page_i < previous page page_i next page > Page i Reading Seminar XI < previous page page_i next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_i.html[10/20/2011 4:24:44 PM] page_ii < previous page page_ii next page > Page ii SUNY Series in Psychoanalysis and Culture Henry Sussman, Editor < previous page page_ii next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_ii.html[10/20/2011 4:24:45 PM] page_iii < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii 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 < previous page page_iii next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_iii.html[10/20/2011 4:24:45 PM] page_iv < previous page page_iv next page > Page iv 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 < previous page page_iv next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_iv.html[10/20/2011 4:24:46 PM] page_v < previous page page_v next page > Page v 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 < previous page page_v next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_v.html[10/20/2011 4:24:46 PM] page_vi < previous page page_vi next page > Page vi 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 < previous page page_vi next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_vi.html[10/20/2011 4:24:47 PM] page_vii < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii 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 < previous page page_vii next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_vii.html[10/20/2011 4:24:47 PM] page_ix < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix 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- < previous page page_ix next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_ix.html[10/20/2011 4:24:48 PM] page_x < previous page page_x next page > Page x 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 < previous page page_x next page > file:///C|/Users/shreesha/Desktop/New%20folder/files/page_x.html[10/20/2011 4:24:48 PM]

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

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