Talk:Seminar XXVII

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 XXVI Seminar XXVIII →

Dissolution
Seminar XXVII
French Title	Dissolution / La dissolution
English Title	Dissolution
Seminar Information
Seminar Date(s)	1979–1980 (academic year; commonly associated with Lacan’s act dissolving the École freudienne de Paris)
Session Count	Weekly sessions (exact count varies by transcription tradition)
Location	Paris
Psychoanalytic Content
Key Concepts	École freudienne de Paris • Psychoanalytic training • Pass • Analyst of the School (AE) • Cartel • Subject supposed to know • Transference • Analytic act • End of analysis • Borromean knot • Sinthome • Jouissance • Real • Lalangue • Scansion • Nomination
Notable Themes	Institutional dissolution as analytic act; transmission without mastery; critique of group effects; topology and knotting as clinic; end of analysis and “dissolution” of transference; the status of the School after Lacan
Freud Texts	Freud on termination, repetition, and the institutional problem of training (background reference points)
Theoretical Context
Period	Late period (Borromean/topological and institutional teaching)
Register	Primacy of the Real and the knotting of the three registers
Chronology
Preceded by	Seminar XXVI
Followed by	Seminar XXVIII

Dissolution (French: Dissolution / La dissolution) is the title most commonly associated with Jacques Lacan’s twenty-seventh annual seminar (Séminaire XXVII), delivered in Paris during the 1979–1980 academic year and closely linked—both in content and in historical memory—to Lacan’s decision to dissolve the École freudienne de Paris (EFP). The term also refers to a distinct short text/act in which Lacan formally announces the dissolution of the EFP, an intervention that has been widely read as a late instance of the analytic act applied to psychoanalytic institutions and to the problem of transmission.

Situated within Lacan’s late topological teaching—following Seminar XXIII (Le sinthome), Seminar XXV (Le moment de conclure), and Seminar XXVI (La topologie et le temps)—Seminar XXVII brings together two registers of “dissolution”: (1) the institutional dissolution of a School and the critique of group formations in psychoanalysis, and (2) the clinical and logical “dissolution” of certain analytic supports (notably the subject supposed to know) at the end of analysis.

Because late seminars often circulated for years through transcriptions and working notes, session boundaries and formulations can vary across editions; scholarly references therefore typically specify the transcript/edition tradition used, and distinguish between the seminar as a course of teaching and the “Dissolution” text as a discrete institutional act.

Introductory overview

From the early 1950s, Lacan’s “return to Freud” reoriented psychoanalysis around language, the signifier, and the address to the Other. In the 1970s, the center of his teaching increasingly shifts toward the Real, jouissance, and the symptom conceived not only as meaning to be interpreted but as a mode of knotting that gives consistency to the parlêtre (speaking being).

Within that late framework, “dissolution” names a critical problem: how a psychoanalytic formation—whether an individual analysis or a collective institution—can come to an end without simply replacing one mastery with another. Lacan’s late teaching repeatedly treats group effects (identification, idealization, rivalries, and the lure of doctrine) as intrinsic risks for psychoanalysis, whose practice depends on a rigorous relation to the unconscious and to the Real rather than on belonging and shared belief.

In its institutional sense, Lacan’s “Dissolution” is often read as a decisive break with the fantasy of a stable psychoanalytic School guaranteed by the founder’s authority. In its clinical sense, it is linked to Lacan’s account of the end of analysis as a shift in the subject’s relation to knowledge and to jouissance—especially as the transference is “de-supposed” from the analyst and the subject supposed to know is undone as a support for belief in interpretation.

Historical and institutional context

The École freudienne de Paris and the problem of training

Lacan founded the École freudienne de Paris in 1964 after earlier institutional conflicts in French psychoanalysis, presenting the School as an organizational solution to the problem of transmitting psychoanalysis without reducing it to professional credentialing or adaptationist psychotherapy. The EFP’s institutional innovations included the cartel and the Pass, both aimed at rethinking how an analyst is formed and recognized.

