I will begin with a fantasy.* It is an idea that came up while listening to our colleagues yesterday morning; in short, our colleagues tell us the same thing: people today, the post—or even hyper-modern subjects are disinhibited, neo-disinhibited, the desamparados, distressed, disoriented. In listening to them, I said to myself: Oh, yes! Oh, yes, yes! And how! And how compassless we are! How true that is! And how rare it is to conceive a sequence of four colleagues who are all in agreement, and then to agree with them oneself and to feel that the entire world is in agreement, that there is a consensus on this point.
The Metaphor of Nature by the Real
So, in listening to them, I asked myself: Since when has it been so, since when have we all become compassless? And I answered myself: undoubtedly, ever since civilized morality—as Freud said, it is an expression of Freud's—was shaken up, ever since it disintegrated. And psychoanalysis is not without involvement in this dissolution of civilized morality.
We here, not all of us, not the youngest, male or female, of the audience over there, but we, we keep the memory of what this civilized morality was. We still have the signification of it. We have it at least enough to understand and even experience our present civilization as immoral, as going toward immorality. In effect, civilized morality, in its Freudian sense, provided a compass. It provided a support to those in distress, undoubtedly because it was inhibiting.
We could, all the same, ask ourselves: why is it that this civilized morality, at its epoch, at the end, let us say, of the 19th century, became so cruel? It could very well be that this cruel morality was already responding to a crack, to a flaw, which was already growing wider in civilization. It could be that this civilized morality, in as much as it was present in full force in [the] hearts, it is possible that it was already a reaction-formation, reactionary to a process that had begun from a much earlier on.
And thus, I was dreaming: perhaps, we became compassless from the time we obtained compasses. I mean ever since the practice of agriculture, which is not our own practice, which is obviously not in our foreground, ever since agriculture began to cede, step by step, the dominant place to industry. We do not think enough about that, about agriculture. It is from there, perhaps, that all evil stems: the metaphor of agriculture by industry. Ah, the agricultural civilization, a great thing!
Thus, the agricultural civilization finds its bearings in Nature, in the invariable cycle of seasons. Of course, there is a climate history of. Some good souls are reconstructing the history of climatic changes. This does not alter the invariable cycle of seasons that set the pace for agricultural civilization, in such a way that, in effect, it takes its bearings, its symbols, from the seasons and from the sky. The agricultural real is celestial; it is a friend of nature. With industry, with what we call the industrial revolution, all that was slowly swept away. The artifices multiplied, and at this very moment, we can certify that the real is devouring nature, that it is substitutes itself for nature, and that it is proliferating. There you have a second metaphor, the metaphor of nature by the real.
I also thought that this is where the charm of the Seminar Anxiety, which I was rereading after editing it, lies. Because this Seminar presents us with an object a in a state of nature, if I could put it thus. The object small a that becomes detached from the body, which is a morsel of the body, whether it concerns a sensitive morsel or not. In the Seminar Anxiety, object a is as though in a natural state, it is taken up in that way. But when it concerns the industrial production of the surplus-jouissance, if one had to describe that, one would undoubtedly place it under a whole new angle.
A New Compass
So, my fantasy continued in this way through a question: to be compassless, is it to be, as my friend Jorge says, without discourse? Is it, as Deleuze and Guattari, who were generously commented on this afternoon, have said, is it to be chaotic, schizophrenic? First of all, are we completely without a compass? Perhaps we have a different compass?
There is a phrase of Lacan's, which was quoted twice yesterday, and which has served as my own compass, during my course with Éric Laurent of "The Other which does not exist and its Ethics Committees," a phrase that reports the rise of the object a to the social zenith. There is the zenith, the highest point, and there is the nadir, the lowest one; both can be located in the heavens. This phrase served me as a compass, since it signalled that we had touched the heaven. We had touched this ancient and unmoving heaven, the unchanging agricultural heaven, the one that is referred to by immobile or slow-changing societies, societies that are cold or lukewarm. What was indicated by this phrase of Lacan's was that a new star had risen in the social heaven, in the sociel, socielo in Spanish. And this new socialheaven star [ce nouvel astre sociel], if I may put it that way, is what Lacan had noted about the object small a, as resulting from a forceful action, from a crossing of the limits, which Freud discovered in his way, precisely in a beyond. An intensive element, which overturns any notion of measure, which goes toward the without measure, following a cycle that is not the cycle of seasons, but a cycle of accelerated renewal, of frenetic innovation.
