The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages 63 - 77
AN EXAMINATION OF THE FUNCTION OF THE
PROPER NAME AS INTRODUCED IN CRUCIAL
PROBLEMS FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS.
Micheli Romão
This paper explores the occurrence of parapraxis in two different instances, and its relation to the function of the proper name. The first parapraxis is captured in the word Poor(d)J’eLI, presented by Serge Leclaire during the closed sessions of Lacan’s seminar Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis 1964/1965. The second instance is Lacan’s reading of Freud’s The Forgetting of Proper Names. Leclaire argues that the nonsensical utterance Poor(d)J’eLI functions as a proper name and that it is linked to a primordial unconscious phantasy. For Lacan, Freud’s forgetting of the name Signorelli is also a reference to the function of the proper name, this time linked with absence. The comments on Leclaire’s work and the subsequent reading of Lacan’s interpretation of Freud’s example reveal two different ‘acts’concerning the same psychoanalytic method.
Keywords: Poor(d)J’eLI; Signorelli; proper name; unconscious phantasy; absence; sticking/detaching; Leclaire.