!

!
PAPERS N 10

!
List of members of
the Action Committee
of the School One
Paola Bolgiani
Gustavo Dessal
Mercedes Iglesias
Ram Mandil
Laure Naveau
(Coordinator)
Silvia Salman
Florencia Fernandez
Coria Shanahan

!
Responsible for the
edition:
Marta Davidovich

Editorial
Laure Naveau

With this issue number 10 of Papers of

the Action Committee of the School
One, we come to the end of our epic
journey through the reals.

It is our hope that its conclusion will

satisfy the reader, who will find in this
issue nine short texts by members of the
Scientific Committee of the IX th
Congress of the WAP, including its
Director, our friend Guy Briole.

These papers were published in the

dossier WAP Congress special of
issues 324, 325 and 326 of Lettre
Mensuelle numrique, who joyfully
welcomed our project to publish them in
PAPERS. So, following the tradition of
PAPERS, the texts are translated into all
the languages of the School One and
made available to the international
community of the WAP.

To begin with, Hlne Bonnaud, subtly

elaborates on Lacans passage from the
want to say to the want to enjoy of
analytic interpretation, as the only way
for the analyst to reach the real after
emptying the unconscious meaning of
the analysands statements. I quote her:
Interpretation aims, thus, to abolish
meaning and it achieves that by
equivocation defined as the
resonance of what is written. Thus, this
interpretation constitutes itself as a
limit, and introduces us to the
impossible, namely says Hlne-, to
the etc of the sinthome.

Sonia Chiriaco, Pierre Strliski, and

Pierre Naveau, then chose to respond
to the question posed by Jacques-Alain
Miller in his presentation text of the IXth
Congress: What should the desire of
the analyst be so that it operates in a
correct way? Sonia Chiriaco therefore
immediately captures this question by
noting the paradox we encounter in
Lacans statement concerning the desire
to which the subject will have to
confront himself in analysis, while he
had just stated that there is no Other of
the Other. He will thus arrive at his
Proposition on the Pass, which
interrogates this desire beyond the
analysis itself. It is that which JacquesAlain Miller named the ultra-pass,
this zone where everything remains to
be constructed, the zone of the Oneall-alone where the sinthome is bared.

For his part, Pierre Strliski is

interested in that which, of the impurity
of the analysts desire, is able to counter
the real. I especially appreciated the
point of Pierres remark, where he
underlines the redundancy of the
expression desire of the analyst, by
reversing it as follows: the
psychoanalyst is desire, and even, it is
the topology of our desire. Lacans
famous proposal at the end of his Ethics
concerning the issue of giving ground
relative to ones desire is thus clarified
from a new angle, where the solar
opposes the dark

Finally, Pierre Naveau takes up the

gauntlet of the subtle antinomy between
disturbing the defence and
interpreting repression, by which the
analysts desire is indexed. The youre
mistaken objected by Lacan to Ernst
Kris in Direction of the Treatment, gives
it its tone: the analyst, if he thus

embarks with his patient, lacks then the

essential: the surprise. He forgets his
act, that of being first and foremost and
a c c o r d i n g t o P i e r r e s b e a u t i f u l
expression, an analyst surpreneur.

Philippe de Georges returns to

Jacques-Alain Millers elucidation of
the opposition between transferential
unconscious and real unconscious. He
thus comes to oppose traumatism,
elective referent of the real unconscious,
to structured like a language, relative
to the transferential unconscious, and
whose face of repetition is in fact
repetition of the avoidance of a core of
real. And so Philippe can emphasise
how the concept of real unconscious
throws light on the more current form of
the direction of the treatment.

Anne Ganivet-Poumellec and Philippe

Hellebois, for their part, chose to speak
of love, placing themselves, according
to the beautiful expression used by
Anne, under the artistic palette of the
colours of the real. Anne GanivetPoumellec is here inspired by Lacans
phrase according to which with the
analytic experience, jouissance is
coloured, to show its multiple tints,
which go from the black and white of
the imaginary, to the colour of the three
rings of the Borromean knot, to this
great expression of Lacan which Anne
knew how to re-illuminate, concerning
woman the colour of man and man
the colour of woman. I let you discover
her conclusion, which leaves us in
blue...

What a title! Philippe Hellebois makes

fun of himself regarding the title of his
own text: Love. A Users Guide. Is it
about how to find love? How to fall in
love? How to search for it, or how to
2

find it? How to want what one desires?

The reader will read and will tell us,
what is it that is so enlightening in the
opposition, introduced by Jacques-Alain
Miller and to which Philippe returns,
between the signifying articulation
and the libidinal investment, the
traumatic seduction and the surprises of
love
Sophie Marret-Maleval provides a
precise and detailed analysis of a
contemporary phenomenon belonging
to the category of occupational
stress [souffrance au travail], and more
specifically, of the condensed AngloSaxon term of Burn out used to
indicate it. She interprets in it the effects
of the capitalist discourse in its slope of
superegoic jouissance imperative, and
the return of the subject which signals,
in the depression of the burn out, its
own erasure. I quote her: He subtracts
himself from the real of the
commandment he is subjected to, albeit
as a waste, the remainder of the
productivist machine. Her fine clinical
noting teaches us that, behind this
phenomenon of subjective eclipse, there
is often a concealed melancholic
triggering proved.

in which he knots, through an elegant

arc, this Lacanian conclusion with
Jacques-Alain Millers thesis of the One
without the Other, of the One-all-alone,
disjointed from meaning, constitutive of
the speaking-being. Because it is this
thesis that in fact leads us to the rupture
of any causality and to the incurable,
beyond Oedipus.

