Talk:The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis

MAP OF THE TEXT

Preface. I) Historical background has import for our concerns, II) just as the reexamination of the history of Freud's con- cepts has import for their use. Introduction. I) The power of the word is such that we turn away from it 1. and alter our tech~ique a. with undue emphasis on resistance. 2) Our "scientific" literature instead deals with: i) the function of fantasies in development, ii) libidinal object relations, c. tountertransference and training of the analyst. ix) But all three risk abandoning the foundation of the word. 3. Even Freud did not venture too far afield in his dis- covenes. 4) Formalism and miscognition have led to a deterio- ration of analytic discourse.

96 LACAN AND LANGUAGE II) The American group especially has obscured Freud's inspiration, 1) in its ahistorical bent for "communication" and behaviorism, 2) and in its emphasis on social adaptation, human relations, and human engineering. III) Freudian technique cannot be understood or correctly applied if we ignore the concepts on which it is based. \ 1. The concepts, in turn, take on full meaning when related to the field of language and the function of the word. IV) Empty speech and full speech in the psychoanalytic realization oj the subject. V) The empty word marks the initial period of analysis. 1) Psychoanalysis has one medium: the word. a. There is no word without a reply: i. silence is a reply; ii. so is the void within the analyst, (a) which he seeks to fill by analyzing behavior (b) and from which the subject seeks to seduce the other. 2) The mirage of introspective monologue is opposed to the labor of free association. i) This labor involves "working through," and meets with: ii) Frustration - not from the analyst's silence, but from the alienated ego. iii) Aggressivity - due not to frustrated desire, but to the slave's frustrated labor. (a) Hence the aggressive response to analysis of resistances, (b) and the danger of objectification by the analyst's focus on gestures. (i) But even empty silence bears witness to the word,

FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 97 (ii) and even the ending of a seSSlOn punctuates its discourse. n1. Regression - not as a real relation, but as an ego-activated fantasy relation. (a) Thus the analyst cannot be guided by supposedly "real contact" with the subject, (i) nor is it needed in supervision. (ii) Instead he filters the musical score of the subject's discourse. 3. The empty word is ego-focused. II) The full word 1) has the following characteristics: i) anamnesis versus analysis of the here and now, ii) intersubjectivity versus intrasubjectivity, iii) symbolic interpretation versus analysis of resistance. 2) Anamnesis and the "talking cure" are not a function of consciousness. i) Verbalization in hysteria and hypnosis relates the past to the present as necessities to come. ii) It is not a question of reality in recollection, but of truth, iii) as, for example, in Freud's treatment of the Wolf Man. iii) The subject's assumption of his history in dialogue is the ground of psychoanalysis. 3) The "talking cure" is intersubjective, i) and the intersubjective continuity of the discourse aims to restore continuity in the subject's motivations. 4) Discontinuities in discourse mark the place of the unconscious as transindividual. i) The unconscious participates in thought, b. whose truth is inscribed in: ii) monuments of the body qua hysterical symptoms,

98 LACAN AND LANGUAGE n. archival memories, Iii. characterological and semantic evolution, iv. family legends, v. distortions in the continuity of experience. c. It is recovered in secondary historization, ix) which reveals the subjective sense of instinctual stages ii. and not their analogical meaning. 5) Even Freud made the theory of instincts subordinate to the historization of the subject in the word. i) The subject is not reducible to subjective expenence, ii) for his unconscious is structured by a discourse that is other to him. II. Symbol and language as structure and limit oj the psychoanalytic field. I) Psychoanalytic experience has a narrower focus than does common experience. 1) Much of the patient's mode of experienci~g remains unknown to us, 2) which falsely leads us to seek "real contact" with patients. II) We return to Freud to rediscover the meaning of psychoanalytic experience as manifest particularly in: 1) The Interpretation oj Dreams. a. The dream is structured like a sentence, ix) which is elaborated in its rhetoric of syntactical displacements and semantic condensations, b. and is the expression of dialectical desire. 2) The Psychopathology oj Everyday Life. i) Every parapraxis is a successful discourse. ii) The symptom has the structure of language. iii) The apparent chance combination of numbers reflects this structure.

