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The Letter, Issue 18, Spring 2000, Pages 22 - 34 TO SPEAK ABOUT WHAT'S INVOLVED IN THE PSYCHOANALYTIC ACT, ONE HAS TO SPEAK ABOUT LOGIC Patricia McCarthy Introduction In the course of Seminar XIV The Logic of Phantasy and Seminar XV The Psychoanalytic Act Lacan takes his project for a science that includes psychoanalysis to new heights. Using a deMorgan-like transformation he establishes a truth equivalence between Descartes 'I think therefore I am' and his own axiom for the subject of lack 'Either I do not think or I am not'. Beginning with negation and contradiction, this paper looks to underscore the inadequacy of classical logic to account for the subject of the unconscious. This sortie into logic continues with an examination of the 'innards' of the deMorgan law ~(C&D) =11= (~Cv~D) as employed by Lacan. The paper concludes by referring to the pivotal function of the disjunction 'Either I do not think or I am not' for Lacan's conception of the psychoanalytic act as a logical operation that can only be decided by a logically realised end to analysis itself.

The Letter, Issue 18, Spring 2000, Pages i - iii

The Letter, Issue 17, Autumn 1999, Pages 38 - 62 The Way We Talk: Psychotic Language And The Butcher Boy * Olga Cox-Cameron One of the most striking features of The Butcher Boy is that it is a novel sustained almost entirely by one voice. True, this is a voice which exists in a kind of antiphonal relationship to the other voices in the world where the antagonist finds himself. But in contrast to the nineteenth century novel, there is no perceived need to establish the novelistic character in a densely created representational world. Everything is carried by the voice. Perhaps for this reason it is a voice which is very distinctively textured. Like other twentieth century novels, it is a voice which is inserted into regional rhythms and a novel which is almost impossible to read without the reader somehow entering these rhythms. One thinks of other recent twentieth century novels, for example, the award winning recent novel by Kathleen Fergusson, The Maids Tale or the celebrated or notorious Trainspotting or indeed any of Roddy Doyle's novels. This luring of the reader right inside the rhythms of speech creates a seductive effect which is very different, for example, to the seductive effect of Dickensian description. At one level, of course, the fictional world is always a world sustained by a voice. If the voice were to stop, the world would cease to be. So the fictional enterprise presentifies, in a way, a different version of the psychotic dilemma as described so vividly by Schreber. For Schreber too it was absolutely necessary for the voices to continue. Except for Schreber it was not simply his own speaking voice which held the world in existence but equally the persecutory voices emanating from the rays, emanating in turn from God.

The Letter, Issue 17, Autumn 1999, Pages 79 - 119 SUBJECT AND BODY Lacan's struggle with the Real * Paul Verhaeghe It is not to his conscience that the subject is condemned, it is to his body. ** [1] Introduction Study of Lacan's work may start from two different points of view. Either one considers that everything is there, right from the start, thus considering the rest of his work as one long elaboration. The standard example of this approach lies with the Freud scholars who include the whole of his theory in his early Project for a Scientific Psychology. Or one considers his theory and teaching as a 'work in progress' marked by an evolution which contains drastic changes. Both approaches can be defended. I have opted for the second one, which does not mean that we will not be confronted with the first option... From this point of view, Lacan's theory concerning the relationship between body and subject can be divided in three periods, each one demonstrating a certain evolution in his work as such. - Lacan (1) is concerned with the opposition between the Symbolic and the Imaginary. The Symbolic determines the body in a predictable way, so that this body is nothing more than an effect, to be understood as a bodily surface. - Lacan (2) has to do with the Real as the cause of the combined Symbolic and Imaginary; the Real of the body is to be understood as the organism and the drive. - Lacan (3) takes these previous oppositions up again, this time in terms of jouissance, that is, phallic jouissance versus the jouissance of the body.

The Letter, Issue 17, Autumn 1999, Pages 70 - 78 NOTE ON KRISTEVA Pauline O'Callaghan The work of the Bulgarian psychoanalyst, Julia Kristeva, provides an interesting parallel with the theories of both Freud and Lacan with regard to women. Her ideas on the formation of the subject; her theory of the semiotic and the chora; her views on the origin of poetic language and its relationship to psychotic babble; the maternal role and the abject; all of these seem very relevant to any attempt to understand the development of the female subject. Kristeva, a Bulgarian living in France, contends in an interview in 1989 that psychoanalysis offers a way to approach foreignness and alterity because 'the Freudian message, to simplify things, consists in saying that the other is in me. It is my unconscious'. [1] She claims to be 'very attached to the idea of the woman as irrecuperable foreigner ... (having) a permanent marginality, which is the notion of change'. [2] Following Lacan, Kristeva maintains that subjectivity is formed in conjunction with language acquisition and use and she challenges the unity and claim to mastery of a sovereign subject. However, she focuses her analysis upon the transgressions of the law of the symbolic in the form of the semiotic, which she argues is an integral and revolutionary part of symbolic language.