Finally, to conclude and as a finale for

these fireworks of sharp and nimble
short texts, Guy Briole returns with
great clarity, to the fundamental
question of the rupture between cause
and effect, which orients our reflection
towards the forthcoming Congress of
the WAP. Thus, there where Lacan first
thought that the real could be
reabsorbed by the symbolic operation,
by interpretation, Guy highlights the
arrival point of Lacans teaching, where
he assigns to the real its place of
inassimilable. But what gives Guys
demonstration its high point is the way

So it only remains for us to say

goodbye! To thank you for your faithful
attention, and to give you rendez-vous at
our next Congress, where all these
facets, these one thousand and one
colours of the real, shall mix with many
other variations that the works of the
Congress will surely know how to
emphasise.
Thank you to Leonardo Gorostiza,
President of the WAP, as well as to Guy
B r i o l e , D i re c t o r o f t h e I Xth
Congress,for the unreserved trust they
had on us during this year of
publications of PAPERS

!
!

Acknowledgments: A big thank you

goes to the team of translators of the
multilingual PAPERS and their
wonderful availability:
Margarita Alvarez, Rosana Alvarez,
A l e s s a n d ro A re n a , M a r i e - J o s
Asnoun, Vera Avellar Ribeiro, Betty
Bertrand, Maria Bolgiani, Chantal
Bonneau, Beatrice Bosi, Isabel Capelli,
Anna Castallo, Maria Rita Conrado,
Joanne Conway,
Ester CristelliMaillard, Cinzia Crosali, Renata
Cuchiarelli,
Carmen Cuat,
Ian
Curtis, Vincent Dachy, Maria Grazia
D'Arino, Nicolas Derus, Philip
Dravers,
Laurent Dupont, Florencia
F.C. Shanahan, Betina Ganim, Anne
Goalabr-Biteau, Concetta Guarino,
3

Janet &John Haney, Luis Iriarte Prez,

Thierry Jacquemin, Marie-Christine
Jannot, Michele Julien, Brigitte Laffay,
Bianca Maria Lenzi, Susana Liberatore,
Roger Litten, Alessandro Madonia,
Joana Maia, Roberta Margiaria,
Florencia Medici, Anna Milleri, Rosana
Montani-Sedoud, Maria Nicotra,
Pauline O'Callaghan, Federico Ossola,
Laura Pacati, Ilaria Papandrea,
Pierangela Pari, Gabriela Pazmino,
Hara Pepeli, Elda Perrelli, Angela
Ragnetti, Julia Richards, Laura Rizzo,
Micheli Romao, Eduardo Scarone,
Grard Seyeux.
Samya Seth, Adele
Succetti, Ana Tello, Christos Tombras,
Rosanna Tremante, Maria Laura Tkach,
Monica Vacca, Bodgan Wolf, Giuliana
Zani.

And warm thanks to Marta Davidovich,

responsible for the sustained edition of
the 10+1 issues of PAPERS!

!
NB : Erratum Papers 9 in French
Upon the authors request, please note a
correction of the French translation of
the text "Vos paroles m'ont frappe" by
Araceli Fuentes, of the Spanish word
"numero", translated as "cipher", and
which would rather be "number". It is
an important nuance indeed, and it
means that the following sentence in
Aracelis text should read: In my case,
the lalangue wrote itself on my body
through two different writings: one
being the writing of the symptom, and
the other one being a real writing of the
order of number. On behalf of the
Action Committee of PAPERS and of
Chantal Bonneau, responsible for the

French translation, we offer Araceli our

friendly apologies.

!
Translated by Florencia F.C. Shanahan

!
!

From Punctuation to
Equivocation
Hlne Bonnaud

!
Analytic interpretation is, at the
beginning of an analysis, a response
given by the analyst to the enigma that,
for the analysand, is his symptom. It
acts like a dive into meaning, a
powerful means of deciphering the
unconscious, its reading making itself
tighter and more precise. The signifiers,
isolated by the punctuation of the
sessions, the putting into perspective of
the desire that is heard there, the support
of the unconscious-interpreter as the
echo chamber of everything that
constitutes its invention slips, dreams,
things forgotten these represent the
interpretative power of the analysis
when it inscribes itself in the register of
the search for truth.

!
Lacans teaching on this subject goes
from The Function and Field of Speech
and Language 1 up to when he
approaches the question of lalangue. In
fact, with this concept, Lacan breaks
with the question of meaning in order to
substitute for it that of jouissance.

Lacan J., The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis, transl. B. Fink, New
York/London: Norton (2006)

!
Lalangue is essentially made of
alluvium deposits which accumulate
from misunderstandings, from the
linguistricks creations, of each one2.
Interpretation passes thus from the
want-to-say to the want-to-enjoy [jouir].
It is in Seminar XX3 that Lacan will
give a radical formula to the cut
between speech which wants to say and
the drive which wants-to-enjoy with his
concept of lapparole which is that
which becomes speech when it is
dominated by the drive, and which
assures not communication but
jouissance.4
From then on, interpretation will not be
carried on meaning, but will look to
reach the want-to-enjoy of the drive. In
fact, introducing the drive as taken in
language opened for Lacan new
perspectives on the way to interpret.
To interpret the drive, it is to disturb the
want-to-enjoy that is at the heart of the
symptom. Indeed, the question is to
know how to reach, how to attain the
real by interpretation, or moreover, after
the transferential interpretation has been
emptied of unconscious meaning, the
repressed. Interpretation aims, thus, to
abolish meaning and it achieves that by
equivocation. So, what is equivocation?
It works by setting out from the writing
that it makes resound. In playing on
equivocation, interpretation disturbs the
expected meaning, exposes its absurdity

and disconnects knowledge from its

position of truth. From this fact,
interpretation is no longer on the side of
the limitlessness of speech as meaning
to be deciphered, but it comes, on the
contrary, to set a limit. It is an
interpretation that makes finite [qui
finitise], that breaks with the
interpretative jouissance of the
unconscious as knowledge. One passes
from interpretation taken in the
symbolic and the imaginary, to the
interpretation of the real. Of what is
the real assured by interpretation?5
asks Jacques-Alain Miller in the same
text. As long as we are in the
interpretation of the apparole,
interpretation remains at the level of the
jouissance of speech. There isnt any
assured real. It is here that interpretation
must follow an upward slope against the
pleasure principle. It must introduce the
impossible. It is what Lacan indicates in
Encore. If the subject is happy, even in
the failure which interpretation
underlines, all this happiness does not
guarantee the real of the sexual relation.
In order to assure itself of the real,
interpretation will have to resemble a
formalisation, if one admits that only
mathematical formalisation reaches the
real.
This implies that interpretation comes
into being on the other side of meaning.
Lacan made equivocation the means to
achieve this: equivocation, we have
nothing but that as a weapon against the

Miller J.-A., Le monologue de lapparole, La Cause freudienne n34, Paris, Navarin/Seuil, October
1996, p. 11.
3

Lacan J., The Seminar Book XX, Encore, On Feminine Sexuality: The Limits of Love and Knowledge
(1972-3), transl. B. Fink, New York/London, Norton, 1998.
4

Miller J.-A., op. cit. p. 13.

