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[[Analysis ]] tells us that the [[fetish ]] is a [[symbol]]. In this [[regard]], it is almost immediately set on the same footing as every [[other ]] [[neurotic ]] [[symptom]].<br><br>But if, with [[fetishism]], it is not a matter of a [[neurosis]], but of a [[perversion]], that does not say it all. It is thus that things are classified, nosographically [[speaking]], for apparently [[clinical ]] reasons which without any [[doubt ]] have a certain [[value]], but it is necessary to look rather closely to confirm it within the [[structure]], from the [[analytic ]] point of view. In [[truth]], many authors here show some [[hesitation]], and go to the point of putting fetishism at the [[limit ]] of perversions and [[neuroses]], precisely because of the electively [[symbolic ]] [[character ]] of the crucial fantasm.<br><br>

Beginning with the top of the structure, let us stop for a [[moment ]] at this intermediate [[position ]] which amounts to the fact that what is loved within the [[object ]] of [[love ]] is something which is beyond. This something is [[nothing ]] without doubt, but has this property of [[being ]] there [[symbolically]]. Because it is symbol, not only can it but it must be this nothing. What is it that may materialize for us, in the clearest way, this intermediate relation which makes it the [[case ]] that what is aimed at lies beyond what is made [[present]]? -- if not this, which is truly one of the most fundamental [[images ]] of the [[human ]] relation to the [[world]], the [[veil]], the curtain.<br><br>

The veil, the curtain in front of something, is again what lets us best picture the fundamental love [[situation]]. One may even say that with the [[presence ]] of the curtain what is beyond as [[lack ]] tends to be realized as [[image]]. [[Absence ]] is painted upon the veil. This is nothing other than the function of a curtain, whatever it may be. The curtain gets its value, its being and its consistency, from being clearly that upon which absence is projected and imagined. The curtain is, if one may say, the idol of absence. If the veil of Maya is the most common [[metaphor ]] in use to express the relation of man with everything which captivates him, that is not undoubtedly without [[reason]], but surely sustains the sentiment that man has a certain basic [[illusion ]] within all the relations woven from his [[desire]]. It is indeed that in which man incarnates, makes an idol of, his [[feeling ]] of this nothing which is beyond the object of love.</p><p><br>

You should keep this fundamental [[schema ]] in [[mind ]] if you [[wish ]] to correctly situate the elements which come into play in the institution of the fetish relation, at whatever moment we consider it. <a></a><a></a><br>

Here is the [[subject]], the object, and this beyond which is nothing, or again the symbol, or again the [[phallus ]] insofar as it is [[missing ]] for [[woman]]. But from the moment that the curtain is placed, upon it may be painted something which says -- the object is beyond. The object may then take the [[place ]] of the lack, and be also as such the support for love, but it is insofar as it is clearly not the point where desire attaches itself. In a certain way, desire appears here as metaphor of love, but what attaches to it, that is the object, appears, itself, insofar as [[illusory]], and insofar as valued as illusory.<br><br>

The famous <i>[[splitting]]</i> of the <i>ego</i> when it is a matter of the fetish, is explained to us by saying that the woman's [[castration ]] is at once affirmed and denied. The fetish being there, it is that she has clearly not lost the phallus, but by the same token, she may be made to lose it, which is to say [[castrated]]. The ambiguity of the relation with the fetish is constant, and without end manifested in the [[symptoms]]. This ambiguity which is confessed to be experienced, an illusion sustained and cherished as such, is at the same [[time ]] experienced within a fragile equilibrium which is at each instant at the mercy of the falling and raising of the curtain. It is this relation that is of concern in the relation of the [[fetishist ]] to his object. <br><br>

