Talk:Seminar XVII

Jacques Lacan's Seminars : I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX · X · XI · XII · XIII · XIV · XV · XVI · XVII · XVIII · XIX · XX · XXI · XXII · XXIII · XXIV · XXV · XXVI · XXVII I. Freud's technical writings II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis III. The Psychoses IV. The Object Relations V. The Formations of the Unconscious VI. Desire and its Interpretation VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis VIII. Transference IX. Identification The Names of the Father X. Anxiety XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis XII. Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis XIII. The Object of Psychoanalysis XIV. The Logic of Fantasy XV. The Psychoanalytic Act XVI. From One Other to the Other XVII. The Reverse of Psychoanalysis XVIII. On a Discourse That Would Not Be Semblance XIX. Or Worse XX. Encore XXV. The Moment of Concluding XXVII. Dissolution ← Seminar XVI Seminar XVIII →

The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
Seminar XVII
Cover image commonly associated with published editions of Seminar XVII.
French Title	Le Séminaire, Livre XVII : L'envers de la psychanalyse
English Title	The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (also rendered The Reverse of Psychoanalysis)
Seminar Information
Seminar Date(s)	26 November 1969 – 17 June 1970
Location	Paris (teaching setting in the wake of May 1968; associated with the Faculty of Law and the post-1968 university reorganization)
Psychoanalytic Content
Key Concepts	Four Discourses • Discourse of the Master • Discourse of the University • Discourse of the Hysteric • Discourse of the Analyst • Master signifier (S1) • Knowledge (S2) • Barred subject ($) • objet a • plus-de-jouir (surplus-enjoyment) • Jouissance • Real as impossible
Notable Themes	Social bond as discourse; knowledge/truth and domination; post-1968 critique of the university; Marx and surplus value; hystericization and analytic act; the father myth (Totem and Taboo); limits of symbolization
Freud Texts	Totem and Taboo • Beyond the Pleasure Principle (background) • Freud’s case of Dora • Freud’s discussion of dream-work (condensation/displacement)
Theoretical Context
Period	Middle/Late period (formalization of discourse; transition toward later work on sexuation and Encore)
Register	Symbolic/Real with formalization via mathemes
Chronology
Preceded by	Seminar XVI
Followed by	Seminar XVIII

Seminar XVII, known as The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (L'envers de la psychanalyse), is the seventeenth annual seminar delivered by Jacques Lacan during the 1969–1970 academic year. Established posthumously from transcripts and notes and edited by Jacques-Alain Miller, it was published in French by Éditions du Seuil in 1991 and later translated into English (trans. Russell Grigg) for W. W. Norton & Company.

The seminar is widely regarded as the point at which Lacan offers his most systematic account of discourse as the elementary form of the social bond: a set of positions and relations that organize how signifiers, knowledge, truth, and jouissance circulate. Its best-known innovation is the formalization of the Four Discourses—the discourses of the Master, University, Hysteric, and Analyst—presented as transformations of a single structural matrix.

Rather than equating discourse with spoken content, Lacan famously insists on discourse as a structure that may operate “without words” (un discours sans paroles). From this standpoint, the “other side” (envers) of psychoanalysis is not merely its opposition to other psychologies, but the way analytic practice both depends upon and inverts the discursive forms that sustain mastery, institutional knowledge, and subjectivation.

Historical and institutional context

Post-1968 France and the problem of the university

Seminar XVII begins in the immediate aftermath of May 1968, amid intense debate over the authority of the university, the status of knowledge, and the relation between intellectual institutions and political power. Lacan situates the seminar within this moment by treating “the university” not only as an institution but as a discourse: a mode of social link in which knowledge (savoir) occupies the position of agent while concealing the master signifier that authorizes it.

The seminar’s attention to the university discourse is often read as Lacan’s intervention into a post-1968 scene in which demands for liberation and authenticity could themselves be captured by new forms of bureaucratic and technoscientific management. In later reception, Seminar XVII has therefore been frequently mobilized in debates about technocracy, scientism, and the cultural authority of expertise.

The École freudienne de Paris and Lacan’s teaching

Lacan delivered the seminar within the milieu of the École freudienne de Paris (founded 1964), at a point when his teaching had become both a clinical formation and a public intellectual event. The seminar’s formalizations—mathemes, algebraic inscriptions, and schematic rotations—continue Lacan’s broader effort to render psychoanalysis transmissible without reducing it to psychology, moral pedagogy, or ideology.