The Pass, in particular, was designed as a procedure to address the question of the end of analysis and the emergence of the analyst. Rather than treating authorization as a purely administrative decision, it staged a structure of testimony and transmission—most famously associated with the title “Analyst of the School” (AE)—intended to formalize the passage from analysand to analyst and to make the end of analysis an object of collective elaboration.

Late-1970s tensions and Lacan’s act of dissolution

By the late 1970s, the EFP was widely described (in biographical and institutional histories) as marked by internal conflicts over authority, training, and doctrinal guardianship, as well as by disagreements over the Pass and the distribution of institutional power. Against this backdrop, Lacan’s “Dissolution” text announces the end of the School in a performative mode—less as an administrative reform than as an act that intervenes in the symbolic status of the institution and its collective identifications.

In most cited versions, Lacan’s announcement is direct and juridical in tone, commonly paraphrased as the declaration that he dissolves the École freudienne de Paris. The gesture has been interpreted as an attempt to prevent the School from consolidating into an apparatus of mastery and to force a reconfiguration of transmission beyond the founder’s name.

Aftermath and reconfiguration of Lacanian institutions

The dissolution of the EFP played a major role in shaping the subsequent institutional landscape of Lacanian psychoanalysis, including the emergence of new schools and associations that variously claimed continuity with Lacan’s teaching while revising its organizational forms. Jacques-Alain Miller’s role in post-EFP institutional reorganization is frequently emphasized in historical accounts, though interpretations of the dissolution’s meaning and legitimacy remain contested across Lacanian and non-Lacanian communities.

Composition, publication, and textual status

Seminar vs. “Dissolution” as a discrete text

In Lacanian bibliographies, “Dissolution” designates both:

• the late seminar year commonly numbered XXVII (1979–1980), and
• the short text/letter/act titled “Dissolution” addressed to the School and published in collections of Lacan’s later writings.

This dual usage can create confusion for readers, since the seminar (as an oral teaching sequence) and the “Dissolution” text (as an institutional act) are not identical genres. Scholarship therefore often treats the “Dissolution” act as an event that frames how Seminar XXVII is read—especially regarding Lacan’s critique of group effects and his emphasis on the act and on the Real.

Editorial variance and citation practice

As with other late seminars, Seminar XXVII is frequently consulted through transcripts and working editions. Differences in session dating, headings, and pagination can affect quotations and the reconstruction of conceptual sequences. For this reason, academic practice commonly cites stable book-editions when available and otherwise specifies the transcript source and session date where possible.

Conceptual framework and methodology

Dissolution as act: performativity and institutional logic

A central methodological premise of late Lacan is that psychoanalysis cannot be reduced to a body of doctrine; it is defined by acts (interpretation, cut, scansion, nomination) that produce effects in the Real. In this sense, “dissolution” is treated not only as a topic but as a performative operation: an act that changes the symbolic status of an institution and reorganizes the coordinates of identification and authority.

This approach resonates with Lacan’s broader distinction between knowledge (savoir) and truth effects, and with his critique of institutions that claim to “guarantee” psychoanalysis by bureaucratic certification. The “Dissolution” act is often read as forcing a confrontation with the question of authorization—echoing Lacan’s dictum that “the analyst authorizes himself …” (a formulation central to Lacanian debates on training and legitimacy, though interpreted differently across schools).

Dissolution and the late topological clinic

The late Lacan’s topological and Borromean teaching frames subjectivity as a matter of knotting the registers: Imaginary, Symbolic, and Real. The Borromean knot—three rings linked such that cutting one unlinks the other two—provides a model for how consistency depends on linkage rather than on substance.

In this perspective, “dissolution” has a formal correlate: unlinking, slipping, or cutting can produce a collapse of consistency or, conversely, a re-knotting through a supplementary tie such as the sinthome. Seminar XXVII is thus frequently read as articulating an analogy between:

• institutional dissolution (breaking a collective bond that has become rigidified), and
• clinical dissolution (undoing a certain bond to knowledge and to the Other at the end of analysis).

