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The Letter, Issue 58, Spring 2015, Pages 79 - 84 REVIS(IT)ING REPETITION [1] Monica Errity This paper seeks to uncover what lies behind Lacan’s conceptualisation of repetition as a ‘missed encounter with the real’ which he introduces in his 1964 seminar on the foundations of psychoanalysis. Through re-examining what Freud says about repetition in Beyond the Pleasure Principle it aims to give some foundation and grounding to what, on first reading, may appear enigmatic and elusive. Keywords: repetition compulsion; pleasure principle; trauma; binding; death drive In The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis Lacan makes the following statement about repetition; ‘What is repeated is always something that occurs... if by chance.’ [2] He then goes on to define chance as, ‘the real as occurs... as encounter - the encounter in so far as it may be missed, in so far as it is essentially the missed encounter.’ [3] Taken in isolation these words appear enigmatic and bewildering leaving us wondering how they are to be understood. Fortunately, Lacan doesn’t leave us completely in the dark. His frequent references to Freud suggest that before we can begin to understand what he, Lacan, is saying about repetition, we need to revisit Freud and revise, go over again ( wiederholen ) what he has said on the subject.

The Letter, Issue 58, Spring 2015, Pages 71 - 78

The Letter, Issue 58, Spring 2015, Pages 59 - 70 THE WOLFMAN: SYMPTOMS AS A REPRESENTATION OF IDENTIFICATORY CONFLICTS [1] Ros McCarthy [2] This text explores the connectivity between sexual differentiation and the Wolfman’s complicated symptomatology, tracing its progress through the dream and the primal scene to his latter-day complaint about the world being hidden by a veil. Key words: sexual differentiation; seduction; castration; the veil. Introduction Sergei Pankejeff (1887-1979) moved to Germany from Russia, his country of birth, in the wake of the Russian Revolution in 1905. The following year, his sister Anna committed suicide. This was followed in 1907 by his father’s suicide, reducing the family unit to mother and son three years before he commenced his analysis with Freud in 1910, at which time he was twenty three years old. In the course of his childhood, Pankejeff had a series of psychical disturbances. These included a change in his character when he was three and a half, an animal phobia from the age of four, the appearance of an obsessional neurosis at the age of four and a half, an hallucination at the age of five that he has lost his finger and a further outbreak of an obsessional neurosis between the ages of eight and ten.

The Letter, Issue 58, Spring 2015, Pages 31 - 58 GOING BEYOND CASTRATION IN THE GRAPH OF DESIRE Magdalena Romanowicz and Raul Moncayo This paper explores the various meanings attached to Lacan’s famous graph of desire. The graph represents the relations between desire and the law, the signifier, the subject and the code. In addition, the relations between desire and the desire of the Other and among desire, jouissance, and the drive are examined. It is proposed that the graph is constructed as an ascending and descending structure of facilitations, punctuations and limitations, of circular repetitions and lines that escape them. Beyond the drive, the subject asks ‘What do I want from the Other and what does the Other want from me?’ These questions are anything but rhetorical, as no matter what we do, we will never find complete answers to them, mainly because the answers are hidden in the questions. In other words, desire is essentially related to the loop between desire and the desire of the Other. We learn from Lacan that desire is unconscious and inseparable from the law. He also claims that, although impossible to fully capture — the Other lacks the signifiers to represent desire — desire can be represented with the help of mathematical graph theory. Graph theory allows the placing of many Lacanian concepts in one picture, such as phantasy, the ideal ego, the ego ideal, the formula for the drive, the signifier of a lack in the Other, the signifying chain, the treasury of signifiers. The most difficult part of the graph to represent is the ‘beyond’ of castration, the nonexistence of the phallus and the unthinkable Being of the subject (of the Real and the Other jouissance) that is missing within the Other and the battery of signifiers. Keywords: desire; graph of desire; topology; castration; jouissance

