Talk:Seminar VI

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1959-1960 (491 pp.)-SEMINAIRE VII: L'ETHIQUE DE LA PSYCHANALYSE (SEMINAR VII: THE ETHICS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS)-Anonymoua veralon: 1981; Official version: 1986 Lacan's certainty that a mission needed to be acccmplished sustains this semi�nar and gives it an overall unity. He was responding to two pressures: to define in all their rigor the true ethical foundations of psychoanalysis; but, even more, to construct, thanks to the discoveries of psychoanalysis, an "ethics for our time," an ethics that would finally prove to be equal to the tragedy of modern man and to the "discontent in civilization" (Freud). The two ad�dresses on the same themes given in March 1960 at the Catholic University of Brussels confirm the messianic tone of his teaching. The truth of the hu�man condition is an unbearable horror: the irreparable calamity of being born, the indelible sin, the dereliction, the nightmare of the incomprehensible de�sire of the Father, the nightmare of the Thing of which one is the prey and that is the mortal "gap" [beance] of our being, etc. Such are the most basic and obvious facts. However, how many people refuse to see them! An un�compromising duty is therefore Lacan's: to confront sucb a truth and to an�nounce it to everybody, no matter what the cost might be, without flagging and without expecting any other reward than :that of not having failed in his most personal conviction. Until his death, he (always wanted to write the mes�sage of this seminar himself; however, the quasi-legacy remained unfinished. Even if the transcription is controversial, its reading remains necessary for anyone who wants to grasp the doctrinal principles of Lacanian theory and practice.' At the root of the ethics, one must locate desire, but desire marked by the indelible stamp of the fault (in the two senses of crime and lack).h Lacan rejects Hesnard's expression, "the morbid universe of sin" [/'univers morbide de lafaute], which is the title of one of his books. If analytic experience can reduce morbidity, there is no way it could obliterate [volati/iser] sin. Those confessors who are too quick to send their penitents to the doctor should remember this. Analysis's only promise is austere: it is "theentrance-in~ The official version of this seminar appeared in 1986, published by Seuil. h. To render the French faure, by fault, is only an approximate translation because, although both the original and the translation convey the idea of lack, the English faull also conveys the idea of a "failing," whereas in French fault is used in the sense of a misdeed, an offense, a sin. 172 DOSS I ER the-I" [/'entree-en-Je). "I must come to the place where the id was," where the patient discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the truth of his desire. One still has to know that this entrance is always missed. What, then, can the end of psychoanalysis be? It is "the purification of desire" that can be achieved "beyond fear and pity." Lacan makes three statements, often used by his disciples: one is only guilty of "having given in on one's desire"; "the hero is he who can be betrayed with impunity"; goods indeed 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 the desire to know. Are the examplary figures he chose enlightening? Freud remains, of course, the Master: he leads us toward Greek tradition. However, if Lacan lauded Oedipus, it is the Oedi�pus at Colonus who calls down curses before dying-and he associated him with Antigone, walled up alive, who has not given in at all. Both have re�jected the primum vivere (first, to live) in order to enter the "in-between-two�deaths" [entre-deux-morts] where they have gained their immortal greatness. However, Freud was situated here more in "the Judeo-Christian tradition," insofar as, with the primacy of the Name-of-the-Father, he would have picked up the torch of Moses's monotheism. Lacan even appealed to Jones (42) for having placed "{reud's notion of man's destiny under the patronage of the fathers of the Church." On the other hand, Lacan referred to Saint Paul, to Luther, and to the Cathars. These are the precursors he acknowledged for himself. Can we go further in this genealogy? Can we read in this discourse the more secret figure of Christ as the chosen figure, the figure of the perfect son and the most affiicted son? We have discussed this issue in our general presentation. In any case, since Hamlet (41), the analysis of the son's passion (subject) had become more radical. Who is the Father? Here he is the terrible Father; the monstrous 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"; worse, the Father of the law who, according to Saint Paul, leads to temptation: "For me, the very commandment [You 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 specifies, "I have put the Thing in the place of sin," denouncing the com�plicity between the Law and the Thing, "which is properly 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 words. It is the "outside signifier" and also the foreign and hostile "outside signified," a "mute reality" prior to primal repression itself that already puts in its place "the pure signifying web" without being able to hide it. It is the center of the unconscious but it is excluded; it the Real but always represented by an emptiness, the nonthing, the a-thing [l' a-chose], the nothing, a hole in the Real from which the Word-the Signifier-creates the world. It is the 172 DOSS I ER the-I" (/'entree-en-Je). "I must come to the place where the id was," where the patient discovers, in its absolute nakedness, the truth of his desire. One still has to know that this entrance is always missed. What, then, can the end of psychoanalysis be? It is "the purification of desire" that can be achieved "beyond