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The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 102 - 116 WHAT TYPE OF KNOWLEDGE?: THE FIDEIST POSITION IN PSYCHOANALYTIC PRAXIS * . Stephen J. Costello. Introduction 'I am not one of those who philosophise'. The less', Lacan continues, 'one wants to do philosophy, the more of it one does'. [1] I don't particularly want to philosophise either but as both Aristotle and Lacan have confirmed, in order to want not to philosophise, one must philosophise. What I have to say locates itself within theological and philosophical discourses as much as within Lacanian psychoanalytic praxis. Today, I would like to confine myself to exploring the relationship between fideism and psychoanalysis or, to put it more specifically, the fideist position and analytic praxis, a connection tentatively adumbrated for us by Lacan in week 19 of the seminar entitled Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis, which we are here considering. [2] To this end, I shall cover three topics: (1) a succinct historical and hermeneutical survey of fideism in the Western intellectual tradition; (2) a brief exposition of Pascal's and Kierkegaard's philosophical psychology of religion, as two examples of such a fideist position and; (3) to conclude by connecting the fideist position to the Lacanian clinic and to the sujet suppose savoir.

The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 84 - 101 RUMPELSTILTSKIN'S REVENGE ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PROPER NAMES IN PSYCHOANALYSIS * Dany Nobus Morse is my name In the final chapter of Colin Dexter's Death is now my Neighbour, Chief Inspector Morse and his girlfriend Janet McQueen walk towards the Roman Baths of Bath, when Janet suddenly disturbs the silence to ask her ever grumpy partner a most delicate question: 'Does he know your Christian name?'. [1] Of course, the he is the ever jolly Sergeant Lewis, without whose dedication Morse could not possibly have solved the myriad complicated murder cases for which he has become famous. And of course, Morse has to admit that even his beloved assistant has been refused access to the mystery of his given name. But Janet insists: 'How come you got lumbered with it ?'. [2] Hesitantly, but ostensibly carried away on the wings of love, Morse reveals the story: They both had to leave school early, my parents - they never had much of a chance in life themselves. That's partly the reason, I suppose. They used to keep on at me about trying as hard as I could. They wanted me to do that. They expected me to do that. Sort of emotional blackmail really - when you come to think of it. [3]

The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 73 - 83 A PORTRAIT OF THE ANALYST AS A CRUCIAL PROBLEM * Guy Le Gaufey We do not pay enough attention to the fact that the unconscious was not discovered alone, and that something else saw the light at approximately the same time, I mean: the psychoanalyst as such, as he appears in the sheer movement of transference. We regularly lean to those last years of the previous century as to a cradle into which, in the shape of a certain Dr. Freud, a sort of psychoanalytical Adam emerged. We admire the feat through which Freud gave birth to a new kind of being, and we comment untiringly on the old story of the dawn of psychoanalysis. I would prefer to consider each of these - the unconscious and the psychoanalyst - as a pair, from their very beginning right up to today and even, while I am at it, for the foreseeable future. During the first half of this century, the psychoanalyst was not the main problem; at first he was simply someone deeply interested in the new field of the Freudian unconscious; then, on top of that, he became someone having experienced, more or less, a psychoanalytical treatment; but he has become something else too, through Lacan's teaching; a sort of product, or shadow, or scrap of the unconscious.

The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 61 - 72 THE SOPHIST AND THE PSYCHOANALYST * Barry O'Donnell In the Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis [1] Lacan announces: The psychoanalyst is the presence of the sophist in our time ...'. In this paper I will investigate this provocative statement. The paper is divided into four sections. Firstly I will introduce you to different understandings of the term sophist and then in the subsequent three sections I will situate and explore a text of Plato's entitled Sophist [2] under the following headings: One: Definitions and Defining. Two: Getting it wrong: the possibility of falsehood and deception. Three: Mimicry and Knowing: the sophist and the psychoanalyst. In this last section I will return to the quotation from Lacan and attempt to situate his reference to the sophist. As we proceed through what is a broad outline of the story of Plato's Sophist I would ask you to bear in mind that the figure of the sophist as presented by Plato is in some significant way comparable to the psychoanalyst as presented by Lacan. What do we understand by the term sophist? Firstly let us distinguish between the historical sophist and the Platonic sophist.

The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 47 - 60 OF KLEIN BOTTLES, CUTS AND SEX* Patricia McCarthy A young man had the following dreams. He is obsessional and his symptom involves a sexual attraction to other young men, always in a form more perfect or beautiful than himself. The first dream is as follows: We were at the scene of an accident. My friend, (male) was stuck in a shaft in the ground. It was as if he was standing up in it wedged in by his heels. The situation was desperate as the water level was rising. We put planks around the edges of the hole to shore it up and to give him some leverage to get out of this shaft. I went off to phone the fire brigade but when I returned the situation had worsened. The water level had almost covered his head and in the dream, my gaze focused on this pair of heels wedging him in. So, as you listen to an anxiety dream like this, you cannot be immune to the danger that this young man is in. However, what presented itself in the account was a pair-of-heels. This reference to a pair-of-heels is Other. It jars with the otherwise distressing content of the dream. And, likewise, my intervention seems to jar, when all I ask him is, 'What about this pair-of- heels?' His response was, 'Now that you mention it, I think of women's high heels, breasts or testicles'. In the next session, he produced a second dream. It is in three parts.

