Book-17-From An Other To The Other

t.A. PUBUC LIBRARY ..'.

SOCIAt ·SCtENCE/l'fflliREL
THE SEMINAR OF
JACQUES LACAN
Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller
- - - -- --

The Other Side of Psychoanalysis

BOOKXVIl
TRANSLA'TED WITH NOTES BY

Russell Grigg
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LL"em~rs dt- la psycb:ln.alyse. F.nglis hl
The othcc side of ~-ycboanalysis i Jacques Lacan ; tr.1nSlaccd
with notes by Russell Grigg.
p. cm.-(The seminar of Jacques Lacan ; bk. L7)
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I. PsychonnaJ~is. 2. Social sciences and psychoanalysis. I. T ille. JT. Scrics: L:Jcan,
Jacques, J 90 1- l <J8 I. Seminairc de Jacques Lacan. English ; bk. 17.
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
CONTENTS
TransJaror's Nole 9
I Production of the four discourses II
AXES OF THE ANALYTIC SUBVERSION

II The mascer and the hysteric 29
m Knowledge, a means of jouissance 39
N Truth, the sister of jouissance 54
v The Lacanian field 69
BEYOND THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

VI The castrated master 87
VII Oedipus and Moses and the father of the horde 102
VIII From myth to structure 118
IX Yahweh 's ferocious ignorance 133
THE OTHER SIDE OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE

x Interview on the steps of the Pantheon 14.3
XI Furrows in the alethospherc 150
XII The impotence of truth 164
XIII The power of the impossibles 180
...
6 Contents
APPENDDIBS
A Analyticon 197
B Monsieur Caquot's presentation 209
Acknowledgments 2 15
Bibliography 2 17
Index 221
j
THE SEMINAR OF
JACQUES LACAN
BOOK XVII
.....
Translator's Note
This is a translation of the seminar that Jacques Lacan delivered at the Law
Faculry, Place du Pantheon, in 1969-70, in the unsettled aftermath of the
eventful year of l %8. The original tcxi is the version of the seminar edited
by Jacques-Alain Miller and published by :Editions du Seuil.
Quite apart from the usual challenges facing any translator of Lacan into
English, this seminar presencs special difficulties of its own. Certain of
them call for special commenc.
l'envers
Beginning with the tide itself, l'enuers, translated here as "the other side,"
also carries the meaning of "back," "verso," "lining," "underside," ..flip-
side,7' "underneath," "bad $ide"--connotations of the unseen, even tbe
obscene, which " the ocher side" in English only barely suggests.
lamouse
\Vbat is striking about this made- up word, pronounced LA-TOOZE, is its
suffix, -ouse, which can be used to turn ordinary words into slang and infor-
mal language. Thus, une bague, a ring, becomes une baguouse; la (prison) cen-
irale becomes la centrouse; and so on. With "lathouse" Lacan is obviously
baving a bic of fun with his object a.
astu&
This neologii>m, translated as "ascudied," attempts to work the "a" of
"object a" into the term " student" or "studied" to convey something of the
place the student occupies in the university discourse.
alethosphere
This neologism, constructed as it is from the Greek words for "truth,, and
for "ball,'' "globe," or "sphere," is plain enough for the English reader.
Lacan introduces it to refer to the meani> by which something can
be recorded at a distance, whether in the form of light or sound waves.
The alethosphere obviously extends beyond the limits of the earth's
atmosphere.
9
10 Translator's Note
In ocher cases where the translation is open to question, potentially mis-
leading, or has struck me as inadequace to the original French, [ have
included the original term in brackets; the reader can at least judge the ade-
quacy of this English reflection co its French original.
I would like to thank Kerry Murphy and Justin Clemens for working their
way through drafts, while Bruce Fink's detailed comrnencs have also
improved the quality of the translation.
Russell Grigg
Gcelong, Auscralia
I
Production of the four discourses
OISl".OUltSE "'1"1110\1T SPr.i;cH
LUCI f'RliV>Tr:RPllET
nm RfJATION)KIJ' BETil'TiEN 1'NO\t"LEDGH AND ]OUillwtNr:E
lliE Sl.AVF R08Bl!.O OP ms ~O'lll.J:DGE
·1'KI:: O~ TO 1(1.;0T
Allow me once again, my dear friends, to raise the question of this audience
which has assisted me, most n otably today, by following me in what for
some of you is the third of my relocations.I
Before I do this, the least f can do is speJJ out bow I have come to be
here in order to thank those I owe thanks to. le is through an offer that the
Facultc de droit bas kindly made to several of my colleagues from the
[Ecole des] Hauces Erudes with whom they have kindly included me. J
would like to thank, and I believe it is with your endorsement, the Faculte
de droit, and in particular its senior Faculty, most notably the Dean.
As the notice may have infonned you, I will only be speaking here-oot
that this place was not offered to me every Wednesday-the second and
third Wednesdays of each month, thereby freeing me, no doubt, for other
duties the other Wednesdays. And in particular, I believe I can announce
that the first Wednesday of each month, at least for some of them, that is,
every second month, and therefore the first Wednesday of December, Feb-
ruary, April, and June, I will be going to Vincennes to give, not my seminar
as was incorrectly aooounced, but what in contrast I have taken care to call,
so as to stress that they are different, " Four Impromptus," to which I have
given a humorous title that you can read in the [university] grounds where
the poster has already been put up.
Since, as you can see, it pleases me to leave certain details up in the air, lO
I shall take immediate advantage of this to air a scruple that has stayed with
me following che welcome that T gave a certain person, because on reflec-
.. 'Tbe original French pagination is included in the margins to facilitate

comparison with the French cext.
l This was the first year of Lacan's seminar at the Faculte de droit, after hov-
in.g been tirst held.at Sainte~Annc H ospital and then, under the patronage of the
Ecole des Hautes Etudcs en Sciences Socfales, at the Ecole normale superieurc.
11
12 The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
tion it was not very friendly- not that I wanted it that way, but in fact that
was bow it turned out.
One day somebody who is perhaps here, and will no doubt nor make
herself known, accosted me in the street just as I was getting imo a taxi. She
pulled over on her scooter and said to me, "Are you Dr. Lacan?"
''Yes, I am," I said to her. "Why?"
"Arc you holding your seminar again?"
" Yes, of course, soon."
"Where?"
And then, n o doubt I had my reas ons for this, and 1 ask her to take my
word for it, I answered, "You'll see."
She then took off on her little scooter w1th so much throttle that I was
left both nonplussed and full of remorse. It's my remorse that I want to
convey co ber today by apologizing to her, if she is here, in c.he hope thac
she will forgive me.
In fact., this is surely an opportunity to point out that it's never, in any
way whatever, by another person's excesses that one turns out, in appear-
ance at least, to be overwhelmed. It is always because their excesses happen
to coincide with your own. It was because I was already at this point, in a
certain scale that ccprcsented an excessive preoccupation , that I no doubt
exprt:ssed myself as I did, in a way I very quickly found inappropriate.
With that, let's go into what my contnbution for this year is going to
be about.
I thought 1 should caJI this seminar "Psychoanalysis upside down" [La Psy-
chanal,yse a l'c11vers].
D on' t get the idea chat this title owes anything to the current situation
that thinks it is in the process of rurning a number of places upside down.
Let m e give just the foUowing as proof of this. In a text published in 1966-
onc of those introductions that I wrote at the rime of the collection of my
Bcrit.s, and which punctuate it-a text called "De nos antecedents," "On
My Antecedents," on page 68>I describe my discourse as being about, I say,
11 a revival of the Freudian project upside down. It's thus written down well
before the events-a re'l1ivalfrom the other dfrection [rep·rise par l'cnvers].
What docs that mean? Last year I managed, with much perseverance, to
ascertain what discourse is about, as a necessary structure that goes well
beyond speech, which is always more or less occasional. What I prefer, 1 said,
and I even wrote it up on the board one day, is a discourse without speech.
J
Ptoduction of the fo ur discourses 13
The fact is that, in truth, discourse can clearly subsist without words. It
subsists in certain fundamental relations which would literally not be able
to be maintained without language. Through the instrument of language a
number of stable relations are established, inside which something that is
much larger and goes much furcher than actual utterances [enonciations]
can, of course, be inscribed. There is no need of the latter for our conduct,
possibly for our acts, to be inscribed within the framework of certain pri-
m ordial statements. If this were not so, what would we make of what we
keep rediscovering in our experience, and especially in our psychoanalytic
experience-I mention analytic experience in chis connection only because
it gives tllis a precise designation- what would we make of what keeps
appearing in the guise of tbe superego?
There are structures-we cannot describe them in any oilier way-for
characterizing what can be extracted from this " in the form of," one partic-
ular usage of which I took the libercy of stressing last year-namely, what
happens by virtue of a fundamental relation., the one I define as the relation
of one signifier to another. And from this there results the emergence of
what we call the subject-via the signifier which, as it happens, here func-
tions as representing thU; subject with respect to another signifier.
How is tbi~ fundamental form to be situated? Withom any further ado
we arc, if you will, going to write this form in a new way chis year. Last year
I wrote it as the exteriority of the signifier S1-the one that is the point of
departure for the definition of discourse that we will emphasize ar this first
step-with respect co a circle marked with che sign A, chat is, the field of
the big Other. But, simplifying, we will take S 1 and the batteryofsignifiers,
which we will refer to as the sign S2• 1 am talking about those signifiers that
are already there, whereas at the point of origin ar which we place ourselves
in order to establish wbar discou rse is about, discourse thought of as the sta-
tus of the statement Ll'bwnce], S 1 is the one to be seen as intervening. It inter-
venes in a signifying battery that we have no right, ever, to take as dispersed, 12
as not already forming a network of what is called knowledge [savoir].
Knowledge initially arises at the moment at which S 1 comes to repre-
sent something, through its intervention in che field defined, at the point
we have come to, as an already structured field of knowledge. And the sub-
ject is its supposition, its hypokeimenon, insofar as the subject represents
the specific traic of being distinguished from the living individual. The lat-
ter is certainly its locus, where the subject leaves its mark, but it isn't of
the same order as what is brought in by the subject, by virtue of the stacus
of knowledge.
s. ... s,
$ a
14 The 0th.er Side of Psychoanalysis
No doubt it's around this word "knowledge" that there is a point of ambi-
guity to which, we have to stress this tuuay, I have already rendered your
ears sensitive by means of several paths, tracks, moments of enlightenment,
or flashes of light.
ShaJI I mention it for those of you who took note of it, for whom it is still
fresh in your mind? Last year I had occasion co call the Other's jouissancc
" knowledge."
A su-ange busim:ss. To be honest, this formulation had never been prof-
fered before. It's not new, since even last year I was able co make it suffi-
ciently phlusfule for you, I could make the claim without raising any
particular protests. ·nus is something I announced I would return to chis year.
Lee me first of all finish what began with two legs, then had three. Let's
give it its fourth.
The latter is something I hove been emphasizing for quite a while, and
last year especially, since for quite some time this was the purpose of the
seminar- " D'un Autre a l'aucre;"' "'From an Other co die ocher," I caJJcd it.
This other, this lircle other, with it'> famous "the," was what ar this level,
whkh is the level of algebra, of signifying structure, we designate as d1c
object a.
At this level of signifying strucmre we have only to learn the way it oper-
ates. Thus we are at liberty co see what happens when we wrice che thiogs
out and give che entire system a quarter rum.
13 I have been speaking about this notorious quarter rum for long enough,
and on different occasioo~in particular, ever since the appearance of
what I wrote under the tide "Kant with Sade"-for people to think that
perhaps one day fr would be seen that this isn't limited to what the so-called
Schema Z docs, and that there are other reasons for this quaner turn than
some pure accident of imaginary representation.
$ -~ s.
a S.
Here you have an example. If it seems justified to say that the chain, the
sequence of letters of this algebra, must not be disturbed, then by perform-
ing this operation of a quarter rurn we will obtain four structures, and no
more, the first of which in some way gives you the starting point.
It is a simple matter to quickly reproduce the remaining three on paper.
I am only saying this to specify an arrangement that has absolutely not
been imposed in any way- as they say, from a certain point of view, noth-
ing has been abstracted from any reality. On the contrary it's already
inscribed in what functions as chis reality I was speaking about before, the
reality of a discourse that is already in the world and that underpins it, at
Production of the four discourses 15
least the one we arc familiar with. Not only is it already inscribed in it, but
it is one of its arches.
Of course, the form ofletters in which we inscribe this symbolic chain is
of no great importance, provided they are distinct-this is enough for some
constant relations co become clear. As is the case with this formula .
What does it say? It locateti a moment. What my discourse subsequently
develops here will tell us what the appropriate meaning to give this moment
is. It says that it is at the very in.c;mnt at which S 1 intervenes in the already
constituted field of the other signifiers, insofar as they are already articu-
lated w:irh one another as such, chat, by intervening in another system, this
$,which I have called the subject as divided, emerges. Its entire status, in
the stmngest sense of this term, is to be reconsidered chis year.
Finally, we have always stressed that something defined as a loss emerges
from this trajectory. This is what the letter to be read as object a designates.
We have n ot left undesignated the point from which we extract this func- 14
tion of the lost objecL It's from Freud's discourse about the specific sense
that repetition bas in the speaking being. Indeed, repetition is not about
just any old effect of memory in the biologicaJ sense. Repetition bears a
certain relationship to what is the limit of this knowledge, and which we
call joujssance.
This is why ir's a logical articulation that is ar stake in the formulation
that knowledge is the Other's J011i.ssance-dle Other's, of course, insofar
as--since there is no Other--the intervention of the signifier makes the
Other emerge as a field.
Yon will tell me no doubt that bere, in short, we are still going around in
circles-the signifier, the Other, knowledge, the signifier, the Other. knowl-
edge, and so on. But this is where the term jcuissa11ce en.ables us to show the
apparatus's point of insertion . In doing so, we are n o doubt leaving behind
what knowledge authentically is, what is recognizable as knowledge, and
referring to the limits, to the field of these limits as such, the field that
Freud's words dare to confront.
What is the upshot of all that these words articulate? Not knowledge, but
confusion. Well then, from this very confusion we have to draw some les-
sons, since it is a quescion of limirs and of leaving the system. Leaving it by
virtue of what?- by virtue of a thirst for meaning, as if the system needed
it. The system doesn't need it. But we foeble beings, as we will keep on dis-
covering for ourselves at every turning point over the course of this year, we
need meaning. Alright then, here's one.
It's perhaps not the right one. But then, it is certain that we will find that
there are many of these "It's perhaps not the right one"- the insistence of
which is for us a good indication of the dimension of truth.
Notice the ambiguity that the word "Tricb" has taken on in psychoana-
IJ l6 The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
lytic stupidity, instead of people striving to grasp how this category is to be

unpacked. Tl:e category is not without ancestry, I mean the word is not
without a usage already, one that goes back a long way, as far back as Kant,
but what it is useful for in analytic discourse would merit our not rushing
in and translating it as "instinct." But., after all, these slippages do not occur
for no reaso n. And although for a Long time I have been emphasizing the
aberrant character of this translation, we are nevertheless within our rights
to benefit from it. Not so a11 to en.wine rhe notion of instinct, to be sure,
t5 and above all not in this respect, but to remind you what it is in Freud's dis-
course chat renders it a habitable notion-and simply co try and make this
discourse inhabit it in a different way.
Popularly, the idea of instinct is indeed che idea of knowledge-knowl-
edge such that we are unable to say what it means, but it is supposed to
result, and not without goon rea.c;on. in the fact that life subsists. On cbe
other band, if we arc ro give any sense to what Freud says about the pleas-
ure principl.e as es~cntial co the functioning of life, being tbe principle
whereby tension is maintained at irs lowest level, aren' t we already stating
whac, as his subsequent discourse shows, was forced upon him? Namely,
the death drive.
What forced this notion upon him was the development of an Cl.1>eri-
c nce, analytic experience, insofar as it has the strucrure of discourse. For
d on't forget thac one does noc in'1ent the death drive by considering peo-
ple's behavior.
We have the death drive here. We ha\·e il h ere, where something is tak-
ing place between you and what I am saying.
l said, "Whac I am saying." lam not calking about what I am. What would
be the use, since, in shorr, one can see this, owing to your presence? It's not
that your presence speaks in my favor. It does speak sometimes and, usu -
ally, in my place.
Be that as it may, what justifies me in saying something here is what T
would call che essence of this manifestation that the diverse and successive
audiences I have attracted according co the locations in which I have spo-
ken have been.
I was particularly keen to tack the following remark on somewhere,
because, as 1 am in a new location, today seemed to me to be the day. The
location has always had an impact upon the style of what I am calling this
manifestation, and I do not want to pass up the opportunity to say that it
bears a relation to che usual meaning of the term "interpretation." What I
I I
said by, for, and in your presence is at each of these moments, if we define
them by their geographical locations, always already interpreted.
This will have to take its place in the little rotating quadrupeds I have
begun to put to use today, and I will come back to ic. But so aii not to leave 16
you completely in the dark, I will point someching out to you strajght away.
If I had to interpret what I said at Sainte-Anne Hospital b etween 1953
and 1963, I mean pin down its incerprecation-interpretarion in a sense
concrary to analytic interpretation, which makes you feel how much ana-
lytic interpretation itself goes against the grain of the ordinary meaning of
the term-I would say chat what was the loudest chord, the chord thac
really resonated, was having fun.
The most exemplary character in this audience, which was a medical one
obviously-but thl.'D, some of the participants were not doctors- was the
person who punctuated my discourse with a son of continuous stream of
jokes. This is whac I will take as most characceristic of what over a period
of ten years was the essence of my manifestation. Further proof of this is
thac things only started to turn sour when I dedicated a cerm to the analy-
sis of jokes. 2
That's a big aside, and 1 can't go on in this direction for very long, buc I
must add what h: was that characrerized incerpretation at the place where
you left me last time, the Ecole oormalc supcrieure.
E. N. S.-it's quire magnificent in initials. Ir revolves around being
[l'etaml. One must always know how to beoefic from literal equivocations,
above all when they are the first three letters of the word enseigner, "to
teach." As it happens, it was in rue d 'Ulm that ir was noticed that what I
was saying was a teaching.
Before that, it hadn' t been at all obvious. It was not even permitted. The
professors, and especially the doctors, were very worried. The fact that it
wasn' t ac all medical left serious doubts whether it deserved ro be called
teaching, right to the day when they saw these young blokes from the
Cahiers pour !'analyse come along, who were trained in this part of the world
wher~as I had said a long time before, precisely at the time of the jokes-
one of the ettects of training is that one knows nothing but teaches it beau-
tifully. The fact that that was how they incerpreted what I was saying-I am
speaking today of a different imerpretatioo from analytic interpretation-
does indeed make sense.
Naturally, no one know:; what will happen here. I don't know whether
law students will come, bur acmally, it would be wonderful for interpreta- l7
tion. This will probably be by far the most important moment of the three,
since this year we are tackling psychoanalysis from the other side, and per-
, 2 See /.e Seminaire, Livre V, Les formari'ons de l'inconscienc, 1957-1958 (Paris:

Editions du Seuil, 1998).
18 The Ocher Side of PsycboanalyRis
haps, precisely, giving it its sratus1 in what is called the juridical sense of the
Lcrm. This, io any case, has surely always bci:o concerned with che struc-
ture of discourse, and to the nth degree. H this isn't what law is, if we can-
not grasp bow discourse structures the real world here, then where can we?
This is why we are no worse off here than anywhere else.
It is therefore not simply for reasons of convenience that I seized this
opportunity. But it is also what causes you the least inconvenience in your
travels, at least for those who were accustomed to the other side-3 l am not
so sure that, for parking, here is very convenient, but then, for that, you still
have rue d' Ulm all the same.
Let's pick up me thread again.

We bad goc to che point of situating our instinct and our knowledge, in
sum, on the basis of what Bichat defines as life. ''Life," he says, and this is
the most profound definition, it is not at all trite if you look at it closely, "is
the totality of forces that resist death." 4
Read what Freud says about life's resistance to the decline into Nirvana,
as me death drive was otherwise described at the time be introduced ic. No
doubt, ac the heart of aoaJyt:ic experience, which is an experience of dis-
course, he gives thought to this decline toward a rerurn to the inanimate.
Freud goes chat far. But what, he says, makes for the subsistence of this bub-
ble-really, this image forces itself upon you when you listen to these pages-
is the fact that life only ever returns there via paths that are always the same,
ones it has previously traced. What is this, if not the true sense given to what
we find in the notion of instinct, which is thac it implies knowledge?
This crack, this pathway, is familiar to us. It's ancestral knowledge. And
what is this knowledge, if we don'r forget that Freud introduces what he
himself calls " beyond the pleasure principle," the pleasure principle irself
not being overturned therc=by? Knowledge is what brings life to a halt ac a
certain limit on the path to jot1issance. For the path toward death-this is
J8 whar is at issue, it's a discourse about masochism--the path toward death
is nothing other than what is caJled jouissance.
3 The Ecole normale superieure is located in the rue d 'Ulm, which rwis off
the Place du Pantheon and is not far from the new location of Lacan's seminar at
the Faculre de droit.
4 Marie Fran~is Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), French doctor, anatomist, and
physiologist. See his Physio/()gKal Reuarclres on Life a1td De/Uh (1827; rcprim, New
York: Arno Press, 1977).
Production of the four disc~urses 19
- ----· ... -- - - -
The relationship between knowledge and jc;,uissancc: is a primitive one,
and it is where what emerges with the appeara..oce of the appararus of the
signifier comes to be inserted. It is henceforth Cc:::>nccivable chat we are bind-
ing up the function of this emergence of the si~cr.
"That will do!" I hear you say...Do we really need to explain everything?
And, why noc, the origins of language?" We all kt-tow that to structure knowl-
edge correctly one needs ro abandon lhe quest ion of origins. Whac we are
doing, in spelling this out, is superfluous with respect to what we have to
develop chis year, which is situated at the level of structures. le is a futile
search for meaning. But, as I have already said, l~c·s take note of what we are.
I will go on, then. Ar the intersection of a jc:,uissance-and not just any
jouissance, it must no doubt remain opaque-at the intersection of a jouis-
sarice that is privileged ab ove all others-nor be cause it is sexual jouissance,
since what thisjouissance designates by heing at this intersection is the loss
of sexual jcuissancc, castration-in relation to cl:Us meeting point with sex-
ual jouissa11ce rbere emerges, in the Freudian fable of repetition., the engen-
dering of something radical rbat gives body to a schema thar is, literally,
articulated. s., having emerged at the firstmom~nt, is repeated with respect
to S 2 • The subject emerges from this entry into a relacion, the subject that
something, a certain loss, represents. And ic i s worch having made this
effort in the direction of meaning in order to C()mprehend the ambiguity.
le was not for nothing that last year I caUed "surplus jouissance" chis same
object that I bad moreover described as the on~ that me entire dialectic of
frustration in analysis is organized around. This. means that the loss of the
object is also the gap, a hole opened up to something, and we don't know
whether or not this something is the representation of the lack in jo11is.sance,
which is situated by means of the knowledge process, insofar as it appears
in a completely different ligbt as a result of being, from that point on,
knowledge scanded by the signifier. Is it even tl\e same?
The relationship to jouissance is suddenly ma.de to appear in a different
light by this still virtual function called the function of desire. Moreover this
is why I'm describing what appears here as "surplus joumance" and not
forcing anything or committing any ttansgressi()o.
I beg you to bite your tongue a bit over all tltis n onsense. What analysis 19
shows, if it shows anything at all-I invoke here those whose soul is a little
bit different from the one of which one could say, as Barres says of the
cadaver, thar it talks nonsense- is very precisely the fact that we don't ever
transgress.5 Sneaking around is not transgressing. Seeing a door half-open
is not the same as going through it. We shall have the occasion to come back
5 Maurice Bani:s (1862-1923), French writer and conservative political fig-

ure of French nationalism.
to what I am introducing now- there is no transgression here, but rather

an irruption, a falling into the field, of something not unlike jouissance-a
surplus.
But perhaps even that has to be paid for. That is why I told you last year
that in Marx the a, which is here, is recognized as functioning at the level
that is articulated-on the basis of analytic discourse, not any of the oth-
ers-as surplus jquissance. Here you have what Marx discovered as what
acrually happens at the level of surplus value.
Of couMIC, it wasn 't Marx who invented surplus value. It's just that prior
to him nobody knew what ics place was. le has the same ambiguous place
as the one I have just mentioned, that of excess work, of surplus work.
"What does it pay in?" be says. "It pays in jouissance, precisely, and chis has
to go somewhere."
What's disturbing is chat if one pays injcuissance, then one has got it, and
then, once one has got it it is very urgent that one squander it. 1f one docs
not squander it, there will be all sorts of consequences.
L et's leave the thing up in the air for the moment.
What am I up to? I am beginning t o get yon to acknowledge, simply

through locating it, that this four-footed apparatus, with irs four positions,
can be used to define four radical discourses.
It's no accident that I prescnced chis form co you as the first. There is no
reason why I could not have begun with any of the others, with the second
for instance. But it is a fact, determined by historicaJ reasons, that this ini-
tiaJ form- the one that we express by starting with this signifier that repre-
sents a subject with respect to another signifier- hac; a very sp ecial
20 importance, insofar as, in whac I am going to state this year, it wiJJ be sin-
gled out as being, of the four, the one that articulates the master's dis-
course.
The master's discourse. I don't sec any point in recounting its historical
importance, given that you are, after all, on the whole recruited through
this sieve called the university, and that, as a consequence, you are not
unaware d10c it's all philosophy ever talks about. Even before it began talk-
ing about this alone, that is before it called it by its namc·-at least in Hegel
it stands out, and is quite specially illustrated by him-it was already appar-
ent that at the level of the master's discourse something appeared wh ich is
of interesc to us con cerning discourse, irrespective of its ambiguity, and
which is called philosophy.
I do not know how far 1 will be able to go with what I want to point out
co you today, since we mustn't delay if we want to go over the four dis-
courses in question.
Whar are the others called? I will tell you straight away, why not?·-even
if only so as to wh~t your appetit e.
That one, the second on the blackboard, is the hysteric's discourse. It's
not obvious straightaway, but I will explain it to you.
And then, the other two. One is the analyst1s discourse. Tue other. ...
No, definitely not, I won't tell you what ir is. Saying it just like that today
would create mo many misunderstandings. You will sec-it's a discourse
that is highly relevant today.
Coming back to the first one, then, I must ground why it is thar the pres-
ent algebraic formula is described in thfa way, as the one that gives the
structure of the master's discourse.
S 1 is~ to say it briefly, the signifier, the signifier function , that che essence
of the master relics upon. From a different angle you may perhaps recall
what I emphasized several times last year- chat the slave's own field is
knowledge, S 2 • Reading the testimonies we have about life in Antiquity, in
any case discourse about this lif~rcad Aristotle's l'olttics on this-what I
am claiming about the slave as being characlerized as the one who is the
suppon of knowledge is not in doubt.
In Antiquity this was not simply a class, as with o ur modern slave, it was
a function inscribed in the family. The slave Aristotle speaks of is just: as
much a part of the family as be is a pare of the State, and even more a part 21
of che family than a pan of tbc State. This is because b e is the one who has
the know-how [sawir-fairej . Before we can know whether cbe knowledge is
known, whethe r a subject can be founded on the perspective of a knowl-
edge that is totaUy transparent in icself, it is important to know how to m op
up the register of what, at its origin s, know-how is.
Now, what is it that happen s right before our very eyes, which gives
meaning, an initial meaning- as you will see, then~ an: other meanings- co
philosophy? Fortunately we have traces of this thanks to Plato, and it is
quite essential to r emember this so as to put what is at issue in its place and,
after all, if anything in what is bolhering us has any sen se, it can only come
from putting things in their place. What does phikisophy designate over its
entire evolution? It's this- theft, abduction, stealing slavery of its knowl-
edge, through the maneuvers of the master.
To see chis it is enough to read Plato's dialogues from time to time, and,
as only God knows, for the past sixteen years I h ave bt:en making an effort
to get thost: who listen to me to do it.
I will begin by distinguishing what on this occasion I will call the two
aspects of knowledge, the artic ufatcd aspect and this know-how that is so
akin to animal knowledge, but which in the slave is not totally devoid of the
apparatus that transforms it int-o one of the most articulated networks of
language. The point is that this, the second layer, the articulated apparatus,
can be transmitted, which means it can be transmitted from the slave's
pocket to the master's-assuming they had pockets in those days.
It is here that you have the entire effort to isolate what is called episteme.
I t's a funny word, I don't know whether you have ever given it much
tboughc-"putting oneself in the right position," in short it is the same
word as Verstehen. It is all about finding the position that makes it possible
for knowledge to become the master's knowledge . The entire function of
the episteme insofar as it is specified as transmissible knowledge-see Plato's
dialogues-is always borrowed from the techniques of crafumlen, that: is to
say of serfs. It is a matter of extracting the essence of this knowledge in
order for it to become the master's knowledge.
And then, naturally, this is augmented by a little backlash, wruch is
absolutely what is called a lapsus, a return of the repressed. But so says
someone or other, Karl Marx or someone.
22 Refer to the Meno, where it is a question of the square root of 2 and its
incommensurable. There's someone who says, "Hey, look, get the slave to
come over, that little fellow, can't you see, he knows." They ask him ques-
tions, master's question.ci, of course, and the slave naturally answers what
the questions already dictate as their response. You find here a form of
ridicule. It's a way of scoffing at the character who is being taken apart here.
It is shown that the serious business, the aim, is to make it known that the
slave knows, but by acknowledging it only in this derisory way, what is hid-
den is that it is only a maner of robbing the slave of his function at the levd
of knowledge.
To give what I have just said its sense one has to see, and we will cake this
step next time, how the slave's position is articulated with respect co jouis-
sance. I already began t o say this last year, in the form of a colorful hint. What
peupk usually say is that jouissance is the privilege of the masler. Whal ii;
interesting on the contrary, as everyone knows, is what belies this within it.
In short, it's the master's status that i-:; at stake here. By way of introduc-
tion today I only wanted to tell you how profoundly interesting this status
is to us, the utterance of which is worth keeping for a future step. It is inter-
esting to us when what is being unveiled and, at the same time, reduced to
a corner of the landscape is the function of philosophy. Given the space,
briefer this year than others, that I have allowed myself, I will no doubt be
unable to develop it. It is of no importance, perhaps someone else will cake
up this theme and do what he will with it. Philosophy in its historical func-
tion is this extraction, I would almost say this betrayal, of the slave's knowl-
edge, in order to obtain its transmutation into the master's knowledge.
Does this mean that what we have seen emerge as the science that dom-
inates us is the fruit of this operation? Here again, rather than having to
rush in, we can observe that on the contrary it's nothing of the kind. This
wisdom., this episreme) created with every recourse to every dichotomy, led
only to knowledge that can be designated by the term that Aristotle himself
used to characterize the master's knowledge--theoretical knowledge. Not
in the weak sense that we give this word, but in the emphatic sen se that the
word "theoria" has in Aristotle. A singular mistake. I will come back to this,
since for my discourse this is the crucial point, the pivotal point- it was
only when, by a movement of renunciation of thi11 wrongly acquired knowl-
edge, so to speak, someone, for the first time as such, extracted the func- 23
tioo of the subject from the strict relationship between S 1 and S 2- I named
Descartes) whose work I believe I am able to spell out, not without agree-
ment with at least a significant oum'ber of those who have discussed it-
thac science was born.
It is well to distinguish between the time at which this rum emerged in
the attempt to pass knowledge from the slave to the master, and the time it
recommenced, which is motivated only by a certain way of raising, within
lltc: scrucrure, all possible functions of the statement insofar as the articula-
tion of the signifier alone supports it. There you already have one small
example of the insight that the type of work I am proposing this year may
bring you. Don't think it stops there.
What l have been proposing here presents, as soon as one shows it, at
least this characteristic of uncovering the obvious-who can deny chat phi-
losophy has ever bet:n anything other than a fascinating enterprise for the
master's benefit? At the other extreme we have Hegel's discourse, with irs
outrageous absolute knowledge, as it's called. What can this absolute
knowledge possibly mean, if we begin with the definition that I took the lib-
erty of recalling as being a foundational one for our way of proceeding con-
cerning knowledge?
This is perhaps where we will start n1:xt ti.me. l e will at least be one of
our points of departure, for there is another, which is no less imporcaoc,
and which is q uite particularly salubrious because of the overwhelmingly
outrageous things one hears from psychoanalyses concerning the desire for
knowledge.
If there is one thing that psychoanalysis should force us to maintain
obstinately, it's that the desire for knowledge bears no relation tu knowl-
edge-unless, of course, we wheel out the lubricious word "transgression ."
A radical distinction, which h as far-reaching consequences from the point
of view of pedagogy-the desire to know is not what leads to knowledge.
What leads to knowledge is- allow me to justify this in the more or less
long term-the hysteric's discourse.
There is as a matter of fact a question to be asked. Does the master who