fear and pity." Lacan makes three statements, often used by his disciples: one is only guilty of "having given in on one's desire"; "the hero is he who can be betrayed with impunity"; goods indeed 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 the desire to know. Are the examplary figures he chose enlightening? Freud remains, of course, the Master: he leads us toward Greek tradition. However, if Lacan lauded Oedipus, it is the Oedi�pus at Colonus who calls down curses before dying-and he associated him with Antigone, walled up alive, who has not given in at all. Both have re�jected the primum vivere (first, to live) in order to enter the "in-between-two�deaths" (entre-deux-morts] where they have gained their immortal greatness. However, Freud was situated here more in "the Judeo-Christian tradition," insofar as, with the primacy of the Name-of-the-Father, he would have picked up the torch of Moses's monotheism. Lacan even appealed to Jones (42) for having placed "freud's notion of man's destiny under the patronage of the fathers of the Church." On the other hand, Lacan referred to Saint Paul, to Luther, and to the Cathars. These are the precursors he acknowledged for himself. Can we go further in this genealogy? Can we read in this discourse the more secret figure of Christ as the chosen figure, the figure of the perfect son and the most affiicted son? We have discussed this issue in our general presentation. In any case, since Hamlet (41), the analysis of the son's passion (subject) had become more radical. Who is the Father? Here he is the terrible Father; the monstrous 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"; worse, the Father of the law who, according to Saint Paul, leads to temptation: "For me, the very commandment (You 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 specifies, "I have put the Thing in the place of sin." denouncing the com�plicity between the Law and the Thing, "which is properly 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 words. It is the "outside signifier" and also the foreign and hostile "outside signified," a "mute reality" prior to primal repression itself that already puts in its place "the pure signifying web" without being able to hide it. It is the center of the unconscious but it is excluded; it the Real but always represented by an emptiness, the nonthing, the a-thing (['a-chose], the nothing, a hole in the Real from which the Word-the Signifier-creates the world. It is the The Wolts 01 Jacques Lacan 173 locus of deadly jouissance sanctioned by the prohibition of incest. Of course, it is associated with the mother who represents it by her "manifest carnality," and with the woman who, idealized in courtly love, speaks the truth: ". am nothing but the emptiness which is in my cloaca." Thus, the idea that human sexuality is irremediably distorted already emerges here, foreshadowing the multiple developments of the '70s around the quasi-ritual expression, "There is no sexual relation." Of course, the woman, who is the Other, has to bear the burden of the curse-although the Thing is settled at the heart of all subjects who have to recognize it. Who am I? "You are the waste that falls in the world through the devil's anus," Luther roared. Lacan's thesis could be summarized with the cliche Ie ver est dans Ie fruit (literally, the worm is in the fruit, that is, the rot has already set in), but this formulation is obviously not as sparkling. Rather, let us say that salvation only holds on by a thread; the theme of "the exquisiteness [the exquisite character] of the son's love for the father" would be amplified in 1969 with the reading of Pascal's Pari (71). This father is ultimately a symbolic Father, that is, he is all the more present for being absent, a Father without a body or the glorious body of signifiers, a Father who can only be the object of an act of faith, for "there is no Other of the Other" to guarantee him. In this perspective, sublimation, especially ar�tistic sublimation, is the quest for the encounter with the Thing; the 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 exactly the Lacanian definition of psychosis. Therefore, Lacan expressed only sarcasm toward "doctor-love" that offers �the patient "the ideal of human love," "authenticity" (the end of lies), and "the ideal of nondependency." What he says is instructional for all: "the philosopher might find reasons there to modify the traditional position of be�donism" (whether it is a matter of the search for the sovereign good, for pleasure provided in its temperance, or for the utilitarian conception of goods); "the man capable of emotion" will learn there how "to restrain his demand for happiness"; "the man of duty" will learn bow to reconsider "the illusions of altruism" (including the Christians for wbom the precept "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" is the locus of their narcissistic loss); "the libertine" will be able to "recognize the Father's voice in the command�ments left intact by His death" (here is where the analyses of Sade, which we ] will discuss in Kant avec Sade (51), are situated); finally, "the spiritual" will be able to resituate the Thing around which the nostalgia of desire revolves. However, there is a problem; how are the objet a. the Thing, and later the ..... agalma in the seminar on transference (47) articulated, not to mention the fact that the phallus is not always clearly distinguished from them? We have spent some time on this seminar because it seems to enli~ten,' depth the Lacanian process of thinking: this text functions like a bass accom�panying the melodic variations throughout the years. If one pays attention to ."'lI;" I, 174 DOBBI ER it, one can hear it even in the most abstract commentaries on mathemes or in the statutory texts that structure the Ecole Freudienne.


