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The Letter, Issue 50, Summer 2012, Pages 61 - 76 WHAT SUBJECT IS IT? [1] Guy Le Gaufey FOREWORD It is amusing to know that the word “subject”, which appears to assemble in it the essence of what makes man a rational animal, is also used to mean “a corpse used for the study of anatomy, dissection, vivisection.” [2] From freedom to slavery, the semantic spectrum of this term is so broad that it borders on homonymy. Law, politics, medicine, literature, the arts cannot do without it. It’s philosophical career? Prestigious. The man in the street, for his part, uses it without blinking, and even the concierges do not shy away from saying: “What’s the subject?” Did psychoanalysis have to monopolise it in order to further its cause? This was the challenge for Jacques Lacan. Whilst the term proves to be almost non-existent in the work of Freud (the German language has little use for it, more or less on a par with the French), Lacan has never ceased to make it one of the pivots of his construction. It is true that his “specular I,” right from the first steps of the mirror stage, did not fit in with the Freudian ego [ moi ], and left the place of the subject vacant, while a couple of substantive pronouns me/I [ moi/je ] had already been custom-made in the French language (unlike the German, the English or the Spanish language). It would, however, take a few seminars for Lacan to embark at the turn of the sixties on fostering an acceptation of the term “subject” foreign to the philosophical orb in which up to then Descartes, Hegel and Heidegger had brought precious but contradictory indicators to bear on it. From May 1959 on, the release towards the end of the seminar Desire and its Interpretation of his long commentary on Hamlet, the urgency of the need for a new definition of the subject and of the object at play in analytical treatment makes itself felt, and Lacan himself sets out through numerous trials and errors until he comes, more than two years later, during the first sessions of the seminar Identification , to a particularly crimped formula where subject and signifier are co-defined: “The signifier represents the subject for another signifier.” The treatment is strange, and the imposed semblance of universality compels even more immediate incomprehension, giving the impression of a round and impenetrable stone, centred on enigmatic repetition.

The Letter, Issue 50, Summer 2012, Pages 47 - 59 THE APPEAL OF PSYCHOANALYSIS [1] Barry O’Donnell This paper gathers remarks made by Freud which differentiate the practice of psychoanalysis from psychotherapy. It will also draw from Lacan’s Seminar 24, L’insu qui sait de l’une bévue, s’aile à mourre, for its consideration of the concept of the unconscious in 1976. Keywords: psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, object of practice, training First of all I would like to thank Ros McCarthy [2] for her words of introduction, which are generously brief. The truth is much more problematic in light of the topic of today’s study-day. As well as the practice Ros mentions I am employed in a number of roles, the titles of which combine the terms psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Currently, still, I carry the titles of Head of a Department of Psychotherapy, Course Director of a MA in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (a training in psychotherapy), Director of a Specific Modality training in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and tutor on a MSc in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. More worryingly, I have at times announced that I practice psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. I am uneasy. I am concerned that the officers of the Trade Descriptions Board may one day come knocking on my door. I believe I need to clarify my position. Today’s study-day has given me an opportunity to address this question of mine because I also believe that I am not alone in having such a question to address.

The Letter, Issue 50, Summer 2012, Pages 23 - 46 READING L’ÉTOURDIT SECOND TURN CHAPTER 4 INTERPRETATION Christian Fierens (267) Structure ana-lyses the neurotic torus, by re-ascending towards the cross-cap that makes it possible. It dismantles the torus into a Moebius strip which allows the analyser, at the end of analysis, to rediscover himself at once in sex, sense and meaning. ‘These benefits’ (44e; 488) are supported ‘by a second-saying’, as the three preceding chapters have demonstrated. Are these benefits going to last or are they ephemeral? They last, they are well established, inasmuch as they allow the saying which produced them to be forgotten. It is quite useful that saying should be forgotten behind the said in what is understood: the analyser will comfortably enjoy the benefits acquired during the treatment only inasmuch as they are inscribed, as they are established in a discourse which avoids the switching of discourses. From this point of view it is better not to become an analyst! ‘That is the cutting edge of our enunciating at the start.’ (44e): ‘That one might be saying remains forgotten behind the said in what is understood’. ‘The first said’, free association, ‘only has its structure-effects’ in that ‘saying’ is beingwith being, ‘in that saying parsoit’ . The parêtre of saying comes from the second turn thanks to which there emerge at the same time the supplementary disc and the Moebius strip. By the double turn of the cut, ‘being’ (the o -object or the supplementary disc) is redoubled by the ‘ parêtre’ (the barred subject or the Moebius strip). Interpretation, as a ‘double-turn’ cut of the cross-cap, makes ‘ parêtre’ , assures the dereliction, the desêtre of a radically barred subject.

