Issue 71 now available

The Letter, Issue 53, Summer 2013, Pages 47 - 55 SPEAKING SUBJECTS Barry O’Donnell Close attention to Lacan’s writing provides a basis for discerning an account of subjectivity in terms of speech and in terms of the option of refusal of a position as a speaking subject. In this exercise a reference to the Symbolic Order is indispensable. Keywords: subjectivity and its refusal, assujettissement, Symbolic Order, speaking, memory What are the grounds for our insistence on speech being the basis of psychoanalytic practice? It is, to be sure, something more than the slogan that ‘it’s good to talk’. Freud discovered early on that speaking is not simply a medium, the use of which can be cathartic in effect. [1] It was because of this discovery that he found his way in The Interpretation of Dreams to the mechanisms of the dream work. Then, again, in Jokes and their relation to the Unconscious these same mechanisms of condensation and displacement are revealed to be operating in the work that produces a joke, the Witzarbeit. [2]

The Letter, Issue 53, Summer 2013, Pages 41 - 46 FROM ONE TURN TO THE OTHER Christian Fierens (161) The starting point of psychoanalytic logic is the Heteros , the ‘notall’. If Plato’s Parmenides opens out onto the Heteros , we must nevertheless await the coming of the practice of ab-sense or psychoanalysis to set en route the logic of the Heteros ; for it is only in ‘the equivocation of the signifier’ that the logic of the ‘notall’ appears as logic of the impossible or logic of the reversal proper to the roundabout of discourses. Already at work in the first two phallic formulae, especially in these naval manoeuvres and these dances with which history is woven, the ‘notall’ must be explained in a second turn. The riddle of the notall (24e; 468) How conceive the riddle of the notall? To the riddle posed by the Sphynx – ‘what is the animal that walks on four paws in the morning, two paws at midday, and three paws in the evening? – Oedipus responded: ‘man’. Far from repeating the riddle of the Sphynx and Oedipus’ interpretation, Lacan asks himself the question: ‘What is a woman’? And he responds by the count of four, two, three: - by the quadrupod of the four places of the discourses (chapter 2), - by the bipod of the sexes that remain without a relationship (chapter 3) and – by the tripod formed by the two sexes and the phallic function (chapter 4).

The Letter, Issue 53, Summer 2013, Pages 1 - 39

The Letter, Issue 53, Summer 2013, Pages v - vii

The Letter, Issue 52, Spring 2013, Pages 57 - 77 THE BIG OTHER, ITS PARADOX AND THE RUSE OF KNOWLEDGE [1] It is really the messenger of the gods who speaks through the lips of this innocent. Lacan 13.11.1957 Patricia McCarthy The fact of repression is that a thought or knowledge solution is launched. Freud’s hysterics showed him that they suffered from reminiscences where things did not add up. A knowledge solution is the means by which we live our lives – of necessity, a fictional or lying means that masks/speaks the truth. This knowledge solution launches agency in the Other – again a fiction. Lacan’s radical formulation of the real makes for a very disconcerting disconnect between an agent Other eg God, mother, father, superego and a knowledge without a subject. And yet and yet… psychoanalysis takes place in the presence of a flesh and blood other, who refuses the demand of the analyser, grounded as this demand is on an acceptance by him or her of this very refusal – a ‘thy will be done’. For those who are committed to psychoanalysis, the question remains, what conditions such acceptance? Keywords: the hole in the big Other; paradox; lack-of-sense (ab-sens); the drives; the real of sex; knowledge solution; the pervert; the mystic Unwittingly, I realise, that for the past three years of my work in three separate cartels within ISLP, I have been preoccupied with the conceptual challenge posed by the big Other [2] - particularly as Lacan speaks about it in the Seminar for 1968–69, Seminar XVI From an Other to the other . This preoccupation was given an unexpected boost by a teaching exercise in the academic session of 2011–12 where I had the opportunity to re-read Seminar V The Formations of the Unconscious delivered by Lacan some eleven years earlier in 1957–58.