1958-1959-SEMINAIRE VI: LE DESIR ET SON INTERPRETATION (SEMINAR VI: DESIRE AND ITS INTERPRETATION)-Summarlea1959-1960-0n Hamlet 1981-1983-ANONYMOUS VERSION 1981

Desire has to be placed at the heart of analytic theory and practice: the title does not indicate a mere juxtaposition of the two terms, but also ties them around the essential function of language. Desire, if the libido is its psychic energy, indicates man's dependency on the signifiers that constitute him. This is what the treatment, based on speech, must make clear beyond the patient's demand. Lacan even says that "desire is its own interpretation."

The best way to approach thi;seminai-may oe1oreadt~ven lessons on Hamlet published by J.-A. MiIler in Ornicar?: after Freud, JOJles, and Ella Sharpe, Lacan offered a new interpretation. Hamlet is the "tragedy of de�sire": this is why, Lacan says, "we are in the midSt of clinical experience." What is this "bird-catcher's net in which man's desire is articulated according to the coordinates of Freud, Oedipus, and castration"? The structural analy* of the play, which orders not only the characters' positions but also the suc�cession of events, should lead us to "situate the meaning and direction [Ie sens] of desire." The enigma is that of Hamlet's inability to act: he cannot kill Claudius (his father's kil~er, his mother's lover, and the usurper), he cannot love Ophelia, "he cannot want." When, at the end, he discovers his de�sire-by fighting with Laertes in the hole that has been dug out to bury Ophe�lia-this revelation is ineluctably linked to the death in which they all disappear. Fascinated by this tragedy, Lacan devoted to it his bes~ pages. They shed light on what is, for him, the masculine drama of desire and, more deeply, the anxiety of the "To be or not to be." What is, then, this "hopeless truth of modem man"?

On the Father's side, the disappointment is beyond remedy: "There ;s no Other of the Other." The dead King wanders in quest of an impossible re�demption. The Other, locus of truth, does not contain the signifier that could .. be the guarantor of such Truth. The phaIlus is unavailable in the Other (which is translated by the sign: - <1». This was an important turn in Lacanian thinking, which explains the desperate tone of the next seminar on ethics, L' Ethiqllc (43). What if the masculine subject turns toward his mother to love her woman's "dignity"? Then he comes up against what she manifests of her desire: "not desire, but a gluttony that is an engulfing." "The horror of femi�ninity" rules over the play and hits Ophelia, the virgin fiancee, in the face. For Lacan, this character is a "fascinating" figure because, he says, she em�bodies ~'the drama of the feminine object caught in the snare of masculine desire," but above all because she is at the same time the object and the touchstone o~ desire: objet a (part object) of desire and phallus (present in O�Phelia). The two terms are not clearly distinguished and, if Ophelia can only be discovered in mourning- "I loved Ophelia" -such mourning is both that of the object and of the phallus. Besides, against aphanisis as defined by Jones who tried to find in the fear of being deprived of one's desire a factor common to both sexes, Lacan maintains a radical asymmetry in the relation to the phallic signifier alone. Man "is not without having it" and woman "is without having it." The only object of desire-and at the same time its only signifier-seems indeed to be the phallus, which, alas, only appears "in flashes," during decisive "phallophanias" where death is at the rendez-vous.


