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The term <i>'[[automaton]]'</i> is introduced by [[Aristotle]] in the second book of ''[[Physics]]''.

''[[Automaton]]'' is usually rendered as ‘spontaneity’ in [[English ]] translations of [[Aristotle]]’s ''Physics''.

Both ‘spontaneous’ and ‘automatic’ indicate that something in the [[nature ]] of the [[event ]] itself triggered its occurrence, as in ‘spontaneous combustion’.

In Lacan’s [[discourse ]] ''[[automaton]]'' coincided with the [[insistence ]] of the [[network]] of [[signifier]]s and with [[Freud]]’s [[pleasure principle]].

Such a transformation can only take [[place ]] if a de-randomizing operator is capable of reducing the [[chance ]] element.

It is evident that this opens completely different perspectives on the [[subject ]] of [[determinism]]. On the [[whole]], Lacan is much more optimistic than Freud in this respect. 'It is always a question of [[The Subject|the subject ]] qua indeterminate,' and this has effects on the [[goal ]] and finality of the [[treatment]]. 37 But the innovation goes much further, as it also implies a new view on the tricky subject of [[causality]]. The novelty resides in the way Lacan puts the [[lack ]] at the centre of the -- indeed -- twofold [[stage]]. The denominations are provided by Aristotle, but their [[content ]] is new: automaton (α αύτόματον) versus tuchè (τ ύξη). 38

The automaton is the level that is the easiest to [[understand]]. It concerns the network or [[chain ]] of [[signifiers]], in which the 'pulsatile function of the [[unconscious]]' is at [[work]]. The [[barred ]] subject ($) pops up and [[disappears ]] under these signifiers -- 'the signifier represents a subject for [[another ]] signifier.' 39 In this, the subject is indeed determined, as Lacan had demonstrated [[time ]] and again with his [[theory ]] on the unconscious as [[being ]] [[structured ]] like a [[language]]. 40 The automatic [[character ]] of this determinism was masterfully demonstrated in his [[Seminar ]] on 'The Purloined [[Letter]],' showing how the chain of signifiers is indeed a chain. 41 This is the level of the law, at which [[science ]] aims, with its preponderant interest for the causa efficiens (efficient [[cause]]), and it may convince one of the omnipresence of determinism. 42 It took Freud until 1920, in Beyond the [[Pleasure ]] [[Principle]], to recognize the fallacy in this reasoning, and thus the [[hole ]] in the mechanistic [[universe]]. 43 The hole will prove to be a black one.

This brings us to the second level. The unwinding of the associative chain succeeds only to a certain point, something which Freud experienced time and again during his therapeutic work from the Studies on [[Hysteria ]] onwards. 44 The [[process ]] of [[remembering ]] succeeds only to a certain point where the chain stalls and shows an abyss, a gap. 45 This is what Freud termed the '[[primal ]] [[repressed]],' and what he also called the Nabel ([[navel]]) of the [[dream ]] and the Kern unseres Wesens (the core of our being). 46 It is at this point that the [[real ]] ex-sists, [[The Real|the real ]] in the [[sense ]] of what cannot be assimilated by the chain of signifiers. 47 Hence, the always missed [[encounter]], due to the lack of a signifier as meeting-point. This radical lack is conceptualised by Lacan with the [[idea ]] of tuchè and it is [[understood ]] in [[terms ]] of [[absence]], abyss and cut, where the law and regularity of the chain are failing. This is also the level of pure causality, where law and predictability fail. 'In short, there is cause only in something that doesn't work.' 48

Hence, we find ourselves again dealing with two levels. On the one hand, there is the chain of signifiers with the lack between [[them ]] ( Freud: the repressed). This is the level of the automaton, of the law and predictability, and thus of science. Underlying this chain, we find a more fundamental lack, concerning the real beyond any signifier ( Freud: the primal repressed). This is the level of the tuchè, of cause and unpredictability.

With this theory, Lacan solves the classical question [[about ]] the cause of the cause. The first cause [[lacks ]] any determination whatsoever. 49

The interaction between the two levels consists in the never ending attempt of the chain of signifiers to produce an answer to the real. This attempt fails and results in the exact opposite: the more signifiers produced, the further one moves away from this real. Therefore, in [[Seminar XX]], Lacan defines the real as 'what does not stop not [[writing ]] itself.' 50

What is this real all about? Lacan is quite clear on this point. The real beyond the signifier, functioning as cause, is [[drive]]-ridden, and that is why Lacan took the drive as his starting-point. With this aspect of the real, the meeting is always a failed one, because it contains no signifier. In the course of his teaching, Lacan enumerated the various manifestations of the real: the [[Other ]] of the [[Other, the ]] [[sexual ]] [[relationship]], [[Woman ]] (La [[femme]]), all of them summarized in the notation of the barred Other ∅. 51 In this respect, the subject is fundamentally undetermined, and that is why it has a possibility of [[choice]], beyond the determination of the automaton. This aspect of choice was already implicit in Freud's idea of Neurosenwahl (choice of [[neurosis]]) and it is made [[explicit ]] with Lacan's idea of la [[position ]] du [[sujet]]: the subject has to take a position. 52 Which position? A position vis-à-vis the lack of the Other, of the [[symbolic ]] [[order]]; a position vis-à-vis the [[desire ]] and the [[jouissance ]] of the Other. It is this element of choice that provides the subject with a possibility of [[change]], beyond the inescapable determination of the automaton. This finds an expression in Lacan's [[ideas ]] on the [[future ]] anterior: choices made now will determine the future of the subject, which therefore shows in itself a fundamental indeterminateness. 53 This provides us with the possibility of change, beyond the ever [[present ]] [[Freudian ]] determinism. In this respect, Lacan's elaboration of the goal and finality of [[psychoanalysis ]] will be different, as we will show in the last part of this chapter.

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