are substitutes for
masturbation then it seems that Freud considered addiction to be related
to an actual neurosis. This must surely be the beginning of the possibility
of a differential diagnosis for addiction because Freud had earlier on
related some of the addictions to other neuroses and mental problems.
That here perhaps he encounters the limitations of his technique is of
crucial importance and something that needs to be explored and
questioned separately. Freud's final comparatively extensive remarks
before the turn of the century on addiction and again masturbation stem
from an article from 1898 called Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses.
Here he is predominantly concerned with the related questions of how to
break addictive habits and what it is that causes them. He writes:
To break the patient of the habit of masturbating is only one
of the new therapeutic tasks which are imposed on the
physician who takes the sexual aetiology of the neurosis into
33 ibid., p. 187.
83
account; and it seems that precisely this task, like the cure of
any other addiction, can only be carried out in an institution
under medical supervision. Left to himself, the masturbator
is accustomed, whenever something happens that depresses
him, to return to his convenient form of satisfaction.
Medical treatment, in this instance, can have no other aim
then to lead the neurasthenic, who has now recovered his
strength, back to normal sexual intercourse. For sexual
need, when once it has been aroused and has been satisfied
for any length of time, can no longer be silenced; it can only
be displaced along another path. Incidentally, the same
thing applies to all treatments for breaking an addiction.
Their success will only be an apparent one, so long as the
physician contents himself with withdrawing the narcotic
substance from his patients, without troubling about the
source from which their imperative need for it springs.
'Habit' is a mere form of words, without any explanatory
value. Not everyone who has occasion to take morphia,
cocaine, chloralhydrate, and so on, for a period, acquires in
this way an 'addiction’ to them. Closer enquiry usually
shows that these narcotics are meant to serve - directly or
indirectly * as a substitute for a lack of sexual satisfaction;
and whenever normal sexual life can no longer be re­
established, we can count with certainty on the patient's
relapse.34
It strikes us as funny when Freud proposes to treat masturbators (like
other addicts) in an institutional setting under medical supervision. We
are less concerned today with masturbation but we are in a moral panic
about addiction. Whatever image an institution full of masturbators
under medical supervision conjures up for you, do not let yourself be
distracted by it and do not ignore what is really at stake here.
34S. Freud. Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses (1898), S.E., vol. Ill, pp. 275-276.
Masturbation and addiction have in common the fact that both activities
are able to produce a pleasure which is completely independent of others.
The encounter with others always implies an element of risk, of anxiety
and above all of unpredictability. To be part of human culture and to take
part in the social bond always implies the paying of a price. This price is
total pleasure which is lost when castration cuts the child out of the unity
with the mother and replaces it with an ordinary or limited kind of
pleasure. Addiction creates the illusion that this total pleasure is
attainable again and masturbation creates the illusion for the other that the
masturbator might have access to this pleasure. The masturbator knows
only too well how limiting an orgasm is. This 'knowledge' of the
masturbating subject is probably the reason why masturbation is less of a
threat to culture than addiction and why these days we have treatment
centres for addicts and not for masturbators. When do we find
masturbators in treatment centres? When the limited effects of their
activities do not suffice anymore and are supplanted with for-instance
drugs or alcohol.
When Freud makes the connection between
masturbation and neurasthenia, he does not take his place in an age-long
cultural tradition of frightening people away from such an
un(re)productive activity, as masturbation by linking it with all kinds of
imaginary diseases and ailments. When Freud posits that one of the
causes of neurathenia can be masturbation, he is more concerned with an
inherent problem in human sexuality. His concern is the possibility that
some aspect of our sexuality cannot be symbolised or psychically
processed and that this lack can lead to all kinds of disturbances such as
neurasthenia or as he suggests in the above quote, depression. He writes
that whenever something happens to the masturbator that depresses him,
he might relapse into his convenient form of satisfaction. So perhaps the
'primary addiction' is related to depression or neurasthenia in a much
more problematic way than we thought. Depression and neurasthenia can
cause this 'primary addiction' rather than just the other way around. In
other words, Freud is here opening up the possibility that addiction and
masturbation as pleasure producing activities can be related to mental
pain as the cause of these activities. This idea is substantiated by the rest
85
of the quote. He writes that 'habit' has no explanatory value and that not
all people who take morphine or cocaine become addicts. In fact he relates
the cause of addictions to a 'lack of sexual satisfaction’ by positing
addiction as a substitute satisfaction. He even goes so far as to suggest
that abstention from drugs and alcohol in itself will never be sufficient to
cure a patient but that one needs to look at the cause of the addiction
which is situated within the subject. In this sense, Freud was already way
ahead of most modem addiction treatment ideologies which proclaim that
there are no causes of addictions and that this preoccupation with causes
only diverts attention away from what should be the only and true
therapeutic aim: abstention. The problem for Freud in 1898 is that the
therapeutic solution he comes up with is a 'normal sexual relationship1.
His blind hope for a complete solution in the form of a normal sexuality
hides his inkling that something-is-up in the domain of human sexuality.
With this blind hope of a normal sexuality, Freud is precisely at the same
level as those modem treatment ideologies which proclaim abstinence as
their aim and happiness as their object.
Address fo r correspondence:
Centre fo r Psychoana lytic
Studies
LSB College
6-9 Balfe Street
Dublin 2
TRAUMA AND HYSTERIA WITHIN FREUD AND LACAN
Paul Verhaeghe
I want to start this paper with a question: why is it proving necessary
to reopen the dossier on trauma in general and Freud's vision on it in
particular? An obvious answer is that today we are confronted much more
with this pathology than we used to be, and not only in Belgium, for that
matter.
The signifier of 'posttraumatic stress disorder' is virtually
everywhere. Of course, it is very difficult to prove or disprove the
hypothesis that traumatic experiences are actually more frequent than they
used to be. Anyhow, it is obvious that the recent hype concerning
'recovered memory therapy’has endorsed the whole question. In itself, this
discussion is already a retake, albeit in a changed form, of the discussion
around Masson, who in the early eighties tried to prove how wrong Freud
was in matters of trauma.1 Such hypes have even received a name on their
own, it is called 'Freud bashing'. The most interesting question from a
clinical point of view is why a number of people think it necessary to bash
daddy Freud, or, at the other end, think it necessary to justify daddy Freud.
But this would lead us into a discussion of the oedipal complex, which is not
on the agenda today ...
One of the remarkable things about these discussions is their extreme
character, which is such that even the 'normal' press talks about it, both at
the time of Masson and today. One does not need that much clinical
experience in order to acknowledge the fact that this extreme character
betrays a hidden issue. From a clinical point of view, it is very important to
unravel this hidden wager, in order to discuss it openly. The thing at stake
is none other than an underlying value judgement which divides clinical
1J. Masson. 1The assault on truth: Freud's suppression of the seduction theory'. London, Fontana,
1992.
87
practice arbitrarily into two different parts. On the one hand, we find the
hysterical patients with their merely fantasmatic aetiology, that is, an
imaginary, early-infantile traumatic seduction. This has to be read as
follows: imaginary means, no real aetiology, hence they are not real patients
either. Furthermore: they are nothing but simulators who play false with
the laws of science. Historically, the starting-point of this apprehension
starts with Babinsky, one of the founding fathers of neurology who trained
his assistants in differential diagnostics in such a way that they would be
able to sort the real patients from the fake ones, that is, the hysterical ones.2
Indeed, the conversion symptoms of these hysterical patients did not tally
with the objective laws of science, thus they had to be frauds. At the other
side of the opposition, one finds at last the real patients, which means, from
this point of view, those who have been subjected to real traumatic
situations and whose pathology is a direct consequence of these situations.
Thus, besides being a patient, they are also victims and they deserve not
only our counselling, but also our sympathy and even our pity.
The most remarkable thing about this binary categorisation is that
the first category tends to become smaller and smaller, whilst the second
one keeps growing. Nowadays, there are almost no patients left, there are
only victims who are in no way whatsoever implied in their situation.
Historically speaking, this value judgement was greatly endorsed by the
feminist movement. Indeed the patients or victims were almost always
women, the sexual offenders were almost always men. From that time
onwards, a Newspeak denomination started being widely used: one does
not say 'patient1, not even 'victim1, the correct signifier is: 'survivor1. For
example, even someone like J. Herman falls into this kind of trap, in her
book on Trauma and Recovery. The obligation for 'political correctness' must
be quite heavy. Ironically enough, in the same book she herself
demonstrates the fact that the historical discussion about hysteria and
trauma is actually taken up again under new signifiers, in which borderline
2 P. Bercherie. 'Lesfondements de ia clinique'. Histoire et structure du savoir psychiatrique. Paris,
Seuil-Navarin, 1980.
88
disorders stands for hysteria and posttraumatic stress disorder for traumatic
neurosis. 'L'histoire se répète', history repeats itself, especially in matters of
traum a...
A second historical factor that enhanced the discussion further, has
everything to do with a typically American situation, that is, their insurance
system and their judicial system. Without going into details, we can state
that in the U.S. the proof of a ’genuine', that is, a reality-based
psychopathology, is necessary in order to get hold (gold!) of the insurance
payment. Moreover, a certain kind of lawyer specialises in suing for
malpractice, and in this case they only have to take their pick: either they
sue the alleged sexual offender, or they sue the therapist...
As yet, we don't have this kind of situation in Europe. As we can
keep our distance, it is easier for us to detect and formulate the essential
ethical question that lies at the base of this discussion, together with its
answers, which trace definite lines. The question bears on the position of
the patient towards the traumatic situation. Either one considers the patient
as a mere victim of an external agent, which means that he or she is entitled
to help and support; or one considers the patient not solely as a victim but
as someone with an impact of his or her own, even with a limited form of
choice. The difference between these two answers can be understood as the
difference between a master discourse and a psychoanalytic one.3
If this discussion takes place within a 'political' context, more often
than not, the patients will be considered as victims and survivors. Within a
clinical context, on the contrary, clinicians tend to choose the second
approach. For example, both Judith Herman and James Chu stress the
necessity for emotional distance, that is,, for taking your distance from the
all too supporting role. Herman considers the taking away of responsibility
from the patient, as one of the major therapeutical mistakes.4 Chu tunes in
when he states that it remains the patient's responsibility to understand
what and how things have happened to him or her, and he also stresses the
3 P. Verhaeghe. 1Klinische psychodiagnostiek vanuit Lacans discourstheorie'. Gent, Ides^a, 1994.
4 J.L. Herman. 1Trauma and recovery'. Glasgow, Harper and Collins, 1992.
89
element of choice.5 These ideas echo the original Freudian ideas on the socalled 'NeurosetiioahV, the choice of neurosis. This is no coincidence, because
it is precisely this factor that makes psychotherapy possible. If one sticks to
the first answer, then one ends with a complete determinism and thus with
therapeutic pessimism, even fatalism: the patient has become what he had
to become, due to his or her traumatic experiences. If one chooses the
second answer, then there is a minimal element of choice and implication of
the subject, which is precisely the minimal condition for change. Hence the
fact that Lacan stresses the ’future anterior' in contrast to the 'past tense': ’I
will be what I am now through my choice', instead of: 'I am what I already
was'. Choices made now will determine the future of the subject.
So far for my introduction, as an attempt to bring into the open the
underlying ethical wager in the recent trauma debate. Freud's theory is in
this respect both more subtle and clinical than appears from this recent
hype. In the rest of this paper, I want to elaborate this theory from a
Lacanian point of view.
First of all, it is important to note that it is impossible to study
Freud's theory on trauma in an isolated way. One has to take at least three
different subjects into account. The first one concerns indeed the discussion
on trauma versus fantasy, but this has to be linked to Freud's theory on
aetiology. The second subject relates to psychological functioning in general
and the memory function in particular, which leads us into the heart of
Freudian metapsychology. The third subject implies the goal of all this, that
is, the question of the treatment and its aims.
If one studies the Freudian theory on trauma from this threefold
point of view - aetiology, metapsychology and aim of the treatment - then it
soon becomes obvious that Freud’s theory evolved almost constantly. There
are only three ideas that remain unchanged. First of all, the most obvious
clinical characteristic of a trauma resides with the fact that it cannot be put
into words, the patient doesn't succeed in verbalising it. Secondly, the
5 H. Snijders. 'James Chu's visie op dissociatieve stocmissen' in Tijdsckrift voor Psychotherapie.
22(4), p. 282-286,1996.
trauma is always of a sexual nature, although the signifier 'sexual' has to be
understood as 'related to the drive', 'pulsional', based on the Freudian idea
of 'Trieb', drive. Thirdly, from a Freudian point of view, a trauma has
always to do with a conflict, and thus with a defence, more particularly, an
inner defence within the subject.
As I have already said, Freudian theory is a lot more complicated
than is usually thought. If one sticks to one isolated sentence from a letter to
Fliess, dating from September 1997, then one could assume that Freud
stopped believing altogether in the traumatic aetiology. The sentence runs
as follows: 'Ich glaube an meine Neurotica nicht mekr', I no longer believe in
my neurotica. If one takes the larger theory into account, then things
become more complicated. I will demonstrate that Freud will surpass the
initial question of whether the traumatic event did really happen or not; he
will elaborate a theory in which the very idea of trauma receives a structural
position in the coming-into-being of every human being. It is obvious that
the meaning of trauma has changed in this new theory. This will become all
the more clear, if we study it from a Lacanian point of view, with the
category of the Real.
Let us retrace Freud's steps. Before 1900, the question of whether a
traumatic event really happened or not does not bother Freud. His main
focus is directed to the different ways in which the psychical apparatus
treats this trauma. His first theory is based on the academic psychology of
his time with Herbart and Wundt as the main characters. Based on their
theories, he will define the traumatic factor as an Erregungszuwachs, an
increase in excitation which cannot be adequately discharged by the
neuronal system. The fact that it cannot be discharged is caused by the
typical way in which the trauma is psychologically represented, that is: by a
so-called 'anti-thetical representation', which is a representation that the
patient tries to keep out of his or her consciousness; if the patient succeeds
in doing so, then the representation cannot be verbalised nor discharged
and becomes pathogenic.6 In his Studies on Hysteria, Freud will conclude
6 S. Freud.
1A case of successful treatment by hypnotism with some remarks on the origin of
91
that these bewustseinsunfahige Vorstellungen, these representations which are
incapable of becoming conscious, they form the nucleus of the pathological
complex.7
The important point in this line of thought is the idea of conflict: a
trauma installs a conflictual division within the psyche; it is this idea of
division or dissociation that leads Freud to the idea of a division between a
Conscious and an Unconscious system. The therapeutic goal at that time is,
for both Freud and Breuer, so-called catharsis. By making use of the hypnocathartic method, the patient is induced to reproduce the antithetic
unconscious representational complex.
If this succeeds, then the
assumption is that the accompanying affect will be liberated and
discharged, the effect of which is that unconscious representations will be
integrated into normal conscious associations. These unconscious
representations reveal themselves most of the time as having a visual
character, which brings Freud to the idea that the treatment amounts to the
verbalisation of something that is obviously not verbal. Hence his frequent
use, during the case studies of that time, of expressions such as Absprechen,
Aussprechen, literally, ’to speak out’.
As said before, at that time, Freud does not have any doubts about
the genuineness of the trauma. His main preoccupation concerns the fact
that the memory traces of the trauma cannot be verbalised. He doesn't
doubt the possibility of this verbalisation as such; indeed, the experiments
with hypnosis convince him of the fact that both a complete remembering
and verbalisation must be possible. However, in his clinical practice he just
can't get hold of the last words; instead of producing the ultimate
verbalisation, his patients keep producing new associative chains, leading to
ever earlier traumata. Moreover, these trauma's are of a sexual nature,
which was rather shocking at the end of the previous century.
hysterical symptoms through counterwilV. S.E., I, pp. 122-123.
S. Freud. ’Preface and footnotes to the translation of Charcot's Leçons du mardi de la Salpêtrière'.
S.E.,I,p. 137.
7S.Freud. Studies on Hysteria (1895d). S.E., H, pp. 286-87 and p.289.
92
In 1895, Freud states that every hysteria is based on a sexual
seduction at the time of early childhood, to which the child reacted with
what he denominates as a 'pre-sexual sexual fright'. Freud does not stick to
moral indignation, but tries to understand how die psyche reacts to this
situation. He assumes that the seduced child does not understand what
happens at the time of the scene itself, because it does not dispose of the
correct words for it. Hence his strange formulation: a pre-sexual sexual
fright. The fact that the words were lacking at the time of the trauma
explains the difficulties in the process of remembering and the ensuing
impossibility of discharge.8
Moreover, during his clinical practice, Freud meets with an
unexpected element which opens a totally new dimension, that is, the
fantasies of his patients. Initially, he considers these fantasies as a
hindrance, something that stands in the way, because he wants to uncover
the real memories of the real thing. Soon enough, he discovers their
defensive function: fantasies are attempts of the child to understand what it
could not grasp, they are defensive coping constructions. To quote Freud:
'Such fantasies regularly, as it seems to me, go back to things heard by
children at an early age and only understood later’. This quote comes from
a letter to Flies, dated April 6,1897. On the second of May, he writes: ’The
fantasies are derived from things that have been heard but understood
subsequently and all their material is, of course, genuine. They are
protective structures
From these quotes, it becomes clear that at the time, Freud does not
think in terms of 'either-or', either real or just imaginary. Even more so: the
two of them, the real and the imaginary, stand in a vexy peculiar
relationship. It is the discovery of this relationship that will get lost in the
later, rather naive discussion in terms of 'either-or1: the fantasy is an attempt
to give meaning to a part of the Real that resists to the Symbolic. At that
time, that part of the Real is understood by Freud as a seduction scene, and
8 S. Freud. 'Heredity and the aetiology of the neuroses'. S.E., HI, p. 152. See also his letters to
Fliess, dating from 15.10.95 and 16.10.95.
93
it is precisely this interpretation he will doubt later on. Nevertheless, he will
never be in doubt about the said relationship. The only thing he will change
his opinion about is the way in which he understands the original scene.
In other words, if one argues that Freud has abandoned his theory on
trauma, this is not only wrong, it is also a forgery of the history, which gave
the discussion in these matters a completely different direction. Indeed, this
false interpretation obliterated Freud's interest in the relationship between
fantasy on the one hand and a certain reality on the other. It is much more
interesting to ask oneself the question why Freud, at a given moment, starts
to have doubts about the content of this reality. I use the word ’doubt'
explicitly, because he will never abandon the trauma theory as such. On the
contrary, his struggle with it will continue through his whole work; at the
end and as a result of this struggle, he will reformulate the problem on
another level. One of the reasons why he stays in doubt, has to do with his
changed views on the functioning of the psyche and the associations
produced by the patient. To be more specific: he discovers the fact that it is
impossible to make a differentiation between reality and fantasy in the story
of the patient. This discovery will have its effects on his theory on memory.
For example, as early as 1899, he questions the idea of whether we are ever
able to really remember something, because, he says, memories of
childhood are always constructed at a later date, when other things have
become more important in comparison to the things important at that early
age.9 A second reason for his doubts has to do with his discovery of the
infantile sexuality and the possibility of sexual pleasure for the child itself.
There must be some link with the trauma and or the fantasy, but for the
time being, he can't grasp it. He returns to this question in his Three Essays
on the Theory of Sexuality. When he elaborates the way in which the drive
operates in children, he produces a very interesting definition of the drive:
’a drive is to be regarded as a measure of the demand made upon the mind
to work'.10 Freud interprets the effect of the drive as a rise in excitation and
9 S. Freud. 'Screen memories'. S.E., III, p. 303.
20S. Freud. 'Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality'. S.E., VII, p.168.
94
pressure which threatens to overwhelm the ego if this psychological
elaboration does not take place. Now, this description is not new and tallies
perfectly with another description, namely the one Freud formulated in
1916 on the very idea of trauma. I quote:
We apply the term 'traumatic' to an experience which within a
short period of time presents the mind with an increase of
stimulus too powerful to be dealt with or worked off in the
normal way, and this must result in permanent disturbances
of the manner in which the energy operates.11
If we compare these two definitions, we find a remarkable analogy
between the drive and the Freudian concept of trauma. That is, between the
effects on the psyche of an internal agency, the trauma, and a supposedly
external one, the trauma. Moreover, in his correspondence with Flies, more
particularly in Draft K, Freud had already described the onset of hysteria in
terms of overwhelment, albeit that in that case, the source of overwhelment
was considered to be only external, that is, again the trauma. In both cases,
trauma and drive, there is a so-called Erregungszuwachs, an increase in
energetical tension, which has to be discharged. The therapeutical manner
of discharge is the verbalisation, being the most apt psychological way of
discharge. The lack of such a verbalisation gives rise to anxiety in particular
and psychopathology in general. In both cases, one finds a situation of
conflict.
It is within this conflict that one can discern two different kinds, with
a possible interaction afterwards. The first one is general and thus
structural, the second one is particular and thus accidental. The accidental
concerns the trauma in the normal sense of the word, by which the subject
comes into conflict with something or rather, someone, from the external
world. This trauma and the ensuing conflict is accidental, because it did not
11 S. Freud. 'General Theory of the Neuroses - Fixation to Traumas - the Unconscious'. S.E., XVI, p.
have to happen. The general one concerns the drive, by which an internal
conflict takes place, which is in itself inescapable, because it has everything
to do with the essence of human nature and culture. This brings us to a
very important idea, namely the idea that human sexuality contains
potentially the same effect for the subject as an external trauma, and this
even in the absence of any external element whatsoever. It is this that Freud
formulates in one of his drafts addressed to Fliess, where he states that, I
quote ’In my opinion there must be an independent source for the release of
unpleasure in sexual life: once that source is present, it can activate
sensations of disgust, lend force to morality, and so on1.12 Later on, he will
return to this idea in his essay on Civilisation and its Discontents.
Even today, this is a rather surprising statement which has never
been understood by the advocates of total sexual freedom. Freud himself
also struggles with this idea, and it will take him some twenty years before
he will be able to study this independent source of unpleasure. And it is no
coincidence that this study leads him back to the very idea of trauma and
traumatic neurosis. The title of the ensuing paper speaks for itself: Beyond
the Pleasure Principle.
The effect of this study is that the trauma-fantasy controversy will be
reconsidered on a different level. Ifd like to summarise it as follows. Drive
in itself, independent of any externally determined trauma, has a potentially
traumatising effect, to which the psyche has to come up with an answer,
that is, with a psychological elaboration. This elaboration takes place in and
through the fantasy, which receives in this way a very important function.
In this sense, there exists a perfect analogy between the night dream and the
day dream, not so much because both of them contain a wish-fulfilment, but
because both of them try to provide a representational elaboration of
something that is very difficult to represent In The Interpretation of Dreams,
Freud had already concluded that the nucleus of the dream contains
something that can never be adequately represented, and he considers this
12S. Freud. 'Extractsfrom the Fliess Papers - The Neuroses of Defence - Draft K'., S.E., I, p. 222
96
nucleus as the very core of our being. This is the explanation of the
hysterical neurosis.
Besides this structurally determined trauma, which goes for every
human being, there is the accidental real trauma, caused by an external
agency. This trauma will inevitably come into interaction with the
structural trauma caused by the subject's own drive. Here, hysteria turns
into traumatic neurosis, but the function of the fantasy remains the same,
namely elaborating in the Imaginary what could not find an adequate
answer in the Symbolic. In case of the accidental trauma, this elaboration is
not enough, the real aetiology of the traumatic neurosis also causes
symptoms in the real, psychosomatic phenomena and automutilation being
the two most well-known.
