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Lordre symbolique au 21me sicle

o vient le titre du prochain Congrs de 2012. Lordre symbolique au 21me sicle. Il nest plus ce quil tait. Consquences pour la cure! Comment sinscrit-il dans la srie des titres des congrs? A Buenos Aires, il y a deux ans, Jacques-Alain Miller avait mis en forme logique la srie des titres, et retrac lhistoire dun programme merveilleux, bien pens ds le dbut. Il le mettait en forme laide de ternaires. Les trois derniers Congrs forment un ternaire particulier. Dabord en 2006, les Noms-du-Pre, ou plus exactement Le Nom du pre, sen passer, sen servir, Rome. Puis lobjet petit (a): Les objets petit (a) dans la cure psychanalytique, Buenos Aires en 2008. Et aujourdhui, Paris 2010, le binaire: Semblants et Sinthome. Comment repartirmaintenant? Il nous est apparu quil fallait repartir sur un ternaire solide. Aussi, aprs avoir atteint ce point de rel quest le Sinthome, la solution qui simposait tait de repartir dans le symbolique, ou lordre symbolique. Etant donn que nous avons, avec le ternaire prcdent, dj montr combien cet ordre symbolique est dglingu, il sagissait den dvelopper les consquences. Nous allons donc tourner autour de cette tche et resserrer notre propos sur les consquences pour la cure de la particularit de cet ordre symbolique. Resserrer, tourner autour, implique aussi la rptition, le tournage en rond. Nous reprendrons des lments de la fantaisie de Comandatuba, en 2004, qui renvoie elle-mme des lments du cours LAutre qui nexiste paset ses comits dthique. Ce tournage en rond, cest prcisment ce qui nous permet
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dapprofondir notre position. Cette position est double. Dune part, nous constatons la fragilit des fictions qui constituent notre monde. Aujourdhui prcisment, il y a une fiction qui prend un coup sur la tte, une fiction qui structure tout un monde. LEuro, lagent du chiffrage conomique dun continent, prend un grand coup sur la tte avec nos amis grecs. Cette question ne peut quintresser tout le monde puisque depuis de nombreuses annes, nos collgues outre-atlantique subissent le poids de cette monnaie assez survalue. Par quelles manigances va-t-on ramener la confiance? Nul ne semble vraiment le savoir et le Concile attendu bute sur les contradictions du signifiant-matre. Toujours pas de lieu do pourrait se lire vraiment la situation. Pourtant, malgr cette incertitude angoissante, nous montrerons dautre part, en quel sens il est possible de faire lloge du dficit du symbolique. Ce dficit symbolique, ces impasses, font que nous sommes tous dbiles. Cest bien pour cela que la psychanalyse et son discours peuvent venir notre secours.

Eloge du dsordre symbolique La dysfonction du symbolique a t inscrite au dbut du 20me sicle. Lacan a su faire valoir la contemporanit de Freud et de Russell. Frege avait permis de penser logiquement des objets aussi vastes que la liste de toutes les listes. Russell, distinguer celles qui se contiennent 14

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et celles qui ne se contiennent pas elles-mmes, a fait apercevoir une variante des paradoxes de linfini qui allait engendrer un monde. Celui-ci serait plus instable que tout ce que rvait lcriture conceptuelle de Frege. La rvolution logique du vingtime sicle est souvent dcrite sans faire le lien avec lcrit de Freud qui introduit le sicle: la Traumdeutung. Pourtant Lacan a fait voir leur profonde articulation. Le rve peut numrer tous les traits par lesquels le rveur reprend les descriptions finies de son monde. Ce que lon appelle les restes diurnes. Pour autant, lensemble du rve se contient-il lui-mme? Contient-il le rveur sous une reprsentation dfinie ? Le rveur se contient-il lui-mme ? Freud introduit un paradoxe particulier. Le rveur est partout et nulle part. Il est toutes les places mais aucune en particulier. Et surtout, quel que soit le rve, le rveur ne peut y tre sous la forme de la conscience du rve. Il y est sous la forme invente par Freud du dsir inconscient du rve. Disons le avec Jacques-Alain Miller, le sujet Freudien, lu par Lacan, est structur comme un ensemble de Russell. Il est pris dans un paradoxe fondamental. Il natteindra jamais une description dfinie de la jouissance qui puisse la contenir. Lacan oppose le rve de la conscience et le monde du rve proprement dit. Dans le rve, quelque soit la vivacit des perceptions, ou cause mme de lintensit de celles-ci ou de leur dformation, on peut dire la fois que le rveur est toutes les places, et mme noter que le rveur peut dire dans le rve ce nest quun rve. Dans les moments dangoisse, le rveur peut rver un tout petit peu plus loin, un court moment, tout en se disant ce nest quun rve, mais comme le note Lacan il ne se dit jamais malgr tout je suis la conscience de ce rve . Cest un rve nimplique pas je suis la conscience de ce rve . Puisque le rveur est toutes les places il ne peut pas noncer un je suis car le rve lui mme est un je suis, je suis le rve . Lexprience du rve, par son articulation entre visible et invisible, par limpossibilit de cette conscience dtre l, est justement proche de ce qui se produit dans la rencontre sexuelle. Lacan dira mme dans le texte sur lveil du printemps de Wedekind, que les garons nauraient aucun rapport avec les filles sils navaient pas les rves pour les guider. Il faut oser noncer une telle proposition lpoque de la dite libration sexuelle, et les rpter lpoque de lhyper-modernit o les petits garons regardent des films pornographiques ds lge de douze ans. Ils ont tous les renseignements. Lacan a nanmoins lide que quelque soit la dmocratisation de la pornographie, et le fait de mettre des corps fminins dans toutes les tenues et positions la disposition gnrale des populations, cela ne correspond pas lexprience de la sexualit. Sil ny avait pas le rve, au del de la jeune
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parque pornographique, nous naurions pas de mise en relation des deux sexes. En abolissant la distance entre la perception et le rveur, le rve introduit un monde o pourrait sapprocher ce que serait lenchevtrement des corps. Dans le rve prend forme ce qui est un mode darticulation entre la jouissance est invisible et le monde de la reprsentation. Il dsigne un passage de linvisible ce qui est enforme, qui dsigne ce qui nest justement pas la forme du corps. Lacan se sert du schma de la pulsion et de la distinction chez Freud entre le bord, la zone rogne, et la direction du mouvement pulsionnel, pour faire valoir le trajet pulsionnel, par o le bord satteint lui-mme. Lobjet nest que le parcours, il nest que le battement qui va permettre que le bord se satisfasse lui-mme, que la bouche se satisfasse elle-mme et le dtour par lenforme qui vient marquer lcart, le battement, le temps ncessaire ce que le sujet se frappe lui-mme et trouve sa jouissance. Lacan dira ensuite, considrer chacune des trois consistances le Rel, le Symbolique et lImaginaire, RSI, que lobjet (a) est au croisement des trois. Lobjet (a) est cet enforme aussi bien tenu entre les consistances RSI. Ces trois consistances, vous pouvez les mettre sous forme de triangle ou sous forme de noeuds. Lobjet coinc au centre est cet enforme serr qui se situe avant toute forme possible, pour marquer un semblant. Ce nest pas un semblant dtre. Il ruine toute perspective de ltre. Lobjet petit (a) est une exprience qui na pas dessence. Celui qui en fait lexprience est un sujet qui, comme dans le rve, est toutes les places. Limpossibilit de marquer sa place comme conscience du rve fait du rveur un sujet qui nest la place de personne. Cest lenvers de la fixation qui est vise par le crmonial pervers o le sujet tente par tous les moyens de se maintenir conscience de jouissance, de maintenir un scnario et de laccomplir en layant crit jusqu la dernire ligne. Le sujet essaye alors dviter de se trouver dans la zone du plus personne . Ltoffe du sujet qui se produit alors, nest pas la reprsentation, mais sa limite quimplique lirrductible de la jouissance. Cet irrductible se rpartit entre les restes auto-rotiques chez le sujet masculin et le pas tout dans la fonction phallique chez le sujet fminin. Je citerai un rve de fin danalyse chez un sujet fminin: un trou noir avec une bande qui le barre. Sur cette bande il est crit, ce qui est invisible cest ce que lon ne peut pas voir. Voil une tautologie . Cest le dernier mot, un point final. Elle pointe dans la direction de la tautologie du singulier. Une dimension sinthomatique se manifeste l, qui ne rentre pas facilement dans les petites cases des discours tablis et ne se prte pas plus au remde propos pour remdier linsuffisance des discours : le chiffrage. Lordre du discours est marqu dune faille, cest ce qui, 15

