Difference between revisions of "Talk:Seminar XI"

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1964 (256 pp.)-SEMINAIRE XI: LES aUATRE CONCEPTS FONDAMENTAUX DE LA PSYCHANALYSE (SEMINAR XI: THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS)-1973, 1978
 +
January 15, 1964 marked the opening session of the seminars at the E.N.S. where, in the presence of a number of celebrities (Levi-Strauss, H. Ey, AI�thusser ... ) and of a new and young audience, Lacan reminded people of the "censorship" of his teaching and of his excommunication by the official psychoanalytic circles. Why, he asked, was this refugee involvcd in the uni�vcrsity, a placc gcnerally held in contempt by psychoanalysts? Well, he wantcd to continuc to train analysts, which was his first priority. At the same timc, his tcaching was also addrcssed to the non analysts and he wanted to raisc thc following questions: Is psychoanalysis a science? Under what con�ditions is it a science? If it is-the "science of the unconscious" or a "con�jectural science of the subject" -what can it, in turn, teach us about science? This double aim of Lacan's discourse created interferences that are not always easy 10 follow, and also Icd him to evade somc of thc participants' questions. For cxample, could one do without the "stagcs" of carliest childhood? (Fran�<;oise Dolto's question); how would others reappear in his discourse? and "is topology for you a method of discovery or of exposition?" (Wahl's questions); "What diffcrcnce do you make between the object of desire and the object of the drive?" (Safouan's qucstion). Once, Lacan even answered, "Look, the main thing is that I don't fail and get hurt!"
 +
Praxis, which "places man in a position of dealing with the real through the symbolic," produces concepts; four concepts are offered here, the un�conscious, repetition, transference, and the drive. The 1973 title has often been contcstcd in favor of the 1964 title, "Les Fondements de la psychana�Iysc" (The Foundations of Psychoanalysis), which implies neither that it is a matter of concepts, nor that there are only four of them. Sometimes Lacan talked of concepts, and sometimes he wondered whether psychoanalysts lived in dcccption, and hc was suspicious of the relationships among psychoanaly�sis, religion, and science. Did they not have, like religious groups, a founding fathcr and quasi-sacred texts? Freud was "legitimately the subject that one could presume to know," at least regarding the unconscious; "he was not only the subject who was supposed to know. He did know." "He gave us this knowlcge in terms that may be said to be indestructible," terms that support an inexhaustible interrogation. "No progress has been made, however small, that has not deviated whenever one of the terms has been neglected around which Frcud ordered the ways that he traced and the paths of the uncon�scious." This declaration of total allegiance contrasts with the study of
 +
The Works of Jacques Lacan 113
 +
Freud's dream about the dead son screaming "Father, can't you see I'm burn�ing?" Was Lacan both an inventor and the only faithful disciple? The more he protected himself with Freud's name, the more he exposed himself. In�deed, the central problem remained that of the transference to the founding father: the Name-of-the-Father is a foundation, he tells us, but the legacy of the Father is sin, and the original sin of psychoanalysis is Freud's desire that was not analyzed. This repeats the theme of L' Ethique (43). Lacan presented himself as the son of the plowman in La Fontaine's fable; the Name-of-the�Father is a treasure that remains to be found, provided, like Actaeon, one offers oneself as a sacrificial victim to truth (29).
 +
