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Begun as an investigation of poetic images and language[[Surrealism]], their sources, their naturehowever, offered the young Lacan an alternative route to psychoanalysis and specific features, surrealism is a movement of ideas, of artistic creation the crucial link to his [[clinical]] [[practice]] in [[psychiatry]].  The Surrealists fully embraced [[psychoanalysis]] and action based explicitly on Freudian discoveries, which were used to develop an original theory of language and creativityduring his medical studies Lacan developed strong [[links]] with the movement. In later years it adopted Hegelian dialectics   [[Surrealism]] was a [[literary]] and Marxist-Leninist historical materialism. The "social artistic movement that emerged after the First [[World]] War in [[Paris]], its founding [[figure]] the writer and martial cataclysm" (poet [[André Breton, 1934]] (1896-1966) provoked a revolt by an entire generation.The movement [[Breton]] was founded in Paris in 1924 by French poet André Breton, familiar with the support Freud's work on dreams and developed a technique of a group of poets 'spontaneous' writing to give free expression to unconscious thoughts and painterswishes. The presence of Max Ernst Similarly, from Germany, Man Ray, from Surrealist painters such as [[Dali]] attempted to paint the United States'[[reality]]' of their [[dreams]], which they saw as more '[[real]]' than the prosaic reality of our everyday world.   In 1932, and Joan Mirówithin this context, a Catalan, gave [[Lacan]] completed his doctoral [[thesis]] on [[Paranoid Psychosis and Its Relations to the group its international flavorPersonality]]. Surrealism's goal was to "change life"  Around the same [[time]] he entered [[analysis]] with [[Rudolph Loewenstein]], the SPP's most famous [[training]] [[analyst]] (Arthur Rimbaud) by freeing humanity from the constraints of mental or social censorship as well as economic oppression: "Poetry a recognized [[psychoanalyst]] who is made by everyone. Not by one" (Lautréamontqualified to train [[other]] [[analysts]] within the [[Society]]).The project made little sense to Freud During this time, who refused his patronage (Freud to Lacan's links with the Surrealists developed further.  He was a friend of [[André Breton, 1933e [1932]; ] and [[Salvador Dali]], and was later to Zweig, July 20, 1938 become the painter [[Pablo Picasso]]'s (1960a [18731881-1939])1973)personal physician. Breton visited Freud in Vienna  He attended the first [[public]] readings of [[James Joyce]]'s (1882-1941) [[Ulysses]] in 1921 and corresponded with him was a well-known figure in 1932 about <i>The Interpretation the cafés and bookshops of Dreams</i>Paris's [[Left]] Bank.  In 1937 he asked him 1933 Dali was to contribute refer to a planned anthology (<i>Trajectoire du rêve</i>, 1938). Freud answered: "A collection Lacan's [[doctoral thesis]] in the first issue of dreams without their associations, without understanding the circumstances in which someone dreamed, doesn't mean anything Surrealist review [[Minotaure]] and Lacan himself was to make many contributions to me, this and I have a hard time understanding what it might mean to others" (Bretonother Surrealist publications. Lacan's doctoral thesis, 1938then, I).These associations were generally omitted by the surrealists when they narrated their dreams. They appear was written in André Breton's <i>The Communicating Vases</i> (1932)a largely anti-[[psychoanalytic]] [[culture]] and remained within established [[psychiatric]] [[categories]] and theories, but there at the author, denying same time it drew on the "dream navel" for alternative resources of the sake of MarxistSurrealist movement. ---Leninist materialism, felt he could use them to bring into focus all his dream thoughts. He claimed, contrary to Freud            Begun as an investigation of poetic [[images]] and [[language]], that the dream was a creatortheir sources, an instigator to actiontheir [[nature]], and capable specific features, surrealism is a movement of dialectically resolving the contradiction between desire [[ideas]], of artistic creation and reality. Surrealism ignored therapy.There are several periods [[action]] based explicitly on [[Freudian]] discoveries, which were used to the history develop an original [[theory]] of surrealismlanguage and [[creativity]]. Its "prehistory" dates from 1916 (Breton discovers Freud) to 1924In later years it adopted [[Hegelian]] dialectics and [[Marxist]]-Leninist historical [[materialism]]. This was the period of the review <i>Littérature</i> (1919The "[[social]] and martial cataclysm" (Breton, 1934)provoked a [[revolt]] by an entire generation. Together with The movement was founded in Paris in 1924 by [[French]] poet André Breton, a with the support of a group of young artists invented surrealist techniques intended to liberate the unconscious: automatic writing poets and drawingpainters. The [[presence]] of