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The Letter, Issue 26, Autumn 2002, Pages 109 - 119 FULL AND EMPTY SPEECH WITHIN PSYCHOANALYTIC PRACTICE Frédéric Declercq At the beginning of his teaching, what motivates Lacan is, according to his own saying, 'to clear away the imaginary, which was too prevalent in technique' [1] . Since post-Freudian theory and technique revolve around the axis of the ego and its resistance, Lacan seeks to define the respective domains of the symbolic and the imaginary within analytic practice. One of the crucial topics underlying Lacan's elaboration of the agencies of the ego and the subject of the unconscious throughout his first seminars concerns the question of the way to deal with the ego-defences within clinical practice. To put it bluntly: can one interpret the ego-defences? Following Freud, Lacan demonstrates that the interpretation of the ego defences is a technique that just doesn't work. The agency of the ego: Freud and Lacan Picking up and radicalising Freud's work, Lacan splits Freud's concept of the ego in two, into the subject and the ego. Lacan calls the ego the 'mental illness of man,' for it is synonymous with resistance in psychoanalysis. [2] More precisely, the ego functions like a resistance operating against the analysis of the subject of the unconscious. As for the nature of the defence mechanisms, Freud and Lacan found that the ego resists in a rather typical, paranoid way, namely by denial and projection. Lacan's doctoral dissertation was about the link between paranoia and personality. However, after 40 years of clinical practice with neurosis and psychosis, Lacan no longer talks about the link between them; his final statement on the matter is that the ego is paranoia. In this respect, we emphasise again that Lacan's conceptualisation of the ego is different from Freud's. Lacan was fully aware of Freud's inability to define the ego in a consistent way, and his differentiation between the subject of the unconscious and the ego is an attempt to make up for this inability. Indeed, it is obvious that throughout Freud's work, the theory of the ego is full of holes, and is never finished. Even his last paper, published after his death - The Splitting of the Ego in the Process of Defence - produces more questions than answers.

The Letter, Issue 25, Summer 2002, Pages 93 - 108 THE PROBLEMATIC SHADOW OF SUPER-VISION IN ANALYTIC SUPERVISION Alan Rowan Freud made hardly any reference to the topic of supervision. When he did, as for example in his paper The Question of Lay Analysis (1928), he merely acknowledges its existence as a component of psychoanalytic training and, moreover, defines it loosely in terms of inexperienced practitioners having the opportunity to discuss their cases with more experienced practitioners. [1] Indeed he states that the movement from beginner to Master 'must be acquired by practice and an exchange of ideas in the psychoanalytic societies in which young and old members meet together', [2] which, if anything, de-emphasises supervision, and with it the supervisor as knowledge holder, in favour of a more open and group based research agenda which has, at its core, the experience of analytic practice. Today, however, things are different and in general great weight is placed on the importance of supervision not only in psychoanalysis but in psychotherapy generally. [3] More and more one sees publications on this topic alongside increasingly specified guidelines by professional bodies. To take one recent example one can note how the UK Association for Family Therapy has recently made a recommendation that in effect advises that supervision should continue throughout the working life of the systemic psychotherapist. [4]

The Letter, Issue 25, Summer 2002, Pages 76 - 92 INDIRECT SPEECH AND COMMUNICATION Colm Massey What happens to the subject when confronted by speech or text whose origins or purpose are deliberately disguised? Irony, for example, is central to the clinical situation. The analyst is the one supposed to know, - at least that is why the analysand is drawn to him, when in fact the opposite is the case. The analyst poses as the one who knows, by promoting their knowledge in order draw the client, but refuses to impart it. A vacuum is created which draws the truth from the analysand. The analysand tells his story, but it is not, at least initially the true story. Why is this subterfuge necessary? What is in this counterfeit situation that provokes true speech? We know that the manifest content of the dream is a parable: Is the unconscious then the arch-ironist? Although parallel speech and writing is confined to the symbolic order of language, there is a strong case for comparing this to the effectiveness of schemata, topology, algebraic formulae etc. as parallel modes of representation and symbolisation for psychoanalytic knowledge. If it is found that what is included under the title of parallel speech enhances and advances the meaning of the parent topic, then it may follow that symbolic representation (schemata, topology, algebraic formulae etc.) can enhance and progress psychoanalytic thinking. If it is seen that both of these parallel modes of communication are more than analogous, that they in fact add, develop, progress and enhance what we refer to as the parent topic, then there must be some reason, some connecting factor that overrides the apparently simplistic application of these (so-called) analogous techniques.