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selon la psychanalyse, ne cesse de scrire. Cest pourquoi, comme il a t mis en exergue lors du congrs de lAMP Comandatuba en 2004, la civilisation qui est la ntre consonne avec le discours analytique. Que ce soit par la faille dans lordre du rapport entre les sexes ou dans les impasses de la civilisation, le discours psychanalytique aborde lordre symbolique par son dfaut que mme la posie ne peut rmunrer. Devant la faille dans les semblants, qui sapprofondit, un double dsir se fait jour, selon la loi dairain du Surmoi. Dun ct un appel scuritaire envahissant et son corollaire: la mise en place dune socit de surveillance avec son panoptique fou. De lautre la fascination pour se vivre comme une machine enfin dlivre des semblants. Une logique implacable va de lacphale de Bataille lhomme neuronal de Changeux. Ce sont des tapes, dans la mise au point laide du discours de la science, de lhomme libr. Cest aussi un fantasme, dans la mesure o il rglerait le malaise dans le rapport sexuel. La consquence de cette libration du rapport lAutre et ses semblants, en est que le rle et la place du principe dautorit en gnral, et spcialement dans la cure, est atteint. Dans la psychanalyse, on ne peut pas sen tirer avec un supplment dordre, ni avec des semblants pompeux. La question se pose doublement pour le discours de la psychanalyse. Comment un psychanalyste qui ne saurait pas sorienter dans la socit o il vit et travaille, dans les dbats qui agitent celle-ci, serait-il apte prendre en charge les destines de linstitution analytique?1 Rien de plus actuel que la grande ide que Lacan se faisait du psychanalyste en 1953, et linjonction quil lui adresse: Quil connaisse bien la spire o son poque lentrane dans luvre continue de Babel, et quil sache sa fonction dinterprte dans la discorde des langages. () Puisque la psychanalyse est au 21e sicle une question de socit, un problme de civilisation, il y a un choix forc () Cela veut dire: tmoigner en acte de notre position, comme psychanalystes, non pas seulement dans la cure, mais dans la cit.2 Cest partir de son ancrage dans le nouvel ordre symbolique que lanalyste saura faire usage des signifiants matres pour pouvoir occuper la place dun partenaire qui a chance de rpondre. Il lui faut tenir compte des impasses de la civilisation, ce que Lacan appelle en 1953, la discorde des langages. Le discours de la psychanalyse se singularise au regard de ce que Lacan appelait la politique de la nvrose . Alors que les autres discours, spcialement la religion, nont compt que sur le Nom du Pre, la psychanalyse a ajout le phallus. Cela dplace la place du pre. Or sil y a quelque chose qui caractrise le phallus [cest] dtre assurment ce dont ne sort aucune parole. Et au sein mme de lquivalence entre Phallus et NomL o r d r e s y m b o l i q u e au 2 1 m e s i c l e

du-Pre lorsque lhystrique contemporaine appelle le Pre: ce dont il sagit cest que quelquun parle. Ainsi dfinie, cette fonction du pre devient produit du discours analytique. Si la psychanalyse sait inventer, dans la discorde de lordre symbolique contemporain, comment rester le partenaire qui a la chance de rpondre dans la cure, alors elle aura accompli son programme.

Le savoir- jouissance, bouchon de la cure La faille dans le savoir trouve au 21e sicle une forme particulire accentue par la dtermination de la contribution par la science. Une sociologue dcrit ainsi la faille de la subjectivisation du savoir: Lhomme dmocratique veut soumettre toute vrit et toute dcision sa critique, mais, en mme temps, il est condamn croire() des millions de choses sur la foi dautrui . Notre autonomie intellectuelle na jamais t aussi affirme, mais, en mme temps, nos jugements reposent de plus en plus sur la confiance que nous sommes contraints daccorder autrui. Il ne sagit pas seulement de la recherche scientifique et de sa spcialisation accrue. Le progrs scientifico-technique rend lorganisation de la vie quotidienne rapidement obsolte et dpasse les capacits de comprhension de la majorit dentre nous. En sorte que nous dpendons plus que jamais troitement des autres, alors que nous ne cessons daffirmer notre irrductible individualit et notre droit absolu lautonomie intellectuelle 3. La voie de lgalitarisme contemporain avec son exigence de transparence a spcialement touch le statut du sujet suppos savoir dans lexprience de la psychanalyse. Devant la concurrence du modle cognitivismecomportemental rduisant le thrapeute un technicien au service de la cure de son client , la psychanalyse amricaine veut renouveler les semblants de la psychanalyse en proposant une cure strictement dmocratique, rciproque, dlivre de toute autorit suppose. Judith Beck, fille du fondateur des thrapies cognito-comportementales, donne la prsentation suivante de la relation thrapeutique. Les thrapeutes collaborent avec leurs clients (ils prennent des dcisions communes comme sur lemploi du temps de sance), ils demandent un retour ( quavez-vous pens de la sance ? Voulez-vous faire diffremment la prochaine fois ? )Lalliance est renforce lorsque les clients voient que leur thrapeute est utile, cest--dire lorsque les clients se voient eux-mmes rsoudre leurs problmes et se sentent mieux4 . Nous trouvons une version clinique de lgalistarisme californien chez Owen Renik. La construction dun ordre symbolique se fait partir dun savoir explicite vrifi par une exprience de jouissance. Le gain de savoir 16

