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The Letter, Issue 64, Spring 2017, Pages 1 - 13 WHAT IS ANXIETY? [1] Barry O’Donnell In his comprehensive and scholarly Hearing Voices, The History of Psychiatry in Ireland Professor Brendan Kelly writes ‘In the early twentieth century, the preeminent intellectual movement of the day, psychoanalysis, conspicuously failed to grab the imagination of psychiatrists in Ireland as much as it did elsewhere.’ [2] I argue here that we do not have to make the same mistake twice, that psychiatry and mental health work in Ireland, in the early twenty first century can make it their business to draw from the well of psychoanalysis with the confidence that it can provide an understanding of, and a clinical technique for, the handling of aspects of mental life that otherwise escape attention and care. How often do we hear, as a conclusion to the carrying out of a raft of necessary medical investigations the conclusion: no organic cause can be found so it must be …. anxiety or depression . Full Stop. The psychoanalytic field does not stop with these catch-all words. On the contrary it is from these words that psychoanalysis begins its interrogation of the field of the mental. In this paper it is argued that psychoanalysis can provide direction for the treatment response, specifically, to anxiety. To make this case the first step is to open up the question: what is anxiety?

The Letter, Issue 64, Spring 2017, Pages iv - xi

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 103 - 107 WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? [1] Audrey McAleese The mother-son relationship is examined with reference to Freud’s texts - including On Narcissism and Female Sexuality - and Lacan’s terms, the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. The paper further explores what psychoanalysis offers in response to the absence of a sexual rapport between a man and a woman and questions ‘What’s love got to do with It?’ – the ‘It’ being any relationship, particularly that between a mother and her son. Keywords: mother-son relationship; narcissism; female sexuality; the Imaginary; the Symbolic; the Real; the difference between the sexes; the Oedipus Complex; the absence of sexual rapport. In light of our understanding that ‘there is no sexual rapport’ il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel , how do we assess what Freud writes about the mother-son relationship?

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 97 - 102 THE NARCISSISTIC EGO: FUNCTIONS AND FALLACIES [1] Nellie Curtin Ego therapies have as their aim the strengthening of the ego. This is in sharp contrast to Lacan’s statement that the ego is the capacity to fail. Freud identifies the functions of the ego as well as presenting the complex theory of its origins. Following Freud and Lacan, this paper, while recognizing the ego as an agency which speaks, searches back to the narcissistic fixation of the image and its precarious foundation in the imaginary. There is also an attempt to reflect on the implications of this for psychoanalytic practice. Keywords: orthopaedics of the ego; identification; the moorings of speech; Echo; the image. Freud’s paper On Narcissism: An Introduction (1914) is considered to be one of his most important writings. He had developed his ideas over a decade prior to this publication and he continued to refine them during the subsequent decade. His paper is interesting because it includes the hesitations and ambiguities of a theory in its beginnings. This is also true of what he says about the ego which is so closely linked with Narcissism.

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 83 - 95 A PERFECT CONSTRUCTION Marion Deane This fore-tale to the Táin Bó Cualnge is a 9th century representation of an event in the 7th century when the poets of Ireland set about reconstituting a book whose original contents are imagined to have happened around the time of Christ. In this paper, I will examine , in light of Christian Fierens’ work on L’Étourdit, how its basic assumptions about what constitutes truth in its entirety do not stand up to scrutiny. Keywords: Táin Bó Cualnge; assertory propositions; body; concept ; knowledge ; memory Do Fallsigud Tána Bó Cualnge [1] Concomgarthá trá filid Herend do Senchán Torpeist, dús in ba mebor leo Táin Bo Cualngi inna ógi. Asbertatar nach fetar di acht bloga nammá. Asbert iaram Senchán ria daltu dús cia dib no ragad ara bennacht i tíre Letha do foglaim na Tána berta in suí sair dar éis in chulmeinn … Iss ed dollotar do fertai Fergusa meic Róig ocus sech a liic oc Énloch la Connachta. Suidid Murgein a oenur oc liic Fergusa. & luid cách úad Gabais Murgen tra laíd don lííc amal bid Fergus fessin adgladad. a n-asbert riss iarum. ‘Manib do liic luaich-thech malgel mac Róig … Cuailngi in cech follus ... La sodain forrubai in ceó mór imbi connach fúair a muntir co cend tri laa ocus tri n-aidche. Intí Fergus fo chongraimimm chain … Adfét Fergus dó iarum in Táin uili amal doringned o thossuch co dead … Tiagait uli co Senchán iarum ocus adfiadat a n-imthechta dó ocus ba buidechside dííb iarum dano.

