Being Irrational: Lacan, the Objet a, and the Golden Mean

211 Pages·2004·7.116 MB·English

by  Shingu Kazushige

Being Irrational
Lacan, the Objet a, and the Golden Mean
Kazushige
S h in g u
Translated and Edited by Michael RADICH
Gakuju Shoin
Being Irrational: Lacan, the Objet a, and the Golden Mean
Shngu Kazushige, M.D.
Translated and Edited by Michael RADICH
Originally published as Rakai no seishin-tmnsdd by Kodansba Ltd in 1995.
Gakuju Shorn, Publishers Ltd.
4-GO‘l Minamidai Nakanoku Tbkyo 164*0014 Japan
http://www.gnkuju.com
1SBN4-906502-2S-*
0 2004 Shingu Kazushige
O 2004 Michael Radich (English translation)
All nghli reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written
permission from the copyright holders.
TTiii pwktitetbn has heat made possible with the support of Smntory Foundation.
Printed and bound in Japan
—jv—
CONTENTS
Author’s Acknowledgements
Translator’s Foreword
Chapter ONE
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ROMANESQUE
One: Starting at the Vary Beginning I
TWo: Nadja and Breton 5
Three: Almte and Lacan 9
Chapter TWO
THE STAGE IS SET
One: After Freud 15
TWo: Melanie Klein 17
Three: The Controversy Between Klein and Anna Freud 22
Four. Enter Lacan 24
Five: Schism - 1953 29
CHAPTER THREE
ROME: THE CORNERSTONE
One: The Politics of the Short Session 37
TWo: The Logic of the Short Session 41
Three: Interpretation as Sonic Boom 44
Four: The Efficacy of the Short Session 47
Five: The Objet a Is the Golden Mean 52
Chapter four
LANGUAGE AS THE OTHER
One: The Fundamental Epistemological Position of Psychoanalysis
TWo: The Discourse of the Other 67
Three: The Desire of the Other 73
Four The Desire of Nature 79
—v—
Chatter FIVE
BECOMING OTHER
One The Otyct a Within the Discourse of the Other
Ttoo: The Murder of the Thing 86
Three: Repetition (I) 93
Four The Theory of the Mirror Stage 98
Five: Repetition (IQ 110
Sic Symbolic, Imaginary, Peal 112
Seven: Schema L and the Mirror 121
Chapter six
ALL ALONE IN PARIS
One The Unary Trait 127
TVvo: The Ecole Freudlenne de Paris 133
Chapter SEVEN
WAITING FOR THE AGALMA
One The Object of Psychoanalysis 139
Ttoo: Socrates 140
Three Irma 144
Four In the Mouth ISO
Chapter EIGHT
THE DISCOURSE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
One: The *Pass‘ ISS
Ttoo: The Four Discourses 160
Three: The ‘Discourse of the Master* and Oedipus
Four Towards the Place of the Impossible 176
Five The Final Failure 180
Sic Encore, Lacan! 188
Bibliography
Index
ABBREVIATIONS
tents tcriti (Paris: Scull, 1966). [French original]
Roudinesco Elizabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan and Cos A History of Psychoanalysis tn
France, 192S-198S, trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (London: Free Association
Books. 1990).
SI The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller Book I, Freud's
Papers on Technique 19S3-19S4, translated with notes by John Forrester
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19M).
SII The Seminar, Book II, The Ego in Freud’s Theory and the Technique of
Psychoanalysts, 1954-55, trans. Sylvia Tomaselli, notes by John Forrester
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I960).
SVII The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller Book VII, The
Ethics of Psychoanalysis 19S9-1960, translated with notes by Dennis Porter
(New York: Norton. 1992).
sviii Le S/minaire de Jacques Lacan, livre VIII, “Le Transfert", ed. J.-A. Miller
(Paris: Seuil, 1991).
SXI The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller,
trans. Alan Sheridan (London: Penguin, 1979).
SXVII Le Sdminaire, livre XVtL L'envers de la psychanatyse, texte 6tabll par
Jacques-Alain Miller (Paris: Seuil. 1991). Translation by Russell Grigg,
The Seminar. Book XVII: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis (Norton,
forthcoming).
sxx The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: On Feminine Sexuality, the Limits of Love and
Knowledge, 1972-1973 (Encore), ed. Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Bruce Fink
(New York: Norton, 1999).
SE The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud,
ed. J. Strachey with Anna Freud, 24 vols (London: The Hogarth Press,
1953-1964).
Selection Edits: A Selection, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Norton, 1977).
[English translation]
-vii-