When we follow his [[text]], [[Freud ]] speaks of <i>[[Verleugnung]]</i> with respect to the fundamental position of [[denial ]] in the relation to the fetish. But he says as well that it is a matter of <i>making to remain standing, aufrecht zu halten, </i> to wit this [[complex ]] relation, as would be said of a piece of theatrical scenery. Freud's [[language]], so vivid and precise at once, includes [[terms ]] which here get all their value. <i>The [[horror ]] of castration, </i>he says, <i>is in itself posed within this creation of a [[substitute]], a monument.</i> The fetish is a <i>Denkmal.</i> The [[word ]] <i>trophy</i> is not explicitly used, but in truth it is there, doubling for <i>the [[sign ]] of triumph, das Zeichen des Triumphes.</i> Many [[times ]] authors, in an approach to the typical phenomenon of the fetish, will [[speak ]] of that through which the subject will herald his relation with sex. Freud here lets us take [[another ]] step.<br><br>Why does that happen? Why is it necessary? We will come back to it. As always one goes too fast. If one goes first to the why one enters immediately into a chaos and pandemonium of all the [[drives]], which crowd in there to explain what makes the subject be more or less far from the object and feel himself arrested or threatened by it, in [[conflict ]] with it. Let's stay for the moment with the structure.<br><br>The structure is here in the relation of the beyond and the veil. Upon the veil may be imaged, which is to say instituted as [[imaginary ]] [[capture ]] and place of [[desire, ]] the relation to a beyond, which is fundamental in every institution of [[the symbolic ]] relation. It is a matter here of the incursion upon [[the imaginary ]] plane of the ternary rhythm subject-objectbeyond, which is fundamental to the symbolic relation. In other [[words]], within the function of the veil it is a matter of the [[projection ]] of the intermediary position of the object.<br><br>

Before going further and approaching the [[demand ]] which creates the subject's [[need ]] for a veil, we will notice another slant beneath which there is also an institution of a symbolic relation within the imaginary.<br><br>

I spoke to you last time, with respect to the [[perverse ]] structure, of [[metonymy]], and also of allusion and of the connection between the lines, which are elevated forms of metonymy. In the clearest way, Freud says nothing else, and nearly uses the word <i>metonymy.</i> What constitutes the fetish, the symbolic element which fixes the fetish and projects it upon the veil, is borrowed specially from the historical [[dimension]]. It is the moment of the story when the image is arrested. <br><br>

I [[remember ]] having formerly employed the comparison with the [[film ]] which is suddenly frozen, just before the moment when what is sought for in the [[mother]], which is to say this phallus which she has and which she doesn't have, must be seen insofar as presence-absence, and absencepresence. The [[recollection ]] of the story is halted and suspended at the moment just prior. <br><br>

I speak of recollection of the story, for there is no other [[sense ]] to be given to the term [[screen]]-[[memory]], which is so fundamental within the [[freudian ]] [[phenomenology ]] and conceptualization. The [[screen-memory]], the <i>Deckerinnerung, </i>is not simply an instant, it is an interruption in the story, a moment when it is stopped and frozen, and when, by the same token, it indicates the pursuit of its movement beyond the veil. The screenmemory is tied back to the story by a [[whole ]] [[chain]], it is an arrest within this chain, and it is in this way that it is metonymical, for the story, by its [[nature]], continues. In being stopped there, the chain indicates its henceforth veiled continuation, its [[absent ]] sequel, that is the [[repression ]] of which it is a matter, as Freud clearly says. <br><br>

We are speaking of repression only insofar as there is a symbolic chain. If one may designate as the point of a repression a phenomenon which may [[pass ]] for imaginary, for the fetish is in a certain way an image, and projected image, it is that this image is only the limiting point between the story insofar as it is continued, and the moment beginning from which it is interrupted. It is the sign, the marker, of the point of repression.<br><br>

If you read Freud's text closely, you will see that this way of articulating things gives in the clearest way the [[full ]] weight to the expressions he uses.<br><br>

Once more, we see here distinguished the relation to the object of love and the relation of [[frustration ]] to the object. These are two different relations. It is by a metaphor that love is transferred to the desire which is attached to the object as illusory, while the [[constitution ]] of the object is not [[metaphorical]], but metonymical. It is a point within the chain of the story, there where the story is arrested. It is the sign that it is there that the beyond constituted by the subject begins. Why? Why is it there that the subject must constitute this beyond? Why is the veil more <p>precious to man than [[reality]]? Why does the [[order ]] of this illusory relation become an essential constituent, necessary, to his relation with the object? That is the question posed by fetishism.<br><br>