The Letter, Issue 52, Spring 2013, Pages 57 - 55 GODISNOWHERE PSYCHOANALYSIS – NEGATIVE ONTOLOGY, NEGATIVE THEOLOGY Donat Desmond The ambiguity or pun in the title ‘God is now here’,‘God is no where‘ is entirely intentional as it explores Lacan’s subject engaged in the task of analysis depicted as a ‘negative ontology’ influenced by Hegel’s concept of ‘Begierde’ (Desire) and Heidegger’s concept of ‘Dasein’ (Being there) or alternately as a ‘negative theology’ where the later Lacan’s RSI facilitates a God of the Real which is neither of the Symbolic or the Imaginary. This article does not argue in an evidential way regarding the superiority of one position over another but argues that both have validity within a Lacanian reading where truth is a subjective ontological position rather than an objective epistemological position. Keywords: epistemology, ontology, Hegel, Heidegger, RSI, sinthome, lack. This paper arose from participation during the academic session 2013-2014, in an ISLP Cartel Group at Milltown studying Lacan’s (1974-5) Seminar XXII RSI and Seminar XXIII Joyce and the Sinthome (1975-6) . In the latter seminar, James Joyce is studied as a subject for whom the instatement of the nom du père in inserting him into the symbolic was deficient. In a profound sense Joyce’s writing was an attempt to make a name for himself, a name and a writing which would intrigue, baffle and confound future generations of scholars.

The Letter, Issue 52, Spring 2013, Pages 29 - 46 DO DRÚTHAIBH OCUS MERAIBH OCUS DÁSACHTAIB[1 ] O F FOOLS MADMEN AND LUNATICS Marion Deane This paper will examine attitudes towards the mad and insane in early Irish society and explore the rationale for both their inclusion in and their exclusion from mainstream society. It will attempt to interpret a range of terms, now defunct, that indicated the characteristics of their illness. As no individual case history survives, and since the mad were seldom afforded a significant role in the early literature, the investigation of the topic has to proceed obliquely. The material for it is in two parts. The first is formed from a composite of material, notably, legal, satirical and gnomic, from an amalgam of residual or interpolated material, dating from the seventh to the ninth centuries. However, much of the evidence is more suggestive than definitive. Furthermore, in most of it, the mentally ill are regarded as members of a social category, not as distinct human subjects. However, when Irish social and kingship theories are taken in conjunction with Buile Suibhne, henceforth, The Frenzy of Sweeney, [2] the text that grounds the second part of the investigation, their alliance brings the lived experience of a human being in crisis into focus for us. In preparation for the commentary on Sweeney, most of the general material selected will have direct relevance to his life.

The Letter, Issue 52, Spring 2013, Pages 1 - 27 READING L’ETOURDIT: FIRST TURN CHAPTER 3: THERE IS NO SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP Christian Fierens (79) Chapter 1 was centred on the said as it operates in the master and academic discourses. Chapter 2 demonstrated saying in the scientific and psychoanalytic discourses. Ab-sense separates these two chapters. On the one hand, saying ex-sists with respect to the said, does not belong to the dit-mension of truth and on the other hand the said is always only half-said, has no hold whatsoever on saying; impossible in the dit-mension , saying is demonstrated from the impossibility of the said. The rupture between the first and second chapters or the impossibility between said and saying will be put to work in the third chapter: there is no sexual relationship. We will grasp in these pages the passage from relationship to non- relationship, from the possible to the impossible, from the discourse of the master to the discourse of the analyst. This passage is accompanied by a displacement of Lacanian theory: the theory of discourses has as matrix the discourse of the master; it is built on the meaning-relationship and on the possibilities offered by the signifier. In this sense, it is centred on the symbolic and the practice which flows from it turns around the signifying word and its deciphering. In opposition to the theory of discourses, the theory of the formulae of sexuation has as nexus the absence of sexual relationship; it is built on the phallic function which here supplies for it. In this sense it is centred on the real and the practice which flows from it turns around enjoyment and interpretation.