The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 37 - 46 THE RAPTURE OF LOL V. STEIN* Tony Hughes The Rapture of Lol V. Stein was written by Marguerite Duras in 1964. Lacan wrote a short commentary [1] on the text in December 1965 - the only one he ever wrote on the work of a living author. As a consequence Duras' book became widely known. Michelle Montrelet was the first psychoanalyst to comment on the novel, which she did in Seminar XII, Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis. [2] The Rapture of Lol V. Stein [3] is the story of a nineteen-year-old Jewish woman who has been engaged for six months to Michael Richardson. One evening she goes to a ball with him at the T. Beach Municipal Casino and during the course of the evening a mysterious woman - Anne-Marie Stretter - enters the ballroom accompanied by her daughter. Stretter is wearing a low-cut black dress and she and Richardson dance together and they are caught up 'in a passion that is as sudden as it is definitive'. [4] As Lol watches the excruciating scene unfold before her, she becomes hooked by it and it traumatises her. She is simultaneously ecstatic with happiness and beside herself with loss. The lovers leave the ballroom, watched by Lol and 'when she could see them no longer she fell to the ground in a dead faint'. [5]

The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 23 - 36 THE PROBLEM OF THE CRUCIAL OBJECT IN PSYCHOANALYSIS* Maeve Nolan Lacan considered the o object to be his most original contribution to psychoanalysis and it plays many roles in his theorising about the human subject. It moves from being the object of desire, an imaginary part-object to being the agalma, the object of desire we seek in the other. It gradually loses some of its imaginary status as it takes on connotations of the real and becomes the object cause of desire, that which sets desire in motion. This paper in many ways takes up from a previous one which followed a reading of Lacan's seminar on Transference. My desire to understand the o object was evoked but avoided while writing an article on transference in analysis. Now, following a reading of Seminar XI [1] and Crucial Problems, [2] its centrality is once more apparent and this time it had to be confronted rather than ignored. This continued pursuit of the o object illustrates Melman's point that the o object is; ... the object which ensures that when we pursue a reflection it comes to a limit, which doesn't allow us to draw a conclusion but which sustains or activates our desire to know more about it. [3] This paper attempts to clarify something about the o object but it is necessary to point out that this grappling with it stems primarily from a reading of Crucial Problems and from Seminar XL There will undoubtedly be new formulas for the o object but as Lacan points out there is no need for 'the preceding ones to find their way to the bottom of your pockets and never come out again'. [4] Whatever revisions it may undergo there is much of value come out again'. to be said about the o object at this stage in his theorising.

The Letter, Issue 9, Spring 1997, Pages 1 - 22

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 104 - 113 ELLA FREEMAN SHARPE - A REVIEW OF HER CONTRIBUTION Barry O'Donnell Ella Sharpe (1875-1947) came to psychoanalysis from a background in literature, particularly Shakespeare, and teacher training. She became a student of psychoanalysis at the Medico-Psychological Clinic in London in 1917 and three years later went to Berlin for analysis with Hans Sachs, a non-medical analyst who shared her interest in literature. (He had also written on symbolism with Otto Rank and had been well regarded in Ernest Jones' seminar paper The Theory of Symbolism). [1] Ella Sharpe would later say that her motivation from the beginning of her involvement in the field of psychoanalysis was not to cure but to understand. She began to work in accordance with two articles of faith: an absolute belief in psychic determinism, and that a process was set in motion in analysis. [2] By 1923 Ella Sharpe had returned to London and become a Member of the British Psycho-Analytic Society and quickly became involved in teaching. A series of lectures to students entitled The Technique of Psychoanalysis has been regarded as 'classic'. [3] Here and elsewhere she initiated many lines of thought that have since become very much associated with the British independents. With Ernest Jones and Joan Riviere she supported Melanie Klein in her 1926 attack on Anna Freud's book on child analysis and while she acknowledged Klein's 'special insight into the unconscious life' she remained suspicious of her 'theoretical formulations'. [4] Raynor groups Sharpe with Joan Riviere and Melanie Klein as the female analysts around Jones when he was questioning Freud's phallocentric theory and writing on female sexuality in the mid-thirties. However, she does not seem to have addressed this issue explicitly in her writing. In the Controversial Discussions (1942-44) she made some important contributions on the questions of technique and training and the danger of a priori assumptions in the practice of analysis. She did not align herself to either side in those 'Discussions' and has become associated in retrospect with the Independent tradition in British psychoanalysis.

