Cormac Gallagher – A Reading of The Psychoanalytic Act (1967-1968)
 
THE LETTER 18 (Spring 2000) pages 1-21
 
Introduction
 
Our chronological working-through of Jacques Lacan1 s seminars brought us this year to his ‘meditation’ on the psychoanalytic act – a meditation which was interrupted by the strikes and street violence in Paris in May 1968. Interrupted to such an extent that Lacan tells us that we have heard less than half of what he had planned to say. The seminar then came to a premature end and with only fifteen recorded sessions is the shortest to date in the Lacanian canon. However it does not stand alone and has to be read against the background of other documents – also relating to the position and action of the psychoanalyst – produced by Lacan around this time.
 
Five of these are of particular note:
 
– Proposition of 9th October 1967 on the Psychoanalyst of the School
 
– Lecture on Psychoanalysis and the formation of the psychiatrist (10th November 1967)
 
– Speech at the Ecole Freudienne de Paris (6th December 1967)
 
– Talks during the strikes and street demonstrations of May 1968
 
– Summary of The Psychoanalytic Act (10th June 1969)
 
The Provosition with which Lacan opened the year exploded like a bomb, says Roudinesco, among the members of the Ecole Freudienne. The ‘unreadibility’ of which Lacan is so proud and which he ‘maintains…