Seminar VIII

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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 Index

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1953 - 1954 Les écrits techniques de Freud Freud's Papers on Technique The first seminar, open to the public, takes place at Sainte-Anne Hospital just after the creation of the S.F.P (Société Française de Psychanalyse). Lacan cuts in the study of Freud by dint of his theory on 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 worth of consideration. He doesn't have to guide the subject to knowledge, but on to 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 him 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 by withdrawal, and finally by "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" and "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.

Date PDF DOC 18 novembre 1953 link link 13 janvier 1954 link link 20 janvier 1954 link link 27 janvier 1954 link link 3 février 1954 link link 10 février 1954 link link 17 février 1954 link link 24 février 1954 link link 10 mars 1954 link link 17 mars 1954 link link 24 mars 1954 link link 31 mars 1954 link link 7 avril 1954 link link 5 mai 1954 link link 12 mai 1954 link link 19 mai 1954 link link 26 mai 1954 link link 2 juin 1954 link link 9 juin 1954 link link 16 juin 1954 link link 23 juin 1954 link link 30 juin 1954 link link 7 juillet 1954 link link