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 95 - 103 ANXIETY: Preserving the objet a Helen Sheehan Lacan makes it clear in his Seminar on Anxiety that anxiety is a phenomenon, that it has an object and moreover there seems to be a precise place where we can locate this phenomenon. [1] But to do this we need to understand a little of how the subject comes into being and how in turn the subversion of the subject will come about. But this in turn will necessitate our having to confront our own anxiety, and who likes to have to do that? The coming into being of the subject will necessarily involve him in jouissance but this kind of enjoyment as such is really forbidden to the speaking being. But it is through this jouissance that we can begin to learn something about our indebtedness to the Other, because of something having been lost -this lost object which Lacan came to name the objet a. Two questions arise at this time -what is this object and what does to subvert the subject imply? This is a question which cannot be arrived at fully at this stage but it is fair to say that the object in question is the objet a, the object which causes our desire and that the subversion must be a little like turning the back to the front, -the reversal that Freud has shown to take place with the Uncanny. [2] This will involve the doubling around of all the old familiar things, including the ego itself, into something else which we can see in a completely new way and which may involve our having to take a step back into another area of darkness, where vestiges of childhood pain and anxiety lie dormant. We then realise that we are in familiar territory.

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 83 - 94 THEORY, CLINIC ...A QUESTION OF ETHICS? Robert Levy The ethical question of the analyst is included in the way he gives an interpretation. In this way his knowledge or better said his 'supposedly known', is inscribed in a certain relation with desire. It is at this point of the encounter that the analyst, supposed to know and understand unconscious desire, is called upon. About this Freud is absolutely dear and tells us that... ... we refused most emphatically to turn a patient who puts himself into our hands in search of help into our private property, to decide his fate for him, to force our own ideals upon him, and with the pride of a Creator to form him in our own image and see that it is good ... and the patient should be educated to liberate and fulfil his own nature, not to resemble ourselves. [1] Freud offers us a striking example in an article that appeared in 1928 in the magazine Imago, entitled A Religious Experience. [2] This text shows the extent to which it is necessary for the analyst to 'know' Freud and Freudian analysis; as we will see, this knowledge is 'already there' for Freud. But knowledge is 'already there' not because it is a non-sense to which a sense is given, but rather because Freud consistently upholds the body of knowledge already constituted by Freudian analysis, and which can be called upon in each case that he uses as demonstration of it.

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 71 - 82

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 49 - 70 AUTOEROTIC ASPHYXIA FROM PHENOMENOLOGY TO PSYCHOANALYSIS K. Temmerman & J. Quackelbeen Introduction On the subject of man's sexual life, history teaches us at least two, ostensibly opposite facts: first of all that throughout all cultures sexuality has a virtually endless series of variations but also that, despite its public expressions, it also remains highly concealed, highly secretive; as if precisely in this domain man were a multiple Janus figure. Autoerotic asphyxia (AEA), also referred to as asphyxiophilia, is one of these possible types of expression, the private nature of which is stressed par excellence. At any time the way in which it is viewed is a function of the appraisals that are commonly accepted at the time when the evaluation is formulated. At one time the practice applies as a refined routine in highly cultivated circles, at another it belongs to the classical range of services supplied by prostitutes and finally, when viewed from the sphere of action of the (forensic) psychiatrist or the sexologist, it is a sexual 'aberation’，a perversion.

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 33 - 48 LACAN AND THE LURE OF THE LOOK Stephen J. Costello In vain your image comes to meet me And does not enter me where I am who only shows it Turning towards me you can find On the wall of my gaze only your dreamt-of shadow. I am that wretch comparable with mirrors That reflect but cannot see Like them my eye is empty and like them inhabited By your absence which makes them blind. Aragon, 'Contre-chant', Fou d'Elsa . It was an instance, par excellence, in the Real. It concerned a dream told to Freud by a woman patient and which Freud analysed in chapter seven of The Interpretation of Dreams . A father had been waiting and watching at the bed-side of his sick son for days and nights. After the boy had died, the father went into the next room to lie down, but left the door open so that he could see into the room in which his son's body was laid out with tall candles surrounding it. An old man had been told to keep watch over it and was seated beside the body murmuring prayers. After an interval spent sleeping, the father dreamt that his son was standing beside his bed, taking hold of his arm and whispering reproachfully to him: 'Father, can't you see I'm burning'. The father wakes up, notices a bright glare from the next room, hurries in and finds the old watchman sleeping and discovers that the wrappings and one of the arms of his son's dead body had been burned by a candle. He concluded that the candle over­ turned, the sheets of the boy's bed caught fire while he slept next door. It was an accident, a contingent, capricious and meaningless event in the impossible Real which always comes without having been called, unbidden, unwelcome, captured in this dream by the words: Father, can't you see I'm burning .

