Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis : The Paris Seminars in English

322 Pages·1995·3.38 MB·English

by  Richard Feldstein

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Reading Seminar XI

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SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis
and Culture
Henry Sussman, Editor

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Reading Seminar XI
Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis
Including the first English Translation of "Position of the Unconscious" by Jacques Lacan
Edited by Richard Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus
The Paris Seminars in English
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

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Cover painting reproduced by courtesy of the Trustees, The National Gallery, London
Hans Holbein, the Younger: Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve ('The Ambassadors').
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 1995 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of
this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in
writing of the publisher.
For information, address State University of New York
Press, State University Plaza, Albany, N.Y., 12246
Production by Diane Ganeles
Marketing by Theresa Swierzowski
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reading Seminar XI: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis: the Paris Seminars in English / edited by Richard
Feldstein, Bruce Fink, and Maire Jaanus.
p. cm.--(SUNY series in psychoanalysis and culture)
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7914-2147-3 (alk. paper).--ISBN 0-7914-2148-1 (pbk.:
alk. paper)
1. Lacan, Jacques, 1901- Quatre concepts fondamentaux de la
psychanalyse--Congresses. 2. Psychoanalysis--Congresses.
I. Feldstein, Richard. II. Fink, Bruce, 1956-. III. Jaanus,
Maire. IV. Title: Lacan's Four Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis. V. Series.
BF173.R3656 1995
150.19'5--dc20 93-50120
CIP
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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CONTENTS
Preface
Bruce Fink ix
Part I: Excommunication
Context and Concepts
Jacques-Alain Miller 3
Part II: Subject and Other
Alienation and Separation (I)
Éric Laurent 19
Alienation and Separation (II)
Éric Laurent 29
The Subject and the Other (I)
Colette Soler 39
The Subject and the Other (II)
Colette Soler 45
Science and Psychoanalysis
Bruce Fink 55
The Name-of-the-Father
François Regnault 65
Part III: Transference and the Drives
Transference as Deception
Pierre-Gilles Gueguen 77
The Passionate Dimension of Transference
Jean-Pierre Klotz 91

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The Drive (I)
Marie-Hélène Brousse 99
The Drive (II)
Marie-Hélène Brousse 109
The Démontage of the Drive
Maire Jaanus 119
Part IV: The Gaze and Object a
The Gaze as an Object
Antonio Quinet 139
The Phallic Gaze of Wonderland
Richard Feldstein 149
The "Evil Eye" of Painting: Jacques Lacan and Witold Gombrowicz on the Gaze
Hanjo Berressem 175
Art and the Position of the Analyst
Robert Samuels 183
The Relation between the Voice and the Gaze
Ellie Ragland 187
The Lamella of David Lynch
Slavoj Zizek * 205
Part V: Repetition
The Real Cause of Repetition
Bruce Fink 223
Part VI: Discovery and Psychoanalytic Practice
Introductory Talk at Sainte-Anne Hospital
Jacques-Alain Miller 233
The End of Analysis (I)
Anne Dunand 243

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The End of Analysis (II)
Anne Dunand 251
Part VII: Translation from the Écrits
Position of the Unconscious (1964)
Jacques Lacan Translated by Bruce Fink 259
Index 283

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PREFACE
Bruce Fink
Psychoanalysis is not a science. Not yet, at any ratenot in the sense in which "science" is currently understood.
Unlike the "hard" sciences, it is a praxis constituted by certain aims, ends, and desires. Since the demise of
alchemy, desire has been excluded from the sciences, despite the historian's and the biographer's keen awareness of
the importance of the individual scientist's motives and personality.
Some people have tried to render psychology scientific by asking patients to fill out questionnaires and take
standardized tests before, during, and after therapy to provide "objective" criteria for evaluating the psycho-
therapeutic process. As important as such information about whether or not analysands feel they are being or have
been helped may be to Consumer Reports-type publications, they establish nothing about the epistemological status
of psychoanalysis itself. Instead they relegate psychoanalysis to the status of public opinion polls.
While any field of study can produce statistical data (whether the effect of advertising on TV viewers, the
popularity of presidential candidates, visitors' reactions to zoo exhibits, etc.), the type of scientificity proper to
psychoanalysis derives from the formulation of the psychoanalytic process in generici.e., abstract theoreticalterms.
Each moment or movement in analytic treatment can be understood in terms of identification, alienation,
separation, fantasy, and so on, each of these terms being formulated and developed within psychoanalytic theory.
This kind of formalizationwhich Lacan takes as far as providing a sort of algebra with which to formulate certain
aspects of analytic experi-

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ence (S1 and S2 standing for the most elementary matrix of language, for the subject split into conscious and
unconscious, a for the cause of desire, and so on), constituting a form of mathematization which is not
quantifiable, but provides restrictive "formulas" or formulations which reduce experience to its bare psychoanalytic
essentialsallows one to compare the various forms of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, predict their outcomes,
and critique their methods.
A critique of methods, however, requires a well-developed theory of the aims of analysis. Physics and chemistry
can do without aims. Game theorythe "conjectural science" with which Lacan most closely associates
psychoanalysisbegins with an aim, but a rather simplistic, unchanging one: winning. Psychoanalysis is a practice,
and as such requires a praxis whereby aims and theory constantly interact. This is what Lacan provides, and it is
quite rare in the history of psychoanalysis: a sustained attempt to examine ever further the aims of analysis on the
basis of advances in theory, and to develop ever further theorization on the basis of revised views of analysis' aims.
The aims of psychoanalysis have faded into the backgroundthey are considered too obvious and well known to
warrant discussion. To most analysts, psychoanalysis seeks to alleviate the patient's symptoms and readapt him or
her to social reality. Yet neither Freud nor Lacan ever adopts or endorses any such aims. Psychoanalysis' aims
have, to Lacan's mind, more to do with psychoanalytic theory itself and the patient's predicament. If the analysand
sustains that s/he never gets what s/he wants because s/he always does something to sabotage things, the knots in
his or her desire need to be undone. If that doesn't lead to satisfaction, perhaps that implies something about the
nature of desire itselfnamely, that desire has no object, pursuing instead its own maintenance and furtherance: more
desire, ever greater desire. Yet in fantasy, the analysand is fixated on a specific object which arouses his or her
desire. How is that fixation to be transformed? What is the analyst to aim at with regards to that object which
causes the analysand's desire: Putting a new object in its place (is it even substitutable?), i.e., maintaining the basic
structure of that fantasy while displacing its object, leaving intact the fixation? Changing the subject-object
relationship altogetheri.e., reconfiguring the fantasy? What does transforming or "traversing" fantasyputting the
subject in the place of the objectlead to? A desiring subject. And isn't that state of pure desirousness what is
required of the analyst in order to avoid the identification trap whereby the analysand identifies with the analyst
and tries to become like him or her?
By formulating fantasy as a relationship ( ) between the subject ( ) and that object (a) which causes his or her
desire ( a), Lacan is able to indicate how the analyst can elude the role of the all-knowing, judgmental

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