In response to the Congress' call for contributions, I began to write with this initial title: "A Short Essay on Joy". I wanted to talk about joy in psychoanalysis. As the deadline for submissions to the Blog approaches, I still have to choose a section. DESAFINADO seems to be the only one I can fit into. I'm surprised! Then, like a Witz, "Y a d'la joie" comes to mind, the song by Charles Trenet, and I burst out laughing! DESAFINADO: it's a song – "Out of tune" – it's for me. I can't say much more. Laughter arises from what, in the unconscious, has no words to say it. I then realise that it runs through my text.
"Y a d'la joie," Charles Trenet does not know what this joy is about, but he feels it and sings Y a! [there is!] The joy I am talking about implies a knowledge of this structural "There is no" and makes the Y a in Charles Trenet's song resonate.

How can we not mention the recurring complaints of female analysands about their relationships… and sometimes, the sudden emergence of a shift, greeted with laughter!
One of them is fascinated by a couple she knows. He is brilliant and so attentive with her! However, she notices that they want to keep their relationship secret, but are constantly showing off their harmony… She then laughs and adds: "In my relationship, there isn't a day that goes by when I don't have to work at it!"
Caught up in this fascination, she laments her own commitments, that are marked by failure, whereas she aspires to a direct relation with her desire… but she keeps coming back to the ideal image of this couple.
I emphasise the significance of this fascination.
Silence… Then she describes her relationship as "consistent, but turbulent".
I agree: "That's right!"
She then specifies the importance of this relationship, that is constantly being reinvented… A silence follows.
I point out to her: "You know something they don't know…"
Long silence.
I venture: "And you'd rather not know…"
After a silence, she sighs and replies: "Yes… That's true…" And laughter erupts!
"There is no sexual relation". How painful this assessment is! How she would like to believe in it, still… and find salvation in a fusion of bodies: "Forever Songs"¹
What to do? Well, "We invent, we invent… what we can, of course!"² says Lacan.
This is the thread on which the speaking-being must engage his talents on the tightrope.
It is love that makes this disjunction, inscribed in the bodies, bearable. But what can be said about love?
Love is insatiable; it is not the promise of a relation "that does not exist".
Is it about a knowledge, here?
Love is a first step when faced with this abyss, but often without knowing what causes it. "True love" is a step further; it is a love that knows its hatred, insofar as hatred aims at "there is no". It often leads to impotence.
One more step: a love that knows and accepts the impossibility of the relation.
This knowledge "where one grasps what there is to learn",³ Lacan says again in "L'étourdit", gives access to a new approach to jouissance in the relation between the sexes, that of an Other jouissance, which divides each one, "while the union remains at the threshold".⁴
Does this step, then, not attempt to be equal to the structure?
This knowledge, while difficult to sustain, is also a strength. It comes to border this abyss. Is this where joy is based? When the subject's knowledge, product of the analysis, joins the knowledge about structure, that is when joy can arise.
All that remains is to invent… again!

^[1] Trenet C., "Y a d'la joie," Raoul Breton, 1938. Available online.
^[2] Lacan J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXI, "Les non dupes errent", lesson of 19 th February 1074.
Unpublished.
^[3] Lacan J., "L'étourdit," Autres écrits, Paris, Seuil, 2001 p. 466. Unpublished in English.
^[4] Ibid.