Ibid., p. 17.

sinthome6. And he adds a few lines

further on: playing on equivocation
may liberate from the sinthome7. These
two citations indicate to us how to
counter the real of the sinthome, and in
a second moment, how to liberate
oneself from it. It is about passing, by
interpretation, from the it-wants-to-say
to the it-doesnt-want-to-say [a ne veut
rien dire] that allows the extraction of
the it-wants-to-enjoy. And so, to refind
the it-wants-to-enjoy, it is necessary to
pass by the it-doesnt-want-to-say8.
Interpretation makes of writing the
means of reaching the it-does-notwant-to-say-anything of jouissance. It
touches the out-of-meaning of
jouissance in order to reach the real of
the sinthome, which is, as Lacan
formulated it, an etc

!
!
!

Towards a redefinition of
the desire of the analyst
Sonia Chiriaco
When all is said and done what desire
is the subject going to confront in
analysis, if not the desire of the
analyst?9, wondered Lacan during the
last session of his Seminar Desire and
its Interpretation. Isnt it remarkable
that he designates desire of the analyst,
for the first time, after having stated that
there is no Other of the Other?10 If
Lacan does not define here what this
desire of the analyst is, he nevertheless
gives a clear clue concerning his or her
act, namely that the cut is probably the
most effective mode of analytical
interpretation11. Thenceforth, he will
not stop questioning the desire of the
analyst by articulating it to the end of
the analysis. In the Seminar following
his excommunication (The Four
Fundamental Concepts of
Psychoanalysis) he lays the foundation
for a doctrine of the end of the analysis
which will be realised with his

Lacan J., Le Sminaire livre XXIII, Le sinthome, Paris, Seuil, 2005, p. 17.

Ibid., p. 17.

Miller J.-A., op. cit., p. 18. [TN: a ne veut rien dire Can be also translated as: that means nothing,
it has no meaning.]
9

Lacan J., Le Sminaire, livre VI, Le dsir et son interprtation, Paris, Seuil, p. 571

10

Ibid., p. 353.

11

Ibid., p. 572.

Proposition on the Pass three years later.

In the last session of this seminar, Lacan
launches questions that resonate with
those which J.-A. Miller proposes for us
to tackle at the next congress of the
WAP12. What should the desire of the
analyst be so that it operates in a correct
way?13 How can a subject who has
crossed the radical fantasy live the
drive? This is beyond analysis and has
never been addressed. 14 Lacan
sketches a first response: The desire of
the analyst is not a pure desire. It is a
desire for absolute difference.15 This
absolute difference has never taken
more relevance than since the
introduction of the there is (something
of) the One from his latest teaching.
Drawing us to this beyond of analysis
that J.-A. Miller named outrepasse16
(ultra-pass), a zone where everything
remains to be constructed17, he urges
us to take the questions posed by Lacan
in 1964 from a new angle, that of the
real.
The position of the analyst, when he
confronts the there is (something of)
the One in the ultra-pass, is no longer

marked by the desire of the analyst, but

by another function which is yet to be
elaborated18. This other function, if it
still refers to desire, can no longer, in
the time of the non-relation, be
referenced to the Other. In the ultrapass, it is jouissance of the One-allalone that is concerned; jouissance of
the body in as much as it has been
struck by the signifier, and this is a
jouissance outside meaning. Beyond
desire it is the clamping of the sinthome
that we are dealing with. The whole
clinic was knocked for six to the point
that all cases became unclassifiable!
Thus, always alone in his act, the
analyst cannot refer to any established
order. If he manages to move forward
with a feeling of absolute risk19, it is
because he knows how his own neurotic
arrangements with the real were
surprised, disturbed, dismantled by the
equivocation which undid meaning,
leaving the subject struggling with his
opaque jouissance, until the sinthome
was bared. Equivocation is the tool that
he now has to turn his hand to in order
to surprise in his turn the analysand and

12

Miller J.-A., The Real in the 21st Century, transl R. Litten, Hurly Burly issue 9, NLS, May 2013, p.
199-206.
13

Lacan J., Seminar Book 11, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, transl. A. Sheridan,
London, Penguin, 1977 [Paris, Seuil, 1973, p. 14.]
14

Ibid., [Paris, Seuil, 1973 p. 246]

15

Ibid., [Paris, Seuil, 1973 p. 248]

16

Miller J.-A., Lorientation lacanienne, Ltre et lUn, lesson of 4 May 2011, unpublished.

17

Ibid., lesson of 30 March 2011, unpublished.

18

Ibid., lesson of 11 May 2011, unpublished.

19

Lacan J., Le Sminaire, livre XXIII, Le sinthome, Paris, Seuil, 2005, p. 45.

to succeed in undoing with words that

which was made with words.20

The analyst knows that he cannot do

without his sinthome, but he has learned
to make use of it in order to put it to a
new use in practice, which aims
resolutely at the real.