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"'3. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious.

a. In the witticism the spirit shows reality to be

FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 99 subordinated to the nonsensical. ii) The point of wit always strikes the listener unexpectedly, iii) implying an other that goes beyond the individual. iv) In neglecting the language of symbols, psychoanalysis has changed its object. III) The nature offundamental discourse: the law of man is the law of language, 1) originating in the exchange of gifts. i) Symbolic gifts signify a pact as signified, ii) because as gifts their functional utility is neutralized. iii) We see the origins of symbolic behavior in ani- mals, ix) but not in animal research that is ignorant of the nature of the sign. ( a) The sign consists of the relation of the signifier to the signified, (b) and has distinctiveness and effectiveness as an element of language only in relation to the whole ensemble. 2) The concept completes the symbol and makes language of it, i) freeing it from the here and now, ii) producing a word that is a presence made of v' absence. c. Through the word, absence names itself, i. as in Freud's example of the Fort! Da!, iv) giving birth to a particular language's universe of sense in which the universe of things is arranged. e. In this way the concept engenders the thing, ix) and the world of words creates the universe of things. 11) Speech and the human world itself are made possible by the symbol.

100 LACAN AND LANGUAGE IV) The law of exchange governs the system of family ties, 1) governing the exchange of women and gifts, i) according to an order which, like language, is imperative but unconscious in its structure. 2) The Oedipus complex marks the limits of awareness of our unconscious participation in the primordial law. i) This law, in regulating matrimonial alliances, superimposes the kingdom of culture on the kingdom of nature. 3) This law is the same as an order of language, i) making kinship nominations possible and weaving the yarn of lineage. 4) The figure of the law is identified with the father. i) The symbolic father, expressed in the "name of the father," must be distinguished from the imaginary and the real father. XIX) The law is also expressed in the Great Debt, guaranteeing the exchange of wives and goods. 6) This law is pervasive, precedes and follows man, and would be inexorable if desire did not introduce in terferences. V) The relation between the law of language and speech has negative and positive consequences. 1) Negatively, three paradoxes result: i) In madness speech no longer tries to make itself recognizable; ii) in delusions the subject is objectified in a language without dialectic, iii) so that he no longer speaks but is, rather, spoke,n. iv) In the symptoms, inhibitions, and anxiety of neuroses, the word is driven out of conscious discourse, , v) but finds support in organic stimuli or in images, so that the symptom becomes the signifier of a signified repressed from consciousness, (a) and thus participates in language (b) that includes the discourse of the other. lll. In deciphering this word, Freud revealed the primary language of symbols. 1V. Our exegesis resolves these hermetic elements by liberating the imprisoned meaning. iii) In the objectifications of discourse, the subject loses his meaning. iv) The subject is alienated in "scientific" civilization, forgetting his own existence and his death. 11) We meet this alienation when he talks to us about himself as ego. lll. We add to it when we talk of ego, superego, andid. ' 1V. The thickness of this language barrier, which is opposed to speech, is measured in tons of print, miles of record grooves, etc. 2) Positively, the symbolic character of creative subjectivity has, never been more manifest: i) in a revised conception of science as conjectural, b. with linguistics as a basic scientific model, ii) yielding discoveries in ethnography and anthropology , c. and in a semiotic reorganization of the sciences. ix) The symbolic function is a double movement within the subject in which action and knowledge alternate. 11) The opposition between the exact sciences and the conjectural sciences is erased, (a) for exactitude is distinguished from truth (b) and conjecture does not rule out rigor. lll. Even physics has a problematic relation to nature.

102 LACAN AND LANGUAGE FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 103 .. (a) Experimental science is not defined by the quantitative nature of its object, but by its mode of measuring it. (i) The clock, operating by gravity, was used to measure the acceleration due to gravity. IV. Mathematics can also be applied to intersubjective time, (a) providing psychoanalytic conjecture with ngor. v. History sets an example for us. vi. Linguistics can help psychoanalytic practice. vii. Rhetoric, grammar, and poetics should be added to the "liberal arts" curriculum of the analyst in training. III. The resonances of interpretation and the time of the subject in psychoanalytic technique. I) The resonances of interpretation. 1) Psychoanalysis must return to the word and language as its base, i) rather than to the principles of the analysis of resistances, ii) which lead to an ever greater miscognition of the subject, 11) and which principles Freud ignored in treating the Rat Man, (a) making instead a symbolic gift of the word. ii) We choose instead to resonate with the word of the subject, iii) so that analysis consists in sounding all the multiple keys of the musical score which the word constitutes in the registers of language. 2) To understand the effect of Freud's word, we turn to its principles, not its terms. "-.l a. These principles are the dialectic of self-conSCIOusness, ii) but require a decentering from consciousness of self. iii) Psychoanalysis reveals the unconscious as a universal structure disjunctive of the subject. 3) To free the word, we introduce the subject to the language of his desire, the primary language of v' symbols and symptoms. a. This language is both universal and particular. i. Freud deciphered it in our dreams; Ii. Jones defined its essential field in reference to the body, kinship, birth, life, death. b .. The symbol, though repressed, has its full effects by being heard; c. the analyst evokes its power by resonance. ix) The Hindu tradition teaches us that the word can make understood what it does not say. iv) Like prime numbers out of which all others are composed, symbols are the stuff of language. v) We restore the word's evocative power by using vmetaphor as a guide. vi) Therefore we must assimilate, as Freud did, literature, poetics, folklore, etc., 11) and we must do more than just attend to the "wording." 12) In its symbolizing function, the word transforms the subject addressed. a. We must distinguish symbol and signal. ix) The dance of bees is a signal, not a language, because of the fixed correlation of sign to reality, 11) whereas linguistic signs acquire value from their relations to each other. 111) In addition, the bee's message is never retransmitted, but remains fixed as a relay of the action. b. Language is intersubjective.v