The Letter, Issue 50, Summer 2012, Pages 1 - 22 L’ÉTOURDIT Jacques Lacan A Bilingual Presentation of the Second Turn Chapter 4. Interpretation [1] Translated by Cormac Gallagher L’Étourdit consists of two parts called the First Turn and the Second Turn respectively. The First Turn, comprising Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 was published in Issue 41, Summer 2009. The Second Turn, Chapter 1, was published in Issue 43, Spring 2010. The Second Turn Chapter 2 was published in Issue 45, Autumn 2010. The Second Turn, Chapter 3 was published in Issue 49, Spring 2012. The facing French text is from L’archive de L’École Lacanienne. These benefits even though supported by a second-saying, are nonetheless established from it, by the fact that they allow it to be forgotten. That is the cutting edge of our enunciating at the start. The first said, ideally from the spontaneity of the analyser, only has its structure-effects from the fact that saying ‘ parsoit’, in other words that the interpretation makes it parètre . (45) In what does this parètre consist? In that producing ‘true’ cuts: to be strictly understood as closed cuts by which topology does not allow to be reduced to the out-of-line-point nor, which is the same thing, to only make an imaginable hole. I do not have to expose the status of this parètre , otherwise than from my own journey, having already dispensed myself from connoting its emergence at the point, above, where I permitted it.

The Letter, Issue 50, Summer 2012, Pages v - vi

The Letter, Issue 49, Spring 2012, Pages 81 - 94 HATELOVING IN THE TRANSFERENCE [1] Oscar Zentner No ashes, no coal can burn with such glow as a secretive love of which no one must know Sabina Spielrein [2] . … To be slandered and scorched by the love with which we operate - such are the perils of our trade, which we are certainly not going to abandon in their account. Navigare necesse est, vivere non necesse.” Sigmund Freud [3] Borges: Yes, a lover is like a god … Uchida: Yet there must be a recipient to contain that god. The centre is always empty and that is where God is present. Borges: Yes, empty. That is what is important … Empty. That is exactly what the gushi in the sanctuary of Meiji said. Mic Uchida [4] Arguably the disavowal of Sabina Spielrein is perhaps one of the most tragic events involving the very problematic reciprocal hateloving structure in the transference. This paper highlights the rather questionable concept of the saintly sterilised transference-love. The hateloving in the transference was a triangle that engaged Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Sabina Spielrein. It entailed repression and in a way disavowal of the discovery of Sabina Spielrein. Although Spielrein’s propositions were at the foreground of a momentous theoretical psychoanalytical innovation, the personal enmities between Freud and Jung endangered their potential discovery, thus running the risk of being disregarded in the history of ideas within the psychoanalytic movement. This paper attempts to clarify the scope of this situation as well as to underscore how much Freud and Freudian psychoanalysis owe to the by and large almost forgotten importance of Sabina Spielrein. This is particularly so, concerning her new formulations proposed for the sexual and destructive drives - none of which were ever acknowledged either by Freud or by other psychoanalysts. However by introducing Lacan’s innovations, regarding the unconscious the paper goes much further with new propositions. Keywords: hateloving, death drive, Freud, Jung, Spielrein.

The Letter, Issue 49, Spring 2012, Pages 73 - 79 YOU HAVE A VERY GOOD FUTURE BEHIND YOU [1] Malachi McCoy [2] Freud reminds us of the indispensable and ethical requirement, of one’s own reputable analysis, in the formation of becoming an analyst. The science of psychoanalysis is fundamental in demystifying what is involved in, and what is at stake for psychoanalysis. This paper recalls some of those fundamentals. Keywords: Freud, formation, science, Melman, Lacan, Gallagher, cartel, plus one, Oedipus complex, ethics. ‘How can one become an analyst’? Freud asks in Recommendations On Analytic Technique …He writes ‘I count it as one of the many merits of the Zurich school of analysis that they have laid increased emphasis on this requirement, and have embodied it in the demand that everyone who wishes to carry out analyses on other people shall first himself undergo an analysis by someone with expert knowledge.’ [3] He continues: Anyone who has scorned to take the precaution of being analysed himself will not merely be punished by being incapable of learning more than a certain amount from his patients, he will risk a more serious danger and one which may become a danger to others. He will easily fall into the temptation of projecting outwards some of the peculiarities of his own personality, which he has dimly perceived, into the field of science, as a theory having universal validity; he will bring the psycho-analytic method into discredit, and lead the inexperienced astray. [ 4]