brings about this operation of the displacing, the conveyancing, of the
slave's knowledge want co know? Does he have the desire to know? A real
24 master, as in general we used to see until a recent era, and this is seen less
and less, doesn' t desire co know anything at all-be desires that things
work. And why would he want to know? There are more amusing things
than that. How did the philosopher manage to inspire the master with the
desire to know? I will leave you on this note. lt's a bit provocative. If there
are any of you who work chis out between now and next time, let me know.
26 Nbvember 1969
Supplement
Following sessivn: Agi.ration
The people who, for various reasons, love me warned me that agitation was
in the air.
They are not sufficiently aware char for me, too, agitation is in the air.
And I do so for a reason that is of supreme interest to me-for what it
proves or disproves concerning this level at which I am situating the struc-
ru.n: of a discourse .
I have just said "I."
It's obviously because I am viewing the discourse in question from some-
where else. l am viewing it from a place in which I am situated by another
discourse, of which l am the effect-so that, in the present case, saying "This
discourse situates me" is the same as saying "This discourse is situated.''
At the level of this discourse it's not ~o as to be able to blow my own
trumpet, to give a good course, as we say, which is everything. It doesn't
count for nothing, to be sure, and no one can tell me that, up till now, there
has been any lack of opportunity for taking notes.
25 To be honest, T cannot complain of ever having been disturbed.
But I do not think that agitating is about disturbing classes. It would be
a pity if I had to teach this to the agitators themselves.
To be honest, as essential in fact as whether or not I speak withoi1t being
disturbed is what my listeners are steeped in. In effect, what I am speaking
about is a signal that chis discourse that is not my own, but the one of which
I am~to restrict myself to this provisional term-the effect, is swinging
into action.
I went to Vincennes last week where people might have thought that
what took place wasn' t to my taste. Everyone agreed in fact that my going,
solely by virtue of my being a prominent person, would be the occasion for
obstruction. Does anyone believe that this would have made any sort of
impression on me? Need I say that I was fully aware of what I was co
encounter there? And what sore of great novelty, in the context, do people
expect this incident to have constituted for me when such obstruction has
nothing new about it?
If we go right back co the start, when I began my discourse at Sainte-
Anne, what I am calling "what my Hsteners are steeped in" was at that time
constituted by a little survey the frequency of which I couldn't say, but it
may well h.ave been monthly then quarterly. It was an anxious investigation
they were carrying one on my listeners, in the very milieu where I was their
guest , on I.be subject of knowing bow well my teaching fulfilled the require-
ments of what constitutes mcdicul teaching. It might have been the case-
horror of horrors-that my reaching did not possess rhc characteristics of
medical teaching.
On the subject that I chose to begin with, namely, good heavens, the cri-
tique of Freud, whac could lhe characteristics of medical teaching have pos-
sibly been? Did i1 only have to consist in some act of reference-I didn't say
"revereoce"-to terms considered to be sacred because they are themselves
located right in the center, at the heart, of medical teaching? Should I have
indicated, in order for this teaching to be medical, rhat perhaps one day
cndocrioal causes will be found for neurosis? Or just simply recalled that
there is one uf ll1~t: little dcmenrs cbac we <..-annot fail co take account of,
and that we call the coru;titutionnl factor? That would have been medical.
In short, as I did not bother co waste rime on these genuflections the
investigations stopped and they were convinced that I had placed them in
the unfortunate position of being subjected, at the heart of a place that is 26
essentially medical, to a teaching that wasn't.
It was then that I was made aware, by people through whom, since tlley
were in analysis with me, one was, unforrunately, only too sure that the
m essage n:gardiog what one thought of my public would necessarily get
to me.
I mention this because in the audience that you are today I can discern
a bit better than Jast time the seams, the components, I can siruate the faces
better. There are many familiu1· faces here, but I am delighted by this, as I
am also delighted with the relative decrease in nwnbers I can observe- ·last
time, it was a bit like a crowded Metro in here.
A fair few of you were already part of that very old audience before fol-
lowing me to that place from which I bad to crrugrate, as it turned out , and
I can say that my audience at Sainte-Anne really did consist then of those
who are currently the pillars of the Ecole frc~di~~c-1 do not mean by
that that these are nm people you can count on. Well then, good heavens,
one had the impression, it seems, merely on the basis of watching them
wander about before they went in to listen to me at half-past twelve, as
usual, that they showed all sorts of signs of drug addiction and homosexu-
ality. It was palpable. It was, obviously, what the style, the general form, and
the bearing of these itinerants reflected.
This is so that you know that it's no recent thing that, because of its com-
position, my audience gives rise t~what? this is precisely what I am won-
dering about- a certain discomfort. We experienced this in a place that
organized a venue for us, and, to be sure, I am grateful to those who men-
tioned the fact that it lasted as long as it did. Nevertheless, don't imagine
that c.h aracterizing my audience as troublemakers began at these incidental
places.
It was students at the Ecole normale, the Normalian elements, these Lit-
tle princes of the university who know quite well that you don't have to
know something in order ro teach it, who discovered that \'ecy curious
things were happening at my seminar. It so happened over there that when
you smol<ed- in face:, for chis reason I made myself me echo, every now and
27 then, of the fact that you migbc refrain from doing so-something hap-
pened that I have never seen anywhere, which is that the smoke went
through the ceiling of the room, so that the elegant Normalians who were
apparently in the library space above couJd no longer breathe.
These arc extraordinary things that can obviously only occur because of
the audience that YQU are. It is the importance of this that I am showing
you.
[Arrival of a building supervisor.]
I was calling this agitation at Vincennes into question, you really see it,
perfectly. This dear man is very touching.
All this takes place in a zone that nevertheless does not lose its meaning.
lThc supervisor turns off the lights and retr11cts the bl11ckboard.]
However amusing these jokes about higher offices, I declare the session
over.
10 December 1969
AXES OF THE ANALYTIC
SUBVERSION
II 31
The master and the hysteric
Tiffi HYSTFIU7ATJO~ OF N:SCl.1CRSS

KNOWL.t.u<.ot; ANU l!ttirtt
Tim 11A1r-!iAm
l:.."10Mh, CllATION, IN1 l!.kl'kE"0010N
u M H A
S. ... a s. .. s. s ... s. a _,.. $
--
s. $ a a S.. s, S·
These four formulas arc useful to have her!! as a reference.

Those of you presenr at my first seminar heard my reminder of the for-
mula chac che signifier, as distinct from the sign, is what represents a sub-
ject for anorhcr signifier. Since rhcrc is oo i:;uggcstion that the other signifier
knows anything about rbe marter, iris clear chat it is not a question of a rep-
resentation but of a representative.
As a conscqucocc, on that same occasion , I chougbt I would use it to
illustrate what I have called the master's discourse.
lf the masccr·s discourse can be seen as reduced to a single signilier, thiio

implies that it represents something. Calling it "something" ~s already say-
ing too much. It represents x, which is precisely what is there to be clarified
in the matter.
In effect, there is no indication of how the master might impose his will.
That consent is necessary is not in doubt, and the fact that in this instance
Ht:gd i..:an uo no mon~ Lhun refer to death as the signifier of the absolute 32
master, is, on this occasion, a sign- a sign that nothing is resolved by this
pseudo-origin. In fact, for it to continue it would only be demonstrated that
the master is the master if he were to be resuscitated, that is, if he had actu-
ally been put to the test. As for che slave, ir's che same thing-he has, pre-
cisely, declined t o confront it.
29
The enigma of the master's function does not therefore reveal itself
immediately. I will point out, because it is already on our path-a path that
we do not have to pretend we have discovered, and which is not that of the
theory of the unconscious- that it is not at all self-evident that all knowl-
edge, by virtue of being knowledge, is known as knowledge. 1
What we discover in even the slightest bit of psychoanalytic experience
is, indeed, of the order of knowledge [savoir], Sp and not of acquaintance
[connaissance] or representation. It is very precisely a 'question of something
that links one signifier, S 1, to another signifier, S 2, in a relationship of rea-
son.
These are fairly pulverizing terms, I would say, if in using this metaphor
1 can get you to see the connotation that should be placed, on this occa-
sion, on che term "knowledge."
Nevertheless, the foundation of what is known, of what is quietly artic-
ulated as the little master, as the ego, as he who knows a bit about it, resides
in such a relation as this and, precisely, insofar as it is not known.
All the same I do notice from time to time that this breaks down. Here
we have the eruption of the entire phase of lapses and stumblings in which
the unconscious is revealed. But it is much better and goes much further
chan in the light of analytic experience.
We allow ourselves to read a biography when we have che means to do
so, when we have enough documents for it to be attested what a life
believes, what it believed it was as destiny, step by step, indeed in certain
circumstances even how it believed it has concluded this destiny.
Nevertheless, in light of this notion that it is not certain that knowledge
is known, it does not seem impossible that we might be able to read at what
level of unconscious knowledge the work has been carried out that delivers
what is effeccively the truth of everything that has been believed to be.
33 Operating on the schema of the discourse of the big M> lee us say 1t is,
invisibly, the slave's labor, the labor that constitutes a non-revealed uncon-
liduus, that reveals whether that life is worth speaking about- that which,
out of truths, out of true truths, has brought forth so many detours, fic-
tions, and errors.
Knowledge, then, is placed in the center, in the dock, by psychoanalytic
experience. This fact alone imposes on us a duty to question, which has no
reason to limit its field. In short, the idea that knowledge can, in any way
or at any time, even as a hope fo1· the future, form a dosed whole-now
there's something that didn't have to wait for psychoanalysis for it to appear
questionable.
Perhaps this doubting was approached from a bit low down where the
I " . , • tout sawir, d 'etre Sa'DOir, se sache romme tel."

- The master and the hysteric 31
skeptics were con cerned. I am speaking of those who adopted this name at
the time this doubting formed a school, something that we n o longer have
anything but a very feeble idea of. But, after all, would that be worth it,
what do we know about it? What do we know about this on the basis of
what has remained for us from the skeptics? Perhaps it's better for us not
to pass judgment. Concerning their own knowledge perhaps we only have
what others were able t o gather from them, others who did not know where
their skeptical formulas that radically questioned all knowledge, and a for-
tiori the totalization of knowledge, were starting from. ·
What is well designed to show how little impact the schools carry is the
face that the idea that knowledge can make a whole is, if I may say so,
immanent to the political as such. This has been known for a long time. The
imaginary idea of the whole that is given by the body, as drawing on the good
form of satisfaction, on what, ultimately, forms a sphere, has always been
used in politics by the party of political preaching. What is more beautiful,
but also what is less open? What better resembles closure of satisfaction?
We have to struggle against the collusion of this image with the idea of
satisfaction whenever we encounter anything that forms a knot in the work
in question, which is the work of bringing things to light via the paths of the
unconscious. It is the obstacle, the limit, or rather it's the hard road on
which we lose our bearings, and where we find ourselves blocked.
It is odd to observe that a doctrine such as Marx's whose articulation onto
the function of struggle, the class struggle, which he instituted has not pre-
vented it from giving birth to what for the moment is, indeed, the same prob-
km that ~unfrunts us a ll, namely the persistence of a master's discourse.
To be sure, the present one d oes not have the structure of the old, in the
sen se in which the old is installed in the place indicated under this big M . 34
The present one is installed in the place on the left> the one capped by the
U. I will tell you why. What occupies the place there, which we will provi-
sionally call dominant, is this S2 , which is specified as being, not knowledge
of everything [savoir Ck toui]-we've not gol lu lhal pvint yt:t-but all-
knowing [tout-savoir]. Understand this as what is affirmed as being nothing
other than knowledge, which in ordinary language is called the bureau-
cracy. It cannot be said that there are no problems created there.
In my opening remarks three weeks ago we began with the fact that in
the initial status of the master's discourse knowledge is on the side of the
slave. And I thought I could indicate, without being in a position to develop
it last time owing to a minor inconvenience I regret, that what happens
between the classical master's discourse and that of the modern master,
whom we call capitalist, is a mo<lification in the place of knowledge. I even
thought it possible to go so far as to say that the philosophical tradition has
some responsibility for this transmutation.
Consequently, because the proletarian has been dispossessed of some-
thing- this is before communal property, of course-be finds himself char-
acterizable by this term "dispossessed," which justifies both the attempt at
and the success of revolution.
Is it not evidenr that what is restituted to him is not necessarily his own
share? Capitalist exploitation effectively frustrates him of his knowledge by
rendering it u seless. What, in a type of subversion, gets returned to him is
something different-master's knowledge. And this is why all he has done
is change masters.
What remains, in effect, is the essence of the master, namely, that be
docs not know what he wants.
There you have what constitutes the true structure of the master's dis-
course. The slave knows many things, but what he knows even better still is
what the master wants, even if the master does not know it himself, which
is the usual case, for otherwise he would not be a master. The slave knows
what it is, and that's what his function as slave is. This is also why it works,
since, indeed, it has worked for quite a while.
The face chat all-knowing has moved into the place of the master is
something thac does not throw light on it, but rather makes a little bit more
obscure what is at issue, namely, uuth. How does it come about that there
is a master's signifier in this place? For this is well and truly the S 2 of cbe
35 master, revealing as it does the bare bones of how things stand under the
new tyranny of knowledge. This is what makes it impossible that in this
place, over the course of the movement of history, as we were perhaps hop-
ing, the narure of truch might appear.
Now the sign of truth is somewhere else. lt is to be produced by what has
come to be substituted for the ancient slave, chat is, by those who are them-
selves products, as we say, c.onsumables every bit as much as the others. "Con-
sumer society," we say. "Hum.an material," as it was called at one stage-co the
applause of some who thought there was something tender in this.
lt was worth highlighting this, since what equally concerns us now is to
question what is at issue in the psychoanalytic act.
I won't be caking this up at the level at which I had hoped to bring things
to completion two years ago, which was left interrupted, concerning the act
by which the psychoanalyst grcmnds himself, is instituted as such.2 I will be
2 le Scminairc, Livre XV, L'Acre p.~ychanalycique, 1967-1968 (unpublished).

The mostcr and the hysteric 33
taking it up at the level of the analyst's interventions, once [analytic] expe-
rience has been instituted within its precise limits.
If there is knowledge that is not known, as I have already said, it is insti-
tuted at the level of S 2, which is the one I call the other signifier. This other
signifier is not alone. The stomach of the Other, the big Other, is full of
them. This stomach is like some monstrous Trojan horse that provides the
foundations for the fantasy of a totality-knowledge [sawir-totalite1. It is,
however, clear that its function entails that something comes and strikes it
from without, otherwise nothing will ever emerge from it. And Troy will
never be taken.
What does the analyst instirucc?
I bear a loc said about the discourse of psychoanalysis, as if this actually
meant something. H we characterize a discourse by focusing on what is
dominant in it, then the analyst's discourse exists, and this is not to be con-
fused with the psychoanalyzing discourse, with the discourse effectively
engaged in in the analytic experience. What the analyst establishes as ana-
lytic experience can be put simply-it's the hysterization of discour8e. In
other words, it is the structural introduction, under artificial conctitions, of '36
che hysteric's discourse, the one that is indicated here by a capital H .
I tried to point this out last year by saying that this discourse exists, and
that it would exist whatever the circumstances, whether there was psycho-
analysis or nor. I expressed ic in a figurativl! way, giving it its most common
support, the one from which the major experience has issued for us, namely
the detour, the ziw.ag lines, on which this misunderstanding thac sexual
relations [rup.fJ<lrts] consl.itucc: in the human species res1s.
Since we have signifiers, we must understand one another, and this is
precisely why we don't understand one another. Signifiers are not made for
sexual relations. Once the human being is speaking, ic's stuffed, it's the end
of this perfection_, this harmony, in copulation-which in any case is impos-
sible to find anywhere in nature. Nature presents an infinite number of
species of it, which, moreover, for the majority do nor include any copula-
tion. Ths shows how little it is part of narure's intentions that this form a
whole, a sphere.
In any case, one ching is certain- if for man it works out more or less
okay, it's due to a trick that makes it possible, by first of all making it
insoluble.
This is what the hysteric's discourse means, industrious as she is. In say-
ing "she," we are making the hysteric a woman, but this is not her privilege
alone. Many men get themselves analyzed who, by this fact alone, are
obliged to pass through the hysteric's discourse, since this is the law, the
rule of the game. It is a matter of knowing what one deduces from this con-
cerning the relations between men and women.
We therefore see che hysteric fabricate a man as best she can- a man
who would be animated by the desire to know.
I raised this issue in my last seminar. We can observe that historically the
master has slowly defrauded the slave of his knowledge and turned it into
the master's knowledge. But what remains a mystery is how the desire to
d o this could bave arisen for him. Desire, if you take my word on this, he
can easily do without, since the slave satisfies him even before he himself
knows wbat he might desire.
This is the point my re flections might have got to last time if this charm-
ing thing bad not em erged from the real-I am informed that it is the real
ofdecoloni1.ation. He was apparently a patient from a hospital, a supporter
37 of ours from the former Algeria and billeted here. As you can see, a charm-
ing romp, owing to which I won't know, at least nor for sometime, for I have
to move on, what ltinship I place between the philosophical discourse and
the hysteric's ctiscourse, since it seem s that it is the philosophical discourse
that has inspired the master with the desire to know. Whar can the hysteria
in question here be? There is a domain here th.at must not be spoiled. If
there is anyone whose thinking loves to run on ahead of the speaker, they
will find an opportunity here to exercise their taleor. I assure them that co
m e it seems to be a promising path.
Be that as it may, so as to provide a formula that is more extensive than
one that limits it co relations between man and woman, let's say thac if we
just read whac J have inscribed here concerning the hysteric's discourse, we
still don't know yec whar this $is. But if it concerns her d iscourse, and if
r
it's chis discourse thar brings it abouc that there is a man motivated a11ime]
by the dc,<;irc to know, i.t is because it is a matter of knowing ... what? Of
knowing at what price she herself is this p erson who sp eaks. For, qua object
a, sbe is rhe fall, rhe fallen object, fallen as an effect of cliscoursc, which in
turn is always broken at some point.
What hysterics ultimately wanr one ro know is that language runs off the
rails concerning the magnitude of what she as woman is capable of reveal-
ing concerning;ou.issance. But this is not what matters to the hysteric. What
matters to her is that that other called a man know what a precious object
~he becomes in this conrexc of discourse.
I sn 't this, after all, the very basis of analytic experience? If l say that it
gives che other as subject the dominant place in the hysteric's discourse, it
hystericizes his discour'3e, it turns him into this subject who is asked to
abandon every o ther reference than to the four walls that surround him and
to produce signifiers that constitute this free association that is, in a word,,
master of the field.
H ow could saying no-matter-what lead anywhere, unless it was deter-
The master and the hysteric 35
mined chat there is nothing in the random production of signifiers that,
simply because it involves signifiers, does not bear upon this knowledge
that is not known, and which is really what is doing the work?
The only thing is that there is no reason why he should not come to
know a bit more about it. If the analyst do~o't speak, what might become
of this swarming production of S 1s? Many things, surely.
The analyst who listens is able to record many things. With what your 38
average person today can state, if he pays no attention to anything, one can
compile the equivalent of a small encyclopedia. This would generate an
enormous number of keys, were it to be recorded. Afterward one could
even construct a little electronic machine, get one made. And this is more-
over the idea that some people can have-they construct an eleetronic
machine so thar the analyst onJy has to pull ouc a ticket that will give them
their answer.
Let's see what is at work here in the analyst's discourse. It is he, the ana-
lyst, who is the master. In what fonn? This is what I shall have to reserve
for our subsequent meetings. Why in the form of object a?
It's on his side that there is S 21 that there is knowledge-whether be
acquires this knowledge through Listening lo his analysand, or whether it is
already acquired, locatable knowledge, which at a certain level can be lim-
ited to analytic know-how.
The only thing is that what bas to be undersrood about this schema-as
was already indicated when in the master's discourse S2 was put in the
slave's place, and when in the modernized master's discoUise it was then
put in the master's place-is char the knowledge is noc the same.
There in chc last discourse on the right, what place is it in? lt is in the
place thac in the master's discourse Hegel, the most sublime of hysterics,
designates for us as being that of truth.
We cannot say, in effect, that The Phe1wmenology of Spirit consists of
starting from che so-called Selbstbewusstsein grasped at the most immediate
level of sensation, thus implying lhac all knowledge ii; knuwn frum the out-
set. What would be the point of all this phenomenology if it were not a
question of something else?
It's just that what I am calling the hysteria of this discourse seems pre-
cisely from the fact that the discourse eludes the distinction that would
enable one to perceive the fact thac if this historical machine, which is in
fact only the progress of the schoo ls and nothing more, ever did culminate
in absolute knowledge, it would only be to mark the annulment, the fail-
ure, the disappearance ac the conclusion of the only thing that motivates
the function of knowledge- its dialectic with jouissance. Absoluce knowl-
edge is supposed to be the abolition of this conclusion, purely and simply.
----- -------- - - - - -- -- - -·- ---~- ·· ·-·
Whoever studies the text of The Phenomenology closely can be left in no
doubt about this.
What does the PQSition of S2 in the place of truth offer us now?
What is truth as knowledge? It can be put like this: H ow can we know with-
out knowing?
It's an enigma. This is one response-it's an enigma-among other
examples. And I will give you a second one.
The cwo have the same characteristic, which is a property of rruth-
truth can only ever be said by halves. Our deaT tru~ from the imagery of
Epinal, emerging from a well is only ever a body.J
In I taly, at one of the lectures I had been asked to give, I don't know why,
and which I wen1 about in a mediocre way, I know, I mentioned the
Chimera, in wbkh precisely the original characteristic of the hysteric's
discourse is incarnated. Aod cbc Chimera put an c:nigma tu Oedipus che
man who perhaps already bad a complex, but certainJy noc the one be
gave his name co. He replied in a particular way, aod that was bow be
became Oedipus.
There could have been many other replies to what the Chimera asked
him. For example, he might have said, "Two feet, three feet, four feet-
thac's Lacan's scbema."1llatwould have produced quite a different result.
He could also have said, "It's a man, a man as a baby. As a baby he starts
out on four feet. He walks on two, he acquires a third, and instantly he flies
as straight as an arrow into bis mother's stomach ." That's in effect what one
calls, rightly, the Oedipus complex.
I think you can see what the function of the enigma mcans·- it's a half-
said [mi-dire], just as the Chimera appears os a haJf body, with the risk of
disappearing altogether once the solution has been found.
Knowledge as tr uth-this defines what the structure of what we call ao
intt:rpretation must be.
If I insisted at length on the difference in level between the utterance
[enonciaiion] and the statement [enonce], it was so that the function of the
enigma would make sense. An enigma is most likely that, an utterance. I
charge you with the task of making it into a statement. Sort that out as best
' The imngel\ of Epinal were a popular form of illustration, familiar to every-
one in France, invented at the end of the eighteenth century.
The master and the hysteric 37
you can-as Oedipus did- and you wilt bear the consequences. That is
what is at issue in an enigma.
But there is something else, rarely thought of, that I have touched upon, 40
that I have raised from time to time, but frankly, it concerned me so much
that it was not easy for me to speak freely abouc it. It's what we call a citation.
What does a citation consist in? Io the course of a text where you are
making more or less good progress, if you happen to be in the right places
of the Class struggle, all of a sudden you will cite Marx, and you will add,
"Marx said." If you are an analyst you will cite Freud and you will add,
"Freud said.,, This is fundamental.
An enigma is an u1terance--you do what you can about the statement.
A citation is like this. l make a statement, and for che remainder, there is
the solid support you will find in the author's name for which I hand
responslbility back to you. This is how it is, and it has nothing to do with
the more or less shalqr status of the author's function .
When one cices Marx or Freud- I haven't chosen these names by
chance--one does so as a function of the part the supposed reader takes in
a discourse. The citation is in its own way also a half-said. It is a statement
about which someone is indicating to y(m that it is admissible only insofar
as you already participate in a certain structured discourse at the level of
the fundamental structures that are there on the blackboard. This is the one
point-could I have explained it before oow?-chat makes it the case that
the citation, the face that one cites aa auchor or oot, can nave second-<>rder
importance. 1 am going to get you to understand this and l hope that you
will not rake this the wrong way, because ic's a familiar example.
Suppose that at a second moment someone cites a sentence indicating
where it comes from-the author's name, Mr. Ricoeur} for instancc.4 Sup-
pose that someone cites th e same sentence, and that they put it in my
name. This can definitely not have the same sense in the two cases. I hope
J have made you feel how things are with what I am calling a citation.
Well then} it is these two registers that,, insofar as they partake of the half-
said) give the medium--and, if I can put it like this, the hcading·-under
which interpretation intervenes.
Interpretation-those who make use of it arc aware of this-is often
established through an enigma. It is ao enigma that is gathered as far as
possible from the threads of the psychoanalysand's discourse, which you,
the interpreter, can in no way complete on your own, and cannot conaidcr 41
to be an avowal without lying. ft is a citation that is sometimes taken from
the very same text, on the other hand, from a given statement·-·such as the
4 See Paul Ricocur, F~ucl and Philosophy: An Essay on lnterpreiation (New

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970).
38 The Other Side of PsychoanaJysii;
one thac can pass for an avowal, provided only that you connect it to the
whole context. But you are thereby appealing to whoever is its author.
What is striking, in effect, in this institution of the analytic discourse,
which is the mainspring of the transference, is not, as some have thought
they have heard me say, that the analyst is the one who is given the fum:-
tion of the subject supposed co know. If speech is so freely given to the p sy-
cboanalysan~s is precisely how he receives this freedom-it's because
we recognize that he may speak as a master, tllar is, as a birdbrain, but that
this will not give results that arc as good as in the case of a real master, since
it's supposed to lead to knowledge.1bis is knowledge of which he who is
prepared, in advance, to be the product of the psychoanalysand's cogita-
tions, that is, the psychoanalyst, makes himself the underwriter [gage], the
hostage-insofar as, as this product, he is in the end destined to become a
loss, to be eliminated from the process.
What does it mean to say that he may assume this place which at the
level of the master's discourse is that of the master? Already in the simple
functioning of the relations between master and slave, it is clear that
the master's desire is the Other's desire, since it's this desire that the slave
anticipates.
It's another question co ask what the analyst is taking the place of when
be unleashes the movement that invests the subject supposed 10 know- a
subject who, by being recognized as such, is, with regard to the analyst,
ready in advance for what is called the transference.
To be sure, it is only too easy to detect here a shadow of satisfaction at
being r~gnized . This i:; not what is essential, if one supposes that he, the
subject, knows what he is doing any better than hysterics do, for whom it is
the truth of their conduct, but not at all their very being.
The analyst makes himself the cause of the analysand's desire.What docs
this strange notion mean? Do we have ro n..-gard it as an accident, as a his-
torical emergence, that bas appeared in the world for the first time?
Anticipating the continuation of a path tbac will perhaps take us down a
long detour, I will just indicate that this function has already appeared, and
that it is not for nothing that Freud had a liking for resorting to so many
Presocratics, Empedocles among others.
42 Since I am aware that this amphitheater is occupied at two o'clock, from
now on I shall finish at a quarter-to. Let's meet again the second Wednes-
day of January.
17 December 1969
III 43
Knowledge, a means of jouissance
OOMINAN'l 'I> A."'--0 FACTS 0 1- S nn;cn.lU'.
IU!l'CTTTIOI' A.'«> ]OUJSSAAT'Ji
THI\ PBOOUC.:nON or J'.Nll!OPY
flllJTI I IS IMPO'fi:!IC:li
M H A
$ .... s. a ,_ S
a S, s, s.
T have been given red chalk, very red chalk. Red on black-it is not obvious
chat it is guing lo be legiblt:.
These are not new formulas, since I already wrote them up on chc black-
board last time.
They are useful to hav-~ present there because-as simple as they arc, so
simple to deduce one from one anothet" since it's just a matter of chcir cir-
cular permutation with lhe terms remaining in the same order-it jusc so
happens that our powers of mental representation are noc able to compcn-
sare for whether they arc wrinen on the blackboard or not.
We shall therefore continue what: I am doing here, where "here" is always
at the same time, whether here or somewhere else, Wednesday at half-pasr
rwelve for the lase seventeen years.
I t's worth mentioning this again ar a time when everybody is rejoicing at
entering a new decad~. I would instead turn it into an opportunity for look-
ing back. over wbac the previous one has given me.
Ten years ago two of my students presented something that came out of 44
Lacanian theses uodcr the title "I'Inconscient, erude psychanalytique."I
1 The article, by Jean Laplanche and Serge Leclaire, appeared in Henri Ey,
ed., I.:bu:onsciem (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1966) and appeared in English as
"The Unconsciou!>: A Psychoanalytic Study," Yale French Studm 48 ( J 972):
118- 75.
39
This was brought about by what one can call the efforts of a prince. A
prince is the only pcr$on capable of a liberal act, if one understands a lib-
eral act to mean an arbitrary act, allowing also that "arbitrary" means not
governed by any necessity. There was no necessity urging the prince, my
friend Henri Ey, in one direction or another on this point. He placed the
unconscious on the agenda at a certain conference, that of Bonneval, and
enuusced the composition of it, at least in part, co rwo of my students.
In some ways this work is considered definitive. And, to be truthful, not
without reason. It is indeed definitive in the way in which these two, my sru-
dents, thought they might explain some of what I was putting foIWard on
an interesting topic, since it was about nothing less than the unconscious,
that is, that from which at the outset my teaching took wing, and explain it
to a certain group.
This group was characterized by having been given orders of some sort
concerning what 1 was saying. The interest they took in it was manifested
in effect by something that I translated recently in a small preface as "for-
bidden to anyone under fifty." It was 1960, don' t forget, and we were a long
way away- are we any closer? that's the question-from challenging
authority ..cballcnging, among other things, the authority of knowledge.
The upshot was that this prohibition, proffered in strange characters-one
of them rendered it comparable to a sort of monopoly, a monopoly on
knowledge-this prohibition was observed, purely and simply.
Tbis is to tell you what the task was that was proposed to the people who
had been kind enough ro take it on-it was the task of having to explain to
the cars in question something chat was strictly speaking unprecedented.
How did they go about it? It is not too late for me to tak.e stock of this
now, especially since there was no question of my doing so at the time, for
the reason that it was already quite a lot to see this brought into play for
ears that were totally uninformed, that had picked up not even the slighr-
45 est of what I had been able to develop over a period of seven years. It was
obviously n ot the moment, with respect to the very people who had dedi-
cated themselves to this work of deciphering, to contribute anything at all
that might have given the impression that there was anything there to be
restated. Moreover, there were many excellent clements in it.
This point arises, then, apropos of a thesis., a recent thesis, which, good
God, was produced ac the frontier of the French-speaking region, there
where they struggle valiantly ro maintain their rights. In Louvain someone
has written a thesis on what they have called, perhaps improperly, my work.2
Let'i; not forget that this thesis is an academic thesis, and, ac the very
2 See Anjka Lemaire, Jacques Lacan (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1977).
Knowledge, a means ofjouissance 41
least, what emerges is that my work lends itself poorly to thac. Indeed this
is why it is not unfavorable, at the head of any such proposition by a uni-
versity thesis, to situate the extent of the contribution that what was already
academic makes to serving as the vehicle of the said work, still in inverted
commas. This is also why one of the authors of this Bonneval report is sin-
gled out there, and in a way that made me unable to observe in my preface
chat a division has to be made between what is possibly a translation of
what I srate and what I have strictly speaking said.
In this little preface I did for this thesis that is going to appear in Brus-
sels, and it is obvious that a preface by me will lighten its wings, I am
obliged to note-th.is is its one useful purpose-chat it is not the same thing
to say that the unconscious is the condition of language as it is to say that
language is the condition of the unconscious.
Language is the condition of the unconscious-that's what I say. The
way in which one translates it stems from reasons which, to be sure, could,
in their detail, be altogether activated by a stricdy academic motive-and
chis would certainly go a long way, and will perhaps take you far enough for
chis year. From a strictly academic motive, I say, flows the fact that the per-
son who bas translated me, by virtue of having a background in the style,
in the form of imposition of the university discourse, cannot do anything
other, whether he believes he is commenting on me or noc, than reverse my
formula, thac is, give it a significance that, it has to be said, is strictly con-
trary to rhe truth, without even any homology at all with whac I claim.
Surely, the difficulty ende mic co translating me into academic language
will also blight anyone who, for whatever reason, mes their hand at it, and
in truth the author of the thesis I am speaking about was motivated by the 46
best of qualifications, that of an immense good will. This thesis, then, that
is going to be published in Brussels retains jc.~ value nonetheless, its value
as an example in itsdf, its value also as an example because of what it pro-
motes to the level of distortion, in some way an obligatory one, of a trans-
lation into the university discourse of something that has its own laws.
I have to unravel these Jaws. They are the onc<s that claim to give at least
the conditions of a properly p sychoanalytic discourse. Of course, this
remains subject to the fact chat, as I stressed last year, because T am stating
this from high up here on a podium there is in effect a risk of error, an ele-
m<.:m of refraction, which means that in some respects it will fall under che
inOuence of the university discourse. There is something here that stems
from something fundamentally off balance.
To be sure, in no way am I identifying with a certain position. I assure
you that whenever I come here ro speak it is certainly not to speak about
just anything, nor is it a question of "What am I going to tell them this
time?" T have no role to play in this respect, in the sense in which the func-
42 The Ocher Side of P:>ychoanalysis
tion of anyone who teaches has to do with a role, with a place to occupy,
which is, undeniably, a place that has a certain prestige. It is not tllls that I
am asking of you, but rather somerhing that is a kind of putting into order
imposed on me by the fact that I have to submit this unraveling to this trial.
I, like anyone else, would escape this putting into order if, before this sea of
ears among which there is perhaps the odd critical pair, I didn't have to give
some account, with this feat:fuJ possibility, of the path my actions are fol-
lowing with respect to the fact that there exists a psychoanalyst [qu 'u y a du
pzychana/ysteJ.
That is my situation. The status of this situation as such has so far not
been settled in any appropriate way, unless by imitation, unless at the
incitement, the semblance, of various other escablished situations. Jn the
present case this results in timid selection practices, in a certain identifica-
tion with a figure, in a form of conduct, indeed, in a human type whose
form nothing seems to render obligacory, or again in a ritual~ indeed in
some other measure that, at a better time, a former time, I compared to that
of a driving school, without moreover provoking any protest from anyone. 3
There was even someone among my students, very close at the time, who
47 remarked to me that this was, in reality, whar was desired by everyone who
was starting an analytic career-to receive one's driving Jicense, as in a driv-
ing school, according to paths that were mapped out well in advance and
that included the same type of examination.
It is cenainly notable-I mean, worth noting-that after ten years I have
arrived all the same ac spelling out a way that is the one I call the discourse
of this position uf psychoaualysL Let's say its byporhctical discourse, since
this is also what is being put to you this year for your examination.
Namely- what is the structure of this discourse?
I have managed to state che psyclloanalyst's position in the following terms.