The intervention of a real trauma on top of the structural trauma
caused by the subject's own drive, opens the possibility of a particular line
of defence, namely: that the originally internal conflict is at least partly
exteriorised, projected. This can be generalised: every subject will try to
project this internal conflict even where there is no external trauma. Indeed,
one cannot flee from an internal conflict situation, and that is the reason for
its projection. This is the mechanism that lies at the base of a phobia for
example. This explains our initial ideas about the underlying value
judgement and the difficulties of recognising one's own implication in
matters of psychopathology. Guilt and anxiety have to be avoided.13
Anyhow, from here onwards, we are confronted with a double
question. First of all, how does this defensive function of the fantasy
operate? Secondly, how is it that the drive, which has everything to do with
pleasure and satisfaction, implies an intrinsic traumatic factor? In his
elaboration of these two questions, Freud's attention to the externally
determined trauma will become smaller and smaller, and, inversely, his
focus on the internal conflict will become more and more important.
The way in which he develops this theory, will imply a new
conception of the end and goal of the treatment. In the previous period, the
13S. Freud. 'Studies on Hysteria - The Psychotherapy of Hysteria', S.E., H, p. 290.
97
goal was relatively simple: the patient had to put his traumatic history into
words, especially those parts that were forgotten, that is, repressed due to
the operation of defensive mechanisms. This process of remembering had
to be as complete as possible, the last word being the final goal.
Nevertheless, after Freud's discovery of infantile sexuality and the
accompanying fantasies, this conception is no longer tenable. The change in
relation to the goal of the treatment becomes obvious in a famous paper of
1914, entitled: Remembering, Repeating and Working-through.
This paper undermines the psychoanalytic importance of the process
of forgetting almost completely, with the result that the idea of
remembering as an important therapeutic goal, disappears at the same time.
Instead of that, the analytic cure aims at the consciousness-raising of matters
which have always been unconscious, and thus which could never have
been forgotten in the first place. In this paper, Freud denominates this
factor as the unconscious fantasies which determine obviously the kernel of
someone’s neurosis. Moreover, he adds that this consciousness-raising is
not enough as a therapeutic goal, it has to be followed by a process of socalled Durcharbeiten, working-through, which provides the treatment with a
completely different goal. Half a century later, Lacan will reformulate the
same ideas with his 'traversing of the fantasy1, as the basic goal of the
analytic treatment. It is no coincidence that Freud discovers in the very
same paper the idea of the compulsion to repeat, the Wiederkolungszwang,
which differs from 'normal1repetition. The elaboration will follow some six
years later.
From this point onwards, fantasy becomes the core of the treatment.
The initial question - whether the aetiology was real or not - has
disappeared, and instead of that, the idea of fantasy has to be understood as
the most characteristic feature of the subject. Indeed, it determines the way
in which the subject models, represents and thus copes with the drive. In
the meantime, fantasy has become a concept, denoting a typical complex of
representational constructs that determine the psychological reality of the
subject. From a Lacanian point of view, the fantasy is not so much the
counterpart of reality, on the contrary, it is precisely what models the Real.
98
This theory can already be read in Freud, although it is only with
Lacan that it finds its final form. Summarised, this Lacanian theory runs as
follows: the drive is traumatic-Real at those points where the subject does
not dispose of the adequate signifiers to treat the impulses. From a
structural point of view, this is the case for every subject, because the
Symbolic Order, being a system based on the phallic signifier, lacks the
signifiers for three aspects of the Real. These three aspects concern
femininity, fatherhood, and the sexual rapport. Traditionally, these are
expressed by a number of winged words, for example, Das ewig Weibliche,
the eternal feminine; Pater semper incertuus estf fatherhood is never certain,
and Post coitum omne animal tristum est, after mating every animal is
depressed. In these matters, the symbolic order does not provide us with
adequate answers, which means that every subject has to tinker with them
in the Imaginary Order. These imaginary answers will determine the way
in which the subject copes with the ever problematic questions concerning
sexual identity and the sexual rapport.
To put it differently: the fantasies of the subject, being those
imaginary answers - will determine the way in which someone enters, even
constructs his intersubjective world.
This structural Lacanian theory has conquered the analytic world
with a number of slogans. The three aspects of the Real to which the
Symbolic Order does not provide an adequate answer, were promoted by
catchwords or catchphrases, like: La Femme n'existe pas, The woman does
not exist, VAutre de VAutre n'existe pas, The Other of the Other does not
exist, II n'y a pas de rapport sexuel, The sexual rapport does not exist. The
ensuing hype or hysteria - there was, for example, an Italian newspaper
announcing that women did not exist for Lacan - obliterated both the
structural context and the fact that the same reasoning can be studied in
Freud's theory. For example, Freud writes that every child, driven by its
own sexual development, becomes confronted with three inescapable
questions: the gender of its mother and thus of women in general, the role
of the father and the sexual rapport between his parents. Every child will
construct answers of his own, which give rise to very particular
99
constructions, the so-called infantile sexual theories, in which time and
again imaginary, pre-genital contents are produced, focusing on the phallic
or the castrated mother, the primal father and the primal scene. These socalled 'theories1are considered by Freud as the fore-runners of something
else, something that comes more and more into Freud's focus, both from a
conceptual and a therapeutic point of view. These are the primal fantasies,
being necessary constructions for every subject as an answer to those three
mysterious aspects of the real. For Freud, these constructions determine the
particular form of someone’s neurosis.
Until this moment, I have stressed the resemblances between
Freudian and Lacanian theory in these matters, the Lacanian roots in
Freudian theory. The major difference lies in the fact that, as long as one
sticks to Freud, one can have the idea, the illusion rather, that there exists
one correct answer, one correct construction. The therapeutic goal then is to
analyse the wrong answer and replace it by the correct ones. With Lacan,
there is no such answer, the confrontation with gender, drive and sexuality
is considered by him as une rencontre toujours manquee, an always missed
encounter. This has everything to do with the very difficult question of the
drive and the experience of satisfaction, and it is to these subjects that we
turn our attention now.
Roughly speaking, until 1915 Freud conceives a pleasure principle
which is very one-dimensional. Pleasure and satisfaction which can be
obtained from a drive, are caused by a process of discharge. In order to
make this possible, there is a typical condition: the sexual energy has to be
linked to representational complexes, that is, to signifiers. This connection
to words is very important for Freud, because it provides the pathway
along which psychological elaboration becomes possible. In the case where
this connection is lacking and the psychological elaboration fails, the patient
develops a so-called 'actual neurosis', with anxiety as the central symptom.
Psychopathology in general and hysteria in particular have to do with a
wrong connection, what Freud denominates as a falsche Verknüpfung - just
think of a phobia - caused by the conflict between desire and prohibition.
Due to this false connection, both the discharge and the experience of
100
satisfaction become impossible, and the patient develops a psychoneurosis,
following the initial actual neurosis. Treatment has to repair the right
connection, by making use of the free association and the process of
interpretation, through which verbalisation and discharge become possible
again.
This theory and the ensuing treatment are quite coherent; there is
only one flaw to it: it doesn't work. The final verbalisation, the last word
remains lacking with his hysterical patients, as if they have to go on
producing signifiers circling around a nucleus that can never be fully
expressed in words. Hence, the pleasure principle always fails in the end.
Moreover, in his clinical practice, Freud has to acknowledge the fact that a
number of patients tend to repeat things which provide them with a lot of
displeasure. After twenty years, he is again confronted with the traumatic
neurosis, and then especially, with war neuroses.
The main question, in the light of the pleasure principle, runs as
follows: why is it that victims of traumatic neurosis have to repeat time and
again their original trauma, albeit always in a fragmentary way? In Beyond
the Pleasure Principle, Freud comes up with an explanation by making use of
an older idea, the W&derholungszwang, the compulsion to repeat. This
compulsion has to be understood as a persistent attempt by the
psychological apparatus to bind the traumata to signifiers. This process of
binding is necessary for the discharge and the ensuing catharsis. The
particular feature of a trauma resides precisely in the absence of this
connection to signifiers, which implies at the same time that its
psychological elaboration remains impossible.
At this point, we regain our operational definition of trauma from a
Freudian point of view. A trauma is an element of the Real that cannot be
put into words, thus causing the impossibility of a normal discharge.
During his study of war neuroses, Freud adds another peculiarity: a trauma
has less impact on someone who gets physically injured as well. It seems as
though the injury functions as a physical analogy to the verbal discharge.
The same mechanism can be found in a tragic way with patients who have a
101
traumatic history. Indeed, a number of them injure themselves, and their
automutilation can be considered as an attempt at discharge of tension.
If we accept this definition of trauma, we are confronted with the
question where this impossibility of verbalisation comes from. From a
therapeutical point of view, this is probably the most important question,
because the answers to this question determine the way in which the
treatment has to be conducted. There are several hypotheses possible, for
example, the stimulus intensity of the trauma, its unexpected character that
took the patient by surprise and thus unprepared. Or, in the case of
children, the fact that the psychological apparatus is as yet underdeveloped,
etc ... As I have already pointed out, Lacan will explain this from a
structural point of view: something stays beyond the symbolic order,
beyond the pleasure principle, because it is different, even alien. One of its
most bizarre characteristics, besides its impossible verbalisation, resides in
the fact that it produces a strange form of pleasure, strange because it differs
from the phallic pleasure provided by the pleasure principle and the
symbolic Order.
At this point, Freud is obliged to rethink his one-dimensional
pleasure principle and the accompanying theory on the drive.14 An
intuitive flash from twenty-five years ago pops up again: there is a source of
unpleasure within sexuality itself, there is an internal antinomy at work. It is
here that we find Freud's difficult and never fully accepted theory on the
death-drive, Thamtos, in opposition to Eros, the life drive. One drive follows
the pleasure-principle, is connected to signifiers which means that it can be
discharged; the other is situated in a non-verbal beyond, non-phallic, not
dischargeable, literally operating in silence. It contains another form of
pleasure - 'pleasure' is probably not the correct word - belonging to the
order of the Real. In Freud's opinion, normally both drives operate together
in what he calls the Triebmischung, the fusion of the drives. He considers
14 S. Freud. 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'. S.E., XVIII, p.7.
102
this double drive to be an ontological fact which cannot be explained in
itself, but which can be used as an explanatory axiom for clinical data.15
This theory will be taken up by Lacan in his seminar on Encore, in
which he elaborates the contradiction between the phallic-symbolic pleasure
principle and the accompanying pleasure on the one hand versus the nonphallic, other jouissance that lies beyond the scope of the signifier on the
other hand16 Just like Freud, he will situate the first one on the masculine
side. Indeed, for Freud, there is only masculine libido. The other, more
mysterious one, is situated on the feminine side. In the meantime,
masculinity and femininity can no longer be reduced to their biological
interpretation. They must be understood as a position chosen by the subject
towards the structurally determined lack.
Needless to say this is a highly abstract theory. Nevertheless, there
are some very important clinical repercussions, which I would like to end
with. Both hysteria and traumatic neurosis are caused by a sudden, nondischargeable accumulation of tension. In hysteria, this accumulation
comes from within, and is caused by the subject's own drive. In traumatic
neurosis, the source is an external one, added to the previous, internal one.
This implies that hysteria and traumatic neurosis stand in a certain
relationship towards each other. Hysteria starts at a structurally determined
lack of the psychological apparatus, because a certain jouissance (Lacan)
coming from a certain drive (Freud) cannot be linked to signifiers and
remains outside the symbolic, phallic order. Traumatic neurosis comes on
top of that, and entails a strange interaction with the internal conflict; just
think of phenomena like automutilation and repetition compulsion. This
strangeness has everything to do with the fact that something within the
patient enjoys it, and this against the conscious desire of the patient. This
15 I think that this theory on Eros and Thanatos is very important, especially within the
actual gender discussion. I have elaborated this in the third essay of a forthcoming book:
Paul Verhaeghe. Love in Times of Solitude, Three Essays on Driue and Desire. London, Rebuss
press, spring 1999.
16 J. Lacan. Encore. Le Séminaire, Livre XX, 1972-73, texte établi par J.A.MiHer. Paris, Seuil,
1973.
103
enjoyment is situated beyond the pleasure principle and thus literally
incomprehensible. The naive benevolent counsellor who wants to liberate
his 'survivors' from their trauma, will meet this factor soon enough, and he
will not know what to do with it. Generally speaking, nobody knows what
to do with it, because even today, most theories are based on the pleasure
principle, that is, on the idea that every human being functions in that way.
Trauma demonstrates in a painful way that this is not the case, that there is
a beyond.
This is indeed the most uncanny thing about trauma, and probably
also the most traumatising aspect of a trauma, namely the experience that
something in the body enjoys the situation, a kind of enjoyment from which
the subject shrinks back in horror. Moreover, by way of a mirroring effect,
this enjoyment has some strange effects on the therapist also; just think of
the relationship in Coppola's Apocalypse now (or Conrad's The Heart of Dar­
kness, if you prefer reading) between Kurt and his 'liberator'.
The treatment, every treatment has the same aim as the repetition
compulsion, and that is: to get hold of this inexpressible experience by
putting words to it. There is one big difference with the repetition
compulsion: during the treatment, this process of symbolisation takes place
within the transference relationship. It is precisely this aspect that will
decide the therapeutic effects.
At the end of the day, we have to admit that we meet here with
something which we do not understand. Instead of producing answers too
fast - Gardez-vous de comprendre, beware of understanding I think it is
much more interesting to formulate a number of questions.
How is the fact that a discharge of tension through speaking and a
discharge through an injury, result more or less in the same effect, to be
understood? Clinical practice with war neuroses shows us that the injured
soldier is less apt to develop a traumatic neurosis than his non-injured
colleague.
Clinical practice with post-traumatic stress disorders
demonstrates that patients make use of this discharge method, by
automutilating. Moreover, in both cases, the injury has to be a bleeding one,
pain in itself is not enough.
How is the remarkable effect of scansion, which can be found in a
number of self-protective reactions in patients, for example, the typical
rocking, the rhythmical movements, to be understood? Hie combination
between these physical phenomena and the symbolic order, which is
essentially a rhythmic, scanned order, can be found in a very remarkable
fact. I mean the RAP-movement, whose roots go back to the black veterans
of the Vietnam war, who elaborated their traumatic experiences in group
sessions. It was this elaboration that gave rise to the birth of RAP, which
comes down, for me, to a very special attempt at regulating puissance,; very
special precisely because of the combination between the physical rhythm
and the Symbolic order as such.
How is the efficiency of groups in the treatment of traumatic
neuroses, especially the efficiency of self-aid groups to be understood? Is
this merely an effect of mutual recognition, or does it go further than that?
Could it be that a group is needed in order to develop a symbolisation,
because every language symbolisation needs the convention of a group?
These questions are far more interesting than the naive discussion on
trauma and fantasy of my introduction...
Address for correspondence:
University of Ghent
Vakgroep voor psychoanalyse
KDunantlaan 2
B9000 Ghent
Belgium
PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS A SCIENTIFIC PARADIGM
Tom McGiath
In a world becoming increasing dominated by information
technology it might appear to be the case that what was involved here was
a kind of final frontier of science-inspired technology taking over and
controlling the coding and transmission of that most human of
commodities, namely information. It is after all something that is about
people, and contained by people and something we seek from people
however indirectly. That the word, information, should become to be so
frequently associated with technology is a mark of the extent to which
society has become increasingly objective and technical as science marches
on, and impacts, apparently more and more, on all aspects of life
mediating human interaction to an ever increasing extent. It raises the
question about the threatened place of the human subject in such an
increasingly technical world in a new way, and gives rise to common
anxieties about the control of that world and the place of the individual perhaps unknowing - subject within it. It is perhaps true to say that a
majority of individuals have little enough understanding of the
technologies which increasingly influence their lives and options, and
experience a degree of alienation and dependence hitherto unknown. It is
as though their lives were being controlled and managed by forces which
are beyond their understanding, forces to which they are subjected, and
by which they are managed.
It might be suggested that there is the domain of the personal and
private, which is separated off from the influences of the modular
technology-dominated world. There is the realm of the psyche which is
removed from that and which operates according to its own laws, as
studied and elaborated in the science of the psyche, namely psychology.
But as one will be aware, here too technology comes to have an ever-
expanding role. The monitor is everywhere and computers measure and
manage - with an accuracy and precision unimaginable in less
sophisticated days - many of the workings of the psyche. The language of
psychology too is technical and specialised to a degree that makes it
incomprehensible to the normal person. It is as though psychology itself
has become part of a technocracy, and the reason for this is the direction in
which main-stream. psychology has moved. But there is a peculiarity
about the subject-matter of psychology which is not adequately reflected
in the procedures of that main-stream psychology. The peculiarity to
which I am referring is that the agent of the theory building in psychology
is at the same time the object about which explanations or understandings
are being sought. The subject of the study is at the same time the object of
that study. It might be argued that this could be said of all of the human
sciences such as economics, anthropology, sociology etc., but probably in
no other scientific endeavour is the tension so marked. This is because the
concern of the psychologist is the individual subject, and whatever
emerges from that study is inescapably a matter for the individual
psychologist at the same time. The question which arises here is about the
implications of this fact for the scientific study of the human subject.
Main-stream scientific psychology has, since its inception as an
independent science more than a hundred years ago, opted in the main for
a natural science methodology, inspired by the natural sciences of physics
and biology etc. It has been concerned in so doing to separate itself off
from its pre-history in theology and philosophy, on the one hand, and
from all imaginary and intuitive preliminary understandings of itself in
the domain of what might called common sense approaches to its subject
matter. It has striven in this way to achieve a degree of respectability and
acceptability by the other sciences, and has hoped in that way to be taken
seriously and to have its findings and research results valued
appropriately. There is an underlying unease among many practitioners
of the science that it may have excluded large areas of what could be
properly regarded as its subject matter in order to achieve this notional
respectability.1 From the perspective of psychoanalysis it would be
claimed that in opting for a natural science paradigm, psychology has in
fact ceded what is its most essential set of concerns, namely the
constitution of the human subject in its totality and in its basic nature.
Psychology has largely adopted a methodology which doesn't allow it to
pursue what should really be its proper object of study, namely the human
subject with all the complexity that is involved in that subject. In a sense
then, analysis would understand itself as a necessary adjunct to
psychology, challenging it to dialogue, at least, and to extend its selfimposed limitations of methodology to take account of what was
emerging from the work of psychoanalysis. But for this to be possible
there would have to be some form of interrelationship between the
operative paradigms within the two related areas of concern. It would be
required that there be some possibility of communication between the
disciplines or some elements at least of common language which would
enable that dialogue to take place. The present considerations are offered
towards that end. It will be helpful to outline some of what the concerns
are of some psychologists about their own methodology. Secondly, it will
be necessary to review some of the remaining questions about the
scientific status of psychology itself. Thirdly, it will be attempted to touch
briefly on the paradigms operative within psychoanalysis, and in the
course of that to examine what the possibilities might be for a more real
dialogue.
Rethinking Psychological Methods
In very recent years there has been lively discussion within main­
stream psychology about the usefulness of, and need for, what are
referred to as qualitative methods, as distinct from the more traditional
quantitative methods. What is envisaged here is the adoption of what is
1 A useful discussion of the issues arising here can be found in S. Frosch, Psychoanalysis
and Psychology: Minding the Gap. Macmillan, 1989.
108
referred to as a more appropriate paradigm for psychology.2 In the words
of one contribution;
... the concern for verstehen within the qualitative paradigm
has shown ... there is need in human sciences research to be
sensitive to people's own understanding as seen from their
local frames of reference, or from inside their own socially
situated phenomenal worlds.3
Research in this qualitative mode is said not to be so concerned with
numbers and measurement in the narrow sense, but rather 'tends to
involve the more open-ended and detailed analysis of verbal, or written
material which has not been converted to points on numerical scales'.4
Common to the different concerns of psychologists who adopt a
qualitative approach is the ...
... identification of participants subjectivities - whether in the
form of experiences, phenomenological worlds or accounts as an integral, though not always uncomplicated - part of the
research endeavour. These subjectivities are located within
many different perspectives and different areas of
psychological concern1. It is mentioned here that there is a
notable gap in that the psychoanalytic perspective on
unconscious subjectivity is not included.
The whole matter is revisited again in a later issue of The Psychologist, in
April 97. Here it is being suggested that the research psychologist must
include some component of what is called 'reflexity1 in the work. This
would involve a sense of the philosophical position and general appoach
2 See the issue of The Psychologist, March 95, Vol 8, N° 3, for a series of interesting articles
on the whole issue of Qualitative Research Methods. Publisher is the British
Psychological Society.
3 See Henwood and Pidgeon's article in The Psychologist, March 95, Vol 8, N° 3, p. 116.
4ibid, p. 109.
of the researcher, with some attempt being made to consider the
implications of that for the outcome of the research findings. An
important difference with qualitative research is that it acknowledges the
social insertion of research activity, that is, in giving the reasons for
researching a particular topic, the researcher's own social stance toward
the question, and accepts the challenge from other social groups as a
legitimate part of psychological debate. The essential difference is that of
allowing for the presence of subjectivity - in the sense of the presence of a
subject and trying to take account of that in the articulation of whatever
the findings of the research might be. It is clear at least here that there are
some serious concerns being expressed about the adequacy of the
traditional 'scientific1model for psychology. It is being argued that the
subjectivity of the researcher has to be included somehow. There is of
course a real difficulty here about the mode of such inclusion. How is the
researcher involved, and how is the question of subjectivity to be dealt
with? It is somewhat paradoxical that while some psychologists are trying
to find ways out of the straight-jacket of what is referred to as scientific
method, at the same time there is concern among psychoanalysts that their
theories and findings should really be subject to more rigorous testing and
examination.
Rethinking Psychoanalytic Method
In a recent conference on Science and Psychoanalysis, in March
1996, organised by the Freud Museum and the British journal of
Psychotherapy, one paper raised the question about the future of an
Empirical Psychoanalysis. Fonagy and Target are concerned about the
state of psychoanalysis and suggest that there are indications that it is in
decline.5 They find many indications for this suggested decline. There is
no coherent set of principles that could define useful exchange between
s P. Fonagy and M. Target. The Future of an Empirical Psychoanalysis. Unpublished lecture
to a conference on 'Science' and Psychoanalysis given at the Anna Freud Centre, Saturday.
March 16,1996.
110
the two approaches to knowledge, that is the approach of science in the
strict sense and the approach of psychoanalysis. In contrast to the
approach in science, there is no sense in which psychoanalysis could be
seen as a singular treatment with the possibility of scientific replicability.
They point out that from the beginning of its endeavours there was a
marked heterogeneity in psychoanalytic technique, and this has continued
to be the situation. In fact there are no more than some common elements
of practice within psychoanalysis, namely that it was long-term and
expensive, use of the couch and a strict regime of abstinence for both client
and analyst. Those crucial elements of the technique have hardly changed
since the time of Freud, and it is suggested that some such changes might
have been expected with the increasing experience and the passage of
time. Better techniques should have been evolved by this time.
Apart from what is referred to as a superficial unity created by the
basic elements of psychoanalytic technique, there exist deep schisms, and
disagreements almost approaching fragmentation. The authors refer to
the contempt with which many British analysts treat their North American
colleagues, which is matched by the latter's views of Latin American
analysts and the derision with which French colleagues treat the whole of
the Anglo-Saxon tradition. It is suggested that it would be hard to
imagine that respect or credibility would be accorded to some science like
molecular biology, if it too were riddled with controversy concerning its
fundamentals. Further evidence of the fragmentation is given by the
authors in their discussions about what is referred to as 'the
psychoanalytic clinical fact'. Celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary in
1995, the International Journal of Psychoanalysis produced a special issue on
that topic. On considering that particular issue, Fonagy saw cause for
anxiety about the extent of the questions of a fundamental nature which
were being raised. Alongside that there was a tendency simply to reaffirm
the traditional attitude to clinical case reports. The sense was conveyed
that all sides of the various controversies gave rise to a challenge to the
sense of self worth of the authors. This was rooted in the lamentable
current state of psychoanalysis. This was further indicated by the
decreasing frequency with which the articles in analytic journals were
being cited, not only by other analysts but by authors in related fields as
well, such as psychiatry and social work.