The Letter, Issue 17, Autumn 1999, Pages 63 - 69 A GROSS EPISODE * Rik Loose In three letters written by Freud in 1908 and addressed to Jung, references were made to the addiction of their colleague, the rebellious and burlesque, Otto Gross. [1] It is most peculiar that these references are not mentioned in any of the surveys, reviews or texts dealing with Freud's ideas and theories on addiction. Freud's remarks on addiction in these letters, and indeed on the case of Otto Gross itself, are interesting enough to warrant (at least) a brief discussion. Gross was an assistant to the famous psychiatrist Kraepelin and a patient of Jung. Freud knew Otto's father, Hans, who was professor in criminology in Graz and Prague. Otto was a psychoanalyst and philosopher and he was also hopelessly addicted to cocaine and opium. Otto's addictive behaviour became at some point so problematic for his entourage that his father decided to have him locked away in a psychiatric institute. Needless to say that the relationship between father and son wasn't the best and it certainly didn't improve after the incarceration. Otto was, and remained, a troubled and rebellious character. He was freed after a while and then disappeared from the scene until his death, due to drug addiction, was announced in 1920. [2] In relation to Otto Gross's addiction Freud writes to Jung the following: However, we shall also have to talk about Otto Gross; he urgently needs your medical help; what a pity, such a gifted, resolute man. He is addicted to cocaine and probably in the early phase of toxic cocaine paranoia (Letter 84). I can imagine how much of your time he must be taking. I originally thought you would only take him on for the withdrawal period and that I would start analytical treatment in the autumn. It is shamefully egotistic of me, but I must admit that it is better for me this way; for I am obliged to sell my time and my supply of energy is not quite what it used to be (Letter 94). I have a feeling that I should thank you most vigorously - and so I do - for your treatment of Otto Gross. The task should have fallen to me but my egoism - or perhaps I should say my self-defence mechanism - rebelled against it. Now I have no reason to doubt your diagnosis, inherently because of your great experience of D.pr. (Dementia Preacox), but also because D.pr. is often not a real diagnosis. We seem to be in agreement about the impossibility of influencing his condition and about its ultimate development. But couldn't his condition be another (obsessional) psychoneurosis, with negative transference caused by his hostility to his father, which presents the appearance of absence or impairment of transference? (Letter 99).

The Letter, Issue 17, Autumn 1999, Pages 21 - 37 METALANGUAGE, FORMAL STRUCTURES, AND THE DISSOLUTION OF TRANSFERENCE * Jason Glynos Introduction This essay attempts precise the meaning and significance of Lacan's claim that 'there is no metalanguage', and to link this to issues of mathematical formalisation and the end of analysis. My investigation will be conducted against the implicit background of another of his well- known claims: 'the unconscious is structured like a language.' I will approach this task, however, from the opposite direction. The question then becomes: In what sense can we say that Lacan thinks that there is a metalanguage? In answering this question I will present some evidence in support of the (hypo)thesis that Lacan does hold onto a conception of metalanguage - a quasi-transcendental conception - but that this is, paradigmatically, mathematics qua non-glottic writing. This line of inquiry generates at least two insights which I will highlight in the final part of the essay. First, I argue that it suggests a productive way of reading the upper left hand side of the graph of desire, as found in his text The Subversion of the Subject and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Unconscious. [1] More specifically, I argue that we can conceive the relation signifier jouissance in terms of a notion that can be called formalised delimitation, a process of formalisation-to-the-limits. Secondly, and finally, I suggest that this notion of formalisation-to-the-limits carries with it implications for how we view the end of analysis, whether conceived in terms of 'crossing the fantasy', the passe, or the dissolution of transference love.