Of the four concepts mentioned, three were already amply developed be�tween 1953 and 1963. Concerning the unconscious, transference, and repeti�tion, this seminar provided an opportunity for spreading the major principles of Lacanian teaching, although this sometimes meant rectifying them. There remained the drive whose importance had kept increasing since the study of the objet a in L'Angoisse (52). If one does not take sexuality into account, which is always linked to the part objects, then "psychoanalysis is nothing but a mantic." Moreover, "the reality of the unconscious is sexual reality�an untenable truth," and sexual reality cannot be separated from death. Un�der the form of the objet petit a whose "only reality is topological," Lacan grouped all the partial drives linked to part objects: the breast, feces, the penis, and he added the gaze and the voice. Here, he was mobilized by the gaze; he confronted Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Caillois so as to assert the radical split between the eye and the gaze. He analyzed Holbein's Ambassa�dors as a "trap for the gaze" [piege a regards], but also as a dompte-regard and a trompe-I' oeil. n In the foreground, a floating object, a phallic ghost ob�ject gives presence to the - <t> of castration. This object is the heart of the whole organization of desire through the framework of the fundamental drives. For the Cartesian Cogito (l think), Freud substituted the Desidero (I desire).
 +
How is it possible to reconcile the desire linked to the signifier and to the Other with the libido that has become an organ under the form of the "la�mella" or the hommelette, the placenta, the part of his own body from which the subject must separate in order to exist? Here is where a new conception of repetition comes into play, whose functioning sterns from two forces: the automatism (automaton) on the side of the signifier, and the always missed but desired encounter (the tuchl) on the side of the drive, where the objet a refers to the "impossible" Real that, "as such, cannot be assimilated." If transference is "the enactement Ila mise ell acte] of the reality of the uncon�scious" (which is what Lacan's deconstruction of the drive wants to bring to light), if desire is the nodal point where the pulsation of the unconscious-an untenable sexual reality-is also at work, then what a Gordian knot! Is it to be untied or cut? For the first time, the psychoanalyst's role is clearly to allow the drive "to be made present in the reality of the unconscious": for that purpose, he must fall from his idealized position so as to become the upholder of the objet a, the separating object. The analysand will thus discover "to what signifler-a traumatic, irreducible nonsense-he, as subject, is sub�jected." Was this a first step toward the deserre that would be the focus of Lacan's texts in 1967 (66)'1
 +
The fourth page of the 1973 edition edited by J.-A. Miller reprints the summary written by Lacan for the directory of the E.P.H.E. In a note (p. 249) Miller explains his task of transcription, while a postscript by the Master rereads this text in relation to his new research (especially concerning the pllls-de-jollir [71 D, and most importantly and ironically in relation to his exclusion from the E.N.S., which had taken place in the meantime. Note that he uses the terms. poubellicatiollO and stecriture (this writing) (terms meant to have a popular success), and also that he insists on the Real as impossible.
 +
 +
n. The meaning of the verb dompler is "to tame." The reference is to a situation in which the gaze is tamed by an object, such as a painting. Lacan invented the expres�sion dompte-regard as a counterpart to the notion of trompe-/' oeil, which has passed into the English langauge.
  