The Letter, Issue 49, Spring 2012, Pages 65 - 72 WHAT FREUD LEARNED IN THEODOR MEYNERT’S CLINIC Tom Dalzell This paper examines what Freud learned from the famous Viennese psychiatrist, Theodor Meynert, during his time at Vienna’s second psychiatric clinic in 1883. It argues that psychoanalysis’ refusal to accept unscientific theories of mental illness and uncritical emphases on heredity is due in no small part to the influence on Freud of Meynert. It also contends that Freud’s subsequent parting from institutional psychiatry, because of Meynert’s rejection of his use of hypnosis and belief in male hysteria, was unfortunate since Freud later gave up hypnosis and Meynert admitted to being a male hysteric. Keywords: Freud; Meynert; Subjectivity; Heredity; Second Viennese Medical School Introduction In Seminar Seven, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis , Jacques Lacan encourages his listeners to read Freud’s text in a different way to the historian. He suggests that psychoanalysts should read Freud without wondering whether he was influenced by Herbart or Helmholtz, as the historians do. [1] But then he proceeds to speak like a historian himself and to consider the influence on Freud of Aristotle. This paper will say something about the influence on Freud of Theodor Meynert, the famous psychiatrist in Vienna when Freud was studying medicine. [2]

The Letter, Issue 49, Spring 2012, Pages 51 - 63 QUESTIONS ARISING FROM READING DARIAN LEADER’S WHAT IS MADNESS? IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE, SCHOOL AND TEACHING [1] Barry O’Donnell This paper examines the representation of a psychoanalytic response to madness in the recent publication What is Madness? by Darian Leader. Drawing from the comments of Christian Fierens and Guy Le Gaufey and guided by the treatment of Freud’s position on paranoia in Tom Dalzell’s Freud’s Schreber Between Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis the paper finds that the representation of a psychoanalytic response raises crucial questions for our practice and teaching as well as the constitution of our schools. Keywords: diagnosis and practice, quiet madness, ordinary psychosis, the use of vignettes as a representative device 2011 saw the publication of two books on the question of madness which came to my attention. Tom Dalzell’s Freud’s Schreber between Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis has been recognised as a very readable, thoroughly scholarly, theoretically rigorous book. It articulates Freud’s specifically psychoanalytic account of psychosis and situates it in the context of the psychiatric theories and treatments of psychosis of Freud’s time. Furthermore, it studies the influence of Freud’s account on subsequent psychoanalytic responses to madness. Dalzell argues that Freud explains the psychosis of President Daniel Paul Schreber’s as caused by a fixation at narcissism. What distinguishes this theory from all others is that Freud invokes a theory of subjectivity which posits “the individual subject’s involvement in the origin of his or her illness, and its cure.” [2] There was, in that era, the late nineteenth, early twentieth century, vigorous debate and heated exchange between very different positions on the question: what is madness? Dalzell describes Freud’s long and difficult engagement with the views of leading psychiatrists, who, for all their own differences, rejected this Freudian thesis of a subjective aetiology of madness. Even in the psychoanalytic community Freud’s approach was not entirely followed leading Dalzell to conclude that “Jacques Lacan has received Freud’s Schreber text and its aetiology more fully than other influential figures in the psychoanalytic community.” [3]

The Letter, Issue 49, Spring 2012, Pages 23 - 50 READING L’ÉTOURDIT SECOND TURN CHAPTER 3 SENSE AND STRUCTURE [1] Christian Fierens We forsake meaning in order to advance into sense. Castration no longer has the Freudian meaning but the sense which aims at the cut. The teachable starts not just from number but from the saying of number. Structure is topology and Kant’s transcendental dialectic corresponds to spherical topology. Interpretation is the cut that makes the structure evident, and love must end up as hate for there to be a saying. The process of treatment results in the certainty of the supposed subject which is situated in the three dimensions of impossibility: sex, sense, and meaning. Keywords: sense, teaching, saying, said, structure, topology, modification of structure, the end of analysis (233) Psychoanalytic discourse puts meaning in parenthesis and puts movement into sense. How does sense teach us? The first section will respond: by translation. What does it teach us? The second section will respond: structure. Far from being congealed, this structure is modification (third section). The last section will show how structure allows for the end of analysis.

The Letter, Issue 49, Spring 2012, Pages v - vi

The Letter, Issue 48, Autumn 2011, Pages 63 - 64 BOOK REVIEW By Lionel Bailly FREUD’S SCHREBER BETWEEN PSYCHIATRY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS On Subjective Disposition to Psychosis Thomas G. Dalzell Karnac Books, London, 2011. This book of Thomas Dalzell’s is a tour de force . Despite stating that his text is not intended as ‘another general exploration of Sigmund Freud’s 1911 Schreber text’, he does in the end provide us with a subtle exploration of the case from which the most experienced analysts could learn a lot. Beyond this, he uses Schreber’s case like a chemical reagent, which reveals, as in the development of a photographic print, hidden aspects of Freud’s thinking, and also the state of thinking of the Viennese psychoanalysts, of Emile Kraepelin, Eugen Bleuler etc.