The Letter, Issue 51, Autumn 2012, Pages 75 - 80 SOME SERIOUS RECREATION Mary O’Connor Lacan’s introduction to the seminar on the Purloined Letter is couched in a mathematical language which can be a little intimidating. This paper attempts to sift through some of the outer layers of his ‘matheme’ so that the treasure of its kernel is not ignored. Keywords: Repetition automatism, memory, symbolic order, language, law, signifying chain, unconscious In 1966, when Lacan had been persuaded, rather reluctantly, to publish some of his writings, he presented the works in chronological order, spanning over thirty years from a comment on his thesis of 1932 to an extract from Seminar XIII, dated December 1st 1965. The exception to this order, which Lacan placed as a prologue to the Écrits , is an extract from the Seminar of 1954-1955. During that year he chose The Purloined Letter to reiterate his teaching that it is ‘the symbolic order that is constitutive for the subject’ and to demonstrate ‘the major determination the subject receives from the itinerary of a signifier’. [1]

The Letter, Issue 51, Autumn 2012, Pages 69 - 73 TYCHE AND AUTOMATON IN ARISTOTLE’S PHYSICS Monica Errity In his introduction to the Seminar on “The Purloined Letter” Lacan attempts to show how the real lies at the heart of that which, ordinarily, would be deemed to have happened by chance. Again in his discussion of the phenomenon of repetition in The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, he highlights that it is the real which lies behind Freud’s notion of repetition automatism, noting that, ‘what is repeated is always something that occurs… as if by chance.’ [1] Throughout his discussion of the relation between the real and chance Lacan draws on two Aristotelian terms, tyche and automaton. On Lacan’s recommendation, [2] this paper aims to revisit these terms as they appear in Aristotle’s Physics, in order to throw some light on Lacan’s use of them in his understanding of the relation between the real and chance. Keywords: Aristotle; tyche; automaton; chance; the real. The importance of the concept of chance in the lives of the ancient Greeks is indicated by the preponderance of words relating to chance such as; tyche (chance or fortune), automaton (randomness), kata symbebekos (things which happen incidentally), eudaimonia (flourishing) and kairos (opportune moment). Of these, the notion of tyche which encompassed many aspects of fortune - chance, fate, both good and bad luck and even achievement, success and wealth, seems to have played a prominent role. Indeed, the belief in the power of tyche was so important for ancient Greeks that it became personified in the figure of the goddess Tyche who came to symbolize the fate and fortune of rulers and through them their cities.

The Letter, Issue 51, Autumn 2012, Pages 45 - 68 ON THE TWISTED STRUCTURE OF SADO- MASOCHISM IN LACAN’S ANXIETY SEMINAR Brian Robertson As early as his Three Essays, Freud accounted for sadism and masochism in terms of two, mirrored (or dialectically opposed) articulations of the selfsame aggressive drives. More recently, attention has been drawn to various elements at work in the two perversions that fail to fit within Freud’s dialectical model. Gilles Deleuze, for example, has criticized Freud’s conception of sadomasochism as an artificial clinical entity and has insisted upon introducing a strict dissociation between the two perversions. This paper aims to rearticulate the relation between the two perversions by means of a close reading of Lacan’s Anxiety Seminar. Instead of dismissing Freud’s account, or attempting to move beyond it, this paper shows how Lacan returns to Freud in order to reformulate a more comprehensive, structuralist reading of sadomasochism. As the paper demonstrates, it is only when sadism and masochism are taken together that they allow us to seize hold of the ‘twisted’ knot of anguished enjoyment that inhabits the heart of human desire. The paper also offers a detailed account of the ‘zig-zag’ schemas of sadism and masochism that Lacan elaborates both in his Anxiety Seminar and in his article Kant avec Sade. Keywords: volonté de jouissance, anxiety, law, fetishism, perverse velleity