The desire of the analyst is not a pure

desire, not a pure infinity of metonymy,
but appears to us as the desire to reach
the real, to reduce the Other to its real,
and to liberate it of meaning,21 says
Jacques-Alain Miller, introducing the
next congress of the WAP, A Real for
the 21st Century. He notes that this
impurity of desire of the analyst is an
observation of Lacan in 1964. You can
find it on the last page of Seminar XI22.
What follows is the explanation of what
this impure desire might be: desire is
always impure, it is impurity itself, it is
the grain of sand which jams the
symbolic order, the plot organized by
the superego in order to freeze
everything, to stop everything. This
impurity in the order of the universe23 is
at the same time a necessity in order
that this world might not be totally vain,
cynical or desperate. Pierre Naveau, in a
guiding text for this Congress mentions
the Three-card Monte man whose
symptom, a sexual impotence, brought
his desire to a standstill.

!
!
!
Translated by Janet Haney

!
!
!
!
!
!
Note on the Desire of the
Analyst

!
Pierre Strliski

20

Lacan J., Le Sminaire, livre XXV, Le moment de conclure, lesson of 15 November 1977,
unpublished.
21 Miller, J.-A., The real in the 21st century, Presenta@on of the theme of the IXth Congress of the WAP,

Scilicet, A New Lacanian School Publica@on, EURL Huysmans, April 2014, p. 35.
22 Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, transl. A. Sheridan,

Penguin, London, 1994. p. 248.

23 Cf. Lacan, J. , Subversion of the Subject and the Dialec@c of Desire, crits, The First Complete Edi@on

in English, transl. B. Fink, Norton, New York/London, 2006, p. .

In this very classical configuration the

desire of the analyst is to boost desire
via the transferential unconscious. The
desire of the analyst is therefore a
redundant expression: the psychoanalyst
is desire. Lacan gives a definition of it
in his Ethics: Traditional morality
concerned itself with what one was
supposed to do insofar as it is
possible, as we say, and as we are
forced to say. What needs to be
unmasked here, is the point on which
that morality turns. And that is nothing
less than the impossibility in which we
recognize the topology of our desire,24
with a little further on this famous
sentence: I propose then that, from an
analytical point of view, the only thing
of which one can be guilty, is of having
given ground relative to ones desire.25
The analyst is placed, or places himself,
in the analytic discourse as a desiring
object. What does he desire? That the
analysis happens, that it exists, beyond
any constricting identification. He
defends the way [voie] - or the voice
[voix] of the revelation of truth. He is
an exposer of truth. He does not state
any oracle however, his virtuous
position26 A saint who trashitas
[dcharite] Lacan will say later (*) is

to designate with his raised finger this

horizon of the unconscious desire. He
says just one thing, which is the title of
a seminar: Still. [Encore]

!
At the end of his teaching, Lacan
considers this differently. An analysis
does not have to be pushed too far, he
says in 1975. The end of the truth, he
adds, the true truth, is that between
men and women it doesnt work.27
Psychoanalysis thus leads to an
impossible, a there is not which is our
real, the real of psychoanalysis. There
is no other possible definition of the real
than: It is the impossible.28

!
It is not the task of the analyst to define
something. How to define something
that ther e is not? Logif icatio n
circumscribes this impossible, no doubt,
sheathes it like Nora encased Joyce. But
the desire of the analyst in our twentyfirst century, where the real dominates
the world, where it is at the forefront of
the scene, continues to aim at
something, something other than to look
at the spectacle of this world. It aims

24 Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Transl. D. Porter, p. 315.
25 Ibid. p. 319.
26 Cf. Lacan, The Direc@on of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power, crits, op. cit., p. 641.

* Lacan, J., Television. A Challenge to the Psychoanaly@c Establishment, W.W. Norton, London, 1990, p.
15.
27 Lacan J., Yale University, Kanzer Seminar, Scilicet 6/7, Paris, Seuil, 1976, p. 16.
28 Lacan J., M.I.T, Scilicet 6/7, Paris, Seuil, p. 55.

certainly less at this hidden truth in the

clinical picture, than at the real itself.
That is the second part of the sentence
of J.-A. Miller: the desire of the analyst
is desire to reach real, to reduce the
Other to its real and to liberate it of
meaning.

!
How does one reach the impossible? By
contingency. That which does not stop
not being written, that is evidently
encountered. But, in that which repeats
itself, in the symptomatic addiction, in
the iteration, there is not just the figure
of a destiny. The analysts mission is to
counter this real,29 to counter in it the
portion which is always obscure, always
opaque, proper to meaning and which is
called jouissance, 30 states Laure
Naveau. If the definition of the real is
the impossible, there is also the fact that
real and impossible are antithetical,
they cannot go together31 which Lacan
said in an interview in Italy. Like the
pair truth/jouissance, the pair real/
impossible is antithetical, incompatible.
They sympathise with one another,
Lacan used to say of the first.

The desire of the analyst aims at this

jouissance which does not stop, until an
unexpected fragment detaches itself,
surprising, contingent: a sinthome.

!
!
!
Translated by Pauline OCallaghan

!
!
!

Note on the Desire of the

Analyst

!
Pierre Strliski

!
!
The desire of the analyst is not a pure
desire, not a pure infinity of metonymy,
but appears to us as the desire to reach
the real, to reduce the Other to its real,

29 Lacan , J., The Third, La Cause freudienne, n 79, Paris, Navarin, 2011, p. 19.
30 Naveau, L., Faire du hasard notre des@n, presented at the 42th Journe de lcole de la Cause

Freudienne, Paris, 2 October 2012. A commentary on a sentence of Lacan: The striking thing about all
that is that it is the real on which the analyst depends in the years ahead, and not the opposite,
unpublished.
31 Lacan, J., Interview with Emilia Granzejo for Panorama the 21st May 1974, unpublished.

10

and to liberate it of meaning,32 says

Jacques-Alain Miller, introducing the
next congress of the WAP, A Real for
the 21st Century. He notes that this
impurity of desire of the analyst is an
observation of Lacan in 1964. You can
find it on the last page of Seminar XI33.
What follows is the explanation of what
this impure desire might be: desire is
always impure, it is impurity itself, it is
the grain of sand which jams the
symbolic order, the plot organized by
the superego in order to freeze
everything, to stop everything. This
impurity in the order of the universe34 is
at the same time a necessity in order
that this world might not be totally vain,
cynical or desperate. Pierre Naveau, in a
guiding text for this Congress mentions
the Three-card Monte man whose
symptom, a sexual impotence, brought
his desire to a standstill.