The Hypermodern Discourse of Civilization
Thus, all of a sudden, I asked myself the question: is not the object a—how should I put it—the compass of civilization today? And why not? Let us try to see the principle of the hypermodern discourse of civilization. Let us see if we can construct this discourse.
We are going to give this object the dominant place in this eventual discourse of civilization. "Object" is a debatable denomination for Lacan himself; to name that which is at stake an "object correlative to a subject," (and furthermore, to put it in brackets, to be sure in remains in its place), it is a designation that Lacan himself did not find entirely satisfying. Finally, let's use that.
Our hypothesis is that this object imposes itself on the compassless subject, inviting him to go beyond his inhibitions. I am going to write, very simply, with the symbol that we commonly use, $.
a → $
We recently isolated the term evaluation. "We isolated"—that is putting it too strongly. It was imposed on us, we were overwhelmed by this term, and all of Europe was overwhelmed with the term evaluation, which I believe has already become common practice in the United States of America. Finally, it is taking on tyrannical proportions in Europe.
Let us consider that the compassless subject is invited to carry out an evaluation. And here, I write: S1
a → $
━ ━
……..S1
What I am writing as S1 is the One which is countable through evaluation, the evaluation to be produced. This seems all the more appropriate to me since, in this place; it replaces the S1 of the master signifier, which is doomed to fall. I will be able to find yet other significations of this S1 and to see in it, for example, the signifier of what, in the United States, they call self-help. I saw that it is called autoayuda in Spanish. I don't even know how it is said in French; I don't have the impression that there is a common term for it. We speak of personal development, but we have shied away from translating self-help into French, one does not yet dare to.
I believe you see where I am coming to with my fantasy: I want to arrive at writing the S2 as well, in the fourth place. S2, knowledge in the place of truth/lie does not seem to me badly placed in today's civilisation. The notion that knowledge is merely semblance has gained many followers and puts pressure on us. It is not, strictly speaking, scepticism or nihilism, but rather relativism or even, as philosophers sometimes say, perspectivism – someone from Argentina told me to what extent he found solace by adhering to a perspectivist philosophy.
a → $
━ ━
S1 S2
That is what I propose as a fantasy, as the structure of the hypermodern discourse of civilisation! That is where my fantasy leads me! I cannot do otherwise but follow where it leads me. And that leads me to think that the discourse of hypermodern civilisation has the structure of the analyst's discourse! I'm flabbergasted. It's a very surprising result, for me, first of all. It's a result that may seem absurd. And ultimately, justifying it when it arises is, if you like, a challenge.
Psychoanalysis, [the] Point of Convergence of Civilisation
First of all, if we think about it calmly, without emotion, Lacan did not hesitate to posit that the discourse of the master had the same structure as the discourse of the unconscious. Now, if you like, the discourse of the master is a social discourse, it is the discourse of a civilisation that has prevailed since Antiquity. Therefore, it is not inconceivable, a priori, that the discourse of today's civilisation has the same structure as the discourse of the analyst; it is not inconceivable on the potentially desiring basis from which we work.
So, if we accept that, we see the difficulty. The discourse of the analyst was once the analyser of the discourse of the unconscious, which was its opposite – what Lacan calls the other side of psychoanalysis, which is the discourse of the master. The analyst's discourse could therefore analyse the discourse of the unconscious. Its interpretative and subversive power could thus be exercised on civilisation and on the social phenomena with which we were dealing and had been dealing, as Lacan tried to show, since early antiquity.
Today, if this fantasy is true, if this fantasy leads somewhere – which remains to be seen – the discourse of civilisation is no longer the other side of psychoanalysis, it is the success of psychoanalysis. Bravo! Well done, Father Freud! But this calls into question both the means of psychoanalysis, that is, interpretation, and its end, or even its beginning. And we could say – if we start from the premise that the relationship between civilisation and psychoanalysis is no longer one of opposites – we could say that this relationship is more one of convergence, that is to say that each of these four terms remains distinct from the others in civilisation. On the one hand, surplus jouissance commands; on the other, the subject works; on yet another, identifications fall away, replaced by the homogeneous evaluation of capacities; and this while knowledge is busy lying and progressing as well. One could say that, in civilisation, these different elements are scattered and that it is only in psychoanalysis, in pure psychoanalysis, that these terms are organised into discourse. This would make psychoanalysis the point of convergence, the focal point of civilisation. In that case, we would have to say "poor civilisation"!