Author’s Acknowledgements
Freud held that the future toward which our dreams lead us is “moulded ... into a
perfect likeness of the past”, In that it re-presents a time in which our wishes were
already fulfilled, and our desires already realized. If this is so, then surely an author
will meet his own past through his future reader. In the mind of the reader, the
author’s wishes for the import of his text are realized, and the author’s past
encounters, as they determine his writing, are represented for the author himself to
rediscover. Until such a moment, whether the author merely dreams of writing this
foreword, or whether he writes it in his reader’s dream, he is confined to the realm of
the dream; and it is precisely the promise of such realization that makes writing - to
be so read - such a meaningful endeavor.
And who represents that reader to the author if not the editor who urges him to
write his book? Clearly, the author can only meet the reader to come by her
mediation. I thank Kawasaki Atsuko of Kodansha Publishing, therefore, for effecting
this mediation in the first instance; for this English version, I am likewise indebted to
Michael Radich, who, as if by chance, picked out the original Japanese version from
among many books on the capacious and well-stocked shelf of a large bookseller in
Osaka, and ultimately made the decision to translate it into English.
In fact, I recollect many such happy encounters along the way as I have pursued the
study of Lacanian psychoanalysis. I have been lucky to have as teachers and
stimulating interlocutors my many mentors and colleagues in the Japan-France group
(le Groupe franco-japonais) of the Champ freudien. Many of them came to Kyoto to
participate in the International Symposium held in 1990, including Jacques-Ala in
Miller and Judith Miller as special guests, Jean-Louis Gault from Nantes and Pierre
Skriabine from Paris as secretaries of the group, as well as many members of the
group from France and all over Japan. Later, with the kind assistance of the
Foundation of the Champ freudien, 1 was able to visit Paris and Nantes, and also
Angers, where Roger Wartel was the warmest possible host. This symposium and
the Intellectual exchanges that grew out of it were among the most important sources
of inspiration for this book, and I offer my heartfelt thanks to all these people.
Except where otherwise noted, all clinical material is from my own practice. I would
like to thank all the patients who gave me the analytic experience I have recorded in
the following pages.
-ix-
My thanb « alio due to the Suntory Foundation for offering me financial help fo,
the publication of the English version, and to Yoshida Kazuhlro of Cakuju Sholn, who
aSrtyi showed this project warm and genuine understanding,
Shingu Kazushige
Kyoto, March 2004
Translator’s Foreword
This book was originally published In Japanese as Lacan's Psychoanalysis (Kakan no
seishln-bunseld), and under that title it is the best-selling and widest-read introduction
to Lacan in Japan. It is my belief, however, that the specific Insights it affords into
the obfet a will make it fruitful reading for a much broader audience than the one it is
confined to in Japanese; for this reason, I gladly accepted when Professor Shingu
kindly offered me the chance to translate it.
Professor Shingu and I have together chosen a new title for the English edition -
Being Irrational Loam, the Obfet a, and the Golden Mean - in keeping with the relevance
we hope its unique exposition of the obfet a in particular will hold for an
English-reading audience. The obfet a is a seminal notion in Lacan's thought, and
Bruce Fink has justifiably remarked that an entire book would be required to explain
it fully. While Being Irrational is not a systematic exposition of all the different
formulations that have been given to the obfet a, it is, in a sense, just such a book. It
is ground-breaking in that it develops a hint from Seminar XX (along with a few
pieces of algebra from Seminar XVII) to the effect that “the obfet a is the golden mean",
and makes of this notion a key to Lacan’s entire theoretical edifice. This is the
“being irrational" (or “irrational being") of the title. As we see in Chapters III and V,
it is “irrational" both in the ordinary everyday sense of the word - emotional, and not
amenable to “logical" understanding - and also numerically; the golden mean is an
irrational number.
In addition to the change of title, various other changes were also made in the
course of the translation. Quotations, theoretical concepts, and details from Lacan's
biography have been sourced. References to Japanese culture that would be lost on
an outside audience in their original condensed form have been expanded. The
translator and author have also co-operated to modify the text slightly in places, to
make it read smoothly in English. In achieving the latter aim, we decided to move
paragraph divisions in places, and we have also introduced some introductory and
condusory sections at the beginning and end of structural units such as chapters and
sections. All such changes were made with the author's careful approval. In the
few cases where changes bear on content, or where substantial passages were added,
the fact is noted.
A note is also required on the use of the pronoun “I". In many passages, I have
decided after consultation with Professor Shingu to translate the Japanese first person
—xi-
pronoun watosfri as "1”, but to use the third person form of the verb with it (e.g. “I is
an other.-). In so doing. I hope to convey a peculiarity of the Japanese of the original
text. Verbs in Japanese do not conjugate for person, and there are no articles, so
that both "1 am an other-, for example, and -the T is an other- would be expressed in
exactly the same way; Watashi wa hiton no tashe dc aru. Throughout the book.
Professor Shingu talks about watasfu Cl-) in discussing the vicissitudes of the Lacanian
subject, and in Japanese, these passages not only read as natural ways of phrasing an
objective consideration of "the I-, but also as bearing quite intimately on the person
of the author and/or the reader: -1”. Inspired by the Rimbaudian “I Is an other-
quoted at the outset of Chapter V, we decided to compromise between the persona]
T (as opposed to the distancing “the I-) and the objectifying use of the third person.
We hope that this phraseology, even if it reads strangely in English, will convey
something of the double import of the argument, which implicates the person of
reader, writer, and translator even as it is, at the same time, a universal consideration
of human subjectivity as a category.
In the course of preparing this translation, I have been helped by a number of
people, and I would like to thank Duncan Campbell, Bruce Fink. Russell Grigg, Jeffrey
Hayden. Matsuzawa Tetsurd, Daya Nelson, Nikaido Kazuko, and Judy Wakabayashi.
As always, my wife, Amanda Jack, has provided me with constant support in ways too
various to count. My thanks, however, go above all to Professor Shingu himself, for
so readily entrusting the translation of his work to an unknown quantity; for his
meticulous explanations of troublesome details; and for the many kindnesses he has
showed me personally. Any mistakes in the translation, of course, remain my
responsibility and mine alone.
Michael Radich
Cambridge MA, 2004