The Letter, Issue 58, Spring 2015, Pages 1 - 30 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, 2012. 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...4 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 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 2 THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE Over against the approach of witnessing which transforms the supposedly established act of saying into the statement of a said and heard, it will be a matter of starting from the said to rediscover a saying which on the one hand is forgotten and which on the other hand cannot be expressed in the form of a said. The task seems hopeless: we have saying and the said–heard ( ditentendu ) in their opposition, the first is completely forgotten, we can only start from the second and, what is more, we cannot exhibit saying in terms of saids, or again in terms of truth, since the truth is always of the domain of the said, more precisely of the half-said. In truth there is no saying. Nevertheless it is indeed by restoring its saying that the discourse of analysis would be constituted ( AE [Autres Ecrits] , p. 454). Not the discourse of the analyst: starting from the personage of the analyst, it is rather the established discourses which take on the consistency of saids. But the discourse of analysis starts from the neutral speech which does not allow itself to be determined either by a precise stating subject, nor by a fixed object of which one might speak. Saying without saying who and without saying what. Neutrality is a fundamental principle.

The Letter, Issue 58, Spring 2015, Pages iv - vii

The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages 63 - 77 AN EXAMINATION OF THE FUNCTION OF THE PROPER NAME AS INTRODUCED IN CRUCIAL PROBLEMS FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS . Micheli Romão This paper explores the occurrence of parapraxis in two different instances, and its relation to the function of the proper name. The first parapraxis is captured in the word Poor(d)J’eLI, presented by Serge Leclaire during the closed sessions of Lacan’s seminar Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis 1964/1965. The second instance is Lacan’s reading of Freud’s The Forgetting of Proper Names . Leclaire argues that the nonsensical utterance Poor(d)J’eLI functions as a proper name and that it is linked to a primordial unconscious phantasy. For Lacan, Freud’s forgetting of the name Signorelli is also a reference to the function of the proper name, this time linked with absence. The comments on Leclaire’s work and the subsequent reading of Lacan’s interpretation of Freud’s example reveal two different ‘acts’concerning the same psychoanalytic method. Keywords: Poor(d)J’eLI; Signorelli; proper name; unconscious phantasy; absence; sticking/detaching; Leclaire.

The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages 55 - 62 IRISH MYTH: CULTURE AND PSYCHIC STRUCTURE Nellie Curtin The relationship of myth and psychoanalysis is present in Freud’s writing from the beginning. He uses myth to help explain his theories of infantile sexuality and the interpretation of dreams. His references are to stories from Greek literature, as for instance the myths of Oedipus and Narcissus. This paper draws on an Irish myth which deals with a culture in transition as well as the structuring of a human subject. Using this myth, the paper attempts to identify remnants of prehistory which are likely to remain in the unconscious and how these are woven into analytic experience. Keywords: primal scene; Irish myth; phylogenesis versus ontogenesis; products of construction; refusal; oral subject. In the closing paragraph of the Wolfman analysis, Freud refers to two problems which he says deserve special emphasis. They are, what he calls, ‘the phylogenetically inherited schemata’ [1] and a ‘primitive kind of mental activity’ which he compares to the ‘the instinctive knowledge of animals.’ [2] He gives a warning also: ‘I consider that they are only admissible when psychoanalysis strictly observes the correct order of precedence, and after forcing its way through the strata of what has been acquired by the individual, comes at last upon traces of what has been inherited.’ [3] While paying heed to his counsel about the primacy of the individual’s experience in psychoanalysis, it seems worthwhile to reflect on these psychological factors which he considers significant.

Marion Deane The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages 47 - 62 SUBJECT AND SUBJECT-MATTER Marion Deane Based upon ‘The Psychoanalytic Discourse: A Second Reading of Lacan’s L’Etourdit’ by Christian Fierens, I look at ‘The Tollund Man ’ by Seamus Heaney as the first stage of a process. l consider the limitations of certain hermeneutic tactics brought to my first hearing it. Then, l consider a hypothetical situation, in which the words were spoken and heard in a psychoanalytic setting. I examine the further inadequacies of these interpretive strategies for such a situation together with the possibility of going beyond them. Keywords: delusion of interpretation; unary trait; semantic equivocation; infra-linguistic differance The Tollund Man [1] I Some day I will go to Aarhus To see his peat-brown head, The mild pods of his eye-lids, His pointed skin cap. In the flat country near by Where they dug him out, His last gruel of winter seeds Caked in his stomach, Naked except for The cap, noose and girdle, I will stand a long time. Bridegroom to the goddess, She tightened her torc on him And opened her fen, Those dark juices working Him to a saint’s kept body, Trove of the turfcutters’ Honeycombed workings. Now his stained face Reposes at Aarhus.