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est en continuit avec le plus-de-jouir. Lanalyste interprte son analysante, dprime chronique, un souvenir denfance comme autocritique de faon non-ncessaire, pessimiste dans son interprtation des interactions sociales sous-estimant lintrt que lui portent les gens . Il lui explique les raisons de son interprtation quelle critique. Lanalyste est comme son pre, incapable de respecter son point de vue, ayant besoin davoir raison. Lanalyste conteste linterprtation de lanalysante et lui demande si elle pense rellement cela alors quil la considre, elle, comme lexperte sur son enfance, et non pas [lui]. Lanalyste et lanalysant discutent ensuite de ce point : qui est lexpert ? Lanalysante est sarcastique, dit navoir pas rellement envie de parler et se tait. Elle poursuit: Elle pense que je crois important pour un analyste dtre ouvert et non-autoritaire, que jessaie de ltre avec elle et que cela laide. Mais au-del, elle pense que jai un intrt personnel ntre pas peru comme dominant et partial. Ceci peut interfrer quelquefois sur ma capacit dcoute et me conduire finalement faire la chose que jessaie dviter. Lanalyste coute cette sortie de lanalysante et rpond que cest trs intressant et un peu embarrassant. Ravie dtre entendue, lanalysante confirme ses sentiments transfrentiels positifs envers lanalyste: Elle est nerveuse dtre seule dans la pice avec moi, en ressentant que je suis un type bien (nice guy) et quelle maime bien. Elle sait quil y a quelque chose de sexuel l-dedans. Nous constatons que ce qui met un terme la rivalit imaginaire dans ces sances est quelles sachvent sur un mode de satisfaction. Renik parle l dune preuve de ralit, entre lanalyste et lanalysant et dveloppe une critique de la ralit unique et objectivable, alors que la ralit de la sance doit tre construite. Il faut donc obtenir le consensus et laccord de lanalysant le point crucial de lpreuve de ralit est que le patient puisse dcider de son point de vue de ce quest la ralit. () Un patient prend en compte le point de vue de lanalyste, mais ne doit pas sy soumettre comme faisant autorit (). La mise en avant de lpreuve de ralit dans la cure comme processus construit, permet aussi de rconcilier le transfert rptition et le transfert actualis dans la sance. Il fait mme rfrence un processus quasi hegelien pour sortir de limaginaire et attendre une dimension symbolique analyste et patient trouvent leur voie en ragissant lun avec lautre, en se rpondant comme thse et antithse, cheminant au moyen dun processus de ngociation.5 Un autre exemple clinique est construit selon la mme mthode mais il va plus loin dans la mise en scne de la transparence analytique. Ann a eu une mre aimante, mais qui la contrlait et ne tolrait pas les manifestations dindpendance, et la contradiction de la part de ses enfants. Nous avons donc, Ann et moi, discut de
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la possibilit que sa difficult critiquer son mari tait en relation avec un sentiment de danger appris auprs de sa mre. () Un jour o son mari stait dsintress delle, Ann avait souponn quelle y tait sans doute pour quelque chose. Lanalyste lui dit: Je suis surpris. Quest-ce qui vous donne limpression que cest votre faon de parler qui a dtourn votre mari ?. Ann rpondit avec une lgre irritation: Je ne pense pas que vous soyez surpris, Owen. Je pense que vous avez une ide de ce qui se passe. Pourquoi ne pas dire ce que vous pensez?. Mon hypothse tait quAnn avait une fois de plus ressenti le besoin de se critiquer plutt que de critiquer son mari (). Elle rflchit: Cela se tient, dit elle, je peux comprendre votre faon de procder. Mais pourquoi ne mavez-vous pas expliqu votre souci? Vous vous tes au contraire prsent comme confus et ce ntait pas rellement vrai sans mentionner que cest contre les rgles que vous mavez exposes de rendre votre pense explicite de faon ce que nous puissions en discuter sil le faut. Nen faisons pas une affaire, mais pourquoi dconner comme a?. Le jour suivant, Ann commena par dire combien la sance prcdente lui avait t utile Ce qui lintressait vraiment, plus elle y rflchissait, ctait que javais t intimid par elle suffisamment concern par sa dsapprobation pour mexpliquer. Ann poursuivit son laboration sur la faon dont il lui avait t utile de reconnatre quelle pouvait, par inadvertance, intimider dautres gens. () Elle et son mari en parlrent longuement cette nuit-l et aprs cela ils firent lamour plus intimement et passionnment quils ne lavaient jamais fait depuis des annes. Cet exemple sachve lui aussi sur une satisfaction. Nous voyons bien laspect dchanges imaginaires, et lempowerment du sujet se vrifie par lexprience de satisfaction. Dans cette perspective, le sujet suppos savoir ne cesse pas moins dexister. Il est vcu comme un sujet suppos savoir comment mieux maximiser les embarras de son rapport la jouissance. Lintersubjectivit se dmarque de la tradition et consonne avec lair du temps. Elle est rvisionniste, nadmet pas les vaches sacres et les grands anciens. Elle est post-moderne, dmocratique, conversationnelle. Eloigne des conflits thoriques lis au statut de la mtapsychologie, elle est oriente par lvaluation dun rsultat obtenir. Elle savance comme a-thorique. Un tel courant a des rfrences profondment amricaines. Il redonne une identit aux praticiens soumis de fortes attaques dans la civilisation contemporaine mfiante lgard de tous les savoirs et de toute diffrence de statuts accorde aux experts. Le sujet auquel sadresse lexprience a des attentes rationnelles. Il cherche maximiser son savoir sur lui-mme et le monde. Il a le dsir dapprendre, le need to know. Cest ce qui remplace, dans cette perspective, le sujet suppos savoir. Ce savoir se retrouve moyen 17

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de jouissance car par ce savoir le sujet cherche aussi maximiser son gain libidinal, amliorer sa satisfaction sexuelle, ou lestime de soi. Disons quil cherche maximiser des gains rels, symboliques et imaginaires. Cest un homo economicus libidinalis. Le bonheur utilitariste et fonctionnel quadmet apparemment O. Renik comme hypothse est en accord avec une fibre de notre civilisation. Le nivellement de terrain quil accomplit, a dj t interprt par un de ses collgues comme faisant partie du Zeitgeist. Celle-ci promeut en effet lide que la seule justification dun choix relve de la volont dune plus grande efficacit. Par contre, notre perspective met en cause lide mme de Zeitgeist. Il ny a plus de Zeitgeist, car le Zeit a rompu avec le Sein. Il ny a plus dUn. Nous avons affaire, dans la globalisation, un monde du morcel, du pas-tout.

Les restes didentification, et lirrductible du sinthome A suivre notre voie, telle quen tmoignent ceux qui se sont exprims dans le Congrs, en prsentant leur voie vers la psychanalyse, ne sommes nous pas alls plus loin que nos collgues IPA en sparant la position de lanalysant-psychanalyste de la cure elle-mme ? Selon la conception que lon se fait de la fin de la cure, la position de lanalyste diverge. La traverse du deuil du pre et de lirrductible de la castration dfinit le pessimisme actif de Freud. La sparation davec le bon objet permet, selon Mlanie Klein, de supporter la sparation davec ce partenaire particulier quest le psychanalyste; traverse de la position dpressive pense t-elle. Notre horizon est celui dun analyste vide, qui se tient carreau de sa jouissance, mais qui sait, au del du trou dans lordre symbolique, sinstaller dans la position de celui qui peut dranger la dfense. Cest en le disant sur des pates de colombe que nous pouvons penser le psychanalyste comme psychanalyste trauma. Cest une ascse. Aussi grande que celle de faire le mort, ou celle de navoir aucun souvenir, intrt ou mmoire. Cest lascse dtre ce qui excde la reprsentation et le sujet stratifi de la langue. La neutralit analytique relve du principe de prcaution. Le psychanalyste trauma, par contre, est une position du psychanalyste o il accepte de prendre des risques, calculs bien sr, et ne pas se soumettre entirement aux interdictions protectricesou mortifiantes, sans pour autant tomber dans lactivisme thrapeutique. Le psychanalyste qui se donne pour but de dranger la dfense , de faire trauma , tmoigne du refus de considrer son espace de discours comme celui dune norme sans force . Il accepte de se mettre en jeu et nest pas risk adverse, condition quil refuse du mme
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mouvement, le pouvoir des semblants. Il sait, par lexprience dune psychanalyse mene son terme, quil ny a pas dordre symbolique. Ce nest pas une donne. Ce dont tmoigne le dsordre symbolique, cest du rel de lalangue. Cest partir de la mise nu de ce rel quun ordre symbolique peut se rtablir. Le parcours dune psychanalyse sinaugure par la mise en place de lInconscient transfrentiel par le lien associatif entre deux signifiants S1S2. Il se termine par un horizon o les signifiants matres du sujet sisolent des multiples liens quils avaient tisss. Ils prennent une dimension relle. Leur retour dans les chanes identificatoires est rendu impossible, S1 se retrouve coup de S2. Dans cette perspective, il restera toujours des signifiants qui ne seront pas assez seuls et nous nattendons pas que tous les signifiants matres dun sujet soient ainsi produits. Il suffit que quelques-uns le soient suffisamment. Un sujet, lors des premires sances, voque les trois gnrations de dsir qui ont provoqu lembarras dans lequel il se trouve. Dabord la msalliance du grandpre dont les enfants embarrassent la famille. Puis une mre qui maltraite ses propres enfants. Enfin, lui, le fils, qui se retrouve divorc la quarantaine avec la ferme intention de ne pas faire souffrir sa femme alors quil se produit, bien sr, exactement linverse. Il faudra au cours de lanalyse dmler cette pelote embrouille. Les signifiants matres circulent entre les gnrations au del des individus. Lacan pouvait parler de la transmission dune gifle entre plusieurs gnrations6. Les produire consiste dlivrer le sujet de sa navet et de sa perplexit et parcourir le labyrinthe de jouissance o se nouent la rptition, la culpabilit, lagressivit, la dpression, lagitation perdue. Il faudra isoler les signifiants familiaux qui, dans leur contingence, contribuent la formation et la stabilisation des modes de satisfaction qui constituent le fantasme. On passe ainsi du droulement de la chane signifiante aux relations du sujet avec les objets de sa jouissance S/a Le passage se fait grce la double fonction du psychanalyste. Il est, dune part ladresse des demandes du sujet, dautre part place de lobjet qui dtiendrait la clef de la jouissance impossible aS/. Lidentification dun mode de jouir nest pas identification un mode de jouir. Cest ce que nous apprend la fin du texte sur la Direction de la cure7. Alors que la psychanalyse de lpoque visait lidentification du sujet son fantasme, Lacan montre comment le sujet est renvoy par la pulsion la contingence de lamour. Le fantasme peut se traverser. Lidentification dun mode de jouir modifie ce que nous entendons par identification. Comme le montre le sminaire du mme nom, le dveloppement dune srie o se mlent signifiants et valeur de jouissance: (1+(a)), permet de dfinir une valeur de 18