Max Ernst, hypnotic sleepfrom [[Germany]], hypnagogic visionsMan Ray, dream narratives, group creationfrom the [[United States]], oral and written gamesJoan Miró, collagea Catalan, rubbings, decals, experimental photography and theater. The publication of gave the first <i>Surrealist Manifesto</i> (Breton, 1924) ushered in group its international flavor. Surrealism's formative period. The group had a journal of its own, <i>La Révolution surréaliste</i>. [[goal]] was to "[[change]] [[life]]"We must be thankful for Freud's discoveries,(Arthur Rimbaud) by freeing humanity from the constraints of [[mental]] or social [[censorship]] as well as [[economic]] oppression: " wrote Breton, [[Poetry]] is made by everyone. Not by one"the imagination may be on the point of winning back its rights(Lautréamont)."In 1927 André BretonThe [[project]] made little [[sense]] to [[Freud]], Louis Aragonwho refused his patronage (Freud to Breton, 1933e [1932]; to Zweig, PaulÉluardJuly 20, and Benjamin Peret joined the Communist Party1938 (1960a [1873-1939])). Breton did not, however, abandon visited Freud: "in [[Vienna]] in 1921 and corresponded with him in 1932 [[about]] <i>The Surrealism that, as we have seen, has adopted Marxist beliefs does not intend [[Interpretation]] of Dreams</i>. In 1937 he asked him to contribute to treat lightly the Freudian critique of ideas" a planned anthology (Breton, 1930). Breton soon quit the Communist Party<i>Trajectoire du rêve</i>, which reproached him for his Freudianism1938). Surrealism embraced cinema (Luis Buñuel), the construction Freud answered: "A collection of objects ("Situation surréaliste de l'objetdreams without their [[associations]]," Bretonwithout [[understanding]] the circumstances in which someone dreamed, 1935)doesn't mean anything to me, and produced important works of art in every fieldI have a hard time understanding what it might mean to [[others]]" (Breton, 1938, I).But in 1930, in his These associations were generally omitted by the surrealists when they narrated their dreams. They appear in André Breton's <i>Second Manifesto of SurrealismThe [[Communicating]] Vases</i>(1932), Breton acknowledged but there the existence of a profound crisis. The third period of Surrealism was about to begin. A new review was introduced[[author]], <i>Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution</i>. In 1930 denying the review published two articles by "[[dream]] [[navel]]" for the Frenchsake of Marxist-American psychoanalyst Jean FroisWittmannLeninist materialism, in 1933 the Breton-Freud correspondence of 1932felt he could use [[them]] to bring into focus all his dream [[thoughts]]. He claimed, contrary to Freud, that the dream was a favorable critique creator, an instigator to action, and capable of Jacques Lacan's doctoral dissertation by René Crevel, [[dialectically]] resolving the [[contradiction]] between [[desire]] and, also by Crevel, an attack on an article in the <i>Revue française de psychanalyse</i>reality. Surrealism ignored [[therapy]]. The review also published There are several periods to the first texts by Salvador Dali, where he developed the idea of [[history]] of surrealism. Its "critical-paranoia,[[prehistory]]" dates from 1916 (Breton discovers Freud) to 1924. This was the use period of the interpretative processes of paranoia for creative ends, and the exploration of the unconscious.In 1933 <i>Minotaurereview <i>Littérature</i> appeared(1919). Although it was not the official voice Together with Breton, a group of young artists invented surrealist techniques intended to liberate the group, it was strongly influenced by it. The first issue included articles on the "contributions of psychoanalysis." Lacan [[unconscious]]: automatic [[writing]] and Dalí explained their conceptions of paranoia as an active psychic phenomenondrawing, hypnotic [[sleep]], hypnagogic visions, dream narratives, which Dalí compared with the passivity he associated with dreams and automatic writing. Several large-scale international exhibitions confirmed the growth of surrealism around the world, a phenomenon that accelerated during the Second World War following the exile of Breton, André Massongroup creation, [[oral]] and Max Ernst in the United Stateswritten [[games]], collage, rubbings, and Benjamin Péret in Mexicodecals, experimental [[photography]] and continued after the wartheater.Breton, the principal theorist The publication of the groupfirst <i>Surrealist Manifesto</i> (Breton, maintained 1924) ushered in Surrealism's formative period. The group had a close association with Freudian thought throughout his career. He was most interested in the logic of the unconsciousjournal of its own, <i>La Révolution surréaliste</i>. "We must be thankful for Freud's discoveries, in conflicts between the ego" wrote Breton, "the id, and [[imagination]] may be on the superego, relating them to the process point of artistic creationwinning back its rights."In 1927 André Breton, to Freudian ideas