The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages 41 - 45 NOTES ON THE GREEK EXPRESSIONS IN ‘FRAGILITIES OF ANALYSIS [1] ’ Barry O’Donnell επιμελεια εαυτου ( epimeleia heautou ) This phrase was brought to prominence in the work of Michel Foucault and is usually translated into English as ‘care of/for the self’. This translation is, arguably, misleading in an age of enthusiasm for predominantly narcissistic practices of ‘self-care’. επιμελεια (epimeleia ) translates as ‘care bestowed upon a thing’ or ‘attention paid to something; it has a sense of ‘attending with diligence’, of ‘employment upon a matter’. εαυτου ( heautou ) is a third person reflexive pronoun and is therefore literally 'of himself, or itself'. A possible translation of the phrase epimeleia heautou can be ‘care of what is of oneself’ or ‘care for what is one’s own’. The Hiberno-English ‘it’s himself’ comes tomind. In light of the discussion in Jean Allouch’s paper of das Ding and the Freudian thing the translation ‘attending to one’s thing’ suggests itself. Foucault translated the Greek with soucie pour le soi and argued that it referred to practices whereby the subjectis engaged in his or her own ques- tion vis-a-vis the Other. He represents it as adevelopment in Plato - a 'fairly profound reorganisation’ of earlier practices concernedwith the self. Foucault finds the phrase in Plato's Alcibiades , 127e. He proposes thatinvolved in any use of the term are two questions: ‘… what is this thing, this object, this self to which one must attend? Secondly, there isthe care in “care of the self”. What form should this care take, in what must it consist, given that what is at stake in the dialogue is that I must be concerned about myself so as to be able to govern others and the city-state?’ [2]

The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages 29 - 40 FRAGILITIES OF ANALYSIS [1] Jean Allouch The historical attempts of psychoanalysis to remedy its sense of fragility by forging a pseudo-solidity alongside psychiatry, psychology and anthropology have led to a deviation of its aims and an inhibition of its efficiency. Michel Foucault has argued that psychoanalysis, and psychoanalysts outside Lacan, has not had the courage to think of itself and to exercise itself as a form of spiritual exercise - as understood from ancient times, where only a transformation of the subject can permit his access to the truth. Psychoanalysts need to rediscover a sense of fragility which refuses to offer guarantees, renounces psychiatric and even early Lacanian clinical categories, abstains from classifying analysers and in particular from describing their sexual behaviour as perverse. Freud's final arrival in Moses and Monotheism, at Geistigkeit (spirituality) as opposed to psychology and religion is an illuminating guide to what is truly at stake in the Freudian field. Key words: fragility; Michel Foucault; clinical categories; the diverse; spirituality.

The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages 1 - 27 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 Presentation ...4[ 1] Introduction: The differ a nce...7 1 THE ROLES OF THE ANALYST...11 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 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 PRESENTATION Discourse creates a social bond. How express (dire) the social bond specific to psychoanalysis? Must we base ourselves on the persons concerned by analysis? Discourse in general does not have protagonists; it is not determined by the agents that are supposed to precede it. On the contrary, it is the discourse which gives their place to people who will find in it their consistency by allowing it to resonate in them. It is the master discourse which determines the master and not the inverse. It is the hysterical discourse which challenges the hysteric and makes her exist and not the inverse. It is the academic discourse which knows how to organise the academic and not the inverse. In the same way, the psychoanalytic discourse is not the discourse held by the analyst, nor is it the discourse held by the analyser. There is no analyst and no analyser who maintains the psychoanalytic discourse. It is on the contrary the latter which maintains and sustains them. One should not confuse the psychoanalytic discourse and the discourse of the analyst.