!
In this very classical configuration the
desire of the analyst is to boost desire

via the transferential unconscious. The

desire of the analyst is therefore a
redundant expression: the psychoanalyst
is desire. Lacan gives a definition of it
in his Ethics: Traditional morality
concerned itself with what one was
supposed to do insofar as it is
possible, as we say, and as we are
forced to say. What needs to be
unmasked here, is the point on which
that morality turns. And that is nothing
less than the impossibility in which we
recognize the topology of our desire,35
with a little further on this famous
sentence: I propose then that, from an
analytical point of view, the only thing
of which one can be guilty, is of having
given ground relative to ones desire.36
The analyst is placed, or places himself,
in the analytic discourse as a desiring
object. What does he desire? That the
analysis happens, that it exists, beyond
any constricting identification. He
defends the way [voie] - or the voice
[voix] of the revelation of truth. He is
an exposer of truth. He does not state
any oracle however, his virtuous

32 Miller, J.-A., The real in the 21st century, Presenta@on of the theme of the IXth Congress of the WAP,

Scilicet, A New Lacanian School Publica@on, EURL Huysmans, April 2014, p. 35.
33 Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book XI, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, transl. A. Sheridan,

Penguin, London, 1994. p. 248.

34 Cf. Lacan, J. , Subversion of the Subject and the Dialec@c of Desire, crits, The First Complete Edi@on

in English, transl. B. Fink, Norton, New York/London, 2006, p. .

35 Lacan, J., The Seminar, Book VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, Transl. D. Porter, p. 315.
36 Ibid. p. 319.

11

position37 A saint who trashitas

[dcharite] Lacan will say later (*) is
to designate with his raised finger this
horizon of the unconscious desire. He
says just one thing, which is the title of
a seminar: Still. [Encore]

!
At the end of his teaching, Lacan
considers this differently. An analysis
does not have to be pushed too far, he
says in 1975. The end of the truth, he
adds, the true truth, is that between
men and women it doesnt work.38
Psychoanalysis thus leads to an
impossible, a there is not which is our
real, the real of psychoanalysis. There
is no other possible definition of the real
than: It is the impossible.39

!
It is not the task of the analyst to define
something. How to define something
that there is not? Logification
circumscribes this impossible, no doubt,
sheathes it like Nora encased Joyce. But

the desire of the analyst in our twentyfirst century, where the real dominates
the world, where it is at the forefront of
the scene, continues to aim at
something, something other than to look
at the spectacle of this world. It aims
certainly less at this hidden truth in the
clinical picture, than at the real itself.
That is the second part of the sentence
of J.-A. Miller: the desire of the analyst
is desire to reach real, to reduce the
Other to its real and to liberate it of
meaning.

!
How does one reach the impossible? By
contingency. That which does not stop
not being written, that is evidently
encountered. But, in that which repeats
itself, in the symptomatic addiction, in
the iteration, there is not just the figure
of a destiny. The analysts mission is to
counter this real,40 to counter in it the
portion which is always obscure, always
opaque, proper to meaning and which is
called jouissance, 41 states Laure

37 Cf. Lacan, The Direc@on of the Treatment and the Principles of its Power, crits, op. cit., p. 641.

* Lacan, J., Television. A Challenge to the Psychoanaly@c Establishment, W.W. Norton, London, 1990, p.
15.
38 Lacan J., Yale University, Kanzer Seminar, Scilicet 6/7, Paris, Seuil, 1976, p. 16.
39 Lacan J., M.I.T, Scilicet 6/7, Paris, Seuil, p. 55.

40 Lacan , J., The Third, La Cause freudienne, n 79, Paris, Navarin, 2011, p. 19.
41 Naveau, L., Faire du hasard notre des@n, presented at the 42th Journe de lcole de la Cause

Freudienne, Paris, 2 October 2012. A commentary on a sentence of Lacan: The striking thing about all
that is that it is the real on which the analyst depends in the years ahead, and not the opposite,
unpublished.

12

Naveau. If the definition of the real is

the impossible, there is also the fact that
real and impossible are antithetical,
they cannot go together42 which Lacan
said in an interview in Italy. Like the
pair truth/jouissance, the pair real/
impossible is antithetical, incompatible.
They sympathise with one another,
Lacan used to say of the first.

!
The desire of the analyst aims at this
jouissance which does not stop, until an
unexpected fragment detaches itself,
surprising, contingent: a sinthome.

!
!
!
Translated by Pauline OCallaghan

!
!
!
!
Desire of the Analyst
Pierre Naveau

During his course of 2 December 1998,

J.-A. Miller remarked that disturbing
the defence was not the same thing as
interpreting repression. This term (to
disturb) is found in the passage from
The Direction of the Treatment where
Lacan evokes the case of a man playing
three card monte. Lets recall it: the
patient, showing himself impotent,
suggested that his mistress bring a third
man into the relation. She has a dream,
in brief: even though she has a phallus,
she still wants to have one. The effect of
the story of this dream is immediate: the
patient quickly rediscovers his potency.
Lacans commentary is substantially as
follows: the woman here restores by a
ruse a game of escape that analysis had
disturbed43. Between parenthesis, this
expression a game of escape, which
makes allusion to the defence, is
intriguing. In any case, the moral of the
story, says Lacan, is this: there is no
use to have the phallus, since his desire
was to be it44. Could one not say that in
the case of the fresh brains man Lacan
indicates to Kris that where he interprets
the defence, is it, on the contrary, its
disturbance that he has achieved?
Again, let us summarise: the
interpretation of Kris is that the patient
defends himself from stealing ideas
from others, by accusing himself of
wanting to steal them. In fact, he does
not steal. He accuses himself thus of
wanting to steal in order to hinder

42 Lacan, J., Interview with Emilia Granzejo for Panorama the 21st May 1974, unpublished.

43

Lacan J., The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power crits,
Norton, New York/London, 2006, p. 528.
44

Ibid.