104 LACAN AND LANGUAGE IX) It invests the person addressed with a new reality. X) The word always subjectively includes its own reply, (a) wherein what is unconscious becomes conscIOUS. HI. As language becomes just information, "redundancies" become apparent. (a) These "redundancies" are precisely what does duty as the resonance of the word. --•<IV. To be evocative rather than informative is the central function of language. (a) In the word, I seek the response of the other. (i) In calling the other person by whatever name, I intimate to him his subjective function. (b) In his reply to the subject, the analyst either recognizes or abolishes the subject as subject. (i) All spoken interventions have a structuring function. 5) Language is a subtle body: i) words can be trapped in corporeal images, b. and suffer physical wounds; --"c. the discourse as a whole can be eroticized; iv) the word can lose its status as symbol and become an imaginary or real object. 6) The advent of a true word and the subject's realization of his history remain the only goal of analysis. i) This is opposed to any objectifying orientation as seen in the aberrations of new tendencies in analysis. ii) Freud even takes liberties with facts in order to reach the subject's truth. iii) His treatment of the Rat Man gives abundant examples of this.

\ 105 FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 7) Responding to the analysand requires knowing where his ego is, i) that is, knowing through whom and for whom the patient poses his question. ii) The hysterical subject is identified with an external spectacle. ii. The obsessional masters an internal stage. ii) "Ego" must be distinguished from "I" if the subject's alienation is to be overcome. iii) This is possible only in giving up the idea that the subject's ego is identical with the presence speaking. VIII) This error is promoted by the psychoanalytic correlation of ego and reality in the topology of ego, id, and superego, (a) and leads to the subject's apprehending himself as an object. (b) In more and more refined splitting, he is expected to conform to the analyst's ego. (i) Such analysis of resistance leads to a negative transference, as in the case of Dora. 8) The present emphasis on analysis of resistance stems from the analyst's guilt about the power of the word. i) We deny responsibility for it by imputing magical thinking to the patient. ii) We achieve distance through condescension. iii) We fail to see the cunning of reason in both our scientific discourse and symbolic exchange. iv) In attending to the un-said in the gaps of discourse, we should not listen as if someone were knocking on the other side of a wall, v) for in attempting to translate nonlinguistic sounds we must look to the patient to confirm our understanding. 11) In illusion we are led to seek his reality be-

106 LACAN AND LANGUAGE yond the wall of language, Hi. just as he believes his truth is given to us in advance and thus he remains vulnerable to objectification at our hands, ( a) wherein the effects of the transference are constituted. 9) In distinguishing the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real, we see that there are reality factors in the analysis: i) in the transference there are real feelings responding to our person as real factor; ii) reality is encountered in both the analyst's interventions and his abstention; iii) in his punctuating reply to the subject's true word. iv) There is also a junction of the symbolic and the real in the pure negativity of the analyst's silence as well as in the function of time. II) The time oj the subject in psychoanalytic technique. 1) The duration of the analysis must remain indefinite. i) We cannot predict the subjeds "time for understanding." ii) To fix a date is to alienate the subject and act as if he can place his truth in us, iii) as occurred in Freud's treatment of the Wolf Man. 2) The duration of the session is often obsessionally fixed by the analyst, i) whereas as gatherer of the lasting word and witness of his sincerity, the analyst punctuates the subject's discourse in ending the session. ii) In manuscripts and symbolic writing, punctuation removes ambiguity and fixes the meamng. iii) A fixed hour lends itself to connivance in the obsessional subject, iv) who in his forced labor waits for the m,\ster's death,

FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 107 ii. and is alienated, living as he does in the fu. ture and identifying himself with the dead master. iii. His "working through," then, is a seduction of the analyst. iii) The use of short sessions breaks the discourse in order to give birth to speech. 3) Beyond the wall oflanguage lies the outer darkness of death. i) Freud's "death instinct" is rejected by those who share an erroneous view of the ego and of speech. ii) The ironic conjunction of "death" and "instinct" expresses the polar relation of life and death at the heart of life, iii) whose resonances must be approached in the poetics of the Freudian work. Co The death instinct expresses the limit of Heideggerean man as Being-unto-death. 4) The profound relationship uniting the notion of the death instinct to the problems of the word makes the notion of primordial masochism unnecessary. i) In the repetitive game of Fort.! Da.! we see speech develop as separation is faced. ii) In this moment of inchoative speech desire becomes human. iii) In mastering absence the verbal action becomes its own object to itself. iv) In the child's solitude his desire becomes the desire of an other. 5) As the symbol negates the object of desire, desire becomes eternalized. i) The tomb is the first symbol of man's presence. ii) Death is the intermediary between man and history. iii) Among animals the individual death passes into the species, while among men suicidal

108 LACAN AND LANGUAGE death as symbolic passes into history. iii) Man's freedom is inscribed within the borders of death as threat, self-sacrifice, and negation of the other as master. iv) It is from death that the subject's existence takes on its meaning. 6) The meaning of death shows absence to be the heart of speech. i) The circularity of the torus exemplifies the deathbounded dialectic of analysis, i. a dialectic that is not individualistic, ii. and has implications for the traihing of the analyst. b. Humanity is formed by the law of the word. ix) It is in the gift of the word that the effects of psychoanalysis reside. 11. All reality comes to man by this gift, Iii. whose domain is enough for our action, knowledge, and devotion. NOTES TO THE TEXT 30/237 Additional historical background to the "Discourse at Rome" is provided by Turkle (1975, pp. 336-337; 1978, pp. 97-118). Wilden (1968) also provides important background information and highlights the spirit of the "Discourse" (pp. xxiii-xxvi). In addition, the reader is directed to his 65 pages of notes to the text, some further reference to which will be made below. 35a/242 The "subject" in this case appears to refer to the analyst, whose alibi for loss of effectiveness is the patient's resistance. At times the "subject" can refer to either the patient or analyst and sometimes both at once. 37g/245 The "c factor" remains a conundrum for us (but see note 106b below).

FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 109 In failing to realize that his silence is a reply, the analyst experiences it as a void to be filled with speech - about behavior. His word is then rendered suspect since it is a reply only to the felt failure of his own silence in the face of (the English text misreads "in the fact of") his own echoing void. The analyst's move parallels the patient's lifelong attempt to overcome his own gap or dehiscence (now called Mance) by means of the narcissistic and imaginary constructs of his ego through which he strives for the other's recognition. The reference to "humbler needs" (besoins) would seem to be taken up later (p. 46a/254) under the rubric of "the individual psycho-physiological factors" which are excluded from the analytic relation, i.e., physical needs which place the primary emphasis on the "real" as opposed to the symbolic (verbal) contact between the patient and analyst. 42b/ As Lacan indicates in his footnote (1977, p. 107, n. 249-250 10/250, n. 1), these "theorists" include notre ami Michael Balint, who writes of "the analytical cure of ejaculatio praecox ... because the ego has been strengthened" (1938, p. 196). 43c1251 Since progress lies in "an ever-growing dispossession" of the ego as "his construct in the imaginary" (p. 42a/249), teaching the subject what he has been leads only to greater objectification. 43g/251 In his excellent note to this paragraph, Wilden (1968, pp. 10 1-1 02) brings together tessera as password, object of pottery used for recognition, and symbolon and also specifies the text from Mallarme. 45b/253 Lacan often compares discourse to a polyphonic musical score (e.g., 1977, p. 154d/503), suggesting multiple levels of ongoing signification. 46]/255 Aufhebung is the rich Hegelian term with a loose meaning of an "overcoming" or "negating" whereby what is overcome is integrated. 40d-e/ 248