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jouissance pour toute la srie. Cest par l que Lacan a clair les dbats o sembourbait la psychanalyse entre le transfert rptition de la chane signifiante et le transfert au prsent, articul la mise en jeu du fantasme dans la ralit de la sance. Elle ne se fait pas sans restes. Le mouvement de la psychanalyse est double. Dune part il autorise le desserage de lidentification aux signifiants matres S1, et dautre part il permet le serrage dun trou. Prenons lexemple dun sujet marqu par la scne o il surprend les bats parentaux. Il garde le souvenir dune phrase nigmatique de la mre tu reviendras lorsque le ciel sera violet. Les ressources de lquivoque de la phrase lont longtemps laiss errer de lnamoration de jeunes filles androgynes la contemplation fascine de sexes dvoils de faon pornographique. Combien de temps la fixation scopique du symptme le maintiendra labri de la constatation quil nest jamais revenu de cette assignation par la femme interdite, inaccessible ? Du signifiant matre au trou dans le langage, le passage ne se fait pas sans restes. A mesure que le sujet droule les diffrentes identifications qui ont tram son histoire, il se rvle que lidentification est non seulement multiple mais quelle est impossible. Personne ne peut sidentifier son propre inconscient. Le sujet peut rver en isoler la formule. Nous savons depuis la tentative faite par Serge Leclaire les limites de cette entreprise8 . Il avait tent de rduire son inconscient sa racine Poordjeli et par l de sortir de lalination9. La sparation viendra du ct de lobjet(a) comme trou de la lettre dans la mdiocrit du sens, au sens de Tlvision10. Le trou dans la langue du sujet se produit dans la cure analytique par son versant dexprience logique. Lacan isole la fonction logique de la lettre comme argument dune fonction, F(x), comme celle dun trou dans le langage. Il voque le pouvoir de soufflage de lcriture. Si dans Tous les animaux sont mortels, vous soufflez les animaux et vous mettez la place le comble de lcrit, cest--dire une lettre toute simple11. Cette conception de lcriture nest ni celle dune criture comme impression ni celle dune homologie des deux dimensions de la parole et du langage. Il faut commencer par dire pour que puisse se creuser le trou, par la rptition. On ne peut commencer par crire au sens de la littrature. Dans ses confrences amricaines, Lacan peut dire lauto analyse de Freud tait une writing-cure et je crois que cest pour a que a a rat. Ecrire est diffrent de parler. Lire est diffrent dentendre12. Le trou ainsi creus dans les noncs du sujet nest pas suffisant, il faut encore que le sujet plonge dans le trou ouvert dans et par linconscient. Lacan parle cette occasion de trou du souffleur. Aprs avoir voqu lacte analytique, Lacan souligne Il ny a passage lacte que comme un plongeon dans le trou du souffleur, le soufL o r d r e s y m b o l i q u e au 2 1 m e s i c l e

fleur tant bien sr linconscient du sujet 13. Lanalyste, dans la cure, marque la place de ce trou et le voile: a>S/. Lopration logique dans la cure ne peut se rduire une criture de fonctions de jouissance comme dans une sorte de Begriffschrift psychanalytique14 . Certes, cette criture fait apparatre le trou dans les noncs.x linstar de celui que produit largument de la fonction, mais le sujet peut rester sur le bord. Dans sa srie de vingt confrences France Culture, JacquesAlain Miller explorait ce qui se produit lorsque les cures durent longtemps mais o le sujet ne plonge pas dans le trou du souffleur. Il condensait lobstacle sur lequel des tmoignages de passe avaient but. Celui qui tait le fils maman, devenu homme femmes, continue vouloir sduire lEcole dans la procdure. Celle qui tait la fille de son pre et repoussait sa mre avait aim le passeur mle et dtest le passeur femme. Lhomme marqu par le secret familial transporte avec lui une atmosphre de clandestinit dans le dispositif. Celle qui a t marque par la solitude dans lenfance veut se faire adopter par lEcole et y trouver sa nouvelle famille15 . Cette dclinaison des restes montre la prsence du fantasme en abme. Comment peut alors se produire le plongeon ? Lacan donne une indication trs prcise: il faut que le sujet dcomplte le symptme de lAutre. Il faut avoir t form comme analyste. Ce nest que lorsquil est form que, de temps en temps, a lui chappe ; form cest avoir vu comment le symptme, a se complte16 . Cest par lincompltude que se produira le saut dans le trou. Cela suppose que soient franchis les restes didentification fantasmatiques et les restes didentification lanalyste. Le principe du ratage de lacte analytique rside en dernire instance dans lidentification lanalyste. Elle se donne sous deux formes distinctes. Il y a dune part lidentification lanalyste comme adhrence au psychanalyste qui a t linstrument de lopration analytique. Le sujet devient analyste comme le veut son analyste ou comme lui. Lidentification lanalyste se fait lombre de ces jeux narcissiques o lun est limage de lautre. Identifications fantasmatiques et narcissiques se recouvrent comme dans les jeux de la rive avec londe dont senchantaient les potes maniristes, nous disait Lacan 17. Lidentification lanalyste porte aussi la trace de ladhrence un idal ou une norme de ce que serait lanalyste . Elle empche labandon de cette perspective. Leffort de la commission de la Passe est de cesser de concevoir lexistence dun analyste comme exception une rgle mais partir de lexception, de dchiffrer une facette de ce quest un analyste. On part alors non pas de ce qui est commun ou courant mais plutt de ce qui est inhabituel. Cest en prenant ce point de vue que lon 19

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peut dire que Cromwell a t jug lAnglais le plus typique de son temps simplement parce quil a t le plus bizarre18 . Cette logique de la singularit est celle o se mettent en jeu le vide et la jouissance, au del des signifiants matres qui font la loi pour chacun. Cest maintenir une topologie qui diffrencie les vrais et les faux trous que peut rester ouverte la singularit du mode de jouir fondement de lordre symbolique de Lalangue, corps par corps. Le mode de jouir tient au corps sans pour autant sy rduire. A rpondre langoisse qui nous saisit, nous avons une chance

de rpondre linvitation que fait Dmocrite dans la lecture que Lacan nous propose dans Encore et dans lEtourdit. Latome de Dmocrite, comme le sinthome de Lacan, est la fois corps et lment de signifiance volant. La jouissance du corps est la fois corps et vide pas plus corps que vide19. Cela nest pas le mot de la fin mais larticulation dune topologie produire, celle de la place de plus personne. Eric Laurent, le 22 juillet 2010.