The Case Study - a critique
Can it be that this problem is due to an over reliance on the clinical
case study?
It has been the standard method for advancing
psychoanalytic knowledge from the beginning. As Griinbaum has
pointed out this approach may be deeply flawed.6 Too often clinicians will
choose selected highlights of their successful cases to show how useful
their technique is. However helpful and useful this approach may be to
illustrate the manner in which a technique operates, there are problems
about using such highlights as ways of deriving theory or technique. In a
sense the approach doesn't readily allow the inclusion of disconfirming
evidence, if one is to borrow from Popper’s ’falsifiability’ canon of
scientific procedure.
It is possible, theoretically, to accumulate
indefinitely, illustrations which lend credibility to a particular element of a
theory, but unless it is possible to test that element of theory in the light of
instances in clinical practice which contradict it, one remains in the realm
of the merely plausible and one can hardly claim any verification to a
desired extent. The implications of this are that it has to be acknowledged
that possibly large numbers of what are regarded as accepted
generalisations within analysis might be actually false. Elements of theory
based on such anecdotal evidence can only be revised on the basis of
disconfirming experience or data, and the tendency in the case study
approach is for such contradictory evidence simply not to be seen, or to be
denied. In the narrowly defined sciences such evidence has the possibility
of coming to light because of the very nature of the scientific paradigm, or
because of the general advance in scientific knowledge. Such advance
requires that the scientist bring an element of scepticism to his own
findings. In the case of the analyst, however, this is particularly difficult.
6 A. Griinbaum. The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique. California,
University of California Press, 1984.
The analyst may need to leave aside such analytical material which
doesn't fit into his current understanding of the patient and his internal
situation. It is probably psychologically impossible to hold in mind all the
possible material which would suggest alternative formulations or
understandings of the patient's current state. The integration of the clinical
with the scientific approach is inherently difficult. How is the analyst to
retain the distance from the clinical material - which often emerges from
the intense atmosphere of the consulting room - which is necessary for an
objective evaluation of such material? Fonagy opts for detailed outcome
studies of particular cases. Interesting as the material offered here in his
discussion of such studies is, it will probably not prove satisfactory to the
analyst relying to a great extent on methods and measurement techniques
not readily compatible with the peculiar analytic enterprise. His estimate
of how positive the outcome was relies on standardised descriptions of
subjects treated, and interviews of those involved. Clearly this method of
evaluation of outcome relies to a very great extent on self-reports, and to
some extent on the non-professional evaluations of people close to the
subjects concerned, but it is clearly difficult to standardise these reports in
such a way as would satisfy the requirements of psychoanalysts in
specifying what was a successful outcome. It is clearly the case that there
isn't agreement among analysts about what could be considered a
successful outcome, or how such an outcome might be measured. As
Fonagy says, despite the eighty-seven years which have passed since the
publication of Little Hans, we have very little definite evidence about what
we may expect to be the outcome of child psychoanalysis. The
consequences of this situation could be unfortunate, and the challenge
confronting child psychoanalysis is to be able to be specific about .the
range and types of cases for which it is a suitable treatment, and also to
demonstrate its effects in a form accessible to others. If this fails, it is
suggested, the likely outcome is that child analysis will be discredited and
disappear. Perhaps it is possible to think of a similar fate awaiting
psychoanalysis in general unless it gets itself into a position where it can
organise itself along the lines of a paradigm which will unify the research
efforts and practice of analysts and offer a united and coherent picture to
113
those who call on the services of analysts. Perhaps it is too much to think
in terms of paradigm, and one might think more specifically of a more
coherent organisation of analytic theory and practice. Psychoanalysts
need not be primarily concerned, according to Fonagy, about whether
their activity is to be categorised as scientific in some sense, but must be
concerned about the central issues of the nature of mental life, the
processes of cure, and the efficacy of analysis as therapy. As to whether it
can be linked in a clear conceptual way to the other enterprises which
would be considered part of science is a wider question and perhaps need
not be of central concern. It is suggested that we do not know enough
about what psychoanalysis is to link it in that way. Perhaps it is sufficient
to think of analysis as principally a clinical matter with some operative
generalisations about technique and theory, or perhaps to regard it even
more loosely as a body of knowledge which is applicable to some defined
psychotherapeutic situations. What is now required is that the constructs
of analysis be elaborated in a maimer which ensures that its findings will
continue to be of interest to clinicians and psychologists, literary critics
and art historians, anthropologists and sociologists, and all those
concerned with human behaviour and motivation. What Fonagy is
suggesting is that systematic methods as adjuncts to clinical case reports
might lead to coherence and progress in the field of analysis. Broadening
the data base and the accepted methodology of analysis would enrich the
insights of analysts, clarify the confusions, separate the wheat from the
chaff in analytic discourse and help to retain Hie pre-eminent position of
analysis as a clinical as well as a psychological speciality. Desirable as this
project and these very creative suggestions might be there is a radical
question as to whether what would emerge would still be discernible as
analysis. One might ask the question about the continuing place of the
unconscious in these elaborations or amplifications of the analytic method.
Is it possible to think of the unconscious as being a dynamic force which is
invoked only in these situations where more accessible rational
psychological explanations do not apply? That seems to be the
assumption which is implied here. In this view, which seems also to be
the view of Richard Wolheim, the unconscious is only invoked where
114
there is a question of explaining the irrational. This is hardly faithful to
Freud's unconscious which is always understood to be operative in the
human subject, also at those times when its impact on the mental
processing of the subject is not obvious, as in the case of clearly rational
functioning. It seems problematic in explanations of mental processing
only then to invoke the unconscious when other avenues of explanation
are found to be inadequate. What might be called for is a radical
rethinking of the notion of the unconscious of the kind which Lacan
suggests in order to rethink the psychoanalytic enterprise in a thorough­
going way. That would involve very far-reaching and fundamental re­
orientation of both analytic theory and technique. What I want to do here
is take the more limited context of main-stream psychological science and
look at ways in which its basic orientation might be re-interpreted in the
light of the Lacardan criticism of analysis and the proper place of the
unconscious in that enterprise.
The Proper Study of Mankind.
In the Thirteenth Society Lecture delivered before the Psychological
Society of Ireland more than ten years ago, Cormac Gallagher sketched
out some crucial considerations in this context, and I want to revisit some
of these considerations here and attempt to draw out some further
implications.7 Pointing out some of the fundamental difficulties there are
for a proper study of mankind for a psychology too closely identified with
a rigid Anglo-American empiricism, Gallagher suggests that what might
be required is a philosophical shift towards a more appropriate
understanding of the human subject. The questions that he suggests that
arise for psychology in relation to what should be its proper object are
profoundly philosophical ones, which are beyond the limits of the present
introductory considerations. Suffice it to say for the moment that the
problems for psychology relate to its philosophical underpinning in
7 C. Gallagher. 'The Psychologist as Psychoanalyst: The Proper Study of Mankind'. in The
Irish Journal of Psychology. Vol 8, No. 2 Winter 1987. pp. 111-125.
115
empiricism as a philosophy. It is overly indebted to the experimentalism
of W. Wundt, and has totally neglected the starting point of F. Brentano's
and his considerations on psychology from what he called an empirical
standpoint.8 Gallagher goes on to offer some critically important
considerations in regard to the relationship between psychology and
psychoanalysis. Quoting Theodor Reik he reminds us that: 'The
psychoanalyst is above all a psychologist, whatever else he may be
physician, teacher, jurist, pastor
analysis will exist as an essential part
of psychology or not at all. For a psychologist, he suggests, this states the
correct position for psychoanalysis, and he calls for the recentering of the
aims and methods of psychology in the light of the discoveries of
psychoanalysis. This would involve psychology in focusing on the
speaking subject as distinct from what has hitherto been the main focus,
namely the experimental subject. It is fundamental to a psychoanalysis
properly so called to regard the speaking subject as being at the centre of
its concern. That is the locus of the emergence of the unconscious of the
subject and the desire that structures everything else. Drawing on the re­
reading of Freud by Lacan, Gallagher goes on to challenge psychology to
address all that emerges from such a contemporary analysis and look at its
implications for its own methods and approaches to its subject matter.
Lacan argues, following Freud, that what is centred, to the human subject is
desire, and any theory of human nature which didn't take account of that
was fundamentally flawed. It is further clear from Freud that that desire
is basically unconscious. This applies of course also to the desire of the
analyst. The central challenge to the science of psychology was to find
ways of accommodating the findings of analysis with all that that implies.
Scientific psychology could no longer then simply adhere to the common
paradigms of what is regarded as science, but would have to elaborate a
method proper to its own peculiar topic, namely the human subject.
8 For an analysis and comparison of Wundt's and Brentano's starting point for
psychology see my unpublished MA thesis on The Implications ofLonergan's Insight for
Cognitive Psychology, UCD, 1976.
116
A World of Meaning
The human subject is bom into a pre-existing world of meaning,
and the goal of development is to constitute itself in that world and take a
position in it. The world as experienced in sense experience is radically a
mediated world and the predominant mode of that mediation is linguistic
or symbolic. So it follows that an understanding of subjectivity will
involve the psychologist - as well as the analyst, and all other disciplines
concerned with human sciences properly so called - with the basic
question of meaning. One can of course take the word in the sense of a
noun, where it has to do essentially with the overall context of the word
and how it is used in the language, following Wittgenstein. Where does
the word make sense, fit in, or where does it belong in such a manner as to
conform to the grammar and syntax of the language of which it forms a
part. The meaning of a word is given by its place in the chain of language,
or of signifiers as Lacan has it. Any human subject can be said to
understand the meaning of the word when he can use the word as it is
understood by the hearers. But apart from the meaning as a substantive,
there is the sense of meaning as intending, wanting, planning, etc. and of
course, in a basic way, desiring.9 The world given by pre-existing
meaning is already there, given to the experiencing subject. It is to that
larger world mediated by meaning that we refer to when we speak of the
real world, and in it we live out our lives. But the subject knows this
world to be insecure because meaning is insecure, since besides truth there
is error, besides fact there is fiction, besides honesty there is deceit, and
besides science there is myth. Lonergan speaks also of meaning in the
second sense. Besides the world given in experience there is also the
world that we make, as he puts it. The world that we make, we first
intend, and this might be followed by planning, structuring and
organising. What one might consider to be intended is a transformed
9 For a useful discussion of meaning in this sense, see B. Lonergan's fDimensions of
Meaning' in Collection: papers by Bernard Lonergan, F. Crowe (Ed), New York, Herder and
Herder, 1967, pp. 252-67.
117
world. The human subject doesn't simply accept the world as given, but
through his desire attempts, however unsuccessfully, to transform it. It is
in that sense that one might say that the subject constitutes his world.
Lonergan speaks at this point of the emergence of the existential subject
and by that he means the place where the subject finds out for himself that
he has to decide for himself what he has to make of himself. Lonergan's
account of meaning is of importance here even though he doesn't
explicitly advert to the operations of the unconscious in any clear way.
But what is useful is the detailed analysis of human meaning, and its place
in the structure of the human subject It is being suggested here that the
Lacanian symbolic order is conceivable in terms of the world as mediated,
and the world as constituted by the subject as being that which emerges
progressively in the unfolding of human desire.
This particular sketch of a theory of meaning is offered simply to
indicate what the challenge to a human science of psychology might
involve. It would have to take the basic issue of meaning as a central
concern, and include the enormous elaboration of that that is implied in
Freud's initial discoveries and Lacan's later re-formulations of them. The
challenge offered to Irish psychologists by Gallagher more than ten years
ago has gone largely unanswered. But it is gratifying that it has been
issued and that the work of sketching the framework for a much needed
human psychology and psychoanalysis continues in Dublin under his
inspiration. The sub-title of the present review speaks of a paradigm for
psychology. Perhaps in the light of what has emerged from that review
we cannot be said to be nearer to anything like a useful paradigm. But
some crucial questions have been asked, and of particular importance
seems to be the issue of meaning touched on above. Perhaps that is all one
can manage for the moment, but it is none the less important. To have
asked the right or the most useful question is all an analyst can ever hope
for. The answer or answers must come from somewhere else, perhaps
from the unfolding subjectivity of the readers
118
Address for correspondence:
APPX
School o f Psychotherapy
S t Vincent's Hospital
Elm Park
Dublin 4
LECTU1E RAISONNÉE ET CRITIQUE DES ŒUVRES
DE FREUD ET DE LACAN
Charles Melman
4^ année, Séminaire du 8 octobre 1998
à mon cher Cormac Gallagher,
en témoignage d'amitié
Certains d'entre vous ont peut-être eu connaissance d'un document
que je vous ai apporté ce soir, parce que je trouve ces phénomènes assez
intéressants pour ouvrir le séminaire cette armée. Je ne sais pas si la
presse, si les média, chez nous, en ont parlé. Il s'agit d'une exposition qui
a eu lieu au Musée de la Technique et du Travail de Mannheim, ville
allemande d'une certaine importance. Cette exposition s'intitule Les
mondes du corps> regards dans le corps humain et comprend ... deux cents
cadavres qui ont subi un traitement spécial la 'plastination' inventée par
Monsieur Gunter von Hagens.
Ce monsieur a donc réuni deux cents cadavres qui sont des
écorchés dont la musculature est remarquablement mise en évidence,
dont parfois la calotte crânienne est retirée, ce qui permet de voir les
hémisphères cérébraux. Lorsqu’il s’agit de malades, Monsieur von
Hagens s'est arrangé pour qu'on puisse voir directement l'organe malade,
le foie, le coeur, les poumons. Cette exposition a eu sept cent mille
visiteurs à Mannheim ... Ce qui entre autres choses assure un certain
bien-être matériel à Monsieur Gunter von Hagens, d'autant que, après le
succès considérable ainsi rencontré, elle est immédiatement partie vers
où? Le... Japon!
Du reste, monsieur von Hagens promet d’être 'plastiné' lui-même
quand le moment viendra et de figurer, on pourra lui rendre visite, dans
cette exposition. Enfin! il est très content.
120
J'ai pris cette manifestation comme point de départ de ce qui aura à
nous concerner cette année, dans la mesure où elle illustre de quelle façon
le pouvoir de la technique (ici la 'plastination') est en mesure de nous
procurer des jouissances nouvelles, en l'occurrence de porter la
nécrophilie à un niveau de diffusion jusqu'ici peu égalé.
Car c'est bien de cela qu’il s'agit - évidemment, c'est une exposition
scientifique, puisqu'il s'agit d'anatomie, et puis de pathologie! Mais enfin,
je ne suis pas certain que les sept cent mille visiteurs aient été motivés par
le noble mobile de s'instruire.
Lors de notre semaine d'été la question de jouissances nouvelles
était donc posée à partir du séminaire sur V angoisse que nous avons
largement survolé, et d'une façon qui me paraît elle aussi intéressante.
Nous l'avons, à mon goût, survolé comme s'il s'agissait d'un texte
scientifique, c'est-à-dire impliquant notre propre division par rapport à
lui.
Comme s'il s’agissait non pas de remarques concernant la
psychopathologie de la vie quotidienne, mais d'une élaboration sur cette
chose étrange que constituerait peut-être l'angoisse, à laquelle nous nous
intéressions ...
Tout ceci me paraît rejoindre ce qui me semble être le succès
grandissant de la démarche scientifique, en tant qu'elle implique a priori
notre propre division par rapport à l'objet d'étude, et d'autre part son
triomphe lié moins à son éventuelle exactitude qu’à sa faculté de nous
offrir donc des jouissances nouvelles.
Car en voilà une tout de même assez! Nous allons pouvoir, sans
avoir besoin de nous cacher dans les cimetières pour ceux que cela
intéressait, nous allons pouvoir à la lumière des néons et dans une joyeuse
cohue générale, jouir de ces cadavres! C'est-à-dire que ce progrès dans
lequel nous sommes ne peut pas, je me permets de faire cette remarque,
ne peut pas manquer de nous rappeler qu'après tout, c'est au nom de la
science que s'est engagé, il y a soixante ans, un type d'action qui lui aussi
comprenait cette idée: la science justifiait qu'au titre d'expérimentation,
l'on puisse fabriquer des cadavres ... - autrement dit que l'on puisse au
nom de la science, jouir des corps jusqu'au bout!
Et si cette sorte de rétroaction que je vous propose est exacte, elle
éclaire d'un jour qui n’a peut-être pas été souvent proposé ce qui s'est
passé il y a soixante ans, c'est-à-dire une fois encore la prévalence de la
référence à la science pour guider les conduites, pour les justifier, pour
leur donner leur soubassement éthique, et là aussi donner la mesure
d'actions qui ne pouvaient connaître plus aucune limite, plus aucune
limitation. On ne saurait trop rappeler à cette occasion que à ceux qu'on a
appelés les ’troupes spéciales1 qui étaient engagées pour la fabrication
ainsi des cadavres sur les arrières des troupes nazies qui filaient vers
l’avant, il était strictement proscrit d'être, en aucun cas, pathétiquement
engagés par leur action. Autrement dit, il s'agissait d'agir en scien-tifiques ; y mettre le moindre pathos était contraire à ce qui était attendu
d'eux. Ils avaient à exercer une action de nettoyage, un point, c'est tout !
Ceci nous ramène à l'angoisse. Je me suis permis d'évoquer au
cours de ce séminaire, la façon dont finalement nous nous y sommes
habitués, dont nous l'apprivoisons, et la façon dont elle en vient à
constituer une modalité de jouissance nouvelle - et collective. Car Lacan
disait 'on se défend contre l’angoisse', 'on se défend contre la proximité de
l'objet a', sauf si, bien entendu, l'effet d'angoisse produit par cette
approche est susceptible d'alimenter des jouissances nouvelles, y compris
bien entendu mortifères.
En recueillant le témoignage de cette manifestation, j'étais bien
obligé de repenser à ceci: Lacan nous a laissés en panne, en panne
volontaire, sur deux points: l'un concerne son séminaire sur Les noms du
Père (et on déplorera toujours que nous n'ayons aucun accès au dossier
des notes qu'il avait constituées pour tenir ce séminaire, dossier qui existe,
qui doit être dans un tiroir, je ne sais même pas si quelqu'un l'a ouvert ou
s'y est intéressé!) et l’autre panne, c'est qu'il est resté très discret à l’endroit
de cette expression remarquable de la pensée humaine qui s'appelle la
logique, et qui est l'ossature de la démarche scientifique.
Il est resté discret à l'endroit de la logique, bien qu'à son propos, il
ait utilisé des formulations très intéressantes mais pour des raisons qui me
semblent éminemment pratiques: j’imagine qu’il ne souhaitait pas
décourager ... l'ardente jeunesse qui, venue de l’École Normale,
s'intéressait à son enseignement, et pour qui le rapport, la référence faite à
la logique était aussi bien celle qui devait donner appui à leur action
privée ou sociale, que celle qui devait régler leur démarche et leurs écrits.
Car enfin, il est quand même surprenant que des psychanalystes ne
s'interrogent pas davantage, eux qui sont délibérément critiques, aussi
bien vis-à-vis des diverses productions dites ’intellectuelles1que de la leur!
Comment se fait-il que des psychanalystes entérinent de façon volontiers
automatique les affirmations d'un mode d'écriture qui, comme tous les
modes d’écriture, doit être réfléchi et soumis à la critique? Qu’est-ce qui
fait que des analystes semblent désarmés ou sans pouvoir à l'endroit
d'une argumentation, dès lors qu'elle se réfère à la logique, et sans être en
mesure eux-mêmes de mieux établir ce qui serait la leur ?
Parce qu'après tout, un analyste est supposé ne pas dire n'importe
quoi. Il est supposé être pris dans une stricte rationalité. Même s'il se
trompe, néanmoins sa démarche n'a rien à voir avec ce qui pourrait être
celle du voyant ou du thaumaturge, ou de l'interprète des songes. C'est
une démarche qui, chaque fois, se réfère à une rationalité, même quand
elle est dépassée (celle de Freud par exemple, sa référence à la
thermodynamique, etc.). Mais il se réfère lui aussi à la rationalité et,
semble-t-il, sans être en mesure de soutenir la sienne ni du même coup de
tenir sa place quant à la façon dont la démarche scientifique devrait être
appréhendée.
C'est pour cela qu'on ne peut que se féliciter des Journées qui ont
eu lieu le week-end dernier et où un certain nombre d'interventions, fort
diverses, bien entendu inégales, mais toutes intéressantes parce que
témoignant toutes d'une certaine approche de ce qui est ici en cause. Je
crois avoir à cette occasion commencé à apporter quelques propositions
que je vais me permettre de reprendre, pour que là encore votre critique
puisse éventuellement m'aider dans ce chemin que je poursuis et que,
comme je le disais tout à l'heure, Lacan nous a épargné.
On pourrait, ce chemin, le baliser de quelques formules de Lacan.
L'un des participants à ces Journées, lui-même mathématicien et vieux
copain de route de Lacan, nous a dit que finalement, Lacan laisse de côté
l'intuition. Il ne marche pas selon le chemin qui plaît aux scientifiques,
c'est-à-dire la démonstration: il y a chez Lacan très peu de démonstrations
à proprement parler mathématiques et donc ses énoncés se soutiennent
avant tout de l'auteur de rénonciation. Ht il fait la grosse voix pour dire
des trucs comme ’il n'y a pas de rapport sexuel' ou que 'La femme n'existe
pas'. Et tout cela tient par le fait que c'est Lacan qui le dit, et sousentendu, vous répétez ce qu'il dit et vous le prenez ainsi parce qu'il Va dit.
Donc l'argument d'autorité prévaudrait.
Prenons donc un certain nombre de formules de Lacan pour baliser
mon chemin, le rendre peut-être moins aride, par exemple 'la science
commence avec la possibilité d'écrire dans un ensemble de formules des
petites lettres, susceptibles dès lors dans ces formules de prendre chacune
toutes les valeurs'. Voilà par exemple une assertion de Lacan. Une autre
assertion ’il a fallu une société de maîtres pour que naisse la science. Là où
il n'y avait pas d'esclaves (évocation de la Chine), pas de science!' ce qui
est vrai d'ailleurs. La culture arabe, elle, au contraire, s'est montrée très
tôt éprise de scientificité ...
Ceci mérite d'être repris dés lors par ce qui souligne la distinction
du signifiant et de la lettre. Je dois dire que je m'étais déjà bagarré avec ce
genre de choses à propos d'un livre de Serge Leclaire, Psychanalyser, où il
dit 'au commencement est la lettre' - non pas le Verbe mais la lettre.
Donc distinction du signifiant et de la lettre en tant que le
signifiant, comme nous le savons par cœur, se distingue avant tout,
chacun d'être différent des autres, et donc différent de lui-même puisque
son usage, son emploi n'est jamais que métaphorique ou métonymique ;
alors que la lettre, nous savons par l'introduction aux Écrits de quelle
façon Lacan en situe la genèse, c'est-à-dire par un mouvement lié aux
propriétés d'une chaîne, mouvement décrit par Markov. Autrement dit, à
partir du moment où dans une chaîne aléatoire de lettres, je les regroupe
par trois (je simplifie) il va s'organiser un certain nombre d'exclusions à tel
ou tel moment de la chaîne.
124
Donc cette lettre dont Lacan prend le souci dès l’entrée des Écrits des Écritsl ... - il ne s'agit pas de séminaires, de ce qui se supporte de la
voix et vous savez de quelle façon notre ami Jean-Claude Milner s'insurge
contre tout ce qui ferait référence à la présence de la voix dans
l'enseignement de Lacan, cherchant à le réduire à ce qui est pure écriture,
pure inscription
. cette lettre, elle, contrairement au signifiant qui est
donc différent de lui-même, cette lettre est toujours identique à elle-même.
