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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 and action based explicitly on Freudian discoveries, which were used to develop an original theory of language the crucial link to his [[clinical]] [[practice]] in [[psychiatry]].  The Surrealists fully embraced [[psychoanalysis]] and creativity. In later years it adopted Hegelian dialectics and Marxist-Leninist historical materialismduring his medical studies Lacan developed strong [[links]] with the movement. The "social and martial cataclysm" (Breton, 1934) provoked   [[Surrealism]] was a revolt by an entire generation.The [[literary]] and artistic movement was founded that emerged after the First [[World]] War in [[Paris in 1924 by French ]], its founding [[figure]] the writer and poet [[André Breton, with the support of ]] (1896-1966). [[Breton]] was familiar with Freud's work on dreams and developed a group technique of poets and painters'spontaneous' writing to give free expression to unconscious thoughts and wishes. 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]], and Joan Miró, a Catalan, gave the group its international flavor. Surrealismwhich they saw as more '[[real]]'s goal was to "change life" (Arthur Rimbaud) by freeing humanity from than the constraints prosaic reality of mental or social censorship as well as economic oppression: "Poetry is made by everyone. Not by one" (Lautréamont).our everyday world.   The project made little sense to FreudIn 1932, and within this context, who refused [[Lacan]] completed his patronage (Freud to Breton, 1933e doctoral [[1932thesis]]; to Zweig, July 20, 1938 (1960a on [[1873-1939Paranoid Psychosis and Its Relations to the Personality]])). Breton visited Freud in Vienna in 1921 and corresponded  Around the same [[time]] he entered [[analysis]] with him in 1932 about <i>The Interpretation of Dreams</i>. In 1937 he asked him to contribute to [[Rudolph Loewenstein]], the SPP's most famous [[training]] [[analyst]] (a planned anthology (<i>Trajectoire du rêve</i>, 1938recognized [[psychoanalyst]] who is qualified to train [[other]] [[analysts]] within the [[Society]]). Freud answered: "A collection of dreams without their associations  During this time, without understanding Lacan's links with the circumstances in which someone dreamed, doesn't mean anything to meSurrealists developed further.  He was a friend of [[André Breton]] and [[Salvador Dali]], and I have a hard time understanding what it might mean was later to others" become the painter [[Pablo Picasso]]'s (Breton, 1938, I1881-1973)personal physician.These associations were generally omitted by the surrealists when they narrated their dreams. They appear in André BretonHe attended the first [[public]] readings of [[James Joyce]]'s <i>The Communicating Vases</i> (1932(1882-1941), but there [[Ulysses]] in 1921 and was a well-known figure in the author, denying cafés and bookshops of Paris's [[Left]] Bank.  In 1933 Dali was to refer to Lacan's [[doctoral thesis]] in the "dream navel" for first issue of the sake of Marxist-Leninist materialism, felt he could use them Surrealist review [[Minotaure]] and Lacan himself was to make many contributions to bring into focus all his dream thoughtsthis and other Surrealist publications. He claimed Lacan's doctoral thesis, contrary to Freudthen, that the dream was written in a creator, an instigator to actionlargely anti-[[psychoanalytic]] [[culture]] and remained within established [[psychiatric]] [[categories]] and theories, and capable of dialectically resolving but at the contradiction between desire and reality. Surrealism ignored therapy.There are several periods to same time it drew on the history alternative resources of surrealismthe Surrealist movement. Its "prehistory" dates from 1916 (Breton discovers Freud) to 1924. This was the period  ---            Begun as an investigation of the review <i>Littérature</i> (1919). Together with Bretonpoetic [[images]] and [[language]], their sources, their [[nature]], and specific features, surrealism is a group movement of young artists invented surrealist techniques intended to liberate the unconscious: automatic writing and drawing[[ideas]], hypnotic sleep, hypnagogic visions, dream narratives, group of artistic creation, oral and written games, collage[[action]] based explicitly on [[Freudian]] discoveries, rubbings, decals, experimental photography and theater. The publication which were used to develop an original [[theory]] of the first <i>Surrealist Manifesto</i> (Breton, 1924) ushered in Surrealism's formative period. The group had a journal of its own, <i>La Révolution surréaliste</i>language and [[creativity]]. In later years it adopted [[Hegelian]] dialectics and [[Marxist]]-Leninist historical [[materialism]]. The "We must be thankful for Freud's discoveries,[[social]] and martial