1 Miller, J-A., Journal des Journes 78 2 Lacan, J., Ecrits, p.321 3 Schnapper D, extrait de la leon inaugurale des Rencontres de Ptrarque, lemonde.fr le 14 juillet 2010. 4B  eck J, Cognitive behavior Therapy: Myths and Realities, 12 juillet 2010, www.huffingtonpost.com. 5R  enik, O., The Perils of Neutrality , Psychoanalytic Quaterly, LXV, 1996, pp.495-517; traduit par G. Le Gaufey et al. 6L  acan J, La psychanalyse et son enseignement (1957) in Ecrits, 1966, le Seuil p.448-449 7 Lacan J, La direction de la cure et les principes de son pouvoir (1958), in Ecrits, 1966, le Seuil p.639-642 8 Leclaire S, Le rve la licorne, in Psychanalyser, le Seuil 1968, p.117 9 Lacan J, Position de lInconscient, (1964), in Ecrits, 1966 p.842 10 Lacan J, Tlvision (1973), in Autres Ecrits, le Seuil 2001 p.544 11 L  acan J, le Sminaire, livre XVIII, Dun discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, le Seuil, 2006, p.81-82 12  Lacan J, Yale University 24 novembre 1975, in Scilicet n 7, Seuil, 1976, p.36

13 Id, p.35 Lacan J, le Sminaire, livre XV, Lacte psychanalytique, 31 janvier 14  1968, indit. 15 M  iller J-A, confrences France Culture, Histoires de psychanalyse, 2008, indites. 16 L  acan J, Yale University 24 novembre 1975, in Scilicet n 7, Seuil, 1976 p.35 17 L  acan J, in Ecrits, 1966, p.681. Prenons lexemple suivant o lon voit que joncs et songes sont en miroir : Lombre de cette fleur vermeille/ et celle des joncs pendants/ paraissaient tre l dedans/ les songes de leau qui sommeille. Tristan lHermitte,Promenoir de deux amants, in Les Amours, (1638) 18 Geertz Cl, (1973), Bali, Interprtation dune culture, Gallimard, p. 19 L  acan J, Encore, p.66-67 et lEtourdit in Autres crits, le Seuil 2001, p.494. On lira le commentaire que propose Barbara Cassin de la rfrence de Lacan Dmocrite dans Il ny a pas de rapport sexuel, Deux leons sur lEtourdit de Lacan, de Badiou A, et Cassin B, Fayard 2010

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The Symbolic Order in the Twenty-First Century

here does the title for the next WAP Congress in 2012 come from? The Symbolic Order in the Twenty-First Century. Its not what it used to be! Consequences for the treatment. Two years ago in Buenos Aires, Jacques-Alain Miller put a series of titles into logical form, and retraced the history of a wonderful programme that had been well thought through from the outset1. He used ternaries to give it form. The three last Congresses form a particular ternary. Firstly in 2006, the Names-of-the-Father, or more exactly The Name of the Father, Going Without it, Making Use of It, in Rome. Then, the object a: The Objects a in Psychoanalytic Treatment, in Buenos Aires in 2008. And today, in Paris 2010, the binary: Semblants and Sinthome. What can we begin again with now? It seemed to us that we had to begin again from a solid ternary. After having reached this point of the real which is the Sinthome, the obvious solution was to begin again with the symbolic, or the symbolic order. Since, with the preceding ternary, we had already shown to what extent this symbolic order is kaput, it was a matter of developing its consequences. We are thus going to turn around this task and concentrate our comments on the consequences of the particularity of this symbolic order for the treatment. Concentrating on it, turning around it, also implies repetition, turning in circles. We will be taking up the elements of the fantasia of Comandatuba, in 2004, which itself refers to elements of the lesson The Other that Doesnt Exist and its Ethics Committees. This tur-

ning in circles is precisely what allows us to deepen our position. This position is twofold. On the one hand, we note the fragility of the fictions that constitute our world. Today precisely, there is a fiction that has taken a blow to the head, a fiction that structures a whole world. The Euro, the economic ciphering agent of a continent, has taken a blow to the head with our Greek friends. This question cannot but interest everybody since for a number of years our colleagues on the other side of the Atlantic have been subject to the weight of this rather overvalued currency. By means of what sleight of hand are we going to bring back confidence? Nobody really seems to know and the long-awaited Council keeps running into the contradictions of the master-signifier. There is still nowhere from where the situation can be read. And yet, despite this anguishing incertitude, we will be showing in what sense it is possible to speak in praise of the symbolics deficit. This symbolic deficit, these impasses, mean that we are all feeble minded. It is for this very reason that psychoanalysis and its discourse can come to our aid.

In praise of the symbolic disorder. The dysfunction of the symbolic was registered at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lacan emphasised the contemporaneity of Freud and Russell. Frege had allowed for objects as vast as the list of all the lists to be thought through in logical terms. By distinguishing 21

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those that contain themselves from those that dont, Russell made a variation of the paradoxes of infinity appear that would generate a whole world, but a world that would be more unstable than anything Freges conceptual writing had dreamed of. The logical revolution of the twentieth century is often described without making the link with the text from Freud that ushers in the century: the Traumdeutung. However, Lacan showed their profound articulation. The dream can list all the traits by means of which the dreamer takes up the finite descriptions of his world: what are called the days residues. Does the set of the dream contain itself for all that? Does it contain the dreamer under a definite representation? Does the dreamer contain himself? Freud introduced a particular paradox. The dreamer is everywhere and nowhere. He is in all the places but none in particular. And above all, whatever the dream may be, the dreamer cannot be there in the form of the dreams consciousness. He is there in the form invented by Freud: the unconscious desire of the dream. As Jacques-Alain Miller says, the Freudian subject, read by Lacan, is structured like Russells set, caught in the fundamental paradox. He will never attain a definite description of the jouissance, a description that would contain it. Lacan contrasts the dream of consciousness with the world of the dream itself. In the dream, however vivid the perceptions may be, or even on account of their intensity or their distortion, we can say that the dreamer is in all the places at once, and at the same time note that the dreamer can say in the dream this is only a dream. At anguishing moments, the dreamer can dream a little bit further for an instant and at the same time say to himself this is only a dream, but as Lacan points out, he never says after all, I am the dreams consciousness. Its a dream does not imply I am the dreams consciousness. As the dreamer is in all the places, he cannot utter an I am since the dream itself is an I am, I am the dream. The experience of the dream, by its articulation of the visible and invisible, by the impossibility of this consciousness of being there, is very close to what happens in the sexual encounter. Lacan even said in his text on Wedekinds Spring Awakening, that boys wouldnt have any kind of relation with girls if they didnt have their dreams to guide them 2.You have to be daring to make such a proposition during the era of sexual liberation, and then to repeat it in the era of hyper-modernity where little boys watch pornographic films from the age of twelve and have access to all the information. Nevertheless, Lacan had the idea that whatever the degree of democratisation of pornography, of putting womens bodies in all possible positions and garments at the general disposal of all the poT h e S y m b o l i c O r d e r i n t h e T w e n t y- F i r s t Ce n t u r y

pulations, this does not correspond with the experience of sexuality. If it werent for the dream, beyond the pornographic version of La jeune parque, there would be no way of placing the two sexes in relation. In abolishing the distance between perception and the dreamer, the dream introduces a world where a possible mingling of bodies can be approached. In the dream, a mode of articulation between jouissance is invisible and the world of representation takes shape. It designates a passage from the invisible to what is in-form, designating what is precisely not the form of the body. Lacan makes use of the schema of the drive and Freuds distinction between the rim, the erogenous zone, and the direction of the drives movement, to emphasise the drives trajectory, whereby the rim attains itself. The object is only the path, it is only the pulsation that will allow the rim to satisfy itself, the mouth to satisfy itself. It is only the detour by way of the in-form that comes to mark the gap, the beating, the time necessary for the subject to strike himself and find his jouissance. Then, considering each of the three consistencies of the Real, the Symbolic and the Imaginary, RSI, Lacan says that the object a lies at the crossing point of the three. The object a is this in-form held between the consistencies RSI. These three consistencies can be placed in the form of a triangle or in the form of knots. The object wedged in the middle is this squeezed in-form which is situated before any possible form, to mark a semblant. This is not a semblant of Being. It destroys any perspective of Being. The object a is an experience that has no essence. He who experiences it is a subject who, as in the dream, is standing in all the places. The impossibility of marking out ones place as the consciousness of the dream makes of the dreamer a subject that is in the place of no one. This is the inverse of the fixation that the perverse ceremony aims at where the subject attempts by any means possible to maintain himself as the consciousness of jouissance, to maintain a scenario and accomplish it by having written it out right to the last line. The subject tries to avoid finding himself in the zone of No One Anymore [Plus Personne]3 . The fabric of the subject which is thus produced is not representation but its limit, which implies the irreducible of jouissance. This irreducible is divided up into the auto-erotic remainders for the masculine subject and the not all in the phallic function for the feminine subject. I will quote a dream from the end of analysis of a feminine subject: there is a black hole with a strip barring it. On this strip is written: what is invisible is what cant be seen. Here is a tautology. This is the last word, a full stop. It points in the direction of the tautology of the singular. A sinthomatic dimension manifests itself here. It does not easily enter into the little boxes of es22