C'est-à-dire qu'elle ne renvoie aucunement à sa différence avec les autres
lettres et elle ne renvoie pas non plus à quelque obscur réfèrent qui
viendrait lui procurer un quelconque signifié. D'être réelle, la lettre a cette
vertu d'être toujours identique à elle-même et Lacan le dit dans cette leçon
de séminaire consacrée à Dupin et à La lettre volée de Poe, elle entraîne
toujours le réel avec elle et, dit-il, même si je la déchire (autrement dit si
elle perd de sa forme), elle reste la lettre.
Le réfèrent du signifiant: à partir du moment où il se trouve
protégé contre la psychose qui accompagne cette vertu chez lui d'être
chaque fois différent de lui-même et de renvoyer du même coup à un
signifié qui n'est rien d'autre que celui de la pure différence (dans cette
normalité du fonctionnement du signifiant, nous sommes dans la
psychose, et c'est bien pourquoi Lacan disait que la psychose, c'était
'normal'), nous savons dès lors que dans le référent, ce réfèrent jusque là
organisé par la différence, s'isole un trait un; il va se trouver, ce trait un,
supporter une interprétation phallique et les signifiants, ’traits unaires1par
la même opération, ne vont plus avoir qu'un unique signifié. Bien qu'ils
soient tous différents les uns des autres, ils n'ont plus qu'un unique
signifié, le phallus. C'est-à-dire qu'ils n'ont qu'une valeur.
La lettre a cette propriété de pouvoir endosser toutes les valeurs, et
il faut s'interroger sur ce que peut vouloir dire ce 'toutes', pour Lacan, et
s'il ne se résumait pas à l'ensemble des grandeurs que la lettre peut venir
supporter. Mais la lettre en tout cas, les deux valeurs que nous
connaissons en ce qui nous regarde, ce sont la valeur phallique et la valeur
Autre. Et prêtons à la lettre ce pouvoir de représenter et de supporter
aussi bien avec elle la valeur phallique que la valeur Autre.
125
Il serait possible à cet endroit d'engager une digression qui
risquerait peut-être d'être amusante. Alors ça soulagerait un peu ... il faut
faire cela (dans une leçon, il faut toujours introduire un petit moment
amusant pour relancer l'attentioni).
On pourrait partir de ce fait bien connu, le goût pour l’écriture, et
inversement aussi bien une espèce d'impossibilité de s'exercer à ce noble
art. Goût pour l'écriture, c'est-à-dire une espèce de partie de pêche pour
en quelque sorte récupérer toutes ces lettres que le jeu de la chaîne
signifiante a pu ainsi oblitérer, et qui sont venues à destination d'être
refoulées, l'écriture permettant en cette affaire le retour du refoulé. Et la
jouissance de ce qu'il faut bien considérer hélas! comme étant l'objet
nutnber one, la lettre, l'objet par excellence!
Je faisais remarquer à l'occasion de ces Journées, cette conférence
faite à lfAssociation dans le cadre du groupe dit 'de Cordoue’ par Shmuel
Trigano venu nous évoquer de façon très plaisante, intéressante, et
instructive, le travail des talmudistes et des kabbalistes. Je suppose que
l'ensemble de l'auditoire a pu saisir de quelle façon on pouvait être aspiré
par cette jouissance de la combinatoire de la lettre, au point d'y consacrer
sa vie entière et assurément dans une relation, il faudrait bien le dire, avec
le vrai objet de la jouissance. La lettre à cet égard, ce n'est pas du
semblant!
L'écriture, il y a une moitié de la population à laquelle nous
sommes très attachés et qui a volontiers et très facilement une ambition
d'écrire, cette moitié de la population étant la moitié féminine, avec des
réussites bien entendu certaines et des échecs non moins certains, tout
cela, c'est bien normal. Mais on pourrait se dire que si chez le
scribouillard mâle, il ne s'agit jamais que de retrouver, de faire revenir au
jour des lettres refoulées, aller chercher dans la poubelle tout ce qui est
venu là s’accumuler et pouvoir ainsi en faire son festin, chez une dame, il
s'agit peut-être plus volontiers, par le jeu de l'écriture, de se créer un
refoulement. Parce que a priori, pour elle, dans le champ de l'Autre, il n'y
a aucune raison pour qu'il y ait quelque refoulement que ce soit. Et donc
du même coup une certaine nostalgie de pouvoir jouir de cet objet vrai, et
126
non plus sous la forme du semblant qu'elle représente, elle, mais en
cernant enfin ce qui fait son prix, à elle.
Et en dégageant en même temps ... qu'est ce qu'on appelle un
style? Moi, j'aurais envie de dire que ce qui fait la beauté du style, d'un
style, c'est quand on perçoit bien que chez un auteur donné, il y a un
module, autrement dit que le jeu des métaphores, des métonymies, le
balancement des phrases, leur groupement, leur équilibre, finalement
s'organisent autour d’un espace qui est toujours le même. Et l'effet de
beauté qu'est susceptible de produire cette réalisation virtuelle, mais aussi
bien réelle de cet espace en tant qu'il s'avère être le moteur, le moteur
fidèle, constant régulier, de ce qui donne à ces écrits justement ce que l'on
appelle un style.
Vous savez que Lacan dit que le style, c'est le sujet, et d'abord de
'celui à qui l'on s'adresse', autre formule. Mais rien ne nous empêche de
justifier ce que je vous évoque par le fait que la possibilité du style chez
l'une de nos amies ou de nos compagnes est l'exercice qui lui permet ainsi
de se créer une demeure subjective dans l'Autre, elle qui singulièrement
est contrainte à jouer les hystériques pour essayer de faire valoir qu'un
sujet, elle en serait un, elle aussi...
En quoi cela nous intéresse-t-il? En ce que cela débouche sur une
possibilité déjà incluse dans ce que j'évoquais tout à l'heure à propos de
cette funeste exposition : des techniques du corps - ici en l’occurrence,
l'écriture - seraient peut-être susceptibles d'organiser, de mettre en place
la castration par un cheminement qui ne devrait donc plus rien au Nomdu-Père, - surtout que dans le cas présent, le Nom-du-Père se montre bien
incapable de l'assurer pour une femme. Cette mise en place par des
moyens purement techniques, des exercices corporels, en quelque sorte,
permettrait de s'offrir du même coup des jouissances neuves ou inédites.
Pourquoi ce que je raconte là était-il inclus dans mon départ? Il est
clair que l'un des intérêts, des enthousiasmes que la science soulève, c'est
qu'elle s'avère effectivement capable par des phénomènes d’accoutumance
ou d’habitude, de créer des jouissances aussi bien nouvelles que celles-là,
extrêmes, c'est-à-dire d'emblée de l'ordre de l'ujipiç, c'est-à-dire sans
limites, des jouissances qui ne sont plus commandées par ce qu'il en serait
d'un rapport à un semblant et liées au maintien nécessaire de la limite,
mais fabrication d’une jouissance allant délibérément à l'uPpiç à
l'extrême, comme notre Gunter von Hagens, allant tout de suite à une
jouissance ... Donner à chacun la faculté de jouir des morts, c'est quand
même une possibilité qui n'est due qu'à la science!
Ce qui nous repose une question qui a été abordée, introduite au
cours de ces Journées par une remarque très pertinente de Castel, c’est-àdire qu'il y aurait deux façons de transmettre le savoir, l'une transmission
de la science, et puis l'autre par la cohabitation. La cohabitation avec X et
les questions humoristiques qui alors se posent pour tous ceux qui ont
approché les couples de personnages célèbres et qui n'ont jamais manqué
d'être surpris par le fait que l'épouse du célèbre philosophe semblait en
savoir beaucoup plus que tous ses élèves sur ce que pensait le Maître. Et
cela d'abord évidemment parce qu'elle lui serrait soigneusement la vis
(c'est une métaphore ...) mais ensuite parce que de partager son lit, sa
table, son intimité, d’avoir avec lui quelques rapports intimes lui donnait
sur le bonhomme un type de savoir que les élèves les plus attentionnés,
les plus empressés, les plus chaleureux, les plus charmants, les plus
mignons ne pouvaient avoir. Et je pourrai vous donner des noms si vous
en voulez.
Oui? Vous voulez des noms? Madame Heidegger était très au fait
de la philosophie de son mari, et sûrement plus que les élèves qui se
pressaient à la table du maître. Ce n’était pas le cas, alors c'est intéressant,
ce n’était manifestement pas le cas de Madame Freud. Je ne sais pas
pourquoi...
Mais j’évoque devant vous ce que Lacan appelait les techniques du
corps et dont il dit quelque part que finalement, on ne sait pas très bien
jusqu’où vont leurs pouvoirs, jusqu'à quel point elles sont en mesure
d'apprendre au corps à jouir de la façon qu'elles enseignent sans autre
référence, c’est-à-dire sans passage par le signifiant C'est aussi pourquoi
les histoires de séduction dans l'enfance ne sont pas, bien entendu ! je
serais désolé que ce que j'ai dit là-dessus puisse prêter à confusion, ne sont
128
pas sans conséquences. Il est certain qu'il y a des enfants pour qui ce type
d'expérience a pu être déterminant, nous le voyons en analyse, mais c'est
aussi pourquoi on rencontre si fréquemment chez les dames cette idée que
l'on a abusé d'elles dans leur enfance, que leur savoir est lié à une
expérience corporelle. Puisque leur savoir ne peut être lié à une castration
qui serait opérée par le père. Alors d'où leur vient-il, leur savoir sexuel,
leur savoir du sexe? A la limite, elles n'ont pas d'autre moyen pour
expliquer le fait qu'un beau jour, elles se sont trouvées éveillées au sexuel.
Alors, ce pouvoir des techniques du corps et donc de la science ne
peut que nous faire revenir à l'examen de la validité de sa démarche.
Examen qui paraîtra d'emblée futile puisque la validité de sa démarche se
résout précisément dans le fait qu'elle marche ou pas et que si elle marche,
elle est donc valide. Et Lacan s'étonnait sur ce fait qu'un agencement de
petites lettres s'avère opératoire sur le réel, il s'en étonnait. Cela ne lui
semblait pas aller de soi. Pourquoi ça marche, après tout?
En tout cas, je souhaite attirer de nouveau votre attention ce soir,
sur le fait que toute la démarche analytique consiste à refuser les
connecteurs logiques que le discours conscient établit entre les
propositions pour systématiquement les suspecter et affirmer (ce qui est
encore plus grave!) qu'aucun connecteur logique entre les propositions ne
saurait être considéré comme ultime et définitif. Autrement dit, vous
analysez un rêve, vous avez une suite de propositions, du fait de le
rapporter à l'analyste vous êtes forcément amené à y introduire des
connecteurs logiques, il n'est pas d'adresse à autrui qui ne comporte la
référence à de tels connecteurs.
Si je ne m'en sers pas, il dira que je suis complètement dinguel
Si j'avance des propositions contradictoires par exemple, il dira...
ça ne va pas!
Ou des implications complètement arbitraires mais que la logique
respecte à partir du moment où la forme est respectée, il dira que je suis
m alade...
Eh bien, tout le travail de l'analyste est d'être fidèle au travail du
rêve lui-même. Je le faisais remarquer en me référant à quelques pages
129
essentielles de la Traumdeutung (chapitre VI sur l’élaboration du rêve)
concernant la représentation des relations logiques dans le rêve, où Freud
souligne que le rêve n'a aucun moyen de représenter les relations
logiques, les connecteurs logiques. Cela mériterait de sa part un
étonnement un peu plus grand, parce que le rêve a tous les moyens de
figuration. Pourquoi n'aurait-il pas des moyens à lui, de son invention à
lui, pour représenter les connecteurs logiques?
Mais il faudrait franchir le pas, et dire que l’inconscient ignore les
connecteurs logiques. Dans l'inconscient, il n'y a pas de ... S'il y a dans
l'inconscient un 'ou bien, ou bien', c'est un 'ou bien, ou bien' qui déjà figure
une adresse à un interlocuteur. Alors vous direz, oui, mais Lacan
souligne que les rêves en analyse sont toujours des rêves adressés à
l'analyste. Certes mais dans le texte du rêve lui-même, vous ne trouvez
pas la trace du moindre connecteur logique. Et si chez Freud, il y a
quelques pages consacrées à la façon de représenter la négation par la
contradiction dans le rêve, ce sont des pages intéressantes mais qui
montrent bien que cette contradiction qu'évoque Freud à ce propos n'est
pas forcément celle qui est équivalente au signe moins de la négation ou
bien à une contradiction qui serait proprement logique.
Si l'inconscient est structuré comme un langage, il est fait d'unités
de tailles fort diverses : la lettre, le phonème, le mot, le bout de phrase,
voire une séquence phrasée tout entière; l’inconscient n’a pas d’unité en
quelque sorte fixe . Ce qui compte, c'est que ça fait unité, mais sa taille
dans la chaîne signifiante peut être fort variable. Mais si l'inconscient
ignore les connecteurs logiques, c'est sans doute que l'inconscient n'est pas
organisé ... il faut que je fasse un peu attention dans la façon de le dire
pour ne pas introduire de confusion ...
Dans la mesure où l’unité fondamentale de l'inconscient est la
lettre, nous avons vu que le réfèrent de la lettre, ce n'est pas le phallus,
que la lettre porte avec elle l'ombre du phallus qui a causé sa chute, mais
ce n ’est pas le phallus, le réfèrent de la lettre.
Du même coup, il n'y a pas une quelconque organisation de
séquences dans l'inconscient qui serait régie par une rigueur 'connexion,
disjonction, implication (encore que l'implication ne soit qu'une variante
de la disjonction), négation,’, il n'y a nulle part dans l'inconscient la
marque de ce qui unit, de ce qui sépare et de ce qui nie et où - j’aurai
l'occasion lorsque j'écrirai là-dessus de vous le montrer mais je ne le
reprendrai pas à ce séminaire -, et où on peut voir le passage dans la
réalité du phallus avec ses connecteurs logiques, le passage dans la réalité
du phallus que la chaîne écrite forclôt.
Je m'en suis mieux expliqué l'autre jour qu'aujourd’hui, mais pour
vous le rendre mieux sensible, le poinçon du fantasme, qu'est-ce que c'est?
Vous pouvez le lire, dit Lacan, comme le signe de la conjonction, de la
disjonction, de l'implication, du ’plus grand que’, du ’plus petit que’. Lacan
prend l'arbitraire de ramener tous les connecteurs logiques à un unique
signe, peu importe que vous vous en serviez pour en faire une
conjonction, une disjonction ou une négation. Il ramène tout cela à un
unique signe qui sera pour lui le poinçon, non seulement pour des raisons
de facilité d’écriture puisque ce sont les deux signes logiques de
conjonction et de disjonction qui se réunissent, mais aussi parce que le
poinçon, c'est précisément ce qui soustrait, ce qui opère l'opération d'une
ponction, le poinçon, c'est ce qui ponctionne, d'abord.
Un texte, je me permets de reprendre ce point que j'ai déjà plusieurs
fois abordé, n'a que deux moyens de faire valoir sa validité :
- Ou bien l'autorité de I’énonciateur, de celui qui parle
- Ou bien la consistance logique, c’est-à-dire les phénomènes de
consécution, du fait qu’il y a une proposition qui vient engendrer l'autre
dans un mouvement, dans un devenir qui paraît relever du nécessaire. Il
ne peut pas en être autrement, une fois qu'on a posé Ifun, c'est l'autre qui
vient forcément, et puis l'autre.
Il apparaît d’une façon qui ne saurait nous étonner que si vous
annulez la valeur de vérité de l'énonciation, et ce qui la supporte, c'est-àdire le phallus, vous faites automatiquement apparaître dans la chaîne
écrite la prévalence de lois pour régir la consécution des propositions, et
c'est la rigueur de cette consécution qui vaut pour vérité alors que la
vérité, celle de l’énonciation, car il n'y en a pas d’autre, a été forclose!
131
C'est pourquoi aussi, toujours dans ce texte d'introduction aux
Écrits, vous voyez comment Lacan dit à propos des écrits (j'ai répété ça
cent fois!) qu'ils 's'en vont au vent comme traites folles' ... Ce sont des
prescriptions, comment dirais-je, dont plus personne ne sait quel en est
l'auteur, qui les a émises, ni ce qu'elles signifient, et qui s'en vont comme
ça, avoir leurs effets d'impératifs.
Si Lacan ne fait pas de démonstration, c'est tout simplement parce
que la discipline à laquelle il se réfère fait la critique de ce qu'on appelle la
démonstration logique et que, tirant la leçon de la constitution de
l'inconscient, il retient, comme le montre l'analyse des rêves, que ce qui
vaut dans l'inconscient n'est rien d'autre que, non pas la consécution, mais
la contiguïté. C'est parce que les divers éléments se trouvent en relation
de voisinage, que vous allez de l'un à l’autre ... Alors vous tracez des
réseaux, et puis avec des retours, avec des recoupements ... mais ce qui
fait que l'ensemble tient, c'est que chacun est avec l'autre dans une relation
qui n'est pas de conjonction ni d'implication, ni de disjonction, mais est
avec l'autre dans une relation de voisinage.
En vous disant cela, je crois suffisamment évoquer ce qui constitue
la justification que Lacan fasse de la topologie qui est donc la science des
voisinages, fasse de la topologie le domaine dont il y a à attendre une
logique qui serait cohérente avec notre domaine. Alors que la logique
classique est organisée sur le principe de la conjonction et de l'exclusion,
c'est-à-dire de la coupure, commencée même par Platon. Lacan s'amuse
évidemment à penser qu'il s'agit de la définition du pêcheur, c'est-à-dire
que vous procédez tout le temps par disjonctions et par coupures, vous
élaguez sans cesse.
Eh bien, il est, je crois, essentiel pour la façon dont nous 'pigeons'
notre domaine de ne pas faire du réel, c'est-à-dire de ce qui est ainsi
retranché, un espace de rebut et un espace qui dès lors ne nous
concernerait pas mais nous avons, grâce à la topologie et à sa capacité de
n'étudier que les voisinages et éventuellement s'il y a une coupure, les
effets d’une coupure, à faire du réel cette dimension propre à assurer le
fonctionnement de la psyché.
132
Est-ce à dire que la psychanalyse serait, elle aussi, la science du
réel? Mais évidemment pas! Si Lacan dit que 'la logique est la science du
réel', c’est parce que le réel est précisément ce qui fait sa limite, ce qu'elle
exclut Et elle passe son temps ainsi à retrancher. Alors que pour Lacan et
c'est là, je crois, la mutation qui nous intéresse, le réel est au contraire ce
qui est non pas à privilégier, mais en tout cas à traiter au titre d'une
dimension égale aux deux autres.
Voilà pourquoi il serait temps de nous engager, plus hardiment en
tout cas, dans ce type de mise au clair qui devrait rendre beaucoup plus
difficiles des ouvrages comme ceux de Sokal et Bricmont ... qui d'une
certaine manière, de la part de leurs auteurs, sont justifiés - dans la mesure
où les psychanalystes n'ont pas répondu à ce type de problèmes, n'ont pas
interrogé, non pas la validité, de l'éthique de la science, etc., mais sa
démarche même. Et donc en aucun cas elle ne saurait les terroriser, dans
la mesure où justement tout leur travail, du fait que le sujet, comme le dit
Lacan, c'est celui de la science, tout leur travail consiste à discuter ladite
démarche et à lui opposer celle de l'activité désirante, celle qui supporte et
maintient un brin d'humanité dans ces nouvelles offres de jouissance (à
l'exemple de ce que je vous racontais tout à l'heure, cette 'plastination'...)
qu'avec succès nous offre la science.
Address for correspondance:
Association Freudienne
Internationale
15 Rue Bouchardor
75010 Paris
France
LACAN AND DALI - AN ANAMORPHIC ENCOUNTER?
Olga Cox Cameron
'What fun I might have had
Lacan's half-mocking, backward
look at his early years from the vantage point of 1966, pinpoints his much
publicised connection with Salvador Dali as a stopover, left long behind in
his own intellectual odyssey. On the occasion of the publication of a first
extract from Paul Duquenne's translation of Schreber's Memoirs of M y
Nervous Illness, in the psychoanalytic journal Cahiers pour VAnalyse, Jacques
Alain Miller invited Lacan to write an introduction. Lacan took advantage
of this opportunity to review the trajectory of his own thought on
psychotic structures and, typically, to flatten out the importance of
'connaissance paranoïaque', signalled as crucial in the article in The
International Journal of Psychoanalysis of May 1951.
What a fine career as an essayist I could have made for
myself using this theme which lends itself to all kinds of
aesthetic variations! One has only to think of all that our
friend Dali has done with it.
The doctoral thesis had theorised 'le cas Aimée as 'a developmental fixation
at the level of the superego', but the slow working over of Aimée's story in
the years immediately following 1932 offered Lacan a number of other
salient elements which would reappear, metamorphosed, in the 1960's.
Aimée's relationship with her elder sister, described in 1933 as haine
amoureuse is a disturbed doubling which radically subverts the stability of
the narcissistic image. Furthermore, this anomaly in subjective structure is
identical to that found to be at the basis of certain homicidal attacks, which
the psychiatrist Guiraud had described as unmotivated murders. These
acts, frequently carried out in twilight states, and of which the perpetrator
has no clear memory; 'reveal a specific anomaly identical to that found in
psychosis'. Thirdly this anomaly is characterised by certain types of prelogical conceptual structures, which account for 'the often remarkable
aesthetic creations produced in psychotic states'.
The concluding sentences of De la Psychose raise three questions to
which he will return in the sixties; firstly, the subjective structure which
underpins psychosis; secondly, the manner in which this impacts on
creative expression and by extension on language itself; and thirdly, what
he will call in the Seminar on Identification the abolition of the temporal
dimension in a-subjective aggressivity. All of these questions converge on
the topic of identification, most fully examined by Freud in The Ego and the
Id in 1923 and in chapter seven of Group Psychology and the Analysis of the
Ego two years earlier. In the doctoral thesis, Lacan had puzzled over the
fact that Freud saw the super-ego as a passage from the outside to the
inside, a reincorporation into the ego of a part of the outside world. By the
sixties, a daunting panoply of topological surfaces will be invoked to
account for the particular properties and functions of outside and inside in
the constitution of all subjectivity, normal or psychotic.
Lacan was not unaware that the questions about subjectivity,
opened up throughout the sixties by means of the Moebuis strip, the Klein
bottle, and eventually the Borromean Knot had already featured for some
time in the work of creative artists. He himself said as much, notably in his
1966 article on Marguerite Duras's Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, but also at
the end of the 1961-1962 Seminar on Identification, when, having quoted
from Blanchot, 'the poet of our literature', he added; fI want to tell you that
I am often aware of doing nothing other here than allowing you to
advance with me to the point that all around us many of the best people
have already got to'. This reference, in which he singles out the work of
Blanchot and Klossowski, stands in contrast to the smiling dismissal of
Dali's influence cited above. In the sixties Lacan will in fact quote Frege
more often than Blanchot or Klossowski to illustrate subjective structure
and the manner in which the functions of repetition and representation are
intricated. In the thirties and forties, however, the writings of Salvador
Dali, like his art, were moving strongly in the direction of a radical
questioning, if not a downright subversion of the stability of these
concepts. Also, Dali's writings which he himself considered not inferior to
his painting, offer a deeply interesting commentary on the three inter­
related questions with which Lacan had ended his doctoral thesis, to wit,
the particular crisis of subjectivity engendered by a too close doubling
within the family structure, the relation between this structure and certain
homicidal crimes, and the way in which familiar modes of representation
may be sabotaged in the service of this subjectivity. In this paper I propose
to examine not just Dali's influence on Lacan, but also the extraordinary
convergence in the dominant concerns of both men insofar as it becomes
retrospectively visible in Dali's writings, especially in his two
autobiographies.