 
==Introduction==
 
==Introduction==

Revision as of 01:24, 23 September 2006

1

1964 (256 pp.)-SEMINAIRE XI: LES aUATRE CONCEPTS FONDAMENTAUX DE LA PSYCHANALYSE (SEMINAR XI: THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS)-1973, 1978 January 15, 1964 marked the opening session of the seminars at the E.N.S. where, in the presence of a number of celebrities (Levi-Strauss, H. Ey, AI�thusser ... ) and of a new and young audience, Lacan reminded people of the "censorship" of his teaching and of his excommunication by the official psychoanalytic circles. Why, he asked, was this refugee involvcd in the uni�vcrsity, a placc gcnerally held in contempt by psychoanalysts? Well, he wantcd to continuc to train analysts, which was his first priority. At the same timc, his tcaching was also addrcssed to the non analysts and he wanted to raisc thc following questions: Is psychoanalysis a science? Under what con�ditions is it a science? If it is-the "science of the unconscious" or a "con�jectural science of the subject" -what can it, in turn, teach us about science? This double aim of Lacan's discourse created interferences that are not always easy 10 follow, and also Icd him to evade somc of thc participants' questions. For cxample, could one do without the "stagcs" of carliest childhood? (Fran�<;oise Dolto's question); how would others reappear in his discourse? and "is topology for you a method of discovery or of exposition?" (Wahl's questions); "What diffcrcnce do you make between the object of desire and the object of the drive?" (Safouan's qucstion). Once, Lacan even answered, "Look, the main thing is that I don't fail and get hurt!" Praxis, which "places man in a position of dealing with the real through the symbolic," produces concepts; four concepts are offered here, the un�conscious, repetition, transference, and the drive. The 1973 title has often been contcstcd in favor of the 1964 title, "Les Fondements de la psychana�Iysc" (The Foundations of Psychoanalysis), which implies neither that it is a matter of concepts, nor that there are only four of them. Sometimes Lacan talked of concepts, and sometimes he wondered whether psychoanalysts lived in dcccption, and hc was suspicious of the relationships among psychoanaly�sis, religion, and science. Did they not have, like religious groups, a founding fathcr and quasi-sacred texts? Freud was "legitimately the subject that one could presume to know," at least regarding the unconscious; "he was not only the subject who was supposed to know. He did know." "He gave us this knowlcge in terms that may be said to be indestructible," terms that support an inexhaustible interrogation. "No progress has been made, however small, that has not deviated whenever one of the terms has been neglected around which Frcud ordered the ways that he traced and the paths of the uncon�scious." This declaration of total allegiance contrasts with the study of The Works of Jacques Lacan 113 Freud's dream about the dead son screaming "Father, can't you see I'm burn�ing?" Was Lacan both an inventor and the only faithful disciple? The more he protected himself with Freud's name, the more he exposed himself. In�deed, the central problem remained that of the transference to the founding father: the Name-of-the-Father is a foundation, he tells us, but the legacy of the Father is sin, and the original sin of psychoanalysis is Freud's desire that was not analyzed. This repeats the theme of L' Ethique (43). Lacan presented himself as the son of the plowman in La Fontaine's fable; the Name-of-the�Father is a treasure that remains to be found, provided, like Actaeon, one offers oneself as a sacrificial victim to truth (29). Of the four concepts mentioned, three were already amply developed be�tween 1953 and 1963. Concerning the unconscious, transference, and repeti�tion, this seminar provided an opportunity for spreading the major principles of Lacanian teaching, although this sometimes meant rectifying them. There remained the drive whose importance had kept increasing since the study of the objet a in L'Angoisse (52). If one does not take sexuality into account, which is always linked to the part objects, then "psychoanalysis is nothing but a mantic." Moreover, "the reality of the unconscious is sexual reality�an untenable truth," and sexual reality cannot be separated from death. Un�der the form of the objet petit a whose "only reality is topological," Lacan grouped all the partial drives linked to part objects: the breast, feces, the penis, and he added the gaze and the voice. Here, he was mobilized by the gaze; he confronted Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and Caillois so as to assert the radical split between the eye and the gaze. He analyzed Holbein's Ambassa�dors as a "trap for the gaze" [piege a regards], but also as a dompte-regard and a trompe-I' oeil. n In the foreground, a floating object, a phallic ghost ob�ject gives presence to the - <t> of castration. This object is the heart of the whole organization of desire through the framework of the fundamental drives. For the Cartesian Cogito (l think), Freud substituted the Desidero (I desire). How is it possible to reconcile the desire linked to the signifier and to the Other with the libido that has become an organ under the form of the "la�mella" or the hommelette, the placenta, the part of his own body from which the subject must separate in order to exist? Here is where a new conception of repetition comes into play, whose functioning sterns from two forces: the automatism (automaton) on the side of the signifier, and the always missed but desired encounter (the tuchl) on the side of the drive, where the objet a refers to the "impossible" Real that, "as such, cannot be assimilated." If transference is "the enactement Ila mise ell acte] of the reality of the uncon�scious" (which is what Lacan's deconstruction of the drive wants to bring to light), if desire is the nodal point where the pulsation of the unconscious-an untenable sexual reality-is also at work, then what a Gordian knot! Is it to be untied or cut? For the first time, the psychoanalyst's role is clearly to allow the drive "to be made present in the reality of the unconscious": for that purpose, he must fall from his idealized position so as to become the upholder of the objet a, the separating object. The analysand will thus discover "to what signifler-a traumatic, irreducible nonsense-he, as subject, is sub�jected." Was this a first step toward the deserre that would be the focus of Lacan's texts in 1967 (66)'1 The fourth page of the 1973 edition edited by J.-A. Miller reprints the summary written by Lacan for the directory of the E.P.H.E. In a note (p. 249) Miller explains his task of transcription, while a postscript by the Master rereads this text in relation to his new research (especially concerning the pllls-de-jollir [71 D, and most importantly and ironically in relation to his exclusion from the E.N.S., which had taken place in the meantime. Note that he uses the terms. poubellicatiollO and stecriture (this writing) (terms meant to have a popular success), and also that he insists on the Real as impossible.

