Changes

[[Lacan]] [[identifies ]] four viables types of [[social ]] bond which regulate [[intersubjective]] relations. Articulations of the [[symbolic]] network, the [[Four Discourses]] get [[structure]]d throughout dramatic [[reflection]]: <i>[[plus-de-jouir]]</i> and <i>[[jouissance]]</i>; the [[master]] and the [[slave]]; [[Marx]]; [[knowledge]], [[truth]] and <i>[[jouissance]]</i>; the [[Father]] of <i>[[Totem and Taboo]]</i> who is all love - or all <i>jouissance</i> - and whose [[murder ]] generates the [[love]] of the [[Dead]] [[Father]], a [[father]] to whom [[Lacan]] opposes both the [[Father]] presiding over the first [[idealization ]] - the one deserving [[love]] - and the [[Father]] who enters the [[discourse of the Master]] and is thereby [[castrate]]d <i>ab initio</i>. For [[Lacan]] "the [[death]] of the [[father]] is the key to supreme <i>[[jouissance]]</i>, later [[identified ]] with the [[mother]] as [[aim]] of [[incest]]." [[Psychoanalysis]] "is not constructed on the proposition 'to [[sleep ]] with the mother' but on the death of the father as [[primal ]] <i>[[jouissance]]</i>." The [[real]] [[father]] is not the father of [[biological ]] [[reality]], be he who upholds "[[the Real ]] as [[impossible]]." From the [[Oedipus complex]] [[Lacan]] only saves the [[paternal metaphor]] and the [[Name-of-the-Father]] which "is positioned where [[knowledge]] [[acts ]] as [[truth]]. [[Psychoanalysis]] consolidates the [[law]]."<br>

The novelty in this [[seminar]] is the [[return ]] of the [[hysteric]], with <i>[[Dora]]</i> and <i>la Belle Bouche erre</i> - the Beautiful Mouth wanders - an allusion to the [[dream ]] of the beautiful butcher's wife [[analyzed ]] by [[Freud]] and carried on in "The direction of the [[treatment ]] and the principles of [[power]]" (<i>[[Écrits: A Selection]]</i>). [[Three ]] questions: the rapport between <i>[[jouissance]]</i> and the [[desire]] for unfulfilled desire; the [[hysteric]] who makes man - <i>fait l'[[homme]]</i> or the [[Master]] - she constructs him as "a man prompted by the desire to [[know]]"; a new conception of the [[cure ]] as a "hystericizaton of dicourse," which the [[analyst]] introduces at the [[structural ]] level. This leaves untouched [[hysteria ]] as attributed to woman - the only [[discourse]] where [[sexual difference]] comes openly into play. [[Castration]] is "the [[deprivation ]] of [[woman]]," insofar as "she would fulfill herself in the smallest [[signifier]]." [[Woman]] is [[absent]] from the field of the [[signifier]].<br>

S1 refers to "the marked circle of the field of the [[Other]]," it is the [[Master-Signifier]]. S2 is the "battery of [[signifiers]], already there" at the [[place ]] where "one wants to determine the status of a discourse as status of [[statement]]," that is knowledge - <i>[[savoir]]</i>. S1 comes into play in a signifying battery conforming the network of knowledge. <img src="lacansem1b1.gif" valign="bottom" height="11" width="12"> is the subject, marked by the unbroken line - <i>[[trait ]] [[unaire]]</i> - which represents it and is different from the [[living ]] [[individual ]] who is not the locus of this subject. Add the <i>[[objet ]] a</i>, the [[object]]-waste or the [[loss ]] of the object that ocurred when the originary division of the subject took place - the object that is the [[cause ]] of desire: the <i>plus-de-[[jouir]]</i>.</font><p>

It is the basic discourse from which the other three derive. The dominant [[position ]] is occupied by the [[master signifier]], S1, which represents the [[subject]], S, for all other signifiers: S2. In this signifying operation there is a [[surplus]]: <i>[[objet a]]</i>. All attempts at totalisation are doomed to fail. This [[discourse]] masks the [[division]] of the [[subject]], it illustrates the [[structure]] of the [[dialectic]] of the [[master]] and the [[slave]]. The master, S1, is the [[agent ]] who puts the slave, S2, to [[work]]: the result is a surplus, <i>objet a</i>, that the [[master]] struggles to appropriate.

