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==1==
1964 (256 pp.)-SEMINAIRE XI: LES aUATRE CONCEPTS FONDAMENTAUX DE LA PSYCHANALYSE (SEMINAR XI: THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS)-1973, 1978
January 15, 1964 marked the opening session of the seminars at the E.N.S. where, in the presence of a number of celebrities (Levi-Strauss, H. Ey, AI�thusser ... ) and of a new and young audience, Lacan reminded people of the "censorship" of his teaching and of his excommunication by the official psychoanalytic circles. Why, he asked, was this refugee involvcd in the uni�vcrsity, a placc gcnerally held in contempt by psychoanalysts? Well, he wantcd to continuc to train analysts, which was his first priority. At the same timc, his tcaching was also addrcssed to the non analysts and he wanted to raisc thc following questions: Is psychoanalysis a science? Under what con�ditions is it a science? If it is-the "science of the unconscious" or a "con�jectural science of the subject" -what can it, in turn, teach us about science? This double aim of Lacan's discourse created interferences that are not always easy 10 follow, and also Icd him to evade somc of thc participants' questions. For cxample, could one do without the "stagcs" of carliest childhood? (Fran�<;oise Dolto's question); how would others reappear in his discourse? and "is topology for you a method of discovery or of exposition?" (Wahl's questions); "What diffcrcnce do you make between the object of desire and the object of the drive?" (Safouan's qucstion). Once, Lacan even answered, "Look, the main thing is that I don't fail and get hurt!"
Praxis, which "places man in a position of dealing with the real through the symbolic," produces concepts; four concepts are offered here, the un�conscious, repetition, transference, and the drive. The 1973 title has often been contcstcd in favor of the 1964 title, "Les Fondements de la psychana�Iysc" (The Foundations of Psychoanalysis), which implies neither that it is a matter of concepts, nor that there are only four of them. Sometimes Lacan talked of concepts, and sometimes he wondered whether psychoanalysts lived in dcccption, and hc was suspicious of the relationships among psychoanaly�sis, religion, and science. Did they not have, like religious groups, a founding fathcr and quasi-sacred texts? Freud was "legitimately the subject that one could presume to know," at least regarding the unconscious; "he was not only the subject who was supposed to know. He did know." "He gave us this knowlcge in terms that may be said to be indestructible," terms that support an inexhaustible interrogation. "No progress has been made, however small, that has not deviated whenever one of the terms has been neglected around which Frcud ordered the ways that he traced and the paths of the uncon�scious." This declaration of total allegiance contrasts with the study of
The Works of Jacques Lacan 113
Freud's dream about the dead son screaming "Father, can't you see I'm burn�ing?" Was Lacan both an inventor and the only faithful disciple? The more he protected himself with Freud's name, the more he exposed himself. In�deed, the central problem remained that of the transference to the founding father: the Name-of-the-Father is a foundation, he tells us, but the legacy of the Father is sin, and the original sin of psychoanalysis is Freud's desire that was not analyzed. This repeats the theme of L' Ethique (43). Lacan presented himself as the son of the plowman in La Fontaine's fable; the Name-of-the�Father is a treasure that remains to be found, provided, like Actaeon, one offers oneself as a sacrificial victim to truth (29).
Of the four concepts mentioned, three were already amply developed be�tween 1953 and 1963. Concerning the unconscious, transference, and repeti�tion, this seminar provided an opportunity for spreading the major principles of Lacanian teaching, although this sometimes meant rectifying them. There remained the drive whose importance had kept increasing since the study of the objet a in L'Angoisse (52). If one does not take sexuality into account, which is always linked to the part objects, then "psychoanalysis is nothing but a mantic." Moreover, "the reality of the unconscious is sexual reality�an untenable truth," and sexual reality cannot be separated from death. Un�der the form of the objet petit a whose "only reality is topological," Lacan grouped all the partial drives linked to part objects: the breast, feces, the penis, and he added the gaze and the voice. Here, he was mobilized by the gaze; he confronted Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Caillois so as to assert the radical split between the eye and the gaze. He analyzed Holbein's Ambassa�dors as a "trap for the gaze" [piege a regards], but also as a dompte-regard and a trompe-I' oeil. n In the foreground, a floating object, a phallic ghost ob�ject gives presence to the - <t> of castration. This object is the heart of the whole organization of desire through the framework of the fundamental drives. For the Cartesian Cogito (l think), Freud substituted the Desidero (I desire).
How is it possible to reconcile the desire linked to the signifier and to the Other with the libido that has become an organ under the form of the "la�mella" or the hommelette, the placenta, the part of his own body from which the subject must separate in order to exist? Here is where a new conception of repetition comes into play, whose functioning sterns from two forces: the automatism (automaton) on the side of the signifier, and the always missed but desired encounter (the tuchl) on the side of the drive, where the objet a refers to the "impossible" Real that, "as such, cannot be assimilated." If transference is "the enactement Ila mise ell acte] of the reality of the uncon�scious" (which is what Lacan's deconstruction of the drive wants to bring to light), if desire is the nodal point where the pulsation of the unconscious-an untenable sexual reality-is also at work, then what a Gordian knot! Is it to be untied or cut? For the first time, the psychoanalyst's role is clearly to allow the drive "to be made present in the reality of the unconscious": for that purpose, he must fall from his idealized position so as to become the upholder of the objet a, the separating object. The analysand will thus discover "to what signifler-a traumatic, irreducible nonsense-he, as subject, is sub�jected." Was this a first step toward the deserre that would be the focus of Lacan's texts in 1967 (66)'1
The fourth page of the 1973 edition edited by J.-A. Miller reprints the summary written by Lacan for the directory of the E.P.H.E. In a note (p. 249) Miller explains his task of transcription, while a postscript by the Master rereads this text in relation to his new research (especially concerning the pllls-de-jollir [71 D, and most importantly and ironically in relation to his exclusion from the E.N.S., which had taken place in the meantime. Note that he uses the terms. poubellicatiollO and stecriture (this writing) (terms meant to have a popular success), and also that he insists on the Real as impossible.
n. The meaning of the verb dompler is "to tame." The reference is to a situation in which the gaze is tamed by an object, such as a painting. Lacan invented the expres�sion dompte-regard as a counterpart to the notion of trompe-/' oeil, which has passed into the English langauge.
==Introduction==