The Fundamentalist Freudians and the Backward-looking
At least this fantasy has the advantage of explaining the retreat of certain analysts to the master's discourse of old, their nostalgia for the Name-of-the-Father that Nepomiachi rejected yesterday at the end of his presentation – not for me, he said. This was at least testimony, in the guise of negation, that indeed, there is undoubtedly a call for us to retreat to the master's discourse. In France, at least, there is no shortage of psychoanalysts – and they are undoubtedly more numerous than us in dealing with this – who dream and work towards restoring the order of the master's discourse. Restoring the master in order to still be subversive: "French people, make one more effort to be reactionary, otherwise you will no longer be revolutionary!" In a very recent text, published two or three months ago, we see the emergence of the notion of a reactionary practice of psychoanalysis, where psychoanalysis would now consist of passing on the master signifiers of tradition to the famous disoriented subjects. It is explained that today, psychoanalysts, having to deal with these disoriented subjects, must truly renounce their former subversion in order to begin to pass on, to hand over, to instil in their patients the signifiers of tradition, failing which nothing could happen. I am far from having read much about psychoanalysis today, but I have the impression, for the moment at least, that this has not yet taken on a massive form, but that it is beginning to take shape. And perhaps tomorrow we will have a psychoanalysis whose aim will be to reconstruct the unconscious of daddy. Moreover, in principle, this psychoanalytic reaction is no different from the rise of fundamentalism. It is the same notion. We will see psychoanalysts reconstructing the unconscious, trying to artificially reconstruct Dad's unconscious, the unconscious of yesterday, just as we see the fanatics of God rising on the world stage and changing our daily lives, our travels and our leisure activities. It's the same thing: the fundamentalist Freudians…
A second position takes shape in psychoanalysis, a position that can be described as backward-looking and which consists of one thing: nothing happens, nothing takes place. The unconscious is eternal, listen to the eternal, which is your God, if I may say so.
A Neuro-cognitivist Translation of Metapsychology
And there is a third position, it seems to me, which is emerging – if the first is oriented towards the past and the second resides in an eternal present, we can say that this third position is progressive. This is the position that was put forward yesterday by Agnès Aflalo and Éric Laurent, who did not, of course, adopt it as their own. This progressive position consists in bringing psychoanalysis into line with the progress of science and pseudoscience, in regimenting psychoanalysis according to this progress. This attempt is not absurd. Moreover, it was not presented to us as such. Nor is it unprecedented. Thus, one could say that Lacan himself undertook a logical-linguistic translation of Freud's metapsychology, a metapsychology which was showing signs of weakness in the mid-twentieth century. Lacan himself recognised that he had to go through this process in order to breathe new life into psychoanalysis. So, indeed, it is not absurd, a priori, to try to give a neuro-cognitivist translation to metapsychology. It will be judged by the results, as one might say – Jorge Forbes thinks I am exaggerating, which is quite possible, but in doing so I am demonstrating an open-mindedness for which I can only be thanked. I mean that we must not insult the future. We ourselves took a long time to realise that a huge reflexive industry had been developing over the last ten, fifteen, even twenty years, as Agnès Aflalo tells us. For twenty years, industrious bees have been producing this honey: translating metapsychology into neuro-cognitivist terms. And, it must be said, we didn't see it coming until it was already happening and starting to cause trouble and chaos here and there. I'm all for those who are interested in this taking an interest and bringing us news of what's going on there.
So, these three positions which I have distinguished appear to me to verge upon practices of suggestion.
So, these three positions that I have identified seem to me to open up practices of suggestion.
The first, the reactionary practice of psychoanalysis, proceeds by exalting the symbolism carried by tradition. Moreover, we are witnessing sensational alliances with all forms of traditionalism, which highlight a striking convergence between the Bible and The Interpretation of Dreams – indisputable. The second practice, which I called backward-looking, proceeds by consolidating an imaginary refuge. As for the third, which is undoubtedly the most advanced, it devotes itself to a rallying cry, it rallies to the real of science, or so it believes.