I have said thac it is substantially made from the object a.
In the way I characterize the structure of discourse, insofar as it interests
us and, let's say, insofar as it is taken at the radical level it has attained for
the psychoanalytic discourse, th is position is, substantially, that of the object
a, insofar as this object a designates precisely what presents itself as the
most opaque in the effects of discourse, as having been misrecognized for
J Sec Lacan, "The Situation. of Psychoanalysis and the Training of Psychoan-
alysts in 1956," pp. 384-411 in Ecn"rs: The Fim Complet£ Edirion in English (New
York:W. W. Norton, 2006).
Knowledge, a means of jo1"5Jance 43
a long time, and yet is essential. It is question of an effect of discourse that
produces a reject. I shall shortly try to indicate irs pJace and i ts function.
That, then, is bow it is, substantially, with the psychoanalyst's position.
But this object stands out for another reason, which is that it occupies the
place from which the discourse is ordered, from which, if I can put it in
these terms, the dominant is issued.
You are well aware of the reservation with which this is used. Saying " the
dominant" means exactly that by which I ultimately designate each of the
structures of these discourses so as to distinguish them from one another,
naming them differently, me university, the master's, the hysteric's and the
analyst's, according to the various positions of the radical terms. Let's say
that because I am unable to give a different value to this term for the
moment I will call "dominant" what I use to name these discourses.
This word "dominant" does not imply dominance, in the sense in which
this dominance is supposed to be, and this is not certain, specific to the
master's discourse. Let'5 say that one can give, for example, different sub- 48
seances to this dominant according to the discourse.
Take the dominant in the master's discourse, whose place is occupied by
S 1 • If we called it "the law- we would be doing something that has great
subjective value and that would not fail to open the door to a number of
interesting observations. It is certain, for example, that the law- I mean
the law as articulated, that very law within whose walls we are finding
shelter, this law [cette Im] that cons titutes the law [le droit]-must cer-
tainly not be taken ai; a homonym for what may be spoken of elsewhere
under the heading of justice. On the contrary, the anibiguiry and the 1rap-
pings that dlis law adopts by virrue of the fact that it derives its authority
from justice is very precisely a point on which our discourse can perhaps
give a better sense of where its real resources are, I mean those that make
the ambiguity possible and bring it about thac the law remains something
that is, first and foremost, inscribed in the structure. There are not thirty-
six. wnys co make laws, whether motivated by good intentions, justice, or
not, for there are pecbaps laws of structure that make it the case that the
law will always be rhe law located in this place that I am calling dominant
in the master's discourse.
At the level of the hyst~ric's discourse ir is clear that we see this domi-
nant appear in the form of a symptom. It is around the symptom that the
hysteric's discourse is situated and ordered.
This is an opportunity for us to make an observation. If this place
remains the same, and if in a particular discourse this place is tha1 of the
symptom, this will lead us ro wonder whether the same place is that of the
symptom when it is in use in another discourse. This is, in fact, what we can
sec in our own time-the law is being called into question as a symptom.
And saying that this appears to us in the light of our own time is not suffi-
cient to explain it.
I said before bow it is that this same dominant place can be occupied
when it is a question of the analyst. The analyst himself here has to repre-
sent, in some way, the discourse's reject-producing effect [effet de rejei], that
is, the object a.
Is this to say that where the university discourse is concerned ic will also
be easy for us to characterize the said dominant place? What other name
can we give it, one that would enter into this sort of equivalence that, as I
have just been suggesting, e:xiscs at least at the level of a question, between
49 the law, the symptom, and even the reject insofar as it is the place the ana-
lyst is destined for in the psychoanalytic acr.
The difficulty \'>'C face in giving a reply ro what constitutes che essence,
the dominant, in the university discourse has to make us aware of some-
thing in what is our research-for what I am oudining in your presence are
the very paths over which, when I deliberate, my chougbts drift and wander
before finding any points of certainty. It is here, then, chat the idea might
occur to us to look for what would appear altogether certain, as cenain as
the symptom where hysteria is concerned, in each of th~ discourses, so as
to designate a t least one of ics places.
I have already shown you that in the master's discoun;e the a 1s precisely
identifiable with what the thought of a worker, Marx's, produced, namely
what was, symbolically and really, the function of surplus value. We would
therefore already be faced with two terms and, thereby, we would only need
co modify thc:m slighd y, give them a freer translation , in order to transpose
them into other regisccrs. The following suggestion presents itseH h ere-
since there are four places to characcerize, perhaps each of the four permu-
tations could, from within itself, yield the place that is the most pruminent,
making a step forward in an order of discovery that is nothing other than
what is called structure.
In whatever way you put such an idea ro the test, it will consequently
lead you to put your finger on the following, which will perhaps not occur
to you at first sight.
Independently of this place that, I am suggesting, may be the one that
interests us, try, in each of these figures of discourse, as wt:'ll call them, to
get yourself simply to choose a different place, defined as a function of the
terms "above," "below," "right," "left." You will not be able to get any of the
places occupied by a different letter, no matter how you go about it.
Try, in the opposite direction, making it a condition of the game to
choose a different letter io each of these four formulas. You won't be able
to get any of the letters to occupy a different place.
Have a go. It is very ea!>-y to do it on a piece of paper, as it is if you use
Knowledge, a means of}ouissance 45
this little grid that is called a matrix. With such a limited number of com- 50
binations! the specimen drawing is irrunediately sufficient to illustrate the
thing in a perfectly obvious way.
There is here a certain signifying connection, which one can suppose i~
altogether radical. This simple fact presents us with an opportunity to illus-
crate what structure is. In supposing the formalization of discourse and in
granting oneself some rules within this formalization that are destined to
pur it to the test, we encounter an element of impossibility. This is what is
at the base, the root, of an effect of structure.
And this is whac interests us, in the structure, at the level of analytic
experience. And this is not at all because we would here be at what, at least
in its pretentions, is an already higher degree of elaboration, but from
the outset.
Why arc we caught up in these manipulations t>f the signifier and its possi-
ble articulations? It is because it is in the material of psychoanalysis.
I mean that it is in what occurred co a mind as little accustomed to this
sore of development as a Freud could be, given the training we know be
received, in the parapbysical sciences and in a physiology armed with the
first steps in physics and with thermodynamics in particulac.
\Vhat Freud, in following che vein, cbe thread of his experience, was led
to formulate at a second stage in his declarations io:; of even greater impor-
tance since after all nothing seems to have made it necessary ac the first
stage, which was that of articulating the unconscious.
The unconscious makes it possible to situate desire. That is the meaning
of the first, already quite complete, step Freud rook, which was not merely
implied but in fact fully articulated and developed in the Tiuumdeutung.
This is already acquired knowledge when, at a second stage that opens with
Beyond the Pleasure Principle, he states that we must take into account this
function called what?--repetition.
What is repetition? Read Freud's cext and see what he says.
What necessitates repetition is jou:issance, a term specifically referred to. 51
ft is because there is a search for jouissance as repetition that the following
is produced, which is in play at this :>tage of the Freudian breakthrough-
what interests us qua repetition, and which is registered with a dialectic of
.iouissance, is properly speaking what goes against life. It is at the level of rep-
etition thar Freud secs himself constrained, in some way, by virtue of the
very structure of discourse, to spell out the death instinct.
- - -·- -..··- · ·- -· .. .. .
This is hype rbole, and a fabulous and, in fact, scandalous extrapolation
for anyone who takes the identification of the unconscious with instinc t Hr-
erally. It means that repetition is not only a function of the cycles that life
consists of, cycles of need and satisfaction, but of something else as well. It
is a function of a cycle that embraces the disappearance of this life as such,
which is the return to the inanimate.
The inanimate. A point on the horizon, an ideal point, a point that's off
the map, but one whose meaning reveals itself to a structural analysis. lt is
revealed perfec tly by the fact ofjouissance.
One only has to begin with the pleasure principle, which is nothing other
than the principle of least tension, of the minimum tension that needs to be
maintained for life to subsist. This d emonstrates that in itself jouissance
overruns it, and that what the pleasure principle maintains is a limit with
respect to jouissance.
As everything in the facts, in clinical experience, mdicates to us, repeti-
tion is based on the return of jouissance. And what~ in chis connection, is
well speUed out by Freud himself is that, in this very repetition, something
is produced that is a defecr, a failure.
At the time, here, I poinccd out the kinship with remarks by
Kierkegaard.4 By virtue of being expressed and as such repeated, of bemg
marked by repetition, wb ar is repeated cannot be anything other, in relation
to what it repeats, than a loss. A loss of whatever you like, a loss of momen-
rum-chere is something that is a loss. Right from the outset, right from che
elaboration that I am summarizing here, Freud insists on chis loss- in rep-
etition itself there is a reduction in juuissanu.
This is where che function of the lost object originates in Freudian dis-
course. And there is really n o need to remind you that it is explicitly around
52 m asochism, conceived only in the dimension of the search for this ruinous
jouissa11ce, that Freud's entire text revolves.
Now, what Lacan contributes follows. It concerns this repetition , this
identification ofjouissarice. Herc I will borrow something from Freud's text
and give it a sense that is not highlighted there, namely, the function of the
unary trait, which is the function of the simplest form of mark, which prop-
erly speaking is the o rigin of the signifier. And I proposL...__this cannot be
seen in Freud's text, but it can in no way be brushed aside, avoided,
rejected, by the psychoanalyst-that everything that interests us analyst$ as
knowledge o riginates in the unary trait.
Psychoan alysis in effect takes as its point of departure a turning point,
one at which knowledge is purified, if I may put it like this, of everything
4 Sec Soren Kierkegaard , Repetition, in his Fear and 1remhlfr1g; Repericion

(Princeton, N.J.: Priac~ton Uaiversicy Press, 1983).
Knowledge, a means of jqu£ssance 47
that may create ambiguity over natural knowledge, that may be taken for an
unknown something that would be able co guide us in the world around us
with the help of unknown sensors which, in us, would know how to orien-
tate us in the world from birth.
Not, to be sure, that there is nothing like this. When a learned psychol-
ogist writes in our time--1 mean n ot so long ago, forty or fifty years-some-
thing called Se11salion, guide de vie, he is not saying anything absurd, of
course not. 5 But if he is able to declare it in this way, it is precisely because
the entire evolution of a science makes us see that there is no co-naturaliry
becween this sensation and what, b y its means, can be born out of the
apprehension of a supposed world. If a properly scientific construction, the
examination of the senses of sight, even of hearing, demonstrate anything
to u s at all, it is som ething that we should accept as it: is, with, exactly, the
coefficient of fabrication [faaidtel with which it presents itself. In the light
spectrum there is an ultraviolet that we have no perception of~d why
wouldn't we have any? At the other, infrared e nd it's the same. The same
goes for the ear-there are sounds that we stop hearing, and no one can cell
very well why it stops there rather than further on .
As a matter of fact, through being illumin ated in this way, nothing else
is graspable than the fact that there are filters, and that we are able to man-
age with these filters. The function, they say, creates the organ. On the con-
trary, one makes use of the organ as best one can.
This is something about which, concerning the mechanisms of thought,
an e ntire philosophical tradition has sought to reason-a tradition that has
tried, by paths you are familiar with, by means of an account of what h ap- 53
pens at the level of abstraction, of generalization, to construct this thing, on
the basis of a sort of reduction, filtering, on the nature of sensation regarded
as foundation~Nihil fuerii in imellectu quod, etc.-this subject is deducible
in the name of the subject of knowledge [connaissance] .6This subject is con-
structible in a manner that now strikes us as so artificial, on the basis of
vital system~, organs which it is not clear, in effect, how we could do with-
out. fa this what is at issue in this signifying articulation in which these ini-
tial terms, which we are starting to spell out and tender here, can begin to
play a role? These are the most elementary of the terms that, as I've already
said, knot one signifier co another signifier, and which already have an effect
in that this signifier is only manipulable in its definition insofar as the fol-
lowing makes sense-that it represents a subject, and nothing but a subject,
5 Henri Pieron, The Sensations: Their Fut1ctions, Processes, and Mechanisms

(New Haven, Conn.:Yale Uoiversicy Press, l952).
6 "Nihil esi in inteilectu quod mm priu.s /iten't iti sensu," or "Nothing is in the
understanding that wai; nut previously in the senses." The quotation comes from
John Locke.
·· ·--- - - - · · . . _.. ..
, ___
for another signifier. No, there is nothing in comm.on between the subject
of knowledge [connaissancel and the subject of the signifier.
There is OQ way of escaping this extraordinarily reduced formula that
there is som ething underneath. But precisely, there is no term that we can
designate this som ething by. It cannot be an etwas, it is simply an under-
neath, a subject, a hypokeimenon. Even for a thought so invested with the
contemplation o f the exigencies-primary and not at all constructed exi-
gencies-of the idea of knowledge [connaissance] , I mean Aristotle's
thought, the logical approach alone, the fact alone th.at he introduced it into
the circuit of knowledge, requires him to rigorously distinguish
lrypokeimemm from all ou.sia in itself, from anything that is essence.
The signifier becomes articulated, therefore, by representing a subjecc
for another signific:r . This is our starting point for giving meaning to this
inaugural repetition that is repetition directed atjcuissance.
At a cerrain level knowledge is dominated, articulated by purely for mal
necessities, the necessities of writing, and in our day this leads to a certain
type oflogic. Now, this type of knowledge to which we can give the support
of an experience, the experience of m odern logic, which is, in itself and
above all, the ma;cjpulation of writing, is the same knowledge that is at work
when it is a question of measuring the effect of repetition in the analytic
clinic. In other words, knowledge that seems to us to be th.c m ost purified,
54 even though it is quite clear that we could inno way ex'tract it from empiri-
cism through purification, is this same knowledge th.at on e finds bas been
introduced from the out:set.
Th.is knowledge here reveals ics roots in the fact that ia repetition, and
in the for m of the unary trait to begin with, it is found to be the means of
j(}la$sance-pceeisely insofar as jouissance goes beyond the limits imposed,
under the term of pleasure, on the usual censions of life.
What becomes evident from this formalism, to keep following Lacan, is,
as we were saying just before, that there is a Joss of jouissance. And it is in
the place of this loss introduced by repetition th.at we sec the function of
the lost object emerge, ofwhar I am calling the a. What does this impose on
us? If not this formula that at the most elementary level, that of the imposi-
tion of the unary trait, knowledge at work produces, let's say, an entropy.
That's spelled e, n,, i. You could write it a, n, t, h, this would be a nice play
on words.i
This shouldn't astonish us. Are you unaware that, whatever the ingenu-
ous hearts of engineers believe, energetics is nothing other than the net-
work of signifiers overlaying the world?
I defy you to prove in any way that descending 500 meters with a weight
7 "Encropie" and "anthropie" sound the same in French.

Knowledge, a means of jou1'.~sance 49
.- -···-··· · · - - - - - --
of 80 kilo~ on your back and, once you have desct.!mled, going back up the
500 meters with it is zero, no work. Try it, have a go yourself, and you will
find that you have proof of the contrary. But if you overlay signifiers, that
is, if you enter the path of energetics, ic is absolutely certain that there has
been no work.
When the signifier is introduced as an apparatus ofjouissance, we should
thus not be surprised to see something related to entropy appear, since
entropy is defined precisely once one has started t o lay this apparatus of sig-
nifiers over the physical world.
Don't think I'm joking. Whenever you construct a factory somewhere,
narurallyyou draw energy, you can even accumulate it.Well then, the appa-
ratuses that have been installed so that these sorts of turbines ftmction co
the point where you can put energy in a bottle are built ac.cording to this
same logic 1 am speaking about, namely the function of the sigailler. Today,
a machine bas nothing to do with a tool. There is no genealogy between a 55
bucket and a turbine. The proof is that you can quite legitimately call a lit-
tle drawing you've done on a piece of paper a machine. It takes hardly any-
thing. le is simply enough that you have conductible ink for it to be a very
effective machine. And why shouldn't it be conducttbJe, since rbe mark in
itself already conduces pleasure [wlupte1?
If rhere is anything that analytic experience teaches us it is what concerns
the world of fantasy. Jn fact, if it does not seem to have been explored prior to
analysis, it's because no one knew bow to extricate themselves from it except
through recourse to the bizarre, to the anomaly, which serves as the basis for
these terms, these names that pin down ma.(()thism this, so.dian that. When we
give these -isms we are at the level of zoology. But there is nevertheless some-
thing altogether radical, which is the association, in what is at the base, at the
very root of fantasy, with this glory of the mark, if I can put it like this.
I am speaking of the mark on the skin, which, in thi<:> fantasy, inspires
nothing other than a subject identifying itself as the object of jouissance. In
rhe erotic practice I am alluding co, which, co give it its name in case any-
one is hard of hearing, is flagellation, the enjoying [le jouir] adopts the very
ambiguity by means of which it is at its level and no other that the equiva-
lence between the gesture of making a mark and the body, object of jouis-
sance, can be reached.
Whose jouissance? Is it the joui'ssance of whosoever carries what I am call-
ing rhe glory of the mark? Is it certain that this means the Other's.fouissance?
Certainly, this is one of the ways in which the Other enters one's world, and
assuredly, it is an irrefutable one. But the mark's affinity withjouissance of
the body itself is precisely where it is indicated th.at it is only throughjouis-
sance, and jouissance alone, that the division distinguishing narcissism from
the relation with the object is established.
50 The Ocher Side of Psychoanalysis
There's no ambiguity here. I t's at the level of Beyond the Pleasure Princi-
ple that Freud strongly indicates that what in the end gives the specular
image of the apparatus of the ego its real supporc, its consistency, is that it
is sustained within by this Jost object, which it merely dresses up, by which
jouissance is introduced into lhe dimension of the subject's being.
56 In effecr, if jouissance is forbidden, then it is dear that it only comes into
play by chance, an initial contingency, an accident. The living being that
ticks over normally purrs along wirh pleasure. lfjouissance is unusual, and
if it is ratified b y having rhe sanction of the unary trait and repetition, which
henceforth institutes it as a mark-if this happens, it can only originate in
a very minor variation in che sense of jouissance. These variations, after all,
will n ever be extreme, not even in the practices I raised before.
We are nor dealing with a transgression, an irruption into some forbid-
den field chrough the wearing away of vital regulatory apparatuses. In face,
it is only through this effecr of entropy, through this wasting, that jouissance
acquires a status and shows itself. This is why I initially introduced it by the
term "M ehrlust," surplus jouissance. It is precisely through being pe rceived
in the dimension of loss--somethlng necessitates compensation, ifl can put
it like this, for what is initially a negative number- -that this something th.a t
has come and struck, resonaced on the walls of the bell, bas created jouis-
sance, jouissarice thac is to be re peated. Only the dimension of entropy gives
body to the fact that there is surplus jouissance there co be recovered.
And this is the dimension in -which work, knowledge at work, becomes
necessary, insofar as, whether it knows it or not_, ic initially stems from the
unary trait and, in its wake, from everything that can possibly be arriculared
as signifier. This is the basis on which this dimension ofjouissance is insti-
tuted, which is so ambiguous in che speaking b eing who can also theorize
and make a religion of Living in apathy, and apathy is hedonism. He can
indeed turn it into a religi<>n, and yec we all know that as a group-
Massenpsychologt.'e is the title of one of Freud's writings, from the same
period-what animates him, what preoccupies him, what makes of him an
order of knowledge differe nt from chese harmonizing knowledges that link
the Umweli to the Irmenwelt is the function of surplus jouissance as such.
This is the hollow, the gap that no doubt a nwnbcr of objects initially
come and fill--objects that, in some way, are adapted in advance, d esigned
to be used as stoppers. This is no doubt where a classical analyric practice
stops, with its emphasis upon these various terms, oral, anal, scopic, not to
mention vocal. These are various names by which we can designate, as an
57 object, the a-but the a_, as such, is strietly speaking what follow s from the
fact that, at its origin, knowledge is reduced to an articulation of signifiers.
This knowledge is a means ofjouissance. And, I repeat, when it is at work,
what it produces is entropy. This entropy, this point of loss, is the sole point,
Knowledge, a m~ans ofjouisumC<l 51
the sole regular point at which we have access to the nature of jouissancc.
This is what the effect the signifier has upon the fate of the speaking being
cranslates into, culminates in, and is motivated by.
This has little to do with his speaking. It bas to do with structure, which
gets fitted out. The subject, who is called human, no doubt because be is
only the humus of language, has only to speechify himself co its fittings. s
With something as simple as my four little signs, I was able before to get
you to sense that we only have to place this unary trait in the company of
another trait, S 2 after S 1 , in order to si1uate, equally with licit signifiers,
what its sense is and, on the other band, the nature of its insertion into the
Other'sjouissance--this Other by virtue of which it is a means ofjouissance.
This is where work begins. It is with knowledge as a means of feuissance
that work that has a meaning, an (>bscure meaning, is produced. This
obscure meaning is the meaning of truth.
No doubt, if I had not already been exploring these terms in various ways
chat enlighten us, I would certainly not h ave dared introduce them as I've
done. But some work., a considerable amount of work, bas already been
accomplished.
When I speak of knowledge as having its initial locus in the master's dis-
course at the level of the slave, who apan from H egel has shown that what
the Hlave's work will yield is the master's truth? And, no doubt, the truth
that refutes him. But, in truth, we arc perhaps in a position to develop other
forms of the schema for this discourse, 3.lild to perceive where the H egelian
construction gapes, remains gaping, and bas been closed up in a forced way.
If there :is one thing that <1ur entire approach delimits, and that bas surely
been renewed by analytic experienct:, it is that the only way in which co
~-voke the truth is by indicating that ir is only accessible through a half- 58
!.aying [mi·dire], that it cannot be sa:id completely, for the reason that
beyond this half there is nothing co say. That is all that can be said. Here,
conscqueody, discourse is abolished. One isn't speaking of rbe uosayable,
whatever the pleasure that this seems to give certain people.
It remains oo less true that I illustrated this knot of the half-saying last
time through indicating how one has co emphasize wbat is properly speak-
ing the nature of interpretati()n, what I expressed as an utterance without a
II The punning here is untranslatable: "Ccla a a faire avec la ~-oucture, laque-
llc s'appareillc. L'ecre humain, qu'on appcllc ainsi sans doutc parce qu'iJ n'cst que
!'humus du langagc, n'a qu'a .('apparoler ti ca appareil-18."
- 52 The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
statement, as a statement with the utterance in reserve. I indicated that
these were the axis points, the points of balance, the aJtes of gravity, specific
to interpretation, from which our developments must profoundly renew the
question of truth.
What is the love of tt\lth? It's something that mocks the lack in being
a
[manque itre] of truth. We could call this lack in being something else--
the lack of forgetting, which reminds us of its existence .i n formations of the
unconscious. This is nothing of the order of being, of a being that is in any
way full. What is this indestructible desire F reud speaks of at tbe end of his
Trattmdeuumg? What is this des ire that nothing can change or deflect when
everything changes? The lack of forgetting is the same thing as the lack in
b~ing, since being is nothing other than forgetting. The love of truth is the
love of this weakness whose veil we have lifted, it's the love of what truth
hides, which is called castration .
I should not need these reminders, which are in some way so bookish . It
seems that it is among analysts, particularly among chem, that in the name
of these few taboo words with which their discourse is soiled one is never
made aware of wh at truth is, what knowledge is, what impotence is.
It i:; upon chis chat everything that has to do with truth is constructed.
That there is a love of weakness is no doubt the essence of love. As I have
said, love is giving wbac one d oesn 't have, namely whar might make good
[reparer] chis original weakness.
And this role-I don 't know whether I sh ould call it mystical or mystify-
ing- which since the birth of time, in a certain vein, has been given to love
is immL-dialely conceiv-c1bk, half open . This love thac they call universal,
brandished on a piece of paper so as to calm us, is precisely wbat we make
into a veil, a veil of obstruction, over what is the truth.
59 What is asked of the psychoanalyst, and this was already in my discourse
last time, is certainly not what emerges from this subject supposed to know
on which, by hearing it a little bit askew, as one usually does, it has been
thought possible to found the transference. I have often insisted on the fact
that we arc not supposed to know very much at all. What analysis estab-
lish es is this, which is quite the opposite. The analyst says to whoever is
about to begin-"Away you go, say whatever, it will be marvelous." He is
the one that the analyst in8titutes as subject supposed to know.
This is after all not in such bad faith, because in chc present case the ana-
lyst cannot put his trust in any other person . And the transference is
founded on the fact that there is this character who tells m e- me, che poor
bastard- to act as if I knew what it was all about. I can say anything what-
ever, it will always produce something. This doesn' t happen to you every
day. There is a lot chere to cause the transference.
What defines an analyst? I have said it. I have always said right from the
Knowledge, a means o fjouissance 53
start, it's just that no one has ever unde:rsto<>d anything, which moreover is
natural, it's not my fault, that an analysis is what one expects from an ana-
lyst. But this "what one expects from an analyst" -we would obviously have
co try to understand what it means.
It is very much there, just like that, within band's reach- I nevertheless
gee the feeling, even now, that I am merely restating this- the work is mine,
and the surplus pleasure is yours. What one expects from a psychoanalyst
is, as I was saying last time, to get rus knowledge to function in terms of
truth. This is why he limits himself to a half-saying.
I said this last time, and I will have occasion co return to it, because it
b as consequences.
It is co the analyst and to him alone chat this formula I have so often
commented on, this " Wf.I es war, soil /ch werden," is addressed. Cftbe analyst
tries to occ upy this place which determines his discourse at the top left, he
is absolutely not there for rumsetf. It is chere where the surplus joui.ssance,
the other's jmli.ssance, was thac I, as proffering the psych oanalytic act, muse
come.
J.I J anuary 1970

61
IV
Truth, the sister of jouissance
LOClC ANO TRUTH
WfTTGJ!NSTEN' S PSYCHOSIS
POUJ'ZER A..'ID ·1ltE UNIVERSITY
DI! SADE'S HUMOR
u H M
S, ~a $ ... s. s. s.
s. a s. a
At the level of srrucmre we arc trying to develop this year, the analytic dis-
course completes the three others, respectively named- f am recalling this
for those of you who come here sporadically-the master's discourse, that
of the hysteric, which coday rve placed in the middle, and finally the dis-
course that interests us here co a high degree, since it is a question of the
discoune s ituated as being thac of the university.
But the fact chat the analytic discourse completes the 90• dIBplacemenc
by whicb the chrcc ochers are scrucrured does not mean that ic resolves
them and enables one to pass to the other side. It doesn' t resolve anyching.
The inside does nor explain the outside. l We are dealing with a relation-
ship of weaving, of tcxt--of fabric, if you like. It remains no k ss true that
this material bas a texture, that it captures something--not everything, to
be !.'Uri.:, since language shows the limit of thii.; word which only exists
through language. It shows that even in the world of discourse nothing is
everything, as I say-..··or better, that "everything" as such is self-refuting,
founds itself, even, on having to be reduced in its employment.
This is by way of introduction to what will today form the object of an
cs11ential approach, with the aim of demonstrating what the other side, l'en-
vers, is. Envers is assonant with verice, "truth."
l "L'eovers n'explique nut endroit." L'envers can mean "the Lining," as in the
lining of a jacker, and ~>ndroit "the outside." Thus, "The lining doesn't \!Xplain the
outside:."
54
Truth, the sister of jouissance 55
62
1
In cruth, something worth being supported right from the start is that
"truth" is not a word to be handled outside propositional logic, where it is
made into a value, reduced to the inscription, to the handling of a symbol,
usually a capital T, its initial. This usage, as we shall see, i~ most particu-
larly bereft of hope. This is what is salubrious about it.
Nevertheless, everywhere else, and notably for analysts-I do have to say
this, and with reason-for women analysts, it provokes a curious shiver, of
the same order as the one that bas, for some time n ow, been pushing them
to confuse analytic truth wirh revolution.
l have aJready spoken of the ambiguity of this term ..revolution," which,
in the use made of it in tbe mechanics of heavenly bodies, can mean return
to the start. So much so that in certain respecrs what the analytic discourse,
as l said initially, can accomplish with respect to the three other order.; is
situated in three other strucrures.
It i'I no accident that women are less enclosed than their partners m this
cycle of discourses. Man, the male, the virile, such as we know him, is acre-
ation of discourse-at least none of what is analyzable in him can be
defined in any other way. The same cannot be said of woman. Nevertheless,
no dialogue is possible unless it is sicuated at the level of discourse.
This is why, before she starts to sbake, the woman animated by the rev-
olutionary properties of analysis could tell her.;elf that she will benefit
much ruun: than che man does from what we shall call a certain culture of
discourse.
It is not that she has no gifc for it, on the contrary. And once she becomes
animated by it she becomes an eminent guide in this cyck. This is what
defines the hysteric and tbi'! i::i why on the blackboard, breaking with the
order of what I have been writing up there, I have placed her at the center.
It is, however, dearly not by chance that the word "truth" provokes thi::o
particular emotion in her.
Except that truth is not, in our context~ easily acccssihk. Like certain
birds that I used to be told about when I was little, you can only trap it by
putting salt on its tail. This is nor easy. M y first reading book had as its first 63
text a story that was called The Story of Half a Chicken. It is true, that was
what it was about. It is not a bird that is any easier to catch than others
when the requirement is to put salt on its tail.
What I have been teaching, ever since I have been developing something
about psychoanalysis, could well be called The Story of Half a Subject.
Where is the truth in this relationship berween rhe story of half a chicken
and the story of half a subject? It can be taken from cwo angles. One might
say that the story in my first reading determined the development of my
thought, as an academic thesis might put it. Or, from the point of view of
the structure, the story of half a chicken could have represented, for the
author who bad written it, something in which there is some kind of pre-
sentiment, not of "sychanalisse" as it is said in Paris Peasanl, buc of the
nature of the subject .z
What is clear is that there was also an image.The image ofbaJf a chicken
was in profile, from its good side.You didn't see the other side, rbe cut one,
the one where the truth probably was, since on rbe right-band-side page
you saw the half without rbe heart, but nm: without liver no doubt, in the
two senses of the word. 3 What docs that mean? It means that uuth is hid-
den, but perhaps it is onJy absent.
This would settle everything if it were so. One would only have to know
all that there is to know. After all, why not? When one says something there
is no n~ to add that it is true.
An entire problematic of judgmem cums on this. You know that Mr.
F rege raises the question in the form of a ho rizonraJ stroke, and distin-
guishes it from bow i:hings are when one affirms that it is true, by puning
a vertical stroke on the far left. Then it becomes an affirmation .~
H owever, whac is it that is true? M y G od, it is wbat was said. What is it
that was said? A sentence. But the only way of having a se.o tence supported
i~ by signifiers, insofar as they do not involve objcctS. Unless, like a logician
whose extremist views I will come ro shortly, you claim chac chere are no
objects, only pseudo-objects. As for u s, we hold chat signifiers are not con-
cerned with objects but with sense.
64 The o nly subject of the s entence is the sensc-··thus this dialectic we
star ted with, which we call chc pas-de-sens, the no sense, wich all the ambi-
guicy of the word "pas."5
This bt:gins with the non-sense forged by Husserl, "The green is one
for." However, this may very well have a seme, if for instance it is about vot-
ing with green balli. and rt:d balls.
H owever, what leads us down the path where the nature of being derives
from sense is that which bas the most being. It is down this path, in any
case, that the step-of-sense [pas-de-sens] has been taken of thinking that
what has the m ost being cannot fail to exist.
Sense, ifl may say so, is responsible for being. It does not even have any
2 Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant (London: Jonathan Cape, 197 1).