n. The meaning of the verb dompler is "to tame." The reference is to a situation in which the gaze is tamed by an object, such as a painting. Lacan invented the expres�sion dompte-regard as a counterpart to the notion of trompe-/' oeil, which has passed into the English langauge.

Introduction

This is a dense and difficult text to read, but it is unquestioonably the pivotal seminar of Lacan's career and one that you will read over and over again. It is an immensely rich text, packed with ideas and formulations that Lacan will return to throughout the second half of his career. Lacan differentiates his work from orthodox Freudianism on some of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, transference, the drive and the subject. He also begins to rformulate many of his earlier concepts and to elaborate what we now recognize as a specifically Lacanian theory of psychoanalysis. Most importantly, Lacan stresses the centrality of the 'drive' as the distinguishing feature of psychoanalysis. He reformulates his understandingg of the subject from the subject of the signifier to the subject of the drive and replaces some of the linguistic terminology, such as metaphor and metonymy, with alienation and separation. Lacan also develops the objet petit a - as the object cause of desire and remainder of the real - in relation to the split between the eye and the gaze. Finally, the seminar develops a notion of transference as a relation to 'the subject supposed to know'.

January 15 1964, marks the opening session of the seminars at the École Nationale Supérieure where, in the presence of celebrities (Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Fernand Braudel) and a new younger audience, Lacan talks about the censorship of his teachings and his excommunication from official psychoanalytical circles.

He wants to train analysts and, at the same time, address the non-analyst by raising the following questions: Is psychoanalysis a science? If so, under what conditions? If it is - the "science of the unconscious" or a "conjectural science of the subject" - what can it teach us about science?

Praxis, which "places the subject in a position of dealing with the real through the symbolic," produces concepts; four are offered here: the unconscious, repetition, transference and the drive.

The 1973 title has often been contested in favor of the 1964's: ‘’Les fondements de la psychanalyse’’, which implies neither that it is a matter of concepts, nor that there are only four of them.

Lacan is suspicious of the rapport between psychoanalysis, religion and science.

Did they not have a founding father and quasi-secret texts?

Freud was "legitimately the subject presumed to know," at least as to the unconscious: "He was not only the subject who was presumed to know, he knew."

"He gave us this knowledge in terms that may be said to be indestructible."

"No progress has been made that has not deviated whenever one of the terms has been neglected around which Freud ordered the ways that he traced and the paths of the unconscious."

This declaration of allegiance contrasts with the study of Freud's dream about the dead son screaming "Father, can't you see I'm burning?"

The main problem remains that of transference: the Name-of-the-Father is a foundation, but the legacy of the Father is sin, and the original sin of psychoanalysis is Freud's desire that was not analyzed.

In "The Freudian thing" (‘’Écrits: A Selection’’), Lacan presents the Name-of-the-Father as a treasure to be found, provided it implies self-immolation as a sacrificial victim to truth.