The Letter, Issue 25, Summer 2002, Pages 39 - 75 IN LANGUAGE MORE THAN LANGUAGE ITSELF: RECONSIDERING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF STRUCTURALISM IN LACAN'S THOUGHT Adrian Johnston Despite the formidable size of his oeuvre, spanning a period from 1932 to 1980, Lacan is frequently summarized with reference to a single statement: 'The unconscious is structured like a language.' Both critics and disciples of Lacanian thought usually assert that Lacan's primary theoretical contribution consists of a linguistic turn wherein the energetic, libidinal unconscious of Freud is transformed into a formalizable, symbolic structure. To some, this 'linguistification' of the unconscious represents a necessary overcoming of Freud's inappropriate reliance upon nineteenth century biology and physics. To others who are less sympathetic, Lacan's claim to be the sole initiator of an orthodox 'return to Freud' is refuted by his misguided effort to reformulate Freudian metapsychology within the parameters of Saussurian structural linguistics, an effort supposedly foreign to Freud's own vision of the psyche. When Lacan invokes linguistics, he almost always utilizes Saussure's terminology. In particular, the Lacanian unconscious is composed of (or, is 'structured like') 'signifiers'. Opponents of Lacan claim that his position is incompatible with Freudian theory; in distinguishing between word- presentations (Wortvorstellungen) and thing-presentations (Sachvorstellungen), the unconscious consisting of the latter alone, Freud denies the notion that the unconscious contains linguistic units of any sort. Resolving the debates between the defenders and detractors of Lacanian theory's references to structural linguistics requires answering two central questions. First, are the terms 'signifier' and 'word-presentation' synonymous? Second, is the structure revealed by linguistics itself entirely linguistic, that is to say, is 'structure' strictly co-extensive with language per se? The first question necessitates discussing several topics: the Freudian understanding of the place of language in the psyche, the relation between Freud's view of language and that of Saussure, and, finally, Roman Jakobson's modifications of Saussure as the source of Lacan's conception of the signiher. The second question prompts an examination of a series of distinctions drawn by Lacan during the later 'post-structuralist' period of his teaching (mainly in the 1970s), in particular, the difference between la langue and le langage (both are usually translated into English as language') as well as that between sens ('meaning') and signifiance ('signifier-ness').

The Letter, Issue 25, Summer 2002, Pages 21 - 38 THE SUBJECT OF ADDICTION * Rik Loose Who will ever relate the whole history of narcotica? It is almost the history of 'culture', of our so-called high culture. [1] The earliest evidence of psychoactive drug use and knowledge of hallucinogenic plants dates back some 13,000 years. [2] Most early forms of religion used drugs in an attempt to gain divine knowledge. Drugs and drug use are an integral part of human culture. Yet, we hardly know anything about drugs, at least not the kind of knowledge that would help us to understand how drugs affect people and how people become addicted to drugs. This is most surprising in light of the vast amount of knowledge that has been accumulated in the sciences. So, what should we expect from science concerning the effect of drugs and the pathology of addiction? Whilst science has devoted considerable time and resources to the question (for instance, the American National Institute of Drug Abuse [NIDA] allocates $600 million a year to research into drug abuse), we still do not have a satisfactory scientific basis for addiction. On the other hand, although psychoanalysis has yet to seriously and systematically address the problem of addiction, it is my contention that psychoanalysis has an unique contribution to make.

The Letter, Issue 25, Summer 2002, Pages 17 - 20 REMARKS ON THE THEORY AND TREATMENT OF (PATHOLOGICAL) ADMINISTRATIONS OF ENJOYMENT Paul Verhaeghe Addiction, like prostitution, is a phenomenon as old as the human race. Evidently they have something in common - their relationship to desire and enjoyment - and both pose a problem for the society in which they occur. It is not too difficult to find a reason for this. A society is a perfect example of an institution consisting of a collection of people held together by a number of commonly shared rules and conventions. This applies to every institution, be this a family, a school, an association, or a psychiatric institution. The rules and conventions that we find in these institutions, no matter how private they may be, always have the same aim: the regulation of enjoyment on the basis of a number of collectively developed and often legally binding agreements. Hence, every institution also presents an ideal, precisely through which that regulation is articulated.