13

himself from stealing. It is that which is

called, says Lacan analysing the
defence before the drive, the latter being
manifested here in an attraction to
others ideas45. To the one who, a few
years before, was to tell him that isnt
done!46, Lacan objected: you are
mistaken. Lacan, taking support from
the acting out of the patient, said that
this is to disturb the defence. He directly
addresses himself to Kris: It is not the
fact that your patient doesnt steal that is
important here. Its that he steals
nothing. And thats what you should
have conveyed to him.47 This nothing
indicates, in fact, what it comes down
to: it is that he may have an idea of his
own which never occurs to him or
barely crosses his mind48. The real,
indeed, surprises. But, here it is up to
the analyst to surprise the real, there
where the traumatic incident resounds at
the same instant. It is not the surprised
analyst of which Theodor Reik speaks49,
but the surprising analyst the word is
J . - A . M i l l e r s t h e a n a l y s t
surpreneur.

Translated by Janet Hane

45

Ibid., p. 501

46

Ibid.

47

Ibid., p. 502.

48

Ibid.

The Transferential
Unconscious and the
Real Unconscious

!
!

Philippe de Georges

The bringing into light of the real

unconscious and the transferential
unconscious is a culmination point: that
of of Jacques-Alain Millers elucidation
of the long journey made by Lacan
starting with the Freudian invention of
the unconscious, leading to his own
invention of the real. This binary was
established in 200650, each term being
characterised by a constitution
mechanism and a paradigm,
determining a logic of the direction of
the cure.

To summarise in broad terms, the

transferential unconscious is comprised
of signifiers and structured like a
language. Its installation results from
the process Freud called repression. It is
inscribed in the dialectic between the
nascent subject and the Other of
language. It is the cause of the
symptom, which under the form of the
metaphor proceeds from the return of
the repressed by encryption of censored

49

T.N. Reiks book, Der berraschte Psychologe, literally the surprised psychologist,
was translated as Surprise and the Psychoanalyst (1937).
50

J.-A. Miller, Lacanian Orientation. Les us du laps, teaching delivered within the
setting of the Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Paris 8, published in Quarto
No 88-89, Linconscient rel, p. 6.

14

representations. Realised [actualis] in

the analytic experience by the
transference, it gives interpretation its
matter.

believed, the unconscious is in fact

real. Between the lines, this hapax
derives the logic of the sinthome from
the work of Joyce.

The real unconscious differs from it

point by point: it is not born from the
repression of representations but has the
trauma for reference. It is not correlated
to the subject-supposed-to-know or to
the production of meaning. Its spring is
not the signifier, but jouissance. That
which responds to jouissance (which is
the real of the living being) is the
defence. It is from the sibylline sentence
of the later Lacan that J.-A. Miller
extracts the written formula that fixes
Lacans elaboration: Invented by a
solitary [it is about psychoanalysis],
incontestable theorist of the
unconscious (which is not what is
believed, I say: the unconscious, that is,
real, believe you me)51. This text is
dated 17 May 1976, namely one week
after the last session of the seminar Le
Sinthome. Clarified in this way, this
phrase allows us to hear that if we are to
believe Lacan rather than what is

J.-A. Miller can then assert that the

unconscious is a matter [affaire] of the
real, aims at the core of the real, the
inassimilable on which the trauma is
modelled so that repetition is
conceptualised as the repetition of the
avoidance of a core of the real52.

The real unconscious is the unconscious

of the later Lacan 53 . It differs
profoundly, not only from what Lacan
called the Freudian unconscious at the
time of the Seminar XI54, but also from
the one that he then called ours. The
Freudian invention is not reducible just
to the signifying dimension. The deep
reason for the second topography, in
The Ego and the Id55, was in effect
that repression is not the ultimate cause:
there is for Freud in 1923 an implacable
unconscious, uninterpretable and dumb
which he defines as the id. The id is the
real unconscious of Freud, internal

51

J. Lacan, Preface to the English Edition of the Seminar XI, 1976, in Autres crits,
Paris, Seuil, 2001, p. 571; The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, transl.
A. Sheridan, 1977, p. vii [trans. modif.],
52

J.-A. Miller, Lacanian Orientation. Les us du laps, teaching delivered within the
setting of the Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Paris 8, Lesson of 15
December 1999, unpublished.
53

J.-A. Miller, The Real in the 21st Century, in Scilicet, A New Lacanian School Publication, EURL
Huysmans, April 2014, pp. 25-35.
54

J. Lacan, Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, lesson 2

The Freudian Unconscious and Ours, transl. A. Sheridan, 1977, p. 17.
55

S. Freud, The Ego and the Id, transl. J. Strachey, The Standard Edition of the Complete
Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIX, Hogarth, London, 1961.

15

and directly plugged into the biological

and the needs. J.-A. Miller says that
the preliminary being is a being of
jouissance56. He substitutes to it, as does
Lacan, the One of the first traumatic
encounter with this jouissance, which
leaves a trace and pushes towards
reiteration57.

of the world-illuminating meaning of a

new signifying day.

The real unconscious is the concept that

allows the analyst to go forward in the
task that is his: not just to interpret but
to counter the real58. It clarifies the
most current form of the direction of the
treatment: to disturb the defences.

Translated by Bogdan Wolf with Janet

Haney

!
!

Colours of the Real

Anne Ganivet-Poumellec

In its first period, Lacans teaching is

outlined in black and white.

At times, the opaque and resistant black

of the imaginary hinders the revealing
light of the symbolic; at times, from
obscure materiality rises the revelation

The blackness of the imaginary

governed by the large sun of the
symbolic resists with its multiple shades
but imaginary factors, despite their
inertia, figure only as shadows and
reflections therein.59
A whole phantasmagoria ensues but
nothing indicates that colours play any
other part in it than such as in the game
of go or chess; the subject of logical
time only owes its leaving the prison at
his determination to recognize white
where it might as well have been black.

When did Lacan start to have the need

to use a more colourful palette?