of sexualityLouis [[Aragon]], fantasyPaulÉluard, desireand [[Benjamin]] Peret joined the [[Communist]] Party. Breton did not, repressionhowever, the death instinctabandon Freud: "The Surrealism that, whose opposition to Eros he assumed to be dialectical (Bretonas we have seen, 1930), and especially has adopted Marxist beliefs does not intend to treat lightly the Freudian critique of ideas about representation and perception " (Breton, 19331930). Beginning with Breton soon quit the Communist Party, which reproached him for his concept Freudianism. Surrealism embraced [[cinema]] (Luis Buñuel), the [[construction]] of [[objects]] ("pure mental representation[[Situation]] surréaliste de l'[[objet]]," situated "beyond true perceptionBreton," he examined1935), and produced important works of art in the context of the <ievery field.But in 1930, in his <i>Essais de psychanalyseSecond Manifesto of Surrealism</i> (1927), how Breton acknowledged the transition from the unconscious to the perception-consciousness system takes place in the creative individual[[existence]] of a profound crisis. For Breton, as a reader The [[third]] period of FreudSurrealism was about to begin. A new review was introduced, it was at the preconscious level that language and <i>Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution</i>. In 1930 the review published two articles by the French-American psychoanalyst Jean FroisWittmann, in 1933 the traces Breton-Freud correspondence of acoustic and visual perceptions were united and charged with affect. But Breton went further: he saw in these preconscious elements the raw material of creation1932, obtained by the removal a favorable critique of repression with the help of automatic writing [[Jacques Lacan]]'s [[doctoral dissertation]] by René Crevel, and drawing. In creating a work of art, also by Crevel, an attack on an article in the artist would make <i>Revue française de [[psychanalyse]]</i>. The review also published the individual universal (Bretonfirst [[texts]] by Salvador Dali, 1935).In a letter to Stefan Zweigwhere he developed the [[idea]] of "critical-[[paranoia]], Freud, who had met Salvador Dalí in London, also associated " the fundamental elements use of the work of the artist with the preconsciousinterpretative [[processes]] of paranoia for creative ends, but he added a principle of economy: "From and the critical point exploration of view it could still be maintained that the notion of art defies expansion as long as unconscious.In 1933 <i>Minotaure</i> appeared. Although it was not the quantitative proportion [[official]] [[voice]] of unconscious material and preconscious treatment does not remain within definite limits" (July 20, 1938)the group, it was strongly influenced by it. The specific task of first issue included articles on the creative individual, the result "contributions of his psychoanalysis."initiative" (Breton) is to manipulate the relation between unconscious Lacan and preconscious elements, and objectify them in a work Dalí explained their conceptions of art. Repression would have to be removed using "surrealist techniques" (Breton). Freud's meeting paranoia as an [[active]] [[psychic]] phenomenon, which Dalí compared with Dalí seems to be the only time when Freud made an effort to understand the surrealist use of psychoanalysis [[passivity]] he associated with dreams and compare it with his own beliefsautomatic writing.There were other points Several large-scale international exhibitions confirmed the growth of contact between surrealism and psychoanalysis: Adrien Borel discussed his surrealist experiences (1925); Salvador Dalí and René Crevel interviewed Jacques Lacan; Crevelaround the world, a phenomenon that accelerated during the Second World War following the exile of Breton, Antonin ArtaudAndré Masson, and Robert Desnos were analyzed by René AllendyMax Ernst in the United States, which they later wrote about. André Embiricosand Benjamin Péret in [[Mexico]], a surrealist poet and theoretician as well as a psychoanalyst, founded, together with Marie Bonapartecontinued after the war.Breton, the Greek Psychoanalytic Society.Lacanian thought developed throughout principal theorist of the nineteen-sixtiesgroup, and, although it has maintained a number of affinities close [[association]] with surrealism, it has always remained distinctFreudian [[thought]] throughout his career. In 1971 He was most interested in the surrealist painter and philosopher René Passeron, with his research team at [[logic]] of the C.N.R.S.unconscious, founded<i>Études poïétiques</i>in conflicts between the ego, which analyzed the creative process id, and made use the [[superego]], relating them to the [[process]] of artistic creation, to Freudian theory. A number ideas of psychoanalysts (André Berge[[sexuality]], Jean-Bertrand Pontalis[[fantasy]], Guy Rosolato[[desire,]] [[repression]], the [[death]] [[instinct]], whose opposition to [[Eros]] he assumed to be [[dialectical]] (Breton, 