Before going further, you can already see all sorts of things be clarified beginning with, up to, and including the fact that Freud gives us as the first example of an analysis of fetishism this marvelous story of the pun. A man who had spent his early [[childhood ]] in England and who had come to make himself a fetishist in [[Germany]], always appeared to have a rather shiny nose, which he moreover noticed, <i>ein Glanz auf die Nase.</i> This meant nothing other than <i>a glance on the nose, </i>which nose was itself, certainly, a symbol. The [[german ]] expression only effected a transposition of the [[english ]] expression <i>a glance at the nose, </i>which came to him from his first years. You see here come into play and [[project ]] itself at a point on the veil, the [[narrative ]] chain, which may even contain a quite different phrase, and more still, a phrase in a forgotten language. <br><br>

For some time authors have been very embarrassed. On the one hand we can not lose contact with the [[idea ]] that the genesis of fetishism is essentially articulated with the [[castration complex]]. On the other hand, it is within [[preoedipal ]] relations, and nowhere else, that it appears most certain that the [[phallic ]] mother is the central element, the decisive spring. How are we to put these two things together?<br><br>

These authors do so more or less easily. Let us simply observe the ease, moreover the means, that the members of the english [[school ]] can find here thanks to Melanie [[Klein]]'s [[system]]. She [[structures ]] the first [[stages ]] of the [[oral ]] drives, particularly in their most [[aggressive ]] moment, by introducing there the presence of the paternal [[penis ]] through [[retroactive ]] projection, which is to say in making the [[Oedipus ]] complex retroactive within the first [[object relations ]] insofar as introjectible. One thus has a more easy access to a [[material ]] which will permit the [[interpretation ]] of what is at issue. Since I have never yet launched an exhaustive critique of the [[meaning ]] of [[Melanie Klein]]'s system, we will set aside for the moment what this or that [[author ]] may bring to this proposal. To keep to what we have been discussing, let's begin with the fundamental relation which is that of the [[real ]] [[child]], the symbolic mother, and her phallus which is for her imaginary.<br><br>

This is a schema to modify with care, for it is concentrated on a single plane, while it responds in fact to diverse planes and as it enters into the function of successive steps in the story. For a long time effectively, the child is not up to appropriating the relation of imaginary belonging which creates the deep [[division ]] from the mother in respect to him. We will attempt to shed light on this question this year. We are on the road to [[seeing ]] how and at what moment that comes into play for the child, how the entry of the child into the relation to the symbolic object happens, insofar as the phallus is the major currency of it. There are [[temporal]], [[chronological ]] questions here, of the order of succession, which we are trying to approach, as we lay out the story of [[psychoanalysis ]] from the angle of [[pathology]].<br><br>

What do observations show us when they are nearly stripped bare? They show us phenomena which are manifested in correlation with this [[singular ]] symptom which places the subject within an elective relation to a fetish, the fascinating object inscribed upon the veil, around which gravitates his [[erotic ]] [[life]]. I say <i>gravitates</i> for it is certain that the subject conserves a certain liberty of movement, which one sees within analysis when one does not make a simply clinical description. To make an observation, one sees very well the elements which I have already articulated for you today and which Binet had already signaled, for example this gripping point of the screen-memory, which fixes the arrest at the bottom of the mother's dress, even her corset, or again the essentially ambiguous relation of the subject to the fetish, a relation of illusion, experienced as such, and as such preferred, and also the particularly [[satisfying ]] function of an inert object, fully at the mercy of the subject for the manipulation of his erotic relations. All that is seen within an observation, but it takes analysis to discriminate a bit more closely what takes place each time that, for whatever reason, the recourse to the fetish flags, is extended, is used, or simply hides.<br><br>