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tablished discourse any more than it lends itself to the remedy proposed to make up for the insufficiency of the discourses: ciphering. The order of discourse is marked by a flaw and, according to psychoanalysis, this does not stop writing itself. This is why, as was emphasised during the 2004 WAP Congress in Comandatuba, our civilisation is consonant with the analytic discourse. Whether this is in the flaw in the order of the relation between the sexes or in the impasses of civilisation, psychoanalytic discourse broaches the symbolic order by its fault, that even poetry cannot put paid to. Faced with the flaw in the semblants, which is deepening, a twofold desire has come to light in accordance with the iron law of the Superego. On the one hand, an invasive call for security and its corollary: the installation of a society of surveillance with its crazy panoptic. And on the other, the fascination for living like a machine so as to be delivered from semblants. An implacable logic takes us from Batailles Acphale to Changeuxs Neuronal Man4 . These are the different stages in the fine-tuning of liberated man with the aid of the discourse of science. It is also a fantasy, to the extent that it regulates the malaise in the sexual relation. The consequence of this liberation from the relation to the Other and its semblants is that the role and the place of the principle of authority in general is undermined, and specially in the treatment. In psychoanalysis, we cannot get out of it by increased order, nor by means of pompous semblants. The question is doubly posed for psychoanalytic discourse. How can a psychoanalyst who does not know how to orient himself in the society where he lives and works, in the debates that stir it, have the capacity to take charge of the destiny of the analytic institution?5 There is nothing more current than the grand idea that Lacan had of the psychoanalyst in 1953 and the injunction that he addressed to him:  et him be well acquainted with the whorl into which L his era draws him in the ongoing enterprise of Babel, and let him be aware of his function as an interpreter in the strife of languages6. Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, psychoanalysis has been a question of society, a problem of civilisation, there is a forced choice [...]. This implies testifying, in act, to our position as psychoanalysts, not only in the treatment, but in also in the city. It is from his implantation in the new symbolic order that the analyst will find out how to make use of master signifiers so as to be able to occupy the place of the partner who has a chance of responding. He will have to take into account the impasses in civilisation, which Lacan called in 1953, the strife of languages.
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The psychoanalytic discourse is distinguished with regard to what Lacan called the politics of neurosis. Whereas the other discourses, especially religion, relied on the Name-of-the-Father, psychoanalysis added the phallus. This displaced the place of the father. Now, if there is something that characterises the phallus [it is] assuredly its being that from which no speech emerges.7 And, at the very heart of the equivalence between the Phallus and the Name-of-the-Father when the contemporary hysteric calls upon the Father: what it is at stake is that someone speaks8 . Defined as such, this function of the father becomes a product of analytic discourse. If, in the discordance of the contemporary symbolic order, psychoanalysis knows how to invent a way of remaining the partner who has a chance of responding in the treatment, then it will have accomplished its programme.

Knowledge-jouissance, a plug in the treatment In the twenty-first century, the flaw in knowledge has found a form that is particularly accentuated by the contribution of science. One sociologist describes the flaw in the subjectivisation of knowledge as follows:  emocratic man wants to submit any truth and any D decision to his criticism, but at the same time, he is condemned to believe [...] millions of things based on the others faith. We have never been so assertive of our intellectual autonomy, but at the same time, our judgements depend more and more on the confidence we are forced to have in our fellow man. It is not just a question of scientific research and its increasing specialisation. Scientific and technical progress rapidly renders the organisation of daily life obsolete and, for most of us, goes way beyond our capacities of comprehension. As such, we narrowly depend more than ever on others, whereas we are ceaselessly affirming our irreducible individuality and our absolute right to intellectual autonomy. 9 The path of contemporary egalitarianism, with its demands for transparency, has especially afflicted the status of the subject supposed to know in the experience of psychoanalysis. Faced with competition from the cognitive behavioural model reducing the therapist to a technician who is at the service of the treatment of his client, American psychoanalysis wants to renew the semblants of psychoanalysis by proposing a strictly democratic, reciprocal treatment, freed from any supposed authority. Judith Beck, the daughter of the founder of the cognitive behavioural therapies, gives the following presentation of the therapeutic relation: 23

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 herapists work collaboratively with clients (maT king joint decisions such as how to spend the therapy hour), ask for feedback (What did you think of the session? Anything you want to do differently next time?)... The alliance becomes significantly strengthened when clients see that their therapist is helpful, that is, when clients see themselves solving their problems and feeling better.10 We can find a clinical version of Californian egalitarianism with Owen Renik. The construction of a symbolic order is achieved on the basis of an explicit knowledge confirmed by an experience of jouissance. The gain in knowledge is in continuity with surplus jouissance. The analyst interprets a childhood memory for his chronically depressed analysand, as unnecessarily self-critical and pessimistic in her interpretation of social interactions, and underestimates peoples interest in her. He explains to her the reasons for his interpretation, which she criticises. The analyst is like her father, unable to respect her point of view, needing to be right. The analyst contests the analysands interpretation and asks her if she really thinks this even though he consider[s] her the expert on her childhood and not him 11. The analyst and analysand then discuss this point: who is the expert? The analysand is sarcastic, says she doesnt really feel like talking and stops talking. She goes on:  he thinks I do believe its important for an analyst S to be open and non-authoritarian, that I try to be that way with her, and that its very helpful. But besides that, she thinks I have a personal stake in not being seen as domineering and unfair [...] and that gets in the way of my being able to listen to her sometimes. So, in a way I can wind up doing the very thing Im trying to avoid. The analyst listens to this output from the analysand and replies that is very interesting and a little embarrassing. Delighted to have been heard, the analysand confirms her positive transferential feelings for the analyst: It makes her nervous to be alone in this room with me, feeling like Im a nice guy and she likes me. She knows its about sex, somehow.12 Note that what brings a halt to the imaginary rivalry in these sessions is that they end on a mode of satisfaction. Renik speaks here of reality testing between the analyst and analysand and develops a critique of reality taken as unique and objective, whereas the reality of the session has to be constructed. It is thus necessary to reach a consensus and have the agreement of the analysand,
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 he crux of reality testing is that the patient reaches t decisions about his or her own view of reality. [...] a patient takes the analysts view into consideration, but does not defer to it as authoritative13 . The emphasis on reality testing in the treatment as a constructed process allows for a reconciliation of the transference of repetition with the transference activated in the session. He even makes reference to a virtually Hegelian process so as to exit from the imaginary and attain a symbolic dimension: Analyst and patient find their way to crucial encounters between thesis and antithesis, so to speak, then resolve them, via a process of negotiation.14 Another clinical example is constructed according to the same method but it goes further in the installation of analytic transparency.  nne had experienced her mother as loving, but A quite controlling and intolerant of independence, let alone contradiction from her children. Anne and I discussed the possibility that her difficulty in feeling critical of her husband might connect to a sense of danger that she had learned in relation to her mother. [...] One day, she described how her husband was not interested in her. Ann suspected she had something to do with it. The analyst says to her: Im confused. What gives you the impression that your way of talking turned your husband off? Ann responded, with slight irritation, I dont think youre confused, Owen. I think you have a view of whats going on. Why dont you just say what you think? [...] My hypothesis was that Ann had once more felt the need to criticize herself instead of her husband [...]. She considered.: That makes sense, she said. I understand where you were coming from. But why didnt you just explain your concerns? Instead, you presented yourself as confused, and that wasnt really true not to mention that it goes against your policy, which youve explained to me, of making your thinking explicit so that we can discuss it if we need to. Not that its such a big deal about it, but why did you bullshit like that? [...] The next day, Ann began by saying how useful the previous session had been [...] the really interesting thing to her, the more she thought about it, was that I had been, in a way, intimidated by her sufficiently concerned about her disapproval to even misrepresent myself a bit. [...] Ann continued to elaborate how useful it had been for her to recognize that she could inadvertently intimidate other people [...] She and her husband had gone on to have a very long talk about it last night, and afterward theyd made love more intimately and passionately than they had in years15 . 24