Since the field of psychoanalysis is language, it seems more apt to
look to these writings rather than to Dali's paintings. It would seem too
that Lacan became interested in Dali via his published articles in Minotaure
and not through direct contact with his painting.
Not only do Dali's writings exemplify the thematic implications of
Lacan's thesis, they also, like his paintings, introduce a very specific
problematization of sameness and difference. This problematization,
which furnishes the opening gambit of Lacan's Seminar on Identification in
1961, will become the focal point of modem French philosophy. From the
1960’s onward, as Descombes says in Le Meme et VAutre, the logic of
identity has been countered by a thinking based on difference, and
Deleuze asserts that, for contemporary thinkers, difference and repetition
have replaced the identical and the negative as seminal concepts.
Throughout the sixties Lacan inserts these questions into the heart of
psychoanalytic theory. The result is a railroading of seriously difficult and
abstract concepts through the well-worn definitions of psychosis, neurosis
and perversion, expanding, complexifying and illuminating these
definitions almost beyond recognition. Descombes rightly insisted that
phenomena of representation furnish a privileged approach to the most
authentic understanding of difference, since they provide access to the
experience of incontestable while apparently inconceivable difference.
In those of his seminars which focus on the function of repetition
and the relation of the same to the different, Lacan will insist that he is
speaking primarily of the relation of the subject to the signifier: 'What is in
question is the relation of the subject to the signifier' he says in the opening
lesson of the Seminar on Identification, repeating this messsage a little
further on: 'Now more than ever I am going to make turn around the
structure of language everything that I am going to say to you'. He then
goes on to demonstrate his basic premises with examples taken not from
the domain of language itself, but by means of topological surfaces.
However, in the thirties, literature was quite remarkably extending the
formal implications of what Lacan would call the radiceli duplicity of the
subjective position. Most notable among French writers was Raymond
Roussel, who died in 1932, and whose work, with its stunning coda,
published posthumously in 1933, is an extraordinary exploration of the
virtualities inherent in the repetitions of the signifier, and of the
strangeness of the narrative space available in a language beset by
doubleness. Lacan in the thirties looked to Caillois, Wallon and Kojéve to
add shape to his theory of 'connaissance paranoiaque', and to psychoanalytic
practice for the beginning of a theory of language. The questions raised at
the end of his doctoral thesis will be most fully answered in the sixties
when the relation of the subject to the signifier is theorised in these
topological and mathematical metaphors. But Dali and Roussel had
already created the shapes within writing itself which these metaphors
attempt to outline. Furthermore, they explore the specificities of the
relation of the subject to the signifier within structures which may be
posited as psychotic. Dali made of his paranoid-critical method an
instrument for the creation of great art, just as Roussel, whose celebrated
1procède1 is described by Deleuze as schizophrenic, fabricates from it his
marvellously exotic fictional world.
This paper will look at the immediate influence of Dali's writing on
Lacan at the time of the doctoral thesis, and at the manner in which Lacan's
thesis in turn inflected Dali's description of the paranoid-critical method.
It will then supplement Dali's accounts of this mode of representation by
an examination of the autobiographical writings which underpin his
aesthetic theory. Dali is unambiguous in asserting their strict correlation,
since the autobiographies set out to describe how he forged a sense of
objectivity out of what he called the most terrible mental malady, 'while at
the same time maintaining the freedom of the irreducible share of paranoia
from which my genius derives'.
The Writings of Salvador Dali
The opening sentence of Ian Gibson's recent biography of Dali
warns the unwary reader;
Salvador Dali is not a trustworthy source of information
about himself. From his adolescence he set out consciously
to become a myth, and he continued to work at being Dali
even after he had achieved his goal. A vital stage in the
process was his The Secret Life of Salvador Dali written in 1942,
when he was thirty-eight. Whatever its other qualities, the
Secret Life is not concerned with rigorous autobiographical
truth. On the contrary it goes out of its way to distort it,
becoming in the process, a biographical minefield.
It would assuredly be imprudent to replace the biographer's scepticism
with a kind of uncritical mythopoeic credulity, but a psychoanalytic
reading must accord as much importance to distortion and myth as it does
to factual accuracy. Undoubtedly misinformation and fantasy play a large
part in Dali's writings but this does not invalidate their interest.
In 1979, in an interview on Spanish television, Dali put forward the
view, that he was better as a writer than as a painter. While his one novel,
Hidden Faces written in 1943, bears out Edmund Wilson's assertion that
Dali was no novelist, his early essays on art theory and the first
138
autobiography, Secret Life, are recognised as outstanding achievements. It
is these latter writings, the essays on the theory of art written between 1930
and 1935, and Secret Life, as well as later autobiographical writings, which
are of relevance here. The essays on art theory energetically endorse a new
mode of representation, dubbed by Dali the paranoiac-critical method,
while the autobiographies link this representational innovation to what is
perceived by Dali as anomalies in his own psychic structure, connected to
circumstances in his early life. Dali's insistence on the centrality of these
events is rubbished by his biographer. It remains true nonetheless that for
all of Dali's life this story continued to function as a kind of personal myth
in the Lacanian sense of the term.
Chronological considerations require that the essays on art theory
which relate directly to the intellectual and aesthetic osmosis that occurred
in his first meeting with Lacan should take precedence over an
examination of the autobiographies. However it is impossible not to begin
with Dali's exuberant account of that first meeting in Chapter One of The
Secret Life of Salvador Dali, published in English in 1942. This chapter
consists in a series of unrelated, perhaps loosely chronological episodes
which dramatise the outsider status of the writer with respect to the norm
of human interchange, as well as the sometimes ludicrous consequences of
his lack of self-presence. Among these 'Anecdotic Self-Portraits' is the
story of his first meeting with Lacan:
I seem destined to a truculent eccentricity whether I wish it
or no.
I was 33 ... One day in Paris I received a telephone
call from a brilliant young psychiatrist. He had just read an
article of mine in Le Minotaure on The Inner Mechanisms of
Paranoiac Activity. He congratulated me and expressed his
astonishment at the accuracy of my scientific knowledge of
this subject which was so generally misunderstood. He
wished to see me to talk over this question. We agreed to
meet late that very afternoon in my studio on Rue Gauget. I
spent the whole afternoon in a state of extreme agitation at
the prospect of our interview and I tried to plan in advance
the course of our conversation. My ideas were so often
regarded even by my closest friends in the surrealist group
as paradoxical notions - tinged with genius to be sure - that I
was flattered finally to be considered in strictly scientific
circles. Hence I was anxious that everything about our first
exchange of ideas should be perfectly normal and serious.
While waiting for the young psychiatrist's arrival I
continued working on the portrait of the Viscountess de
Noailles on which I was then engaged. This painting was
executed directly on copper. The highly burnished metal
cast mirror-like reflections which made it difficult for me to
see my drawing clearly. I noticed as I had before, that it was
easier to see what I was doing where the reflection was
brightest. At once I stuck a piece of white paper half an inch
square on the end of my nose. Its reflection made perfectly
visible the drawing of the part on which I was working.
At six o'clock sharp, the appointed time of our
meeting, the doorbell rang. I hurriedly put away my copper,
Jacques Lacan entered, and we immediately launched into a
highly technical discussion. We were surprised to discover
that our views were equally opposed and for the same
reasons, to the constitutionalist theories then almost
universally accepted. We conversed for two hours in a
constant dialectical tumult. He left with the promise that we
would keep in constant touch with each other and meet
periodically. After he had gone I paced up and down my
studio, trying to reconstruct the course of our conversation
and to weigh more objectively the points on which our rare
disagreements might have a real significance. But I grew
increasingly puzzled over the rather alarming manner in
which the young psychiatrist had scrutinised my face from
140
time to time. It was almost as if the germ of a strange
curious smile would then pierce his expression.
Was he intensely studying the convulsive effects
upon my facial morphology of the ideas that stirred my
soul?
I found the answer to the enigma when I presently
went to wash my hands (this incidentally is the moment
when one usually sees every kind of question with the
greatest lucidity). But this time it was given to me by my
image in the mirror. I had forgotten to remove the square of
white paper from the tip of my nose! For two hours I had
discussed questions of a transcendental nature in the most
precise, objective and grave tone of voice without being
aware of the disconcerting adornment on my nose. What
cynic could consciously have played this role through to the
end?
Since the dates supplied by Dali are inaccurate, as are other details such as
the title of the article and the name of the journal in which it was
published, the time of this meeting between the two men, must be
surmised as having taken place sometime after the publication of VAne
Pourri in S.A.D.L.R. in 1930 and before the completion of Lacan's thesis in
1932.
VAne Pourri, which appeared in the inaugural edition of SA.D.L.R.
in July 1930, was Dali's first published contribution to Surrealism. In the
strongest possible terms it marked a break with Breton's privileging of
phenomena such as automatic writing and dreams as exercises in passive
receptivity to 'the voice which it is open to each of us to hear, and which
speaks to us in the most singular fashion of something different from what
we believe we are thinking'. Since according to its first Manifesto, the term
'Surrealism' was itself synonymous with this suspension of volition in
order to cede the initiative to words, Dali's urgent underscoring of the
primacy of will in calling forth 'the image of desire behind the simulacra of
141
terror' seems an odd inclusion, although its polemic tone was altogether in
keeping with the tenor of the journal. The development of Dali's aesthetic
stance corresponds in time with his first meeting with leading Surrealist
artists, and also with the beginning of his life-long relationship with Gala, a
relationship which he saw as utterly transformational, saving him from a
headlong descent into madness. Many of the themes of VAne Pourri were
already in evidence in a lecture given to the Athenu Club in Barcelona in
March 1930 on 'The Moral Position of Surrealism', where he asserts ‘the
rabidly paranoiac determination to systematize confusion1. In this lecture,
as in VAne Pourri, which appeared in July 1930, the term ’paranoiaccritical' has not yet been forged. Perusing the article, the reader is
immediately struck by the emphasis on force, violence and will in
imposing the unstable truth of the image on the viewer. Paranoia offers
Dali a signally effective instance of this coercive power. It is the property
of paranoiac vision to solder the disparateness of everyday surroundings
and events, into coherent dramas which are as irrefutable as they are
unlikely:
It is enough for a delusional interpretation to bind together
the meanings of various pictures hanging on a wall in order
for others to be unable to deny the existence of this link.
Paranoia uses the outside world to illustrate an obsessive
idea, with the disturbing result that this idea is rendered
valid for the spectator.
That Dali was well aware of the subjective implications of this transfer to
the other is obvious from his later commentary;
I define the paranoiac-critical method as the art of playing
upon all one's own inner contradictions with lucidity by
causing others to experience the anxieties and ecstasies of
one's life in such a way that it becomes gradually as essential
as their own. But I very early realised my life formula; to get
142
others to accept as natural the excesses of one's personality
and thus to relieve oneself of his own anxieties by creating a
sort of creative participation.
As a schoolboy, Dali had hit on an astounding device to free himself from
unbearable anxiety. In full view of the pupils and teachers in his school, he
would hurl himself from a high roof into the schoolyard, discovering that
whatever his injuries might be on landing, ’my own fears disappeared in
the anxiety I caused my schoolmates’. This definition of paranoia which
leans on the transfer to the other, is entirely in keeping with the insights of
classical psychiatry and with Freud's first observations on this topic to
Fliess when he underlines his comment that 'the subject matter has
remained unchanged; what was changed was something in the placing of
the whole thing’.
Dali's first article describes paranoiac activity as capable of
systematising confusion, and refers to the speed and extreme subtlety of
the paranoid process, but it is only after his meeting with Lacan that he
attacks the assumption in psychiatry that the systematised delusion is a
secondary elaboration, the statue, as de Clerambault used to say, which
installs itself on the plinth of a primary disturbance. In the prologue to a
proposed essay, ' Paranoiac-Critical Interpretation of the Obsessive Image in
Millet's Angelas', published in Minotaure in 1933, which directly follows
Lacan's article on Le Problème du Style et la Conception Psychiatrique des
Formes Paranoïaques de VExperience', Dali recognised his debt to Lacan.
Lacan had demonstrated that the delusion itself is a systématisation, an
active element magnetising reality around its field of force.
In his thesis, Lacan had emphasised the revelatory character of
delusion, the experience of sudden illumination, of things falling into
place. 'Cela a fait un richochet dans mon imagination' was Aimée's
picturesque phrase in her account of the discovery that her best friend was
in fact the persecutor responsible for the plagiarisations which beset and
harried her.
143
Like the articles written by Dali on the paranoiac-critical method in
1933 and 1935, Lacan is at pains to establish this as a non-rational mode of
perception, while also laying particular emphasis on the importance of this
phenomenon as a means of decrying the views of de Clerambault and the
purveyors oijblies raisonnantes. His views are however, considerably more
conservative than those of Dali and of course denuded of Dali’s violent and
vitriolic onslaught on the world of reality. When Lacan opens his major
Seminar on Les Psychoses in 1955 by invoking the authority of his 'master'
de Clerambault, he nonetheless remains true to this Dalinean insight,
distinguishing between de Clerambault's 'parasitic p o in t... around which
the subject supposedly constructs something1, and his own affirmation that
'A delusion isn't deduced. It reproduces its same constitutive force. It, too,
is an elementary phenomenon'. Further on in the same Seminar, delusion
will be defined in an echo of Dali's repeated assertion, as a field that has
organised a certain signifier.
Lacan identifies delusion as a disturbance in perception, and links it
to a whole series of such disturbances directly attributable to
psychaesthenia or to the mechanisms of what were known as etats
oniroides, the dreamlike or twilight states which figured so prominently in
nineteenth century psychopathology: an explanation which Freud had
already put seriously in doubt in his paper on fausse reconnaissance in 1913.
Dali obviously appreciated the negative thrust of Lacan’s remarks, the
blow struck at the establishment. The clarity with which Lacan disengages
himself from his predecessors, dismissing the criteria set up by Serieux,
Capgras and others as at best approximative, gave Dali free reign to
inveigh against a miserably reductionist psychiatry. However insofar as
Lacan seeks to enlarge these views in the doctoral thesis, he leans more
towards Lombrosian sociology than towards Freudian psychoanalysis.
The paranoid-critical method is inseparable from the foregrounding
of the double image. From childhood on, Dali had been fascinated by
optical illusions and stereoscopic experiments. In L'Ane Pourri, he asserts
that the paranoid image is essentially double:
144
It is via a strict paranoiac process that it has been possible to
obtain a double image; that is the rperesentation of an object
which without the slightest figurative or anatomical
modification is at the same time, the representation of
another object which also is devoid of the smallest anomaly
which might indicate some kind of mutual adjustment.
As in the sixteenth and seventeenth century fascination with anamorphic
devices, Dali's interest in the double image undercuts the factitious
demarcation between illusion and reality which constitutes normal life.
Already in 1662, Descartes, whose contribution to dioptrics will be evoked
by Lacan in the topological Seminars of the sixties, had asserted; 'A
difference exists between reality and our conception of it. This is true not
only of art but of life1. Dali's ambition is 'the complete discrediting of the
world of reality'. Paranoia effectively achieves this. The doubleness
achieved is itself susceptible to triplication or quadruplication, its capacity
for ceaseless replication limited only by the individual's facility with
respect to paranoid thinking processes.
Curiosity about the relation between desire, representation and
double inscription, so forcefully posited here by Dali, will fuel many of
Lacan's topological demonstrations in the sixties. In the 1932 thesis Lacan
tends to assimilate the anomalies of perception specific to paranoia into a
sociological discourse, although strongly defending their creative and
aesthetic validity. Dali on the contrary, of whom Breton remarked, 'nul
plus que lui n'est feru en psychanalyse' goes much further. The connection
between psychoanalytic theory and the paranoiac-critical method has been
appreciatively remarked on by the feminist critic, Naomi Schor:
While many commentators have been tempted to dismiss
Dali's psychoanalytic ventures as parodies of scientific
discourse, nothing but another clever hoax perpetrated on
the public by the master 'cretiniseur', I will argue - by reading
Freud after Dali - that Dali's surrealist 'psycho-criticism1
145
ranks as one of those 'misprisions' more perceptive and
provocative than many a 'serious1application of Freud.
Indeed in a retrospective and megalomanic gesture in 1939, Dali will
invoke Freud's reflections on Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his
Childhood, among other predecessors, as having laid 'the epistemological
and philosophical cornerstone of the majestic edifice of imminent
paranoiac painting'. From his student days in Madrid, Dali had immersed
himself in the works of Freud, and in the 1930's according to Julien Green
spoke of him 'like a Christian talks of the New Testament'. Just as Freud,
on perhaps very slight evidence, linked Lenoardo's painting to his
childhood experience, Dali has no hesitation in linking his own focus on
the paranoiac double image, to events surrounding his birth. His several
autobiographies recount an early experience of doubleness which he
claimed broke in on and disrupted his sense of his own identity. He also
described the potentially homicidal consequences of this disturbance on
inter-subjective relationships, and the manner in which it organised the
force field of representation, thus vividly exemplifying in his own person,
a response to the question with which Lacan had ended his doctoral thesis.
Lacan had pointed out the relation between a certain psychotic structure
and a-subjective aggressivity, and had wondered about the creative
representations to which this structure might give rise. In later years, Dali
was influenced by a psychoanalyst, Pierre Roumegueres, who subsumed
this story of Dali's life into the myth of Castor and Pollux, but this rather
inflated gesture is simply a more resonant version of Dali’s personal myth
as set forth repeatedly in the autobiographical writings. Truth or fiction, it
fuctions as a powerfully coherent narrative, welding the facts, or as Joyce
would say, the 'unfacts' of his life to a very particular mode of artistic
representation.
146
A utobiographical W ritings
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali was published in English in 1942 to a
mixed reception. George Orwell described it as 'a striptease act conducted
in pink limelight’. The Dallas Texas Herald hailed it as ’a wild jungle of
fantasy, posturing, belly-laughs, narcissist and sadist confessions'. It is a
first version of a story which will be extended and expanded in several
other autobiographical texts, most notably The Unspeakable confessions of
Salvador Dali published in 1973. In it he recounts the circumstances of his
birth.
Researchers who have followed up the connection between Dali and
Lacan have been struck by the similarities, no doubt coincidental, between
the biographical backdrop to the paranoid crime of Lacan's patient, Aimée,
and the autobiographical facts to which Dali assigns the origin of the crises
attendant on the earliest experience of his own identity. In these
autobiographies, Dali tells of the death of an elder brother, also named
Salvador, after their father, three years before his own birth, and describes
the impact on him of his parents' massive anxiety following the tragic
death of this elder brother:
My parents' despair was assuaged only by my own birth ...
And within my mother's womb I could already feel their
angst. My foetus swam in an infernal placenta.
As noted in the previous chapter, Lacan had alluded in his thesis to a
tragedy in the family of origin of his patient Aimée, Marguerite Anzieu.
According to Lacan's version, while the mother was pregnant with his
patient, an older sister, the eldest girl in the family, fell into a fire and was
burned alive before her mother’s eyes. This little girl was also called
Marguerite, though it would appear from parish records that the accident
occurred a year and a half before the birth of the second Marguerite. The
mother was probably indeed just pregnant at the time of the accident, and
gave birth eight months later to a stillborn child. Lacan's patient was born
eleven months after the stillbirth and was therefore the first child to enter
the family after the death of the original Marguerite, which had so
traumatised the mother.
In Dali's case, it would appear that his dating is inaccurate and
masks the near instanteneity of the death of the first and the conception of
the second Salvador. The first Salvador actually died, aged two and three
quarter years, on August 1st 1903, nine months and ten days before the
birth of Dali, so it is not impossible that Dali, conceived in the wildness of
parental grief, swam, as he put it, in an infernal placenta. In later years he
would insist; 'I lived through my death before living my life'.
Dali's emphasis is not on the factual event, but on its implications
for him and his parents; 'The excess of love lavished on me by my father
from the day of my birth was a narcissistic wound, one I had already felt in
my mother's womb'. He felt a shadow cast over his own existence by this
dead older brother;
I deeply experienced the persistence of his presence both as
a trauma - a kind of alienation of affections - and a sense of
being outdone. All my efforts thereafter were to strain
towards winning back my rights to life.
Being locked in a death-bearing identification with the other Salvador, he
says, allows him no self-presence and no possibility of assuming a
narcissistic image. His biographer, Ian Gibson, tellingly entitled his
authoritative tome, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali, and refers repeatedly
to Dali's shame-driven personality. Given the far-reaching links between
shame and a disturbed narcissistic image, it is regrettable that Gibson does
not develop this perceptive insight beyond pointing out that Dali was the
only painter in the history of art to depict shame, and to suggest that in
'forcing us to contemplate its sources and its agonies, Dali made one of his
most important contributions to civilisation'.
Of the impossibility of assuming a narcissistic image, Dali says;
148
I had no corporeal image (my double started by being a
dead boy) fate having willed for me to be bom without a
body or in an angelic one with images of putrefaction to
boot.
Having no body he 'burst upon the world' and the first chapter of The
Secret Life of Salvador Dali recounts the degree to which his relationships
with others was marked by upsurges of homicidal energy. These
anecdotic self-portraits describe how more than one childhood companion
came perilously close to murderous assault. Some of these attacks seem
totally unmotivated, others occur in the context of an unassumable desire.
I was five years old ... I was walking in the country with a
boy smaller than I who had blond unruly hair, and whom I
had known only a short time. I was on foot and he was
riding a tricycle. With my hand on his back I helped to push
him along. We got to a bridge under construction which
had as yet no railings of any kind. Suddenly as most of my
ideas occur, I looked behind to make sure no-one was
watching us and gave the child a quick shove off the bridge.
He landed on rocks fifteen feet below. I ran home to
announce the news.
Another time, having administered a kick in the head to his sister, he
pronounced himself carried away with the delirious joy of this savage act.
Such acts of aggression against companions in one-to-one situations took
on a compulsive character;
Bom double with an extra brother I first had to kill him off
in order to assume my own place, my own right to my own
desire.
149
In the doctoral thesis, Lacan had emphasised that the murderous attack on
the double which had been Aim6e's crime, revealed a subjective structure
identical to that found in psychosis. In his 1948 paper on Aggressivity,
Lacan cites a small story taken from the writings of St. Augustine as an
example of the threat to being, posed by the other;
Vidi ego et expertus sum zelatum parvulum: nondum loquebatur
et intuebatur pallidus arna.ro aspectu conlactaneum suum 1
I have seen with my own eyes and known very well an
infant in the grip of jealousy; he could not yet speak and
already he observed his foster-brother, pale and with an
envenomed stare.
This story will feature frequently in Lacan's teaching, and will be given an
expanded and poetic reformulation in the Seminar on Identification where it
will be presented as an exemplary moment in the birth of the imaginary,
an original version of an essential identificatory redoubling. Before the
little child saw his brother at the breast, the breast was simply a part of his
ongoingness, part of the rhythms of his being, not something he might or
might not have; but this vision of his brother rocks him to the foundations
of his existence, at a level which has nothing to do with either need or
satisfaction. The mortal pallor of the onlooking child tellingly marks his
virtual eclipse as he takes in the fact that he is not there. The other is there.
That moment of blinding recognition in which desire appears in the image
of its loss is a first and stunning apprehension of oneself as a separate
being, but of oneself as not there, a first inscription of identity, perilously
poised between being and non-being. The gap opened between oneself
and the image of desire is the gap in which subjectivity and the dimension
of the temporal must come to be installed. But anomalies exist which make
it impossible for the subject to sustain this gap, as psychosis and the
murderous or suicidal passage a Vacte demonstrate.