In 1969, in an attempt to echo the other

manifestations of the death drive and
masochism brought by Freud in his
second topography, Lacan calls
jouissance that which pushes the subject
and which subverts the regulative
principle of the pleasure principle. It is
precisely because of its emphasis on
colour that we can grasp this new
fundamental concept: "In other words,
with our experience, psychoanalytic

56

J.-A. Miller, Les six paradigms de la jouissance in La Cause freudienne, No. 43,
October 1999, p. 21. Published in English as Paradigms of jouissance, in Lacanian Ink,
Issue 17, 2000.
57

J.-A. Miller, Lacanian Orientation. L'Etre et l'Un, teaching delivered within the setting of the
Department of Psychoanalysis, University of Paris 8, 2010-11, unpublished.
58

J. Lacan, La troisime, edited by J.-A. Miller in La Cause freudienne, No. 79,

September 2011, p. 11-33.
59

Lacan J., Seminar on The Purloined Letter, crits, New York & London, Norton, 2006, p. 6.

16

experience, jouissance is coloured, if

you will allow me to abbreviate.60

Continuing on this thread and giving

preference to surplus-value (a concept
taken from Marx) as effect of the real,
Lacan frees himself from the Hegelian
dialectic. To underline this breakthrough he uses colour: there is
something that colours this discourse
of Hegel61 he says, and this allows
him, Lacan, to decolourise it. So, he
specifies: The word colour means
something other than meaning.62

In the text, the italics used for colour

and meaning give to these notions equal
importance. Colour then takes the value
of being something other than meaning.
Indeed here it is, a notion of primary
importance to help orient ourselves as
we approach a real, the real of
psychoanalysis, which is directly
opposed to meaning.

A little later, engaged in the figuration

of Borromean knots, whereby the three
dimensions of the real, the symbolic,
and the imaginary can be handled by the
same ring of string (although the
dimensions are not the same), Lacan
raises the question of what would
differentiate these knots. He decides to
use colour. Thanks to colour there is
difference63, he notes.

On March 9, 1976, Jacques Lacan takes

up again this notion by giving it its
value and its use. This colour with no
meaning brings the news of the
Imaginary and of the Real to the couple
of opposites such as, for example, the
two sexes. He can then say: "In sex,
there is nothing more than the being of
colour. Which in itself suggests that
there can be woman the colour of man,
or man the colour of woman.64

The blue colour is precisely what

arrives to catch Adele at the end of the
film Blue is the Warmest Colour (La
vie dAdle) by Abdellatif Kechiche.

At the beginning of the story, Adle is a

subject, almost undifferentiated, who
has a body.

From this body Adle enjoys a nonstop jouissance. Her idea of the sexual
encounter and the impossible upon
which she begins to stumble, bring
Adle to Emma, a choice of object
which she, Adle, who prefers not to
speak, will retain as long as possible.

By this turn of events, then, an other

emerges, whose blue colour denotes a
way of life Emma is an artist and
who, propping herself up against Adle,
even though it is all against, will make
her own choice.

60

Lacan J., The Seminar, Book XVI, Dun Autre lautre, Paris, Seuil, 2006, p. 114.

61

Lacan J., The Seminar, Book XIX, ou pire, Paris, Seuil, 2011, p. 118.

62

Ibid.

63

Lacan J., RSI, Book XXII, seminar of 18 March, 1975, unpublished.

64

Lacan J., The Seminar, Book XXIII, Le sinthome, Paris, Seuil, 2005, p. 116

17

Adle is not in it, but the blue colour of

her clothes denotes in the last scene of
the movie a difference which finally
asserts itself.

!
!
!
!
!

Translated by Christos Tombras

Love A Users Guide

Philippe Hellebois
Smooth mover
What danger for my heart
What pain, what tears
But now, without fears

!
- What a title! You pretend to tell us
how to make love?
- Oh yes! And also, indeed above all,
how to become loved, how to meet
love! [Laughter].
- I suspect you of advertising the next
Congress of the WAP!
- While youre at it, say that I am
advertising a dating site! And besides
why not? Although, ordinarily, you
brush up more against signifiers than
you do against bodies. But as our bodies
are made (at least in part) of our
signifiers well, you never know
- Very amusing, youre having a laugh!
- Madly, but I will try to satisfy you all
the same really I will! The secret of
love is that there isnt any! It meets
itself because it meets itself; I love you
because I love you. It is more than a

pirouette, it echoes something

remarkable that Picasso said: I do not
search, I find. Its one way of saying
that you never search except by turning
your back on what you have already
found without having searched, that is,
by chance. This dear chance being what
it is, the only recommendation which
could give you the scientific committee
of the Congress is, therefore: do not
hesitate to leave home, your cage, your
routine, your prison.
- Bizarre all the same! In matters of the
heart is there not a programme, a
fantasy which explains how these things
must happen necessarily do we not
love and will we not love this or that
kind of partner? Is this not what Freud
said when speaking of the conditions of
love?
- Sure, and if, as all men born, I prefer
blondes, I have never yet met anything
but brunettes. One knows that this
programme explains the past more
easily than it announces the future. In
fact, there is the programme and there is
the meeting, the one does not hinder the
other. Freud explained this: not all our
fantasies are activated; they exist thanks
to an accidental overinvestment
[bersetzung] which triggers in the
libido a true revolution [Umschwung].
J.-A. Miller, commenting on this
passage in a course that only needs to
receive a form worthy of him, remarks
that the fantasy is the same before as
after. What changes is what is invested:
We can pose as a certain rule [] that
between the signifying articulation and
the libidinal investment, there is a
hiatus, a break, a rupture of causality in
all cases. The signifying articulation
returns, always in the last instance, to a
certain formalism, while the libidinal
investment is of another order.
18

Formalism does not permit us to know

where the investment is placed.65
- Very interesting! Got any examples?
- Shedloads! Theres Gide, for a start.
An inexhaustible case who did
everything, as Lacan noted, to be such.
Gide was skewered for a long time by
the question: was it his voyage to
Algeria that had been decisive for his
homosexuality or, on the contrary, had it
already existed, in seed form. Wrong
question! Both are true! Moreover,
Lacans text contains passionate
developments about the traumatic
seduction. We can also read Marivaux
inexhaustible on love, on danger, on
surprise and all while waiting, in a
fever, of course, for the fireworks
constituted by the cases that will be
presented at the Congress.

