Seminar XV
| L'acte psychanalytique | |
|---|---|
| Seminar XV | |
 Cover of L'acte psychanalytique (French edition) | |
| French Title | Le Séminaire, Livre XV : L'acte psychanalytique |
| English Title | The Psychoanalytic Act |
| Seminar Information | |
| Seminar Date(s) | 1967–1968 |
| Location | Paris |
| Psychoanalytic Content | |
| Key Concepts | Psychoanalytic act • Transference • Subject-supposed-to-know • Object a • End of analysis |
| Notable Themes | The nature and status of the psychoanalytic act; the role of the analyst; transference and its sustenance; the end of analysis and subject transformation; symbolic and real dimensions of acting |
| Chronology | |
| Preceded by | Seminar XIV |
| Followed by | Seminar XVI |
Seminar XV: L'acte psychanalytique (Le Séminaire, Livre XV : L'acte psychanalytique), delivered by Jacques Lacan during the 1967–1968 academic year, is the fifteenth in his series of annual seminars. Titled in English as The Psychoanalytic Act, the seminar undertakes a sustained investigation of what constitutes the “act” within psychoanalysis, focusing particularly on the position and function of the analyst, the dynamics of transference, and the structural transformation that marks the completion of analytic work. Unlike many of Lacan’s other seminars that introduce an array of formal concepts and topological schemas, Seminar XV centers its discourse on articulating the very notion of psychoanalytic action, its paradoxes, and its consequences for subjectivity and analytic technique.
Historical and institutional context
Seminar XV was delivered against a backdrop of significant institutional and socio‑political change. Within the psychoanalytic community in France, debates surrounding practice, training, and the role of theory in clinical work were particularly acute; Lacan’s own critical engagement with the training models of the Société Psychanalytique de Paris (SPP) had previously led to institutional ruptures and reforms.
The year 1968 brought wider societal upheavals in Paris, including student strikes and protests, which Lacan references in the seminar’s later sessions. These events intersect with his reflections on mastery, authority, and the analytic institution, and help situate the seminar’s concerns within a broader cultural context of crisis and transformation.
The text of the seminar was established from transcribed course notes and has been edited by Jacques‑Alain Miller for publication in the Seuil/Champ Freudien series; the English edition is anticipated but not yet widely available as of early 2026.
Conceptual framework and methodology
In contrast to seminars that systematically elaborate formal schemas (e.g., the Graph of Desire or versions of Schema L), Seminar XV proceeds through a dialectical interrogation of the term “act” as it applies to psychoanalysis. Lacan asks: what differentiates a psychoanalytic act from ordinary action, and how does such an act transform the subject structurally?
For Lacan, the psychoanalytic act cannot be reduced to common notions of decision, will, or behavior. Rather, it is a structural threshold: a crossing that marks the analysand’s passage to occupying a position previously held by the analyst within the symbolic field of transference. It is thus inseparable from transference itself, and from the analytic relationship configured around the figure of the subject‑supposed‑to‑know.
Lacan’s method in this seminar shows a characteristic movement of returning persistently to one question—“What is the psychoanalytic act?”—and exploring its implications from multiple angles, often by repeating and recontextualising formulations in different sessions.
Key themes and concepts
The psychoanalytic act
One of the seminar’s central claims is that the psychoanalytic act is not simply an action performed by either analyst or analysand, but a structural occurrence that reconfigures their positions within the analytic relation. Lacan provocatively asserts that “l’acte est du psychanalyste”: the act properly belongs to the analyst, not because the analyst consciously performs it, but because the analysand ultimately assumes the structural position of the analyst by virtue of the analytic act itself.
This act is not an intervention in the behavioral sense but a transformation of the subject’s relation to desire, knowledge, and the signifier. It involves a passage beyond transference—the condition that initially sustains the analytic relation—and toward a form of subjective assumption of one’s own division and causality.
Transference and its sustenance
Lacan emphasises that transference is not an obstacle to analysis but a structural condition that enables the analytic act to unfold. Transference is sustained not through interpretation alone but through the analyst’s occupation of the structural place of the subject‑supposed‑to‑know, which the analysand projects onto the analyst. Lacan suggests that sustaining this projection is itself part of the psychoanalytic act.
The analyst maintains this position not by offering answers or gratifications, but by exercising a stance of abstinence—resisting the impulse to satisfy the analysand’s demands—and thereby allowing the analysand’s speech and unconscious truth to emerge.
Subject‑supposed‑to‑know and dissolution of the analyst’s image
A further theme in the seminar is the eventual dissolution of the figure of the subject‑supposed‑to‑know. As the analysand advances through the analytic process, this figure evaporates: the analysand comes to occupy the position of assumed knowledge, and the analyst’s role diminishes to that of a structural residue, likened by Lacan to an unwanted remainder or even to the objet a.
Lacan’s striking metaphors—such as depicting the analyst as “rejected like a piece of waste” at the end of analysis—underscore the radical nature of this transformation and the extent to which the survivor of analysis takes up the symbolic position previously held by the analyst.
Distinction between action and act
Throughout the seminar, Lacan distinguishes ordinary “actions” (agir) from psychoanalytic “acts” (acte). An action pertains to observable behavior or decisions made within symbolic mediation; by contrast, an act in Lacan’s sense marks a structural shift in the subject’s relation to the symbolic order, desire, and knowledge. It is this kind of structural transformation that defines the psychoanalytic act.
End of analysis and the analyst’s status
For Lacan, the end of analysis is not a matter of duration or symptom resolution but a structural event: the analysand passes beyond transference to assume the symbolic location of the analyst. In this moment, the analytic act has occurred. The analyst, in turn, is stripped of the mystified position of knowing and becomes structural “waste”—the remnant of the operation.
Lacan’s reflections on the analyst’s position also gesture toward broader questions of training, authority, and ethical responsibility within psychoanalysis, anticipating later elaborations in his work on transmission and the passe.
Theoretical significance and clinical implications
Seminar XV marks a significant moment in Lacan’s teaching insofar as it articulates a conception of psychoanalytic action that is neither ancillary to technique nor reducible to clinical interventions. The psychoanalytic act becomes a structural transformation that reassigns symbolic positions, disrupts transference, and redefines the end of analysis.
Clinically, this perspective shifts emphasis away from symptom management or interpretation alone toward an orientation centered on the analysand’s assumption of their own divided subjectivity and desire. The seminar thus has implications for how clinicians understand termination, analyst training, and the relation between analytic theory and practice.
Reception and legacy
As with many of Lacan’s seminars, Seminar XV was circulated in manuscript form for decades before its recent French publication. Its focus on the psychoanalytic act has stimulated extensive commentary in Lacanian circles and has been influential in discussions of transference, analyst training, and the ethics of psychoanalytic work.
The seminar’s commentary on the dissolution of the subject‑supposed‑to‑know and the transformation of analyst and analysand positions has also reverberated in broader Lacanian scholarship on subjectivity, desire, and language.
See also
- Jacques Lacan
- Seminars of Jacques Lacan
- Transference
- Subject-supposed-to-know
- Object a
- End of analysis
- The Passe
References
Further reading
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