Of the four concepts mentioned, three were developed between 1953 and 1963.

Drive

As to drives, whose importance has increased since the study of ‘’objet a’’ in ‘’L'angoisse’’, Lacan considers them as different from biological needs in that they can never be satisfied.

The purpose of the drive is not to reach a goal (a final destination) but to follow its aim (the way itself), which is to circle round the object.

The real source of ‘’jouissance’’ is the repetitive movement of this closed circuit.

Freud defined ‘’Trieb’’ as a montage of four discontinuous elements: "Drive is not thrust (‘’Drang’’); in ‘’Triebe und Triebschicksale’’ (1915, S.E. XIV) Freud distinguishes four terms in the drive: ‘’Drang’’, thrust; ‘’Quelle’’, the source; ‘’Objekt’’, the object; ‘’Ziel’’, the aim.

Such a list may seem quite natural; my purpose is to prove that the text was written to show that it is not as natural as that."

The drive is a thoroughly cultural and symbolic construct.

Lacan integrates the aforementioned elements into the drive's circuit, which originates in an erogenous zone, circles the object and returns to the erogenous zone.

This circuit is structured by the three grammatical voices:

  1. the active (to see)
  1. the reflexive (to see oneself)
  1. the passive (to make oneself be seen).

The first two are autoerotic; only in the passive voice a new subject appears, "this subject, the other, appears in so far as the drive has been able to show its circular course." The drive is always active, which is why he writes the third instance as "to make oneself be seen" instead of "to be seen."

Lacan rejects the notion that partial drives can attain any complete organization since the primacy of the genital zone is always precarious.

The drives are partial, not in the sense that they are a part of a whole (a genital drive), but in that they only represent sexuality partially: they convey the dimension of ‘’jouissance’.

"The reality of the unconscious is sexual reality - an untenable truth," much as it cannot be separated from death. "’’Objet a’’ is something from which the subject, in order to constitute itself, has separated itself off as organ.

This serves as symbol of the lack, of the phallus, not as such, but in so far as it is lacking.

It must be an object that is separable and that has some rapport to the lack.

At the oral level, it is the nothing; at the anal level, it is the locus of the metaphor - one object for another, give the feces in place of the phallus - the anal drive is the domain of the gift; at the scopic level, we are no longer at the level of demand, but of desire, of the desire of the Other; it is the same at the level of the invocatory drive, which is the closest to the experience of the unconscious."

The first two relate to demand, the second pair to desire.

Under the form of ‘’objet a’’, Lacan groups all the partial drives linked to part objects: the breast, feces, the penis, and he adds the gaze and the voice.

Here, he asserts the split between the eye and the gaze when he analyzes Holbein's ‘’The Ambassadors’’ as a "trap for the gaze" (‘’piège à regards’’), but also as a ‘’dompte-regard’’ (the gaze is tamed by an object) and a ‘’trompe-l'oeil’’.

In the foreground, a floating object, a phallic ghost object gives presence to the -  of castration.

This object is the heart of the organization of desire through the framework of the drives.


In "La Lettre vol?e" (‘’Écrits’’) Lacan states that "the unconscious is the discourse of the Other," meaning that "one should see in the unconscious the effects of speech on the subject."

The unconscious is the effect of the signifier on the subject- the signifier is what gets repressed and what returns in the formations of the unconscious.

How then is it possible to reconcile desire linked to the signifier and to the Other with the libido, now an organ under the shape of the "lamella," the placenta, the part of the body from which the subject must separate in order to exist?

A new conception of repetition comes into play, whose functionning stems from two forces: automatism on the side of the signifier and the missed yet desired encounter on the side of the drive, where ‘’objet a’’ refers to the "impossible" Real (that as such cannot be assimilated).

If transference is the enactment (‘’la mise en acte’’) of the reality of the unconscious - what Lacan's deconstruction of the drive wants to bring to light - if desire is the nodal point where the motion of the unconscious, an untenable sexual reality, is also at work, what is to be done?