!
Translated by Janet Haney

Burnout
Sophie Marret-Maleval

!
Burnout, a young doctor tells me
straight away, no longer able to bear the
general resignation in the face of
questionable treatments given to the
residents of the nursing home he works
for, allegedly because of its chronic lack
of funding. I saw a programme on TV
the other day and I understood that I
suffer from burnout a service manager
tells me, finding it hard to cope with the

productivist pressure of her company,

increasing the risk for the customers,
and whose symptoms intensify when a
restructuring plan is imminent. What
should I do? My husband is burnt out.
A model engineer, this man is suffering
from being evaluated with regard to the
time each call-out takes regardless of
the success of his repair rate, which is
nonetheless the primary objective, this
resulting in him being less well rated
and less well paid than his colleagues
who dont share the same concern.
The term burnout imposes itself,
illustrating the developing malaise in all
sectors of activity, becoming a frequent
reason for psy consultations. This
term, Anglo-Saxon and condensed,
describes metaphorically the
phenomena of subjective eclipse in
which those suffering from it recognise
themselves. The expression primarily
evokes an extinguished candle, the
reason why it was first described by its
promoter, Harold Bradley, in 1969. In a
more contemporary fashion, it evokes
the more recent meaning of a blown
electric circuit. It also refers to the aero
spatial industry for which it designates a
rocket which falls back to earth after its
fuel has depleted. All usages of the term
suggest the mechanical conception of
Being behind the behavioural theories
which promoted it, which do not
hesitate to consider the syndrome of
professional exhaustion as an illness,
even if they recognise the influence of
the social context on its development.
Even Christophe Dejours, psychiatrist
and psychoanalyst, who rightly prefers

65

J.-A. Miller, Lacanian Orientation. Le partenaire-symptme (1997-8), teaching delivered within the
framework of the Department of Psychoanalysis, University Paris 8, unpublished. Lesson of 6 May 1998.
The text of Freud to which Miller refers is: Neurotic Mechanisms in Jealousy, Paranoia, and
Homosexuality [1922b], Standard Edition, Vol. 18 p. 223. (Reference communicated by Serge Cottet
thanks, Ph. H.)

19

to speak of occupational
dstress [souffrance au travail, literally
suffering in the work place], connects
its increasing manifestations to the
current forms of management. In an
article in Le Monde, Dejours used the
term burnout, which he defines as a
pathology resulting from the
contemporary malaise. Pathology or
signal? Such is the ethical challenge of
a question which can, if we are not
careful, lead to fight fire with fire.
Alice Delarue precisely shows how, to
treat the question of psychosocial risks,
companies use consultants with a
behavioural orientation, whose
underpinnings are also those at the
foundation of the new management
techniques responsible for the
development of these very risks66. The
roots: man reduced to a behavioural
machine; as a treatment against
subjective expression, even if it is the
choice of suicide: a rectification of
behaviour, i.e. a new erasure of the
subject.67
Conversely, Lacan invited us to grasp
the movement of contemporary
civilisation from the capitalist discourse
as a substitute for the discourse of the
master68. In his seminar The Other
Which Does Not Exist and its Ethical
Committees, Jacques-Alain Miller

shows how the reduction of the father to

the S1 strips bare the superego exposing
its pure function of commandment, of
pure imperative which has no other
anchoring than that of the real, that of
the drive. Thus the capitalist discourse
puts the superego in the driving seat,
with its version of imperative of
jouissance, moving towards the
production of forever more surplusjouissance objects. Its ferocity manifests
itself as well in a Work! in the service
of this production. Is it not that what
many employees report, thus proving
the obvious actualisation of the
capitalist discourse? Invited by flattery
to share their know-how with everyone,
they also take the risk to be discarded
after having lost their usefulness, once
their know-how has been transmitted.
The master draws the surplusjouissance from the knowledge of the
slave and ignores the division of the
subject. It is the subject which returns
with the burnout and signals in
depression its erasure. He subtracts
himself from the real of the
commandment he is subjected to, albeit
as a waste, the remainder of the
productivist machine4. In a time when
keeping ones position is increasingly
uncertain and doubles the imperative
effect, it is more common to crack up.

66

Delarue A., OPA des TCC sur le march du stress, Le Nouvel ne, n10, February 2010. And http://
forumpsy.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/opa-des-tcc-sur-le-marche-du-stress-par-alice-delarue/publi 27
January 2010.
67

See also on this topic Ganivet-Poumellec A., La psychologie sur le toboggan technocratique ,
Souffrances au Travail, rencontres avec des psychanalystes, publication de lassociation Souffrances au
Travail, October 2012. www.souffrancesautravail.org, September 2012.
68

Jacques Lacan, Du discours psychanalytique , Lacan in Italia 1953-1978. En Italie Lacan, Milan,
La Salamandra, 1978, p. 37.
4

See also on this point Doguet-Dziomba M.-H, Au travail : quest-ce qui fait souffrir ? and SAT,
psychanalystes en prise directe avec le social ? , Souffrances au Travail, rencontres avec des
psychanalystes, op.cit

20

It is true that some people are more

likely to be affected by an unsheathed
superego, more susceptible to become
its slave, with melancholic triggerings
often concealing behind the burnout. At
the risk of carrying on feeding the
civilisations superego with our bodies,
we need to understand properly that the
depressive affect is the product of the
exposure of the real side of the superego
as an effect of the capitalist discourse. It
is in this way that a subject makes itself
seen, to resist the machine overload, to
avoid calling for care as a response, at
the service of the master and the
subjects annihilation.

!
!

!
Translated by Betty Bertrand

!
!
!
!

!
!
!
!

21