The Letter, Issue 57, Autumn 2014, Pages iv - vi

The Letter, Issue 55/56, Spring/Summer 2014, Pages 103 - 118 THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE ALLOWS A DIFFERENT KIND OF THERAPEUTIC ENGAGEMENT IN PSYCHOSIS. Patricia McCarthy [1] For the psychiatrist, negative symptoms are viewed as a sign of mental illness marked by a symbolic deficit. Symbolic deficit flags the imperative of the Real and as such is viewed in an utterly different way by the psychoanalyst who views all meaning-making – whether the phantasy of the neurotic or the positive symptom, the delusion of the psychotic - as a means of compensation, a means of constructing a symbolic solution in the face of the Real. Ab-sens , understood as absence or absence of sense, directly indicates the Real. While at the core of the negative symptom, ab-sens allows the question of the subject to be posed. This unique pivot between ab-sens and the subject to come requires an introduction to the terms meaning, sense and ab-sens , in the hope of prompting a reappraisal by the non-analyst, of psychoanalysis as a therapeutic engagement that differs from any other narrative approach. Keywords: negative symptoms; psychoanalytic discourse; Fierens; subject; meaning; sense/ab-sens; differance; a clinic of failure

The Letter, Issue 55/56, Spring/Summer 2014, Pages 93 - 102 PSYCHOANALYTIC TREATMENT OF PSYCHOSIS: A LATER LACANIAN CRITIQUE OF THE 388 IN QUÉBEC CITY Tom Dalzell [1] This paper attempts to assess the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic illness at a publicly funded centre in Canada. This treatment ‘after Lacan’ is thought to amount to treating delusions with the patient’s own dreams, or subordinating the Imaginary to the Symbolic. As a critique ‘after the later Lacan’, the paper draws on current debate and practice in France which applies the later Lacan’s turn to the Real, and in particular his theory of knots, to the treatment of psychotic illness. Keywords: Lacan; psychosis; borromean knot; Real; Symbolic; Imaginary; names of the father; The 388 Introduction The 388 is a centre for the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic patients in Québec City in Canada. When Willy Apollon and others first introduced Lacan’s teaching to the members of GIFRIC Group interdisciplinaire Freudien de recherche et d’intervention clinique and at the University of Laval in the mid-1970s and 80s, they believed that Lacan’s approach to psychosis provided only preliminary remarks rather than definite guidelines for the psychoanalytic treatment of psychotic illnesses. Hence the title of the collection of essays by Apollon, Danielle Bergeron, and Lucie Cantin, all training analysts in GIFRIC, After Lacan. Clinical Practice and the Subject of the Unconscious . The treatment offered in The 388 has been very successful. This paper will examine GIFRIC’s literature on this treatment and respectfully question its theoretical reliance on middle Lacan’s emphasis on the Symbolic. [2]

The Letter, Issue 55/56, Spring/Summer 2014, Pages 81 - 91 ‘A DISCOURSE FOR THE BIRDS’ AN ADAPTIVE PSYCHOANALYTIC JOURNEY WITHIN THE PUBLIC PSYCHIATRIC SERVICE AT ST FRANCIS, RAHENY James O’Connor [1] This paper is an account of an entrée by psychoanalytic methodology and practice into the public psychiatric service in what is now HSE Dublin North at St. Francis Day Hospital Raheny, chiefly by referrring to a seminal case of intractable paranoia, the analysis of which lasted over three years leading to the acceptance of what has become a valuable contributor to psychiatric treatment within the Kilbarrack catchment area. Keywords: observe; adapt; assimilate; accommodate; challenge; methodology; confidence. ‘...If the doctor ‘says what there is’, if the doctor gives his diagnosis, it is indeed to give an adequate response. He is the right person in the right place at the right moment (‘is there a doctor on the plane?’). And that can work as long as the process of the illness is not understood as a signifying process implying the subject….” Medical science functions by setting aside the subject of stating….’ [2] Case Study: ‘HIM’ October 1997 – April 2001