It is caused by a anticlockwise quarter turn of the previous discourse. The dominant position is occupied by knowledge - <i>savoir</i>. An attempt to [[mastery ]] can be traced behind the endeavors to impart neutral knowledge: domination of the other to whom knowledge is transmitted. This [[hegemony ]] is [[visible ]] in [[modernity ]] with [[science]].

[[Discourse of the Hysteric]]:

It is effected by a clockwise quarter turn of the discourse of the master. It is not simply "that which is uttered by the hysteric," but a certain kind of articulation in which any subject may be inscribed. The [[divided ]] subject, S, the [[symptom]], is in the pole position. This discourse points toward knowledge. "The cure involves the structural introduction of the discourse of the hysteric by way of artificial [[conditions]]": the analyst hystericizes the [[analysand]]'s discourse.

[[Discourse of the Analyst]]:

It is produced by a quarter turn of the discourse of the hysteric in the same way as Freud develops psychoanalysis by giving an interpretative turn to the discourse of his [[hysterical ]] [[patients]]. The position of the agent - the analyst - is occipied by <i>objet a</i>: the analyst becomes the cause of the analysand's desire. This discourse [[being ]] the reverse of the discourse of the master, does it make psychoanalysis an essentially subversive [[practice ]] which undermines attempts at domination and mastery?

In any [[case]], this [[algebra ]] is concerned with the positions which are fixed:

A the end of the seminar Lacan adds the opposition between '[[impossibility]]' and '[[impotence]]' - <i>impuissance</i>: "the impossible is the real where [[speech]], as <i>objet a</i>, functions like a carrion" and "impotence protects truth." He states in his new [[translation ]] of <i>Wo Es War, soll Ich werden</i>, work is for the analyst and "<i>plus-de-jouir</i> is for you": "Where <i>plus-de-jouir</i> was, the <i>plus-de-jouir</i> of the other, me, insofar as I utter the [[psychoanalytic ]] act, I must come."<br>

There is the story of the three Congolese, analyzed by Lacan after WWII: "Their [[unconscious ]] functioned according to the rules of the [[Oedipus ]] [[complex]], it was the unconscious that had been sold to [[them ]] at the same [[time ]] as the laws of colonization, an exotic [[form ]] of the discourse of the Master, a [[regression ]] before imperialist [[capitalism]]." Are the capitalistic or imperialistic [[discourses ]] mentioned only metamorphoses of the discourse of the Master?<br>As to the <i>envers</i> of psychoanalysis, sometimes it is the discourse of the Master when it functions as a foil. Sometimes it is unconscious discourse as the knowledge located where wrong and [[right ]] sides ([[analytic ]] discourse) cannot be separated, following the Moebius [[strip]]. "The <i>envers</i> is assonant with truth; one moves to the <i>envers</i>, but the <i>envers</i> does not explain any right side."

"[[Radiophonie]]" (<i>Autres écrits</i>) is an interview recorded while <i>L'envers...</i> is taking place. In it Lacan declares that if "[[language ]] is the condition of the unconscious, the unconscious is the condition of [[linguistics]]." Freud anticipates [[Saussure ]] and the Prague Circle when he sticks to the [[patient]]'s [[words]], [[jokes]], [[slips of the tongue]], and brings to light the importance of [[condensation ]] and [[displacement ]] in the production of [[dreams]]. The unconscious is the fact "that the subject is not the one who [[knows ]] what he says. Whoever articulates the unconscious says that it is either that or [[nothing]]." Linguistics has no hold on the unconscious since it leaves as a blank that which produces effects on the unconscious, the <i>objet a</i>, the focus of the analytic act - of any act. "Only the discourse that defines itself in [[terms ]] given by psychoanalysis manifests the subject as other, whereas science, by making the subject a master, conceals him, so the desire that gives way to him bars the subject for me without remedy." There is only one [[myth ]] in Lacan's discourse: the [[Freudian ]] Oedipus complex. "In psychoanalysis, as well as in the unconscious, man knows nothing of woman, and woman nothing of man. The [[phallus ]] epitomizes the point in myth where the [[sexual ]] becomes the [[passion ]] of the signifier." There is, however, no [[algebraic ]] [[formula ]] for the unconscious discourse: "...the unconscious is only the [[metaphorical ]] term designating the knowledge only sustained when presented as impossible, so that it can conform by being real - real discourse."

<b>Le séminaire, Livre XVII: L'envers de la [[psychanalyse]].</b><br>[[French]]: (texte établi par Jacques-[[Alain ]] [[Miller]]), [[Paris]]: Seuil, 1991.<br>[[English]]: unpublished.