The Letter, Issue 25, Summer 2002, Pages 1 - 16 RETURNING TO SCHREBER 15th December 1994 * Charles Melman Giving a commentary on this formula of Lacan according to which 'the unconscious is the social , implies accepting at first a curious decentering, since to postulate that the Oedipus complex is the organiser of subjectivity, and therefore of desire, is equivalent to privileging the family stage as being where the destiny of the subject is played out, is determined. It is no doubt one of the reasons why the psychoanalysts, in a more or less, intuitive way, consider that the field of their responsibility comes to a halt at the boundary of family organization and that they do not have to make any pronouncement, to become engaged, when they are challenged by the social field. This is also what one sees on the part of neurotics who make of the family scene this permanent and ineradicable locus of passions, of complaints, of grievances, of unpardonable sins, which obviously give to our family lives a very curious tint. You have to chose: either family life is really very good and, in that case, the results are not very good, precisely as regards the determination for a subject of his desire since the aforesaid desire is only supported by shocks, by accidents, even traumas; or indeed - and it is much more frequent - family life is bad and it gives rise to this type of historicizing and consequences which is scarcely any more satisfying.

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 111 - 126 THE REVERSE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS - HOW FAR? A COMMENTARY ON DISCOURSE, KNOWLEDGE AND ENJOYMENT * Patricia McCarthy Introduction In this brief article, my questions - to paraphrase Lacan - are preliminary to any possible theory of discourse! In that sense, I'm departing from the usual meaning given in English to l'Envers de la Psychanalyse, The Reverse of Psychoanalysis, Lacan's seminar of 1969-70. I am taking 'reverse' in its sense as a verb. To reverse is to return to where you've come from, to pick up something that you have left behind or to get a better look at something you've passed by too quickly. It's in that spirit that I'm reversing here. In fact I'm reversing to take a better look at discourse, knowledge and enjoyment, terms that are the main concerns of this seminar. The seminar itself which deals with the four discourses, the master's discourse, the university discourse, the hysteric's discourse and the analytic discourse is often quoted as representing the essence of a Lacanian teaching that goes beyond Freud. My effort here is to understand that position and judge its validity for myself. Also by way of introduction, I should explain that, for my part, working on this seminar is part of a continuing engagement with Lacan's seminars which has spanned the past thirteen years, where as a member of the Monday Night reading group here in St Camillus, we manage to seriously read one seminar a year. So my reading of Lacan's seminars began with The Formations of the Unconscious in 1988. Thirteen seminars later, it's hard to discern this current seminar as more exceptional than another, except to observe that following as it does d'Un Autre a l'autre, it appears less demanding than its predecessor - if only in the sense that it runs to 13 sessions rather than twenty-five sessions, the previous year. In fact I consider that the groundwork was done the previous year with the current seminar building on that. In addition I consider that this seminar can be seductive if taken on its own, in much the same way as the four discourses can, in a sense, stand alone, becoming things in themselves, becoming part of a Lacanian 'metalanguage .

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 99 - 110 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE NIGHT * Rob Weatherill If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it ... A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us. [1] The contract binding the word and the world, the Covenent between logos and cosmos, held until the late nineteenth century in Europe and Russia. The break-up of this linkage virtually defines Modernity itself. Psychoanalysis was central in this endgame. Freud, after all, was called the 'demoraliser' by Karl Kraus, the influential Viennese satirist of the time. We have entered what Steiner ominously calls the 'after-word'. There are two key quotations around which I want to situate some developing thoughts: 1) 'If thought is not measured by the extremity that eludes the concept, it is from the outset in the nature of the musical accompaniment with which the SS liked to drown out the screams of its victims'. [2] 2) ' Q]ust as terror, and abjection that is its doublet, must be excluded from the regime of the community, so it must be sustained and assumed, singularly, in writing as its condition'. [3] Later we will take up where this extreme that must measure our thinking, or this horror that must be a condition of our writing, can be located in our enclave, so to speak, of psychoanalysis. Fundamentally, this thinking or writing the extreme is an ethical questioner us.