I have therefore distributed the three terms of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real between these three practices. What these three practices have in common, it seems to me, is what we abbreviate when we write S1 → S2, with an arrow between these two terms, that is, the relationship between command and execution or between stimulus and response. In other words, what these practices aim at, however different they may be, could be stated in these terms: in all cases, it works.
And then there is the Lacanian practice, or rather there will be, because it has yet to be invented. Of course, it is not a question of inventing it ex nihilo. It is a question of inventing it along the path that the last Lacan, in particular, has paved. And this Lacanian practice can undoubtedly be sensed in what animates us.
So, the first thing that is necessary for this fourth practice, the Lacanian practice of the future, to hold its own and distinguish itself from the forms I have stigmatised, is to clearly distinguish its principle from the principle of the other three practices, from the principle of "it works" [ça marche]. Well, Lacanian practice, if it is to distinguish itself from the others, cannot have "it works" as its principle. Lacanian practice, it fails [ça rate]. You will recognise, moreover, in failure, a leitmotif of the late Lacan. He did everything he could to put himself in a position to fail his knots. Evidently, this failure is not a contingent failure. This failure is the manifestation of the relation to an impossibility. Moreover, Lacan was led to this failure on the instructions of Freud himself – psychoanalysis, an impossible profession. And, indeed, we, his listeners and readers, were overwhelmingly struck by these notions of failure and impossibility. He inoculated us with these terms, which precisely protected us, acting as antibodies against the discourse of "it works" and the new practices of psychoanalysis, all of which are based on this principle. Lacanian practice excludes the notion of success. I will go so far as to say that.
The Law of Failure
I see grimaces, discontent… not at all. The objection, of course, would be: but then, Lacanian practice is without value. I would point out that Lacan did not shy away from this. He even ended one of his last lectures enigmatically by saying: "it is a question of psychoanalysis being a practice without value." You have seen, at least in France and Europe, that psychoanalysis comes last in all therapeutic trials. Among psychoanalysts, who are like everyone else, this creates a feeling of guilt. But we too, we say, have our successes. Of course, of course! But perhaps we should not be so proud of these successes either, because they are so contingent that they do not invalidate the law of failure. Rather, they demonstrate it. Of course, there is the pass! Some people succeed in it. But, precisely, they are so few that it is obvious that it is to persuade the others who have failed, their analysis! Obviously, this is a somewhat special logic, which Lacan once pointed out, and which I took up again some time ago. It is a logic in which contingency proves, or at least attests to, the impossible. Basically, the fact that there is contingency means that we cannot even say that failure is the law of the real, but, that, according to Lacan's enigmatic formula, the real is without law. If there were no contingency to disprove the impossible, we would have a law in the real. We don't even have that.
Let us return to our discourse on civilisation. How should we understand what is at the frontline: of the discourse of hypermodern civilisation? What meaning should we give to this matheme that is so familiar to us, what meaning should we give it when, contrary to appearances, it is not the discourse of the analyst, but the discourse of civilisation?
Surplus jouissance has risen to a dominant place. However, surplus jouissance is correlated with what I would call, to use Antonio Damazzio's term – I'm educating myself here – a state of the body itself and, as such, surplus jouissance is asexual. It commands, but what does it command? It does not command 'it works', but 'it fails', which we write as $. When we barre a letter, it is usually because we have made a mistake. Here, surplus jouissance commands 'it fails' and specifically "it fails" in the sexual realm. And I don't see why we shouldn't consider that this $ means: there is no sexual relation, especially since the initial letter, S, is the same as that for sex. This would lead us to say that the non-existence of the sexual relation has, today, become so obvious that it can be made explicit, written down, from the moment the objet petit a has risen to the socialheaven.
In the master's discourse, on the other hand, it was a truth repressed by the master-signifier. But we must recognise that today the master-signifier, the master-signifiers, are no longer able to bring the sexual relation into existence. This is a source of despair for religious people, except for those who keep their distance from hypermodern civilisation and defend, with talent and vigour, an older, traditional form – today, in fact, a commendable resistance to the object petit a is exercised by the Islamic side of civilisations. On the side of hypermodern societies, on the other hand, religion despairs on this point; sex is a source of despair for it – it is still the sexual question that is holding back the rise, the resurgence of religion, as explained by a Christian sociologist, a Catholic, whom I have read. And if, on the side of hypermodern societies, religion despairs on this point, it is because religion in our societies is based on the notion of nature that the real has rendered obsolete, that the rise of the objet petit a has made obsolete.