110 LACAN AND LANGUAGE 48d/257 Wilden again provides a very helpful note here: Lacan's analysis of this sophism is concerned with the psychological and temporal process involved between three hypothetical prisoners of which the first to discover whether he is wearing a black or white patch on his back has been offered his freedom by the prison governor. The prisoners are not allowed to communicate directly. The governor has shown them three white patches and two black patches and has fixed a white patch on each man's back. Lacan analyzes the intersubjective process in which each man has to put himself in the place of the others and to gauge the correctness of his deductions through their actions in time, from the instant du regard to the moment de conclure. The first moment of the temps pour comprendre is a wait (which tells each man that no one can see two black patches), followed by a decision by each that he is white ('If I were black, one of the others would have already concluded that he is white, because nobody has yet started for the door.') Then they all set off towards the door and all hesitate in a retrospective moment of doubt. The fact that they all stop sets them going again. This hesitation will only be repeated twice (in this hypothetically ideal case), before all three leave the prison cell together [1968, pp. 105-106]. He refers to Lacan's paper in Ecrits (1966, pp. 197-213). 55c1264 As Wilden writes, " 'Une verite de La Palice' is a self-evio dent truth, a truism" (1968, p. 110). The identical note appears in Sheridan's translation (Lacan, 1977, p. 108). 55e/265 The now-classic phrase, "the unconscious of the subI

56b/265 56/266 58a/268 FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 111 ject is the discourse of the other," refers to the transindividual, universal structure of language as the domain in which gaps in conscious discourse are experienced as foreign by the individual subject; in addition, but not secondarily, it refers to the way desire (for the other and for recognition by the other) is signified through the operations of metaphor and metonymy, i.e., through unconscious condensation and displacement or linguistic substitution and combination. The third term is the "other." The Gospel text admits of several translations, including "What I have told you all along" (New English Bible New Testament), "Why do I talk to you at all" (Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version), and "What I have told you from the outset" (Jerusalem Bible). Lacan may have read the translation from the Vulgate, "I am the Beginning who speaks to you," now seen as grammatically impossible. See his later reference, "it was certainly the Word (verbe) that was in the beginning" (1977, p. 61d/271). The first broad division, "the syntactical displacements," group together linguistic mechanisms in which the deliberate alteration of word order appears to be the common element, e.g.: Ellipsis involves the omission of understood words. Pleonasm refers to a redundancy or fullness of language, as in "with my own eyes I saw ... " Hyperbaton is the inverting of word order, as in . "echoed the hills." Syllepsis uses one word to govern two while agreeing with only one in gender, case, or number, or uses one word in the same grammatical relation to two adjacent words, one metaphorical and one literal, as in "taunts more cutting than knives." Apposition sets a second word beside the first with

112 LACAN AND LANGUAGE the same referent and grammatical place (as in "the River Tiber") or a second phrase beside the first in a loose attribution (as in "to kill the prisoners - a barbarous act"). The second group, the "semantic condensations," appears to rely on the use of one word in place of another, e.g.: MetaPhor uses a word literally denoting one thing in place of another, often to suggest some sort of likeness between them. Catachresis involves the incorrect use of one word for another, as "demean" for "debase," or a forced or paradoxical usage, as in "blind mouths." Antonomasia substitutes an epithet, such as proper title for proper name, or vice versa, as in "Solomon" or "His Majesty." (The English text misprints "autonomasis.") Allegory describes one thing under the guise of another in a prolonged metaphor. Metonymy operates according to the principle of contiguity, designating an attribute of a thing or something closely related to it for the thing itself it suggests, as the effect for the cause, the container for the contained, the geographical name for the event or function. Synecdoche uses the part to designate the whole or the whole for the part, the species for the genus (or the genus for the species), or the material for the thing made, as in "thirty sail" for "thirty ships," "the smiling year" for "spring," "boards" for "stage," etc. (The above was drawn from Webster's New International Dictionary [1960] and Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary [1974].) ,

FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 113 It would be consistent to relate the first group to J akobson's axis of combination and Lacan's description of the "word-to-word connexion" while the second group illustrates the axis of substitution and Lacan's "one word for another." Lacan isn't consistent in this way, however, since the "word-to-word connexion" he associates with metonymy, which appears in the second group. There is further discussion of these figures of speech and Lacan's definitions in "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious" (1977, pp. 156-164, 169/505-516, 521). 58b/268 One way to read this might be that the dream's law comes d'autrui, from the place of the other, thus from a place other than Freud's own conscious processes. 59b/269 The French text is more intelligible here in saying that "the symptom resolves itself entirely in an analysis of language, because it [the symptom] is itself structured like a language, because it [the symptom] is language from which speech [la parole] must be set free" ("Ie symptome se resout tout entier dans une analyse de langage, parce qu'il est lui-meme structure comme un langage, qu'il est langage dont la parole doit etre delivree"). The symptom is structured or "knotted" by the nodal points (les noeuds) which are signifiers that function as coordinates for the network of associations. Lacan elsewhere (1977, p. 154/503) calls them points de capiton, upholstery buttons, which bind together from below the mass of associative material. Tracking the associations to these nodal points and resonating with the key words (switch-words) liberates the words, thus resolving the symptom. Ferenczi (1912) gives the example of a woman patient whose dream he interprets as expressing a desire for a better-educated husband, more beautiful clothes, etc:

114 LACAN AND LANGUAGE 60c-d/ 270 At this moment the patient's attention was deflected from the analysis by the sudden onset of toothache. She begged me to give her something to ease the pain, or at least to get her a glass of water. Instead of doing so, I explained to the patient that by the toothache she was perhaps only expressing in a metaphorical way the Hungarian saying "My tooth is aching for these good things." I said this not at all in a confident tone, nor had she any idea that I expected the pain to cease after the communication. Yet, quite spontaneously and very astonished, she declared that the toothache had suddenly ceased. [po 167]. In Lacanian terms we can read this as an instance of how a new signifier (toothache) is substituted for the original signifier (Fdjrd afogam, "My tooth aches for it") and thereby the symptom becomes structured as a metaphor. Ferenczi is able to suggest to the patient the importance of this substitution and by interpreting the symptom linguistically (i.e., as a metaphor) the symptom is relieved by the power of the spoken word itself (rather than by taking some other action). This is the first time in these essays that Lacan explicitly presents the tension between language (langage) and speech (la parole), a theme he dwells on later in this section (see 1977, p. 68/279). The Freudian texts are specified in the notes to the English translation (1977, pp. 108-109) and again they parallel Wilden's notes (1968, p. 117). The effort to reflect back on the originative action of the unconscious prompts the creation of a new verbal expression, as Lacan's example itself illustrates. The Argonauts were a group of 50 Greek heroes led by Jason. They sailed the Aegean and Black Seas (in the first long ship, the Argo) on their way to obtain the Golden Fleece and return it to Greece. The French 61d/271 61f1272 FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 115 , Danaen appears to be the generic term for Greeks and the reference would be to the Trojan horse. 63a/273 The reference is to C. V. Hudgins (1933). This is described as a "celebrated experiment" in Carmichael's Manual of Child Psychology (Mussen, 1970, p. 951). 65d/276 The play of the child is, of course, the Fort! Da! episode. Its relation to presence and absence and the birth of speech was discussed earlier by us (pp. 18-23) and is taken up again by Lacan (see below, 1977, p. 103d/318). 65f1276 One implication seems to be that language differentiates things just as the child's rudimentary phonemes enable him to differentiate from his mother. 66a/276 The law of symbolic exchange, in which the neutralization of the signifier and the law of language are revealed (see above, 1977, pp. 61-62/272), determines the symbolic equivalence of the gift of a woman and the gift of a thigh of an elephant. Wilden (1968, p. 126) notes that the proverb is the epigraph to LeviStrauss' Elementary Structures of KinshiP (1949b). A note to the English text does the same without reference to Wilden. This repetition occurs so frequently that no further alert will be given to the reader and discretionary use of Wilden's notes will continue. 68c1279 The salvific import of "being-for-death" is missing in Heidegger. 68d/279 The precise sense of les cycles du langage and of les ordres is unclear; perhaps Lacan means that language is diachronic and thus has cycles, and is calling attention to the symbolic, imaginary, and real orders - all related to the expression of desire. 6ge/280 Wilden's note on the role of illness (supplied by Hyppolite) makes reference to the Hegelian texts (1968, p. 130). 70d1280 The unified gestalt of the idealized ego-image hides the experience of fragmentation just as the pretensions

