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At the root of the [[ethics]] is [[desire]], but a [[desire]] marked by the "fault". [[Analysis]]' only promise is austere: it is "the entrance into-the-I," ''l'entrée-en-Je''. "[[I]] must come to the [[place ]] where the ''[[Id]]'' was," where the [[analysand]] discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the [[truth]] of his [[desire]]. The [[end]] of the [[cure]] is then the purification of [[desire]]. [[Lacan]] makes [[three ]] statements: one is only guilty of "having given in on one's desire"; "the hero is the one who can be betrayed with impunity"; goods [[exist]], but "there is no [[other ]] good than the one that can pay the price of the access to [[desire]]," a [[desire]] that is only valid insofar as it is [[desire]] to [[know]]. [[Lacan]] lauds [[Oedipus]] at Colonus who calls down curses before dying, and he associates him with [[Antigone]], walled up alive, who has not given in at all. Both have rejected the [[right ]] to live in [[order ]] to enter the "in-between-two-deaths," - ''entre-deux-morts'' - that is immortality.

Since ''[[Le désir et son intépretation]]'', the [[analysis]] of the son's [[passion ]] ([[subject]]) has become more pressing. Who is the [[Father]]? Here is the terrible [[Father]] of the [[primal horde]] (Freud's ''[[Totem and Taboo]]''); Luther's [[God]] with "his eternal [[hatred ]] against men, a hatred that existed even before the [[world ]] was [[born]]"; the [[father]] of the [[law]] who, as to [[Saint Paul]], leads to temptation: "For me, the very commandment - Thou shall not covet - which should lead to [[life ]] has proved to be [[death ]] to me. For sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, seduced me and by it killed me." [[Lacan]] adds, "I have put the [[Thing]] in the place of sin," denouncing the complicity between the [[law]] and the [[Thing]], "which is called [[Evil]]." But what is the [[Thing]] against which the [[Father]] cannot or does not know how to [[defend ]] himself? It has [[nothing ]] to do with the [[object]], which is created by [[word]]s. It is the [[outside ]] [[signifier]] and also the hostile outside [[signified]]: a mute reality prior to [[primal ]] [[repression]] that puts in its place the pure [[signify]]ing web without being able to hide it. It is the center of the [[unconscious]] but it is excluded; it is the [[Real]] but always represented by an emptiness, the nonthing, ''l'a [[chose]]'', the nothing, a [[hole ]] in the [[Real]] from which the [[Word]], the [[Signifier]], creates the world. It is the place of deadly ''[[jouissance]]'' sanctioned by the [[prohibition]] of [[incest]]. It is associated with the [[mother]] who represents it by her [[manifest ]] carnality, and with [[woman]] who, idealized in [[courtly love]], [[speak]]s the [[truth]]: "I am nothing but the emptiness which is in my cloaca." The [[idea ]] of a distorted [[sexuality]] meets the 70s mantra: "[[There is no such thing as a sexual rapport]]." [[Woman]], who is the other, bears the burden of the curse, although the [[Thing]] is settled at the heart of all [[subject]]s who have to recognize it. Who am I? "You are the waste that falls in the world through the devil's anus." However, salvation holds on by a thread: the theme of the exquisiteness of the son's love for the [[father]] would be amplified in ''D'un [[Autre ]] à l'autre''. This [[father]] is a [[symbolic]] [[Father]], he is all the more [[present]] for [[being]] [[absent]], a [[Father]] without a [[body]] or the glorious [[body]] of [[signifier]]s, a [[father]] who can only be the [[object]] of an [[act]] of [[faith]], for: [[there is no Other of the Other]]" to [[guarantee ]] him. [[Sublimation]] is an attempt to confront the [[Thing]]: [[true]] [[love]] for one's [[neighbor ]] consists in recognizing in him, as in oneself, the place and the wound of the [[Thing]]. As for disbelief, by rejecting the [[Thing]] it makes it reappear in the [[Real]], which is the [[Lacan]]ian definition of [[psychosis]].

If [[ethical ]] [[thought ]] "is at the centre of our [[work ]] as [[analyst]]s," then, in the [[cure]], [[ethics]] converges from two sides. On the side of the [[analysand]] is the problem of guilt and the pathogenic [[nature ]] of [[culture|civilised]] [[morality]]. [[Freud]] conceives of a basic [[conflict ]] between the [[demand]]s of [[culture|civilised]] [[morality]] and the essentially amoral [[sexual ]] [[drive]]s of the patient. If morality takes the upper hand and the [[drives ]] are too intense to be [[sublimation|sublimated]], [[sexuality]] is either expressed in [[perversion|perverse]] forms or [[repression|repressed]]. [[Freud]] further develops this idea in his [[theory ]] of an unconscious [[sense ]] of [[guilt]] and in his [[concept ]] of the superego, that interior [[moral ]] [[agency]] which becomes crueler to the extent that the ego submits to its [[demand]]s. The [[analyst]], on the other hand, has to deal with the pathogenic [[morality]] and [[unconscious]] [[guilt]] of the [[patient]] and with the ethical problems that arise in the [[cure]].