The Letter, Issue 17, Autumn 1999, Pages 1 - 20

The Letter, Issue 17, Autumn 1999, Pages i - ii

The Letter, Issue 16, Summer 1999, Pages 92 - 126 THE OBJECT OF ITS AFFECTION Reconsidering Temporality and Object-Choice in Lacan's Theory of Sexual Difference Adrian Johnston Introduction ... when one gives rise to two (quand un fait deux), there is never a return. They don't revert to making one again, even if it is a new one. Aufhebung is one of philosophy's pretty little dreams. [1] Despite its foundational orientation towards the notion of sexuality, Freudian psychoanalysis ironically spends a scant amount of time speaking of what one is most inclined to associate with making love - that is, love itself. It is only as regards two interlinked phenomena that Freud feels compelled to address the topic of amorous sentiments. The first location where love finds a place in psychoanalysis is the dynamic of the transference. In the transference, love is merely the emotional epiphenomenon of a duped, deceived ego that misrecognises its interlocutor. The second schema to which analysis relegates love is the mechanism of object-choice. The notion of such a mechanism maintains that the individual's personal history of loving relationships is nothing more than the repetition of a limited number of childhood refrains: 'love consists of new editions of old traits ... But this is the essential character of every state of being in love. There is no such state which does not reproduce infantile prototypes'. [2] In both the transference and object-choice, Freud posits that love is always a matter of a case of mistaker. identity'; the psyche cannot help but cast the shadow of irrecoverable past ties upon whatever it encounters in its present milieu. According to Freud, instead of achieving a rapport with others through emotion, one simply relates to a set of iterable traits, marks, and characteristics that psychoanalysis treats as divorced from their anthropomorphic vessels. Each love object is almost entirely reducible to the unconscious coordinates which serve as the triggers of desire (that is, the partial objects: a glint in the eye, a certain modulation of the voice, a manner of posture, etc.). Each partner in the patient's life history is merely a carrier of one of these 'signs of 'love". Amorous sentiment is the 'svmptom' catalysed by the appearance of an unconscious indicator of this type. In this sense, psychoanalysis can treat love as a symptomatic manifestation of a part-object fetish. [3] This is the set of Freudian claims that Lacan adopts in pronouncing that, 'there's no such thing as a sexual relationship. [4]

The Letter, Issue 16, Summer 1999, Pages 78 - 91 LACAN AND SEMINAR XX Pauline O'Callaghan It has been argued that since Lacan's concept of the symbolic order is phallocentric and structured according to the law of the father, that it represses the 'truly feminine,’ and defines femininity in patriarchal terms as a consequence of lack. [1] Whilst for the male child the entrance into the symbolic Order is characterised bv his identity with the father or the Phallus, for the female child the experience is a negative one and characterised by her identification with lack. Lacan's theory on the development of women remains a penis-envy theory, according to Elizabeth Grosz, although he uses social, unconscious, and linguistic explanations of the oedipal structure, in place of Freud's phylogenetic, pseudobiological ones. [2] However, it is clear from Lacan's work, with its innumerable references to the subject as 'fading', 'alienated!, marked by an essential 'lack of being', 'split', possessed of an 'empty centre', etc., that the idea of lack’ is not confined to femininity. Psychoanalysis is based on a fundamental split between the subject and the knowledge he has of himself. Lacan's theory of the 'mirror stage' (1936) showed that all notions of unity and absolute autonomy were mere illusions. The human subject will continue throughout life to look for an imaginary wholeness’ and 'unity'. There is thus a fundamental ' alienation' in this action. [3] It is within this context that one must consider Lacan's view of women as being not- whole', not existing, and so on, rather than simply regarding it as phallocentric or misogynistic.

The Letter, Issue 16, Summer 1999, Pages 57 - 77 SUICIDE, A FAMILY NARRATIVE ON THE EDGE OF CONSCIOUSNESS * Ros McCarthy Introduction For many children who experience parental suicide there is a silence, a seemingly inexplicable discontinuity in the family discourse. Following dramatic events there are also technical difficulties when working with parents and children. How can a context be created where children's stories unfold, allowing for differences in understanding, cognition, readiness to question, to know the truth, their truth? Should the family be held together in family sessions avoiding further secrets and dysfunctional coalitions? It could promote connectedness, meaning making and offer a sense of containment. The family is the context within which the death occurred, the meaning of which will be mediated by family members. But the response to death, to what it means, is an individual experience. So while disagreeing with the notion of universal family patterns and responses, death's meaning is mediated through self in relation to others and somewhere in the therapeutic frame, self and system need to be addressed. According to Pocock the link between self and system, between psychoanalysis and family systems, has to do with meaning and understanding expressed consciously and unconsciously through the narrative of play or speech or both media. [1] It is precisely these connections which underpin work with children and parents. There are, I would suggest, four core themes pertinent to the internal and relational world of children and parents who experience a suicide, themes which often echo the world of the parent who has killed him/herself. Engulfinent, abandonment, disconnectedness, reconnections , coalesce and synthesise in the intrasubjective, interpersonal and cultural processes. Case material interwoven with these constructs is an invitation to arrive at one's own conclusion about this case, but also to consider the possibility, the validity of thinking and organising the work in this multidimensional manner.

