JACQUES LACAN THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS KARNAC THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS Jacques Lacan Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller Translated from the French by Alan Sheridan K A R N AC LONDON NEW YORK First published in 1973 by Editions du Seuil First published in Great Britain in 1977 by The Hogarth Press Ltd Reprinted in 2004 with permission of The Hogarth Press by H. Karnac (Books) Ltd, 118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT Copyright © 1973 Editions du Seuil Translation Copyright © 1977 Alan Sheridan All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CLP. for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978 1 85575 357 0 www.karnacbooks.com Printed in Great Britain CONTENTS Preface to the English-Language Edition page vii Editor's Note xi 1 Excommunication i THE UNCONSCIOUS AND REPETITION 2 The Freudian Unconscious and Ours 17 3 Of the Subject of Certainty 29 4 Of the Network of Signifiers 42 5 Tuch6 and Automaton 53 OF THE GAZE AS Objet Petit a 6 The Split between the Eye and the Gaze 67 7 Anamorphosis 79 8 The Line and Light 91 9 What is a Picture ? 105 THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE 10 Presence of the Analyst 123 11 Analysis and Truth or the Closure of the Unconscious 136 12 Sexuality in the Defiles of the Signifier 149 13 The Deconstruction of the Drive 161 14 The Partial Drive and its Circuit 174 15 From Love to the Libido 187 THE FIELD OF THE OTHER AND BACK TO THE TRANSFERENCE 16 The Subject and the Other: Alienation 203 17 The Subject and the Other: Aphanisis 216 CONTENTS 18 Of the Subject who is Supposed to Know, o fthe first Dyad and of the Good 230 19 From Interpretation to the Transference 244 TO CONCLUDE 20 In you more than you 263 Translator's Note 277 Index 283 vi P R E F A CE TO T HE E N G L I S H - L A N G U A GE E D I T I ON When the space of a lapsus no longer carries any meaning (or interpretation), then only is one sure that one is in the uncon­ scious. One knows. But one has only to be aware of the fact to find oneself out­ side it. There is no friendship there, in that space that supports this unconscious. All I can do is tell the truth. No, that isn't so—I have missed it. There is no truth that, in passing through awareness, does not lie. But one runs after it all the same. There is a way of sorting out this muddle that is satisfactory for other than formal reasons (symmetry, for example). Like satisfaction, it is acquired only with use, with the use of an individual—who, in psycho-analysis (psych = fiction of), is called an analysand. And, as a matter of simple fact, there is no shortage of analysands in our lands. That is a fact of human reality—what man calls reality. It should be noted that psycho-analysis has, since it has ex-sisted, changed. Invented by a solitary, an incontestable theoretician of the unconscious (which is not what one imagines it to be—the unconscious, I would say, is real), it is now prac­ tised in couples. To be fair, the solitary was the first to set the example. Not without abusing his disciples (for they were dis­ ciples only because he knew not what he did). This conveys the idea he had of psycho-analysis—a plague— except that it proved to be anodyne in the land where he brought it; the public adopted/adapted it quite painlessly. Now, a little late in the day, I add my pinch o fsalt: a fact of hystory, or hysteria: that of my colleagues, as it happens, a case of no importance, but one in which I happened to find myself implicated for concerning myself with someone who introduced me to them as having imposed on mysel fFreud, the Beloved of Mathesis. vii PREFACE I would have preferred to forget that: but one does not forget what the public constantly reminds you of. So one must take account of the analyst in psycho-analytic treatment. He would have no social standing, I imagine, if Freud had not opened up the way for him—Freud, I say, to call him by his name. For no one can call anyone an analyst and Freud did not do so. Handing out rings to initiates is not to call by a name. Hence my proposition that the analyst hystorizes only from himself: a patent fact. Even if he is con­ firmed in doing so by a hierarchy. What hierarchy could confirm him as an analyst, give him the rubber-stamp ? A certificate tells me that I was born. I repudiate this certificate: I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject. There remains the question of what could drive anyone, especially after an analysis, to hystorize from himself. It cannot come from himself, for he knows something about the analyst, now that he has liquidated, as they say, his positive transference. How could he contemplate taking up the same function ? In other words, are there cases in which you are impelled by some other reason than the wish to set yoursel fup, that is, to earn money, to keep those who are in your care, above all your­ self, according to Jewish morality (to which Freud remained attached in this respect). One must admit that the question (the question of another reason) is necessary to support the status of a profession newly arrived in hystory. A hystory that I do not call eternal, because its aetas is serious only in relation to real number, that is to say, to the serial of limit. Why, then, should we not put this profession to the test of that truth of which the so-called unconscious function dreams, with which it dabbles ? The mirage of truth, from which only lies can be expected (this is what, in polite language, we call 'resistance'), has no other term than the satisfaction that marks the end of the analysis. viii PREFACE Since the main aim of analysis is to give this urgently needed satisfaction, let us ask ourselves how someone can devote him­ self to satisfying these urgent cases. This is an odd aspect of that love of one's neighbour upheld by the Judaic tradition. But to interpret it in Christian terms, that is to say, as Hellenic jean-f.. trerie, what is presented to the analyst is something other than the neighbour: it is the un­ sorted material of a demand that has nothing to do with the meeting (of a person from Samaria fit to dictate Christie duty). The offer is prior to an urgent request that one is not sure of satisfying, unless one has weighed it. I have therefore designated as a 'pass' that putting of the hystorization of the analysis to the test, while refraining from imposing this pass on all, because it is not a question, as it happens, of all, but of scattered, ill-assorted individuals. I have left it at the disposal of those who are prepared to run the risk of attesting at best to the lying truth. I have done so by virtue of having produced the only con­ ceivable idea of the object, that of the object as cause of desire, of that which is lacking. The lack of the lack makes the real, which emerges only there, as a cork. This cork is supported by the term of the impossible —and the little we know about the real shows its antinomy to all verisimilitude. I shall speak of Joyce, who has preoccupied me much this year, only to say that he is the simplest consequence of a refusal —such a mental refusal!—of a psycho-analysis, which, as a re­ sult, his work illustrates. But I have done no more than touch on this, in view of my embarrassment where art—an element in which Freud did not bathe without mishap—is concerned. I would mention that, as always, I was entangled in urgent cases as I wrote this. I write, however, in so far as I feel I must, in order to be on a level (au pair) with these cases, to make a pair with them. Paris 17.5.76 J. L. ix