The analyst's role is to allow the drive "to be made present in the reality of the unconscious": he must fall from the idealized position so as to become the upholder of ‘’objet a’’, the separating object.

Bibliography

‘’’Le séminaire, Livre XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse’’’. French: (texte établi par Jacques-Alain Miller), Paris: Seuil, 1973. English: Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (edited by Jacques-Alain Miller), New York: Norton, 1978.


Bibliography

  • Le séminaire, Livre XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse. Paris: Editions du Seuil. 1973.
  • The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Ed. J.-A. Miller. Trans. A. Sheridan. London: Hogarth Press, 1977.

Library

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Index


2

This is a dense and difficult text to read, but it is unquestioonably the pivotal seminar of Lacan's career and one that you will read over and over again. It is an immensely rich text, packed with ideas and formulations that Lacan will return to throughout the second half of his career. Lacan differentiates his work from orthodox Freudianism on some of the fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis, the unconscious, transference, the drive and the subject. He also begins to rformulate many of his earlier concepts and to elaborate what we now recognize as a specifically Lacanian theory of psychoanalysis. Most importantly, Lacan stresses the centrality of the 'drive' as the distinguishing feature of psychoanalysis. He reformulates his understandingg of the subject from the subject of the signifier to the subject of the drive and replaces some of the linguistic terminology, such as metaphor and metonymy, with alienation and separation. Lacan also develops the objet petit a - as the object cause of desire and remainder of the real - in relation to the split between the eye and the gaze. Finally, the seminar develops a notion of transference as a relation to 'the subject supposed to know'.




January 15 1964, marks the opening session of the seminars at the École Nationale Supérieure where, in the presence of celebrities (Lévi-Strauss, Althusser, Fernand Braudel) and a new younger audience, Lacan talks about the censorship of his teachings and his excommunication from official psychoanalytical circles.

He wants to train analysts and, at the same time, address the non-analyst by raising the following questions: Is psychoanalysis a science? If so, under what conditions? If it is - the "science of the unconscious" or a "conjectural science of the subject" - what can it teach us about science?

Praxis, which "places the subject in a position of dealing with the real through the symbolic," produces concepts; four are offered here: the unconscious, repetition, transference and the drive.

The 1973 title has often been contested in favor of the 1964's: ‘’Les fondements de la psychanalyse’’, which implies neither that it is a matter of concepts, nor that there are only four of them.

Lacan is suspicious of the rapport between psychoanalysis, religion and science.

Did they not have a founding father and quasi-secret texts?

Freud was "legitimately the subject presumed to know," at least as to the unconscious: "He was not only the subject who was presumed to know, he knew."

"He gave us this knowledge in terms that may be said to be indestructible."

"No progress has been made that has not deviated whenever one of the terms has been neglected around which Freud ordered the ways that he traced and the paths of the unconscious."

This declaration of allegiance contrasts with the study of Freud's dream about the dead son screaming "Father, can't you see I'm burning?"

The main problem remains that of transference: the Name-of-the-Father is a foundation, but the legacy of the Father is sin, and the original sin of psychoanalysis is Freud's desire that was not analyzed.

In "The Freudian thing" (‘’Écrits: A Selection’’), Lacan presents the Name-of-the-Father as a treasure to be found, provided it implies self-immolation as a sacrificial victim to truth.

Of the four concepts mentioned, three were developed between 1953 and 1963.

Drive

As to drives, whose importance has increased since the study of ‘’objet a’’ in ‘’L'angoisse’’, Lacan considers them as different from biological needs in that they can never be satisfied.

The purpose of the drive is not to reach a goal (a final destination) but to follow its aim (the way itself), which is to circle round the object.

The real source of ‘’jouissance’’ is the repetitive movement of this closed circuit.