A recurring institutional question in the seminar concerns whether psychoanalysis is structurally subversive—whether it undermines mastery—or whether it risks becoming one more discourse among others, liable to institutional capture. The title’s ambiguity (“other side,” “reverse,” “underside”) condenses this tension: psychoanalysis is defined by a reversal of the master’s discourse, yet it must also account for the ways it can function as a supplement to social order.

Composition and publication history

Editorial establishment

As with many of Lacan’s yearly seminars, Seminar XVII circulated in multiple transcriptions and unofficial versions before appearing in an edited French edition. The text was established by Jacques-Alain Miller and published by Seuil in 1991 in the Champ freudien series.

English translation

The standard English translation is The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (trans. Russell Grigg), published by W. W. Norton & Company, based on Miller’s established text. Differences in terminology across translations and secondary literature (e.g., “other side” vs. “reverse”) are often discussed because the French envers can mean underside, reverse side, or the back of a fabric—an image that resonates with Lacan’s later topological motifs (e.g., the Möbius strip).

Conceptual framework and methodology

Discourse as social bond

In Seminar XVII, Lacan defines discourse as a formal arrangement that produces stable relations between positions in a symbolic network. Discourse is not reducible to what speakers consciously intend. Instead, it names the way subjects are “placed” and linked through the operation of signifiers, the circulation of knowledge, and the production of a remainder of enjoyment (plus-de-jouir).

This structural approach allows Lacan to treat diverse phenomena—political authority, pedagogy, bureaucracy, clinical transference, and even revolt—as permutations of a few fundamental relations. In later Lacanian writing, this thesis is summarized as: discourse is what “makes a bond” (fait lien) among speaking beings, and it does so by distributing agency, address, truth, and product across fixed slots.

The matheme and the four positions

The formal core of Seminar XVII is an algebra of four terms placed into four positions. The terms are:

• S1 — the master signifier (signifiant maître)
• S2 — knowledge as a battery of signifiers (savoir')
• $ — the barred subject (the divided subject)
• a — objet a (the remainder; cause of desire; correlate of plus-de-jouir)

These terms occupy four positions that define any discourse:

• Agent (upper left)
• Other / addressee (upper right)
• Truth (lower left; beneath a bar indicating repression or concealment)
• Production (lower right)

In a compact schema, Lacan writes the discourse structure as:

$\frac{\text{Agent}}{\text{Truth}}⟶\frac{\text{Other}}{\text{Production}}$

The bar separating agent and truth indicates that the truth of a discourse is structurally “half-said” or occluded—an idea continuous with Lacan’s earlier claims about truth and the unconscious.

Rotation and derivation

The four discourses are generated by quarter-turn rotations of the same configuration. This yields a system in which each discourse can be understood both in its own logic and as a transformation of the others. The rotation principle is crucial for the seminar’s argument that no discourse can be grasped in isolation: each implies the possibility of reversal, displacement, or passage into a different social bond.

Key themes, concepts, and case studies

Plus-de-jouir and Marx

A major conceptual thread is Lacan’s linkage of psychoanalytic jouissance to Marx’s analysis of surplus value. Lacan proposes plus-de-jouir (surplus-enjoyment) as the psychoanalytic analogue of surplus value: a remainder produced by the operation of the signifier and the organization of labor/knowledge under mastery. In the discourse algebra, this remainder is indexed by a (objet a), which appears as a product that cannot be fully recuperated into meaning or utility.

Rather than treating enjoyment as a purely psychological quantity, Lacan uses the Marxian detour to insist that enjoyment has a structural relation to social forms: it is produced and managed by discursive arrangements that distribute who commands, who works, who knows, and who is made to embody the object-cause of desire.

Totem and Taboo and the dead father

Seminar XVII repeatedly returns to Freud’s myth in Totem and Taboo: the murder of the primal father and the subsequent institution of law and prohibition. Lacan reads this myth as an attempt to formalize how the death (or symbolic destitution) of the father retroactively produces the father as an object of love and authority—a paradox that psychoanalysis encounters clinically in the superego and the persistence of guilt.

Within this frame, the “father” is not primarily a biological figure but a function in discourse: a name that anchors law, an exception supposed to enjoy, and a signifier that both institutes and is instituted by the social bond. Seminar XVII therefore anticipates later Lacanian developments that pluralize or relativize the paternal function (e.g., “Names-of-the-Father”) while preserving its place in the logic of discourse and castration.