J The two senses are Joie, " liver," and /01~ "faith."
4 See Bcgriffschrift, in Jean Van Heijenoort, ed., Frege and Godel: Two Fimda-
mental Tt.Tts in Mathematical Logic (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1970).
5 Pas-de-s1ms means both "no sense" and "the step of sense."
Truth, the sister ofjouissance 57
- · - · - - - --
other sense. The only thing is that it was observed some time ago that tltis
is insufficient for carrying the weight-the weight, precisely, of existence.
A curious thing that non-sense carries the weight. It grabs you by the
stomach. And the discovery that Freud made is to have shown that this is
what is exemplary about a witticism (moc d'esprit), a word with neither rip
nor cail.
This doesn't make putting sale on it::s cail any easier. Precisely, the truth
ilics off. The truth flies off the very moment you no longer wanted to grab it.
Moreover, since it didn't have a tail, how could you have? Stupefaction
and light.
As you will recall, a linle story, a fairly dull one moreover, about
responses over the Golden Calf (vcau d'or) may suffice to wake up this calf
thlil s/ei:ps (veau qui durt) standing up. You can see then thac it i.c;, if I may
say so, of hard gold (d'or dur). t>
Enter EJuard's hard desire to ~ndure (dur d6-ir de durer) and the desire to
sleep, which is indeed the greatest enigma, which no one seems to be aware
of, that Freud proposes in the dream mechanism. Let's not forget it-
" Wimsch zu schlafe,i," be says. He didn't say, "scl1lafe11 Bediirfni.s," need to
..,Jeep, this is not what it's abo ut . It's the Wimsc11 zu scldafen chat determines
the dream's operation.
It is curious that he complements di.is indication with the further one
that a dream wakes you up jusc when ic might lee the 1ruth drop, so char the
only reason one wakes up is so as to oontinue dreaming--dreaming in the
real or, to be more exacc, in reality.
Thnc is all very striking. It's striking because of a certain lack of sense,
where truth, Like oacurc, comes galloping back.7 And even at such a gallop
that it has scarcely crossed our field before it bas already departed on the
other side.
The absence I mentioned before bas produced a curious contamination 65
in French. If we take the sam, "'without," supposedly derived from the
Latin sine, which is highl y unlikely since its initial form was something like
~e11z, we can see that the absewia, in the ablative, used in legal documents
and which this term sa7zs with neither head nor tail comes from- we have
already produced tltis little word right from the start of what we have been
stating today.
And so what? Senz and then sans- aren't we dealing wirh a puissance, a
"power"? One quite different from this en pu.issance, "potentiality," of an
imaginary virtuality, which is a power only through being deceptive. It is
rather what of being there is in sense, which is to be taken othctwise than
6 Also ordure, "rubbish."

7 "Changez le naturcl, ii revient au galop." French proverb.
-
being full sense, which is rather what escapes being, as happens in so-called
wicricisms.R
Just as, as we know, this always occurs in acts. In an act, of whatever
kind, it is what escapes it that is important. And this is also the step that
analysis has gone beyond, by introducing the bungled act, the parapraxis,
as such, which is after all the only one that we know, with certainty, is
always successful.
Around all chis there is a play of litotes whose weight and emphasis I've
tried to show you in what J am calling the "not-without." An.xiet'J is not
without an object. We are not rvithout a relationship with truth.
But is it cenain that we should find it intus, within? Why not to one side?
Heimlich, unheimlich--each of us, from our reading of Freud, has been able
to rccill what shelters in the ambiguity of this word which, rhrougb not
being within and yet evokes jt, accentuates precisely everything that is
strange.
On this point languages themselves vary strangely. Have you noticed that
"homeliness" in English means sans fa~on, withouc standing on ceremony?
le is, however, just the same word as Heimli-:hkeit, but that doesn't have the
same ton~ al all.
This is why sinnlos translarres into English as "meaningless," that is, the
same word which, in translating Unsirm, "nonsense," will give us non-sense.
We all know that the ambiguity of the roots in English lend themselves
to unusual avoidances. On the other hand, and in a way thac is almost
unique, English will call "wichout" che sans-awe etallt dehors. 9
66 Truth dm:s in effect seem to be foreign to us, I mean our own truth. It
is no doubt with us, but wichout concerning us to the point that one really
wants to speak it.
All tbat can be said, and this is what I was saying before, is chat we are
not wiihoui it. A litotes, in shoC't, of che face that when we are within its reach
we would happily do without it.
We go from " without" to "not-without," and from there to "without-
pasr." 10
8 " ..• commc ii arrive dans le mot justement dit d'e::;prit." Mot d'esprit, lit-
erally "word with mind or spirit," translates che German Wi'tz, and is doser to the
English "witticism" than "joke," by which k is rranslated in The Sr.andard Edirirm of
the Complete P~ychological Wfirks of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press,
1953-74), hereafter ciced as SE.
9 Lacan is referring co che facr that "without" (sam in French) is composed
of "with" (avec) and "out" (dchors).
10 sans, pas-san.5, sa~u~passe. One can also hear s'en pa$ser, " to do withouL"
Truth, the sister of jouissance 59
Here I will make a littJe leap and move to the author who has given the
most forceful formulation to what results from the enterprise of proposing
that the only truth there is is inscribed in a proposition, and from articulat-
ing that which, in knowledge as such--lcnowk"dgc bciog constituted on the
ba!.is of propositions--cao in all strictness function as truch. That is to say,
what results from articulating what, concerning whatever is proposed, can
be said to be true and upheld as true.
I have in mind someone by the name ofWittgeostein who is, may I say,
easy to read. Surely. Try him.
It requires that you know how to be content to move around in a world
that is, !.trictly :ipt!aking, a world of cogitation without seeking any fruit in
it, which js your bad habit. You are very keen on picking apples from an
apple rree, even on gathering them from the ground. For you, anything i~
better than not gathering apples.
Dwelling for a time under this apple tree whose branches, I assure you,
may suffice to caprure you.r dost:st attt:ntion, provided you make au effort,
v.riU nevertheless have the characteristic that you will not be able to draw
anything from it except the affirmation that nothing can be said to be true
other than the agreement with a structure wlrich I will not even situate, if I
can place myself outside the shade of this apple tree for an instant, as log-
ical, but, and the author puts this well, as grammatical.
For this author grammatical scrucrurc constitutes wbac be identifies with
the world. Grammatical structure is the world. And aJl that is true is, in 67
sh ort, a composite proposition comprising the totality of facts that consti-
tute the world.
lf we choose to inuoduce, into che set, the elemeoc of negation that
enables it to be articulated, we will have an entire set of rules which consti-
tute a logic to disengage, but the set is, he says, tamologjcal, that is to say,
as stupid as the following-whatever you state is either true or false. Stat-
ing what is either true or false is necessarily true, but also it annuls sense.
Everything I have said, he concludes at propositions 6.51, 2, 3, 4, since
he numbers them, everything I have just stated is strictly speaking Unsinn,
that is, it annuls sense.
One cannot say anything that i!> not <'I tautology. What is at stake is that
once the reader has passed through the long circuit of statements, and
please believe me, all of them are extremely attractive, he will have risen
above everything that has just been said and concluded that nothing else is
sayable- but that everything that can be said is only nonsense.
60 The: Other Side of Psychoanalysis
I have perbaps been a bit swift in summing up Wittgenstein's Traaarus
Logiw-Philosophicus. t t Let u s add just this remark, that nothing can be said,
that nothing is true, excepr on the condition that one starts from the idea,
on Wittgenstein's approach, that a face is an attribute of an elementary
proposition. 12
Wbac I am caJling an elementary proposition will elsewhere be placed in
quotation marks, in Quine for instance, who distinguishes between a state-
ment aod an utterance. lbis is an operation which, because 1 have constructed
my graph precisely on its foundation, I have no hesitation in calling arbi-
trary. It is in effect clear that it is defensible to say, and this is Wittgcnscein's
position, that no sign of affirmation needs to he added to what is assertion
pure and simple. An assertion declares itself to be the truth.
How then can one avoid Wittgelll>tdo's conclusions, other than by fol-
lowing him e.xactly where he is Jed, namely toward the elementary proposi-
tion, whose notation as true or as false is what must, in every case, whether
it be true or false, assure the tTUch of the compnsite proposition?
\Vhatever the facts in the world might be, I would go furcher, whatever
we might say about them, the tautology of the cotality of discourse is what
makes the wu rld.
68 Take the simplest proposition, I mean grammatically. It is not for noth-
ing th.at the Stoics had already used it, inttoducing it into the simplest form
of implication. I won't go that far, I will only take the first part of it, since,
as you know, implication is a relation between two propositions. " It is day."
That is the bare minimum. "It," in the impersonal. "It is," "that is"- in cer-
tain circumstances these have the same sen~e.
Thus, for Wittgenstein the world is supported only by facts. No things
unless supported by a web of facts. No things, moreover, but that are inac-
ccssibk. Facts alone are articulable. This fact, that it is day, is only a fact by
virrue of chat, ilS being said.
The true depends only--this is where I have to reintroduce the dimen-
sion I am arbitrarily separating from it-on my utterance, namely on
whether I state it appropriately. The true is not internal to the proposition,
where only the fact, the factitious nature, of language is declared.
It is true chat it is a fact, a fact constituted by my saying it, on those occa-
sions when it's true. But that it is true is not a fact, unless I explicitly add
that, moreover, it's true. It is just that, as Wittgenstein puts it very well, it's
quite superfluous for me to add it.
Well, except rhat what I have to say in the place of this superfluity is that
11 Lud~ig Wittgenstein, Tracuuus lAJgico-Philosoplricus (London: Routlt:dge &

Kegan Paul, 1974).
I? Proposition 4.21.
Truth, the sister -0f jouissance 61
J have to have a reason for really saying it, and this will be explained by
what follows.
But then, I don't say that I have a reason, l continue with the rest,
namely my deduction, and I integrate "It is day," perhaps fallaciously-
even if it's true-into my exhortation, which may be ro take advantage of it
so as to get someone co believe that he can clearly see what my intentions
are.
The srupid thing, if I may say so, is to isolate the factiriousness of "It is
day." It is a prodigiously rich piece of stupidity, for it gives i:ise to a lever-
age point, very precisely the following one, from which it results that what
I have used as a leverage point myself, namely that there is no metalan-
guage, is pushed to its ultimate consequences.
There is no other metalanguage than all rhe forms of knavery, i.f we
chercby designate these curious operations derivable from the fact that
man's desire is che Other's desire. All acts of bastardry arc based on the fact
of wishing to be someone's Other, T mean someone's big Otlter, in which
the figures by which his desire will be captivated are drawn.
Thus this Wittgcnsteiniao operation is nothing but an extraordinary 69
parade, the detct."tion of philosophical skulduggery.
The only sense is the sense of desire. This is what one can say after bav-
jng read Wittgenstcin. The only truth is the truth of what the said d~ire for
its lack hides, so as to make light of what he does find.
1bere is no more certain light under which what results from what logi-
cians have always articulated appears, if only to dazzle us with the air of
paradox contained in what has been called material implicatfon.
You know wbat this is. It's simply implication. It has only recently been
called material implication, because, all of a sudden, they have rubbed their
eyes and begun to understand what a scandal implication is, lam :.-peaking
of the one that a certain Stoic upheld. That is to say, that the three follow-
ing implications are legitimate, that, to be sure, che false implies che false,
the true impJjes che true, but that it is not at all robe re jected that the false
imply the true, since in total it is a marrer of what is implie<i and chat if what
is implied is crue the entire implication is also true.
However, this means something, why couldn't we, by slightly altering the
word "implies/' observe what is relevant in this-that it was well known in
the Middle Ages, ex falso nquitur quodiibet-that the false sometimes also
entails the true means that the true can be about anything.
But that if, on the other hand, we reject that the true entail the false, that
it can have a false consequent- for this is what we are rejecting, in the
absence of which there would be no poss1ble artic'ularion of propositional
logic-we end up \vith this curious fact that the true has a genealogy, that
it always goes back to an initial true, from which fr is no longer able to fall.
This is such a strange indication, one that is so challenged by our entire
life, I mean our life as a subject, that this alone would be sufficient to ques-
tion whether truth could in any way be isolated as an attribute-as an
attribute of anything capable of articulating with knowledge.
As for the analytic operation, it is distinguished by advancing into this
field in a way that is distinct from what is, I would say, found embodied in
70 Wittgenstein's discourse, that is, a psychotic ferocity, in comparison with
which Ockham's well-known nv.or, which states chat we must admit only
notions that are necessary, is nothing.
Truth-we begin again from first principles-is certainly inseparable from

the effects of language taken as such.
No truth can be localized except in the field in which it is stated-in
which it is stated as best it can. Therefore, it is true that there is no true
without che false, at least not in principle. 'IO.is is true.
But that there is no false wiithout the true, that is false.
I mean that the true can only be found outside all propositions. To say
that the true is inseparable from the effects of language, considered as such,
is to include the uncon scious within them.
The claim, on the con trary, as I was saying lase time, that the uncon-
scious is the l.'Onditioo of language:: gc::L:; iu; sense here, by vinue of wL'ihing
chat an absolute sense corresponds ro language.
One of the authors of the discourse on "The Unconscious," subtitled, «A
Psychoanalytic Study," once wrote it out by superimposing an S over itself,
by placing it below and above a bar, arbitrarily treated moreover ~'ith
respect to what I had done with ir. The signifier thereby designated, the
sense of which is supposedly absolute, is very easy co recognize, for there is
only one capable of answering ro this place-it is the I.
This is the I insofar as it is transcendental, but, <..'Qually, insofar as it is illu-
sory. This is the ultimate root operation, the one that what I am describing
as an elaboration of the university discourse guarantees for itself-and chis
is what shows that finding it here is no accident.
The transcendental I is what anyone who has stated knowledge in a cer-
tain way harbors as truth, the Sp the I of the master.
It is, very precisely, out of the I identical to itself that the S 1 of the pure
imperative is constituted.
I t is, very precisely, in imperatives that the I is displayed, for they are
always in the second person.
The myth of the ideal I , of the I that masters, of the I whereby at least 71
something is identical to itself, namely the speaker, is very precisely what
the university discourse is unable to eliminate from the place in which its
crutb is found. From every academic statement by any philosophy whatso-
ever, even b y a philosophy that strictly speaking could be pointed to as
being the most opposed to philosophy, namely, if it were philosophy,
Lacan's discourse--the 1-cracy emerges, irreduobly.
Of course, n o philosophy is ever reducible to this. For philosophers the
question has been a lot more supple and pathetic. Remember what is in
question, everyone acknowledges it m ore o r less, and some of them, the
most lucid, do so clearly-they want to save truth.
This bas taken one of them, good heavens, a long way-co the point
where, like Wittgenstein, by making it the rule wd the foun dation of knowl-
edge,, there is nothing left to say, at least nothing that concerns truth as
such , so as to refuse, to avoid, this rock. Surely the author has something
close ro the analyst's position, namely, that he eliminates himself com-
pletely from his own discourse.
I mentioned psychosis before. Here, in effect, one of the most assured
discourses and something or other that is strikingly suggestive of psychosis
concur so much that l am saying this on the sole basis of feeling its effect.
How remarkable it is that a university like the English university made a
place for him. A place ap arc, ic's appropriate to say, a place of isolation with
which che author went along with perfectly well himself, so much so that h e
wichdrcw from time co time to a little house in the country and then
returru:<l LO pun;ue;: this implacable discourse, of which, one can even say, che
discourse ofRussell's Principia Mathematica. cums out to be a fabrication.
Wittgenstein wasn't interested in saving the truth. Nothing can be said
about cruth, as he said. Th.is isn't certain, since we are dealing with it every
day. But how, then, does Freud define the psychotic position in a lecter I
have quoted many times? Precisely by what be calls, strangely, unglauben,
n m wanting to know anything about the spot wncre truth is in question.
For the academic it is i;uch a pathetic thing that one can say that Politzer's
discourse entitled "Foundations of Concrete Psychology," which was insti-
gated by his approaching psychoanalysis, is a fascinating example of it. I 3
Everything in this attempt at leaving behind this university discourse
that has shaped him from head to toe is to be commended. He is well aware
that there is some ramp there he could take to escape from it.
You must read thi:; small work,, republished in paperback without any 72
. u This work had just been republished as vol. 2 of Policzcr's Ecrits (Paris:
Editions soc"'ials, 1969) , edited by Jacques Dcb<>w:y. Policzcr was executed by tbe
Ucstapo in 1942. See his CriciqulJ of the Faundatiom of Psychology: The Psychology of
Aychoa1lalysis (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne U niversicy Press, 1994).
evidence, to my knowledge, that the author has himself authorized this new
edition, whereas everyone knows how much of a trial he found the acco-
lades with which what was initially presented as a cr y of revolt was covered.
Till."1\C scathing pages on psychology, particularly academic p sychology,
are, curiously, followed by steps which in some way lead him right back
again. But what enabled him to grasp where there might be hope for him
co escape from chis p sychology was bis emphasizing the fnct- wbicb
nobody bad done in his day-that what in Freud's method was essential for
exploring formations of the unconscious was to trust the narrative [recit] .
He emphasized this fact of language, from which everyth1ng, really, might
have followed.
At the time there was no question-this is a piece of trivia-<>f anyon e,
not even a1 the Ecole nonnale, having the slightest idea of what linguistics
is, but it is cxtremdy unusual that he should have thus come across the fact
that this is the mainspring thar gives some hope for what he curiously calls
concrete psychology.
You must read this little book, and if I had it here I would read it with
you. Perhaps one day l will make it the substance of our exchanges here,
but I already have enough things Lu :say fur m t: nol Lo have co dwell on
someching whose significant oddness each one of you can Stt for yoursclf-
chat in seeking to escape from the university discourse one implacably reen-
ters it. One can foUow this seep by step.
What objections does he make to the statements, I mean to the termi-
nology, concerning the mechanisms Freud proposes in his theoretical
dcvelopmenr? H e declares, concerning facts isolable by formal absc.raction,
as be confusingly puts it, that what escapes Freud is for him essential co
what is required in matters of p~ycbology, namely that all scientific facts are
utterable only if one preserves what he calls the act and, even better, the
contimrity of the 1. This is what he writes-the continuity of che I.
This term is no doubt what made it possible for the editor I men-
tioned before to shine at Politzer's expense, to whom be m akes a little ref-
erence-an episode, as it were, for enticing his audience such as it then was.
An academic who in another connection has sh own himself to be a hero-
73 what a fitting occasion to evoke him. It is always good to have one from
time to time, but that is n ot sufficient, if you benefit from it without man-
aging to show what in the university discourse is irreducible in relation to
:malysis. This book testifies to a unique battle, however, foe Poli t?.er cannot
fail to sense how close analytic practice ii> in fact to what he ideally sketched
out as being completely outside the fie1d of anything that had previously
been done as psychology. But he cannot avoid falling buck upon requiring
the I.
Not, to be sure, chat I see there anything that is irreducible. The editor
Truth, the ~istcr of jouis5ance 65
in question lets himself off too lightly when he states that the unconscious
does not express itself in the first person, and arms himself for this with one
of my remarks about the fact that the subject receives his message from the
other in inverted form.
That is clearly not a sufficient reason. Elsewhere I have in fact said that
truth speaks I. "I, truth, am speaking.'' 14 It's just that what doesn't occur
either to the author in question or to Politzer is that the "I " in question is
perhaps innumerable, that the I does not need to be continuous for it to
multiply its acts.
This is not what is essential.
In the face of chis use of propositions are we not, before we part, going to
present the following? "A child is being beaten." This entire fancasy really
is made up of a proposition. Are we able ro attribute to it anything whatso-
ever that the terms "true" or "false" designate?
This case, exemplary in that there is ao definition of a proposition thar
it cannot be eliminated from, makes us grasp the fact that if this proposi-
tion has the effect of being sustained by a subject, it's undoubtedly a sub-
ject, as Freud immediately analyzes, divided by fouissance. Divided, I mean
that also he who states it, this child who, becomes virtue, turns green (wird,
·oerttt, verdit, wrdoie) through being beaten, geschlagen:- kt's play on this a
h it longer-this child who becomes green rwith fear], beaten, he jests-
'i.iertu, ·virtue, these are the mjsfortunes of the vers-tu, wward-you, that is, the
one who is striking him, and who is unnamed, no matter how the sentence
is Stated.
The "You are beating me" is chis half of the subject whose formula con- 74
stitutes his liaison witbjouissancc. H e receives, co be sure, his own message
in inverted form .. ·-here this means llis own jouissance in the form of the
Other's jouissance. This is what is involved when the fantasy happens to join
the father's image to what is initially another child. The fact is that the
father gets jouissance from beating him, which here places the emphasis of
the meaning, and also the emphasis of this truth that is a half-truth-for
equally he who is identified with the other half, with the subject as child,
was not this child, unless, as Freud says, one reconstitutes the intermediate
stage··-never, in any way, substantiated by memory-where it is him, in
14 See Lacan, "The Freudian Thing," pp. 344-63 in Ecrits:The First. Complete
Edition in E111:lish (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).
effect. It is he who makes this sentence the support of rus fantasy, the
beaten child.
Here we are led back co this fact that a body can be formless [sans jigure].
The father or the other, whoever chis may be, who here plays the role of jouis-
sance, assures its function, gives it its place, is not named at all. A formless god-
this is truly what rt is. He nevertheless cannot be grasped except as a body.
What has a b<>dy and does not exist? Answer-the big Other. If we
believe in this big Other, then it has a body, ineliminable from the sub-
stance of the one who has said " lam what I am," which is another form of
tautology altogether.
It is in dus that, before leaving you, I will allow m yself to advance this,
which is so striking in history that, quite frankly, it is astonishing that it bas
not been emphasized enough o r even not emphasized at all-materialists
aTe the onJy authentic believers.
Experience h as proved it-I am speaking of the time of the most recent
historical eruption of materialism in the eighteenth century. Matter was
their god. And indeedJ why nor? That stands up better than any other way
of founding bim.
it's just that this is not enough fur the rest of us. Precisely because we
have logical needs, if you will allow me this rerm. Because we an: beings
born of surplus jouissance, as a result of the use of language.
When 1 say, "the use of language," I do not mean thac we use ic. It is lan-
guage that uses us. Language employs us, and thac is how it enjoys. This is
75 why the only chance for the existence of God is that H e-with a capital
H- eujoys, that H e is jouissance.
This is why it was clear to the most incelligent of the materialists, namely
de Sade, that the aim of death is not at all the inanimate.
R ead the propositions of Saint-Fond near lhc middle of ]uHeue and you
will see what it's aU about. When he says that death consists of nothlng
other than the invisible collaboration with the operation of nature, it is of
course because for him, after dcam, everything remains animate - animated
by the desire for jouissance. He can just as well call this jouissance nature, but
it is obvious in the total context that it is jouissance that's at srake. Jouissance
by what? By a unique being who has merely to say "I am what 1 am."
Why is this so? How does de Sade sense this so well?
This is where the fact that in appearance he is sadistic is played out. It's
because he refuses to be whut he is, to he what he says he is. When he makes
this furious appeal to give to nature in its murderous operation, from which
forms arc always being reborn, what is he doing, if not displaying his impo-
tence w be anything other than the instrument of divine jouissance?
That's de Sade the theoretician. Why is he a theoretician? I perhaps have
the time, at the last moment as J usually do it, to cell you why.
The practitioner is different. As you know from a number of stories,
about which we have his testimony in his own hand moreover, the practi-
doner is simply a masochist.
This is the only astute and practical position where jouissaru:e is con-
cerned, for exhausting oneself at being the instrumem of God is backbreak-
ing work. The masochist is a fine humorist. He has n o need of God, his
lackey will do. He gets his kicks by enjoying within limits that are moreover
discreet, na1Urally, and like any good masochist, as you can see, you just
have to read him, he finds it funny. H e is a humomus master. Why in the
devil, then, is de Sade a theoretician? Why this exhausting wish, for it is
completely out of his reach, this wish that is written, designated in this way?
This wish that these particles, in which-following the most e..'<traorclinary
imagined acts-fragments of broken, shredded, d ismembered Jives result,
be scruck down by a second death. Within whose reach is this?
Of course, it Le; within our reach. I stated this a long time ago on the sub- 76
ject of Antigone. I t's just that, being a psychoanalyst, J can see that the sec-
ond death is prior co the first, and not after, as de Sade dreams.
De Sade was a theoretician. Aod why? Because be loved truth.
It is not that he wants to save it- Ile loves it. The pruoftbat he loves it is
that he refuses it, that be does nor appear to notice that by decreeing this
God dead he exalts Him, he bears wimess to Him, witness to the fact chat
h~ de Sade, only achieves jouissance chrough che small means I mentioned
before.
What can it mean to say chat by loving truth one chus falls into a system
thaL ii; so obviously symptomatic? Here on e lhing is becoming dear-by
proposing itself as the residue of the effect of language, as what makes it
that the effect of language only extracts, from enjoying, what last time I was
saying about the entropy ofa surplusjouissance--rhis is what one does not
see -truth as external to discourse-but what- is che sister of that forbid-
den Jouissance.
I say, "It's the sister," because they arc l)nly related by this. If the most
radical logical structures effectively attach themselves to this stem that is
uprooted fromjouissance, the inverse question arises of what corresponds to
the enjoying of these conquests in logic that in our day arc being made.
There is this, for example, that a logical system is consistent, however
"weak" it is, as they say, only by designating its force of effect of incom-
pleteness, where its limit is marked. To what jouissancc does rhis way in
which the logical foundation itself proves to be opening up correspond? In
other words, what is truth here?
It is not in vain, nor by chan ce, chat I describe as sisterly the position
of truth with respect to jouissarece, apart from che fact chat I am stating it
in the hysteric's discourse.
68 The Other Side of Psych()analysis
Oddly enough, quite recently, someone gave a lecture to the Americans
on something that everybody knows. Freud was having, with his sister-in-
law, what is coyly called an affair. So what? We have known Minna Bernays'
place in Freud's preoccupations for a very long time. Adding some Jungian
gossip to it doesn't change a thing.
Bur I will hold onto this position of the sister-in-law. Isn't it because of
his sister-in-law that de Sade, whom, as we all know, Oedipal prohibition
77 had separated from tlls wife-as the theoreticians of courtly love have
always said, there is no love in marriage-loved cruth so much?
I will leave you with that question.
21Ja,mary1970
v 79
The Lacanian field
llil: HAi'l'L~ Ot' 1'Ht! r llAlLUS
WJ!IU.TH, l'ltO IU I '( 01' ·nm W'E...LTRV
M u
s. > s, s. -a
s a s. s
s • s.
- a
- -S
a s, s. s.
H A
We arc gcing to push on, and perhaps so as to avoid one misunderstanding,

among others, I would like to give you chis rule of first approximation-the
reference of a discourse is what it acknowledges it wants co master. That is
sufficient to classify it in the kinship of the master's discourse.
Thi:; i:; I.ht: diffic ulty faced by anyone whom I try to bring as close as I
am able to the analyst's discourse-and who has to be located at the oppo-
sire of any wish, at least any declared wish, for mastery. I say, "at least
declared,'' not because one bas co dissimulate the wish, but because it is
easy after all w spin off into the discourse of mastery.
As a matter of fact, this is the starting point for teaching the discourse of
consciousness, which has recommenced, recommences every day, indefi-
nitely. One of my best friends, who is very close to me, in p~-ychiatry of
course, described it best- it is a discourse of synthesis, a discourse of the
consciousness that masters. I
He was the one I was replying to in certain views that I put forward some
time ago on psychical causality, and which are there to testify that well 80
before I took the analytic discourse in hand I already had some orientation,
in particular when I said to him, more or less, how could one grasp all that
psychical activity other than as a dream, when thousands upon thousands
1 See Lacan, "Presentacion on Psychical Causality," pp. 123-58 in Ecrits: The
First Complete Edition in English (New York, W.W. Norton, 2006). The friend Lacan
refers to is the psychiatrist Henri Ey.
69
of times over the course of the day one hears " this bastard chain of fate and
inertia, of throws of the dice and astonishment, of false success and missed
encounte rs, which make up the usual script of a human life"?'
Don't expect anything more subversive in my discourse than that I do
not cJaim co have a solution.
N evertheless, it is clear thac there is no more burning question than what,

in discourse, refers to jouissancc.
Discourse is constantly touching on it, by virtue of the fact that this i-,
where it originates. And discourse arouses it again whenever it attempt co
reruro co this origin. It is in this respect thac it challenges all appeasement.
Freud has an odd discourse, it has co be said, one that is most con trary
to the coheren ce, to the consistency, of a d iscourse. The subject of dis-
cours\! does not know himself as the ~'Ubject holding the discourse. That be
d oes a oc knuw what he is saying doesn,t maner too much, one bas always
found a substitute [suppManceJ for this. But what Freud says is that the sub-
ject does not know who it is chat is saying it.
Knowledge- I think I have insisted upon this sufficiencly to gee ic into
your h ead-is something spoken, something that is said. Well then, knowl-
edge that speaks alJ by itself-that's the unconscious.
T his is the point at which it should have been attacked by what is more
or less diffusely called phenomenology. It was not enough, co contradict
Freud, to remind us chat .knowledge is known ineffably. The attack had to
bear upon this, which is that F reud stresses what everyone is able to
know- knowledge comes in bits, knowledge is enumerable, it comes in
parcels, and-chis is what isn't self-evident-what is said, the litany, is n ot
said by anyone, it unfolds of its own accord.
With your permission, I wanted to start with an aphorism. You wiU see why
81 I hesitated. I have hesitated, as I usually do, but fortunately I am doing it
before twelve thirty-one and thu.-. have not delayed the end of our i;eminar chi~
time. If I started in the way I always feel like starting, I would start abruptly.
It's because I feel like doing it that I don't do it, I am sparing you, I am avoid-
ing sh ocks for you. I wanted to begin with an aphorism which, 1 hope, will
strike you by its obviousness, because it's the reason that Freud has carried the
1 " Prcsencntion on Psy(;hical Causality," Ecrits: The First Complew Edition in