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 69 - 82 LOOKING BACK AT ON A DISCOURSE THAT MIGHT NOT BE A SEMBLANCE WITH L’ÉTOURDIT IN MIND Patricia McCarthy Discourse and semblance are important terms to understand in order to make sense of L’Étourdit . My wager is that all that is re-presented by Lacan in this écrit is present in a nascent state in earlier works such as On a Discourse that Might Not be a Semblance – a seminar well worth re-visiting to help us come to terms with the shocking implications of non-existence, indicated in 1971 by Lacan in many new ways, such as in the notion that the semblance is but a connotation. Keywords: discourse; semblance; the Lacanian subject; the Ratman; connotation; ab-sens ; an underdeveloped logic Introduction For the past year, our cartel has continued to work on Lacan’s L’Étourdit accompanied by Christian Fierens’ two Readings . To capture some of the questions that these texts provoke, [1] I’ve chosen to re-read Lacan’s seminar from 1971 On a Discourse that Might not be a Semblance . This seminar appealed at this time because of its enigmatic title, a title that contains the words discourse and semblance and that seems to take the form of a question – is it possible to have a discourse that might not be a semblance? Lacan himself fashions it more as a negative hypothesis that he answers quite early on. A discourse that might not be a semblance posits that there is no escaping the fact that discourse - master, university or hysterical - is a semblance. In 1971, did Lacan wish that things could be otherwise? I would suggest that the fact that you cannot have a discourse that is not a semblance culminated in Lacan’s clarifying in L’Étourdit - completed a little over a year later on July 16th 1972 – how, by a strange unsettling of the stable habitat [2] stabitat of the semblance, the analytic discourse works. As Fierens puts it, the analytic discourse is ‘then a matter of a discourse already there’ - master, university or hysterical - ‘on which the analytic discourse operates a cut that relaunches the discourse and prolongs it.’ Let me give you this quote in full without interruptions.

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 59 - 68 IS TOPOLOGY MEANINGLESS? YES AND NO Hugh Jarrett This paper developed out of the work of our cartel on the first part of the second turn of L’Étourdit [1] , and in particular the questions that developed from reading Lacan’s text and the commentary on the second turn written by Christian Fierens [2] : What is the role of topology in L’Étourdit and why is it of value to psychoanalytic practice? The answer is not an easy one largely because of the nature of metaphor or ‘meaning’ and the problems inherent in it. This paper will attempt to draw out the train of Lacan’s thoughts on topology in this particular écrit and to briefly apply his thinking to one of Freud’s cases. Keywords: Topology; L’Étourdit ; Moebius strip; meaning/metaphor; matheme ; case of the young homosexual woman

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 49 - 58 FROM KÖNIGSBERG TO CARTEL Kim Spendlove This paper comes of my work in one of the cartels of the Irish School for Lacanian Psychoanalysis (ISLP) where we focused on the Second Turn of Lacan‘s L’Etourdit and the later chapters of Christian Fierens’ Second Reading. It was presented at the ISLP Study Day on June 11th 2016. By compiling some historical references of note from mathematics, topology and psychoanalysis, my intention was to reference the usefulness of topology in the psychoanalytic clinic. Keywords: topology; topography; torus; table of transformations; drug addiction; circle of demand Why is topology useful in the practice of psychoanalysis? With a view to informing this question, we need to examine some historical aspects of the development of topology as a branch of mathematics. Topology comes from the Greek words μελέτη (study) and χώρα (space), and in mathematics, it designates properties of a particular space that are preserved under various manipulations. Its origins can be traced back to the early seventeenth century when Gottfried Leibniz [1] became interested in geometria situs (Latin for geometry of place) and analysis situs (Latin for picking apart). Topology developed as a field of study out of geometry and set theory, through the analysis of concepts such as space, dimension, and transformation. [2]