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Introduction

Desire has to be placed at the heart of analytic theory and practice: the title of the seminar does not indicate a mere juxtaposition of the two terms, it ties them around the essential function of language. Desire, if the libido is its psychic energy, indicates the subject's dependency on the signifiers which constitute the structure proper. This is what the cure, based on speech, must make clear beyond the analysand's demand. Lacan even asserts that "desire is its own interpretation."

In approaching this seminar one might be aided by reading the seven lessons on Hamlet (1959) published by Jacques-Alain Miller in Ornicar? in 1983. After Freud Lacan offers a new interpretation. Hamlet is the tragedy of desire: this is why "we are in the midst of clinical experience." What is this "bird-catcher net in which man's desire is articulated according to the coordinates of Freud, Oedipus and castration?" The structural analysis of the play, which orders not only the characters' positions but also the succession of events, should lead us to "situate the meaning and direction (le sens) of desire." The enigma is that of Hamlet's inability to act: he cannot kill Claudius - his father's killer, his mother's lover, and the usurper) - he cannot love Ophelia, "he cannot want." When, at the end, he discovers his desire - by fighting Laertes in the hole that has been dug out to bury Ophelia - this revelation is ineluctably linked to the death in which they all disappear. This tragedy shed light on the masculine drama of desire and on the anxiety of "To be or not to be," hopeless truth of modern man.

On the Father's side, the disappointment is beyond remedy: "There is no Other of the Other." The dead King wanders in quest of an impossible redemption. The Other, the place of truth, does not contain the signifier that could be the guarantor of such truth. The phallus is unavailable in the Other, which is rendered by the sign: - F. This would explain the almost desperate tone in Lacan's next seminar, L'éthique.... What if the masculine subject turns toward his mother to praise her woman's dignity? Then he comes up against what she manifests of her desire: "not desire, but a gluttony that is engulfing." The horror of femininity rules over the play and hits Ophelia, the virgin fiancée, in the face. Her character is fascinating because it embodies "the drama of the feminine object caught in the snare of masculine desire," but above all because she is at the same time the object and the touchstone of desire: objet a (part object) of desire and phallus (present in Ophelia). The two terms are not quite distinguished and if Ophelia can only be discovered in mourning - "I loved Ophelia" - such mourning is both that of the object and that of the phallus. Against Jones, whose definition of aphanisis was an attempt to find in the fear of being deprived of one's desire a factor common to both sexes, Lacan maintains a radical asymmetry in the rapport to the phallic signifier. Man "is not without having it" and woman "is without having it." The only object of desire, and at the same time its only signifier, seems indeed to be the phallus, which only appears "in flashes," during decisive phallophanias where death is at the rendez-vous.

Slavoj Zizek notes that for Lacan the phallus is the pure signifier that stands for its own opposite, that it functions as the signifier of castration. The transition from pre-symbolic antagonism (the Real) to the symbolic order where signifiers are related to meaning takes place by way of this pure signifier, without signified. "In order for the field of meaning to emerge, for the series of signifiers to signify something, there must be a signifier that stands for nothing, a signifying element whose very presence stands for the absence of meaning, or rather for the absence tout court." This nothing is the subject itself, "the subject qua S." This Lacanian matheme designates the subject deprived of all content.


Bibliography

  • Le séminaire, Livre VI: Le désir et son interprétation, 1958-1959.


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