The subject supposed to know and the end of transference

Lacan’s concept of the subject supposed to know names the structural support of transference: the analysand supposes that the analyst knows something about the analysand’s truth, and this supposition drives speech, interpretation, and repetition. Lacanian accounts of the end of analysis frequently involve a transformation of this supposition: the analyst is “de-supposed,” and the analysand’s relation to knowledge and jouissance is altered.

In the horizon of “dissolution,” the end of analysis can be described as a dissolution of certain transferential fictions—without implying that transference simply vanishes. Instead, the claim is that the subject’s reliance on the Other’s knowledge is reconfigured, and that the symptom is approached as a mode of jouissance and knotting rather than as a message awaiting decoding.

Key themes, concepts, and case studies

Dissolution of the School: group effects, identification, and authority

One recurring theme in readings of Seminar XXVII is Lacan’s critique of group effects in psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic groups are prone to:

• imaginary rivalries (master/disciple dynamics),
• idealization of doctrine,
• bureaucratic gatekeeping,
• and the substitution of belonging for analytic work.

The “Dissolution” act is often understood as a radical response to these tendencies: by dissolving the EFP, Lacan interrupts the possibility that the School functions as a guarantee of truth through institutional continuity. In this interpretation, dissolution aims to prevent a closure of transmission into orthodoxy and to maintain the analytic requirement that truth is produced in speech and in the act, not preserved by hierarchy.

The Pass and the question of “authorization”

The Pass is a central institutional invention of Lacan’s School and remains inseparable from the question of dissolution. In Lacanian discourse, the Pass is meant to formalize the end of analysis and the production of the analyst by testimony rather than by credential. Its controversies—over selection, authority, and the meaning of testimony—are frequently cited as a fault line within the EFP.

Seminar XXVII’s emphasis on dissolution has therefore been read as re-opening the question of the Pass under conditions where the School itself can no longer serve as stable container. In later Lacanian institutions, variants of Pass procedures have continued to function as a key mechanism for transmission and for internal debate about what counts as an “end of analysis.”

Cartels and the “plus-one” as anti-hierarchical form

Lacan’s cartel—a small working group with a “plus-one”—was designed to counteract mass group psychology and master-disciple structures. In the context of dissolution, the cartel is often invoked as a minimal, anti-hierarchical form intended to preserve work and invention without erecting a doctrinal authority.

While Seminar XXVII is not reducible to institutional engineering, its reception often treats the tension between cartel logic and large-school dynamics as emblematic of the broader question: how to sustain a collective relation to psychoanalysis without producing an institutional Other that “knows.”

Nomination, title, and the Real of the symptom

Late Lacan places increasing emphasis on nomination and on the pragmatic function of naming—both clinically (how a symptom is localized and treated as a tie) and institutionally (how titles such as AE function). Naming is understood not merely as description but as an operation that can stabilize a relation to the Real.

In the wake of dissolution, titles and nominations become especially contentious: do they preserve transmission or reproduce hierarchy? Lacanian discussions frequently interpret Seminar XXVII as exposing this ambiguity and forcing renewed attention to the difference between symbolic nomination that supports work and imaginary nomination that supports prestige.

Clinical “dissolution”: concluding, separation, and savoir-y-faire

In clinical terms, “dissolution” can be aligned with Lacan’s late emphasis on a pragmatic “know-how” (savoir-y-faire) with the symptom. Rather than promising a complete cure or transparency, the end of analysis is often described as a shift in the subject’s relation to jouissance and repetition, enabling a different use of the symptom as sinthome.

This reorientation also echoes Lacan’s earlier “logical time” schema (the “moment of concluding”), now reframed through the Real and the knot: concluding is not simply finishing but changing the structure of what holds together.