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This example also ends on a satisfaction. We can clearly see the aspect of imaginary exchanges. The empowerment of the subject is verified by an experience of satisfaction. From this point of view, the subject supposed to know no less ceases to exist. It is lived like a subject supposed to know how to maximise better the predicaments of her relation to jouissance. Intersubjectivity is distinguished from tradition and resonates with the current climate. It is revisionist, admits no sacred cows or great men of old. It is post-modern, democratic, conversational. Far from the theoretical conflicts relating to the status of metapsychology, it is oriented by the evaluation of a result to be obtained. It advances as a-theoretical. Such a current has profound American references. It reinstates an identity to those practitioners submitted to heavy attacks in a contemporary civilisation distrustful of all forms of knowledge and any difference in status granted to experts. This experience is addressed to a subject that has rational expectations. He is looking to maximise his knowledge about himself and the world. He has a desire to learn, a need to know. This is what replaces the subject supposed to know in this perspective. This knowledge becomes a means of jouissance as by this knowledge the subject is also searching to maximise his libidinal gain, to increase his sexual satisfaction, or his self-esteem. Lets say that he is searching for gains that are real, symbolic and imaginary. He is a homo economicus libidinalis. The utilitarian and functional happiness that Renik seems to admit as a hypothesis is in accordance with the fibre of our civilisation. The levelling of the terrain that he has accomplished has already been interpreted by one of his colleagues as being part of the Zeitgeist. Indeed, this promotes the idea that the only justification for a choice stems from the will for greater efficiency. And yet, our perspective questions the very idea of the Zeitgeist. There is no longer any Zeitgeist, as the Zeit has broken with the Sein. The One exists no longer. In the world of globalisation, we have to deal with a world of the fragmented, of the not-all.

The remnants of identification and the irreducible of the sinthome By following our path, as those who have expressed themselves at the Congress have testified by presenting the path they have taken towards psychoanalysis, have we not gone further than our IPA colleagues in separating the position of the analysand-psychoanalyst from the treatment itself? Depending on the conception one has of the end of the treatment, the position of the analyst diverges. The crossing of the mourning of the
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father and the irreducible of castration defines Freuds active pessimism. According to Melanie Klein, the separation from the good object allows for a tolerance of the separation with that particular partner, the psychoanalyst; she sees it as a crossing of the depressive position. Our horizon is that of an empty analyst, who watches his step with regard to his own jouissance, but who knows, beyond the hole in the symbolic order, how to install himself in the position of the one who can disturb the subjects defence. It is saying it on doves feet that we can conceive of the psychoanalyst as a psychoanalyst-trauma. It is an ascesis, as major as that of playing dead, or having no recollections, interest or memory. It is the ascesis of being what exceeds representation and the stratified subject of language [la langue]. Analytic neutrality stems from the principal of precaution. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst-trauma, is a position of the psychoanalyst where he accepts taking risks, calculated ones, of course, and does not entirely submit himself to protective and mortifying prohibitions, without, for all that, falling into therapeutic activism. The psychoanalyst who gives himself the aim of disturbing the subjects defence, of being a trauma, bears witness to the refusal to consider his space of discourse as one of norms over force16. He accepts to put himself at stake and is not risk averse17, on the condition that, in the same movement, he refuses the power of semblants. He knows, from the experience of a psychoanalysis taken to its end, that there is no symbolic order. It is not a given. What the symbolic disorder is bearing witness to is the real of lalangue. It is by laying bare this real that a symbolic order can be re-established. The path of a psychoanalysis is inaugurated by the installation of the transferential unconscious by the associative link between two signifiers, S1 and S2. It ends on a horizon where the subjects master signifiers are isolated from the multiple links that they had woven. They take on a real dimension. Their return in the identificatory chains is made possible. S1 finds itself cut off from S2. From this perspective, there will always remain signifiers that are not sufficiently alone and we do not expect all the subjects master signifiers to be produced in this way. It suffices for a just a few to be just alone enough. In the first sessions, a subject evokes the three generations of desire that provoked the predicament in which he finds himself. Firstly, the mismatching of the grandfather whose children then burden the family. Then there is a mother who mistreats her own children. Finally, there is he, the son, who finds himself divorced at forty with the firm intention not to make his wife suffer whereas, of course, it is the exact opposite that happens. This muddle of tangled threads will have to be unravelled in the course of the analysis. 25

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The master signifiers circulate between the generations beyond the individuals. Lacan spoke of the transmission of a slap down many generations18 . Producing them consists of delivering the subject from his navety and perplexity and of travelling through the labyrinth of jouissance where repetition, guilt, aggression, depression, and frantic agitation are knotted. The family signifiers have to be isolated which, in their contingency, contribute to the formation and stabilisation of the modes of satisfaction that constitute the fantasy. In this way, we pass from the unfolding of the signifying chain to the subjects relations with the objects of his jouissance $ a. The passage is made thanks to the twofold function of the psychoanalyst. He is, on the one hand the point of address of the subjects demands, and on the other hand the place of the object that holds the key to impossible jouissance a$. The identification of a mode of jouissance is not an identification with a mode of jouissance. This is what the end of the text Direction of the treatment teaches us19. Whereas the psychoanalysis of the time aimed at the subjects identification with his fantasy, Lacan showed how the subject is sent back by the drive to the contingency of love. The fantasy can be crossed. The identification with a mode of jouissance modifies what we understand by identification. As the seminar that goes by the same name shows, the development of a series where signifiers and values of jouissance intermingle: (1 + a), allows for a definition of a value of jouissance for the whole series. This is how Lacan clarified the debates psychoanalysis was getting bogged down in between the transference repetition of the signifying chain and transference in the present, articulating it with the fantasy brought into play in the reality of the session. It does not happen without remainders. The movement of psychoanalysis is twofold. On the one hand, it authorises the loosening of the identification with master signifiers S1, and on the other, it allows for a tightening around a hole. Take for example a subject marked by the scene where he surprises his parents lovemaking. He retains the memory of an enigmatic phrase from his mother: come back when the sky is violet20. The equivocal resources of this phrase left him for some time drifting from enamoration with young androgynous girls to the fascinated contemplation of sexes displayed in a pornographic way. How long would the scopic fixation of the symptom keep him sheltered from realising that he had never got over this assignation by the forbidden, inaccessible woman? From the master signifier to the hole in language, the passage is not made without remainders. As the subject unfolds the different identifications that have woven his history, identification is revealed as being not only multiple, but impossible. No one can identify with his own unconscious. The subject can dream of isoT h e S y m b o l i c O r d e r i n t h e T w e n t y- F i r s t Ce n t u r y