Dali, as the above examples show, while yielding to violence, did
not succumb to the vertiginous seductions of homicide. He found himself
however, drifting inexorably towards the equally vertiginous abyss of
madness; 'little by little my entire universe was being coloured by the
glints of madness' is his description of his early adulthood. Feeling his
world being swallowed by the maw of mad laughter he trawled
philosophy for the essential substance which might rescue him.
My eagerness to read what I did not understand, stronger
than my will, must have obeyed a violent necessity for the
spiritual nourishment of my soul and just as a calcium
deficiency in children causes them to eat lime and plaster ...
so my spirit must have needed the categorical imperative
which I chewed and rechewed for two consecutive years
without swallowing it. But one day I did swallow it. I who
never wept over novels wept on reading a definition of
'identity' by one of these philosophers, I don't remember
which.
This however was not enough. The destabilisation consequent on 'being
bom double' was eventually countered by a different doubling, which is
how Dali describes his lifelong relationship with his wife, Gala. Dali's
highly coloured accounts of this relationship make it clear that he draws a
crucial distinction between two mutually exclusive kinds of psychic
doubling, one of which sabotages while the other reinforces identity. In his
autobiographies he returns to the topic of his salvation many times, always
emphasising certain factors. He speaks of a particular feature, a birthmark
on Gala's ear, as providing the essential stabilising function which creates a
bulwark against the endless slippage of paranoiac doubleness; 'My entire
unconscious found stability around that axis, like a planet around its sun1.
Within the maelstrom of madness, Gala created identifiable contours;
151
Out of the most terrible mental malady, my fantastic
wandering, my paranoiac vision, my deliriousness, she
made a classical order. She de-limited - I might say Dalimit-ed my delirium.
Attempts to circumscribe the contours of this transmutation were to
become a central feature of Lacan's teaching, from the Seminar on Desire
and its Interpretation in 1958-1959 onwards. In recounting the inaugral
moment of their lifelong relationship, Dali declares: 'Gala drove the forces
of death out of me, and first and foremost the obsessive sign of Salvador
my dead elder brother'. This was no metaphor. At the moment when the
closeness of their relationship became explicit, Dali, prey to homicidal
impulses, became locked in the impossibility of distinguishing between
Gala as his fantasised double and Gala the real person.
For me the great problem of madness and lucidity was that
of the limits between the Galuschka of my false memories,
who had become chimerical and dead a hundred times
through my subconscious pulsions and my desire for utter
solitude, and the real Gala whose corporeality it was
impossible for me to resolve in the pathological alienation of
my spirit.
I was 'fighting’ this central problem of my life, this bull of
my desire, who I knew, would at a given moment be there
immobile and menacing a few centimetres from my own
immobility, confronting me with the sole and only choice:
either to kill him or be killed by him.
It was Gala's desire, apparently the mirror image of his own, and yet
distinct and indisputably other, which released Dali from this impasse.
Dali gives two slightly different accounts of this event. According to the
1942 version, Gala declared; 'I want you to kill me', and Dali, astonished
152
and disappointed at having his own secret offered to him, instead of the
ardent erotic proposal he had expected, suddenly recognised that she too
had an inner world of desires and frustrations, and moved within a
rhythm of her own 'between the poles of lucidity and madness1. This
recognition of Gala's otherness transmitted in the words of his own
homicidal urge effects an extraordinary change in Dali, a transmutation
which in 1942, he can only convey by means of an allegorical tale inserted
into the autobiographical text. The Figurine with the Sugar Nose tells the
story of a necrophilic king, who periodically chose a beautiful girl with
whom to spend a night of unfulfilled love. The king would lie beside the
girl looking at her, and at daybreak would draw his sword and cut off her
head. Finally a girl, wilier than the others, substituted a wax model for
herself, to which she had appended a sugar nose. When the king beheaded
this figure, the sugar nose broke off and flew into his mouth. Surprised by
the sudden sweetness the king cries out in regret whereupon the girl who
had been listening came forth, and the king is 'suddenly and miraculously
cured of his criminal aberration1, marries the girl and lives happily ever
after. In his interpretation of this allegory, Dali emphasises the substitutive
operation which had effected the cure, pointing out the incongruous
inadequate aspect of the small object which violently and suddenly
transmitted the sweetness which could serve as a bridge to desire 'enabling
it to pass from death to life'. This real sweetness 'was that which by
surprise happened to occupy the expected place which the fictive
sweetness of death was to occupy’. Dali's allegory attempts a heavy
handed and clumsy account of a process which Lacan in the Sixties
describes as a crucial but unlocatable moment in the becoming of the
subject.
In the Seminar on Desire and its Interpretation, he highlights the
passionate self-destruction betrayed in the pallor of the onlooking child,
and sees the first self image, the image of the other as a first substitute for
this subject 'in his destructive passion'. A transmutation must occur which
establishes the subject as a subject of desire, or at least permits the
possibility of this position. This moment bears an essential relation to the
Mirror stage, but is of a different, a more crucial order. The several
topological surfaces which dominate Lacan's teaching from 1961 onwards
attempt to encompass the transmutation which must occur between
something in the demand of the Other which will eventually constitute the
desire of the subject, and conversely something in the desire of the Other
which will have an essential bearing on the demand of the subject. This
transmutation, based on an essential asymmetry between demand and
desire, is variously described by Lacan as the panic point, the whirlwind
point. Punningly it is the point d'Orage’, topologically it is the circle of
retrogression, the reversion point of the Moebius strip which functions, he
says, as the model for what is in question at this crucial moment in the
identificatory process. Lacan frequently stresses the epistemological
difficulties of giving an adequate description of this process:
... we have simply to think about this circular antipodal
relationship as a sort of radiating intercrossing, as one might
say, concentrating the exchange of one point with the
opposite point of the single edge of this hole, and in
concentrating it, as one might say, around a vast central
interlacing which escapes our thinking and which does not
allow us in any way therefore to give a satisfactory
■representation of it.
Dali's two accounts of Gala's role in his emergence from madness put the
accent on the factor of transmutation. In his second autobiography, he
declares;
My cruelty, my ferocity, my desire to humiliate and to soil
were being transformed like a laser beam in the diamond
prism of Gala's heart and intelligence.
This transmutation allows him to become himself via a narcissistic
doubling which is life-bearing and no longer death-bearing as in his earlier
identification with the dead brother.
From that moment on I was cured of my haunting
obsessions, my laughter, my hysterics ... Gala became the
salt of my life, the steel of my personality, my beacon, my
double-ME ... I felt myself a man, freed from my terror and
my impotence. By her I was henceforth gifted with telluric
vertical forces such as allow a man to penetrate a woman ...
I did not go mad because she took over my madness.
The allegorical tale in 1942 had emphasised the mediating role of the
'paradoxical inadequate object1, the sugar nose which was the bridge to
desire. Lacan in his teaching insists on the function of an object,
designated 'object cause of desire', as the indispensable turning point in
this identification where the subject is constituted as desiring. The crucial
transmutation between the pre-subjective being and the Other in which
desire is bom, is mediated by this object; 'it is starting from the problematic
of the beyond of the demand that the object is constituted as object of
desire’. This object will be an object in which the subject will find 'the very
virtues of his initial demand’. In 1942 Dali was unable to give an account
of this process except by way of allegory. In his second autobiography, the
object which allows him to exist is situated on Gala's body, and has become
a beauty spot on her left earlobe. This mark provides definitive proof of
the death of the other Salvador, ridding him of craziness and granting him
access to lucid existence; 'My entire unconscious found stability around
that axis, like a planet around its sun1. That this 'cure' is less complete than
Dali's narrative suggests is clear from other passages in these writings
notably in The Secret Life where a number of recurrent bouts of nearmadness are described.
Throughout his autobiographical writings, Dali insists on the
correlation between biographical fact and aesthetic theory. Gazing at the
155
moisture stains on the ceiling as a child at school, he trained his vision to
see difference in the same, or alternatively sameness in difference. His
relationship with Gala, crystallised around the distinguishing birthmark,
provides an essential stabilisation, and functions as a bulwark against the
endless slippages of paranoiac doubleness. This relationship, however, is
not something which tips Dali from madness into sanity, but rather
something which allows him a foothold on the boundary line from where
his creativity can function; 'In becoming exorcised through the strength of
Gala and her love I found pathways to the method of truth’. He describes
this method;
The secret lies in lucidly keeping a steady course between
the waves of madness and the straight lines of logic. Genius
consists in being able to live while going constantly from one
frontier to the other.
This steady course is pursued not with calm security but
with unflinching vigilance. Identity for Dali is, he says, a
moment by moment achievement, portrayed as occurring
picture by picture; 'from picture to picture ... my bodily
image was little by little restructured beginning with Gala'.
... but also urgently ongoing, and carved by his will out of the horrors
hidden in time;
My whole being is a field of work that I unify through my
will. If for one second this wave of force stops Dali no
longer exists ... Were I drop vigilance for one second I
might be taken unawares by a nightmare monster.
His is an aesthetics inclusive of the ’irreducible share of paranoia', from
which his genius derives. Both the papers on art theory and the
autobiographical writings emphasise equally the centrality of paranoia and
the critical lucidity which enables him to forge this paranoia into creative
expression;
I channelled my delirium through reason, as in art I found
my expression through classicism. I turn my contradictions
into a veritable coherence. I can truly say that I do not know
when I begin simulating or when I tell the truth, but I do
know where and when delirium ends. Through the pitiless
demand of cold intelligence, I transformed part of my
personality into an analytical faculty and won back from
madness a domain that I turned into power and creation.
The difference - need I repeat - between a madman and me is
that I am not mad.
Dali's autobiographies sketch a bizarre, indeed almost a baroque portrait of
what clinical terminology would call the familial anomaly constituted by
the doubling of identity, attendant on the circumstances of his birth. He
gives numerous examples of the manner in which this anomaly resulted in
his growing up without a corporeal image, but rather inhabiting a
subjective structure where the risk of homicidal violence overshadowed
every opening onto the emergence of desire. This structure was eventually
modified by the relationship with Gala which provided a foothold not on
the safe shores of sanity but on the boundary which made him master of
his genius while retaining access to 'delirium'. These autobiographical
accounts explicitly aim to outline the biographical underpinning of the
mode of representation dubbed ’the paranoiac-critical method'.
Lacan had ended his thesis in 1932 with a call for further exploration
via his own method of 'concrete psychological analysis' of the types of
lived experience, in particular the anomalies in family life, which can give
rise to psychosis, along with the 'pre-logical conceptual structures' issuing
in the aesthetic creations specific to psychotic states, and the link between
psychosis and certain homicidal 'unmotivated' crimes.
157
Within ten years Dali had published a vivid, concrete, idiosyncratic
and probably half-fictional exploration of the manner in which these three
factors can intersect to form the weave from which he created both a
personal identity and a body of great art.
Not only can these
autobiographical writings be fruitfully linked to Lacan's thesis, Dali's
narratives, accentuating as they do, a necessary transmutation between the
subject and the other in the constitution of identity, a transmutation
mediated by an object specified by Dali as that which functions as the
bridge to desire, appear to anticipate or at least to have much in common
with Lacan's theorisations of the becoming of the subject, as elaborated via
the topological surfaces of the Moebius strip, the cross-cap, or the Klein
bottle throughout the Sixties. Indeed one commentator has suggested that
Dali's work represents a kind of pre-Lacanian Lacanianism.
In 1936, the year in which Lacan first presented his theory of the
Mirror stage, Dali wrote a poem entitled The Metamorphosis of Narcissus and
painted a canvas of the same name. (He took this painting to his meeting
with Freud in 1938). Dali's own commentary is illuminating;
If one looks at the hypnotic motionless form of Narcissus for
a while from a little distance and with a certain 'distracted
fixedness' it slowly vanishes and finally becomes invisible.
Exactly in this moment the metamorphosis of the myth takes
place, because the appearance of Narcissus suddenly is
transformed into the appearance of a hand, which emerges
from its own mirror image. This hand carries in its
fingertips an egg ... from which the new narcissus is formed
- the flower. Next to it one can see the plaster-sculpture of a
hand, the hand of the water turned to stone, which holds the
... flower.
One must, of course, suspect the retrospective look, since it is imbued with
its own anamorphic biases, but from the vantage-point of the Nineties, this
commentary by Dali, with its focus on the metamorphosis which occurs
158
precisely at the moment of fading appears closer to Lacan's later work than
to the Lacan of the Thirties.
Address fo r correspondence:
APPI
School o f Psychotherapy
S t Vincent's Hospital
Elm Park
Dublin 4
We who are addicted to books will have a mental list of those teachers along the
way who opened doors onto new intellectual directions. There are five on my list,
the most recent one being Cormac.
For fourteen years Cormac has been an extraordinarily inspiring teacher in
the School for Psychotherapy at S t Vincent's Hospital. Week by week, he is there,
forging intelligent, articulate and accessible inroads into Lacanian texts, which for
each batch of newcomers appear at first glance to be altogether impenetrable. To be
able to teach well, one must be oneself stirred and challenged by the text or the
topic in hand and this is why Cormac's lectures are always interesting. His
engagement with Freud and Lacan is not static; year by year he pushes out the
boundaries, and engages his students in the questions which currently preoccupy
him. It is always fun to watch a new class, and to see the intellectual ferment
begin to happen. The enormous esteem in which he is held was rather touchingly
conveyed to me a couple of years ago when a student, praising my lectures,
surmised that I must knoiv 'nearly as much as CormacPraise Indeed!
Having trained psychoanalytically in the School for Psychotherapy, most of
us put a lot of thought and effort into understanding and maintaining the analytic
position. For this reason we don't often speak of personal warmth.
In wishing Cormac a happy 60th birthday I would like to pay tribute to this
quality in him. In the terible days following the diagnosis of Dick's fatal illness,
and the devastation following his death, Cormac, like so many friends and
159
colleagues, wrote warm letters of support and sympathy which greatly counted at
the time; small lights in a world of darkness.
I wish him a wonderful birthday; and may the coming years be long, happy
and even perhaps sometimes restful
UNE TORPEUR ORDINAIRE
Christiane Lacôte
Le jeune homme partit pour l'étranger.
C'était une demi-solution et il le savait un peu, puisque l'étranger
n'est que la figure compacte de ce que Lacan désigne de son incomplétude
même, le grand Autre. Mais cette figure dégradée de l'Autre était aussi
pleine que l'objet que sa jouissance consommait et cette symétrie n'était
pas encore rompue.
* * * * *
Aujourd'hui, dans nos contrées, la souffrance n'est plus de mise.
Tant mieux, en un sens. Il est admis qu'elle n'est plus rédemptrice et
qu'un monde meilleur ne nous attend plus en récompense de nos peines.
La souffrance ne se tisse plus avec une espérance religieuse, elle est un mal
radicalement.
Cela n'exclut pas qu'elle puisse être un spectacle, télévisé le plus
souvent, 'en direct7, dit-on. Mais le spectacle ne vient pas de la fenêtre ou
de la porte: seul l'horizon est vu de l'immeuble géant II vient de cette
fausse proximité que procure l'écran de télévision; l'actualité est filtrée par
le montage de ses images. Qu'arrive-t-il alors quand le fait-divers fait
irruption réellement dans le cercle familial?
* * * * *
Nous condenserons dans ce récit fictif plusieurs cas de clinique
ordinaire aujourd'hui.
Un samedi, un jeune homme sort de cette discothèque où il a dansé
comme les autres, aussi seul que les autres, abruti de musique
assourdissante plus que d'alcool. Il frime dans la voiture paternelle, roule
à trop vive allure et tue plusieurs de ses amis qui étaient avec lui. Lui161
même, seul survivant, a quelques contusions et fractures. Il arrive alors à
un dispensaire, abruti d'anxiolytiques. Il se plaint à peine et récite la leçon
apprise: 'Je ne suis pas coupable'. Ses parents, et quelques parents des
enfants morts dans cet accident, installent autour de lui un 'nursing'
incessant: 'il ne faut pas qu’il souffre car il risquerait de se suicider'.
Le tableau pervers est en place: à un tel choc, à un tel trauma, on
ne peut résister. On le réconforte, on le drogue, on lui raconte qu'il n'est
pas coupable, car - insiste-t-on - s'il se rendait compte de ce qu'il a fait, il
irait droit à la mort. L'alternative terrible est posée, pas d'échappatoire.
On entend derrière ce 'nursing:' bienveillant, la vengeance
implacable qui ne laisse aucun choix: ou bien le sujet est exclu par les
drogues anxiolytiques/ ou bien il l’est par la mort. D'ailleurs, il suffit de
prendre un peu plus de ces comprimés anesthésiants pour aller d'un
terme à l'autre. Et si le jeune homme meurt, ce ne sera que d’une over­
dose pour quelque chose, qui de toutes manières, était trop 'over'.
Le psychanalyste a peu de marge, non pas pour écouter mais pour
intervenir dans une problématique bien ordinaire aujourd'hui: Ü ne faut
pas que le jeune homme souffre et subjective sa douleur et le deuil de ses
amis, il ne faut pas qu'il se sente coupable car ce serait immédiatement
trop et il serait emporté par ce 'trop'.
Le psychanalyste qui dans sa pratique même ne peut que solliciter
la responsabilité du sujet, que faire entrevoir des plaisirs mal assurés tels
que les aléas des rencontres entre homme et femme les procurent heurte
tout le monde qui est sûr de sa 'défonce'. Les jouissances toutes faites et
sûres, de la musique assourdissante, du moteur lancé à fond, de l'alcool,
de la drogue ont une emprise puissante. Les parents qui ont laissé faire
continuent dans la même dérive, ils continuent la 'défonce': ils maîtrisent
l’anesthésie, enroulent l’adolescent dans les bandelettes d'une
compréhension totale, éternisent la momification car, dans le fond, ils ne
lui donnent pas d'autre choix que de payer de sa vie. Nulle tentative pour
le réveiller et l'aider à élaborer sa responsabilité et son deuil. Nulle
tentative pour que le temps s'élabore autrement à partir de cet événement
irréversible. Au contraire, les parents eux-mêmes, abrutis de chagrin et de
calmants installeront les dispositifs d'une vengeance sans frein sur
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l'adolescent coupable: ils le transformeront en son propre fantôme dans
l’endurance éternisée de ce qui est immobilisé dans ce cataclysme. On a
désigné là une forme de l'enfer car si l'expiation est étemelle, il n'y a plus
ni culpabilité, ni punition, on passe à un autre niveau, celui de la
désubjectivation.
Cette vengeance n'obéit pas au vieil adage 'oeil pour oeil, dent pour
dent' où entrait parfois un certain sens de l'honneur.
Dans cette torpeur de clinique ordinaire il ne peut être question
d'honneur. Rien, dans l'entourage parental ou amical ne propose au jeune
adolescent quelque geste ou parole par lesquels il y aurait un échange au
mal qu'il a fait. Certes, ü n‘y a pas d'échange possible à la perte de la vie.
Mais tout geste d'échange doit-il être annulé dès lors qu'il ne peut pas être
égal? La balance doit-elle être la règle? Qu'il y ait une faille, un
déséquilibre, un hiatus, cela pourrait être au contraire l'occasion de
rompre avec les idéaux mortels de la totalisation, d'amorcer une prise de
conscience de la division subjective.
Mais, dans l'organisation ordinaire de la torpeur, il s'agit souvent,
aujourd'hui, d'empêcher le travail du deuil. Or le deuil, ce n'est pas se
consoler d'une perte, mais savoir que cette perte peut signifier que l'on n'a
pas la maîtrise de la jouissance. Sans, pour autant renvoyer à l'idée
antique du destin. Ce peut-être l'occasion de remarquer la différence
entre la jouissance toxicomaniaque, assurée par un produit chimique,
assurée aussi de son terme ultime, la mort, et la jouissance sexuelle qui
n'est jamais promise dans ce qui réunit et sépare un homme et une femme.
L'aléa de la jouissance sexuelle, c'était justement ce qui devait être
rendu impossible, selon la vengeance doucereuse dont était victime le
jeune homme. Cette vengeance faisait tourner en rond corps, mort et
jouissance et la mort n'était pas autre chose que la seule limite possible à
une jouissance sans frein.
J. Lacan, dans son séminaire R.S.I., met en oeuvre une autre tirade
que ce tournage en rond du corps, de la mort et de la jouissance par lequel
il rend compte, avec exactitude, de certains aspects du symptôme
contemporain.
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Comment déjouer le piège de la torpeur? Comment faire entendre
qu'il peut y avoir un courage du désir à poser d'autres limites à la
jouissance que celles de la mort?
Address for correspondence:
7, bd du Temple
75003 Paris
France
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WE CAN REMEMBER IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE
Helena Texier
(When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,...)
'What is human?' and 'What is reality?'.
It would seem, in the recent, albeit short-lived, furore caused in the
field of psychiatry on their 'discovery' of 'false memories' in the course of
talking cures, specifically in relation to sexual abuse, that these two
questions seem to be causing that field some anxiety. I've elsewhere said
that it is regrettable that psychiatry on this matter seems to lag behind
psychoanalysis by more than one hundred years.1 But more regrettable
still is the implication from some quarters of the establishment, generally
the most vocal, that this 'discovery* should be read as proof of the inherent
danger of talking cures, as if the only adequate response to the new-found
knowledge of the human subject is, precisely, to reinforce the science by
firmly (fore)closing the door in its face. The perceived 'danger' of the
'talking cure' appears to follow, as far as I can gather, from two points;
firstly, in that there is no measurable, empirical basis on which to make a
judgement with regard to the status, the 'reality', of anything that is
produced as memory; secondly, that the psychiatrist risks leaving himself
open to being implicated in the production of such 'false memories' (for
example, that his method involves suggestion, an 'implantation' of
memory) and therefore open to the possibility of being sued by someone
falsely accused of abuse or, indeed by a patient, traumatised by memories,
by-products of therapy which would not have arisen were it not for the
treatment. Ostensibly then, although there is mention of the trauma
1 c.f. Editorial, THE LETTER, issue 12, Spring, 1998.
165
caused to the patient or those falsely accused, the 'danger' is really one
posed for the psychiatrist; firstly, in that the very ground of his field, the
reliance on empirical method, finds itself challenged by a speaking subject;
secondly, insofar as there is a risk to his bank-balance, reputation, etc.
Best to leave well enough alone.
Most interesting perhaps, although no mention of it is made, is this
precariousness of the position in which that field of knowledge is placed
in virtue of its new-found knowledge. It would seem that the emerging
spectre of the 'false memory' in the field of psychiatry casts a threatening
shadow over the previous unproblematic universe of certainties in which
the enigmatic existence of the unconscious has no place. One would be
forgiven for comparing this moment to another, one which is integral to
the coming into being of subjectivity itself, the introduction of uncertainty,
a 'not-knowing1casting the shadow of doubt over the certainties of the
past. It is hardly necessary to remind you that this moment on the
threshold of subjectivity concerns the child's discovery of castration
which, in a similar fashion, punctures a hole in the previously 'whole'
universe, the new-found knowledge having as a logical consequence the
insinuation of a lack in the knowledge of an earlier time. Furthermore,
this discovery has another effect, one in which a desiring subject finds
itself implied and therefore implicated: if I stumble upon the truth then
wasn't it because without knowing it I was looking for it. Here the
epistemological drive is seen to have been predicated on a lack in
knowledge. Now for the real discovery, - one is not master in one's own
home.
It is precisely the subjective stance taken in relation to this 'notknowing' which, as is the case for any subject-to-be, will determine the
structure of and, therefore, the possibilities for any body of knowledge
following from it. If evidence in support of this were needed, one would
only have to turn to a germinal moment in the history of psychoanalysis.