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 41 - 48 NARCISSISM: IS THAT ALL PSYCHOANALYSIS IS? [1] Monica Errity The perils of becoming too wrapped up in yourself has been known for over two thousand years as is evident from the Greeks’ cautionary tale of Narcissus, the boy who fell in love with his own reflection, but not understanding that it was his own image, pined away while waiting for it to respond to him. So, when Freud, in 1914, takes up the subject of self-love under the newly coined but apt term narcissism, it is not only to justify its existence, but to address the extent to which it is implicated in our lives. [2] The result is a comprehensive account of narcissism. Examined from seemingly every angle, Freud’s argument casts it as an all-pervading influence on our lives. However, the paper is not without its paradoxes and contradictions and it is these I want to examine so that I might attempt to answer my question: narcissism, is that all psychoanalysis is? Keywords: Narcissism; ego; ego-ideal; psychoanalysis; imaginary; symbolic

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages 4 - 39 THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE. A SECOND READING Of LACAN’S L’ÉTOURDIT Christian Fierens C. Fierens, Le discours psychanalytique . Une deuxième lecture de l’étourdit de Lacan. To ulouse, Point hors ligne, Erès, 2 01 2. Trans. C. Gallagher 2014. TABLE OF CONTENTS[1] Presentation Introduction: The differ a nce 1 THE ROLES OF THE ANALYST The analyst who knows. The dogmatic analyst The analyst who does not know. The sceptical analyst The analyst who tracks stating. The dynamic analyst The analyst who says what there is. The analyst as witness 2 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE Without resources With resilience ‘There is no sexual relationship’ or the development of the matheme of the impossible The undecidable Conclusion 3 THE LOGICS OF SEXUATION The ‘masculine phallic formulae’ The question of the subject The impasse The ‘feminine phallic formulae’ 4 THE STUFF OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE AND ITS CUT The philosophical discourse and the psychoanalytic discourse: the same stuff The cut-the stitch, the effacing of the psychoanalytic discourse The novelty of the psychoanalytic discourse Saying privileged in the psychoanalytic discourse 5 THE SENSE OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE The comfort and the impossibility of the psychoanalytic group The rejected psychoanalyst The directive idea of the psychoanalytic discourse The psychoanalytic discourse as compared to the other discourses 6 THE STRUCTURE OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE, IS INTERPRETATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Between meaning and absence, the flickering of sense Structure The equivocation of interpretation The three kernel-points of equivocation and the psychoanalytic discourse as Borromean PERSPECTIVES FOR THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE CHAPTER 6 THE STRUCTURE OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE, IS INTERPRETATION BETWEEN MEANING AND ABSENCE, THE FLICKERING OF SENSE The psychoanalytic discourse has no stuff, no consistency outside the established discourses. What is neither an hysterical discourse, a magisterial discourse nor an academic discourse is quite simply not a discourse. The discourse of science is inscribed in the hysterical discourse, the capitalist discourse is inscribed in the magisterial discourse, the psychological discourse is inscribed in the academic discourse, etc. Psychoanalytic discourse resists being preferentially inscribed in any one whatsoever of these three established discourses. And it nevertheless cannot ever escape from them on pain of losing all consistency. How situate it? We are always already engaged in the perspective of the universal proper to the concept. Whatever we say, because saying always involves the universal.