116 71c1282 71d/283 72]/284 73e-j/ 284-285 75d-e/ 287 76d/288 80a/292 80c-d/ 292 LACAN AND LANGUAGE of the belle ame cover its projection of internal disorder onto the world. The "sectors A, B, and C" may echo the "c factor" (1977, p. 37/245). The implication seems to be that the more the psychoanalyst demands "true" speech as opposed to empty talk after the manner of "the precautions against verbalism that are a theme of the discourse of the 'normal' man in our culture" (p. 71b/282), the more he appears to reinforce the thickness of the wall of language. This is clearly a logical snare, to be denoul)ced in the same way that Hegel, abstract idealist philosopher that he was, denounced "the philosophy of the cranium," i.e., phrenology, and Pascal spoke of the ironies of madness. The movement, of course, was and is structuralism. The reference is to the work of J akobson and Halle (1956). See our note (Wilden's actually) to p. 48d. The epistemological triangle he describes is unclear to us. Lacan sees Freud's corrective to Hegel in his discovery of the unconscious, which requires a decentering from ego-consciousness. (The ex-centric or decentered subject is a major theme in "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious" [1977, pp.165-166/516517].) The unconscious as discourse of the other provides the locus for the identity of the particular (in terms of the subject's desire as expressed in his own signifying chains of metaphor and metonymy) with the universal (in terms of the trans individual structure of language). Such an unconscious, defined earlier as "that part of the concrete discourse ... not at the disposal of the subject in re-establishing the continuity of his con-

81a/293 81b/293 81d/ 293-294 FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 117 scious discourse" (1977, p. 49/258) is disjunctive of the subject, prohibiting any description of him as individuum. It is typical of Lacan to arch broadly and obscurely across philosophical history from Plato to Kierkegaard. We can take a few tentative steps toward understanding by suggesting that the Platonic skopia, a vision of the whole as well as underlying pattern, provides a model for Lacan, but with the following corrective: whereas Plato's vision is grounded in the recollection of eternal essences and Kierkegaard's in the repetition anticipated in an eternal future, Lacan places himself in-between and thereby accents here the temporality and historicity of the subjec~ and of truth. The dialogue in Lewis Carroll is as follows: " ... there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents -" "Certainly," said Alice. "And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!" "I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't - till I tell you. I mean 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' " "But 'glory' doesn't mean a 'nice knock-down argument,' " Alice objected. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all" [1923, p. 246]. There are hints here of an individuating principle whereby the moment of differentiation from the mother

118 81e/294 82e/294 82h/295 84d/297 85b-ci 298 LACAN AND LANGUAGE is achieved when the infant's desire for her presence is articulated and embedded in universal discourse by means of its idiosyncratic rudimentary speech (in the Fort! Da! experience). What remains obscure is the relationship between the elementary phonemes and the symbolism of primary language. Jean Francois Champollion deciphered hieroglyphics in 1821 and thereby merited being called the founder of Egyptology. Wilden's note offers a definition of dhvani that stresses the word's power to convey a sense different from its primary or secondary meaning (1968, p. 142). This is an especially tricky paragraph. Lacan does not appear to be saying that symbols are the ultimate signifieds for all the words of a language, but rather that they are subjacent to (sous-jacent~ a) all the meaningunits of language, with a relationship to them closely analogous to (but not identical with) the relationship between prime numbers and composite integers. "A prime number is an integer p> 1 divisible only by 1 and p; the first few primes are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19. Integers that have other divisors are called composite; examples are 4,6,8,9, 10, 12, ... " (Harris and Levey, 1975, p. 1978). Composites, therefore, are the products of prime numbers. In a !,ense symbols, therefore, are the "stuff" of units of meaning, causing a kind of multiplying static by their presenc~. By using the thread of metaphor, with its substitute signifier tuning in to the secondary associative chains of the displaced signifier, we can search for their presence and thereby restore to the word its full evocative power by resonating with them. A more recent description of the waggle dance (not exactly Lacan's) can be found in Wilson (1975, pp. 177-178). What is La forme, La forme essentielLe which is at stake here? Judging by Lacan's examples, it would seem to 94e1309 95e/ 309-310 102c1317 102e/318 103a/318 FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 119 be the second-person singular and as such indicating the opening of a domain inclusive of the other in so radical a fashion that to address another in any way (not just with the solemnity of vows) is to invest him with a new reality, a new role, minimally the role of respondent. Buddhist references to love (passion, attachment), hate (aversion, aggression), and ignorance (delusion, confusion) are common; for example, the saviors "promote the virtues of the faithful, help to remove greed, hate, and delusion" (Conze, 1951, p. 152). The point may be that the analyst's abstention, when it is based on the principle that all that occurs in the work on the unconscious level is accessible as the discourse of the other (and thus he remains silent to let the other speak), combines the elements of both a real intervention and a symbolic reply. Wilden's useful note (1968, pp. 151-152) discusses the phrase's transferred sense in relation to the theory of dhvani or suggestion (see also note 82e above). The two principles governing all change, as formulated by Empedocles (of Acragas, now Agrigento, Sicily), are specified (in 103c) as love and strife. See Kirk and Raven (1957) for further information. Freud makes a lengthy comparison between the views of Empedocles and his own (1937, pp. 244-247). See Heidegger (1927, p. 250). Heidegger doesn't speak of a subject in this way, but rather of Dasein. What Heidegger means by Dasein is a specific existential-ontological structure. What Lacan means by subject is highly problematic. A preliminary effort to relate Lacan's notion of the subject to Heidegger's Dasein may be found in Richardson (1978-1979). Earlier Lacan spoke of "recollection" (1977, p. 48/256) and suggested a Heideggerean context for it

