The Letter, Issue 39, Autumn 2008, Pages 103 - 122
THE ACT OF SAYING NOTALL WITH REFERENCE TO LE GAUFEY’S WORK:
LACAN’S NOTALL, LOGICAL CONSISTENCY, CLINICAL CONSEQUENCES
Christian Fierens
Translated by Cormac Gallagher
Christian Fierens pays Guy Le Gaufey the tribute of critically reading Notall in a positive way. As author of Lecture de L’Étourdit, he proposes that this later work of Lacan throws new light on Le Gaufey’s theoretical and clinical conclusions.
Some texts of Lacanian psychoanalysis, notall (pastous), leave us with too strong an impression of mixing an inconsequential clinical practice without consequences with an uncritical reading of Lacan and an author’s libido that is apparently illogical. There remains then to the reader three possible tracks; either he will capitulate unconditionally and join the good cause presented by the author (which can be called an introjection), or indeed he will rebel without considering the reasons adduced and will heap on the work the facile abuse of being incomprehensible and detestable (which one can call a projection), or indeed finally he will set to work without delay to make good as well as he can for the flagrant lack that the work gives proof of (which one could call an interjection).
Far from being inscribed in this category of works, the books of Guy Le Gaufey[1] do not fail to challenge and to make one work not as a way of trying to make good what may appear to be inconsequential, pre-critical or illogical, but on the contrary in the logical continuation of the obvious desire of the author to read Lacan with a critical eye and to draw out its clinical consequences. The three parts of Le Gaufey’s last work are called: The logic of the sexual fault, towards a critical reading of the formulae of sexuation,
some clinical consequences o f the logical difference between the sexes.