The return of the hysteric

A marked feature of Seminar XVII is the centrality of the hysteric and the Discourse of the Hysteric. Lacan treats hysteria not merely as a diagnostic category but as a discursive position through which knowledge is produced. In this discourse, the divided subject ($) occupies the place of agent and addresses the master signifier (S1), extracting from it a knowledge (S2) while the truth of the operation concerns objet a (the cause of desire and remainder of enjoyment).

Freud’s case of Dora is repeatedly cited in Lacanian reception as exemplary of hysterical address: the hysteric questions the master, demands an answer about desire, and thereby produces knowledge—often at the cost of sustaining desire as unsatisfied. The seminar also revisits Freud’s dream analysis of the “beautiful butcher’s wife,” which Lacan had discussed earlier as a paradigm of desire sustained by lack and deferral.

In clinical terms, Seminar XVII is a major source for the thesis that the analytic cure involves a “hystericization” of discourse: the analyst’s intervention produces conditions under which the analysand can occupy the position of the divided subject and address the Other’s signifiers as questionable, rather than submitting to them as commands or norms.

The four discourses

The seminar’s best-known content is the formalization of four basic social bonds. In each schema below, the upper-left term is the agent; the upper-right is the Other (addressee); the lower-left is the truth of the agent; the lower-right is the production.

Discourse of the Master

$\frac{S1}{\mathrm{\$}}⟶\frac{S2}{a}$

The master’s discourse is presented as the fundamental configuration of domination: a master signifier (S1) commands and organizes knowledge (S2). Its hidden truth is the divided subject ($), while its product is objet a as surplus (plus-de-jouir). Lacan links this to the master–slave dialectic (via Hegel), emphasizing that mastery depends on the labor of the other and produces a remainder the master cannot fully assimilate.

Discourse of the University

$\frac{S2}{S1}⟶\frac{a}{\mathrm{\$}}$

In the university discourse, knowledge (S2) appears as agent and addresses objet a as what is to be managed, classified, or optimized. The master signifier (S1) remains as concealed truth: an authorization that supports the supposed neutrality of knowledge. The product is the barred subject ($), often read as the modern subject produced by schooling, expertise, evaluation, and bureaucratic rationality.

Seminar XVII’s post-1968 resonance is especially strong here: critique of the university is not simply anti-intellectual but targets the structural coupling between knowledge and domination, including the ways emancipatory demands can be re-inscribed into administrative control.

Discourse of the Hysteric

$\frac{\mathrm{\$}}{a}⟶\frac{S1}{S2}$

In the hysteric’s discourse, the divided subject ($) confronts the master signifier (S1) and forces it to speak—producing knowledge (S2). The truth is objet a: the question of the cause of desire that cannot be answered by mastery. In Lacan’s formulation, hysteria is structurally allied to the production of knowledge, including scientific knowledge, insofar as it interrogates the master and extracts formalizable answers while keeping desire unsatisfied.

Discourse of the Analyst

$\frac{a}{S2}⟶\frac{\mathrm{\$}}{S1}$

In the analyst’s discourse, objet a occupies the position of agent: the analyst supports the place of cause of desire rather than that of master or educator. The analyst addresses the barred subject ($), and the product is a master signifier (S1) newly articulated—often read as the emergence of a signifier that marks the subject’s singularity (a reconfiguration of identification). The truth is knowledge (S2), but as knowledge constrained by the analytic experience rather than by mastery or institutional authority.

Lacan calls the analyst’s discourse the “reverse” of the master’s discourse insofar as it inverts the positions of S1 and a: instead of the master signifier commanding knowledge and producing surplus enjoyment, the analyst’s discourse puts the object-cause in the position of agency, aiming to loosen the subject’s capture by mastery and to produce a different relation to signifiers and enjoyment.

Impossibility, impotence, and the Real

In concluding formal remarks, Lacan distinguishes structural limits that later readers gloss as an opposition between impossibility and impotence. Although the terminology is not always uniform across editions and commentaries, the basic point is consistent: every discourse encounters a point where what it attempts cannot be fully achieved (an impossibility), and a point where truth cannot be fully brought into production (an impotence or failure that nonetheless shields truth from total exposure). These limits are connected to Lacan’s definition of the Real as the impossible—what resists symbolization and returns as a structural deadlock rather than a hidden content.

Colonial and political vignettes

Seminar XVII includes political and historical vignettes—often delivered in Lacan’s characteristically elliptical style—concerning the circulation of discourses across social formations, including colonial contexts. Such passages have been cited in later discussions of whether Lacan’s discourse theory can be extended to imperialism, capitalism, and institutional violence without reducing psychoanalysis to sociology or political economy.