120 103d/318 103f/319 104b/319 104c1319 105a/320 105b/320 LACAN AND LANGUAGE (1977, p. 47/255); moreover, he repudiates a Nietzschean interpretation (1977, p. 112, n. 112/318). The Fort.! Da.! experience, discussed earlier, is Lacan's focus for the next six paragraphs. In mastering desire through language (i.e., by mastering the mother's presence and absence in the words repeated now for their own sake), the child's desire is fragmented, multiplied, squared (raised to a second power) as it becomes articulated through the endless signifying chain. Now present somehow in words (i.e., symbolically-the whole mystery of language) the object is "destroyed" in its reality: thus Lacan goes on to say that "the symbol manifests itself first of all as the murder of the thing" (p. 104c1319). In this experience of differentiation and distance from the mother, the child experiences his own separate, limited reality (against that background of the ultimate horizon of limit, death) and seeks to be recognized by her, i.e., desires to be the object of her desire (the dialectic of self-consciousness begins). For a Husserlian analysis of presence and absence in la'nguage, see Sokolowski (1978). The child here seems to be engaged in the Fort.! Da.! or peek-a-boo game with another. N ow trapped in the symbolic order, desire is never fulfilled but achieves a kind of eternalization in language (a familiar theme in poetry). An exact illustration is offered by the death of the patient Billy Bibbitt in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Kesey, 1962). Death is the limit, the boundary that de-fines man and the point from which he begins to be. To speak of "desire for death" in this Heideggerean context can only mean, as Lacan says three paragraphs later, that it is "in the full assumption of his being-for-death," that is, in authentically accepting his ownmost possi-

105c-d/ 320-321 106b/321 106j-i/ 322 FUNCTION AND FIELD OF SPEECH AND LANGUAGE 121 bilities, that he can affirm himself for others. Anything short of this, such as narcissistically identifying with the other or struggling to be the object of the other's desire is to be caught up in the imaginary structures of the ego. We take the phrase "mortal meaning" to suggest again that the "meaning" of the subject, de-fined as "mortal" (i.e., by death) through speech, has a "centre exterior to language" in the sense that its center, as individual, is other than the transindividual center of language itself. As for the topological allusions here, they anticipate a later period in the development of Lacan's thought and require for an understanding of them an exposition that is broader and more comprehensive than the present one. We defer a discussion of these issues, then, to a later day. Wilden's note (1968, p. 156) quotes Freud (1905a): "It is a rule of psychoanalytic technique that an internal connection which is still undisclosed will announce its presence by means of a contiguity - a temporal proximity - of associations; just as in writing, if 'a' and 'b' are put side by side, it means that the syllable 'ab' is to be formed out of them" (p. 39). The factors b for biology and c for culture may shed light on the previous two references (see 37 g, where "the c factor" belongs to culture, and 71c, where culture includes the sectors A, B, and C). Eliot's The Waste Land (1922) ends: Datta Dayadhvam Damyata Shantih Shantih Shantih In his notes to the poem, Eliot translates these as "Give, sympathize, control" and refers to the Brihadaranyaka-Upanishad, 5, 1 for the fable of the meaning of the thunder. Lacan also gives the same reference: "lisons-nous au premier Bd.hmana de la

122 LACAN AND LANGUAGE cinquieme lec;:on du Bhrad-aranyaka Upanishad." Wilden (1968), however, in his translation writes, "so we read in the second Brahmana of the fifth lesson" and in his English text Sheridan (1977) follows Wilden.