Clearly, what is both laughable and lamentable is that many psychoanalysts have no other idea than to come to the rescue. They swear on their experience that the education of the small man requires that he be able to identify with his father and mother. I consider this to be an abuse, an abuse that their experience cannot possibly validate. It was already ridiculous when they set themselves up as guardians of collective reality, but it is even more so when the collective reality they want to guard is that of yesterday. Saying this does not imply any enthusiasm for the changes currently underway. Like most of you, I was educated in an older, more traditional way, but I follow what is written.
Psychoanalysis was invented to respond to a discontent in civilisation, a discontent of the subject, if you will, or rather of the subject immersed in a civilisation that could be described as follows: in order for the sexual relation to exist, jouissance must be restricted, inhibited, and repressed. Freudian practice paved the way for what has manifested itself, with all the quotation marks you want, as a liberation of jouissance. Freudian practice anticipated the rise of the objet petit a to the social zenith and helped to establish it. Moreover, this objet petit a is not a star, it is a Sputnik, an artificial product.
Lacanian practice, on the other hand, deals with the consequences of this sensational success, consequences that are experienced as catastrophic. The dictatorship of surplus jouissance devastates nature, breaks up marriages, disperses families and remodels the body. This reshaping does not simply concern aspects of cosmetic surgery or diet – the anorexic lifestyle, as Dominique Laurent put it – it can go as far as much more profound surgery and interventions on the body. Now that we have deciphered and decoded the genome, we will really be able to produce, moving towards what some call a post-humanity.
So, does Lacanian practice play its part in relation to the practice of the IPA and its standards? Undoubtedly, but it plays its part above all in relation to the new reals attested to by the discourse of hypermodern civilisation. It plays its part in the dimension of a real that fails, in such a way that the relation between the two sexes will become increasingly impossible, so that, if I may say so, the "One-all-alone" will be the post-human standard, the One-all-alone, alone in filling out questionnaires to receive their evaluation, and the One-all-alone commanded by a surplus jouissance that presents itself in its most anxiety-provoking form.
A Hole of [the] Real
Therefore, Lacanian practice, which remains to be invented, will not operate from the discourse of the unconscious as it's opposite. It will operate, it already operates through us – let us try to find our bearings – it operates in a hole of [the] real that works, and a hole is not a lack – a lack is always in its place, lack is another name for place. Lack is the principle of all substitutions, and it is even what allows us to say at a given moment: Bingo!
On the contrary, Lacanian practice operates in the dimension of failure. We also say: "Bingo"!' in Lacanian practice. It is a miracle, a grace. We must recognise, as Lacan himself did, that it is not calculable. Analytical interpretation, in which we understand how it proceeds, is not analytical interpretation. This is how I understand that Lacan took us by the hand, ultimately to reassure us that there are only different ways of failing, some of which are more satisfying than others. It is not just a matter of witty remarks, it is not simply Witz. It is the condition that enables us to hold on in the discourse of hypermodern civilisation.
So, this Lacanian practice would be the form, the deformation, the transformation, in the topological sense that would allow psychoanalysis to surmount the real consequences that have been produced by its practice over the last century, since its introduction into a civilisation that now converges on the structure of analytical discourse. And these consequences are returned upon themselves. The consequences of psychoanalysis return upon psychoanalysis, and in this process, we can even say that what was its condition of possibility becomes a condition of impossibility. I say possibility, but it is rather the contingency of the Freud event, and it could be that the impossibility, which was already stated by Freud and articulated by Lacan, is the condition of the very practice of psychoanalysis. In any case, this is what has been revealed to us, not intellectually, but in practice: psychoanalysis ex-sists against a backdrop of impossibility. Moreover, we have lost the desire to tell each other about our therapeutic successes. It is rather when we testify to a stumbling block that we feel that this is true – as Mauricio Mazzotti, for example, understood well when he testified yesterday about a misinterpretation, a failure in practice for which we were much more grateful than we would have been for the euphoric narration of: 'I pressed this button, it gave this result, and the garment fell off." And it is precisely because we do not understand how interpretation works, because it does not work by pressing buttons, no matter how perfect the diagnosis or clinical experience, that we spend our time explaining to each other, trying to explain what is happening.