The Letter, Issue 63, Autumn 2016, Pages iv - viii

The Letter, Issue 62, Summer 2016, Pages 71 - 97 AN APPROACH TO LACAN’S XXVITH SEMINAR. TOPOLOGY AND TIME Will Greenshields This paper outlines an approach to Lacan’s XXVIth seminar Topology and Time. It begins with an examination of Lacan’s substitution of the philosopher’s being and time for the psychoanalyst’s topology and time by looking at Lacan’s deployment of the Moebius strip in clarifying the paradoxical temporality of the subject and the signifier. It then introduces the Borromean knot as a writing of the Real and attempts to explain the distinction Lacan makes between three different accesses to the Real: modelling, demonstration and monstration. Following a delineation of the place of the symptom and the unconscious in a nodal topology, this paper concludes by raising some questions about the temporality of the Borromean knot and outlining two of the concepts that Lacan introduced in Topology and Time – namely, ‘the generalised Borromean’ and ‘homotopic inversion’. Keywords: the Borromean knot; the generalised Borromean; the Moebius strip; the symptom; the Real; ex-sistence

The Letter, Issue 62, Summer 2016, Pages 65 - 69 LACAN AND PHILOSOPHY. A COMMENTARY [1] Itzhak Benyamini [2] As the last among a series of respondents, I am faced with a certain loneliness that fosters the illusion of intellectual freedom, which does not necessarily imply scientific ease. This position may have influenced my current response to the lectures of conference’s organisers Prof. Ruth Ronen and Prof. Shirley Sharon-Zisser, at the conclusion of this most serious and impressive event. They have honoured me by expressing a desire , a desire that I respond to each of their lectures, suggesting that the role of the desire-complex in the academic field also be put up for inquiry (the desire-complex in this context is to be understood as the never-ending manoeuvrings of academic scholars with their pre-sonal desire, always logically preliminary to their scientific work but constrained by their bureaucratic responsibilities). I first came to know of this expectation after their works were sent to me as inscribed theses a number of weeks ago. It is my hope that the limited scope of my comments will not harm the impression these impressive lectures have created for such a respectable audience.

The Letter, Issue 62, Summer 2016, Pages 37 - 64 CALLIOPE’S SC(D)REAM: FEMININE JOUISSANCE IN ARISTOTLE’S WORKS ON LANGUAGE Shirley Sharon-Zisser This essay offers a reading of three major Aristotelian works on language – the Rhetoric , the Poetics , and the Sophistical Refutations – with the theorisations of sexual difference in Freud’s essays on the castration and Oedipus complexes and Lacan’s teaching from On a Discourse that might not be a Semblance to Encore . Nuancing Lacan’s criticism in 1978 of Aristotle in Aristotle’s Dream as believing in representation to the exclusion of the o -object, the essay shows that Aristotle’s treatments of language are intricated with treatments of sexual difference and feminine jouissance. This is manifest especially in the theorisation of the difference between simile and metaphor in relation to the difference between man and woman, and the treatment of poetic language that is outside sense as ecstatic. Forms of elision, most notably the enthymeme, whose theorisation Aristotle considers a major contribution of his Rhetoric , function as forms of enstasis or exclusory inclusion of ecstatic jouissance such as is forged in an analysis. Keywords: Aristotle; Lacan; rhetoric; feminine jouissance; notall; castration; sexual difference