Freud defined ‘’Trieb’’ as a montage of four discontinuous elements: "Drive is not thrust (‘’Drang’’); in ‘’Triebe und Triebschicksale’’ (1915, S.E. XIV) Freud distinguishes four terms in the drive: ‘’Drang’’, thrust; ‘’Quelle’’, the source; ‘’Objekt’’, the object; ‘’Ziel’’, the aim.

Such a list may seem quite natural; my purpose is to prove that the text was written to show that it is not as natural as that."

The drive is a thoroughly cultural and symbolic construct.

Lacan integrates the aforementioned elements into the drive's circuit, which originates in an erogenous zone, circles the object and returns to the erogenous zone.

This circuit is structured by the three grammatical voices:

  1. the active (to see)
  1. the reflexive (to see oneself)
  1. the passive (to make oneself be seen).

The first two are autoerotic; only in the passive voice a new subject appears, "this subject, the other, appears in so far as the drive has been able to show its circular course." The drive is always active, which is why he writes the third instance as "to make oneself be seen" instead of "to be seen."

Lacan rejects the notion that partial drives can attain any complete organization since the primacy of the genital zone is always precarious.

The drives are partial, not in the sense that they are a part of a whole (a genital drive), but in that they only represent sexuality partially: they convey the dimension of ‘’jouissance’.

"The reality of the unconscious is sexual reality - an untenable truth," much as it cannot be separated from death. "’’Objet a’’ is something from which the subject, in order to constitute itself, has separated itself off as organ.

This serves as symbol of the lack, of the phallus, not as such, but in so far as it is lacking.

It must be an object that is separable and that has some rapport to the lack.

At the oral level, it is the nothing; at the anal level, it is the locus of the metaphor - one object for another, give the feces in place of the phallus - the anal drive is the domain of the gift; at the scopic level, we are no longer at the level of demand, but of desire, of the desire of the Other; it is the same at the level of the invocatory drive, which is the closest to the experience of the unconscious."

The first two relate to demand, the second pair to desire.

Under the form of ‘’objet a’’, Lacan groups all the partial drives linked to part objects: the breast, feces, the penis, and he adds the gaze and the voice.

Here, he asserts the split between the eye and the gaze when he analyzes Holbein's ‘’The Ambassadors’’ as a "trap for the gaze" (‘’piège à regards’’), but also as a ‘’dompte-regard’’ (the gaze is tamed by an object) and a ‘’trompe-l'oeil’’.

In the foreground, a floating object, a phallic ghost object gives presence to the -  of castration.

This object is the heart of the organization of desire through the framework of the drives.


In "La Lettre vol?e" (‘’Écrits’’) Lacan states that "the unconscious is the discourse of the Other," meaning that "one should see in the unconscious the effects of speech on the subject."

The unconscious is the effect of the signifier on the subject- the signifier is what gets repressed and what returns in the formations of the unconscious.

How then is it possible to reconcile desire linked to the signifier and to the Other with the libido, now an organ under the shape of the "lamella," the placenta, the part of the body from which the subject must separate in order to exist?

A new conception of repetition comes into play, whose functionning stems from two forces: automatism on the side of the signifier and the missed yet desired encounter on the side of the drive, where ‘’objet a’’ refers to the "impossible" Real (that as such cannot be assimilated).

If transference is the enactment (‘’la mise en acte’’) of the reality of the unconscious - what Lacan's deconstruction of the drive wants to bring to light - if desire is the nodal point where the motion of the unconscious, an untenable sexual reality, is also at work, what is to be done?

The analyst's role is to allow the drive "to be made present in the reality of the unconscious": he must fall from the idealized position so as to become the upholder of ‘’objet a’’, the separating object.

Bibliography

‘’’Le séminaire, Livre XI: Les quatre concepts fondamentaux de la psychanalyse’’’. French: (texte établi par Jacques-Alain Miller), Paris: Seuil, 1973. English: Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis (edited by Jacques-Alain Miller), New York: Norton, 1978.