Psychoanalysis, which is, if I may say so, a form of Socratism infused with cynicism, has shaken all the pretences on which discourse and practices were based, thereby revealing what Lacan called the economy of jouissance. Well, now derision and cynicism have entered the socialheaven [sociel], with just enough humanitarianism to veil what is really at stake. And this propagation of derision has not spared psychoanalysis itself. Psychoanalysis today finds itself a victim of psychoanalysis. And psychoanalysts themselves are possibly victims of psychoanalysis, victims of the suspicion instilled and distilled by psychoanalysis when they cannot believe in the unconscious. The semblances that psychoanalysis itself has produced – the father, the Oedipus complex, castration, the drive, etc. – have also begun to tremble. This is why, for the past twenty years, we have been witnessing this recourse to scientific discourse, which we hope will give us the real we are looking for and which we hope will give us surplus jouissance, that is to say, to cross the barrier that separates S2 from the petit a in the discourse of hysteria.
An Intention of Sense in the Real
I must recall here the contingent conditions under which psychoanalysis emerged, namely Freud's discovery of the hysteric symptom, which took place in the context of scientific discourse and the psycho-physiological materialism of the late 19th century, in the context of a real in the scientific sense, of a real of a Galilean type, of a real One, lodging and including a knowledge. It was in this context that Freud discovered that there is sense in the real. It must be said that this caused a scandal that psychoanalysis appeared as a corruption of scientific knowledge because scientific knowledge can be in the real, but without saying anything.
That there is sense in the real implies that it wants to say something, that there is an intention. And this has been, for psychoanalysis, its condition of possibility. Sense in the real is the support of the being of the symptom, in the analytical sense. And yet, we have let Freud do it. One may wonder why. We let him do it, him and his disciples who began to proliferate. We let them meddle with the symptom, the mental symptom; we let them meddle with it with meaning. We even let psychiatry be won over by it. No doubt because we didn't have the knowledge in the real that could respond to symptoms of this kind, except in a crude way: we had lobotomy and sleep therapy. So we let him get on with his intention of sense in the real. We left the treatment of symptoms to the manipulation of meaning. Moreover, since at least Pinel, we had already used imperative meaning, the S1, to treat symptoms; it was traditional.
A Scission of Sense and Real
So we have the Freudian S2, i.e. the associative meaning, alongside the imperative sense And this has been the case until now, when, to add to the unease surrounding psychoanalysis, if I may say so, a scission in the being of the symptom has occurred, precisely a scission between the real and the meaning. But this scission was expected, logically expected. The result is the pulverisation of the symptom, as evidenced by the successive editions of the DSM, after the first, which was psycho-dynamic. That which held the symptom together was the saying [le dire]. The symptom had something to say. Ultimately, it was an unconscious intentionality that held the symptom together. Well! In the word symptom, the "sym" has gone and all that remains is "ptom". The symptom is now reduced to a trouble. And English expresses this better when it talks about disorder, a word that refers to the order of [the] real.
For science, the real works. And that is what serves knowledge in the real. That is why we can say that science has affinities with the discourse of the master – Lacan pointed this out a thousand times, incidentally. But it must be said that we no longer believe in it in our hypermodern civilisation. On the contrary, we now have the idea that scientific knowledge, in the real, it fails and will continue to fail. Genetically modified organisms and nuclear power no longer inspire confidence in the proper functioning of knowledge in the real – and this is of course true from the moment we begin to meddle with it
What was once a symptom, and is now nothing more than a trouble, is now divided in two, doubled. On the side of the real, it is treated beyond meaning by biochemistry and increasingly target-specific drugs. The side of meaning, meanwhile, continues to exist as a residue. It is the object of an adjunct treatment that can take two main forms, it seems to me. On the one hand, there is pure semblance of listening – "Come, let me listen to you" – which serves as a form of accompaniment and often even supervision of the operation that is carried out in real through medication – and, indeed, biochemists are the first to say, "Not at all, our patients need to be listened to as well." On the other hand, there is the authoritarian and formal language used in cognitive behavioural therapies.