1930), and especially to ideas about [[representation]] and [[perception]] (Breton, 1933) . Beginning with his [[concept]] of "pure mental representation," situated "beyond [[true]] perception," he examined, in the context of the <i>Essais de psychanalyse</i> (1927), how the transition from the unconscious to the perception-[[consciousness]] [[system]] takes [[place]] in the creative [[individual]]. For Breton, as a reader of Freud, it was at the [[preconscious]] level that language and the traces of acoustic and [[visual]] perceptions were interested in the surrealists. As Breton found in 1934, the scope of surrealism, through the upheaval of sensibility it entails, "is socially incalculable." As a movement it has frequently helped united and charged with [[affect]]. But Breton went further: he saw in these preconscious elements the raw [[material]] of creation, obtained by the removal of repression with the [[help]] of automatic writing and drawing. In creating a [[work]] of art, the [[artist]] would make the individual [[universal]] (Breton, 1935).In a [[letter]] to Stefan Zweig, Freud, who had met Salvador Dalí in [[London]], also associated the fundamental elements of the work of the artist with the preconscious, but he added a [[principle]] of [[economy]]: "From the critical point of view it could still be maintained that the [[notion]] of art defies expansion as long as the quantitative proportion of unconscious material and preconscious [[treatment]] does not remain within definite limits" (July 20, 1938). The specific task of the creative individual, the result of his "initiative" (Breton) is to manipulate the relation between unconscious and preconscious elements, and objectify them in a work of art. Repression would have to be removed using "surrealist techniques" (Breton). Freud's meeting with Dalí seems to be the only time when Freud made an effort to [[understand]] the surrealist use of psychoanalysis and compare it with his own beliefs.There were other points of contact between [[surrealism and psychoanalysis]]: Adrien Borel discussed his surrealist experiences (1925); Salvador Dalí and René Crevel interviewed Jacques Lacan; Crevel, Antonin Artaud, and Robert Desnos were [[analyzed]] by René Allendy, which they later wrote about. André Embiricos, a surrealist poet and theoretician as well as a psychoanalyst, founded, together with [[Marie Bonaparte]], the Greek Psychoanalytic Society.[[Lacanian]] thought developed throughout the nineteen-sixties, and, although it has a [[number]] of affinities with surrealism, it has always remained distinct. In 1971 the surrealist painter and [[philosopher]] René Passeron, with his research team at the C.N.R.S., founded<i>Études poïétiques</i>, which analyzed the creative process and made use of Freudian theory. A number of [[psychoanalysts]] (André Berge, Jean-Bertrand Pontalis, Guy Rosolato) were interested in the surrealists. As Breton found in 1934, the scope of surrealism, through the upheaval of sensibility it entails, "is socially incalculable." As a movement it has frequently helped the spread of psychoanalysis. ==more==The legacy of surrealism  I begin this chapter by explaining why the surrealists were so fascinated by Freud, and [[outline]] the ways in which they explored the workings of the unconscious through the use of various techniques. After suggesting some of Lacan's connections and convergences with the surrealists, I consider the influence of [[Caillois]] on Lacan. In conclusion I describe the [[case]] of [[Aimee]], an early [[patient]] of Lacan's who was also a [[cause]] celebre for the surrealists. Lacan's [[discourse]] is deeply marked by his [[encounter]] with surrealism. Lacan's work, a storehouse of images, allusions and references to surrealism, cannot be fully [[understood]] without a [[knowledge]] of the aims and aspirations of the movement. As Bice Benvenuto has remarked, surrealism's overturning of the place of [[conscious]] [[reason]], its questioning of the reality of the [[object]], its cultivation of the absurd, and its emphasis on the omnipotence of desire, seem to have provided Lacan with many of his basic attitudes. 1 The surrealist movement had great [[intellectual]] breadth and verve and it is difficult for us now fully to understand its original aura of excitement and revolt. Surrealism was a highly politicised, inflammatory movement which had a radical concept of [[freedom]].2 Its aim was [[nothing]] less than the liberation, in art and in life, of the resources of the unconscious [[mind]]. The surrealists' spiritual ancestors were de [[Sade]], Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Lautreamont. Deeply influenced by the lessons of [[Marx]] and Freud, surrealists, like Andre Breton, [[Paul]] Eluard, Louis Aragon and others, saw the new [[revolution]] occurring simultaneously on two fronts: the one 17 18 Jacques Lacan [[political]] and [[external]], the other exploring the deepest recesses of the [[human]] mind and