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 17 - 32 THE HATRED OF THE FATHER IN PERVERSION * André Michels It is often difficult if not impossible to talk publicly about one's own clinical cases, especially when this involves talking of intimate details that the psychoanalyst has been entrusted with and is expected to keep to himself. However, nothing prevents him from using his clinical experience to discuss material, clinical or literary, which has already been published, nor from giving his own interpretation of this. In this paper, I will use the case of Oscar Wilde and attempt to give a clinical interpretation of it. We have all the necessary information on him for a detailed reading that will enable us to develop some hypothesis on perversion in general. An axis will serve as the guide of this research, namely via the way in which the functions of the father intervene in this case to determine it in every single aspect. This will be useful in expounding the pervert's typical attitude towards the challenge of castration. Let us begin by saying that this takes place insofar as castration dogs not intervene to give a structure to the 'place of the Other' ( le lieu de l'Autre ), especially ot the first Other in the life of the child -that means his mother. The pervert is constantly forced to take on the challenge personally. At times it is so important in his life as an adult that it dominates the entire clinical picture. From this we can also refer to and develop the Freudian hypothesis which asserts the disavowal of castration to be at the origin of fetishism and hence also, at least implicitly, that it is paradigmatic of the defence mechanism present in perversion. Repression, though not absent, does not work at all like in the neurotic. I will try to give you an idea of how we could elucidate and give an interpretation of the defence mechanism which takes place in perversion and which determines its scenario. The hypothesis I would like to develop is that the specificity of the perverse reaction that the subject will put into place depends on the way in which the 'father issue' was introduced in his life. However, this does not contradict the generally admitted opinion, which can be verified clinically, that perversion is the result of the law of the mother who did not 'suffer' the sanction of a third" agency or authority which is that of the father. The pervert will be tine as long as he can Eve in a universe which is solelv maternal, and reject the paternal influence, if possible for ever. He will thus be able to stay away from the limits of his subjectivity which are symbolic but which at the same time cause pain (faire mal). In French the word le mal has different meanings, - already yesterday evening we spoke about le mal. [1] As well as evil, it means harm, hurt, disease, illness, pain, ache etc. The pervert is forced to enact one or more at a time of those multiple forms of le mal , of pain or of evil. To avoid hurting himself ( de se faire mal ), he will do all he can to create a double life, of which Dorian Gray's story is an appropriate example. I will comelback for a little while to it and try to show how in fact it is like a model for perversion.

The Letter, Issue 8, Autumn 1996, Pages 1 - 16 OSCAR WILDE: AESTHETE AND HOMOSEXUAL * André Michels Cormac Gallagher: It is a very great pleasure to welcome Dr. André Michels who has come to us from Luxembourg to give a lecture this evening on Oscar Wilde which he has entitled Aesthete and Homosexual. It probably sounds much better in French or Luxembourgeois but we have decided to keep the title anyway. Tomorrow morning he will be giving a talk in St. Vincent's Hospital, to which you are all also very welcome, on The Hatred of the Father in Perversion, that is, the hatred of the father in perversion. This evening's lecture we had planned, and he had intended, to be a more literary and general introduction to the problem of perversion. Tomorrow morning's talk will be perhaps a little bit more technical. I would just like to say a word or two. One of the reasons why Dr. Michels is here is that I read an article in a Strasbourg journal called Apertura in which he was one of the very few people that I have come across who has actually approached the question of Freud's study of the Witz, the witticism, and the way in which it impacts on the style of analytical interpretation. Subsequently, we also met at the Congress of the European Foundation for Psychoanalysis in 1992. More recently again he has published an article in the last issue of The Letter, which I can recommend to you warmly, entitled Writing and Oedipus, in which he proposes some very interesting, I would say, axes for reflection. By training he is a doctor and a psychiatrist, trained, I just learned tonight, in part at least, with a very famous and I would hate to hesitate to say (but for me anyway), an almost avuncular figure in French psychoanalysis called Lucien Israel, who hasn't been translated much into English but whose work has been extremely influential, who incidentally as Dr. Michels just said, wasn't very interested in theory but was, I think, pretty much of a clinical genius - from what one hears. Dr. Michels is also a frequent visitor to the United States where he has lectured on a regular basis in New York and in. Boston and notably also in Clarke University. Those of you who have done the first three weeks of your psychoanalytical studies programme will I hope know that Clarke University is best known for having awarded a doctorate to Freud on its twentieth anniversary. Now, I don't know what we are going to do in LSB or who we are going to award a doctorate to on our twentieth anniversary, but it gives you a sense of perspective when you see this university remembered for something it did on its twentieth anniversary. All of that having been said, we are delighted to have you with us tonight André and I'll now let you read your paper.