The symptom is therefore divided into two: on the side of the real, the aim, to a greater or lesser extent, is to suppress the trouble; and on the side of meaning, it is an acceptance of meaning, a flow of meaning and, at the same time, a levelling of meaning. It must be said that it is especially in cognitive-behavioural therapies that we see a refusal, a refutation of the symptom. Whereas in psychoanalysis, the symptom had value as truth, it represented truth, always under a mask, and therefore as a lie, and it was necessary to take the time to verify the symptom, in the sense of making it true. Today, in we see that in France, this time is no longer a given.
How to respond to this?
Firstly, we have a psychoanalytic protest that is sympathetic but futile, which consists of disallowing knowledge in the real. Secondly, we have what I called a rallying to knowledge in the real. Thirdly, we have the attempt to renew the meaning of the symptom to which Lacan was attached. This is what he introduced by changing the spelling of the word itself, under the name of sinthome.
Here, we must return to Freud and his discontent in civilisation, which was not simply a diagnosis, but the very foundation of psychoanalysis, its promise of success. Today, I tend to refer to the outline he gave in 1908, entitled "Civilised" Sexual Morality and Modern Nervous Illness". It is an amusing text to reread, and not very long. Freud quotes all the observers of the time who, at the turn of the century, between the 19th and 20th centuries, noted new symptoms that marked this turning point – the most famous of which, which has remained, being Beard's neurasthenia. All these observers noted a social phenomenon: the rise and spread of nervous illness. This passage is very amusing, very witty, and provides a description of modern life, the fatigue that it entrains, of overstimulation. One could really believe that it is about today. What is striking is that Freud quotes all this at the beginning of his text, only to set it aside and identify, on the contrary, a single factor, an essential determinant: monogamy, the exigency of monogamy. In this way, he sketches out a theory of sexual jouissance in civilisation in a nutshell. The first stage, he says, is free access to jouissance – it is really, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau says: "Beginning by setting aside all facts". Secondly: restriction of jouissance, which is permitted only for the purposes of reproduction. Thirdly, jouissance today is only permitted within the framework of monogamous marriage. It is amusing to follow this in detail. Freud isolates what is neurotic, what is neuroticising, from the effort to bring about the sexual relation and the sacrifice of jouissance that this entails. We can say that this is where we find the index pointing to what Lacan will contribute.
The Symptoms of the Sexual Non-relation
Lacan's contribution, for his part, does not consist in rejecting the scientific real and knowledge in the real. Rejecting scientific discourse is a path to perdition, which opens the way to all kinds of psy mischief – mischief is not an offensive term. It is not a question of rejecting this knowledge, but of admitting that there is knowledge in the real and, at the same time, stating that there is a hole in this knowledge, that sexuality makes a hole in this knowledge. This is undoubtedly a transformation of Freud, and a new alliance between science and psychoanalysis has taken place which, if I dare say, is based on the non-relation.
"There is no sexual relation" therefore provides the site of Lacanian practice, because it is to be understood in relation to the statement that asserts "There is knowledge in the real." "There is no sexual relation" is what provides the balance with "There is knowledge in the real." It is the sexual relation that objects to the omnipotence of scientific discourse. Moreover, for the time being, we leave marriage agencies in the hands of experienced old ladies. They have not yet installed evaluators in marriage agencies, but it won't be long! So, for the moment, and this is what is striking, the sexual relation makes a hole in the real and in the knowledge in the real.
That the sexual relation makes a hole in the real can be represented simply as follows: the program is deficient at this point. This is the principle of a practice or a clinic where symptoms are not troubles or disorders, because at this point there is no order. In other words, knowledge in the real does not dictate its law; we cannot intervene at this point based on knowledge in the real. This is a negative statement that calls for positive statements, which I must choose because I am at the end of my intervention.
In the first place, symptoms are symptoms of the sexual non-relation. This means that, undoubtedly, they are articulated in signifiers, but this is secondary; it is their loquacity. Symptoms are not essentially messages. They are above all signs of the sexual non-relation, and possibly signs of punctuation. Lacan spoke of symptoms as points of interrogation in the sexual non-relation. Yesterday, I heard a patient say that what remains of her anxiety is linked to the body like a punctuation mark, like a pause in breathing. Therefore, symptoms are signs. This is a different approach from that of messages.