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 89 - 98 BEYOND LACAN * Patricia Stewart We are all familiar with the unique pleasures attendant on studying the work of Jacques Lacan. His complexity and his unparalleled ability to find the perfect equivocation upon which to balance his ideas have undoubtedly ensured that platitudes and simplifications concerning the nature of human subjectivity are no longer acceptable for anyone wishing to be taken seriously in the field of psychoanalysis. Many of us, I imagine, have experienced the dullness and banality of much of what passes for psychoanalytic theorizing after the brilliant intransigence of a Lacanian text. This being said, however, his legacy is not without its problems and I would like, briefly, to raise a few of them. The factor common to these difficulties concerns Lacan's approach to the theorization of knowledge. In correspondence to Lacan one brave soul, quoted by him in Seminar XVII, puts his finger on the problem thus. He asks: 'In what way is the unconscious a key notion that subverts the whole theory of knowledge?' [1] This question underpins much of what follows.

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 83 - 88 LA FEMME DONNE A LA JOUISSANCE D'OSER LE MASQUE DE LA REPETITION * Claude-Noele Pickmann Lacan's phrase can be translated thus: 'The woman gives to jouissance to dare the mask of repetition'. However, this morning during the congress, Jacqueline Rose proposed another more easily understood translation: 'The woman issues to jouissance the challenge of wearing the mask of repetition'. You will find this quotation from Lacan in Seminar XVII, L'envers de la psychanalyse, in the session of 11th February 1970. In French, it is indeed a very poetic and beautiful phrase since it carries with it the promise of a gift, the gift that the woman should bring to jouissance in daring to make use of the semblant as a way to jouir. Of course, the Lacanian woman, as you know, is a woman who is not lacking jouissance. This could even oppose her to the Freudian woman. The Freudian woman is riveted to the missing phallus and to the dissatisfaction that this missing phallus leaves her with, unless she finds its equivalence in maternity. The Lacanian woman offers another point of view on feminine sexuality insofar as Lacan is able to make 'The Woman' (the one who doesn't exist) equivalent to jouissance. For Lacan, not only is woman fully in phallic jouissance, but she also has access to a supplementary jouissance. This supplementary jouissance is beyond the one she obtains when consenting to refer herself to the phallus.

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 75 - 82 HOW CAN ONE SPEAK OF A SUBJECT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS? * Gerard Pommier Everyone has his own Lacan! I mean that each one has found in the work of Lacan an invention that has opened new horizons on psychoanalysis. Lacan, himself, considered that his main discovery was the [ matheme] of drive: I mean the object little a. For myself, I've never been really convinced of the originality of the object a, because Freud had already considerably explained this by the notion of drive. Freud is even clearer than Lacan, especially in distinguishing between the 'aim' and the 'object' of drive. Some Lacanians mix up the aim and the object, which can lead to some quite embarassing results. The 'aim' of the drive is the phallic signification, the (Vorstellungs Representanz) while the object is only the 'representative' of this signification, an interchangeable representative of which each avatar becomes important only in function of the inaccessible aim. However, the notion of the barred subject is entirely original: it is a great invention of Lacan, the consequences of which have enormous influence. In Freud you cannot find the notion of 'subject' because it is mixed up with the notion of the 'ego'. In fact in German, the 'subject and the 'ego' are the same word, 'lch'. To correctly translate in French the german word ' Ich ', one must examine the context. For example, in the aphorism ' Wo Es war, soil Ich werden', one needs to translate ' lch ' by 'I' (it's the subject of the verb!). Indeed, the term 'ego' is not suitable since ' lch' does not as yet have its imaginary consistency, which is the aim. However, when Freud mentions ' Ichspaltung', , he's talking about the splitting of the 'ego', since a certain part of the ' lch ' keeps its imaginary consistency. It's the imaginary dimension, also introduced by Lacan, which prevents any translation errors. Therefore, Lacan distinguished between the 'ye and the 'men' due to the suppleness of the French language. The English language psychoanalysts have already understood this difficulty since they have introduced a term external to English, that is, 'ego', which situates the psychical structures. Unfortunately, the term 'ego' has since drowned the subject, the 'I'. But that is another problem.

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 64 - 74 THE UNCONSCIOUS AND THE REAL * André Michels After the preliminary Studies of Hysteria, the publication of the Interpretation of Dreams, at the very beginning of the twentieth century, constitutes, establishes, the real act of birth of psychoanalysis. The inaugural book of a new rationality will be the masterpiece of Freud's oeuvre. His investigation of the dream led him to consider the psychic causality of the neurotic symptom and, along the way, to develop his theory of the unconscious. The dream in fact presents the same structure as the other?, formations?' of the unconscious - the joke, the lapsus, the acte manqué, t he symptom, etc. In Freud's first studies then - which Lacan held to be canonical - he tries to define the unconscious as a clinical operator which is indispensable for the interpretation of the dream. The unconscious, however, is not identical with the dream itself; rather, it constitutes the stage where the latter takes place. The dream-message includes fault, transgression, guilt on the one hand and absence, gap, lack on the other, teaching the subject that he is split, that he is himself spoken from elsewhere, that he is the crossing point of a radically different, heterogeneous dimension.