unfolding its truths in the work of art. Why were the surrealists so interested in Freud? And why were these artists so interested in the exploration of the [[relationship]] between the conscious and the unconscious? The surrealists believed that the [[value]] of a work of art lay in the effort of the artist to encompass the [[whole]] psychophysical field of which the conscious mind represented only one small part. They thought of human experiences in the [[form]] of a pyramid, the narrow peak of which is the limited range of the conscious [[state]], and the broad base the [[full]], subterranean strata of the unconscious.3 Andre Breton, the [[theoretical]] [[leader]] of the movement, believed that the surrealists' [[search]] for an extra-empirical reality was within the traditions of Western thought, and he consistently demanded that the barriers which ignore the worlds of the [[primitive]], the [[child]] and the mad person be broken down. Surrealism inherited from Dada a hostility towards conventional definitions of art. For Breton, surrealism was not merely an artistic style; it was closer to [[being]] a [[transcendental]] world-view.4 Surrealism attempted to go beyond and above all forms of realism and to attain the realm of pure, unmediated thought and perception. This interest in the transcendental lies at the heart of the surrealists' subsequent enthusiasm for [[Hegel]], who was seen as a potential ally in transcending the contradictions of bourgeois [[order]].s The surrealists hoped for nothing less than the fusing of all the sources of human creativity - the dream, the unconscious, the conscious, the [[irrational]]- into a heightened reality that might alter the very shape of the world as well as men's and [[women]]'s understanding of that world. Freud published an essay in 1907 on Jensen's novel Gradiva.6 In subjecting the novel to the psychoanalytic method, Freud showed the economy of the unconscious, its relationship to conscious action, and the [[role]] played by dream in this nexus. This essay provided many of the themes of the surrealists: the [[mechanism]] of repression, the dynamism of the [[repressed]], the [[myth]] of [[love]] and the primacy of desire. One of Freud's conclusions was that both [[scientist]] and artist arrive ultimately at the same understanding of the unconscious; one proceeds through conscious observation of abnormal mental processes in others, the other directs his or her attention to his or her own unconscious and gives it artistic  The legacy of surrealism 19 expression. The surrealists were quick to seize on Freud's conclusion that [[science]] and art confirm rather than contradict one [[another]] in their explication of the unconscious. They found in Freud's essay an [[explicit]] justification for their own attempt to determine the tortuous relationship between artistic expression and the unconscious. The surrealists were concerned with the replacing of the [[image]] derived from nature by that drawn from an interior [[model]]. The work of art was to [[exist]] not as an aesthetic end, but only as a means to the exploration and expression of an inner psychic reality. Surrealist work of the 1920s and 1930s relied, whether implicitly or explicitly, on the discoveries of Freud. The surrealists, preoccupied with the sources of creativity, probed the [[working]] of the unconscious through many means. These included automatism, collage, [[dream interpretation]], exploration of myth and the use of the [[paranoiac]]-critical method. Automatism, the practice of automatic writing, was one of the first techniques the surrealists used. This process became for them a form of [[self]]-administered psychoanalysis. Automatic writing consisted of writing down as rapidly as possible, without revision or [[control]] by the conscious, everything that has passed through the mind when the writer had been able to detach her- or himself sufficiently from the world [[outside]]. The possibility of applying the techniques of automatic writing to painting was envisaged at this time. They also studied [[hypnosis]] and mediumship and made transcripts of what trance [[subjects]] said. Experiments of this kind produced a sort of intoxicated exhilaration. Writing, painting and sculpture became aspects of one single [[activity]]: that of calling empirical 'reality' into question. The surrealists often attempted to fuse the polarities of dream and reality, the unconscious and the conscious in a single image. They did this through the [[technique]] called collage (the sticking together of disparate elements to make a picture). Surrealists depended on the devices of [[condensation]], [[displacement]] and juxtaposition, to create a visual world analogous to but not reflecting any known perceptible reality. Max Ernst, for example, used old engravings and photo-mechanical reproductions as a means of violating conventional ideas about the [[rational]] [[structure]] of that same world. His figurative paintings, stripped of [[logical]] connections, remind one of the processes of the [[dream-work]]. 