[[Lacan]] addresses the issue of how the [[analyst]] will respond to the [[patient]]'s sense of [[guilt]] by arguing that he must take it seriously, for whenever the [[patient]] feels [[guilty]] it is because he has given way to his [[desire]]: "the only thing of which one can be guilty is of having given ground relative to one's [[desire]]." As to the pathogenic morality acting through the [[superego]], [[Lacan]] asserts that [[psychoanalysis]] is not a libertine ethos. The ethical [[position ]] of the [[analyst]] is revealed by the way that he formulates the [[goal ]] of the [[cure]]. [[Ego-psychology]], for [[instance]], proposes a [[normative ]] [[ethics]] in the [[adaptation]] of the [[ego]] to [[reality]]. [[Lacan]] opposes this stance and devises an [[ethics]] relating [[action]] to [[desire]]: "Have you acted in conformity with the [[desire]] that is in you?"

Traditional [[ethics]] ([[Aristotle]], [[Kant]]) revolves around the concept of the [[Good]], where different goods compete for the position of Supreme Good. [[Lacanian ]] [[ethics]] see the [[Good]] as an obstacle in the path of [[desire]], thus "a [[repudiation ]] of the idea of Good is necessary." It also rejects ideals, such as health and [[happiness]]. Traditional [[ethics]] tends to link the [[good]] to [[pleasure]]: moral thought has "developed along the paths of an hedonistic problematic." [[Lacan]] does not take such an approach because [[psychoanalytic ]] [[experience ]] has revealed the duplicity of [[pleasure]]: there is a [[limit ]] to [[pleasure]], and when it is [[transgression|transgressed]], it becomes [[pain]]. ''[[Jouissance]]'' is the paradoxical [[satisfaction]] that the [[subject]] derives from his [[symptom]], the [[suffering ]] he derives from his [[satisfaction]]. Finally traditional [[ethics]] puts work and a safe, ordered [[existence]] before questions of [[desire]] by telling [[people ]] to make their [[desire]]s wait. [[Lacan]] forces the [[subject]] to confront the relation between his actions and his [[desire]] in the immediacy of the present.

[[Lacan]] introduces the [[notion ]] of ''[[das Ding]]'', the [[Thing]], via the opposition between the [[pleasure principle]] and the [[principle ]] of [[reality]], this opposition, however, is deluding since the latter is but a modification of the former. Two are the contexts where ''[[das Ding]]'' operates. Firstly there is Freud's [[distinction]] between ''Wortvorstellungen'', [[word-presentations]], and ''Sachvorstellungen'', [[thing-presentations]]. The two types are bound together in the [[preconscious]]-[[conscious ]] [[system]], whereas in the unconscious only thing-presentations are found. This seems to contradict the [[linguistic ]] nature of the unconscious. [[Lacan]] counters the objection by pointing out that there are two [[words ]] in [[German]] for "[[thing]]": ''[[das Ding]]'' and ''die Sache''. [[Freud]] employs the latter to refer to [[the thing]]-presentations in the unconscious, and if at one level ''Sachvorstellungen'' and ''Wortvorstellungen'' are opposed, on the [[symbolic]] level they go together. ''Die Sache'' is the [[representation ]] of a [[thing]] in the [[symbolic]], whereas ''[[das Ding]]'' is the [[thing]] in the [[real]], which is "the beyond-of-the-signified." Thing-presentations found in the unconscious are of linguistic nature, as opposed to ''[[das Ding]]'', which is outside language and outside the unconscious. "The [[Thing]] is characterized by the fact that it is [[impossible ]] for us to imagine it."

Yet,in relation to ''[[jouissance]]'', as well as being the object of [[language]], ''[[das Ding]]'' is the [[object of desire]]. It is the [[lost object]] which must be continually looked for, the unforgettable [[Other, the ]] [[prohibition|forbidden]] [[object]] of [[incest]]uous [[desire]], the [[mother]]. The [[Thing]] appears to the subject as the Supreme Good, but if the [[subject]] [[transgression|trangresses]] the [[pleasure principle]] and attains it, it is experienced as suffering or/and [[evil]] because the [[subject]] "cannot stand the extreme good that ''[[das Ding]]'' may bring on him." It would seem then fortunately that the [[Thing]] is usually inaccessible.

<b>Le séminaire, Livre VII: L'éthique de la [[psychanalyse]].</b><br>[[French]]: French: (texte établi par Jacques-[[Alain ]] [[Miller]]), [[Paris]]: Seuil, 1986.<br>[[English]]: <b>The Ethics of Psychoanalysis</b> (edited by Jacques-Alain Miller), New York: Norton, 1992.

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