Er1glish (Nc:w York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 130.
The Lacanian field 71
day despite the protestations that greeted his entry into the world of com-
merce of ideas. What carried the day is chis-Freud doesn't bullshit [deconne].
This is what gives him this sort of priority he has in our day. It's proba-
bly also what makes it the case that there is another who, as we know, sur-
vives fairly well despite everything. What is characteristic of the two of
them, Freud and Marx, is that they don' t bullshit.
We can see it in the fact that in contradicting them there is always a risk
of sliding, one slides very easily, into bullshitting. They throw into confu-
sion the discourse of those who want to trip them up and very often freeze
it into a sort of irreducibly conformist, retarded, academic recursion.
I am perfectly happy for these contradictors, ifl may be so bold, to bull-
shit. They would be unpacking the consequences of Freud, rhey would be
continuing a cenain order, the order of what is at issue. After all, one does
ask oneself why from time to rime tht.-y say So-and-so is an idiot [con] . Is
this so devaluing? Haven't you noticed that when one says that So-and-so
is an idiot it actually means he is nor so stupid? What depresses one is that
one does not very well know in what way be deals with jouissance. And chat's
why he .is called an idiot.
Tilis i'i aho whal giv~s Freud's discourse ics value. He is worthy of iL Ht: U.
worthy of a discourse that maintains itself as close as possible to what refers to
jouissan~as close as it was possible up till Freud. It is not very comfortable.
It is not very comfortable to be siruared at this point where discourse emerges,
o r even, when it rerurns there, when it falrers, in the environs ofjouissance.
Obviously, with respect to this Freud sometimes sh ies away, abandons
u s. He abandons the qut:$tion of feminine j1nlissance. At the latest report
Mr. Gillespie, an eminent character who has distinguished himself b y all
sorts of operations ofhorse-crading berween the different currents that have 82
permeated analysis these last fifty years, mark.<> some kind of jubilation, an
unusual liveliness, in the latest issue of the lmema.c£onal Journal of Psyclw-
Analysis over the fact that, owing to a number of experiments on vaginal
orgasm that have apparently been carried out at the University otWashing-
ton, much light has apparently been thrown on what was a matter of
debate, namely the primacy ~lr not, in woman's development, of afouissance
initially reduced to the equivalent of male .1ouissance. 2
These studies by a certain Masters and Johnson are not, frankly, lacking
in interest. Nevertheless, when, without having been able to refer directly
to the text, but on the basis of certain quotations, I see it appear there that
the greater orgasm, which is apparently the woman's orga~m, emanates
from the total personality, I do wonder how a movie camera that takes
2 William Gillespie, "Concepts of Vaginal Orgasm," foternaxional Journal of

Psycho-Analysis 50 (1969):495-7.
72 1he Other Side of Psychuanalysis
images in color, placed inside an appendage representing the penis, record-
ing from the inside what takes place on the lining of what, on its being
inserted, surrounds it, is capable of grasping the said total personality.
This is perhaps very interesting, as an accompaniment in the margin of
what Freud's discourse enables us to propose. But it is what gives meaning
to the word decanner~ "to bullsbit," like one says dichanrer, to cbange one's
tune. You know perhaps what k dechan~ the descant, is-it's something that
is written alongside plain chant, it can also be sung, it can be an accompa-
niment, but ultimately it is not at all what one expects from plain chant.
It is because there is so much descant here that one has to remind one-
self of what emerges, in brutal outline, from what I could call the attempt
at economic reduction that Freud gives his discourse onjouissance.
It is not without reason that he masks it in this way. You will see what
effect this bas when stated din;ctly. But it is what I thought I should do
today in a form that, I hope, you will find striking, even though it will teach
you nothing but the right tone for Freud's discoveries.
83 2
We are not going to speak about jouissance in that way.

I have already said enough to you for you co know that fouissance is the
jar of the Danaides, and that once you have started, you never know where
it will end.3 It begins with a tJckle and ends in a blaze of petrol. That's
always what jouissance is.
1 will take these things up via another faccor which cannot be said to be
absent from analytic discourse.
H you read the veritable anniversary corpus that is this issue of the Inter-
national Journal of Psyche>-Analysis you Wlll see the authors cocgraculating
themselves on cbe solidity displayed over cb~e past fifty years. l ask you to
carry out this test-take any issue from these past fifty years, you will never
be able to tell when it dates from. They all say the same thing. They are
always equally insipid, and because analysis preserves, they are always the
same authors. It's simply that, as fatigue sets in, they reduce their contribu-
tions from time to time. One of them expre~ses himself in a single page.
3 The Danaides were daughcers of Danaus, a mythical king regarded by che

ancient Greeks as one of their progenitors. Forced co marry their cousins, the sons
of Aegyptus, the Dana.ides, with one exception, swbbed their husbands to death on
the wedding night, with daggers their father had provided; the murderers were pun-
ished in the Underworld by having to fill leaky jars with water.
-------
They congrarulate themselves on the fact that, in sum, these fifty years have
indeed confirmed these fundamental truths, that the mainspring of analy-
sis is goodness, and chat what has fortunately become obvious over the
course of chese years, with the progressive effacing of Freud's discourse, is
particularly the solidity and glory of a discovery that is called the
autonomous ego, namely, the ego free of conflict.
This is the result of fifty years of experience, by virtue of the insertion of
three psychoanalysts, who had blossomed in Berlin, inco American society
where this discourse of a solidly autonomous ego undoubtedly promised
attractive results. 4 For a return to the master's discourse, in effect, one
could do n o better.
This gives us an idea of the consequences, retrogressive if you like, that
rebound from any form of attempt at transgression, which, all the same,
analysis was at one time.
N ow, we are going to put things in a cert.a.in way, and concerning a word
that you will easily find in turning to this issue [of the journall, since it's
also one of the current themes of analytic propaganda- in English it's
called "happiness," in French we call it k bonheur.
Unless we define happines!> in a rall1cr sad way, namely that it is to be 84
like everyone else, which is what the autonomous ego could be resolved
into-nobody, it has to be said, knows whac it is. lf we are to believe Saint-
just who said this himself, then since that time, his uwn day, happiness has
become a political factor.
Let's try to give body co this notion by another abrupt statement which,
I ask you to note, is central to Preudian theory-the only happincl>S is the
happiness of the phallus.
Freud writes this in all sores of ways, and even writes it in a naive man-
ner which con.sises in saying that nothing can come closer co the most per-
fect 1<missance tban that of the male orgasm.
However, where Freudian theory places the emphas is is on the fact that
it is only the phaJlus that is happy- not the bearer of said. Even when, not
out of oblativity, but out of desperation, he places it, the above sajd phal-
lus, inside the womb of a partner, supposedly disappointed at n ot bearing
one herself.
There you have what psychoanalytic experience teaches us positively.
The bearer of the said phallus, as I put it, strives to get his partner to accept
this privation, in the name of which all his efforts at love, his detailed car-
ing and tender services, are in vain, since he reawakens the said wound of
privation. There is no compensation for chis wound in the satisfaction that
4 The allusion is to Ernst Kris, Rudulf ~'ellstcin, and Heisv. Hartmann.

its bearer purportedly derives from alleviating it. On the contrary, it is
reawakened by its very presence, by the presence of that thing the regret for
which causes this wound.
This is exactly what was revealed to us by what Freud was able to extract
from the hysteric's discourse. It is the basis on which we can understand
h ow the hysteric symbolizes the initial non-satisfaction. I have highlighted
her promotion of unsatisfied desire supported by the minimal example that
I have commented on in the arcicle [eerie] that goes under the title of "The
Direction of the Trearmcnt and the Principles of Its Power," namely, the
dream of the butcher's beautiful wife.s
You will recall that there i'i the beautiful wife and her husband, who loves
a fuck, who is a perfect idiot, because of which she has to show him that she
does nor value what he wants to satisfy her to excess with, which means that
nothing is senled as to what is essential, even though she has what i5 essen-
85 rial. There you have it. What she does not see, because she too has limits to
her own little horizon, is that by leaving what is essential to hc.:r husband to
another woman, she would obtain surplus jouissance, for this is what is at
stake in the dream. She doesn't see it in the dream, that's all one can say.
11u:rc arc others that do see it. For example, D ora docs. Through the
adoration of the object of desire that woman has become on her horizon-
the woman she envelops herself in and wh o in the case study is called Frau
K., the woman she is going to contemplate in the figure of the Dresden
Madonna-through this adoration, she plugs her penile claims [revendica-
iiom]. And this is what makes it possible for me to say that the butcher's
beautiful wift:: dut:s uul set: that, like Dora, she would ultimately be happy
to leave this object to another woman.
There are other solutions. If I rake this one it's because it is the most
scandalous.
T here are many other refinements in the ways of finding a substitute for
this jouissance, whose framework, which is that of the social, and which
leads to the Oedipu:> complex, brings it about that by viTLut: uf bi::ing the
only jouissance that would bring happiness, precisely because of that, this
jouissance is excluded. This is, strictly, the meaning of the Oedipus complex.
And this is why it is interesting in analytic investigation to know how it is
that by being substituted for the prohibition of phallic Jouissance something
is introduced whose origin we have defined by a thing chat is quite differ-
ent from phallic iouissance, one that is situated by, and as it were mapped
out (quadrillel by, the function of surplus jouissance.
I am only recalling here s()me outstanding features of Freudian dis-
course that I have highlighted many times before and that I want to insert
5 See Lacan, Ecrits:The First Complete Edirion in E11g/ish (NcwYork:W. W. Nor-
ton, 2006), 489ff.; also Sigmwid 1-lrcud, The Interpretation of Dreams, SE 4: 147ff.
1bc Lacanian field 7 '5
into their relationship of configuration-which is not central but it is

related-with the situation I am trying to give of this discourse's relation-
ships to jouissance. This is the respect in which I am recalling chem and want
to place renewed emphasis on them, with the intention of modifying any
aura that the idea that the Freudian discourse is centered on the biological
facts of sexuality may hold for you.
I will see how I measure up here, which is something that 1 must confess
to you I did not discover very long ago. It is always the chings that are most
visible, the ones that display themselves, that one sees least. ·I suddenly
asked myself, "But how does one say 'sex' in Greek?"
The worst of it is that I did not have a French-Greek dictionary, and any- 86
way there aren't any-well, only small, ugly ones. I had found genos, which
of course has nothing to do with sex, since it means a bunch of other things,
race, lineage, engenderment, reproduction. Then another word appeared
on the horizon, but its connotations are quite different-phusis, "nature."
This division of living beings, of one part of them, into two classes, with
what one realizes that this entails, namely, most likely, the irruption of
death, since the others, those that are not sexed~ do not give the appearance
of dying all that much-this is noc what we are saying at all, it doesn't have
this ring about it at all when we say "sex." The stress, of course, is not at all
on this biological reference. This is clearly what shows that one has to be
very, very careful before assuming that it is a reminder not just about
organicism buc even about a reference to biology that foregrounds the t'unc-
tion of sex in Freudian discourse.
It is hcr1:: thaL um: nu Lice:; 1.llat "sc::x," wilh the significance it has for us and
its level of use, its meaningful diffusion, is sexus. In relation to Greek one
would have to conduct the enquiry into other languages, but in Latin it is,
very clearly, attached w secare. In Latin sexus is implicated in whar I initially
made evident, namely that the entire game revolves around the phallus.
Of course, it is not only the phallus that is present in sexual relations.
However, what this organ has that i:s privileged is that in some way it is
quite possible to isolate itsjouissance. It is thinkable as excluded. To use vio-
lent words-I am not going to drown this in symbolism for. you··-it has,
precisely, a property that, within the entire field of what constitutes sexual
equipment, we may consider to be very local, very exceptional. There is not,
in effect, a very large number of animals for whom the decisive organ for
copulation is something as isoJatablc in its functions of tumescence and
detumesccnce, determining a perfectly definable curve, called orgasmic-
once it's over, it's over. Post coitum animal triste, as has already been said.
This is no exaggeration, moreover. But it does clearly indicate that he feels
himself to be fruscrated. There is something there that docs not concern
him. He can take things differently, he can find it very cheerful, but ulti-
··-· . -···- - · - - - - - - - - - - -
87 mately Horace found it to be rather sad-and this is proof that he had still
retained illusions about the relationships with the Greek phus£s, with this
bud that he thinks sexual desire constitutes.
That is putting things in their place, when one sees that this is, neverthe-
less, how Freud presents things. If there is something in biology that might
echo, have a vague resemblance with but in no way be rooted in this posi-
tion whose roots in discourse we are now going to indicate, if there is some-
thing which, so that we can say good-bye to the domain of biology, would
give us an approximate idea of what it means to say that everything is
played out around this stake, which one of them doesn't have and the other
doesn't know what to do with, it would be more or less what takes place in
certain animaJ species.
Just recently I saw-and this is why I mention it to you-some fish that
were very pretty and monstrous, as a species has to be in which the female is
about this size and the male is like this, tiny. He comes and latches onto her
stomach, and he latches on so well that his own th;sues are indiscernible-it
is not possible, even under a microscope, to see where the tissues of one end
and the tissues of the other begin. There he is, hooked on by his mouth, and
there ht: fulfils, if it <.:an bt: put likt: this, his male functions. It is nor unthink-
able that this greatly simplifies the problem of sexual relations, when in the
end the weary male resorbs his h.eart, his liver, and none of it is left at all,
there he is, suspended from the good place, reduced to what after a certain
time remains in this little animal pocket, namely, principally the testicles.
The question is to elaborate the nature of this phallic exclusion in the
great human game of our cradition, which is th<:tL uf <lt:sirt:.
Desire has no immediately proximate relationship with this field. Our
tradition states it for what it is, Eros, the making present of a lack.
And this is where one can ask how it is possible to desire anything. What
is lacking? There was someone who one day said, "But don't wear yourself
out, nothing is lacking, look at the lilies in the field, they do not weave nor
do they spin, it is they who are in their place in the Kingdom uf heaven."6
It is obvious that to make these claims of genuine defiance, one really
would have had to be the very one who was identifying with the negation
88 of this harmony. This at least is how he was understood, interpreted, when
he was characterised as the Word. He had to be the Word itself if he was to
negate the obvious to this extent. At least, this is the idea that formed
around him. He didn,t say aa much. He said, if one of his disciples is to be
believed, "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life."7 But the fact that they made
6 "Consider how the lilies grow in the fields; they do not work, they do not
spin." Matt. 6:28.
' John 14:6.
this into the Word indicates where people nevertheless knew more or less
what they were saying when they thought that only the Word was capable
of repudiating itself to this extent.
It is true that we can well imagine the lily in the fields as a body entirely
given over to jouissance--each stage of its growth identical to a formless sen-
sation. The plant's jouissance. Nothing in any case makes it possible to
e8cape it. It is perhaps infinitely painful to be a plant. \VeJl, nobody amuses
themselves by thinking about this, except me.
It is not the same for animals, who have what we interpret as an econ-
omy-the possibility of movement in order to obtain, above all, the mini-
mum ofjouissance. This is what is known as the pleasure principle. Lee's not
stay there where one enjoys, because God only knows where it might end,
as I was already saying earlier.
Now, there is this thing, which is that we nevertheless know the means
to jouissance. I was speaking to you just before about tickling and grilling.
There, we know how to go about it. That's even what knowledge is. In prin-
ciple nobody wants to overuse it, and yet it's tempting to.
This is actually what Freud discovered in fact around 1920, and here, in
a way, is the point at which his dii;covery backtracks.
His discovery was to have spelled out the unconscious, and I defy any-
one to say that this can be anything other than the remark that there is a
perfectly articulated knowledge for which strictly speaking no subject is
responsible. When a subject happens tQ encounter it all of a sudden, to
come upon this knowledge he was not expecting, good God, he-he who
spt:ak~-fimh; himi;df vi::ry confused indeed.
This was the first discovery. Freud said to subjects, "Speak, speak then,
do what the hysterics do, let's see what knowledge it is that you encounter,
and the manner in which you have aspired to it or, on the other hand,, in
which you reject it, let's sec what happens." And that necessarily led him to
this discovery, which he called beyond the pleasure principle. And it was 89
this, that the essential thing in determining what one is concerned with
when exploring the unconscious is repetition.
Repetition. This does not mean that one redoes what one has finished,
like digestion or some other physiological fanction. Repetition is the pre-
cise denotation of a trait that I have uncovered for you in Freud's text as
being identical with the unary trait, with the little stick, with the element of
writing, the clement of a trait insofar as it is the commemoration of an
irruption of jouissance.
This is why it is conceivabk that the rule and the principle of pleasure
are violated, why it succumbs to displeasure. There is nothing else to say-
not to pain obviously, but to displeasure, which can only meanjouissance.
78 The Othe.r Side of Psychoanalysis
This is where inserting the generation, the genital, the genitive lge11isique],
into desire shows itself to be entirely distinct from sexual maturity.
There is no doubt that speaking of premarure sexualization has its point.
Certainly, wbat is called the early manifestation of sexualicy in man is very
obviously what it is said to be, namely, premature. But apart from the fact
that this can imply, in effect, the presence of jouissance, it nevertheless
re mains the case that it 1s nor merely organic aucoerotism that introduces
the division between libido and nature. There are other animals than men
who are c.apable of srrokiog themselves, and that hasn't led them, m onkeys,
co a highly advanced elaboration of desire. On the contrary, we find favor
here in the function of discourse.
I t is not just a matter of calking about prohibitions, bur simply abou t a
d ominance of the woman as mother, and as a mother who says, a mother
of whom on e makes demands, a mother who gives orders, and who thereby
establishes the child's dependence.
Woman lends herself to jouissance by daring the mask of repetition. She
pre:;ents herself here as what she is, as the institution of masquerade. She
tenches h er little one to parade. She tends towards surplus joui5sance,
b ecause sh1::, tli1:: woman, plunges h e r roots, like a flower, down into jouis-
sance itself. The means of jouissance are open on the principle that be bas
renounced chis closed, foreign. jouissance, renounced c.he mother.
It is here that a vast social connivance will come and insert itself, invert-
ing what we can call the differences between the sexes in nature into the
90 sexualization of organic difference. This overturning implies as common
denominator the exclusion of the ~p1::dfo.<llly male organ. H enceforth the
male is and is not what he is with respecc co jouissance. And thereby, also,
woman is produced as ao object, precisely through not being whac he is,
sexual difference, on the on e band, and on the other through being what he
renounces by way of jouissance.
These reminders arc absolutely essential ro make ac a time when, in talk-
ing of the other side of psychoanalysis, the question arises of the place of
psychoanalysis in politics.
The intrusion inco the political can only be made by recognizing chat che
only discourse there is, and not just analytic discourse, is the d iscourse of
jouissaru:e, at least when one is hoping for the work of truth from it.
Characterizing the master's discourse as comprising a hidden truth does
not mean that this discourse is bidden) thac ic is lying low. The word cache,
....
hidden, in French has its etymological virtues. It comes from c<Jactus, from
the verb coactare, coacurare, coacti.care. This means that there is something
that is compressed, that is like a superimposition, something that needs to
be unfolded in order to be legible.
I t is clear that his rruth is hidden from him, and a certain Hegel stated
that it is delivered to him by the work of the slave. There you have it, how-
ever, it is a master's discourse, this discourse of Hegel's, which relies on
substituting the State for the master via tbe long pathway of culture, culmi-
nating in absolute knowledge. It does seem to have been definitively refuted
by discoveries m ad e by Marx. I am not here to comment on this, and I
won' t add an appendix here, but I will simply show the extent to which,
from the perspective of our psychoanalytic belvedere, we are comfortable
about casting doubt on whecher work engenders absolute knowledge, or
even any knowledge at all, on the horizon.
I have already developed chis point for you, an d I can go back over it
again here. But it is one of the axes in which I beg you to locate yourselves
so as to grasp what the analytic subversion is.
Whereas knowledge is a means of jouissance, work is something else.
Even if work ii; accomplished by chose who have knowledgt:, whal it pro- 91
duces can certainly be truth, it is never knowledge- no work has ever pro-
duced knowledge. Something objects to this, which is given by a closer
observation of the Mture, in our culture, of the relations between the mas-
ter's dise-0urse and something that ha'i emerged, someching which has reestab-
lished the examination of what, from Hegel's point of view, was wrapped
around this discourse. This somcching is the avoidance of absolute joui.s-
sance, insofar as it is determined by the fact that in attaching the child to
the mother social connivance makes her the privileged site of prohibitions.
Moreover, doesn't the formalization of a knowledge cha[ renders all
truth problematic suggest to us that~ rather than progress having been
made through the work of the slave-as if there has been the slightest
progress in his condition , quite the concrary-ic is a m atter of the tra.OSfer-
cn ce, plundering, spoliation of what, at the beginning of knowledge, was
inscribed, hidden, in the slave's world? In this connection it was the mas-
ter's discourse that had to impose itself. But also, by virtue of this fact,
reentering into the mechanism of its repeated assertion, he had to appre-
hend the loss of his own entry into discourse and, in a word, see this object
a emerge, wh1ch we have nailed down as surplus jouissance.
In short, this and n othing more than this is what che master had to make
the slave, the sole P<'>Sscssor of the means ofjoui:~sance, pay for.
The master was satisfied with chis little tithe, this surplusjouissance, such
that, after alJ, there is no indication that :in himself the slave was unhappy
to be giving it. The case is quite different with respect to what is found, on
80 The Other Sid e of Psychoanalysis
1.h<:: horizon of the rise of the master subject, in a truth which asserts itself
on the basis of his equality with himself, on the basis of this 1-cracy I once
spoke of, and which is, it seems, the essence of every affirmation in culture
that has seen this master's discourse flourish over all others.
If we look at it more closely, what subtracts the slave's knowledge
from him is th e entire history whose stages H egel follows step by step-
someching w1u:; ual, without having seen where it was leading, and for
good reason . H e was still in the field of Newton's discoveries, he hadn't
seen the birth of thermodynamics.. If he had b~en able to take <.in board
formulas which, for the first time, unified this field that was designated
as thermodynamics, perhaps he would have been able to recognize in it
this reign of the signifier, of th e signifier repeated at two levels, S 1, S 1
again.
92 S 1 is the dam . The second S 1, down below, is the pond that receives it and
turns the turbine. 'There is no other meaning to the conservation of energy
than this mark of an instrumentation that signifies the power of the master.
What is collected in the fall has to be conserved. T his is the first of the
laws. There is unfortunately something that disappears in the interval, or
more exactly docs not lend itsc:lf to a return to, to res wring, !lie :;tarting
point. 1bis is the so-called Carn ot-Clausius principle, although a certain
Mayer contributed to it substantially.
Doesn't this discourse which, essentially, gives prim acy to everything at
the beginning and at the end and neglects everything in between, which
may be of the order of something arising from knowledge, placing these
pure numerical truths, that which is countable, on the hm·izon of a new
world signify, all by itself, something compli:tcly different from the
increasing role of absolute knowledge? Isn 't this very ideal of a formaliza-
tion in which henceforth everything is merely to be counted-where
energy itself is nothing other than what is counted, than whati if you
manipulate the formulas in a certain way, always turns out to add up to
the same total- the rotation, the quarter turn, here? Doesn't this make it
the case that in the place of the master an articulation of completely new
knowledge, completely reducible formally, is established, and that in the
slave's place there emerges, not something that might be inserted in no
particular way into this order of knowledge, but something which is its
product instead?
Marx denoW1ccs this process as spoliation. It's just that he does it without
realizing that its secret lies in knowledge itself, just as the secret of the worker
himself is to be reduced to being n o longer anything but a value. Once a
higher level has been passed, surplus jouissance is no longer surplus jauissance
but is inscribed simply as a value to be inscribed in or deducted from the
9.3 totality of whatever it is that is accumulating-what is accumulating from out
--
of an essentially transformed narure. "lhe worker is merely a unit ofvalu~
an indication for those for whom this term produces an echo.*
What Marx denounces in surplus value is the spoliation of jouissance.
And yet, this surplus value is a memorial to surplus jouissance, its equiva-
lent of surplus jouissance. "Consumer society" derives its meaning fro m the
fact that what makes it the "clement," in inverted commas, described as
human is made the homogeneous equivalent of whatever surplusjouissance
is produced by our industry- an imitation surplus joui:~sance, in a word.
M oreover, that can catch on . One can do a semblance of surplus jouis-
sance·--·it draws quite a crowd.
If I wanted to give you matter for your dreams about where this process, of
which our science is the status, begins 1 would tell you, since I reread it
recently, to amuse yourselves with the Satiricon.
I didn't find what Fdlini did with iL bad. What he will never be forgi~n
for is having made a mistake in writing "Satyricon," whereas there is no "y,"
but apart from that, it's not bad. It's nor as good as the text, because in the
text you arc serious, you don't stop at the images and you see what ifs all
about. In a word, it's a good example for drawing the discinction between
what the master is and what the rich are.
What is 1narvelous in the discour::;cs, whichever discourse it may be, even
the most revolutionary, is that they never say things direccly, as r have just
been trying to- a bit. I do what I can.
From time to time I stick my nose into a stack of authors who are econ-
omists. And we can see the extent to which this is of interest for us analysts,
because if there is something that remains to be done in analysis, it is to
institute this other field of energetics, which would demand other struc-
tures than those of physics, and which is the field of jouissancc.
You can unify the thermodynamic and the electromagnetic fields as
much as you want, if you are a Maxwell. You nevertheless run into a diffi-
culty with the field of gravitation, and it's fairly curious because it's with
gravitation that everybody started- but, in the end, that doesn't matter. As
for what comes from the field of joi~issancc-which, sadly, will never be
called the Lacanian field, for I will surely not have the time even to sketch
out the bases, but I have wanted to- there are some remarks to be made.
• In France the number of courses or subjects that one takes for a degree arc
calculated in terms of um'res de ooleur.
·-· . ·-·--·· - - - -
94 One opens the book by a certain Smith, The ~alth uf Naticms, and ht: i:;
not alone, they are all there, MaJth.u s, Ricardo, and others, racking their
brains-what is the wealth of nations? There they are, trying to define use
value, that must count, exchange value-it's not Marx who invented aU
that. Now, it is extraordinary that ever since there have been economists
nobody, up till now, has-not even for an instant, I am not saying this in
order to stop here-ever made this remark that wealth i:s the prnperty of the
wealthy. Just like psychoanalysis which, as I said one day, is done by psy-
choanalysts, this is its principal characteristic, you have to begin with the
psychoanalyst. Why not, concerning wealth, begin with the wealthy?
I have to stop in two minutes time, but all the same I am going to make
a remark to you that stems from an experience that is not particularly that
of an analyst, but is one that anybody could have.
The wealthy have property. They buy, they buy everything, in short-
well, they buy a lot. But I would like you to meditate on this fact> which is
that they do not pay for it.
One imagines that rhey pay, for reasons of accounting that stem from the
transformation of surplus jouissance into surplus value. But first, everyone
knows that they very regularly add on surplus value. There is no circulation
of surplus value. And, very much in particular, there is one thing that they
never pay for, and that is knowledge.
In effect, not only is there the dimension of entropy in what takes place
on the side of surplus jouissance. There is something else as well, as some-
one has noticed, which is that knowkdgc implies an equivalence between
this entropy and information. Of course, it's not the same> it's not so sim-
ple, as M. Brillouin says. 8
The wealthy are masters-and this is what I ask you to go and look for
in the Satiricon-only because they have redeemed themselves. The masters
in question on the horizon of ancient Greece are not businessmen. See how
Aristotle speaks of them-they disgust him.
On the other hand, when a slave has redeemed [rachetej himself he is a
master only in that he has begun to risk everything. Indeed this is how a
character., who is none other than Trimalchio himself, puts it in the Satiri-
con. Why is it that once he has become rich he can buy everything without
95 paying for it? Because he will have nothing to do with jouissancc. That is
not what he repeats. He repeats his purchase. He buys everything again or,
rather, whMcver turns up, he buys. He is cut out to be a Christi<m. He is,
by destiny, the redeemed.
And why does one let oneself be bought by the wealthy? Because what
8 Most likely Marcel Brillouin, French physicist and professor of mathemat-

ical physics at the College de France in the early twentieth century.
· - - -·- - - - - - -
they give you stems from their essence of wealth. Buy from the wealthy,
from a developed nation, you believe-and this is what the meaning of the
wealth of nations is-that you are simply going to share in the level of a rich
nation. However, in the process, what you lose is your knowledge, which
gave you your status. The wealthy acquire this knowledge on top of every-
thing else. It's simply that, precisely, they don't pay for it.
We have arrived at the limit today of what I am able to say before we
vacate the auditorium. I will merely raise, and I will end with this, the ques-
tion of what can happen with the promotion, the vocal reprise, of the nature
of surplus jouissance, of a, at the level at which the function of the wealthy
operates, the one for which knowledge is only a tool of exploitation. This is,
in some way, what the analyst's function gives someching like the dawn of.
1 will try to explain to you next time what its essence is. lt is certainty not
to refashion this element into an element of mastery.
In effect, as I will. explain to you, everything hinges on failure.
11February1970
BEYOND THE
OEDIPUS COMPL.E X
VI 99
-·· -- ---- - - --
The castrated master
Tl1.C .'dAS"ICA SIONIFIEI\ D!rrEMUNES CMTll/iTlOl-1
S\.IBN<:1! 1 MYTH, TH.I! U Nl.,:ONS<.:IOU~
DORA ANO Hl"R l"ATHI'.ll
LI'U:iAl!U. O.E.l>Jl'\:S
le must be beginning to dawn on you that the other side of psychoanalysis

is the very thing that I am putting forward this year under the title of mas-
ter's discourse.
I am not doing this in an arbitrary way, this master's discourse already
bas its letters of credit in the philosophical rrndjtion. Nevertheless, in the
way I am trying to uncover it, it takL-s on, here, a new Lighr by virtue of the
fact that in our day it so happens that it can be uncovered in a son of
purity- and this, through something that we experience directly, and at the
level of politics.
What I mean by this is that it embraces everything, even what chinks of
itself as revolutionary, or more exactly as what is romantically called Revo-
lution with a capital R. The master's discourse accomplishes it.4' own rcvo-
lu tion in the other sense of doing a complete circle.
This evaluation is a bit aphoristic, I agree, but it is made, as is the des-
tiny of aphorisms, so as to illuminate in a simple fla sh . On its horizon there
is the fact, which interests us, by which I mean you and me, that this mas-
ter's discourse has only one count erpoint, the analytic discourse, which is
Mill so inappropriate.
I call it counterpoint because its symmetry, if one exists-and one
does- -is not around a line, nor around a plane, but around a point. In other
W<)rds, it is obtained by completing the circle of this master's discourse I
was referring to a moment ago.
The layout of these four terms, the two numbered Ss, $, and a, as I
rewrote them last time, and whose transcription I hope that you more or 100
less all still have in your notes, sufficiently displays this symmetry in rela-
tion to a point, which makes ir the case that the psychoanalytic discourse is
quite precisely located at the opposite pole from the master's discourse.
87
- - - - - - - - - - - - · · - - - · · -·· .
1
In psychoanalytic discourse it sometimes happens that we see certain terms

that serve as a filum in an explanation, that of the father for instance. And
it sometimes happens that we see someone try to draw the major elements
Lugeth..:r-a pain:slaking la:sk wh~n ~arri~d oul frum within what, al llu:
point we have come to, one expects from a psychoanalytic utterance
[enonce] and statement [enonciaiion], that is to say, from within a genetic
reference.
Concerning the father one thinks one is obliged to begin with childhood,
with identifications, and then it's something that can rend toward extraor-
di..nary nonsense, a strange contradiction. One will speak about primary
identification a> what binds the child to the mother, and indeed this seems
self-evident. However, if we refer to Freud, to his work of 1921 called Group
Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, it is quite precisely the identification
with the father that is given as primary. I This is certainly very odd. Freud
indicates there that, completely primordially, the father happens to be the
one who presides over the very first identification, precisely in that in a priv-
ileged way he is the one who deserves to be loved.
This is very odd, to be sure, and is to be placed in contradiction with
everything that the development of analytic experience is found to have
established concerning the primacy of the child's relationship with the
mother. There is an odd discordance between Freudian discourse and the
discourse of psychoanalysts.
Perhaps these discordances are the result of confusion, and the order I
am trying to introduce by referring to configurations of discourse that arc
in some way primordial is there to remind us that it is strictly unthinkable
to state anything that is ar all ordered in analytic discourse unless one bears
the following in mind. Our effort is, as we know perfectly well, a recon-
structive collaboration with whoever is in the position of the analysand
whom we are, in some way, enabling to embark upon his career. To be effec-
l0 l tive this effort, which we make to extract, in the form of imputed thought,
what has in effect been lived by him who, on this occasion, well deserves
the title of patient, must not make us forget that by virtue of the signifier
connection the subjective configuration has a perfectly mappable objectiv-
ity which founds the very possibility of the assistance we bring in the form
of interpretation.
'There, at a given point of the link, namely the altogether initial one
between S 1 and S 2 , it is possible for this fault we call the subject to open.
1 See Sigmund Freud, SE l8 (1921):100.