20 Jacques Lacan Although automatism and collage were the first 'Freudian' techniques used by the surrealists, Freud's major contribution to surrealism lay in his explication of the role of language in dream and dream interpretation. The [[formal]] structure of the dream - the condensation that results in a density of imagery, displacement of the senses of time and [[space]] and the importance of figurative language - is reconstituted in the works of the movement. The surrealists argued for a view of the relationship between dream and waking in which both states are perceived as fluid, their [[contents]] ceaselessly intermingled. They foresaw the ultimate [[achievement]] of dream study as the integration of the two states, in [[appearance]] so contradictory, of dream and reality into one sort of absolute reality which they called surreality. Like Freud, the surrealists were fascinated by mythological themes such as [[Oedipus]], [[Narcissus]] and others. In the area of surrealist painting, where there [[exists]] no single and [[identifiable]] surrealist 'style' and where the value of the work is determined almost exclusively on the basis of its [[content]], myth becomes one way of organising and synthesising surrealist beliefs within a recognisable set of [[symbols]].7 From their [[reading]] of Freud the surrealists realised that automatism, dream and myth all shared common characteristics: condensation, a displacement of the sense of time and space, a similar [[symbolism]]. Freud had viewed dreams as the residues of daily activity; myth as the collective heritage of centuries. For him the two modes of unconscious thought shared a symbolism that derived from their common origin in [[childhood]], whether individual or [[cultural]]. 8 Another form of Freudian experimentation was the intentional simulation of states of mental abnormality. The most flamboyant and provocative exploitation of this technique was by Salvador Dali. Dali became fascinated by Millet's 'Angelus' and was quick to recognise that the work's universal appeal could not be fully eXplained by its overt content, two peasants bowing their heads as the Angelus peels from a distant tower. His earlier reading of Freud led Dali to an examination of the [[latent]] [[sexual]] content of a work which he saw as 'the most [[erotic]] picture ever painted, a masterpiece of disguised sexual repression'.9 When a visitor to the Louvre drove a [[hole]] through the canvas Dali became even more convinced of the work's disquieting quality. It was Jacques Lacan, a frequent contributor to Minotaure with articles on the  The legacy of surrealism 21 relationship between paranoia and artistic creativity, who interviewed the vandal. Lacan's interest in such 'deviants' should not surprise us. He worked for a year in a [[clinic]] attached to the [[Prefecture de Police]], and his main task was to prepare psychiatric reports on criminals and vagrants. Unable satisfactorily to explain the enigmatic aspects of 'The Angelus', Dali set about examining the painting in the light of the paranoiac-critical method which he had developed earlier. It was during the 1930s that Dali developed his 'paranoiac-critical' method, a process by which he deliberately induced [[psychotic]] [[hallucinatory]] states in ,himself for eXploitation in his art and life. We [[know]] that this practice caught the attention of Lacan, who subsequently visited Dali, whereupon Dali further developed his theory. 10 Freud had used the [[psychoanalytical]] device of [[free association]] to trace the [[symbolic]] [[meaning]] of dream imagery to its source in the unconscious. Dali applied the same method to pictorial imagery, and particularly to that imagery which arises as a result of the visual [[hallucinations]] which Dali had exploited since childhood. By using the external world as the source and stimulus for the [[delusion]] and by rendering the hallucinatory results with the clarity and precision of Dutch seventeenth-century still-life, Dali hoped to destroy all [[belief]] in the idea of a [[stable]] external'reality without recourse to abstraction, which would violate the essentially figurative structure of mental images. Lacan's connection with the surrealists One of the main characteristics of surrealist work is the juxtaposition of images and objects far removed from one another. Breton borrowed Lautreamont's idea of beauty: 'Beautiful as the unexpected meeting, on a dissection table, of a sewing [[machine]] and an umbrella.' Breton's analysis of his dreams contributed to the imagery of the poetry. The [[experience]] of what the surrealists called 'convulsive beauty' (of something that shakes the [[subject]]'s selfpossession, bringing exultation through a kind of shock), is rather like Freud's notion of the [[uncanny]], where shock, mixed with the sudden appearance of fate, engulfs the subject. All this implies a definite