Amorous [[behavior]], and more simply the subject's erotic relation, is summarized in a [[defense]]. You can grab hold of it by [[reading ]] in the <i>International Journal</i> the observations of Mrs. [[Sylvia ]] Payne, XX-2, Mr. Gillespie, Mrs. Greenacre, Mr. Dugmore Hunter, XXXV-3, or again works which appeared in the <i>[[Psycho]]-Analytic 'Study of the Child.</i> that was also noticed by Freud, and is articulated in our schema. Freud tells us that fetishism is a defense against [[homosexuality]], and Mr. Gilespie [[notes ]] that the margin between the two is very thin. Briefly, we find in the relations to the amorous object which organize this cycle with the fetishist an alternation of identifications. [[Identification ]] with the woman, confronted by the destructor penis, the [[imaginary phallus ]] of primordial experiences from the oral-[[anal ]] period, centered upon the [[aggressivity ]] of the [[sadistic ]] [[theory ]] of coitus, and in effect, many experiences brought to light by analysis demonstrate an observation of the [[primitive ]] [[scene ]] perceived as cruel, aggressive, violent, even murderous. Inversely, identification of the subject with the imaginary phallus, which makes him a pure object for the woman, that she may devour, and at the limit destroy.<br><br>

The child confronts this oscillation between the two poles of the primitive imaginary relation in a way that one may call brutal, before the institution of the relation within its [[oedipal ]] legality by the introduction of the [[father ]] as subject, center of order and legitimate possession. It is delivered to the bipolar oscillation between two [[irreconcilable ]] [[objects]], which in any case ends at a destructive result, even murderous. That is what one finds at the bottom of amorous relations each time that they are aroused by the subject's life, tend to be roughed out, and attempt to order themselves. Within a certain path of [[understanding ]] analysis which is clearly the modern path, and which on this point is not without recalling my own road, it is there that the [[analyst ]] intervenes to let the subject glimpse the alternation of his positions as well as their [[significance]]. One may say that, in a certain way, the analyst introduces the necessary symbolic distance so that the subject may perceive the sense of it.<br><br>

Observations here are extremely rich and fruitful when they show us for example the thousand forms which within the actuality of the precocious life of the subject the fundamental uncoupling may take which delivers the subject to the imaginary relation whether by the path of identification with the woman or whether with the place taken by the imaginary phallus, which is to say, in any case, within an insufficient [[symbolization ]] of the [[third ]] relation. Authors note very frequently the sometimes repeated absence of the father in the story of the subject, the deficiency, as one says, of the father as presence--he goes on a trip, to war, etc..<br>

Moreover, a certain type of [[subjective ]] position is noted, sometimes singularly reproduced in fantasms, that of a [[forced ]] immobilization. It is sometimes manifested by a binding or tying of the subject having really taken place, of which Sylvia Payne gives a very [[good ]] example. In following an extreme medical prescription, a child had been prevented from [[walking ]] up to the age of two, bonds effectively keeping him in his bed. This was not without some consequences. The fact that he lived thus strictly observed in his [[parents ]] bedroom put him in the exemplary position of being entirely delivered to a purely [[visual ]] relation, without any trace of muscular reaction coming from him. His relation to his parents was assumed within the kind of rage and anger which you can imagine. If such exemplary cases are rare, some authors have insisted on the fact that the [[phobia ]] of some mothers who keep their child at a distance almost as if being a source of infection is certainly not without importance in the prevalence given to the visual relation in the constitution of the primitive relation to the [[maternal ]] object. <br><br>

Much more instructive than some example of the corruption of the primary relation, is the pathological relation which presents itself as the [[inverse]], or the complement, of the [[libidinal ]] adherence to the fetish. Fetishism is effectively a [[class ]] which nosologically englobes all sorts of phenomena whose affinity or kinship with fetishism is indicated in some way by our intuition.<br><br>

That some subject of whom Mrs. Payne speaks should be attached to a raincoat appears of the same nature as if he were attached to shoes. We are not wrong in [[thinking ]] so. Structurally speaking however, the raincoat contains in itself the relations and indicates a position a little different from those which the shoe or the corset involve. These objects are themselves, directly, in the position of veil between the subject and the object. It is not the same for the raincoat, not other kinds of fetishes involving more or less enveloping clothing. It is necessary moreover to give its place to the special quality that rubber involves. This quality, very frequently encountered, does not fail to harbor some last mystery, that would be undoubtedly clarified psychologically by the sensory character which the special contact with rubber itself contains. Perhaps there is here something which may, more easily that with something else, be taken as the doubling of the skin, or again which involves special capacities for [[isolation]]. Whatever may be the very structure of relations such as they are delivered within certain centers where analytic observation is made, one sees that the raincoat plays there a [[role ]] which is not exactly the same as that of the veil. It is rather something behind which the subject is centered. He situates himself, not before the veil, but behind, which it to say in the place of the mother, adhering to a position of identification where the latter has need of being protected, here through envelopment. <br><br>