Radiophonie and the “other side” of linguistics

During the same period, Lacan recorded remarks later associated with “Radiophonie” (published in Autres écrits), where he reasserts a reciprocal provocation: if language is the condition of the unconscious, the unconscious is also a condition for linguistics—because it reveals effects (slips, jokes, condensations) that linguistics cannot fully domesticate without confronting the dimension of objet a and jouissance.

This motif clarifies the seminar’s title: the “other side” of psychoanalysis is not an external rival discipline so much as the underside of discourse itself—what discourse produces as remainder (a) and what it cannot speak as truth (beneath the bar).

Theoretical significance and clinical implications

A formal theory of intersubjective links

Seminar XVII is foundational for Lacan’s mature theory of the social bond. Whereas earlier seminars emphasize symbolic structures of kinship and signification, Seminar XVII provides a minimal set of schemata meant to formalize how subjects are linked by positions that exceed psychology: mastery, institutional knowledge, symptomatic questioning, and analytic causation.

Because the schemas are formal, they have been applied beyond the clinic—to pedagogy, political rhetoric, organizational analysis, and cultural criticism—often as a way to track how authority is legitimated, how knowledge is mobilized, and how subjects are produced as effects of discourse rather than autonomous agents.

The analytic act and “hystericization”

Clinically, the seminar is among the principal sources for describing the aim of analysis as an installation (or partial installation) of the analyst’s discourse. This entails:

• refusing the place of master who delivers truth;
• supporting the function of objet a as cause of desire in transference;
• enabling the analysand to articulate master signifiers and traverse identifications sustained by mastery or institutional knowledge.

The often-cited formula that analysis “hystericizes” discourse underscores that analytic work begins not by supplying knowledge, but by producing the question of desire and the division of the subject—conditions under which new signifiers may emerge as products rather than commands.

Knowledge, truth, and the ethics of psychoanalysis

Seminar XVII also re-poses a classic Lacanian ethical problem: psychoanalysis depends on knowledge (interpretation, theory, transmissible mathemes) while insisting that truth is not equivalent to knowledge and that jouissance marks a limit to both. The four-discourse system is designed to keep these distinctions in view: knowledge can serve mastery (university discourse), can be extracted by symptom (hysteric discourse), and can function as the concealed truth of an act (analyst discourse), but it is never simply neutral information.

Reception and legacy

Canonical role in Lacanian teaching

Within Lacanian schools and clinical training, Seminar XVII is canonical as the source-text for the Four Discourses. It is frequently taught alongside:

• Écrits essays on the signifier, desire, and the Name-of-the-Father;
• later seminars that develop sexuation and discourse (e.g., Encore);
• clinical literature that applies discourse theory to transference and institutional settings.

Influence beyond psychoanalysis

Seminar XVII has had significant impact in philosophy and cultural theory, especially where Lacan’s discourse theory is read as a bridge between psychoanalysis and social critique. Scholars have applied the discourse schemas to questions of ideology, subjectivation, the authority of science, and the politics of education, often emphasizing Lacan’s claim that discourse is not merely what is said but a structure that produces subjects and objects of enjoyment.

At the same time, critics argue that the algebra’s abstraction risks flattening historical differences among institutions and social orders, or encourages schematic application without clinical anchoring. Defenders respond that the formalization is intended precisely to prevent moralizing or psychologizing accounts of power, by locating domination and its reversals in structural positions rather than personal traits.

See also

• Jacques Lacan
• Seminar XVI
• Seminar XVIII
• Four Discourses
• Discourse of the Master
• Discourse of the University
• Discourse of the Hysteric
• Discourse of the Analyst
• Master signifier
• Barred subject
• objet a
• plus-de-jouir
• Jouissance
• May 1968
• Totem and Taboo
• Radiophonie
• Autres écrits

Further reading

• Lacan, Jacques. Le Séminaire, Livre XVII : L'envers de la psychanalyse (1969–1970). Texte établi par Jacques-Alain Miller. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991.
• Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (1969–1970). Ed. Jacques-Alain Miller. Trans. Russell Grigg. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007.
• Clemens, Justin; Grigg, Russell (eds.). Jacques Lacan and the Other Side of Psychoanalysis: Reflections on Seminar XVII. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.

• Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London/New York: Routledge, 1996. (Entries: “discourse,” “master signifier,” “objet a,” “jouissance.”)
• Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. (Discussion of discourse and subject division.)
• Žižek, Slavoj. The Sublime Object of Ideology. London/New York: Verso, 1989. (Influential applications of Lacanian theory to ideology; engages discourse logic in later work.)