Theoretical significance and clinical implications

Psychoanalysis and the impossibility of institutional guarantee

A major theoretical stake of “dissolution” is the question of whether psychoanalysis can be guaranteed by an institution. Lacan’s late position is frequently summarized as a refusal of guarantee: psychoanalysis is defined by an act, and institutions can at best provide conditions for work—not certify truth. Dissolution, in this sense, is interpreted as an attempt to prevent the substitution of institutional authority for analytic rigor.

This has implications for:

• the ethics of training,
• the status of supervision and control analysis,
• and the relationship between doctrine and clinical invention.

Technique: interpretation, scansion, and the end of the subject supposed to know

Clinical readings of Seminar XXVII link dissolution to a late technical orientation: interpretation aims less at producing meaning and more at producing effects (cuts, punctuations, equivocations) that touch jouissance and alter the subject’s knotting. The end of analysis is therefore not a final understanding but a transformation of the transferential economy—particularly the de-supposition of knowledge from the analyst.

Psychosis, stabilization, and post-dissolution developments

Although Seminar XXVII is primarily remembered for the institutional event, its topological and sinthomatic horizon has been used in later Lacanian clinical developments concerning stabilization—especially in discussions of psychosis and “ordinary psychosis,” where the symptom may function as a crucial tie rather than as a code to decipher. Subsequent Lacanian literature often treats the late seminars as foundational for this shift toward stabilization and knotting.

Reception and legacy

Contested interpretations of Lacan’s gesture

The dissolution of the EFP has generated divergent interpretations:

• As an ethical act to prevent institutional ossification and mastership;
• As a crisis-management decision responding to internal conflicts;
• As a problematic interruption that destabilized training and splintered Lacanian communities.

Biographical histories tend to emphasize both the symbolic force of Lacan’s act and the practical consequences for French psychoanalysis and the international Lacanian movement.

Institutional afterlives and the “Lacanian School” question

In the decades following dissolution, multiple schools and associations positioned themselves in relation to Lacan’s teaching and to the EFP legacy, often retaining or revising core devices such as the cartel and the Pass. Seminar XXVII remains a key reference point in debates about whether Lacanian psychoanalysis requires a School, what kind of School is compatible with analytic ethics, and how transmission can avoid devolving into doctrinal policing.

Academic and interdisciplinary impact

In the humanities and social theory, “Dissolution” has been cited as an emblem of late Lacan’s insistence on the Real and on the limits of mastery. It is also used as a case study in how intellectual movements confront their own institutionalization: the founder’s name can become a signifier of authority that both enables and impedes transmission. Seminar XXVII’s coupling of institutional critique and formalization (topology, knotting) has therefore attracted attention in discussions of institutions, authority, and the politics of knowledge.

See also

• Jacques Lacan
• Seminars of Jacques Lacan
• Seminar XXIII
• Seminar XXV
• Seminar XXVI
• Seminar XXVIII
• École freudienne de Paris
• Lacanian psychoanalysis
• Pass
• Analyst of the School
• Cartel
• Subject supposed to know
• Transference
• Analytic act
• End of analysis
• Borromean knot
• Sinthome
• Jouissance
• Real
• Scansion
• Nomination
• Return to Freud

Further reading

• Lacan, Jacques. “Dissolution” (1980), in Autres écrits. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001.
• Roudinesco, Élisabeth. Jacques Lacan. Columbia University Press, 1997.
• Rabaté, Jean-Michel (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. Cambridge University Press, 2003.

• Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1996.
• Fink, Bruce. The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance. Princeton University Press, 1995.
• Fink, Bruce. A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique. Harvard University Press, 1997.

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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 Index

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1979 - 1980	Dissolution Dissolution

Date	PDF	HTML	Title
13 novembre 1979	link	link
20 novembre 1979	link	link
11 décembre 1979	link	link
5 janvier 1980	link link	link	Lettre de dissolution
15 janvier 1980	link link	link	L'autre manque
11 mars 1980	link link		D'écolage
18 mars 1980	link link	link	Monsieur A
15 avril 1980	link link		Lumière
10 juin 1980	link link	link	Le malentendu
12-15 juillet 1980	link link	link	Le séminaire de Caracas