Symptoms are Real
On the other hand, symptoms are necessary; they never cease to be written, and this is what makes them equivalent to the "et cetera." This means that they are real, to such an extent that they can be perfectly confounded with the real that works. That is the paradox. That is why, at the same time as Lacan says that the symptom is real, he can also say: you have to believe in it. Precisely, these symptoms are so real that it is arbitrary to detach them as such. Someone has to want it. Would you like an example? Take homosexuality. It is presented as a disorder of the natural order. When we attribute a disorder to being a disorder of the natural order, today there is only one thing to do: you have to lobby. And if you lobby, you get to stop being a disorder of the natural order. As you know, it was as a result of pressure, of a political power struggle, that homosexuality ceased to be a disorder, it is no longer classified as a disorder. We can therefore see how, here, we arrive at the results of psychoanalysis, of psychoanalysis, namely: perverse jouissance is permitted. The question remains as to what we do with it.
A third positive statement: symptoms are jouissance-symptoms, if I may say so. They express that jouissance is not where we thought it should be, that is, in the sexual relation, which Freud apes in the form of monogamy. It is never the right jouissance, the one that is needed. From there, we arrive at a number of knot-points in this clinic, which I will not recount today and which involve questions such as:
The incorporation of the unconscious: is the unconscious corporeal? Lacanian practice and the question that troubled Lacan deeply in practice: does the effect of interpretation depend on the use of words or their jaculation? That is to say, an interpretation requires a certain tone—in fact, those who are fortunate enough to be able to report Lacan's interpretations always repeat them in Lacan's tone. The poetics of interpretation is not for show, it is not for kitsch. The poetics of interpretation is a materialism of interpretation. Someone who had been treating a patient for nine years told me yesterday or the day before, during supervision, that he had achieved a completely unprecedented effect in those nine years, simply by saying to her, "Basta!", in a tone whose virulence contrasted sharply with the soft voice she had the rest of the time. You have to put your body into it to bring the interpretation to the power of the symptom.
I am looking for a point to suspend, not to conclude.
Love, what makes the Unconscious Exist
With the last Lacan, we are left with three unconsciouses, three different modalities of the unconscious, but it takes time to explain this.
We could say that the Freudian unconscious works until it is exhausted. In fact, Marco Focchi has provided a list of references where we see the Freudian unconscious exhausting itself at work, while the Lacanian parlêtre does not exhaust itself at all. Rather, it swarms, bubbles, infects; it is more of a parasitic style. Lacan wanted the Lacanian parlêtre to replace the Freudian unconscious. He wanted this, it seems to me, in order to respond to the problem I posed on the board, namely, that psychoanalysis must be shifted into fifth gear.
The considerations I had to skip led to an inversion of what we traditionally say: the subject supposed to know is the pivot of transference. It seems to me that the last Lacan says something else, he says rather, if I may say so: transference is the pivot of the subject supposed to know. To put it another way, he says that what makes the unconscious ex-sist as knowledge is love. Moreover, the question of love in the Seminar Encore takes on a very special significance, because love is what could mediate between the Ones-all-alone. From this point on, it becomes difficult to say that love is imaginary. That is to say, the unconscious does not exist. The primary unconscious does not exist as knowledge. For it to become knowledge, for it to exist as knowledge, love is necessary. And that is why Lacan could say at the end of his Seminar Les non-dupes errent: psychoanalysis requires loving one's unconscious. It is the only way to make the connection, to establish a relation between S1 and S2, because in the primary state, we have disjointed Ones, we have scattered Ones. So psychoanalysis requires loving one's unconscious in order to bring into existence, not the sexual relation, but the symbolic relation. But a psychoanalyst is not required to love the unconscious. A psychoanalyst is not required to love the truth effects of the unconscious. And that is difficult, because an analyst is also an analysand, or a former analysand. And yet, in what could be considered Lacanian practice, one should not love the true anymore than the beautiful or the good.
*Conference of Jacques-Alain Miller in Comandatuba. IVth Congress of the WAP – 2004 – Comandatuba – Bahia. Brazil. Published in the French in the journal Mental Nr. 15, 2005.
