Seminar I

Jacques Lacan's Seminars : I · II · III · IV · V · VI · VII · VIII · IX · X · XI · XII · XIII · XIV · XV · XVI · XVII · XVIII · XIX · XX · XXI · XXII · XXIII · XXIV · XXV · XXVI · XXVII I. Freud's technical writings II. The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis III. The Psychoses IV. The Object Relations V. The Formations of the Unconscious VI. Desire and its Interpretation VII. The Ethics of Psychoanalysis VIII. Transference IX. Identification The Names of the Father X. Anxiety XI. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis XII. Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis XIII. The Object of Psychoanalysis XIV. The Logic of Fantasy XV. The Psychoanalytic Act XVI. From One Other to the Other XVII. The Reverse of Psychoanalysis XVIII. On a Discourse That Would Not Be Semblance XIX. Or Worse XX. Encore XXV. The Moment of Concluding XXVII. Dissolution Seminar II →

1953 - 1954

Seminar I

Les écrits techniques de Freud Freud's Papers on Technique

Seminar I

Years:	1953 - 1954
English Title	Freud's Papers on Technique

The first seminar, open to the public, takes place at Sainte-Anne Hospital just after the creation of the Société Française de Psychanalyse (S.F.P.). Lacan intervenes in the study of Freud by deploying his concepts of the three 'registers' of subjective experience: the imaginary, the symbolic and the real. The focal point of the discussion is the direction of the cure. Participants are allowed to make presentations, comments and objections. Through the case histories of Freud, Klein, Kris and Balint, the debate elucidates on the convergence of psychoanalysis, philosophy, theology, linguistics and game theory. In keeping with this heterogeneous approach, Lacan will further appeal to the science of optics to systematize his analyses of the specular relation. After his schema of the inverted bouquet the mirror stage becomes part of the topography of the Imaginary. As to the méconnaissance that characterizes the ego, it is associated with Verneinung (dénégation): "...everyday speech runs against failure of recognition, méconnaissance, which is the source of Verneinung." He closes the seminar pondering on the role of the analyst: "...if the subject commits himself to searching after truth as such, it is because he places himself in the dimension of ignorance, what analysts call readiness to the transference. The analyst's ignorance is also worthy of consideration. He doesn't have to guide the subject to knowledge, but onto the paths by which access to this knowledge is gained. Psychoanalysis is a dialectics, an art of conversation."

In a spoken intervention (Appendix), Jean Hyppolite comments on Freud's Verneinung and suggests its translation as dénégation instead of négation. The question here deals with how the return of the repressed operates. According to Freud, the repressed is intellectually accepted by the subject, since it is named, and at the same time is negated because the subject refuses to recognize it as his, refuses to recognize himself in it. Dénégation includes an assertion whose status is difficult to define. The frontier between neurosis and psychosis is drawn here, between repression, Verdrägung, and repudiation, Verwerfung, a term that Lacan will replace with 'withdrawal', and finally with "foreclosure" (forclusion), the former being related to neurosis, the latter to psychosis.

When answering Hyppolite in La Psychanalyse that same year, Lacan establishes two poles of analytic experience: the imaginary ego and the symbolic speech. Lacan gives precedence to the Symbolic over the Imaginary. The subject who must come to be is "the subject of the unconscious," where here it is to be understood that "the unconscious is the discourse of the Other." In analysis, he says, "the subject first talks about himself without talking to you, then he talks to you without talking about himself. When he is able to talk to you about himself, the analysis is over."

To this reshaping of the Imaginary by the Symbolic, he opposes the intersection of the Symbolic and the Real without mediation of the Imaginary, which would be the characteristic of psychosis.

Downloads

Author(s)	Title	Publisher	Year	Pages	Language	Size	Filetype	Downloads
Jacques Lacan	The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Freud's Papers on Technique (Seminar I) 9780393306972	W. W. Norton & Company	1991	312	English	4 Mb	djvu	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Jacques Lacan	The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: Freud's Papers on Technique (Seminar I)	W. W. Norton & Company	1991	312	English	23 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4
Jacques Lacan	Das Seminar von Jacques Lacan Buch 1 (1953-1954) Freuds technische Schriften 9783530502138, 3530502138	Walter	1978	364[363]	German	9 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Related

Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus	SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis & Culture Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud	State University of New York Press	1996	460 [445]	English	3 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, Maire Jaanus	SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis & Culture Reading Seminars I and II: Lacan’s Return to Freud	State University of New York Press	1996	445	English	7 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Richard Boothby	Death and Desire: Psychoanalytic Theory in Lacan's Return to Freud [1 ed.]	Routledge	1991	276	English	4 Mb	djvu	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Jacques Lacan	La cosa freudiana e altri scritti	Einaudi	1972	252	Italian	8 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Jacques Lacan	Das Seminar von Jacques Lacan Buch 1 (1953-1954) Freuds technische Schriften 9783530502138, 3530502138	Walter	1978	364[363]	German	9 Mb	pdf	1, 2, 3, 4, 5

French

Date PDF 18 novembre 1953 pdf 13 janvier 1954 pdf 20 janvier 1954 pdf 27 janvier 1954 pdf 3 février 1954 pdf 10 février 1954 pdf 17 février 1954 pdf 24 février 1954 pdf 10 mars 1954 pdf 17 mars 1954 pdf 24 mars 1954 pdf 31 mars 1954 pdf

7 avril 1954 pdf 5 mai 1954 pdf 12 mai 1954 pdf 19 mai 1954 pdf 26 mai 1954 pdf 2 juin 1954 pdf 9 juin 1954 pdf 16 juin 1954 pdf 23 juin 1954 pdf 30 juin 1954 pdf 7 juillet 1954 pdf

French versions of Lacan's Seminars Source: http://ecole-lacanienne.net

• File:Seminaire 01.pdf