The Letter, Issue 16, Summer 1999, Pages 49 - 56 OF THE REAL, PARADOXES AND CONTRADICTIONS * Jacques Laberge In Lacan's teaching with regard to the real and its articulation to the imaginary and the symbolic, I would like to point out some paradoxes and contradictions with respect to four aspects: (1) Starting from the symbolic; (2) impossible to penetrate; (3) the non-existence of sexual rapport; (4) the impossible in relation to the original repression. Starting from the Symbolic Starting from the notion of the symbolic, Lacan comments: Many things get a direction and become clear, but many paradoxes and contradictions appear (...) that are not because of this, opacities or obscurities. [1] To avoid mere confusion with respect to the real, the first step is imposed: start from the symbolic order, because, according to Lacan, 'it's from there that the other orders, imaginary and real, find their place and get ordered'. [2] This affirmation in Seminar I is repeated in a similar way in this same Seminar and throughout Lacan's teaching. For him, it's not just a question of starting from the notion of the symbolic in order to clarify our work but to recognise the anteriority of the symbolic, a logical anteriority of the necessary psychic determination. If there's no symbolic, one cannot speak properly of the real. But in this context, paradoxes and contradictions appear to be more crude in all these first works. For example, Lacan agrees with Rosine Lefort who believed there was no symbolic function1whatsoever in little Robert and 'still less imaginary function' and that 'he was ship-wrecked in the real’. [3] This agreement with Lefort, without explanation, confounds us but also shows Lacan's initial difficulties in articulating the three registers. However, he does stress 'the already established symbolic system'. [4] 'Everything starts from zero' in Seminar XXV, 'the moment of conclusion’, in '78, becomes a full stop for us in the long route having the symbolic as the starting hole. The symbolic is associated and identified with language which on the one hand conditions the unconscious and which on the other hand is in some way that to which the unconscious could be reduced. From the appearance of the knots in Lacan's teaching, the symbolic as the zero starting point must, paradoxically, live with the equivalence between the three registers in so far as if one is cut the other two are automatically cut.

The Letter, Issue 16, Summer 1999, Pages 9 - 26 GAMBLING: PAIN, PLEASURE AND PLAY Franziska Huber Introduction: The Passion for Gambling Last Wednesday was the official start of the Football World Cup 1998 - different nations such as England, Italy, Brazil, France, Germany, Argentina, Holland (just to name a few of them) are in a state of excitement. Statistics, theories, speculations, hopes and guesses are circulating: who is going to make it this time? This is the heyday of calculating and betting - not only via the official football pools, but also in innumerable private bets and estimating contests. These days, homo ludens forcefully displays an old and universal passion, the passion for gambling. As a matter of fact, hardly any other cultural activity can boast such a long tradition as can gaming and gambling. Board games already existed at the time of the First Dynasty in Egypt, at about 3500 B.C. At around the same time the first dice were introduced, also in Egypt. Predecessor of the die was the astragalus, the heelbone of a deer, dog or sheep. Already prehistoric cavemen kept collections of coloured pebbles and astragali, which may have been used for some kind of primitive counting and as toys. [1] Rolling the dice, throwing sticks, pebbles or stones - all these were ancient means of organising chance events. Such 'games of chance', as they would be classified today, were not only played for pleasure and recreation, but also served as means of divination. Men invented mechanical random devices to consult the gods. For instance, in some primitive cultures the guilty were detected by drawing marked pieces of wood or straws of unequal length; the drawing of lots was also part of the religious rites amongst early Teutonic tribes - the origin of our lotteries today. [2]

The Letter, Issue 16, Summer 1999, Pages 1 - 8 ADDICTION * Charles Melman I am going to tell you things, both classical and original, having consequences for the treatment of addicts. As you know, neither Freud nor Lacan directly interested themselves in the area of addiction. Nevertheless, they have left us with a certain number of elements which will allow us to have an orientation and also to arrive at conclusions with respect to this very difficult question. I am going to start with some of the theses that Freud tackles in his famous work Mourning and Melancholia. These theses are going to tell us that we are all dependent and that we are all in a state of addiction. Secondly, I am going to try to show you the role of addiction in the field of toxicomania. And then in the third part of my presentation I am going to give you the exact name for the drug that is used by toxicomaniacs. So the first part of the question: What does Freud teach us in Mourning and Melancholia ? He shows us that there are two different types of loss. First of all there is bereavement or mourning which normally provokes a state of sadness, but which also, paradoxically, in some cases can produce phenomena of happiness, gaiety and joy. And there is another type of loss, which for its part produces a destruction of the personality, of identity, and which is called melancholia. And Freud explains for us very accurately the difference between the two. We know, thanks to psychoanalysis, that the mechanism of desire is set up in the human subject starting with a fundamental loss. For example, with what the theory calls the Oedipus complex, the child must lose the being that for him has been the closest and dearest, in order to gain access to desire and sexual maturity. The paradox, therefore, in the human being is that desire is set up starting from a fundamental and foundational loss. And it is on the foundation constituted by the loss of this fundamental object that there will be set up in reality the objects that are cathected or invested, the beloved/cherished persons who are going to be the support for desire. But these objects or these people are never more than the substitute for the fundamental object, which was initially lost. So you can see that there are two kinds of loss that can take place. I may happen to lose, on the occasion of a break-up or of a bereavement, a beloved person and I am in a state of bereavement or mourning.

The Letter, Issue 16, Summer 1999, Pages i - ii