The Letter, Issue 48, Autumn 2011, Pages 55 - 62 PSYCHOANALYSIS IN THE WORK OF A PSYCHIATRIST IN THE STATE SECTOR Lionel Bailly This paper shows how psychiatrists and psychoanalysts interact in an institutional setting. The problematic of their different discourses is not unique to their situation, and this is frequently understood to be a problem of ‘boundaries’ which afflict specialists in whatever walk of life they work. It is hoped that the approach outlined will give some insight into how this difficulty might be handled to yield a ‘good-enough’ outcome. Keywords: psychoanalyst, psychiatrist, NHS, transference, master signifier. The theme of this presentation is psychoanalysis in the work of a psychiatrist in the state sector. My current experience of the state sector is the British NHS, a very large organisation with a great political value, which is not known for its flexibility and ability to adapt rapidly to change.

The Letter, Issue 48, Autumn 2011, Pages 47 - 53 LACAN’S CONCEPT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS IN SEMINAR XI (PART ONE) ON THE SUBJECT AS INDETERMINATE Daragh Howard This is the first part of a paper on the unconscious as discussed in Lacan’s Seminar XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. It highlights the elaboration of the questions of Cause, Location, and Ontology, and attempts to give an insight to how each of these ideas are useful in bringing us somewhat closer to grasping the ungraspable of the unconscious. Keywords: Lacan, indeterminate, cause, location, ontology. Introduction The Unconscious, Repetition, Drive, Transference, these are the four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis according to Lacan in his 1964 seminar. [1] Immediately, it can be seen that his point of reference, at least on two counts, is the metapsychology of Freud. [2] The unconscious and the drive are explicitly dealt with in the 1915 Metapsychology Papers.

The Letter, Issue 48, Autumn 2011, Pages 31 - 45 PSYCHOANALYSIS WITHOUT TEARS? [1] Helen Sheehan [2] This paper deals with the question of the difference between didactic analysis and the formation of the analyst. It is based on a reading of the historical development of this topic from Freud to the present day. It recalls how some of the earlier leaders of the psychoanalytic movement took a different path to the one that Freud had wished for – the result of which has seen many splits in the psychoanalytic movement, not all of which have been propitious. Keywords: didactic analysis, formation, Freud, Bernfeld, Lacan, Safouan. One hundred years ago in the Summer of 1911 Freud’s Psychoanalytic notes on the case history of Schreber case were published. There are many lessons to be learned from President Schreber’s account of his unbearable suffering and Freud’s analysis of it. Many times he felt so anguished he longed for death. Many times he looked out to the end of the world searching for a fixed point, some place he could find his moorings, he felt his soul was murdered and what do we do when this happens? President Schreber wrote about the tortured steps he took to reclaim his being, to make his way in a world dominated by the cruelty of others, the cruelty of his own thoughts and wishes and his longing for it all to stop. There is no doubt that he was intelligent, articulate, moral and capable and that he was fired up by ideals. Freud said of him ‘his ethical outlook moreover was one which it was impossible not to endorse’ [3] . He tried to master the real through his knowledge and ideals. What makes any of us different?

The Letter, Issue 48, Autumn 2011, Pages 9 - 30 PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE SPELLING OF MARILYN MONROE William J. Richardson This is the text of a memorial lecture given by Dr. Richardson in honour of Professor Thomas A. Blakely (1933 - 1989). The lecture was sponsored by the Boston College Graduate School of Arts and Science to celebrate the conferring of the University’s one hundredth doctoral degree in Philosophy, on March 29, 1990. Keywords: Marilyn Monroe, cut, Woman, dead father, the Real, imaginary transference, jouissance. Ladies and gentlemen: We are here this evening to celebrate - to enjoy a common satisfaction in an achievement that belongs to us all. I would have thought myself that if we wished to symbolize it formally, it would have been appropriate to invite some eminent scholar from outside the University to address us, say, on how we ought to face our responsibilities as academics in the turbulent world around us as it moves into the twenty-first century. Surely there is something important to be said that could have impressed us and inspired us. But when we ask someone from our own University family to be the designated driver of the evening, we are inclined to be much less tolerant. We don’t take kindly to someone trying to edify us. ‘never mind the high talk,’ we would say, ‘just do it for us, show us! We want to see you bleed.’ Anyone who would accept an invitation to do something of the kind would have to be either a madman or a masochist.