The castrated master 89
'1 'hcre, the effects of the link, which as it happens is a signifier link, oper-
ate. Whether this lived experience [vecu] that is more or less correctly called
thought h:; or is not produced somewhere, something is produced there that
derives from a chain, exactly as though it were thought. Freud is never say-
ing anything else when he speaks of the unconscious. This objectivity not
only induces but determines this position, which is that of the subject, as
the focus of what is called the defenses.
What I am advancing, what I am going to announce that is new today,
is that in expressing itself toward those means of jouissance that are what
is called knowledge, the master signifier not only induces but determines
castration.
I shall return to what one should understand by "master signifier," start-
ing from what we have put forward on this topic.
At the outset, surely, there aren't any. All signifiers are in some sense
equivalent, if we just play on the difference of each from all the others,
through not being the other significrs. But it's for the same reason that each
is able to come to the position of master signifier, precisely because its
potential function is to represent the subject for another signifier. This is
how I haw.: a)ways defined it. I Iowever, the subject it represents is not uni-
vocal. It is represented, undoubtedly, but also it is not represented. At this
level something remains hidden in relation to this very same ~ignificr.
The game of the psychoanalytic discovery is played out around this. Like
any other, it has been prepared for. It has been prepared for by this hesita-
tion-which is more than a hesitation-this ambiguity, maintained under
the name of dialectic by Hegel, when it was found to have been po!iitcd at
the outset that the subject asserts himself as knowing himself.
Hegel has the courage to set uut, in effect, from Selbstbewusstsein in its
most naive formulation fbwnciation], namely that all consciousness knows
that it is consciousness. And yet he interweaves this departure point with a 102
series of criscs--Aufhebung, as he puts it-from which it results that thii; very
Selbstbcwu.~stsc£n, the inaugural figure of the master, finds its truth in the
work of the other par excellence, in the other who only knows himself through
having lost this body, this very body he support~ himself with, because he
wanted to retain it for its access to jouissance-in other words, the slave.
How can one not try to break this Hegelian ambiguity? How can one not
attempt to take a different path, starting out from what is given to us in ana-
lytic experience, which it is always a matter of returning to in order to grasp
it better?
More simply, it concerns the fact that there is a use of the signifier that
we can define by starting out from the master signifier's split from this body
We have just mentioned, the body lost by the slave, which becomes nothing
other than the body in which all the other signifiers are inscribed.
90 The Other Side of Psychoanaly1ds
It is in this sort of way that we might illustrate the knowledge that Freud
defines by placing it between the enigmatic parentheses of the
Urverdrangt- which means precisely what has not had to be repressed
because it bas been repressed from the scan. This headless knowledge, if I
can put it like that, is indeed a politically definable fact, structurally defin-
able. Consequently, everything chat is produced through work-I mean this
in the strict, full sense of the word " produced"-evcrything that is pro-
duced concerning the truth of the master, namely what he as subject hides,
is going to join company with this knowledge insofar as it is split off, u~
drangt, insofar as it is split off and nobody understands a thing about it.
There you have what, I hope, rings true for you-without your knowing
whether it's ringing on che left or on the right. This is initially structured in
what bas been called the mythical support of certain societies. We can ana-
lyze them as ethnographic, that is to say, as escaping the master's discourse,
to the extent that the latter begins with the predominance of the subject as,
in face, tending to be supported only by this ultrareduced myth of being
identical with his own signifier.
This is where I indicated to you last time what in mathematics has an
affinicy with chis discourse, where A repn:sencs itself, witho u L auy m:cd fur
a mythical diqcourse to give it its relations. This is how mathematics repre-
sents the master's knowledge insofar as it is constituted on the basis of
other laws than those of mythical knowledge.
I 03 In short, the master's knowledge is produced as knowledge that is
entirety autonomous with respect to mythical knowledge, and this is what
we call science.
Last time I sketcbcd this out for you by briefly mentioning thermody-
namics and, later, the total unification of the field of physics. This unifica-
tion rests on the preservation of a unit that is nothing ocher than a constant
chat is always rediscovered in the calculation-I will not even say in the
quantification-by an operation on figures, that is, ooc defined in such a
way as to make this constant appear in the calculation every time. There
you have what alone supports what is called, at the foundation of physical
science, energy.
This support stems from the fact that mathematics is constrm"tible .. onJy
on the basis of the fact that the signifier is capable of signifying itself. The
A that you have written down on one occasion can be signified by its repe-
tition as A. Now, this position is scrictly untenable, it constitutes a violation
of the rules with respect co the function of the signifier, which can signify
anything except, surely, itself. It is this initial postulate that one must chrow
off in order for the discourse of mathematics to get started.
Between the two, the original violation and the construction of the dis-
course of energetics, the djscourse of science only sustains itself, in logic,
by making truth a play of values, by radically avoiding its entire dynamic
power. In effect, the discourse of propositional logic is, as has been stressed,
fundamentally tautological. It consists in ordering propositions composed
in such a way that they are always true, wbarever the value, true or false, of
(be elementary propositions. Isn't chis to rid oneself of what I have just
been calling the dynamism of the work of truth?
Well then, the analytic discourse is specified, is distinguished by the fact
chat it raises rhe question of what the use is of rhis form of knowledge which
rejects and excludes the dynamics of truth.
A first approximarioo- ics use is to repress what inhabits mythical
knowledge. But, excluding the latter at the same time, it knows [connaitJ
nothing more about it except in the form of what we rediscover under the
i.pecks of the unconscious, that is, as che debris of chis knowledge [savoir]
in the form of disjointed knowledge. What is reconstructed out of chis dis-
joinced knowledge will in no way make its way back into the discourse of
science, nor into its structural laws.
That is to say that here I am distancing myself from what Freud bas said
on this. This disconnected knowledge, such as we find it in th<: uncon- I 04
scious, is foreign to the discourse of science. And, precisely in this respect,
it is striking that rhe discourse of the unconscious imposes irself. It imposes
itself precisely by virtue of the fact I articulated the other day in chis form-
and you have to believe that, ifl employed it, I didn't find anything better--
that it doesn't bullshit. As stupid as this discourse of the unconscious is, it
is rci;punding to something that stems from the institution of the discourse
of 1.he oi.ai;Ler l.Jimi.df. This is what is called thi: unconscious. It imposes
itself upon science as a fuct (fair].
This fabricated [faite) , that is co say artificial [faaicel , science is unable
to misrecognizc what appears co it as an artifact, chis is true. It's just that
it is prohibited, precisely because it is the master's science, from raising
the question of the artisan, and this will make the fact all that much more
of a face.
Very shortly after the last war-I had already been born quite some time
before- ·-I took into analysis three people from the high country of Togo,
who had spent their childhood there.2 Now, I was unable, in their analysis,
to tind any trace of their tribal customs and beliefs, which they had not for-
gotten, which chey knew, but from the point of view of ethnography. It has
to be said that everything was done to separate them from this, given wtrnt
they were, these courageous little doctors who were crying to insert them-
selves into the medical hierarchy of the metropolis- these were still coJo-
2 Togu is a West African country that gained independence in 1960, having

been a French-administered tc:rritory since 1922.
92 The Other Side of P~ychtlanalysis
nial days. What they knew about this, then, at the level of the ethnographer
was more or less that of journalism_, but their unconscious functioned accord-
ing to the good old rules of Oedipus. This was the unconscious that had been
sold to them along with the laws of coloniza.t ion, this exotic, regressive form
of the master's discourse, in the face of the capitalism called imperialism .
Their unconscious was not that of their childhood memories-you could
sense it- but their childhood was retroactively lived out in our famil-ial cat-
egories-spell the word how I showed you to last year. l defy any analyst
whatever, eveo one who has been out into the £cld, t o contradict me.
It is not psychoanalysis that can be used to conduct an ethnographic
inquiry. That said, che said inquiry has no chance of coinciding with
aucochtbonous knowledge, unless it be through reference to the discourse
of science. And unfortunately, the said inquiry has nor the slightest idea
about this reference, since it would be obliged to relativize it. When I say
that one cannot understand an ethnographical inquiry through psycho-
! 05 analysis, I certainly have the agreement of all ethnographers. I will have
rheir agreement less if I say that, in order to have a bit of an idea about chc
relativization of the discourse of science, that is to say, in order to have per-
haps a slight chance of conducting a correct ethnographical inquiry, one
musr, I repeac, n ot proceed by way of psychoanalysis, but perhaps, if there
is such a thing, be a psychoanalyst.
Here, at this crossroads, we state that what psychoanalysis enables us to
conceptualize is nothing other than this, which is in line with what Marx-
ism has opened up, namely that discourse is bound up with the interests of
the subject. This is what, frvm 1j111e tu Limt; Marx calls the economy,
because these interests are, in capitalist society, entirely commercial. It's
jusr mat since the market is linked to the masrer signifier, nothing is
resolved by denouncing it in this way. For the market is no less linked co
this signifier after the socialist rev{)lution.
I am now going co spell out che essential [propres] functions of discourse,

according co my way of stating them.
-~~ter signifier knowledg~-

subject jouissance
This putting into operation of discourse is defined by a split, precisely by

differentiating out the master signifier with respect to knowledge.
-- The castrated master 93
In societies that are called primitive, insofar as I describe them as not
being dominated by the master's discourse--1 am saying this for the benefit
of anyone who would like to know a bit more about it-it is quite likely that
the master signifier can be located by means of a more complex economy.
Indeed, the best sociological research in the field of these societies verges on
doing this. We should be delighted, particularly as it is no accident that the
master signifier functions more simply in the master's discourse.
It can be completely manipulated by means of this relation between S 1
and S 2 that you see written there. In this discourse the subject fuids him- 106
self, along with all the illusions that this comprises, bound to the master sig-
nifier, whereas knowledge brings about his insertion into jouissance.
Well then, this year I will make this contribution-these functions that
are specific co discourse are able to find different sites. Thls is what their
rotation around these four places defines, which as you see are in no way
designated by letters here, but only by what, whenever necessary, I call
" top," "left-hand side," " bottom," and "right-hand side."
I will add~ a bit late in the piece, in order to enlighten those who will have
designated them through the effect of a bit of nous, that here for instance
Wt'. havt'. uc:sire, and OD the other side dte site oflbe Ocher. This represents
what I spoke about, in an ancient register, at a time when I used co be
happy with this sort of approximation, when I said that man's desire is the
Other's desire.
The place underneath desire represents the place of truth. Under the
Other it is the place where loss is produced, the loss of jouissa1Jf:e from
which we exuact the function of surplus jquissance.
desire Other
truth loss
This is where the hysteric's discourse gets its price from. It has the merit of
maintaining in the discursive institution the question uf what the sexual
relation is, namely how a subject is able to maintain it or, to express it bet-
ter, is unable to maintain it.
As a matter of fact, the answer to the question of bow he is able to main-
tain it is the following-leave speech to the Other, and precisely as locus of
repressed knowledge.
What is interesting is the truth that what is in sexual knowledge is
entirely yielded up as foreign to the subject. This is what in Freudian dis-
course was originally called the repressed.
But this is not what matters. Taken in its pure form this has no other
effect, if one can say this, than a justification of obscurantism-truths that
are important co us, and more than slightly, are condemned to obscurity.
This is not the case at all. I mean that the hysteric's discourse does not
testify to the fact that what is inferior is down below. On the contrary, as a
battery of functions it is indistinguishable from those assigned to the mas~
107 ter's discourse. And this is what enables the same letters that are in the
service of the latter to appear there-S, S 1> S2 , and a.
s s.
a S.
It's simply that the hysteric's discourse reveals the master>s discourse's rela-
tion co jouissance, in the sense that in it knowledge occupies the place of
jouissance. The subject himself, the hysteric, is alienated from the master
signifier as be whom this signifier divides-~he," in the masculine, repre-
sents the subject-he who refuses to make himself its body. People speak
about somatic compliance with respect to hysterics. Although the term is
Freud's, can' t we see that it is very odd, and that it's more a question of the
body's refusal? In following the effect of the m aster signifier, the hysteric is
not a slave.
Let's give him the gender under which chis subjecc is most often embod-
ied. She, in her own way, goes on a kind of stn"ke. She doesn't give up her
knowledge. She unmasks, however, the master's function, with which she
remains united, by emphasizing what there is of the master in what is the
Ooe with a capital "0," which she evades in her capacity as object of his
desire. This is his crue function which a long time ago we located, ar least
in the field of my school, under the title of idealized father.
I won't beat about the bush. rll mention Dora- one h as t<»-which l pre-
sume everyone who ha.<; come here to listen to me is familiar with.3
You must read Dora and throughout all the convoluted interpretations-
! use the very term Freud gives for the economy of her maneuvers- not
lose sight of something that 1 would go so far as to say Freud covers with
his prejudices.
I am making a little detour. Whether you have the text in your h ead or
not, consulr it, and you will see these sentences that for Freud seem co be
self-evident- for instance, that a girl can sort out these little difficulties all
on her own or, even, when a man throws himself at her, she still mustn't
create a scene over it, when one is a nice girl, of course. And why? Because
this is how Freud thinks. Or again, and this goes even further, that a nor-
108 mal girl should not be disgusted when someone puts the hard word on her.
Thac seems co be self-evident. You have to recognize the operation of what
·3 Sigmund Freud, "Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria," SE

7:1- 122.
l am calling a prejudice in a certain way of approaching what is revealed
here by our Dora.
If this text has nevertheless retained some of the reference points I am
crying to induct you into, you will see that it will not seem illegitimate to
you yourselves to pronounce this word "convoluted " that I unered just
before. Perhaps the extraordinary subtlety, the asruc:eness, of these rever-
sals, the multiple planes ofwhicb, as Freud explains, refract Dora's maneu-
vers, as I call them, in matte.rs of love across three or four successive
defenses, so as to echo what Freud himself designated in his text Die
Traumdeutung, will make apparent to you that there these convolutions
depend on a particular approach.
Along the lines of what I announced at the start of my discourse today
on the father, that the subjective conjuncture of its signifying articulation
receives a certain kind of objectivity, why not begin with the fact that
Dora's father, the pivotal point of the entire advenrure, or misadventure, is
strictly a castrated man, I mean as concerns his sexual potency? It is obvi-
ous that he has had it, that he is quite unwell
In every case, from Studien iiber Hysierie onward, the father is himself
made out: of symbolic appreciation. After all, even an ill person or a dying
person is what he is. To consider nim as deficient in relation to a function
in which lie is not occupied is to give him, properly speaking, a symbolic
affectation. It is implicitly to proffer that the father is not meiely what he
is, that it is a title like "ex-soldier"-be is an "ex-sire." H e i'> a father, like
the ex-soldier, until the end of his life. This implies that in the word "father"
there is something that is always in fact potentially creating. And it is in
relation co chis fact that, in this symbolic field, ic must be observed that it
is the father, insofar as he plays chis pivotal, major role, this master role in
t he hysteric's discourse, chat, from this angle of the p ower of creation, sus-
tains bis position in relation to the woman, even as he is out of action. This
is what is specific to the function from which the hysteric's relation to the
father stems, and it is very precisely this thac we designate as the idealized
father.
I told you I wouldn't beat about th<.: bush. I am taking Dora and I am 109
asking you to reread the caisc after me in order to see whether what l am
saying is true. Well then, how does what is organized within Herr K.j whom
l shall curiously call here the third man, suit Dora?
I have been saying it for a long time, but why don't we take it up again,
cleaving to the structural definition such as we can give it with the help of
the master's discourse? What suits Dora is the idea that he has the organ.
Freud sees this and he indicates very precisely that it's what plays the
decisive role at the outset, in Dora's initial run-in, if I can put it like this,
With Herr K. when she was four teen, and when the other corners her in a
window recess." Inno way does this affect relations between the two fami-
lies. Moreover, nobody thinks of being astonished by it. As Freud says, a
girl works th.is sort of thing out on her own. What is curious is that, as it
happens, she does not work it out on her own, she puts everyone else on
the spot-though later.
Well, why " the third mao"?To be sure, it's the organ which gives him his
price, not so thar Dora can find happiness in it, if I can put it thus, but so
that another woman should deprive him of it.
What Dora is interested in is not the jewel, even indiscreet. Recall this
observation that lasts for three months, and which is entirely meant for
serving as a cupule for two dreams. The first dream, the one called the
dream of the jewel box, bears this out-it isn't the jewel, it's the box, the ·
envelope of the precious organ, there you have the only thing sh e gets jouis-
sance out of.
She knows very well how to gecjouissance from it herself, as is oom e out
for us by the decisive importance of infantile masturbation, whose mode
m oreover is in no way indicated in the observation, unless it's that it is
probable chat it bad some relationship with what I will call the fluid, flow-
ing rhythm, the model of which is enuresis. In her history her enuresis is
given to us as belatedly induced by her brother's, who, a year and a half
older rhan her, had got co eight years of age affected by enuresis so that she,
in a way, belatedly takes up the running.
This enuresis is completely characteristic and is like a stigma, as it were,
of the imaginary substitution of the child for the father, specifically as
l I0 irnpocent. Here I invoke everyone who, from their own t:Xperiencc with
children, can gather such episodes, for which it is quite frequent to seek the
intervention of an analyst.
Add to this the theoretical contemplation of Frau K., if I can put it chis
way, such as it unfolds in Dora's resting, operunouthcd, before the D resden
Madonna. It is Frau K wb.o knows how to sustain the idealized father's
desire, but also how to contain the respondent, if I can put h: like this, and
at the same time bow co deprive Dora of itJ who thus finds hersdf doubly
removed from his grasp. Well then, by virtue of this, this complex is the
mark of the identification with a jouissance qua the master's jouissance.
A little aside. It is not nothing to recall the analogy that has been made
between enuresis and ambition. But let us confirm the condition imposed
upon Herr K.'s presents- they have to be a box. He never gives her any-
thing else, a jewel box. For she is the jewel. His jewel, his indiscreet jewel
as I was saying before, if only it would go and lodge itself elsewhere, and
that this be known. Whence the rupture whose meaning 1 marked a long
4 SE 7:28.
time ago, when Herr K. says to her, "My wife means nothing to m e." It
is quite true that at this moment the Other's jouissance is offered her, and
she doesn 't want to have anything to do with it because what she wants
is knowledge as the means of jouimmce, but in order to place this knowl-
edge in the service of truth, the truth of the master that she embodies
as Dora.
And this truth, to say it at last, is that the master is castrated.
In effect, if the sole jouissance to represent happiness, which last time I
defined as perfectly closed, the jouissance of the phallus, were tQ dominate
rh.is master-··you see the term I am u sing, the master is only able to domi-
nate by excluding her-then how would the master establish this relation-
ship with knowledge- the knowledge held by the slave-the benefit of
which is the buildup of surplus jouissance? The master can only dorrnnatc
h im through excluding this jouissance.
M oreover, cbe second dream indicates that rhe symbolic father is indeed
rhe dead father, that one accedes to him only thro ugh an empty place that
is without communication . Recall the s tructure of this dream, che manner
in which she receives the announcement by her mother, "Come if you like,»
che mother says, as if echoing the fa ct that Frau K . invited b cr, the other
time, to come to the place where all the scenes that we have mentioned
must have caken place with her husband. " Come if you Like, your father is
dead, and he is being buried"-and the manner in which she cakes herself
there, without it being possible to know in the dream b y what means she
manages to get t o a place about which she has to wonder whether this is 111
really the place where her father dwells, as if 1Sht: <lidn't know the answer. 5
Well then, in this empty box of an apartment deserted by those who,
having invited her, have for their part left to go to che cemetery, Dora eas-
ily finds her substitute for this father in a big book, the dictionary, the one
where one learns about sex. 6 She indicates clearly there that what matters
lo her, even should this be beyond the death of her father, is thac he pro-
d uce knowledge. And not just any knowledge knowledge about the truth.
This will b e sufficient for her, in the p sychoanalytic experience. She will
get enough satisfaction from getting everybody to acknowledge this truth
to which Freud carefully helps her-and this is what attaches her to him .
T be true stare of affairs concerning her father's relation:; with Frau K., and
concerning her own relations with Frau K., everything that the others
wanted to bury concerning episod es that were n evertheless perfectly
authentic, and were episodes of which she makes herself the represenca-
tivc-all of that is necessary, which is sufficient for her co conclude, with
5 SE 7:94.
6 SE 7: 100.
98 T he Other Side of Psychoanalysis
dignity, what has gone on in the analysis, even if Freud does not appear at
all satisfied with its outcome concerning her destiny as a woman.
There would be a few minor remarks to make in passing, which won't be

in vain.
For instance, concerning the jewelery dream, where Dora is leaving
because of the threat of fire, Freud, pausing in the analysis, cells us that one
must not forget that a dream stands on rwo feet, and that it is nor sufficient
that it represent a decision, a lively desire, by the subject as to the present.
There must be something that gives it support in a desire from childhood.
And here, he rakes as his reference-this is usually taken as a display of ele-
gance- -the entrepreneur, the entrepreneur of decisions, in his relationship
to the capitalist whose accumulated resources, the capital of hoido, will
enable this decision to pass inco action.
These arc things that took like they are a metaphor. Isn' t ic amusing to
see how this takes on a different value after what I have been telling you
concerning the relationship becween capitalism and the function of the
master-concerning the altogether distinct nature of what can be done with
112 the process of accumulation in the presence of surplus jouissam:e-in the
very presence of this surplus jouissance, to the exclusion of the big fat jouis-
sance, plain jouisscmce, jaui.ssance that is realized in copulation in chc raw?
Isn' t thjg p recisely where infantile desire gets its fon::e from, its force of
accumulatioo wid1 respect to this object that constitutes the cause of desire,
namely that which is accumulated as libido capital by virtue, precisely, of
infantile non-maturity, rhc exclusion of jouissance that others will crul nor-
mal? There you have what suddenly gives Freud's metaphor its proper con-
notation when he refers to the capitalist.
But on the other hand, if through his lucid courage Freud happened to
carry a dcgr:::c of success with Dora to term, nevertheless, I would say, his
clumsiness as regards retaining his patient is no less clearly in evidence.
Read d1ese few lines in which, in some way despite himself, Freud indi-
cates the extraordinary lengths which are, good heavens, stnggering,
pathetic, he goes on to tell himself that perhaps, by showing more interest
in her- and God knows he shows her plenty of it, the entire case demon-
strates it. ··he would no doubt have succeeded in getting her to take further
this exploration into which- it cannot be said on his own admiS$iOn- he
did not manage to lead her without making mistakes.
Thank heavens Freud didn't do this. Fortunately, in giving Dora these
satisfactions of being interested in what he felt as her demand, her demand
for love, he didn't take, as is customary, the mother's place. For one thing
is certain. Isn't it to this experience, however much it could have altered his
attitude subsequently, that we owe the fact that Freud observed-and he
drops his head, he is discouraged by it- chat everything he was ever able to
do for hysterics ends in nothing ocher than what he pins down as Penisneid?
Whlch means, explicitly, when it is spelled out, that where this ends is in
the girl's reproaching her mother for not having created her a boy, that is,
in carrying forward onto rhe mother, in rhe form of frustration, what, in its
meaningful essen ce, and in such a way that it gives the hysteric's discourse
its place and its living function with respect to rhe master's discourse, is
divided into, on the one band, the castration of the idealized father, who
yields the master's secret, and, on the other hand, privation, the assump-
tion, by the subject, whether feminine or not, of the jouissanc.e of being
deprived.
And why did Freud fall into error at this point, whereas, if my analysis
of today is to be believed, he only had lirerally ro chew over what was being
hand-fed to him? Why did he substitute this myth, the Oedipus complex,
for the knowledge that he gathered from all these mouths of gold, Anna, 113
Emma, Dora?
The Oedipus complex plays the role of knowledge with a claim to truth,
that is to say knowledge that is located in the figure of the analyst's dis-
course in the site of what just before I was calling the site of rruth.
a - S
s. s.
lf all analytic interpretation has caken the path of gratification or non-
gratification, of a response or not to demand, in short, the path toward an
ever-increasing duding, in favor of demand, of what is the dialectic of
desire, metonyrnic sliding when it is a question of assuring the constant
object, it is probably a function of the strictly unusable character of the
Oedipus complex. It is odd that this did not become clearer more quickly.
And in effect, who uses, what place is held by this reference to this
famous Oedipus complex? I ask all chose here who are analysts to reply.
Those who are from the Institute never use it, to be sure. Those from my
school make some small effort. Of course, this doesn't yield anything, it
comes down to the same thing as for the others. It is strictly unusable.,
except as this coarse reminder of the mother's value as an obstacle to all
invesrment in any object as the cause of desire.
\Vhence the extraordinary ruminations that analysts come to concerning
the "combined parent," as they say. That means only one thing- · construct-
100 The Other Side of Psychoanal}'1;is
ing an A as receiver ofjouissance, one generally called God, with whom it is
worth the effort of playing double or quits with surplus value, that is, this
functioning called the superego.
I am spoiling you today. I hadn't produced this word before. I had my
reasons. I had to get at least to the point I am at so that what I stated last
year about Pascal's wager could become operative.
Perhaps some of you will have guessed-the superego is exactly what I
was beginning to spell out in telling you that life, this provisional life that is
114 played out in favor of a chance of eternal life, is the a, but that it is only
worth the effort if the A is noc barred, in other words, if it is everything at
once. However, just as the combined parent doesn't exist, there is the father
on one side and the mother on the other, so the subject also doesn't exist,
it is equally divided in two, as it is barred, as, in a word, it is the response
designated in my graph to the utterance-this seriously calls into question
whether one can play at doubling surplus enjoyment or nothing with
eternal life.
Yes, this recourse to the myth of Oedipus is really quite sensational. It is
worth making the effort to elaborate this. And I was thinking of getting you
today to appreciate whac is outrageous in the fact that Freud, for example,
in the last of the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, should think
he had cut the question of the rejection of religion off from any acceptable
horizon, should think that psychoanalysis has played a decisive role in this,
and should believe that it was the end of the matter when he has told us
that the support of religion is nothing other than this father whom the child
ha:; n:l:uurst: lo in its l:hildhood, and who he knows is all loving, that he
anticipates, forestalls what may manifest itself within him as malaise.
lsn't this an odd thing when one knows how things in fact are with the
father's function? To be sure, this is not the only point at which Freud pres-
ents us with a paradox, namely, the idea of referring this function to some
kind ofjouissance of all the women, when ic is a well-known fact that a father
barely suffices for one of them, and even d1en- he muslu'L buasl abuul iL.
A father has, with the master- I speak of the master as we know mm, as he
functions-only the most dh;tant of relationships since, in short, at least in
the society Freud was familiar with, it is he who works for everybody. He
has responsibility for the "famil" I was speaking of before. Isn't that suffi-
ciently strange to suggest to us that after all what Freud retains in fact, if
not in intention, is very precisely what he designates as being the most
essential in religion, namely, the idea of an all-loving father? This is indeed
what is designated by the first of the three forms of identification that he
distinguishc~ in the article I mentioned before-the father is love, the first
thing to be loved in this world is the father . Strange vestige. Freud believes
----·-··---·-·--
that this will make religion evaporate, whereas it is really the very substance
of it that he preserves with this strangely composed myth of the father.
We shall come back to this, but you can all see the main thread-it all
ends with the idea of the murder, namely that the original father is the one 115
whom the sons have killed, after which it is through the love of this dead
father that a certain order unfolds. In all its enormous contradictions, in its
baroqueness and its superfluousness, doesn't this seem to be nothing but a
defense against these truths that the abundance of all these myths clearly
spells out, well before Freud diminishes these truths in opting for
the myth
of Oedipus? What is there to conceal? 1bat, as soon as the father enters the
field of the master's discourse where we are in the process of orientating
ourselves, he is, from the origins, castrated.
This is what Freud gives us the idealized version of, and it is completely
masked. However, the experience with the hysteric, if not her sayings, at
least the configurations she presented him with, should have guided him
better here than the Oedipus complex does and led him to consider that
this suggests that, at the level of analysis itself, everything is to be put back
into question concerning what is necessary from knowledge, in order for
this knuwletlge Lu bt:: l:alk<l inlu 4ut::sliu11 in Liu: silt: uf lrulh.
There you have the aim of what I am trying to unpack for you here this
year.
18 February 1970
117
VII
Oedipus and Moses
and the father of the horde
TH~ MASTJ;k'S i'UJU; KNO\'VU!DGE
T.lil! MALAISE OF nm ASTul1JED
GfiNfi,.\l.OGY OF SUki'LL'S YALU.I::
THI:: flliW OP BULl..SllITTING
THI! OED!l't;s C:OMPT.TIX, FREUD'S DR!lA.\1
The formulation I tried to give you of the discourse of analysis locates it on