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 48 - 63 THE EMERGENCE OF PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THE CHANGING OF DISCOURSES * Katrien Libbrecht By way of an introduction How can psychoanalytic theory introduce itself within a present day mental health care institution without solely producing toxic effects of Truth amongst the members of staff? Can an ethics of the real invade the dominant discourse of mastery as it is presently identified in the bio-engineering of human behaviour and cognition? How does a psychoanalyst speak when working together with a multidisciplinary team? The history of psychoanalysis in (clinical) institutions suggests various modi operandi for organizing institutions based on psychoanalytic theory and ethics. But what about the introduction of psychoanalysis within an 'established' institution? In this paper I investigate whether psychoanalysis, given its marginal position on a cultural level, has any assets (left) in dealing with the unbearable real and the impossible sexual relation. Anxiety, psychoanalytic experience and Lacan's logic of the four discourses will serve as signposts. Setting the Scene In Belgium the year 2001 has been declared the year of Mental Health Care. The patient rights movement, the tearing down of the walls segregating the mentally ill, providing information about mental illness to the lay person, teaching people how to cope with mentally ill family members, all these actions and intentions illustrate the nature of the official campaigns. The government seems more than ever inclined to ideologically enlightened interventions, recycling individuals who are left in the margin of social functioning into responsible citizens. Additionally, the rise to power of quality assurance and quality enhancement in the non-profit sector, is tightening the grip of bureaucracy on the every day functioning of mental health care institutions. Cure and care have become managed production processes, the care-giver a process manager. And as a true master, a manager wants the system to function optimally, he only wants things to work (il ne veut que ga marche), and all co-workers have to go along with it.

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 38 - 47 THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SYMPTOM * Frédéric Declercq Ever since the discovery of the unconscious, psychopathological symptoms have been explained on the basis of defence, in which repression plays a prominent role. However, after Freud it was more or less forgotten that repression in itself is a second moment within the causation of psychopathology: If what is spoken of as 'repression' is examined more closely, we shall find reason to split the process up into three phases which are easily distinguishable from one another conceptually. The first phase consists in fixation, which is the precursor and necessary condition of every repression. The phase of the repression proper - the phase to which psychoanalysis is accustomed to give the most attention - in fact is already a second phase of repression. The third phase is the return of the repressed. [1] In other words, we mustn't forget Freud's axiom that symptoms are not only a compromise formation between two contradictory tendencies, but also a locus of jouissance. [2 ]

The Letter, Issue 24, Spring 2002, Pages 30 - 37 SOME SHORT CUTS TO DESIRE * Aisling Campbell In modern life there is a proliferation of various alternative therapies centred on the body (for instance, craniosacral therapy, body emotive therapy among others); there is also a general public paranoia about the effects of conventional medicine on the body. [1] Both are symptomatic of a denial that the body is an effect of the registers of the symbolic, imaginary and real as explicated by Lacan. They represent a wish for a return to some imagined state where man is in tune with nature and all that is 'natural'. In a similar vein Lacan is frequently criticised for ignoring the body in favour of the signifier or there is the criticism that psychoanalysis ignores what is popularly known as body language. Those who voice these criticisms tend to see the body as completely exclusive of the field of the signifier; however nowhere is the body more in evidence than in analysis, especially when the signifying chain grinds to a halt, revealing the dependence of the real of the body on the signifier. Some months ago, in the course of a session with an analysand, I had a sense of her body looming large, being almost too close for comfort, although if anything she was slight in build. Moments later she commented that she felt uncomfortably large, as though she were taking up the whole room. The symptom that had provoked her to seek analysis was an inability to finish any intellectual project. The sessions were often characterised by a kind of immobility of the signifying chain which indeed was invariably associated with an almost physical paralysis, embodied in the kind of moment I have described. This brief example serves to illustrate how the body cannot be ignored in analysis. Furthermore, the body is a coalescence of the real, symbolic and imaginary; in the topological as well as in the purely optical sense it is truly three- dimensional.