The Letter, Issue 62, Summer 2016, Pages 19 - 35 A COMMENTARY ON THE TWELFTH SESSION OF LACAN’S XXIVTH SEMINAR: L’INSU QUE SAIT DE L’UNE-BÉVUE S’AILE À MOURRE[1 ],[ 2 ] Flavia Goian This paper is a commentary on some intriguing facets to his teaching introduced by Lacan in this final session of his seminar of ‘76 – ’77 I’Insu que sait de l’unebévue s’aile à mourre . The appearance of the book Polylogue by Julia Kristeva is the opportunity for Lacan to tackle the question of his position with respect to linguistics. Essentially this is that no linguistics has value for Lacan other than ‘linguisterie’, that is to say, a linguistics which takes psychoanalysis into account. In addition, he distinguishes between metatongue and metalanguage by articulating them together: because there is no metalanguage, metatongue is nothing other than translation. In this context, he revisits Jeremy Bentham’s ground-breaking work of the 18th century on the utility of fictions and the finely balanced economy thereby wrought. An economy that regulates our pain and our pleasure but that nonetheless leaves a gap – as ultimately discerned by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle . It is in a revision of the problem of the ethics of psychoanalysis that Lacan refers to Bentham in that this ethics hinges on an orientation of man in relation to the real. Bentham’s effort is founded upon a dialectic of the relation of language to the real in order to place the good on the side of the real, which breaks from the Aristotelian ethic of the Beautiful, the Well and the Good. Furthermore, Lacan relies on the distinction made by Bentham between fictional entites and real entites to unlock the dialectic between the real and the symbolic. A key phrase of Lacan’s thought ‘ Truth is the structure of fiction’ is thereby made clear. Lacan’s preoccupation with how psychoanalysis functions remains paramount throughout the seminar. If he recalls that psychoanalysis operates by ‘an effect of suggestion’ it is because man is a parlêtre that he is receptive to suggestion. The psychoanalyst must make himself poète assez (enough of a poet) in interpretation, relying on equivocation, in order to hollow out – like the poet – one of the terms of the double meaning of the metaphor; and thus, identifying as hole the real of the letter which arises as evidence. Will he succeeed in inventing a new signifier, previously unheard of, which would from the outset be outside sense, a pure real? Keywords: suggestion; Jeremy Bentham; theory of fictions; utility of fictions; pleasure principle; metalanguage; a new signifier; repetition compulsion; hole-effect

The Letter, Issue 62, Summer 2016, Pages 1 - 18 THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE. A SECOND READING OF LACAN’S L’ÉTOURDIT Christian Fierens C. Fierens , Le discours psychanalytique . Une deuxième lecture de l’étourdit de Lacan. To ulouse, Point hors ligne, Erès, 2 01 2. Trans. C. Gallagher 2014. TABLE OF CONTENTS[1] Presentation Introduction: The differ a nce 1 THE ROLES OF THE ANALYST The analyst who knows. The dogmatic analyst The analyst who does not know. The sceptical analyst The analyst who tracks stating. The dynamic analyst The analyst who says what there is. The analyst as witness 2 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE Without resources With resilience ‘There is no sexual relationship’ or the development of the matheme of the impossible The undecidable Conclusion 3 THE LOGICS OF SEXUATION The ‘masculine phallic formulae’ The question of the subject The impasse The ‘feminine phallic formulae’ 4 THE STUFF OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE AND ITS CUT The philosophical discourse and the psychoanalytic discourse: the same stuff The cut-the stitch, the effacing of the psychoanalytic discourse The novelty of the psychoanalytic discourse Saying privileged in the psychoanalytic discourse 5 THE SENSE OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE. . . . 4 The comfort and the impossibility of the psychoanalytic group The rejected psychoanalyst The directive idea of the psychoanalytic discourse The psychoanalytic discourse as compared to the other discourses 6 THE STRUCTURE OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE, IS INTERPRETATION Between meaning and absence, the flickering of sense Structure The equivocation of interpretation The three kernel-points of equivocation and the psychoanalytic discourse as Borromean PERSPECTIVES FOR THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES CHAPTER 5 THE SENSE OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE THE COMFORT AND IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC GROUP Each discourse brings into play a social bond without which it would not be a discourse. What social bond for the psychoanalytic discourse? It would be quite natural to define this social bond as a group, namely as a set of persons ( personnes ) united around an object, an event or a project that brings them together. The social bond proper to psychoanalysis would define the place that the persons take up with respect to psychoanalysis and the question of the unconscious. The psychoanalytic discourse would thus group all the arrangements (arrangements for the treatment, for supervision, arrangements for theory and practice, intra- and inter-associative arrangements, etc.) which would give to each one his place in this group project.