lating the formula. We know the limits of this enterprise from the attempt made by Serge Leclaire21. He had tried to reduce his unconscious to its Poordjeli root and in doing so exit alienation22. Separation comes from the side of the object as the hole of the letter in the mediocrity of meaning, in the sense of Television23. The hole in the subjects language is produced in the analytic treatment through its side of logical experience. Lacan isolates the logical function of the letter as the argument of a function, F(x), as that of a hole in language. He evokes the writings power of huffing [soufflage]24 . If in All animals are mortal, you huff the animals and you put in its place the pinnacle of writing, that is to say, a simple letter25. This concept of writing is neither that of writing as print nor the homology of the two dimensions of speech and language. We have to start with the fact of saying in order for a hole to be dug out, by means of repetition. We cannot start by writing in the sense of literature. In his American lectures, Lacan said Freuds auto-analysis was a writing-cure and I think that it is because of this that it failed. Writing is different to speaking. Reading is different to hearing.26 As such, the hole dug out in the subjects statement is not sufficient, it still requires the subject to plunge into the hole opened in, and by, the unconscious. On this occasion, Lacan speaks about the prompters hole [le trou du souffleur]. After having evoked the analytic act, Lacan highlights There is no passage lacte other than like a diver in the hole of the prompter, the prompter being of course the subjects unconscious27. The analyst, in the treatment, marks the place of this hole and veils it: a$. The logical operation in the treatment cannot be reduced to a writing of the function of jouissance like a sort of psychoanalytic Begriffshrift28 . Certainly, this writing makes the hole appear in the statements ...x... following the example of what produced the argument of the function, but the subject can remain on the edge. In his series of twenty lectures for Radio France Culture, Jacques-Alain Miller explored what is produced when treatments last a long time but where the subject does not plunge into the prompters hole. Miller condensed the obstacles upon which the testimonies of the Pass had been stumbling. He who had been a mummys boy and had become a ladies man, continued wanting to seduce the School in the procedure. She who had been her fathers daughter, pushing her mother away, loved the male passeur and detested the woman passeur. The man marked by the family secret carried an atmosphere of clandestinity with him in the procedure. She who had been marked by solitude during childhood wanted to be adopted by the School so as to find a new family29. This range of remainders shows in the depths the presence of the fantasy. 26

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How then can the plunge be produced? Lacan gives a precise indication: the subject has to de-complete the symptom of the Other. It requires having been formed as an analyst. It is only when he is formed that, from time to time, he lets it slip; formed is to have seen how the symptom is completed30. It is by the incompleteness that the leap into the hole is carried out. This supposes that the remainders of fantasmatic identifications have been overcome as well as the remainders of the identification with the analyst. The principle of the failure of the analytic act resides ultimately in the identification with the analyst. It has two distinct forms. There is the identification with the analyst as adherence to the psychoanalyst who has been the instrument of the analytic operation. The subject becomes analyst like his analyst wants or like him. The identification with the analyst comes about in the shadows of those narcissistic games where one becomes the image of the other. Fantasmatic and narcissistic identifications overlap each other like in the interplay of bank and waters that, let us note, delighted pre- classical mannerism said Lacan31. The identification with the analyst also carries the trace of an adherence to an ideal or a norm of what the analyst would be. It prevents this perspective from being abandoned. The effort of the Commission of the Pass is

to bring an end to the conception of an analysts existence as an exception to the rule, and to conceive of it on the basis of the exception, to decipher a facet of what an analyst is. The point of departure is thus not what is common or current but what is inhabitual. It is in taking this point of view that we can say that Cromwell was the most typical Englishman of his time precisely in that he was the oddest.32 This logic of singularity is a logic where the void and jouissance are put into play beyond the master signifiers that make up the law for each of us. It is by maintaining a topology that differentiates true and false holes that the singularity of the mode of jouissance as foundation of the symbolic order of lalangue, body by body, can remain open. The mode of jouissance stems from the body but without for all that being reduced to it. In responding to the anguish that takes hold of us, we have a chance to respond to the invitation that Democritus makes in the reading that Lacan proposes in Encore and in Ltourdit . Democritus atom, like Lacans sinthome, is at once body and element of flying signifiance. The jouissance of the body is at once body and void no more body than void33. This is not the final word but the articulation of a topology to be produced, that of the No One Anymore [Plus personne]. Translated from the French by Victoria Woollard for  Hurly-Burly Issue 5.

1 Miller, J.-A., Semblants et Sinthomes, Presentation of the Theme of the VIIth Congress of the WAP, transl. by J. Richards, in HurlyBurly, Issue 1, 2009, pp. 87-96. 2 Lacan, J., Spring Awakening, transl. by R. Grigg, in Analysis, Issue 6, 1995, p. 32. 3 Lacan, J., Remarks on Daniel Lagaches Presentation, in crits, The First Complete Edition in English, transl. by B. Fink, Norton & Co., New York, 2006, p. 559. 4 [TN: Jean-Pierre Changeux is a French neuroscientist who published a popular science book in 1983: Neuronal Man: The Biology of Mind.] 5 Miller, J.-A., Journal des Journes, No. 78. 6 Lacan, J., The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, in crits..., op. cit., p. 264. 7L  acan, J., Le sminaire, livre XVIII, Dun discours qui ne serait pas du semblant, Seuil, Paris, 2006, p. 170. 8 Ibid., p. 172. 9 Schnapper, D., from the leon inaugurale of the Rencontres de Ptrarque, Le monde. Lemonde.fr, 14 July 2010. 10  Beck, J., Cognitive Behavioural Therapy : Myths and Realities, 12 July 2010, www.huffingtonpost.com. 11  Renik, O., Getting Real in Analysis, in Psychoanalytic Quarterly, No. 67, 1998, p. 571. 12 Ibid., p. 572. 13 Ibid.,p. 573. 14  Renik, O., The Perils of Neutrality, in Psychoanalytic Quarterly, No. 65, 1996, pp. 495-517. 15  Renik, O., Playing Ones Cards Face up in Analysis, in Psychoanalytic Quarterly, No. 68, pp.525-7. 16  Cf. Ladi, Zaki, Norms over Force: The Enigma of European Power, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 17  Cf. Ladi, Zaki, Is Europe a Risk Averse Actor? in European Foreign Affairs Review, Issue 15, 2010, pp. 411-26; & Europe as a Risk Averse Power. A hypothesis in Garnet Policy Brief, No. 11, February 2010, pp. i-xvi.
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 acan, J., Psychoanalysis and Its Teaching, in crits..., op. cit., p. 374. 18 L Lacan, J., The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its 19  Power, in crits..., ibid., p. 489. 20 [TN, In French, violetis homophonic with viol, violated or raped.] 21  Leclaire, S, in Le rve la licorne, in Psychanalyser, Seuil, Paris, 1968, p.117. 22 Lacan, J., Position of the Unconscious, in crits..., op. cit., p. 714. 23  Lacan J, Television transl. by D. Hollier, R. Krauss, & A. Michelson, in Television: A Challenge to the Psychoanalytic Establishment, Norton, 1990, p. 46. 24  [TN, Huffing is a rule in the board game of draughts: a player who fails to make a capturing move when one is available is penalised. His opponent blows or huffs on his counter before removing it from the board]. 25 L  acan, J., Le sminaire, livre XVIII, op. cit, pp. 81-2. 26 L  acan, J., Yale University, 24 November 1975, in Scilicet No. 7, 1976, p. 36. 27 Ibid., p. 35. 28  Lacan, J, Lesson of 31 January 1968 in Le sminaire, livre XV, Lacte psychanalytique, (1967-8), unpublished. 29  Miller, J.-A., Lectures for France Culture, Histoires de psychanalyse, 2008, unpublished. 30  Lacan, J., Yale University 24 November 1975, in Scilicet Issue 7, op. cit., p. 35. 31  Lacan J, in crits..., op. cit., p 570. Take the following example where we see the reeds and dreams are in the mirror: Lombre de cette fleur vermeille/ et celle des joncs pendants/ paraissaient tre l dedans/ les songes de leau qui sommeille,by Tristan lHermitte, Promenoir de deux amants, in Les Amours, (1638) [TN: English translation: The reflection of this crimson flower/and of these drooping reeds/seem to be therein/the dreams of the sleeping water..., transl. by W. Radford.] 32 Geertz, C., The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books, 1973, p. 43. 33  Lacan, J., The Seminar Book XX, Encore, transl. by B. Fink, Norton, New York/London,1998, pp. 70-71 and Ltourdit

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