break with a purely instrumental or 22 Jacques Lacan representational view of language. For surrealist poets like Aragon, Breton and Eluard, language is not a nomenclature or a [[transparent]] medium. Meaning is seen as being produced through the juxtaposition of images and the clash of associations rather than as deriving from some [[ideal]] correspondence between [[sign]] and [[referent]]. One surrealist painter, Rene Magritte, quite consciously began to explore a theory of meaning, in the late 1920s, that was surprisingly close to contemporary [[linguistic]] theory. Many of his paintings are an investigation of the relationship between the process of depiction and the object depicted. His painting, 'Use of [[Speech]]', which depicts a smoking pipe and is inscribed with the [[words]] 'Ceci n 'est pas une pipe' (This is not a pipe), is a familiar one. This painting is, in part, a comment on the non-correspondence between the visual image and the object it represents. I I An image of a pipe is not a pipe. In other words, the relationship between [[signifier]], [[signified]] and referent is shown to be [[arbitrary]]. I am mentioning all this because it will help us to understand not only Lacan's views on language but his own [[particular]] use of it. Lacan's style, with its puns and [[word]] games, is part of a highly [[self-conscious]] intellectual [[tradition]]. Just as Marcel Duchamp's 'ready-mades' challenged conventional assumptions about the nature of the art object, word play can be seen as a challenge to the notion that language is transparent. Many of Lacan's contemporaries such as Duchamp, Leiris, Queneau, were masters of glossological games. There are many references to surrealism in Lacan's [[Ecrits]].12 The frequency with which Lacan alludes to surrealism is all the more striking in that it is not a major reference for the post-war avant-garde. (Neither [[Barthes]], Sollers nor Kristeva has anything positive to say about it.) Of the forty or so French literary authors included in the [[name]] [[index]], more than half belonged to the surrealist group at one time or another, or were claimed by the surrealists as their forebears. Lacan has said that he felt a great personal connection with surrealist painting. In short, surrealism provides Lacan with a constant stock of allusions and illustrations, as when Magritte's window paintings are used in the 1962 [[seminar]] to illustrate the structure of [[phantasy]] (the idea that a phantasy is like a picture fitted into the opening of a window). 13 There is also an indirect reference to surrealism in Lacan's com-  The legacy of surrealism 23 ments on [[Hans]] [[Holbein]]'s painting '[[The Ambassadors]]' (1533), which is in the National Gallery, London. This work, one of the surrealists' favourite classical paintings, depicts two splendidly dressed men. In the foreground there is a strange, vaguely [[phallic]] object and, if one stands at a certain angle, one can see a skull appear, a continual reminder of the presence of death. This painting is a perfect example of the use of [[anamorphosis]] (a distorted image which will look normal if viewed from a certain angle or in a curved [[mirror]]) in painting.14 Lacan writes that 'Holbein makes [[visible]] for us something that is simply the subject nihilated', and suggests that Dali belongs to the same tradition as Holbein, and it is true that anamorphosis is an important feature of Dali's paintings. IS Besides being on close [[terms]] with Dali, the young Lacan associated with the group surrounding Breton. While Lacan was publishing clinical articles on [[neurology]] in medical journals he was also contributing to surrealist reviews; it was, in fact, in surrealist circles that his doctoral thesis on paranoia received its most enthusiastic welcome. It is an irony that psychoanalysis met with considerable and lasting [[resistance]] in French medical circles and that it was in the literary milieu that it found its first favourable reception. Some writers tried to absorb psychoanalysis into an established literary discourse by arguing that it could be fitted into a theory of literary [[introspection]]. For the surrealists, psychoanalysis had a very different function: it was a means with which to attack bourgeois values. They believed that the primary function of psychiatry was one of social repression. They agreed with the psychoanalytical view that the [[distinction]] between the normal and abnormal is not self-evident. The first issue of the surrealist journal Minotaure contains work by Dali and Lacan. It has been said that there are definite parallels between their [[thinking]] at this time (Dali met Lacan in 1933). Certain of Dali's [[double]] or multiple images might be illustrations of Lacan's views on the mirror [[phase]], and the [[narcissistic]] construction and function of the ego.16 (I will explain these ideas presently.) The ideas of Cail/ois Many important articles were published in Minotaure. We know that