This is what gives us the transition between cases of fetishism and cases of transvestism. The envelopment is not of the order of the veil but of protection. It is a matter of a shield, by which the subject [[identified ]] with the [[feminine ]] personage envelops himself. <br><br>

Another typical relation, sometimes particularly exemplary, is the explosion of an [[exhibitionism ]] in certain truly reactional cases, indeed sometimes alternating with fetishism. This may always be observed when the subject is forced to come out of his labyrinth because of some coming into play of the real which places him in a position of unstable equilibrium where a crystallization or [[reversal ]] of his position is produced. This is very clearly illustrated by the schema of the freudian case of feminine homosexuality, where the introduction of the father as real element makes the terms be interchanged, in such a way that what was situated in the beyond, the symbolic father, comes to be caught within the imaginary relation, while the subject takes a demonstrative [[homosexual ]] position in relation to the father.<br><br>

We likewise have the very pretty case where one sees the subject, inasmuch as he has tried to gain access to a [[complete ]] relation within certain [[conditions ]] of artificial realization of forcing of the real, express by his <i>[[acting-out]], </i>which is to say on the imaginary plane, what was symbolically [[latent ]] in the situation. We have an example of it with the subject who attempts for the [[first time ]] a real relation with a woman, but who is engaged within that position of [[experience ]] where he goes there to show what he is capable of doing. He is more or less successful thanks to the [[help ]] of the woman, but in the hour which follows, and while nothing up to the present would have permitted one to anticipate the possibility of such symptoms in him, he delivers himself to a very singular and well calculated exhibition, which consists in exposing himself to a passing international train, with the result that no one can catch him with his hand in the bag. The subject was here forced to give expression to something which was implicit in his position. His exhibitionism is only the expression or the projection on the imaginary plane of something whose symbolic resonances he has not himself [[understood]], to wit that the act that he had just made was finally only that of attempting to demonstrate--to demonstrate that he was capable like another of having a normal relation.<br><br>

We find at several repetitions this sort of reactional exhibitionism within observations which are very close to fetishism, or even which are clearly fetishism. It is a matter, one feels it well, of delinquent [[acts ]] which are the equivalent of fetishism. Melitta Schmideberg presents us for example a man who had [[married ]] a woman very nearly twice as tall as him, veritable <i>ménage à la Dubout, </i>where he played the role of ubuesque [[victim]], of grievous sufferer. One fine day, this man, who did his best in the horrible situation, was advised that he was to become a father. He rushed into a [[public ]] garden and began to expose himself to a group of young girls.<br><br>

Mrs. Schmideberg, who here seems a little too anna-freudian, finds all kinds of analogies with the fact that the boy's father was already not a little victim of his wife, and that he had succeeded in freeing himself from the situation in having himself surprised with a maid one day, which, by means of jealous retribution had put his spouse a little at his mercy. That explains nothing. Mrs. Schmideberg misses the main [[thing]]. She believes she has [[analyzed ]] a perversion by having made a <i>short analysis.</i> There is no need to marvel at it, for it is not a matter of perversion at all, and she has not given an analysis at all. She [[left ]] out the fact that it is through an act of exhibition that the subject had manifested himself on this occasion. There is no other way of explaining this act than of referring oneself to this [[mechanism ]] of release by which what, within the real, comes there as ad<a></a><a></a>dition, symbolically inassimilable, tends to precipitate what is at the bottom of the symbolic relation, that is the phallus-child equivalence.<br><br>

Failing the capacity to assume in any way this [[paternity]], failing even to believe it, this brave man went to a good place to show the equivalent of the child, that is what remained to him then of the usage of his phallus.<br><br>