The Letter, Issue 51, Autumn 2012, Pages 23 - 44 READING L’ETOURDIT: FIRST TURN CHAPTER 2 : FREUD’S SAYING Christian Fierens (51) The signifier (S1) represents the subject ($) for another signifier (S2). In the master discourse the signifier, taken as a semblance (S1), can be used for something quite other, quite Other (S2). The master discourse is stabilized in the relationship between S1 and S2. It develops the meaning-relationship. As a practice of free association, a practice of the signifier, should analysis be polarised towards the meaning-relationship? Does analysis consist in separating out such a relationship from the remarks of the analysand? In this way free association would always culminate in a significant relationship: ‘Whatever you might say, it will always end up by cross-checking with itself’. To be sure, the signifier of the master discourse is at stake in analysis. Nevertheless the meaning-relationship remains incapable of treating the manifestations of the unconscious, which never cease to surprise and to astonish. How overcome this incapacity proper to the master discourse, if not by reversing this discourse, in other words by pushing it towards its own powerlessness? It would therefore be a matter of accentuating, not the meaning-relationship, but the impossibility between S1 and S2: S2 is radically Other than S1. The relationship between S1 and S2 leads to sense, as it has been separated out in the preceding chapter. The difference, the impossibility between S1 and S2 deviates from sense: it is ab-sense.

The Letter, Issue 51, Autumn 2012, Pages 1 - 22 READING L’ETOURDIT: FIRST TURN CHAPTER 1 : MEANING – RELATIONSHIP AND SENSE Christian Fierens (25) Here are two morsels of the psychoanalytic discourse (… ou pire ): (1) ‘ That one might be saying remains forgotten behind the said in what is understood’. 2) ‘ This statement which appears to be assertive since it is produced in a universal form, is in fact modal, existential as such: as is testified by the subjunctive by which its subject is modulated.’ (5d; 449) These two sentences or these two morsels plunge us into double presentation, into the representation of one (1) for and in the other (2) and this re-presentation will lead us to the barred subject and to the o -object. The first morsel speaks about saying as impersonal process. This saying where the persons are not yet determined is not directly available: it is forgotten behind the said. Is it enough then to obliterate the said for saying to supervene? Would it be enough to efface the statement for the mystery of enunciating to appear? No: there are not too many saids, turns said, d’étourdit : the understudy ( doublure ) is welcome so that the said can be understood. The difference between the said and what is understood, between the presentation and representation, will reveal saying: even if it is forgotten behind the said, it only comes about because there is something understood. [From a technical point of view, the abbreviation of the said, the ‘short sessions’ will only be justified in as much as they produce an ‘understood’].

The Letter, Issue 52, Spring 2013, Pages v - vii

The Letter, Issue 51, Autumn 2012, Pages v - vii

The Letter, Issue 50, Summer 2012, Pages 77 - 83 IN WHAT WAYS DOES PSYCHOANALYSIS DIFFER FROM PSYCHOTHERAPY? [1] Gérard Amiel The evolution of psychoanalysis under Freud, then Lacan, reveals that although psychoanalysis was originally a therapy, that is no longer the case. Today, the true function of psychoanalysis is to bring mankind into a state of desire. Keywords: history, symptom, le Grand Autre (the big Other), objet petit a, [2] metaphor, metonymy, phallus, psychoanalysis, Let us begin with a brief historical reminder. If we go all the way back to the origin of psychoanalysis, back to the time when it was first invented by Freud, the first objective of psychoanalysis was to try to resolve the symptom, particularly the hysteric’s symptom. Little by little, this approach ended up having a great influence on the first theoretical writings of psychoanalysis, as well as defining the structure and essential conditions of the cure. So, in its early stages, psychoanalysis was more like a form of therapy. But, as most of you are probably aware, over the past hundred-plus years, the word “therapy” has significantly evolved, to the point where it no longer means quite the same thing as it did before. I would also like to point out, and this is true for any new patient who walks through the door seeking analysis, that a patient can only seek analysis for something which they themselves identify as being a recurring problem, or in other words, something which they consider to be a symptom based entirely on their own judgment and not on any sort of social ideal or norm. So, we can say that the symptom always lies at the root of the analysis; both at the historical beginning of psychoanalysis as well as at the beginning of each new analysis. The question then is: if the original objective of psychoanalysis was to resolve the symptom, how has that objective changed over time and what is it’s objective today?