Consider the effects of the different approaches taken by Breuer and Freud
in relation to the discourse of Anna O. Breuer, the master, certain of
himself, listened only long enough to hear himself implicated in her
productions ('agalma-mated' into her discourse, one might say). Abruptly
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finding himself on uncertain territory, confused, horrified and with a
reputation to consider, he took to his heels. Freud on the other hand,
while he is often criticised for his adoption of this master position,
continued to listen, to discover the transference and out of it to invent the
analytic position. It would seem then that psychiatry's rather belated
attention to the 'false memory' leaves it on the same cusp of a subjectivity
which it has previously eschewed, now finding itself poised at the point
where it will either flee from the implication of its new knowledge or
become interested in the possibilities it may be afforded by it. It remains
to be seen whether the answer will aim at reinforcing the possibility of a
completitude of knowledge inherent to the perverse solution; now we
know that we didn't know, but all the same we'll carry on as if we didn't
know it; a solution which Lacan recasts as a disjunction between
knowledge and truth, knowledge deluding itself with respect to the truth
which drives it.
In fact the shattering of 'past certainties' by 'uncertainties about the
past' returns us neatly to the topic of memory itself. The question imposes
itself of whether there is not something taken all too easily for granted,
and covertly so, in this expression 'false memory'. Is there not already
silently implied here as unproblematic its corollary, - 'true memory'? The
problematic nature of this latter concept and its relation to the obviously
troublesome former one for the Science Faction is curiously underlined by
a work from the field of Science Fiction, the author of which was,
coincidentally, plagued throughout his life by the two questions which
rear up in the face of psychiatry and with which we opened: 'What is
human?' and 'What is reality?'.
These two not unrelated questions dominated both the life and
work of the science fiction writer, Philip K Dick, prompting more than
forty novels and two hundred short stories, and incidentally probably also
lying at the heart of his thirteen marriages, his various episodes of
rampant paranoia and his complete breakdown at the point at which his
writing failed him, culminating in his Exegisis, the account of his ’divine
invasion', which by all accounts would prove a worthy equal to Schreber's
Diary. Readers unfamiliar with either his life or that genre of literature are
167
probably more familiar with the cinematic versions of his work, most
notably with Ridley Scott's cult-status Bladerunner, a masterful rendition of
his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and with Total Recall, Paul
Verhoeven's box-office hit, a version of Philip K Dick's short story We can
remember it for you Wholesale.
What is remarkable about the works of Dick is that working
comfortably in a genre which is often considered 'low' literature he
manages to transform it into a kind of Ur-literature of the human
predicament, eminently psychological, often theological, undoubtedly
philosophical, infinitely real and perpetually surfing the borders of
subjectivity. His stories in this respect, even if by his own admission they
are not at all beautiful, have more in common with the dark worlds of E.
T. Hoffman or E. A. Poe than with the sci-fi universe of the Starship
Enterprise- Ingenious plots, generously laced with the blackest of humour
and played out in a world which admits of futuristic and fantastic
possibilities, seduce the reader into suspending his judgement of what can
be admitted as constituting reality, while the subjective underpinnings of
the works mean that these ’alternative1worlds eventually end up bearing
uncanny resemblance to the most intimate nooks and crannies of our own.
Dick's books are remarkable in that the notion of memory as constitutive
of human reality is used alternately, initially, to establish reality and,
subsequently, to undermine it, seducing the reader into a solid plot which
always turns out to be a red herring, steadily chipping away at space and
time until reality disintegrates.
To this end he employs the devices of 'false memory implants' and
of 'simulacra1, the use of the idea of androids, resembling humans in all
respects save the contents of their minds. Bladerunner employs both. In this
story the hero, Deckard, has lost his humanity living an anaesthetised
existence in a virtually dead world. The backdrop to the scenario is a
futuristic soulless time in which almost nothing 'natural' exists. One can
never be sure of the essence of the object, animate or inanimate, of
whether it is 'real' or an engineered replica of some 'original' thing.
Deckard is a bounty hunter, engaged to track down and destroy escaped
androids, replicants, on the loose and looking for their Maker - literally.
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The scientific technique for determining the 'false' or 'true' nature of a
suspect involves posing him a series of questions the response to which
will reveal him as an authentic subject or not. (A kind of futuristic DSM).
The method is stretched to its very limit when he comes up against a
replicant who does not know she is not human and this on the basis of the
fact that she has a whole host of memories stretching all the way back to
childhood and including those persistent scenarios emulating Freud's
screen memories, intimating important, barely accessible, subjective
turning points. All of these have been implanted by her Maker. Already
here we have a literary figuration of the relation of the memory of the
subject to the desire of the Other; recalled subjective turning points have
everything to do with the encroachment of this Other. This in itself would
prove a useful point of departure for a consideration of the circumstances
in which memory can be 'implanted'.
In another work, the short story We Can Remember It For You
Wholesale, this theme of memory and the possibility of its implantation is
taken up again. Interestingly, the work opens with a moment on the
border between sleep and awakening, a dream, onto which the scenario
which follows is hung.
He awoke - and wanted Mars. The valleys, he thought.
What would it be like to trudge amongst them? Great and
greater yet: the dream grew as he became fully conscious,
the dream and the yearning. ... I will go, he said to himself.
Before I die I'll see Mars.
This overture onto the field of the dream, the yearning, leads us abruptly
via the hero, Douglas Quail, onto the field of memory. In this future time
Quail, not having the financial resources to really make the trip to Mars,
decides to avail of the services of the Rekal Corporation which, (presumably
having followed to their logical conclusion the commercial possibilities of
the false memory syndrome), specialises in what are called 'extra-factual'
memory implants. They will ensure that for a fraction of the cost of the
real journey to Mars that he will 'remember' it just as if he had gone. They
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will incorporate his request to have been to Mars as an Interplan agent,
sent there on a dangerous and highly secret mission and, in addition, they
will furnish tangible proof of his journey which they will plant on his
person and in his apartment so that reality will furnish him support for his
remembered ’trip’. Phantasy and reality will be inmixed in such a way as
to be indistinguishable. Furthermore, this trip will in fact be better than
the real thing:
Had you really gone to Mars as an Interplan agent, you
would by now have forgotten a great deal; our analysis of
true-mem systems - authentic recollections of major events
in a person's life - shows us that a variety of details are very
quickly lost to the person forever. Part of the package we
offer you is such deep implantation of recall that nothing is
forgotten.
Convinced by the sales talk, Quail parts with his money, and proceeds to
the implantation room where he receives a preparatory injection which
renders him unconscious, returning him to that time between wakening
and sleep with which the story begins. And this is the point where the
proposed scientific procedure fails before it has begun. Before the
implantation and quite spontaneously, the unconscious Quail begins to
speak in his sleep and it becomes apparent that he is already recalling his
trip to Mars. Lowe the technician reports; 'He wants a false memory
implant that corresponds to a trip he actually took. And a false reason
which is the real reason1. He wants to recall consciously what must be an
unconscious memory which some government agency has tried to erase.
Going to Mars meant something special to him, and so did
being a secret agent. They couldn't erase that; it's not a
memory but a desire, undoubtedly the same one that
motivated him to volunteer for the assignment in the first
place.
170
The technical team, unlucky enough to have uncovered 'a genuine
Interplan agent with a cover so perfect not even he himself knew what he
was, or rather is1, are caught in a dilemma posed by the infiltration of
desire into the field of memory, expressed in these terms by one of their
number;
What do we do? Graft a false-memory pattern over the real
memory? ... He'd have to hold two quite opposite premises
in his mind simultaneously: that he went to Mars and that he
did not. That he's a genuine agent for interplan and he's not.
Having successfully introduced the sort of confusion which a blurring of
the boundaries between phantasy and reality by infection with desire
effects, the author takes us further and further into it. Having recalled his
trip, the government agency pursues the errant agent to kill him. Quail
convinces them that it should be possible to resolve the situation amicably.
(Afterall he's been of great service to them and surely they owe him
something). He proposes that the memory be obliterated by replacing it
with the 'memory' of a more powerful scenario. 'Suppose once my
authentic memories have been cancelled, something more vital than
standard memories are implanted. Something which would act to satisfy
my cravings'. The psychiatrist engaged to identify a suitable replacement
memory finds something.
'Mr Quail,' the stern-faced, elderly Interplan psychiatrist
said, 'you possess a most interesting wish-fulfilment fantasy.
Probably nothing such as you consciously entertain or
suppose. This is commonly the way; I hope it won't upset
you too much to hear about it. ... This production is a
grotesque dream of your childhood; it is no wonder you fail
to recall it'.
In this wish-fulfilment he single-handedly prevents the invasion of the
Earth by an alien star system. The invaders are so impressed by the depth
171
of his kindness that they spare Earth for as long as he is alive. So by
merely existing he keeps the Earth safe from alien rule. In keeping with
the grandeur of childhood, he's the most important person in the world!
Once the Mars memories have been erased and this over-riding childhood
wish has been incorporated into the memory implant, he'll believe it really
happened. Mars-memories erased, Quail is now lying in the laboratory of
the Rekal Corporation. Once more, in preparation for the implantation, he
receives an injection which renders him unconscious, returning him again
to that time between wakening and sleep with which the story begins.
And this is the point where the proposed scientific procedure fails as it
had before. (You've probably already guessed!). Before the implantation
and quite spontaneously, the unconscious Quail begins to speak in his
sleep and it becomes apparent that he is recalling the alien invasion of
Earth and how he so impressed the invaders by his kindness that his very
existence guarantees the salvation of the planet.
'They told me not to tell', Douglas Quail mumbled in a dull
drug-saturated voice. 'That was the agreement. I wasn't even
supposed to remember. But how could I forget an event like
that?'.
In a humorous twist, Quail announces that he has tangible proof of the
reality of his memories of the invasion; the Aliens have given him
something, - a magic destroying rod which, incidentally, he used to
execute his mission on Mars. (Yes, he still has total recall of that). And
this magic destroying rod, incontrovertible evidence of the objective
reality of his memory of the past, well, - it's invisible! Moreover, and if
your head is not already spinning at the acrobatic loops that Dick has
taken you through, it is not clear that the whole story is not just the
product of that time suspended between sleep and awakening, hanging on
the dream, manifesting itself through the mouth of the sleep-talking Quail,
with which the story began and to which, through loops of fancy, it
constantly returns.
172
So in this field of uncertainty at the dawning, or better, the yawning
of the subject, what are we left with? Certainly with a subject whose
existence is secured because it has the Big Other over a barrel. In addition,
and as if this were not enough, we have a story whose ingenious plot
manages to pay more tribute to the level of complexity required for any
satisfactory theory of memory than many scientific attempts have
managed.
Here we are presented with a world in which the memory available
to consciousness is dependent on the desire of the Other which,
nonetheless, cannot erase it once it has been written; a universe which
bears witness to the incompatibility of the desire of the Other with the
desire of the subject and, paradoxically, the reliance of the one on the
other. (The aims of the government agency, Interplan, its secret mission,
are dependent on the desire of Quail to volunteer for it). The 'false
memory', the implantation of a recollection, is pursued alternately, out of
the desire of the subject (Quail wants to remember something for the
pleasure of it; wants to remember something else because his existence
comes to depend on it) and out of the desire of the Other (The Other, the
Rekal Corporation, gains financially out of it; the Other, Interplan, wants
him to remember something so as not to remember something else).
Forgetting too is permeated by compromises between conflicting agencies;
Quail can't remember the trip to Mars because the government agency
would rather he didn't and because remembering would prove fatal to
him, can't remember the invasion because the Aliens told him not to and
because he partly wants to comply with this, since the Aliens (radically
Other) have guaranteed him his existence. Added to this is the further
complication pointed up by the dilemma of the technician Lowe, who can
be viewed here as the a-subject of the scientific field, carrying out
procedures to the letter until these grind to a halt when confronted with
the speaking subject, who conjures up for him the paradox of holding as
equally true a premise (I am a secret Interplan agent) and its contrary (I
am not a secret Interplan agent). In addition, with the unfolding of the
story in the 'looping' of memories, we witness the later story of an early
story (the childhood phantasy) making its way into the text of the earlier
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story of a later story (the adult adventure), each loop changing the context
of the past and altering the potential outcome of the subject's future.
None of this was unfamiliar to Freud. From the outset and even
before his invention of the psychoanalytic method, - (evidently the
backward looping of memory is as much a part of the story of
psychoanalysis as it is for any other subject!) - Freud's project would give a
systematic account of the workings of the mnemic system which leaves
little room for the ascription of any truth value to the inscriptions of the
impressions of existence, those mnemic traces, which could be seen to
issue from any direct correlation to reality. For Freud then, even in his
earliest attempts at giving an account of memory, there is no question of
any resemblance between the memory trace and the 'real1 cause of the
impression. Indeed reality itself, or at least the notion of any objective or
de-subjectivised reality, is, in the process, radically undermined. In the
reworking of his Project for a Scientific Psychology in the light of Die
Traumdeutung we see in chapter VII of the latter work, which can be
considered the summit towards which the whole work climbs, that from
the first it appears that that very turning toward reality is itself driven,
even in the vestigial subject, by the search for that hallucinated object
which Freud posits as prototypical wishfulfilment So the turning towards
reality is an intentionalised one set in motion by the search for a
'something' which would correspond to the mnemic trace of the
hallucinated object, - and all of the thought activity 'which is spun out
from the mnemic image to the moment at which the perceptual identity is
established by the external world ... merely constitutes a roundabout path
to wishfulfilment'. So thought activity itself is set in motion,
intentionalised, by desire.
At this point it would be worthwhile taking a cursory backwards
glance at the aforementioned last chapter. You will recall the scenario
which Freud describes in the section on wishfulfilment in which the
hungry baby, unable to escape the tension caused by his need for food,
falls back upon the memory of the experience of satisfaction, temporarily
assuaging his yearning by calling up, hallucinating, the perception of the
satisfying object. The need persisting nonetheless, the subsequent turning
towards a 'somewhere else', aims at establishing a 'perceptual identity' not
with any real object but with this object as remembered. So at one and the
same time it is the success of and the failure of the hallucination that sets an
intentionalised train in motion. This scene, encapsulating the relation of
the subject to desire in an admittedly embryonic form, really is a crucial
one for the understanding of Freud's conception of what is human.
Previous to this moment here staged, Freud has described the psychical
apparatus as working on the basis of a reflex arc, a well functioning
machine operating automatically so as to evacuate all exciting
innervations of their energy, as efficiently as possible, in order to return
the level of energy in the system as a whole to the lowest possible. If we
can speak of intentionalisation of the apparatus here then it is only in the
sense that it automatically functions toward a given end. Stimulus
engenders response. Matters become more complicated however when a
spanner lodges itself firmly in the works. There appears a source of
excitement emanating from the machine itself which, moreover, it cannot
rid itself of.
And it this which opens the door for the human onto the field of
desire; in this case of the inchoate subject, the hungry baby, moving him to
'real-ise' his 'dream1. From an initial basis in need there is something
demanded from reality the cause of which is, in however rudimentary a
form, a desire. Here we have a very different form of intentionalisation.
The machine starts to operate off its own bat and not because it is
smoothly working but because, precisely, the something that isn't working
at all well functions as a kind of motivator, an internal powersource, (which perhaps gives an additional meaning to Lacan's 'battery of
signifiers'). It's very much like the joke about the little boy Freddie whose
parents become increasingly worried when one year follows the next
without his beginning to speak or show any interest in anything. One day
they are sitting down to another sad and silent meal when suddenly
Freddie asks his father to pass him the salt. Through tears of joy his
parents ask him why he hasn't spoken up till now. 'Why Mother!' the boy
says, 'You always put in exactly the right amount of salt before1. Of
course, this very rudimentary prototype of a desiring subject conveyed by
175
the account of the hungry baby or the saltless Freddie is not the whole
story, but it does introduce us to a general trend in Freud's thinking
whereby the biological or functional is ultimately superseded by
something which, although anaclitic on this, proves to have infinitely
more significance for human existence. Secondly, there is also implied
another notion that reverberates throughout his work; that the ' thing that
does not work' constitutes the driving force of the subject, even to the point
where the not-working-thing must be preserved irrespective of the
consequences. Quite paradoxically, it will prove to be that which will
work tirelessly, (sometimes, it quite literally works the subject to death),
what Freud calls variously the ideal worker, the entrepreneur, the
Capitalist, - the Unconscious.
The very heart of The Interpretation of Dreams, this interrogation of
reality (reality put to the test as opposed to 'reality testing') by desire,
achieves a new articulation of these two separate questions 'What is
Human?' and 'What is reality?', as 'What is human reality?, indicating
perhaps that the questions are only problematic if there is an attempt to
treat them as mutually exclusive. Freud’s account of psychical reality
leaves us in no doubt that, if we operate as if a concrete incontrovertible
reality separate from ourselves exists, if we take it as unquestionable, then
it is not because it was a given from the start, and the clinic can certainly
furnish us with testimony to the contrary. With respect to the possibility
that memory could ever furnish us with incontrovertible evidence as to
the veracity of past realities Freud does not inspire much hope. Far from
it being the case that the apparatus of memory captures events like fresh
concrete might receive the imprint of a foot to give us incontestable and
permanent reference of the impact of the real, set in stone so to speak, and while it is not exactly the case of a footprint in eternally shifting sand,
- Freud's theory of memory does insist on a system which is not static but
undergoing successive transformations; see for example his letter to Fliess
of 6th December 1986, in which he speaks of 'the material present in the
form of memory traces being subjected from time to time to a re­
arrangement in accordance with fresh circumstances - to a retranscription'
and of memory as present not once but several times over and in different
registers. Inscriptions of memory which are later chronologically have, as
logical consequence, transformational effects on material from an earlier
period, in many ways making a nonsense of any notion of chronological
sequence. So even if it is the case that impressions of existence are initially
'neutral' (and if we put on hold the problem of the status of such
representations in relation to the circumstances causing them) then the
registration of the contents of memory, their associative arrangements,
will not be at all neutral. These will be intentionalised and therefore
unique for every subject, - the whole will always be greater than the sum
of its parts, - and it is this which contributes to both the particularity of
dream formation and the unfolding of 'free' association.
What then can we make of the possibility for Total Recall in all of
this? If by 'total' we mean exact, complete and objectively accurate
reproduction of past events, then I think we've already said enough to put
paid to any hope of it. Maybe we can content ourselves then with the
notion of a sort of partial recall, a kind of objective retrieval of contents
from the albeit subjective and idiosyncratically organised store of the
mnemic system? Well, we don't fare any better down this lane and for a
number of reasons. Firstly, if as Freud held it's the case that every recourse
to the activity of memory is intentionalised, so too is the very appeal to
memory itself. This is linked for Freud to his assertions, on the one hand,
that consciousness and memory are mutually exclusive, that is, that
consciousness, to remain perpetually open to the reception of new
perceptions, retains no trace of them ...
[TJhere are obvious difficulties involved in supposing that
one and the same system can accurately retain modifications
of its elements and yet remain perpetually open to the
reception of fresh occasions for modification. ... The mirror
of a reflecting telescope cannot at the same time be a
photographic plate.
... and, on the other hand, that consciousness is the result of the addition of
the faculty of attention to what is preconscious, that is, what is so
177
structured as to be capable of being admitted to consciousness. 'Attention'
is then the outcome of investment by the Capitalist mentioned earlier on,
the Unconscious, - the repository of interest'. (As an aside, one might here
point to the potential this thesis would have in theorising adequately what
might be at stake in the recently 'discovered' Attention Deficit Disorder).
So not only do psychical contents have to be translated into a version of
the text that consciousness can accommodate, but the work of translation
is not undertaken disinterestedly, and ends up being a compromise
between the desire to be known and the desire to remain unknown,
resulting in a translated version not of any original lost text but, rather, of
that compromise.
Where then does this leave the work of psychoanalysis? Certainly
very far from the heady beginnings when, despite being already armed
with elements towards a theory of memory which would indicate the
problematic nature of such an approach, it laboured under the illusion
that the work consisted in simply remembering what had been forgotten,
in uncovering an original trauma, for example, by lifting the repression
brought to bear on it. Soon 'remembering' would show itself to be as
infused by desire as 'forgetting' already proved itself to have been, and the
'lifting of repression1proved to be less like the falling away of a thick veil
which leaves unmasked a naked reality, than like the raising of the theatre
curtain which allows the succession of acts in the performance of eine
andere Schauplatz to be witnessed. Here, the lifting of repression doesn't
constitute its abolition but rather signals its preservation, since the Other
Scene which is defined by it is delimited by its raising and its lowering, in
much the same way as the scenario of Philip K Dick's short story
ultimately is played out in that other time between the closing and the
opening of Douglas Quail's eyelids. Whatever emerges in that interval
pertains to a truth having everything to do with a reality which, for all
that, can only be taken as psychical, referring to the truth of the subject
itself. This can't be a reality whose truth-value is to be established by
reference to the supporting evidence of an external objective reality, that
is, independent of the subject's narrative. We must content ourselves with
something of the order of Quail's invisible magic rod. One would not, for
example, require the exact geographical coordinates of the Garden of
Eden, nor await the verificatory evidence of the belly-buttonless forms of a
long dead man and woman, to divine the truth-value of the story of
Genesis. It's not so very different in the case of the genesis of the subject
except, of course, for the fact that here it's more a question of a navel of
absence than the absence of a navel.
If then the work of psychoanalysis bears some relation to the work
of translation, what constitutes a good one? Is it the translation which is
most faithful to the original? The Czech author, Milan Kundera, in an
article for Le Monde on the subject of the work of translation wrote of the
excellence of the English translation of the title of Proust’s a la recherche du
temps perdu as Remembrance of Things Past, a phrase borrowed from one of
Shakespeare's sonnets. One would find it hard to disagree and yet the
translation which remains 'faithful to the original' is in no way an accurate
one; it’s not a repetition of it, - more a re-presentation than a
representation. Perhaps there is something in Kundera’s example of
excellence of translation that could prove useful to us. Does not the
experience of the clinic bear witness to the fact that the subject suffers
from too much faithfulness to the original One, - so much so that all
previous attempts at translation have of necessity failed, the 'failure of
translation' constituting, for the Freud of The Interpretation of Dreams,
repression itself. A frequent, almost banal, example of this, and one which
Freud discusses in the opening chapter of the dream-book, is that of the
analysand who doubts the possibility of analysis since he can never
articulate in all its detail the content of his dream, can never be sure of
giving a faithful, that is, an exact, complete and accurate, account of it. Or
the analysand who doubts because only a fragment is available to him. Or
the analysand who refuses or resents even the slightest nuance added to
the text by the analyst on the grounds that this introduces some impurity
into its spontaneous unfolding, addition of the nuance somehow implying
an intolerable puncturing of the completeness, the inviolability of the
original One. All of these are but variations on the same covert theme; one
must remain faithful, give oneself over completely, to the preservation of
this original Other as complete unto itself.
Besides the obvious ramifications of this for the work of analysis,
there is another less obvious one concerning the relation of the one who
would be analyst with psychoanalysis itself. The implication here is that
taking up the analytic position cannot consist in any faithfulness to the
original (Freud, Lacan, or one’s own analyst) which is merely a mantra­
like repetition of it, but rather involves one in a work of translation which
requires that one add one's tuppence-worth. And if one is not prepared to
pay then perhaps it's only fitting that one foreclose the door opening onto
the landscape of the Other scene, for it's likely to slam in one's face
anyway. In point of fact, even if one refuses this entrance onto the space
of the unconscious, figured for us by Philip K. Dick as bounded by the
opening and closing of the eyelids, one will end up paying nonetheless in
terms of the possibilities for one's discourse. The shape of any future
discourse will depend on whether one closes the eyes and remains
ignorant, or closes one eye and enters into the joke.