the basis of the master's discourse, which is what, via all sorts of traces, at
first sight, it manifests itself as already related to.
Or rather analysis draws its importance from the fact that the truth of
the master's discourse is masked.
Among the four places in which are situated the articularing elements on
which I found the consistency that can emerge when these discour:>e:s art:
put into relationship with one another, the place I have designated as that
of truth is only distinguishable if we look at how things function with what
comes out of that articulation in that place. This is not peculiar to it, the
same can be said of all the others.
The localization that consisted until now of designating the places as
"upper right" or "upper left" and so forth arc of course not satisfactory. It
is question of a level of equivalence of functioning. For example, one could
thus write that what is the S 1 in the master's discourse can be said to be
congruent with, or equivalent to, what comes and functions as S 2 in the
university discourse, in what I have qualified as such so as to focus the
mind, or at least the mental accommodation.
M (S.) .:.::, U (S~)
118 The place in question will be said to function as the place of orders, of the
command, whereas the place that is subjacent to it in my various little four-
legged schemas is the place of truth, which does indeed pose its own problem.
102
Oedipus and Moses and the father of the horde 103
At the level of the master's discourse, in effect, the place on the lower left
can be occupied only by this ~ which, in truth, initially nothing necessi-
tates, occupied only by what in the first instance does not quietly place
itself as identical with itself. I will say that this is the principle, not of mas-
tered, but of "master-ized" discourse, with a hyphen, the principle of dis-
course insofar as acting the master is to think of oneself as univocal.
And surely it is psychoanalysis that leads us to say that the subject is not
univocal. Two years ago, when I was trying to characterize the psychoana-
lytic act-a trajectory that has remained broken down and, like others, will
never be taken up again-I gave you the resounding formulation, "Either I
am not thinking or I am not." This alternative, simply through being pro-
duced, comes to play a role, and a fairly resounding one, as soon as the
master's discourse is at issue.
Nevertheless, in order to justify this formulation, we still need to pro-
duce it, moreover, where it is simply evident. le has to be produced in the
dominant place in the hysteric's discourse in order for it to be in effect quite
certain that the subject is confronted by this "vel" that is expressed in the
"either I am not thinking or I am not." There where I am thinking I do not
recognize myself, I am not, this is the unconscious. 'There where I am, fr is
all too clear that I am lost.
In truthj presenting things in this way shows that, if this has remained
obscure for such a long time at the level of the master's discourse, it is pre-
cisely because it has been in a place which, by virtue of its very structure,
masked the division of the subject.
What have I said, in c.ITc<.:t, abuut any pu:;:;iblt: :;ayiug fdz'rel in Lht: plact:
of truth? The truth, I have been saying, can only be stated via a half-saying
[mi-dire], and I have given you a model for it in the enigma. Fnr this is how
it is always presented to us, and certainly not in the form of a question. The
enigma is something that presses us for a response in the name of a mortal
danger. Truth iis a question, as has been known for a long time, only for the
administrators. "What is truth?" We know by whom that was, on one good
ocL:asion, eminently pronounced.
But this form of haU:-saying that truth rc~tricts itself to is one thing, and 119
this division of the subject which takes advantage of this to mask itself is
another. The division of the subject is something quite different. If "where
he is not, he is thinking," if "where he is not thinking he is," it is indeed
because he is in both places. And I would even say that this formulation of
the Spal11.mg is improper. The subject partakes of the real precisely in that
it is impossible, apparently. Or, to put it better, if I had to employ a figure
that doesn't occur here by chance, I W<)uld say that the case with it is like
that of the electron, where the latter is proposed to us as being at the inter-
section of the wave theory and the corpuscular theory. \Ve arc forced to
admit that it's as one and the same that it passes through two separate holes
at the same time. The order, therefore, of what we characterize by the Spa/-
tung of the subject is different from the one that commands that truth can
only be figured through being stated in a half-saying.
Something appears here that it is important to stress. From this very
ambivalence, taking the word up in another sense, through which truth is
figured only as a half-saying, each of the formulas on the basis of which a
discourse can be located takes singularly opposite senses.
Is this discourse good, is it bad? I pin it down as the university discourse
intentionally, because it h:;, in a way, the university discourse that shows
where it is capable of sinning, but in its fundamental disposition it is,
equally, the one that shows what guarantees the discourse of science.
s. ... a
S 2 lJccupics the dominant place in that it is this place of the order, the
command, the commandment, this place initiaHy held by the master, that
knowledge has come to occupy. Why does it come about that one finds
nothing else at the level of its truth than the master signifier, insofar as it
brings the master's order?
This is what the current movement of science depends on, afcer it hesi-
tated for a moment, which we have evidence for in Gauss, for instance,
when we see in his dairies that he had come close to the remarks that a Rie-
mann subsequently put forward, and made the decision nm: to release
120 them. "'One doesn't go any further." Why put this knowledge into circula-
tion, even though it's purely logical, if it seems that on this basis, much that
is in a state of rest may effectively be disturbed by it?
It is clear that we are no longer at the same point. This stems from
progress, from this seesaw that I describe as a quarter turn, which brings
au um1alUral kuuwledge out of it:; primitive localization at die level of the
slave into the dominant place, by virtue of having become pure knowledge
of the master, ruled by his command.
\'(!ho, in our day, is capable of dreaming even for an instant of arresting
the movement of articulation of the discourse of science in the name of
anything at all that could come out of it? Things are already at that stage,
for heaven's sake. They have shown where we are headed, from molecular
structure to atomic fission. Who can think for even one instant that it would
be possible to stop chat which, through an interplay of signs, and by over-
throwing content in favor of changing combinatory places, incites the the-
oretical attempt to put oneself to the test of the real, jn a manner which,
through revealing the impossible, brings about a new power?
It is impossible not to obey the commandment there in the place of what
is the truth of science, "Continue. March on. Keep on knowing more and
more."
Very precisely, every question about the truth of this sign, about the fact
that the sign of the master occupies this place, is properly speaking
quashed, and in particular every question about what may be veiled by this
sign, the S 1 of the command, "Keep on knowing," about what this sign,
through occupying this place, contains that is enigmatic, about what this
sign that occupies this place is.
In the field of these sciences that courageously call themselves human
sciences we see clearly that the command, "Continue to know," creates a
bit of a stir. In effect, as in all the other little squares or schemas with four
legs, it is always the one up here on the right that does the work-and thus
gets the truth to emerge, for this is the meaning of work. In the master's dis-
course this place is occupied by the slave, in the discourse of science it is
the a stud~nt.
One might play around with this word, perhaps it might revitalize the
question a bit.
A while ago we saw him compelled to continue to know on the level of
physical science. On the level of the human sciences we see something for
which a word would have to be made. I don't know yet if this is the right 121
one, but off the cuff, initially, instinctively, for its assonance, I would say,
"astudied."
If I bring this word into our vocabulary, I would have more chance than
when I wamed the name of the floor mop changed. "Asrudie<l" has mun::
justification at the level of the human sciences. The student feels "astud-
ied." He is "astudied" because, like any worker-get your bearings from the
other little orders-he has to produce something.
My discourse happens to give rise to responses that bear some relation-
ship to him. It's a rare occurrence, bur it happens from time to time, and it
givi::s 1m: pleasun:. Whi::n I came co the Ecole normale it so happened that
there were some young people who started discoursing on the subject of
science, which I had made the object of the first of my seminars in 1965. It
was pertinent, this subject of science, but it is clearly not self-evident. They
got rapped over the knuckles and it was explained to them that the subject
of science doesn't exist, and not at the very point at which they thought
they had made it emerge, namely in the relation between zero and one in
Frege's discourse. It was demonstrated to them that the progress of math-
ematical logic had enabled the subject of science to be completely
reduced-not sutured but vaporized.
The unease of the asrudied is, however, not unrelated to the fact that
they are nevertheless requested to constitute the subject of science with
~ ·

chcir own skin-which, on the latest account, seems to present a number of
difficulties in the zone of the human sciences. And it is thus that, for a sci-
ence so wen founded on the one hand, and so obviously triumphant on the
other, triumphant enough for it to be qualified as human, no doubt because
it takes humans for humus, things happen that land us on our feet again,
and bring us into contact with what follows from the fact that the pure and
simple command, that of the master, is substituted at the level of truth.
Don't think that the master is always there. lc's the command that
remains, the categoricaJ imperntive, "Keep on knowiog." There is no longer
any need for anybody to be present. We have, as Pascal says, all embarked
upon the discourse of science. It remains the case that the half-saying nev-
ertheless happens to be warranted by the obvious fact that, concerning the
human sciences, nothing holds together.
I would like t o arm myself against the idea that could emerge in some
retarded litde brain, that my propositions would imply that one should
restrain this science and that, all things considered, if we return to Gauss's
122 attitude, there may perhaps be some hope of salvation. These conclusions,
if they were imputed to me, could be very correctly characterized as reac-
tionary. I point them ou t because it is n ot w1thinkabie that, in wnes that,
in truth, I a m not very disposed to frequent, one might deduce this sort of
misunderstanding from what I am currently telling you. It would, however,
he necessary to get into one's bead the idea that in whatever ic might be that
I am articulating with a particular aim of clarification, there is nor the
slightest idea of progress, in the sense in which this term might imply a
happy outcome.
What truth, when it emerges, has that is resolvent can from rime to time
be fortunate-and then disastrous in other cases. One fails to see why truth
would always necessarily be beneficial. You would have to have chc devil in
you 10 imagine such a thing, when everything demonscra~s the contrary.
Concerning the position called that of the analyst- in cases that are more-
over improbable, for is there even a single analyst? Who knows? But <.me can
raise it theoreticaJly-··it is the object a itself that comes to the place of the
command . lt's as identical with the object a, that is to say with what pres-
ents itself for the subject as the cause of desire, that the psychoanalyst offers
h imself as the end point for this insane operation , a psychoanalysis, insofar
as it sets out on the trace left by the desire to know.
1 said at the start that this desire to know, the " epistemological drive" is
Oedipus and Moses and the fath~r of the horde 1 07
the name they have invented for it, isn't self-evident. It was a matter of see-
ing where it could have emerged from. As I PQinted outJ it wasn't the mas-
ter who invented that all on his own. Someone must have imposed it upon
hiJD. It wasn't the psychoanalyst, who, good heavens, has not always been
in evidence. And more<>ver, it is not he that instigates it, be offers himself
as the end point for anyone who gets binen by this particularly problematic
desire.
\Ve shall return to this. In the meantime, let me point out that in the
suucture of what's called the analyst's discourse, the analyse, you sec, says
co the subject, " Off you go, say everything that com es into your head, how-
ever divided it might be, no matter how clearly it demonstrates that either
you are not thinking or else you are nothing at all, it may work, what you J 23
produce will always be admissible [recevableJ."
a ~ S
s, s,
Odd. Odd for reasons that we will have to pwictuate, but which we can
begin to sketch out now.
You have been able to see, on the upper line of the structure of the mas-
ter's discourse, a fundamental relationship, which is, to state it quickly, the
one that forms the link between master and slave, by means of which, Hegel
dixit, the slave will over time demonstrate hie; truth to him-also by means
of which, Marx door, he will have been occupied during all th.is time in
fomenting his surplus jouis.sa11ce.
Why does he owe this surplus jouissam:e to the master? Th.is is what is
masked. What is masked at the level of Marx is that che master to whom
this surpJusjouissa1u:e is owed bas renounced everything, andjauissance first
up, because be has exposed himseJfto death, and because be remains firmly
fastened to this position whose Hegelian articuJation is clear. H e has
deprived the slave of the disposal of his body, to be sure, but thiq is ooth-
ing, he ha> left him bi~ jouissance.
How does jouissa11ce come back within che master's n :ach and express his
demand? I think I explained it well in its time, but I will pick it up again,
because the things that are important cannot be repeated too often. The
master in all this makes a small effort to make everyching work, in other
words, he gives an order. Simply by fulfilling his function as master he loses
something. It's at least through this something lost that something ofjouis-
sance has to be rendered to him--specifically, surplus jouissance.
If, by means of this relendes.5ness to castrate himself that h e bad, he hado ' t
computed this surplus jouissam:e, if he hadn' t converted it into surplus
\·aJue, in other words if he hadn' t founded capitalism, Marx would have
....
realized that surplus value is surplus jouissance. None of this, of course, pre-
vents it being the case that capitalism is founded by him, and that the func-
tion of surplus value is designated with complete pertinence in its
d evastating consequences. Nevertheless, to get on top of it, one would per-
124 haps need to know at least what the initial stage of its articulation is. It's not
b ecause one nationalizes the means of production at the level of sociaJism
in llnc country that one has thereby done away with surplus value, if one
doesn't know what it is.
In the master 's discourse, since it is, alJ the same, there that surplus jauis-
sance is situated, there is no relationship between what will more or less
become the cause of desire for a character like the mast~r who, as usual,
fail s to anderstand anything about it and what constitutes his truth. As a
matter of fact, there is a barrier here, on the lower level.
s. s,
S A a
The barrier which we are within reach of naming at the level of the mas-
ter's discourse is jouissance, quire simply insofar as it is prohibited, prob.Jl>-
ited fundamentally. One takes jouissance by morsels, but as for going right
to the end, I have already told you how that is embodied-co need to reac-
tiv:nc Jechal fantasies.
This formula, as defining the master's discourse> bas the ioterest of
showing that it is the o nly one chat makes possible tbic; articulation chat we
have pointed out elsewhere as fantasy, insofar as it is a relationship a h as
with the division of the subject-($<> a).
In its fundamental beginning the master's discourse excludes fantasy.
And that's what makes him, fundamentally, completely blind.
The fact that fantasy can emerge elsewhere, and specially in analytic dis-
course where it stretches out along a horizontal line in a completely bal-
anced way, tells u.~ a bit more about the foundation of the master's
discourse.
Be that as it may for the m oment, taking things up again at the level of
the analyst 's discourse> notice that it's knowledge-that is to say the whole
articulation of existing S 2, everything that can be known- that is, in my way
of writing- I am not l>aying in the real-put in the place called the place of
truth . What can be known is, in the analyst's discourse, invited to functio n
in the register of truth.
125 We get the sense that this is of interest to us, but what o n earth docs it
mean? J have not made this detour into what is current today for nothing.
T bc low level of tolerance> let us say, for the fact that knowledge in the form
knowo as science, m odern science, has taken off at a gallop is what can per-
haps, without our always understanding much further than the end of our
nose, make us sense that surely, if, somewhere, we have an opportunity for
it to make sense to question knowledge in terms of truth, it must be in our
little turnstile, at least if we are prepared to trust it.
I am saying this in passing. It's for instance what justifies my saying that
since at one time they gagged me when I was about to speak about the
names of the father I will never talk about them again. That seems to be teas-
ing, not nice. And then-who knows?-there are even people, science fanat-
ics, who tell me, "Keep on knowing. But what? But you have to say what you
know about the names of the father!!" No, I will not say what the name of
the father is, precisely because I am nor part of the university discourse.
I am a little analyst, a rejected stone initially, even if in my analyses I
become the cornerstone. As soon as T get up off my chair I have the right
to go for a walk. That is reversed, the rejected stone which becomes a cor-
nerstone. It may also be, inversely, that the cornerstone goes for a walk. Ir's
even like that that I will perhaps have some chance that things will change.
If the cornerst:onc left, the entire edifice would collapse. There are some
wbo are cempted by this-
Wcll, Ie1's not joke about it. I simply cannot see why I should speak
about the name of the father, since, in my O\VD way, where it is placed, that
is to say al the level at which knowledge functions as truth, we are properly
speaking condemned to only being able, even on this poin~ still vague for
us, about the relationship between knowledge and truth, to declare any-
thing at all-ta.kc not:e-through a half-saying.
I do not know whether you sense che import of chis. Ir means that if we
say something in a certain way in this field there will be another part of it
which, by virtue of this saying itself, will become absolutely irreducible,
completely obscure. In such a way that, in sum, there is a degrt:c of arbi-
trariness, there is a choice chat can be made about what is in need of clar-
ification. If I do not speak about the name of the father, chis will enable me 126
to speak of other things. Thi~ will not be unrelated to the truth, but it's not
as it is for rhe subject-it won't be the same.
Let's return to what we observe about what knowledge becomes in the

place of truth, in the analyst's discourse.
I don't think you have been waiting for what I am going to tell you now
for it to appear for you. You must all the same remember that what occurs
there at the start has a name-it's myth.
1l0 The Otber Side of Psychoanalysis
To see ilii:; one hasn't had to wait for the master's discourse to fuJly
develop and reveal its last word in the capitalLcit's discourse, with its curious
copulation with science. Th.is has always been observed and, in any case, ic's
the totality of what we see where truth is concerned, the first troth in any
case, the one that is of some interest to us a bit all the same, even though sci-
ence makes us renounce it by giving us only its imperative, "Keep on know-
ing in a certain field"-a curious thing, in a field th.a t is in some discord with
what concerns you, my good man. Well then, it's occupied by myth.
Myth bas today been made a branch of linguistics. I mean that wha1 one
says that is most serious about myth comes our of linguistics.
I can only recommend on tills, in Structural Anthropology, a collection of
articles by my friend Claude Uvi-Strauss, that you refer to chapter 11,
"The Structure of Myths."l You will see the same thing there obviously
expressed as what r am telling you, namely that rruth is supported only by
a half-saying.
The first serious examination that one makes of these large units, as he
calls them, for they are mythemes, obviously yields tl1is, which I do not
impute to Levi-Scrauss, for I am leaving to one side what be writes literally.
The impossibility of connecting groups of relacions- ic is a question ofbun-
dJes of relations, as he defines myths-with one another is overcome, or,
more exactly, replaced by the affirmation that two mutually contradictory
127 relations are identical, this being so insofar as each is, like the other, self-
contradictory. In short, half-saying is the internal law of every species of
enunciation of the truth, and what incarnates it best is myth.
One can all the same declare oneself not to be altogether satisfied that
we are still, in psychoanalysis, dealing with myth. D o you know what effect
the use of the central typical myth of psychoanalytic discourse, the Oedi-
pus myth, has had upon the mythographers? I think that you can all answer
th.is question. It's quite amusing.
There ar~ people who have been occupied wich myths over a good
period of time. No one had waited for our dear friend Claude Levi-Strauss,
who bas contributed an exemplary clarity, in order to take a very lively
interest in che function of myth. There are circles in which one knows wbar
a myth is, even if one does not necessarily define it as I have just tried co
situate it for you-even though it is difficult to admit that even the m ost
obtuse operator does not see that everything that can be said about myth is
this, that the rruth reveals itself in an alternation of strictly opposite things,
which have to be made to revolve around one another. This holds for what-
I "The StructuraJ Study of Myth," pp. 206-31 in Scrnaural Anthropology

(New York: Basic Books, 1963).
Oedipus and Moses and the fath.er of the horde I JI
ever has been constructed ever since the world has been the world, includ-
ing the higher, very elaborate, myths like Yin and Yang.
One can bullshit a lot over myths, because it is precisely the field of bull-
shitting. And bullshitting, as I have always said, is truth. They are identical.
Truth enables everything co be said. Everything is true--<>n condition that
you exclude the contrary-except that it nevertheless plays a role that it be
like that.
Well, the Oedipus myth such that Freud made it function-I can tell you
for the sake of those who are unaware of this-makes the mythographers
inclinetl co laugh. They find this completely baseless.
Why is this privilege being given to this myth in analysis? The first seri-
ous study that it has been possible co make of it shows that ir is much more
complicated, moreover. As if by chance, Claude Levi-Strauss, who does not
refuse the challenge, states the comple£c myth of Oedipus in this same ar ti-
de. One can see that it concerns something quite different from whether or
not one is going to fuck one's mummy.
It is curious nevertheless that, for example, an altogether good mytho-
grapher, with a good head, from the right school, from the right stream that
begins with Boas and has converged upon Levi-Strauss, a 1,;ertain Kroeber, I 28
after having written an inflammatory book on Tbiem and Taboo has, twenty
years later, written something chat makes it known that aU the same this
must indeed have its raison d'etre, that there was something in it, he wasn't
able to say what, moreover, and that in this myth of Oedipus there was a
bone. 2 He doesn't say any more than this but, given the critique be made
of 'Ibtem and Taboo, it's altogerber noteworthy. I t !lad been bothering him,
having spoken so ill of it was plaguing him, above all when be saw that that
was spreading, namely that the latest student believed he was able to join
in the chorus- he couldn't bear that .
Totem and Taboo. One would need-lf don't know if you want me to do it
this year-to srudy how it is composed, it is one of the most twisted things
one can imagine. Ir's n ot at all the case chat b ecause I preach a return to
Freud I cannot say that Totem and Taboo is twisted. It's even for this reason
that one has to return to Freud-it's in order to perceive that if it's twisted
in this way, given chat he was a chap who knew how co write and think,
there must be a good reason for it. I would not like to add, "Moses and
Monotheism, d<>n't even mention it!" because, on the contrary, we are going
to talk about it.
You can see that all che same I am putting things in order for you, even
though I have not begun by giving you any kind of well-worn path. 1 have
2 See Alfred Louis Kroeber, " Totem and Taboo: An Etbnulogic Psychoanaly-
sis" (1920) and "Totem and Taboo in Retrospecc" (1939) in bis T'ne NQ,ture ofC1d-
ture (Chicago: Univcrsicy of Chicago Press> 1952).
done it entirely by myself, to be sure-nobody helped me--so chat we know
what formations of the unconscious are, for example, or the object relation.
One couJd think that now I am simply making little somersaults around
Freud. That's not what it's about.
Let's try to cotton onto, ever so little, something of what the Oedipus
myth is about in Freud. As I do n ot rush, I won't get to the end of it today.
I don't see why I should wear myself out. I speak with you as it comes to
me, and we shall see where, slowly, sJowly, it leads us to.
129 4
I will start at the end and give you my aim straighraway, because I don't see
why I shouldn't lay down my cards. Ir wasn't quite like this that I was
counting on speaking to you, but at least it will be clear.
I am not at all saying that the Oedipus complex is of no use, nor that it
bas no relationship with what we do. It is of no use for psychoanalysts,
that's true, but as psychoanalys1.i; are nOl ch::arly psyt:hoanalysLs, this doesn't
prove anything. Psychoanalysts arc becoming increasingly involved in
something which is, in effect, excessively important, namely the mother's
role. For heaven's sake, l have alr~dy begun t<1 examine these things.
The mother's role is the mother's desire. That's fundamental. The morher's
desire is not something thar is bearable just like chat, that you are indiffer-
ent. to. It will always wreak havoc. A huge cr-0codile in whose jaws yuu are-
that's rhe mother. One never knows whac might suddenly come over her
and make her shut her trap. That's what the mother's d esire is.
Thus, I have tried rn explain that there was something that was reassur-
ing. I am telling you simple things, l am improvising, I have to say. There is
a roUer, made out of scone of course, which is there, pt.>temially, at the level
of her trap, and it acts as a restraint, as a wedge. It's what is called the phal-
lus. I t's the roller that shelters you, if, all of a sudden, she closes it.
These are things that I have eJ.'Pounded in the.ir own time, at a time when
1 spoke to people one had to treat gently, p sychoanalysts. They had co be
told things crudely, like tbac, so chat they would understand. Moreover,
they didn't understand. I spoke therefore about this level of the paternal
metaphor. J have only ever spoken of the Oedipus complex in that form.
That should be a bit indicative, don't you think? I said that it was the pater-
nal metaphor, wh ereas this is nevertheless not how Freud presents rhings
to us. Above all he clings strongly to what actually happened, this blessed
story of the murder of the father of I.he horde, chis Darwinian buffoonery.
130 T he father of the horde--as if there bas ever been the slightest trace of it,
- Oedipus and Moses and the father of the horde L13
this father of the horde. We have seen orangutans. But nor the slightest trace
bas ever been seen of the father of the human horde.
Freud holds chat chis was real. H e clings to it. H e wrote the entire Tocem
and Taboo in order to say it-it necessarily happened, and it's where every-
thing began. Namely, all those little shitty things-including being a
psychoanalyst.
It's striking-someone could have got a little bit excited about this pater-
nal metaphor and known bow to make a little hole. This is what I have
always desired, that someone should make some progress, make a trace for
me, begin to show a little path. Anyway, be that as it m ay, it has never hap-
pened, and the question of Oedipus is intact.
I am going to make some preliminary remarks for you, because the tlling
really does have to be hammered home. This history can't be whisked away.
There's something that we are very u sed to, trained in, in analytic practice,
which is these stories of manifest content and latent content. That's our
experience.
For che analysand who is chere, in the S, tthe content is bis knowledge. We
arc there in order to get to the point where be knows ~cryrhing thac be
docs not know even as be kn0W1> it. That's what the unconscious is. Por the
psychoanalyst the latent content is on the other side, in S 1 • For him tbe
latenc content is the interpretation that he is going to give, insofar as it is,
not this knowledge that we discover in the subject, but what is added on to
it co give it a sense. This remark could be useful for some psychoanalysts.
Let's leave this manifest content and this latent content to one side for
the moment, except for retaining the terms. Whnr's :i myth? Don't all
answer at once. It's a manifest content.
This is not enough to define it, and we defined it differently before. Bue
it is dear that, if it is possible to puc a myth on index cards that one then
stacks up to see what combinations unfold, this is the manifest order. Two
myths are, one in relation to the other, exactly like these little machines that
you can tum around through ninety degrees and get rc~u lrs. They are not
latent, my linJe letters on the blackboard, they are manifest. Well, what's
that doing there? The manifest content has to be put to the test. And, hav-
ing done this, we shall see that it is not so manifest as all that.
Let's proceed like that- 1 am proceeding as best I can- let's recount 131
th~ story.
'fhe Oedipus complex as it is recount~d by Freud when he refers co
Sophocles is not at all treated like a myth. It's Sophocles' s tory minus, as
You will sec, its tragic component. According to Freud what Sophocles'
play r\..'Veals is that one sleeps with one's mother when one has killed one's
father--murder of the father andjouissance of the mother, co be understood
in the objective and the subjective senses, one enjoys me mother and the
- L 14 The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
mother enjoys. The fact that Oedipus absolutely does not know that he has
killed his father, nor that be causes his mother to enjoy, nor that he enjoys
her, changes nothing about the question, since, precisely, it is a fine exam-
ple of the unconscious.
I think I have been pointing out the ambiguity that there is in the use of
the term "unconscious" for long enough. As a substantive it's something
tbar in effect has the repressed representative of representation as its sup-
PQrt. One can say that chis poor Oedipus was unconscious, in the adjecti-
val sense. There is an equivocation there, the very least one can say.
However that may be, this does not disturb us. Bur, in order for it not to
disturb us one has to see what the things mean.
There is the myth of Oedipus, then, borrowed from Sophocles. And then
there is this cock-and-bull story 1 was speaking about earller, the murder of
the father of the primal horde. It is quite curious that the result is exactly
the contrary.
The old daddy had the women all to himself, which already is incredi-
ble-why would he have them all to himself?-whereas there are other
blokes around, nevertheless, perhaps they too might have their own little
idea. They kill him. The consequence is completely different from the myth
of Oedipus--for having killed the old man, the old orang, two things hap-
pen. I place one of them in brackecs, for it is incredible-they discover that
they are brothers. Well, that may give you some idea of what brotherhood
is about, I will give you a little elaboration, something t.emporary-we will
have the time perhaps t o return to it before we part this year.
The energy that we put into all being brothers very clearly proves that
we are not brothers. Even with our brother by birth nothing proves that we
are his brother-we can have a completely opposite batch of chromosomes.
1J2 This pursuit of brotherhood, without counting the rest, liberry and equal-
ity, is something that's pretty excraordinary, and ir is appropriate to realize
what it covers.
I know only one single origin of brotherhood - I m ean human, always
humus brotherhood-segregation. We are of course in a period where seg-
regation_. ugh! There is no longer any segregation anywhere, it's unheard of
when you read the newspapers. It's just that in society- I don't want to call
it "human" because I use terms sparingly, I am careful about what I say, I
am not a man of the left, I observe-everything that exists, and brother-
hood first and foremost, ii; founded on segregation.
No other brotherhood is even conceivable or has the slighteH founda-
tion, as I have just said, the slightest scientific foundation, unless it's
because people are isolated together, isolated from the rest. It is a matter of
grasping its function, and of knowing why it is like this. But, in the end, that
- Oedipus and Moses and the father of the horde
. . - - ·- - - -- - - -
115
it is like this jumps our at you, and acting as if it weren't true must, ne<:es-
sarily, have drawbacks.
What I said just then was half-saying. I am not telling you why it is like
this. Initially ir's because, if I say this is how it is, l am unable to say why
it's bow it is. That's an example.
Be that as it may, they discover they are brothers, one wonders in the name
of what segregation. This is co say that the myth is more li1:e a fable . And then,
they all decide, with one mind, that no one will touch the little mummies.
Because there is more than one of them, to top it off. They could exchange,
since the old father bad them all. They could sleep with their brother's
mother, specifically, since they are only brothers through their father.
No one ever seems to have been flabbergasted by this curious thing, the
extent to which Town and Taboo has nothing to do with the current use of
the Sophoclean reference.
Moses is the limit. Why does Moses have to be killed? Freud gives an
explanation, and it's the richest of them all- it's so that Moses will return
among the prophets, via repression no doubt, via mnesic transmission
through chromosomes, he is forced to admit.
The remark made by an imbecile like Jones that Freud docs not appe::ar
co have read Darwin is accurate. He had read him, however, since it's on
D arwin that he bases himself so as to carry Totem and Taboo off.
It's not for nothing that Moses and Mvnoiheism, like everything else Freud 1.33
writes, is absolutely fascinating. If on e is independent-minded, one can say
that it makes absolutely no sense at all. We will speak about it again. What
is ct.T taiu is lhal what th~ prophets are about docs not have anything at all
to do, chis time around, with jcuissance.
I ..ec me point our to you-and, who knows? perhaps someone could do
me this favor- chat I went off in search of the book that serves ai a basis
for what Freud says, namely the work of a certain Sellin published in 1922,
Mnse und seine Bedeuumg filr die israelitisch-jiidische Reugumsgcschichte.
This Sellin is not unknown. I obtained Die 7.wolf Pmph~ten. He begins
with Hosea LOseej. He's a minor on~ but a daring one [ose1-so daring, ic
lleerns, that he is the one in whom one finds a trace of who is supposed t o
have murdered Moses.
I must tell you that I haven' t waited to read Sellin before reading Hosea,
but never in my entire life have I been able to procure this book for myself,
and I am starting to become obsessed by ic. It's not in the Rihliothcque
nationale, it's not in the Alliance israelite universelle, and I have turned all
Europe upi:;ide down to get it. I still believe> though, that I will manage to
get my hands on it. If any of you had it in your pocket, you might biing it
to rne at the end of the seminar, I would r<.'tllrtl
. it co you.
116 The Other Side of Psychoanalysls
In Hosea there is one thing that is quite clear. This text H osea is extraor-
dinary. I don't know how many people there are here who read the Bible. I
can't say that I was brought up on the Bible, because I was raised a
Catholic. I regret it. But then, I don't regret it, in this sense that when I read
it now-well, "now" is a fair while ago-it has a fantastic effect upon me.
This familial delusion, these entreaties by Yahweh to bis people, which
contradict one another from one line to the next, it makes you sit up and
take note.
One thing is certain, all relations with women are [ ... ], as he says in
his strong language. I will write it in Hebrew on the blad.i>oard for you, in
very beautiful letlcrs. It's "prostitution," znunim.
134 Addressing H osea, this is the only thing ifs about-his people have
prostituted themselves definitively. Prostitution covers more or less every-
thing that surrounds him, the entire context. What the master's discourse
uncovers is that there is no sexual relation, I have already put this to you
in strong terms. Well chen, one has the idea that our chosen people found
themselves in a bit of a pickle where things were very probably different,
where there were sexual relations. This is probably what Yahweh calls pros-
titution. In any case, ir is quite clear that , if it's the spirit of Moses that
returns here, it is not exactly an issue of a murder which has engendered
access to jouissance.
All of this is so fascinating that no one has ever seemed co realize- it
would doubtless have seemed roo immediate, too stupid to make these
objections, and moreover they are not objections, we arc fully into our sub-
ject- that the prophets, in the final analysis, never mention Moses. One of
my best students made this remark to me-it has to be said chat she is a
Procesr:ant, to the point where s he had noticed this a long time before I did.
But above all, they absolutely do not speak of this thing that, for Freud,
seems to be the key, namely that the god of Moses is the same god as the
god of Akhenaton, a god who is supposed to be One.
As you know, very far from this being the case, the god of Moses simply
says of the other gods that one must not have relations with them, but he
docs not say that they do not exist. He says that one must not hasten toward
idols, but, after all, he's referring to idols that represent him, as was cer-
tainly the case of the Golden Calf . They we.r e expecting a god, chey made
a Golden Calf, that was quite natural.
We can see that there is a completely different relationship chere, which
is a relationship with truch. I have already said that truth is rhe little sister
of feuissance, we will have to come back to this.
Oedipus and Moses and the father of the horde 11 7
What is certain is that the crude schema murder of the father~ouissance

of rhe mor.her totally elides the tragic m ainspring. To be sure, it's through
murdering the father that Oedipus finds free access to Jocasta, and that this
is granted to him, to popular acclaim. Jocasta, as I have always sai~ knew
something about this, because women do not lack these little pieces of
information. She had there a servant who had been present during the
whole affair, and it would be curious if this servant, who returned to the
palace and who is found at the end, hadn't said to Jocasta, "I:Ie's the one 135
who blew your husband away." Be that as it may, it's not important. What's
important is that Oedipus was admitted tu Jocasta's side because he had tri-
umphed at a trial of truth.
We shall come back to the enigma of the Sphinx. And then, if Oedipus
comes to a very sticky end- we will see what this "comes to a ve.r y sticky
end" means, and to what extent that's called coming to a sticky end- it's
because he absolutely wanted to know the truth.
ft is not possible seriously to examine the Freudian reference withouc
bringing the dimension of truth to bear, along with murder and jouissance.
That's where I can leave you today.