cataclysm" wrote (Breton, "the imagination may be on the point of winning back its rights1934) provoked a [[revolt]] by an entire generation."In 1927 The movement was founded in Paris in 1924 by [[French]] poet André Breton, Louis Aragon, PaulÉluard, with the support of a group of poets and Benjamin Peret joined the Communist Partypainters. Breton did not, however, abandon Freud: "The Surrealism that[[presence]] of Max Ernst, from [[Germany]], as we have seenMan Ray, has adopted Marxist beliefs does not intend to treat lightly from the Freudian critique of ideas" (Breton[[United States]], and Joan Miró, a Catalan, 1930). Breton soon quit gave the Communist Party, which reproached him for his Freudianismgroup its international flavor. Surrealism embraced cinema (Luis Buñuel), the construction of objects ("Situation surréaliste de l'objet,s [[goal]] was to "[[change]] [[life]]" Breton, 1935(Arthur Rimbaud), and produced important works by freeing humanity from the constraints of art in every field.But in 1930, in his <i>Second Manifesto of Surrealism</i>, Breton acknowledged the existence of a profound crisis[[mental]] or social [[censorship]] as well as [[economic]] oppression: "[[Poetry]] is made by everyone. Not by one" (Lautréamont). The third period of Surrealism was about to begin. A new review was introduced[[project]] made little [[sense]] to [[Freud]], <i>Le Surréalisme au service de la Révolution</i>. In 1930 the review published two articles by the French-American psychoanalyst Jean FroisWittmannwho refused his patronage (Freud to Breton, in 1933 the Breton-Freud correspondence of 1933e [1932]; to Zweig, a favorable critique of Jacques Lacan's doctoral dissertation by René CrevelJuly 20, and, also by Crevel, an attack on an article 1938 (1960a [1873-1939])). Breton visited Freud in the <i>Revue française de psychanalyse[[Vienna]] in 1921 and corresponded with him in 1932 [[about]] <i>The [[Interpretation]] of Dreams</i>. The review also published the first texts by Salvador Dali, where In 1937 he developed the idea of "critical-paranoia," the use of the interpretative processes of paranoia for creative ends, and the exploration of the unconscious.In 1933 asked him to contribute to a planned anthology (<i>MinotaureTrajectoire du rêve</i> appeared, 1938). Although it was not the official voice Freud answered: "A collection of the groupdreams without their [[associations]], it was strongly influenced by it. The first issue included articles on without [[understanding]] the "contributions of psychoanalysis." Lacan and Dalí explained their conceptions of paranoia as an active psychic phenomenoncircumstances in which someone dreamed, doesn't mean anything to me, 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, I have a phenomenon that accelerated during the Second World War following the exile of hard time understanding what it might mean to [[others]]" (Breton, André Masson1938, and Max Ernst in I).These associations were generally omitted by the United States, and Benjamin Péret surrealists when they narrated their dreams. They appear in Mexico, and continued after the war.André Breton, the principal theorist of 's <i>The [[Communicating]] Vases</i> (1932), but there the group[[author]], maintained a close association with Freudian thought throughout his career. He was most interested in denying the logic of "[[dream]] [[navel]]" for the unconscioussake of Marxist-Leninist materialism, in conflicts between the ego, the id, and the superego, relating felt he could use [[them ]] to the process of artistic creationbring into focus all his dream [[thoughts]]. He claimed, contrary to Freudian ideas of sexualityFreud, fantasy, desirethat the dream was a creator, repression, the death instinct, whose opposition an instigator to Eros he assumed to be dialectical (Breton, 1930)action, and especially to ideas about representation capable of [[dialectically]] resolving the [[contradiction]] between [[desire]] and perception (Breton, 1933)reality. Beginning with his concept Surrealism ignored [[therapy]].There are several periods to the [[history]] of surrealism. Its "pure mental representation,[[prehistory]]" situated "beyond true perception," he examined, in dates from 1916 (Breton discovers Freud) to 1924. This was the context period of the review <i>Essais de psychanalyseLittérature</i> (19271919), how the transition from the unconscious to the perception-consciousness system takes place in the creative individual. For Together with Breton, as a reader group of Freud, it was at young artists invented surrealist techniques intended to liberate the preconscious level that language [[unconscious]]: automatic [[writing]] and the traces of acoustic drawing, hypnotic [[sleep]], hypnagogic visions, dream narratives, group creation, [[oral]] and visual perceptions were united written [[games]], collage, rubbings, decals, experimental [[photography]] and charged with affecttheater. But Breton went further: he saw in these preconscious elements The publication of the raw material of creationfirst <i>Surrealist Manifesto</i> (Breton, obtained by the removal of repression with the help of automatic writing and drawing1924) ushered in Surrealism's formative period. In creating The group had a work journal of artits own, the artist would make the individual universal (<i>La Révolution surréaliste</i>. "We must be thankful for Freud's discoveries," wrote Breton, 1935)"the [[imagination]] may be on the point of winning back its rights."In a letter to Stefan Zweig1927 André Breton, FreudLouis [[Aragon]], who had met Salvador Dalí in LondonPaulÉluard, also associated and [[Benjamin]] Peret joined the fundamental elements of the work of the artist with the preconscious[[Communist]] Party. Breton did not, however, but he added a principle of economyabandon Freud: "From the critical point of view it could still be maintained that The Surrealism that, as we have seen, has adopted Marxist beliefs does not intend to treat lightly the notion Freudian critique of art defies expansion as long as the quantitative proportion of unconscious material and preconscious treatment does not remain within definite limitsideas" (July 20Breton, 19381930). The specific task of Breton soon quit the creative individualCommunist Party, the result of which reproached him for his "initiative" Freudianism. Surrealism embraced [[cinema]] (BretonLuis Buñuel) is to manipulate , the relation between unconscious and preconscious elements, and objectify them in a work [[construction]] of art. Repression would have to be removed using [[objects]] ("surrealist techniques[[Situation]] surréaliste de l'[[objet]]," (Breton, 1935). Freud's meeting with Dalí seems to be the only time when Freud made an effort to understand the surrealist use , and produced important works of psychoanalysis and compare it with his own beliefsart in every field.But in 1930, in his <i>Second Manifesto of Surrealism</i>, Breton acknowledged the [[existence]] of a profound crisis. The [[third]] period of Surrealism was about to begin. A new review was introduced, <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 Breton-Freud correspondence of 1932, a favorable critique of [[Jacques Lacan]]'s [[doctoral dissertation]] by René Crevel, and, also by Crevel, an attack on an article in the <i>Revue française de [[psychanalyse]]</i>. The review also published the first [[texts]] by Salvador Dali, where he developed the [[idea]] of "critical-[[paranoia]]," the use of the interpretative [[processes]] of paranoia for creative ends, and the exploration of the unconscious.In 1933 <i>Minotaure</i> appeared. Although it was not the [[official]] [[voice]] of the group, it was strongly influenced by it. The first issue included articles on the "contributions of psychoanalysis." Lacan and Dalí explained their conceptions of paranoia as an [[active]] [[psychic]] phenomenon, 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 Masson, and Max Ernst in the United States, and Benjamin Péret in [[Mexico]], and continued after the war.Breton, the principal theorist of the group, maintained a close [[association]] with Freudian [[thought]] throughout his career. He was most interested in the [[logic]] of the unconscious, in conflicts between the ego, the id, and the [[superego]], relating them to the [[process]] of artistic creation, to Freudian ideas of [[sexuality]], [[fantasy]], [[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 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.There were other points of contact between surrealism André Embiricos, a surrealist poet and psychoanalysis: Adrien Borel discussed his surrealist experiences (1925); Salvador Dalí and René Crevel interviewed Jacques Lacan; Creveltheoretician as well as a psychoanalyst, Antonin Artaudfounded, 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 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.

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

[[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

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]].

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

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.

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.

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

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.)

Many important articles were published in Minotaure. We know that Lacan was greatly influenced by [[Roger Caillois]], a [[sociologist ]]

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 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

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 human 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.]]