By way of conclusion then, a snippet concerning the entrance onto
that space of a winking T, which Lacan wanted to make difficult, anOther scene from Philip K. Dick:
The door refused to open. It said, 'Five cents, please'.
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. Til
pay you tomorrow' he told the door. Again he tried the
knob. Again it remained locked tight. ’What I pay you,’ he
informed it, 'is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay
you'.
'I think otherwise', the door said. 'Look in the
purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.'
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since
signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document
many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening
and closing constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
'You discover I'm right', the door said. It sounded
smug.
180
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a
stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to screw
the bolt assembly of his apt's money-gulping door.
Til sue you', the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, 'I've never been sued by a door. But I
guess I can live through it1.
Address fo r correspondence:
THE LETTER
Centre for Psychoanalytic
Studies
LSB college
6-9 Balfe Street
Dublin 2
THE TIGHT-ROPE WALKERS
Guy Le Gaufey
The idea according to which Freud began with psychoanalysis by
putting an end to his practice of hypnosis is generally very well accepted
today. In spite of some criticism which claims that this is not so obvious,
the analytic community (let's suppose for the moment that such a thing
exists) holds to this assertion through thick and thin. But it is equally
evident that something had been kept alive from hypnosis in the new
technique of free association, and a simple look at two of Freud’s texts will
be enough to support this: the first one written in the glorious time of
hypnosis, the second, ten years later, in Die Traumdeutung.
The former one, the little known and not much read Psychische
Behandlung, was written in 1890, to be included in a collective book whose
title was: Die Gesundheit: Ihre Erhaltung, ihre Storung, ihre Wiederkerstellung
(Health: its preservation, its troubles, its return). Because this book was
known only in its third edition (dated 1905), this essay is even attributed
to 1905 in the Standard Edition, which looks immediately impossible given
its contents: an emotive defence in favour of hypnosis, a technique which,
according to this Freud, represented 'a progress in the art of healing'.
During the 1880's, as a medical practitioner strongly impressed by
Charcot and Bemheim (whom he was in the process of translating), he
used hypnosis almost daily. In this text, after a long introduction about
the importance of words in the relation between body and mind, he gives
a brief account of the means through which hypnosis can be achieved.
After having given an account of how many and multifarious these can be,
he sums them up in a single sentence:
But the same result can be brought about by describing the
onset of the state of hypnosis and its characteristics quietly
and firmly to the subject - that is, by 'talking him into'
hypnosis.1
Isn't it bizarre, this 'talking him into'?2 But here Strachey had to translate a
sort of Freudian pun: 'wenn man ... ihr die Hypnose also 'einredet".
'Einreden' is rather pejorative a verb in German; it generally means 'to
make someone believe in something, or even swallow it - hook, line and
sinker'. And through his inverted comas Freud suggests that this common
verb has to be translated as Strachey did: ein-reden, to talk into, to talk
inside. Irrespective of the order given by the hypnotist ('sleep', or
something else), the key to hypnosis is clearly linked for Freud with the
success in 'talking the patient into'. What does that mean? That is too big
a question for us to answer now, if indeed it is even possible.
Let's rather suppose that such a state is established. To what end?
Freud is then clear:
Hypnosis endows the physician with an authority such as
was probably never possessed by the priest or the miracle
man, since it concentrates the subject's whole interest upon
the figure of the physician; it does away with the autocratic
power of the patient's mind which, as we have seen,
interferes so capriciously with the influence of the mind over
the body.3
This 'autocratic power1is extremely interesting. It appears twice in this
text, under two forms: Eigenmächtigkeit, and Selbsherrlichkeit, which are so
close to each other that the French translator decided to stick to a single
word ('autocratisme'), and Strachey chose respectively 'autocratic power'
and 'autocratic nature1. The main benefit of hypnosis would be, according
1 S. Freud. Psychical (or Moral) Treatment. S.E., VH, London, Hogarth Press, 1953. p. 294.
2 More bizarre in the French translation than in English, where the verb 'to talk into' is a
precise and good translation. But French language is here compelled to elaborate a long
proposition: 'autrement dit en lui insinuant Vhypnose par la parole'.
^ibid, p. 298.
to Freud, the putting aside of this autocratic power which every human
being is naturally able to bring into action, a power then described as a
very strong obstacle on the way to acting upon the body by means of the
mind. So, if we could put it offside momentarily, we could work in
association with the powers of the mind as a surgeon works in agreement
with the functioning of the body under anaesthesia.
Later on, when Freud changed his way of 'operating' thanks to his
new 'fundamental rule' of free association, his aim, with respect to this
Eigenmächtigkeit, remained the same as the one from the time of hypnosis:
to put it offside. The first time he apparently conveyed this fundamental
rule - that is, to Fraülein Elisabeth -, he told her th a t...
... perhaps she thought that her idea was not the right one;
this I told her was not her affair; she was under an obligation
to remain completely objective and say what had come into
her head, whether it was appropriate or not.4
This clear dismissal of the patient's authority over his stream of thoughts
and, in consequence of the fundamental rule, over his stream of words, is
the main characteristic of psychoanalytic treatment to this very day.
The fact that the fundamental rule follows the line of hypnosis is
nowhere more visible than in the last page of the first part of the famous
seventh chapter of the Interpretation of Dreams, whose title is 'The
Forgetting of Dreams'. With the help of a new terminology, in which the
expression 'purposive idea' is crucial, Freud now re-defines his rule as an
instruction given to the patient not to bother worrying about having
purposive ideas during the session.
Which allows him to add
immediately that two purposive ideas always remain at stake:
When I instruct a patient to abandon reflection of any kind
and to tell me whatever comes into his head, I am relying
firmly on the assumption that he will not be able to abandon the
4 S. Freud. Studies on Hysteria. S.E., II, p. 154.
purposive idea inherent to the treatment ... There is another
purposive idea of which the patient has no suspicion - one
relating to myself>
The second one refers undoubtedly to that 'figure of the physician’
mentioned in a previous quotation, the one to which the patient’s
autocratic power has slipped, and who is now in charge of this authority
'never possessed by the priest or the miracle man'. The first one is
essential too: the patient is supposed (’I am relying firmly on the
assumption') not to abandon the idea that all of this is only a treatment. And
this is in agreement with a double statement Freud makes in the same text.
He notices that the power of the hypnotist is such that the patient is
'completely tractable' (you could tell him to take a bite out of a potato
under the impression that it is a pear), but we must also recognise that 'the
best hypnotic suggestion does not exercise unlimited power but only
power of a definite strength'.6
With that, we are well armed with enough quotations from Freud
to address the problem, or even the paradox correctly: what if such a
power is to be abandoned, but not completely? Is it just a hoax? If you 'give
up your Right of Governing your self' to someone, you are not supposed
to keep a bit of it in such a way that, if you no longer agree with what this
one is asking you to do, you could break off the deal and recover the
completeness of your right to govern yourself. The phrase in quotation
marks comes from Leviathan, when Hobbes expresses the deal supposed to
stand at the very roots of the Common-Wealth and citizenship:
I Authorise and give up my Right of Governing my self, to
this Man, or to this Assembly of men, on this condition, that
5 S. Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams. London, Penguin Books, 1982. p. 699. Italics are
mine.
6S. Freud. Psychical Treatment, op.cit., p. 300.
185
you give up thy Right to him, and Authorise all his Actions,
in like manner.7
As mythical as such a deal would be, once it is done, it is done. We get a
glimpse of this when something like a riot occurs, where a political power
in charge is outflanked by forces its police cannot control. The reasoning,
in the aftermath, is always the same: the riots were triggered off by
'strangers', or by ’irresponsible elements', which clearly means people who
were not, or are no longer citizens, because this power - which I do not
suppose here to be either stupid or dumb - is strictly unable to conceive
that a citizen could withdraw the authorisation through which this very
power exists. As a citizen, you have the right (at least democratically
speaking) to fight the people in charge, but you are never allowed to fight
this power itself because, in so doing, you would also destroy the citizen
in you, you would be turning your violence against yourself, which, in the
logic of a Welfare State, is paradoxical. Your right to govern yourself
cannot be understood as a right to put the roots of the political power, and
therefore the roots of citizenship, into question.
At least, it is
inconceivable for very good Hobbesian (and republican, and democratic)
reasons.
There is also another way of looking at this strange abandonment
of any Eigenmächtigkeit, a very modern one according to some new
standards in sexuality; I mean sado-masochistic rituals, the practice of
'S&M' as it is called today. One is supposed to actually abandon any
power of turning down the whims of the other, and to submit oneself
entirely to the sadistic caprices of this other, the common aim of both
being the attainment of better climaxes. More generally, in his now
famous paper Is the Rectum a Grave?,8 Léo Bersani draws our attention to
the fact that powerlessness could actually be something decisive in sexual
pleasure, insofar as, he suggests, 'There is a big secret about sex: most
7 T. Hobbes. Leviathan. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.p. 120.
8 Leo Bersani. 'Is the Rectum a Grave?' in Aids Cultural Analysis, Cultural Activist. Ed.
Douglas Crimp, an October book, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1987.
people don't like it'. They would not like it because they would feel,
somehow, that such a powerlessness constitutes part of the price to be
paid, whether one is male or female, leading each to a momentary loss of
sexual identity, something the macho-style is forced to deny constantly
through projecting it onto a construction named 'femininity'.
In each of these different cases (hypnosis, analysis, Leviathan,
S&M), and in spite of their numerous dissimilarities, the turning point is
the same: someone is supposed to have agreed, on joining in such a game,
that he/ she9is not able? allowed? to go back on it. We easily relieve our
conscience by thinking ourselves capable of stopping the game at any
given time, - but this is not so obvious. Of course this possibility remains
conceivable from the cold viewpoint of an impartial observer who finds
himself standing outside, but the other trapped in the game (the hypnotist,
the analyst, the Prince, the sadist) is not necessarily so opened up and
’tractable', and not because of any ill-will, but rather because he is the one
in charge of the game, and he takes care of his business. We now have to
take into account something usually hidden by the posture of the free
observer: in these games, nobody is in the place of a referee, or an empire,
able to say: 'enough', or 'break', even in the most hidden reaches of the
mind of each one. There is here a fundamental dissymetry, turning
around the fact that one is supposed to have abandoned freely ones right
of governing oneself If one does not, there is no game; but if one does, the
usual paradoxes linked to intentional servitude arise.
Without plunging more deeply into this philosophical maelstrom,
let's note that our four examples (hypnosis, analysis, Leviathan, S&M) can
be described as games in which an initial agreement is required, explicitly
or not, but where there is, for all that, no clear picture of a final agreement.
Of course, many benefits are expected in each case; some relief of pain, a
constitution and a Common-Wealth, new intensities of pleasure ... But
they all depend on a certain powerlessness, an abandonment of this bizarre
Eigenmächtigkeit, a loss which is set as the price one has to pay to enter the
9 1 so much dislike this politically correct grammatical couple that I will content myself
from now on with the trite machismo which uses only the masculine as generic.
187
game. No one will be surprised to discover, later on, that a central concept
in each of these cases is the one of 'resistance', even if with Hobbes this
resistance is not so easy to locate. But this last example is also the one
which permits us to touch upon a crucial point.
The Prince is the one whose acts and words represent the acts and
words of those who have abandoned to him their right of governing
themselves. So that when this Prince says or does anything as a Prince, he
speaks and acts as if any of his 'authors' (Hobbes' word) would have
spoken or acted in 'like maimer' (except that the Prince has now the power
of the ensemble of these authors, each one named, from now on, a
'citizen'). The power of this Prince over each citizen is therefore unlimited
because no one can consciously rebel against him without rebelling
against himself too. It is as simple as this: a citizen is not a slave, he is free
within the frame of that law that the Prince is to concern himself with as
every citizen has asked him to do. And there is not the least irony in it:
freedom bears no relation to wildlife, in spite of any romantic notions to
the contrary. And therefore, freedom is a consequence of a submission to
an unlimited power.
'Unlimited' means exactly that no citizen can draw a line in front of
the law in such a manner as to protect his freedom. It is rather difficult to
think calmly about these matters nowadays because we have our head
filled with stories about how one has to protect oneself against some
misuse of the law. I am not talking about that; only about the fact that
freedom implies that the citizen has not the least right to retract himself
from the deal which makes him a citizen, that is: a full respect for the law.
The difficulty here comes from a very common topological mistake: this
'unlimited' can be frightening if we hear in this, as a mere synonym, the
idea of an infinite power, while something unlimited is not necessarily
infinite! A brief look at a simple sphere is enough to put that idea in
check: there is no 'limit' of any kind to its surface, nonetheless, this surface
can be perfectly finite. A plane, or a line is necessarily infinite if unlimited,
but the idea of abandoning a power which, in fact, did not exist as such
before its very abandonment, leads us to something much more warped
than a plane or a line. Indeed, in a supposed wilderness the fact of
188
governing oneself is obviously not a right, but rather merely a fact (if
anything). It becomes a right only when abandoned in favour of a social
contract. As citizen then, one is entirely submitted to the law. There is no
part of oneself which, by nature, escapes the law. If, nonetheless, there are
some parts of one's life this law has decided not to know, this is also a
decision of the law, never that of any citizen.
That being who, with his neighbour, has contracted to the
transformation of both of them into citizens through abandoning their
right to this same Prince, - what was he before? A man? A beast? A wolf?
That could appear so sophisticated a question that it might appear not to
be worthwhile answering it. But, if what is not submitted to the law has to
be located in this being from whom (from which?) the citizen has, out of
the blue, blossomed, wouldn't it be interesting to make some valuable
statements about that? Is that being still at stake behind, beside, or inside
the citizen? Is he the one capable of stopping the game when it has gone
too far?
Unfortunately, no enquiry will give us the least shadow of an
answer, for any answer of that kind will concern the primary causes from
which a political, a philosophical or metaphysical system springs up, as it
does in Hobbes, or in Rousseau. What we could, instead, remind
ourselves of is that freely waiving one's right to govern oneself puts in
train a sort of irreducible splitting of the one who waives it. Could it not
be the case that this splitting is one of the main results of each of those
games?
To the apparent contrary of this state of powerlessness, something
altogether different emerged in the very beginnings of psychiatry, under
the French name of 1Traitement moral'. On the same basis as the one Freud
supported in his 1890 paper, a French psychiatrist, François Leuret,
overemphasised the influence of the mind over the body, going so far as to
bluntly deny any somatic aetiology in madness. In his Fragments
Psychologiques sur la Folie, published in 1843, he argued that;
... insanity was only the exaggeration of an error in thinking,
and that the normal operations of the mind were the most
appropriate standard by which to judge the pathological
extent of a hallucinatory delusion.10
The treatment he practised and recommended was therefore based upon
the idea that the physician has to force the madman to recover a more or
less complete power of governing himself. In this perspective, the
Freudian Eigenmächtigkeit, far from being abandoned, or dismissed, or put
offside, is required as the very spring of the healing. To this end, Leuret
used a rather rough technique - cold showers, abrupt reversals from care
to disdain etc. - which brought him strong reproaches from most of his
colleagues. But his aim was clear: to tame the madman in such a way that
he would be himself capable of taming the errors in his own way of
thinking, transforming him into a true Eigenmächtigkeit champion.
I would claim that, insofar as he is to conceive himself as standing
at this old cross-road, the psychoanalyst is still today managing with these
two opposites in the treatment he directs. On the one hand, thanks to the
fundamental rule, he can hold that the patient has more or less abandoned
his power of governing his stream of thoughts. Here, I would just
emphasise that this rule is not to be taken as an ideal, and that it is
generally out of place to push the patient into implementing it better too
frequently. Once it has been said, some slight clarifications can be made very few, indeed and that is all! The possible resistances of the patient
will not be further weakened by any reminder of the rule which, in any
case, would immediately only set it up to be targetted by them, whereas it
is none other than the law distributing the speech between the two actors
on the analytical stage. Given then this other Freudian axiom according to
which a repressed idea will always turn out to be consciously represented,
through the transference, you are just supposed to wait and to watch out.
All of a sudden, it will come out, by itself.
On the other hand, Freud, faced with hysteria, was forced to note
that this rule was not functioning all that well, - not only with obsessional
patients, but also with phobic people, in as much as they kept standing
101. Dowbiggin. Inheriting Madness. Oxford, University of California Press, 1991. p. 39.
more or less comfortably behind the inhibition to which they were
compelled because of their phobia. In New Ways of Psychoanalytical
Treatment (1919), he wrote that two kinds of phobic people exist: the
former is capable of facing angst, the latter not, at least not alone. He went
on:
We have some chance to succeed with the latter form only if,
through the influence of analysis [durch den Einfluß der
Analyse], we bring it to the former one, that is through
getting the patient to go out alone and then to fight off angst.
What does that mean 'through the influence of analysis' other than that,
gently or not, directly or not, you push your patient to cope with what he
complains of not being able to? If you are not clever enough, the reply is
foreseeable: 'I came to you because I couldn't do that, and now you ask me
to just go and do it! Are you kidding?'. But the truth is that, in the case of
such inhibition, you could construe absolutely anything, put it anyway
you like and still nothing will really move. True, a symptom can be
removed by means of interpretation. But a mere inhibition, a reine
Hemmung as Freud called it in the first chapter of Inhibition, Symptom and
Angst is beyond the reach of any interpretation because it is entirely
located in the ego, the Freudian ego. There is so little of the unconscious
in inhibition that an interpretation, no matter how enlightened, can only
give more consistency to it. The patient will patiently agree with his
analyst as long as this one keeps linking his inhibitions to his story.
We can tackle this problem on the analyst's side too. Of course, he
is not supposed to direct his patient as a spiritual adviser for, if he did, he
would himself break the rule he has first proposed to follow. Moreover, if
the patient is constantly asking for such guidance, every analyst would
recognise how dangerous responding to this kind of demand would be for
the treatment. Apparently, things are rather more clear on this side; and
nonetheless, how frequent in some cases is this movement which would
lead the analyst to admonish his patient! I do not claim here that it must
never be done. I am not exactly talking about techniques. But I do want to
191
show how much the analyst is trapped here in a tension between the
posture of the hypnotist and the one of the tamer.
As usual, there are those who try to escape so essential a tension
through crafty tactics. This was the case with the so-called 'therapeutic
alliance' by which the analyst was invited to establish a rational link with
the ’healthy part' of his patient’s ego. One way or another, we must
recognise that every analyst does that. But the question remains: how far
can this link be trusted? Not much, if neuroses are even approximately
what we think they are! We can't rely for very long on such an 'alliance'
without guessing that it places the patient in the position of a gun dog, or
better: a pointer. This kind of animal is supposed to be hypnotised in the
Freudian way, that is: his master 'talks him into', so that he is perfectly
obedient, but moreover, this dog is also supposed to have so perfectly
tamed his instincts that, at the right moment, alone and in front of the wild
fowl, he will be able to stop and stay put. On the one hand: no inhibition
of any kind, no longer any Eigenmächtigkeit to resist his master's voice; on
the other, the maximum of inhibition, the capacity to hold back his most
powerful drives. Isn't it a miracle of balance, the voice of the master
matching decisively the power of nature?
A plague on all those stuffy Freudian and post Freudian stories!
Don't we now have something newer and better adapted to analytical
technique? I mean the Lacanian signifier, the subject that has nothing to
do with the old and oh-so narcissistic alter ego, and the object a which is a
sort of strict opposite to any honest object? True again, the landscape has
really changed. But the fact that the splitting is now mainly on the side of
the analyst has just inverted the positions, leaving the forces in not so
different a state.
Transference is now to be conceived as bringing into play a
newcomer, the famous sujet-suppose-savoir. The first day it appeared in
Lacan's seminar as the very key to transference, June 3rd 1964, it was
totally confused with the analyst himself: 'Le sujet-suppose-savoir, dans
Vanalyse, c'est Vanalyste'.n But only three years later, in his extremely
11J. Lacan. Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse. Paris, Seuil, 1973. p. 204.
important paper Proposition du 9 octobre sur le psychanalyste de Vécole, he
wrote:
We can see that, if analysis consists in the preservation of an
agreed situation between two partners, who stand there as
the analysand and the analyst, it cannot expand itself but at
the price of the ternary constituant introduced in the
discourse so instituted, whose name is: subject-supposed-to
know, a formation not from artifice but from vein, as
detached from the analysand. We have to see what qualifies
the analyst to answer this situation which we see as not
wrapping his person. [...] What is here paramount to us is
the analyst in his relation to the knowing of this supposed
subject, [a relation] not secondary but direct.12
Our initial question about hypnosis and moral treatment crops up again,
but with new nuances. If (first possibility) the analyst and the s.s.s. are
conceived as one and the same person, we just fall again into the square of
'hypnosis' as Lacan defines it, thanks to his own terms, on June 24th 1964.
But if, on the contrary, we consider they are two different persons - as is
suggested, for instance, in some cases of obsessional neurosis, when you
are told that this extremely aggressive thought was not at all directed
against 'you', but against the 'analyst' only - we can guess we are not going
the right way either. If the analyst, on his part, allows himself to be
dragged into believing in the difference between himself and this mere
offspring of transference which is this strange s.s.s. (or even believing in
the very opposite: a striking similarity), then this analyst will be the one
who acts out the main resistance to analysis. Inevitably, along the way, he
will some day try to bring the patient to face 'reality', using as an
argument this 'reality' he had first put aside thanks to the fundamental
rule. This is only one of the usual deadlocks through which an analysis
12 J. Lacan. 'Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste de Vécole', in Scilicet I. Paris,
Seuil, 1968. p. 20.
193
caves in, and turns into a psychotherapy in which words are but the
means of mastering nature, whether outside or inside. But if you are
rather more keen to drive out this kind of subject trapped in a symptom,
you would do better to stay at this embarrassing crossing where you do
not know, you will not know, if you actually are that devil s.s.s. or not.
This analyst's ignorance and fragile balancing act in face of these
two slopes - the 'I am1and the 'I am not' (this s.s.s.) - is rather unstable, and
can be narcissistically quite uncomfortable on occasions. This point of
balance on the analyst's part is certainly close to what Freud called
'neutrality', although in a much more precise sense which does not gather
together the many significations he tried to grasp with it. In spite of the
fact that this concept looks outdated for some people today,13 I think it has
to be re-located as opening and supporting the field of transference such
as psychoanalysis welcomes it: not only a way of remembering through
acting-out, not only a path strewn with love's deceits, but a very strange
balance, on the patient's side this time, between a perfect powerlessness
able to give way to hypnosis, and a no less perfect all-powerfulness which
stubbornly builds its interlocutor as its own creature.
Address for correspondence:
15, Rue d'Ass as
75006
Paris
France
13 Including Owen Renik, in his recent paper: 'The Perils of Neutrality', in Psychoanalytic
Quaterly, LXV, 1996. pp. 495-517.
194
THE LETTER
C e n tre
fo r
William J. Richardson
Lacan for beginners
William J. Richardson
The subject o f ethics
Marcel Czermak
Peut-on parler de psychose sociale?
Helen Sheehan
The follower
Claude Dumezil
Symptome, ethique et desir d'analyste
Rik Loose
A review of Freud's early remarks on addiction:
from an ideal to masturbation
Paul Verhaeghe
Trauma and hysteria within Freud and Lacan
Tom McGrath
Psychology and psychoanalysis - a scientific
paradigm
Charles Melman
Lecture raisonnee et critique des oeuvres de
Freud et de Lacan
Olga Cox Cameron
Lacan and Dali -an anamorphic encounter?
Christiane Lacote
Une torpeur ordinaire
Helena Texier
We can remember it fo r you wholesale
Guy Le Gaufey
The tigh-rope walkers
P s y c h o a n a l y t i c S t u d ie s ,
LSB COLLEGE
issn
0791-9875

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