Lacan was greatly influenced by [[Roger Caillois]], a [[sociologist]] 24 Jacques Lacan and avant-garde writer, who published two long essays in the above journal, the first on the praying mantis, the second on the phenomenon of [[mimicry]]. He wrote about how some animals, such as the praying mantis, stick insects and others, camouflage themselves. At that time it was generally held that this mimeticism was [[good]] for the creature and for the [[species]]. Caillois denies this; he argues that mimeticism is not good and he gives several arguments to illustrate why it is not successful. He writes about how these [[creatures]] subject themselves to the structure of an image, and how the structure to which they have to conform does not actually foster their survival. Indeed, it has a catastrophic effect on them. The [[female]] mantis's sexual practices - in certain species, its consumption of its mate after or even during copulation - and its voracity made it the perfect [[symbol]] of the phallic [[mother]], fascinating, petrifying, [[castrating]]. It is not surprising that the image of the praying mantis is found everywhere in the surrealist work of the period.17 In his subsequent exploration of mimicry Caillois writes that the mantis comes stunningly to resemble a machine when, even decapitated, it can continue to function and thus to mime life: In the [[absence]] of all centres of representation and of voluntary action, it can walk, regain its [[balance]], have coitus, lay eggs, build a cocoon, and, what is most astonishing, in the face of [[danger]] can fall into a fake cadaverous immobility. I am expressing in this indir~t manner what language can scarcely picture, or reason assimilate, namely death. IS Most [[scientific]] explanations for [[animal]] mimicry relate it to adaptive [[behaviour]]. It is usually argued that the insect takes on the coloration, the shape, the patterning of its [[environment]] in order to [[fool]] either its predator or its prey. Caillois shows that the adaption hypothesis founders on two counts. First, the fusion of the insect with its environment can and often does work against survival, as when the animal is mistakenly eaten by its own kind or cannot be perceived by members of its species for purposes of mating. Second, this phenomenon, which functions exclusively in the realm of .~the visual, is largely irrelevant to predators' hunting habits, which e a matter of smell and motion. In Caillois's view, mimicry is a fun tion of the visual experience of the insect itself. Ty'ng mimicry to the animal's own perception of space, Caillois     The legacy of surrealism 25 hypothesises that the phenomenon is in fact a kind of insectoid [[psychosis]]. He argues that the life of any organism depends on the possibility of its maintaining its own distinctness, a boundary within which it is contained, the terms of what we could call its self-possession. Mimicry is the [[loss]] of this possession, because the animal that merges with its setting becomes dispossessed, derealised, as though yielding to a temptation exercised on it by the vast outsideness of space itself, a temptation to fusion. In case all this seems far-fetched, Callois reminds his readers of primitive sympathetic [[magic]] in which an [[illness]] is conceived of as a possession of the patient by some external force, one that dispossesses the [[victim]] of his or her own person, one that can be combated by drawing it off from the patient through the mimicry performed by a shaman in a [[rite]] of repossession. Caillois's essay on mimicry had a great influence within the psychoanalytic circles developing in Paris in the 1930s.19 Lacan expressed his debt to Caillois, particularly in his working out of the concept of the [[mirror phase]].20 This phase refers to the [[moment]] when the child assumes an [[imaginary]] [[unity]] with its [[body]] image, in the way that some animals [[alienate]] their true nature, in mimetically hiding in their surroundings. It is the child's first encounter with its image in a mirror which results in a fictional selfprojection that influences subsequent [[identity]] [[formation]]. Lacan's theory of [[subjectivity]] - in his early work - is partly derived from Caillois. Caillois's main thesis is that the organism is constructed by forces and [[structures]] beyond the control of the subject. Influenced by Caillois's ideas about how some insects are [[captured]] by the image, Lacan argues that the human being, like the praying mantis, is captivated by the image. At the time Lacan was interested in narcissistic [[identification]] and he drew on Caillois's work to argue that we are dominated by a structure of images and that this has a toxic, poisonous effect on the spread of psychoanalysishuman subject.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1927). Essais de psychanalys (Samuel Jankelevitch, Trans.). Paris: Payot.# ——. (1960a [1873-1939]). Letters of [[Sigmund Freud]], 1873-1939 (Ernst L. Freud, Ed.]]