Changes

This was [[Lacan]]'s first invitation to talk at [[Sainte-Anne ]] since the 1963 breakup. The seven discussions that he led there reminded him first of all of his own beginnings as an intern at the Asiles, of his friends of the [[time]], such as Henri Ey, and of the [[state ]] of [[psychiatry ]] in the 30s. It was, therefore, to the interns in psychiatry that he wished to address his talks, even if they were only "aI'! overwhelming minority" in the room, compared to the audience coming from die [[seminar ]] held at the same time at the [[University ]] of [[Paris ]] at the Pantheon (86). The [[nature ]] of his address gave a more direct style to the talks; he [[recalled ]] with [[emotion ]] or [[humor ]] "these fifty-five years spent within these walls," and especially the cases of [[patients ]] that he presented there; he enjoyed talking as if in the staff waiting room, or comparing "the incomprehension of Lacan" •• the incomprehension of [[mathematics]]" (would both be "a symptoln"?). In any [[case]], his concern for simple formulations and a pedagogical progres-

sion was obvious, without the nuances amI the difficulties of the [[reflection ]] [[being ]] sacrificed. Everything began with a clarification concerning "the [[ignorance ]] linked to [[knowledge]]"; ignorance is a "[[true ]] [[passion]]" that is made an "established knowledge" or it is a "learned ignorance" that is the highest knowledge. Then, sarcasm attacked antipsychiatry (67) (which would be "psychiatrery" [psychiatrerie]) in which one is more attentive "to the liberation of the psy�chiatrist" than concerned with "solving the problem of [[psychoses]]." Sar�casm attacked the trend of "nonknowledge" borrowed from a misunderstood G. [[Bataille]]. And what [[about ]] [[psychoanalysis]]? It stood "on the perceptible boundary between [[truth ]] and knowledge," at least for him and for those who followed him .... Lacan then embarked on a recapitulation of the problems raised by [[Freud]]'s [[texts ]] and by his own texts since the [[thesis ]] on [[paranoia ]] (2). He went over [[them ]] as he went over his main [[concepts]], in an [[order ]] that was not [[chronological ]] but that was the order of his [[present ]] questioning, with re�definitions, responses to the critiques or misunderstandings, and rectifica�tions. Little by little, he led his [[discourse ]] toward the importance of [[logic ]] for the [[construction ]] of the true [[analytic ]] [[theory ]] and particularly the [[absence ]] of [[sexual ]] relation, concerning which he explained himself in a more precise and sometimes different way than in the previous texts. This is why these discus�sions should be read carefully. He called these talks a "teaching [[speech]]," "at the most elementary level." Are such [[terms ]] degrading? As far as I am con�cerned, I have found a [[number ]] of [[analyses ]] there that shed light on more "[[logical]]" [[seminars ]] and also on the seminar [[Encore ]] (84). Here is an example: "I am not saying that speech [[exists ]] because there is no sexual relation. This would be absurd. I am not saying either that there is no sexual relation because speech is there. But there is no sexual relation because speech functions on that level that [[analytic discourse ]] reveals to be specific to [[speaking ]] [[human ]] beings, that is, the importance, the preeminence of what makes sex a [[semblance]], the semblance of men and [[women]]." Lacan [[thought ]] that, with the [[objet ]] a, he had created the [[matheme ]] of psychoanalysis; he then wanted to create that of sexual [[jouissance ]] and of its articulation with castra�tion. He started with a ritornello, "Between man and [[love]], there is [[woman]]; between man and woman, there is a [[world]]; between man and the world, there is a wall," in order to conclude that "what is at stake in a serious love rela�tionship between a man and a woman is [[castration]]" and that "castration is the means of [[adaptation ]] to survival" (but whose?). The love [[letter ]] is a "/ettre d' a-/1Iur";' is this why he said that he was addressing himself to the walls of the chapel (in the two senses of the [[word ]] chapelle in [[French]]: chapel and clique) where he was holding these discussions? What are the four walls that x. The Ie lire d'[[amour]], love letter, becomes the Ie lire d'a-mur, where mur means wall in French.

lock us up? They are the four fundamental terms that formed the four dis�courses since L' Envers de la [[psychanalyse ]] (73). Here, he named them differ�ently: semblance, jouissance, truth, plus-de-[[jouir]]. and the rectangle was not closed. He almost managed to convince us that "only the matheme ap�proaches the knowledge of truth," by showing how, concerning sexual rela�tions, his logico-[[mathematical ]] [[formulas ]] were untranslatable into the logic of propositions; he subtly [[analyzed ]] the [[impossibility ]] of defining the relation be�tween the two [[sexes ]] in terms of [[negation]], conjunction, disjunction, and implication. In psychoanalysis, the [[phallic ]] function dominates both partners equally, but it does not make them different: the [[difference ]] has to be looked for somewhere else. On one side, there is the One [/'Un], on the [[other ]] there is nonexistence. What relation can be established between one and zero (cf. Pierce for whom it makes two)? However, the One in which the [[organ ]] only [[acts ]] as "a tool" around which "analytic [[experience ]] induces us to consider that everything that is uttered about sexual relation revolves," is rather "the at-least-One" I/' au�moins-Un), "the exception that confirms the rule" of everybody's castration. The [[figure ]] of the ancestral [[Father ]] emerges here, as the noncastrated One, who is also /' epater, the pater fami/ias who amazes and impresses the [[others]], his [[slaves]].Y As for woman, if "she is not-aU" and is nonuniversal, she "conceals a jouissance that does not depend on the One, a properly [[feminine ]] jouis�sance." The fact that her jouissance is [[dual ]] is a "landmark in the [[whole]]." Lacan said that when one talks about sex or love, one always talks about the other sex. Is that not what he was doing here, by wondering at such length about Woman? Behind all this, is there not [[another ]] question; what is a man (un [[homme]]) who is not the One of the Father or the Zero of woman? That is to say, what about "castration"? There was no answer. Is Ya d'/'Un (there's something of One) a [[Master]]-[[signifier]]? "This year, I have reached the point where I only have the [[choice ]] between that ... or worse." He was caught in undecidability between the "not-aU" (pas-tout] and the "not-one" (pas-une]! He admitted that he could not link the two "horizons of signifier" that he bracketed together: the [[maternal ]] ([[material]]) and the mathematical (the [[Real ]] written?). Let us stop here: "If there is no relation between the two, even in . the sexual act, each partner remains one." The embarrassment and the ob~s�sive [[fear ]] before [[femininity]], Woman, a woman, or women are characteristic of this period of [[Lacanian ]] [[thinking ]] ..