It's simply that, seeing how Freud articuJares this fundamemal m yth, it
is clear that it is rruly incorrect ro put everything in the same basket as
Oedipus. What in God's name, so to speak, does Moses have to do with
Oedipus and the father of the primal horde? There really must be some-
thing there that stems from the manifest content and the latent content.
To finish up for today, I would say that whac we propose is to analyze the
O<.!dipus complex as being Freud's dream.
11 March 1970
137
VIII
From myth to structure
THE FATHER, A STIUJCTURAL Ol'llRATOR
nu; DEAD Fli TRE'R IS JOWSSANCE

ACT AND AGJ:Nl
THE RYSTmUC: WANTS A MA...-mR
A person in this audience saw fit, and I thank her for it, to be so kind as to
season what I said lai:.1: time with a certain disappointment. This person has,
as she put it, given me the pleasure---pleasure, as you knowi is che law of
least effort-of having preceded me down a pathway thac I am said to have
ope ned.
The person in question-I can see she is smiling, she is present, why not
name he r, Marie-Claire Boons-sent me, then, a little offprint from a
highly interesting journal called I:Inamscienr.. I have reasons for not having
read her article before. Th.is journal, in effect, in which there have been
some very good things, I must say, is n ot even distributed co m e, paradox-
ically perhaps because of thjs very fact that in principle, at least in its edi-
torial commircee, it u sed co base itself on ls'muorisai L del my teaching. My
attention having been drawn to this issue on "Patemiry," I first read the
article by Marie-Claire Boon.":> with great care, and then read another one
by our friend Conrad Stein. 1
I am quite prepared, if Marie-Claire Boons wants, to take her article today
as a text for commentary, and a number of questions might arise concern-
ing the path she takes over the father's murder in Freud. I believe, as a mat-
ter of fact, that it would easily appear that there is nothing in it chat
anticipates what I have already advanced concerning the Oedipus complex by
the date at which she published this article-advanced, I said, very modestly.
138 There i:; another method, which is that today I try to go further by show-
ing that this is nlready implied in the careful progress I have made up till
now. Then, perhaps, at a ~t:\.:und slagt:, uu lhe 01,;cas~on of one of our gath-
erings, what I would like to say will retroactively become clearer than if I
1 Marie-Claire Boons, '"Le meutre du pere chez Freud," J.:/nconscienl

5 ( 1968): l 01- 3 1; Conrad Stein, "Lepere morrcl ct k pcrc immortcl," /)Jncm1scisnl
5 ( 1968):59- 100.
118
From myth to structure 119
~ere just to leave you hanging concerning the different points in an article
which, in effect, from many aspects presents a sort of introduction, ques-
tioning, and, if you will, preparation.
You may express a wish here for one or other of these two methods-I
give the floor to Marie-Claire Boons.
I will proceed in the second way, then.
The fa ther's death. In effect, everyone knows that this appears to be the key
m, the vital point for everything chat is stated, and not only in the name of
mych, concerning what. psychoanalysis is about.
By the end of her article Marie-Claire BQons would even give us to
understand that many things flow from rhis death of the father and notably
a certain somech.ing that would make it the case that in some way psycho-
analysis frees u s from the law.
Fat chance. I am well aware that this is the register in which a libertar-
ian hook supposedly attaches itself ro psychoanalysis.
I think that this is not at all the cai;c, and thi~ is the entire meaning of
what I am calling the other side of psychoanalysis.
The father's dearh, insofar as it echoes this statement wirh its Nierz-
schean gravicy, this statement, this good news, that God is dead, does noc
seem to m e to b e of a kind to liberate u s, far from it. The first plank in the
proof of this is indeed Freud's own unerance. Quite rightly, at the start of
her article Marie-Claire Boons draws our attention to what I was already
saying two seminars ago, thac the announcement of the death of r:be father
is far from incompatible with the motivation for religion that Freud pro-
poses in the name of an analytic interpretation of the latter. Namely, reli-
gion iLi>df n::pust::s on something that Freud quite astonishingly puts
fonvard as primary, which is that it is the father who is recognized as
deserving of love. There is already the indication of a paradox here, which
leaves the author I have just named in a certain difficulty concerning the 119
fact that, in sum., psychoanalysis would prefer to maintain, to preserve, the
field of religion.
Herc, too, it can be said that this is not at all the case. The pinnacle of
psychoanalysis is well and truly atheism, provided one gives this term
another. sense than that of "God is dead," where all the indications are that
far from calling into question what is in p lay, namely the law, it is consoli-
dated instead. A long time ago I observed ithat for the sentence of old father
Karamazov, "If God is dead, then everything is permitted," the conclusion
120 T'he Other Side of Psychoanalysis
- - - - - - - - · -·- - - - ·---· ....
that forces itself upoo us in the text of our experience is that the response
to "God is dead" is "N othing is permitted anymore."
To clarify this point whose horizon I am announcing for you, let's start
with the death of the father, allowing chat Freud did declare it to be the key
to jouissan.ce, to jouissance of the supreme object identified with the mother,
the m other as the object of incest.
It is certainly not as an attempt to explain what sleeping with the mother
means that the murder of the father is introduced into Freudian doetrine.
On the contrary it's on the basis of the father's death that the prohibition
of this jouissance is esc.ablished in che first place.
As a matter of fact, it is not just the father's death that is at issue, but che
father's murder, as the person I am speaking of also put it very weU in the
title of her investigation . It's here, in che Oedipus myth as it is stated for us,
that the key to jouissan~ is found But if this is in fact how this mytb-\ve
are examining it closely-is presented to us in its sratement [emmce1, I have
already said that it is appropriate to treat the latter for what it is, namely
manifest com ent. By virtue of this fact one has to begin by expounding it
properly.
The Oedipus myth, at the tragic level at which Freud appropria1es it,
dearly shows that the father's murder is the condition ofjouissance. If Laius
is not brushed aside-in the course of a struggle in which, m oreover, it is
far from cc:rtain tbac by chis step Oedipus is going t o accede to jouissance of
the mother- if Laius is not brushed aside then there will not be any jouis-
sance. But does he obtain ic at the price of this murder?
It's here that the principal thing is presented, and becau se the reference
is taken from a myth enacted in tragedy, it becomes all important. He
obtains it in the name of the fact that he has delivered the pcopk from a
question chat is decimating its best by seeking to answer what p res ents itself
140 as an enigma, that is to say, what is represented as being supported by this
ambiguous being uf the Sphinx, in whom strictly speaking a double dispo- 1
~ition is incarnated, by virtue of being made, like the half-saying, from cwo
half-bodies. By answering, Oedipus finds himself-this is the ambiguity-
suppressing the suspense that the question of truth thus introduces among
the people.
He has surely no idea of the extent to which the answer he gives to that
question anticipates his own drama, nor of the extent to which, th.rough his
making a ch oice, this answer perhaps falls into the trap of truth. It's man.
Who knows what man is? Is it to say everything about him to reduce him
to the process- and h ow ambiguous it is in the case of Oedipus- which
makes him go first on aU fours, then on the two hind ones-in which Oedi-
pus, like his entire line, is characterized, as Claude Levi-Strauss has very
well pointed out, by oot walking straight-then, at the end, with the aid of
- From myth co structure 121
a stick which, while not the white cane of the blind man, was for Oedipus
nonetheless of the most unusual character, this third element being, to give
it its name, bis daughter Antigone?
Truth has strayed? What does that mean? ls this so as to leave the way
open to what for Oedipus will remain the path of return? For the truth will
reemerge for him, as this will be because h e will again want to intervene in
chc face of a misfortune that is twice as great this time, no longer decimat-
ing his p eople by the choice of those who volunteer for the Sphinx's ques-
tion, hut striking at all his people in this ambiguous form that is called the
plague, and for which the Sphinx is responsible in the themes of Antiquity.
This is where Freud points ouc for us that for Oedipus the question of truth
is renewed, and that it ends with what? With this thing that we arc able to
identify, in a first approximation, with somechiog th.ar at least bears a rela-
tionship to the price paid in the form of castration.
ls that really saying everything-given thal, in the end, what happens to
him is not that the scales fall from his eyes, buL chat his eyes fall from him
like scales? Don't we see Oedipus being reduced to this very object, not by
being subjeet to castration but, as I would prefer to say, by being castration
itsclf?-nameJy, being what remains when one of the privileged supports of
the object, in the form of his eyes, disappears from him.
What d oes 1his mean? It can only mean that the q uestion arises whether
the price he has to pay is n ot to be mounted on the throne by the path of
succession , but byway of being chosen as the m ascer,for having effaced the 141
question of truth? In other words, introduced to my statement, as you
already arc, that what constitutes the essence of the master's position is to
be castrated, can't you see chat here we find, veiled to be sure, bur indi-
cated, that what is properly called succession proceeds from ca!>tration also.
Given that fantasy is always very <..llliously indicated by, but never prop-
erly anached to, the fundamental myth of the father's murder, then, if cas-
tration is what strikes the son, is it nor also what brings him co accede, by
the righl palh, w whal tJ1c fw1ction of che father is abo ut? This is indicated
in all our experience. And does it not indicate chat castration is transmitted
from father to son?
Henceforth, what about death, which presents itself as being there at the
origin? Do we not have an indication here that it is perhaps a kind of mask?
Even though it has emerged from, been experienced in, the analyst's posi-
tion in the subjective process of the ftmction of castration, isn't there some-
thing here that nevertheless hides it, vdls ic in a certain way, and places it,
if one can put it this way, under it!> acgis?- and thereby saving us from
going to the heart of what the analyst's position enables us to state io a final
and rigorous manner?
Bow has this happened? It is not irrelevant to point out that the myth of
the father's murder, as essential, is initially encountered by Freud at the
level of the interpretation of dreams, where a wish for death appears. Con-
rad Stein's article produces a remarkable critique of this by picking up the
recrudescence of these death wishes with respect to the father at the very
moment at which his death became real. In Freud's own words The Inter-
pretation of Dreams emerged from his father's death. Freud thus wished to
be guilty for his father's death. 2
Is there equally here, as the author stresses, the mark of something hid-
den that might properly speaking be a wish that the father be immortal?
This interpretation is put forward along the lines of analytic psycholo-
gism, where it is regarded as a basic presupposition that the essence of the
child's position has its foundation in an idea of omnipotence that would
place it beyond death. In the hands of an author who does not abandon his
142 presuppositions, this interpretation is, if I may say so, predictable. On the
contrary, by criticizing what is said about what the essence of the child's
position is, it follows that these wishes for death and what they mask, if
indeed they mask anything, have to be explored via another avenue.
And in the first place, in the observations we have to make concerning
subjt:\:tivc:: ~lru\:Lurc:: a:s bi::ing dependant upon the introduction of the signi-
fier, can we place at the head of that structure anything at all we could call
knowledge [connaiSsance] of death?
For his line of interpretation, which is chat of a denial of death in the
name of omnipotence, Conrad Stein makes clever use of Freud's analyses
concerning a number of his major dreams, such as the famous request to
dose the eyes, with the ambiguity of this "an eye" under a bar, which he
also produces as the product of an alternative)
But it can also be read in another semc.
It is, in effect, perhaps susceptible to another sense,, if we take the last

dream in the same series and make it the central one, which I have done in
its day.
Freud himself puts the emphasis on a dream that is not his own, but one
of his patient's, n dream which goes, "He didn't know he was dead."4
I broke this dream down to analyze it, lining it up along the two lines of
2 SC1: "Preface to the Sec()nd Edition," SE 4:xxvi.

3 Sigmund Freud, SE 4:317- 8.
4 SE 5:430-1.
utterance and statement. This was designed to remind us that one of two
things must be true. Either death doesn't exist and there is something that
survives, but this does not resolve the question whether the dead know that
they are dead. Or there is nothing beyond death, and it is quite certain that,
in this case, they do not know it. This is to say that no one knows, no living
being in any case, what death is. It is remarkable that spontaneous produc-
tions formulated at the level of the unconscious arc stated on the basis of
this, that, for anyone, death is properly speaking unknowable.
In its day I emphasized that it is indispensable for life that something
irreducible does not know-I won't say, "Doesn't know that we are dead," 143
because that's not what we should say, in the name of "we/' we are not
dead, not all at once in any case, and that's our foundation- .. ·but, "Some-
thing docs not know thai: I am dead." I am dead, very exactly, insofar as I
am destined to die-but, in the name of this something that does not know
it, I don't want to know either.
This is what makes it possible for us to place at the center of logic this
"all men"-"all men are mortal"-the basil> of which is precisely the non-
knowledge of death, just as it is what makes us believe that "all men" means
something, all men born of a father, who, we are told, insofar a~ Lht:y, lht:
men, are dead do not enjoy what is there for them to enjoy. An equivalence
is therefore drawn, in Freudian terms, between the dead father and jouis-
sance. It is he who keeps it in reserve, if I can put it like that.
In the manner in which it is stated, not at the level of the tragic, with all
its subcle suppleness, but in the statement of the myth of Totem and Taboo,
the Freudian myth draws an equivalence between the dead father andjouis-
sance. This is what we can describe with the term "structural operator."
Here the myth transcends itself through stating in the name of the real-
for this is what Freud insists upon, that it actually happened, that it is the
real-that the dead father is what guards jouissa11ce, is where the prohibition
ofjouissance started, where it sremmed from.
The foct that the dead father is jouissance presents itself to us as the sign
of the impossible itself. And in this way we rediscover here the terms that
are those I define as fixing the category of the real, insofar as, in what I
articulate, it is radically distinguished from the symbolic and the imaginary-
the real is the impossible. Not in the name of a simple obstacle we hit our
heads up against, but in the name of the logical obstacle of what, in the sym-
bolic, declares itself to be impossible. This is where the real emerges from.
In effect, there beyond the Oedipus myth we recognize an operator, a
structural operator, which is called the real father-with, I would say, this
property that in the name of a paradigm, it is also the promotion, at the
heart of the Freudian system, of what the father of the real is, which places
a term for the impossible at the center of Freud's utterance [enonciationJ.
144 That is to say, Freud's utterance has nothing to do with psychology. No
psychology of this original father is conceivable. However, in the way in
which it is presented it evokes derision, and I don't need to repeat what I
said about this at the last seminar-he who enjoys all the women is incon-
ceivable to imagine, whereas ic is fairly normally observable that being
enough for one is already quite a lot. We are referred here to a complecely
different reference, that of castration, as soon as we have defined it as the
principle of the master signifier. By the end of today's discourse 1 will have
shown you what that can mean.
The master's discourse shows usjouissance as coming to the Other-it is
he who has the means for it. Anything that is language only obtains jouis-
sance by insisting to the point of producing the loss whereby surplus jouis-
sance takes body.
First, language, including the language of the master, cannot be anything
other than a demand, a demand chat fails. It is not from its success, it is
from its repetition that something of another dimension is engendered,
which I have described as a loss-a loss whereby surplus jouissance rakes
body.
This repetitive creation, this inauguration of a diml!nsiou by whid1
everything the analytic experience can be judged by is ordered, may equally
wcJI start out as an original impotcncc--to be explicit, the child's impo-
tence, a far cry from its omnipotence. If it has been possible to see that psy-
choanalysis shows us that the child is the father of the man, it's very much
because there has to be, sornewher~, something that mediates them, and
this is very precisely the instance of the master, insofar as it comes to pro-
duce, and this can be any sjgnifier after all, the master signifier.
At a rime when I formulated whac is involved in the object relation in
relation to Freudian structure, I suggested that the real father is the agent
of castration.5 But I only suggested it after I bad first of all taken care to
uncover what there is chat is distinct in the essence of c.astration, frusrra-
tioo, and privation. Castration is an essentially symbolic function, thac is, is
conceivable from nowhere else than the articulation of signifiers, frustration
is imaginary, privation, as is self-evident, is real.
What can one define as a result of these operations? We have to make the
enigma chat the phallus poses fur us, insofar as it is manifestly imaginary,
145 the object of the first of these operations, castration. It is--why not?--
always a question of something very real in frustration, even if the only
resource that the claim on which it is founded has is to imagine that one is
owed this real, which is not self-evident. It is clear that privarion can only
5 See 1..e Seminairc, Int JV, La relarUln d'objer, 1956-1957 (Pari-;: Editions du
Seuil, 1994).
....
be situated with respect to the symbolic, for as far as anything real is con-
ceme~ nothing can be lacking-what is real is real, and it has to be from
elsewhere that this introduction, which is nevertheless essential, be made,
for without it we would not be in the real ourselves, namely that something
in it is lacking-and this is what llritially characterizes the subject.
I remained less explicit then about the level of the agents, though I did
indicate it. The father, the real father, is none other chan the agent of cas-
tration-and this is what affirming the real father as impossible is destined
to mask from us.
What does "agent" mean? Initially, we slip into the fantasy that it is the
father who is the cascracor. It -is very striking that none of the forms of the
myth that Freud was attached to g]ve any idea of this. It is not because at
some initial hypothetical time, the sons, who were still animals, did not have
access to the troop of women that, so far as I know, they are castrated. Cas-
tration as the statement [eno11cel of a prohibition can in any case only be
founded at a second moment, that of the myth of the murder of che father
of the horde, and as this actual myth states, it arises out of nothing other
than a common accord, a singular int"tium whose problematic character I
was showing last time.
Equally, the term "act" needs to be picked up here. If, when discussing
the psychoanalytic ac.."t, what I was able to say about the level of the act is
to be taken seriously, that is, if it is true that there can only be an act in a
cont.ext already replete with everything involving the signifier's effect, its
entry into the world, there can be no act in the beginning, at least none that
could ~ described as murder.This myth can have no other sense here than
the one I have reduced it to, a statement of the impossible. There can be no
act outside a field which is already so completely articulated that the law is
located within it. There are no other acts than those that refer to the effects
of this signifying articulation and include its entire problematic-with on
chc one hand whatever loss (clmteJ the very existence of anything ac all that
can be articulated as subject entails, or rather is, and with on the other 146
whatever preexists it as a legislative function.
Dot.'S the real father's function, then, follow from the nature of the act
concerning castration? This is exactly what the term "agent" that I have
proposed enables us to put in suspense.
The verb agir, "to act," has .more than one resonance in our language,
heginning with that of actor. Actionnaire, "shareholder," also-· -why not,, the
word is made from action, and this shows you that uue action, "a share," is
perhaps not quite what one thinks it is. Activ1:~ce also-doesn't the activist
properly speaking define himself on the basis of the fact that he tends to
consider himself to be rather the instrument of something? Actaeon, while
we're ac it-this would be a good example for anyone who knew what this
...
The Ocher Side of Psychoanalysis
Illeant in terms of the Freudian thing. And finally> what one quite simply
Calls mon agent, "my ageor."You can see what this means in general: "I pay
him for that." Not even> "I compensate him for having nothing else to do,"
ot "I honor him,"6 as they say, pretending to begin from the faa that he is
Capable of doing something else.
This is the appropriate level of the term at which to take both this " real
f<\ther" and this "agent of castration." The real father carries out the work
of the master agency.
We are becoming increasingly familiar with the functions of an agent.. We

live ac a rime at which we know what this conveys- fake stuff> advertising
Stuff, things that are there co be sold. But we also know thac it works this
\\Tay> at the point we have come to in the expansion, the paroxysm, of the
Qiascer's discourse in a society founded on it.
It is gerting late.
I am going to be forced to leave something out here, which I will indi-
cate to you in passing, because we might perhaps return to the matter at
hand, which for me is of some value, and which for me does not seem
'Qnworthy of our making the effort to clarify. Since I am stressing, giving a
very special mark to, the function of agent, some day I will have to show
You all the elaborations it can lend itself to by introducing the notion of a
double agent.
147 Everyone is aware that in our day this n otion is one of the most indis-
Putable, the mosc cenain, objects of fascination . The agenc who starts
again. He doesn't just want the master's lime market, which is the role of
each. He thinks that what he is in contact with, namely that everything that
has true worth, I wean in the order ufjuuinance, ha:. nothing lo do with the
"1eb of intrigues. In his little job it's ultimately chis that be conserves.
It's a strange story, one with many implications. The true double agent
ill the one who chinks that what escapes the web would also have co be
a:rranged [agence1. Because if that is true,. the arrangement is going to
become true, and by the same token the first arrangement, the one chat was
Obviously fake, will also become true.
This is most likely what was guiding a character who placed himself, no
One knows why, in the function of prototypal agent of this master's dis-
course, insofar as he allowed himself to keep something whose essence an
6 As in "I pay him an honoranum."'

From myth tn struerure 127
author, Henri Massis, has profiled by speaking these prophetic words,
uwalls are good." Well, someone called Sorgue, with this so Heideggerian
name, found a way to be with che Naz.i agents, and to make himself a dou-
ble agent-for whose benefit? For the benefit of the Father of the People,
who everyone hopes, as you know, will bring it about that the true will also
be arranged {agenci] . 7
The reference I evoke concerning the Father of chc People has many
links with that of the real father as the agent of castration. As the Freudian
stacement cannoc do otherwise than set out from the master's d iscourse, if
only because it speaks of the unconscious, all Freud can make of this
famous real father is the impossible. But then we actually do know this real
father- he is something of a completely different order.
First, in general, everybody acknowledges that he is the one who works,
and does so in order to feed his little family. lfhe is the agent of something,
in a society that obviously does not give him a big role, ic nevertheless
remains the case that he has some exceedingly nice aspects. H e works. And
also he would very much like to be loved.
There is something that shows that the mystagogy that makes him into
a tyrant is obviously lodged somewhere qwce differem. It's at the level of
the real father as a construction of language, as Freud always pointed our
moreover. The real father is nothing other than an effect of language and 148
has no other real. I am not saying, "other reality," since reaHty is something
quite different, it's what I was talking about a moment ago.
I can even immediately go a little bit further and point out that the
notion of real father is scientifically unsustainable. There is only one rca.I
father, which is tht! spermatozoon, and at least up till n ow, nobody has ever
thought to say that he was the son of this or that spermato7..oon . Naturally,
one can lodge objections, aided by a number of examinations of blood
groups, of rhesus factors. But this is quite recent, and it has absolutely
nothing to do with anything that up tiU now ha<; been said co be the func-
ti lm of the father. I sense that I am entering dangerous ti:rritury, but too
bad- it is, after all, noc only in the Arumas cribes that one could raise the
question of what the father really is on an occasion when a woman finds she
is prcgnant.8 If there is one question that analysis could raise, ic's that one.
Why, in a psychoanalysis, would it not be- one suspects that this is the case
from time to time-the psychoanalyst who is the reaJ father even if he is in
no way the one who bas done it, there, on the level of the spermatozoon?
7 Henri Massis ( 1 88~1970) was a right-wing intcllectual who, despite his

support for Pcrain during the war, was elected to the Academic: fram;aise in 1960.
1 b e " Father of the Pcaple" referred to is Man;ball Pi:tain.
8 An allusion to Ernest Jones, " Mother-Right and the Sexual Ignorance of
Savages," buerna1wnal J1mrnal of Pryc}w-Ana/ysis 6 ( 1925): I 09- 30.
From time to time one has the suspicion when it concerns a woman
patient's relationship with, to be modest about it, the analytic situation that
she has finally become a mother. There is no need to be an Arunta to ask
oneself questions about what the father's function is.
By the same token we are aware, because this gives a broader perspec-
tive, that there is no need to take the reference to analysis, which I have
taken as the most burning one, for the same question co arise. One can very
well give one's husband a baby, and yet this be someone else's child, even
if one hasn 't fucked with him, someone, precisely, whom one would have
liked to be the father. Yet, it's for that reason tbat one has had the child.
This takes us, as you sec, a little way into che dream, as it were. I am only
doing this co wake you up. H I said that what Freud has lucubrated-not,
to be sure, ar chc level of myth, nor al Lhal of lhc:: recognition of death wishes
in patients' dreams- is a dream of Freud's, it's because, in my opinion, the
analyst should tear himself away from the plane of dreams a lime.
What analysts have encountered when guided by what is shocking in
149 what Freud introduced, what they have learned from this encounter, has
not yet been decanted at all. Last Friday at my patient interviews I pre-
sented an ill patient- I don't see why I should say he was ill-to whom cer-
tain things had happened, which meant that his encephalogram, as the
technician told me, is always on the border of sleep and a waking state,
oscillating in such a way that one never knows when he is going ro pass
from one to the other, and that is where things stand. This is a little bit bow
I see all our analyst colleagues, and perhaps myself too, in the end . The
sh ock, the traumatism of the birth of analysis leaves them Like that. And this
is why they spread their wings to try and extract something more precise
from the Freudian articulation.
This is not to say dutt they don't get any closer to it, but what they see
is this, for example. It is the position of the real fatber as articulated by
Freud, namely, as impossible, that makes the father necessarily imagined as
a depfivcr. It is not you, nor him, nor me who imagines, it arises from the
position itself. It is not at al1 surprising that we always encounter the imagi-
nary father. le necessarily, structurally depends on something that evades us,
which is the real father. And it is strictly out of the question chat the real
father be defined in any assured manner unle~s it's as the agent of castration.
Castration is not what every person who psychologizes necessarily
defines it as. We saw this appear, it seems, not so long ago at a chesis defense
when someone who has decisively chosen the approach of making psycho-
analysis the p sychopedia we all know said, "For me, you know, castration is
only a fantasy." Not so. Castration is a real operation that is introduced
through the incidence of a signifier, no matter which, into the sexual rcla-
From myth to structure 1 29
tion [rapport du sexe]. And it goes without saying that it determines the
father as this impossible real that we have been talking about.
It is n ow a question of knowing what is meant by this castration, which
is not a fantasy, and the result of which is that the only cause of desire is
produced by this op eration and that fantasy dominaccs the entire reality of
desire, that is to say, the law.
As foe dreams, everyone now knows that they are a demand, that chey
are signifiers at liberty, which insist, which squawk and stamp their feet,
which have absolutely no idea wh ac they want. The idea of putting the
omnipotent father at the origin of desire is very adequately refuted by the
fact that Freud extracted its master sigoifiers from the hysteric's desire. I t l 50
must not be forgotten, in effect, that this is where Freud began and that he
acknowledged what it is that remains at tbe center of bC; qu~tioo. The fact
it has been recorded is made all the more valuable for baving bc<..'11 repeated
by an ass who had no idea what it meant. It's the question, "What does a
woman want?"9
A woman. Not just any woman. MereJJy raising the question means that
she wants something. F reud didn't say, "\Vhat docs woman want?" Because
ofter all it is n ot written down anywhere that woman wants anything at alt.
I won'c say that she will put up with every circumstance. She is put out by
every circumstance, Kinder, Kiiche, Kin:lu:, but the.re arc many others, Cul-
mre, Kilowau, Culbure [sommaull, rumble], as someone puts it, Cruet Cuit,1°
all of that suits her equally well. She absorbs them. Bue as soon as you ask
the question, "What does a woman want?" you locate the question at the
level of desire, :ind everyone! knows that, for woman, to locate the question
at the Jevel of desire is to question the hysteric.
What the hysteric wants-I say thjs for th ose who do n ot have this voca-
tion, there must be a Jot-is a master. This is absolutely clear-so much so
that you h ave to wonder whether this isn ' t where the invention of the mas-
ter began. Th.is would elegantly bring to a close what we are in the process
of tracing out.
She wants a master.1bat is what resides in the top right-band little cor-
ner, for want of giving it an1)thcr name. She wants th~ other to be a mas-
ter, and to know lots of things, but at the same time she doesn't want him
to know so much that he does not believe she is the supreme price of all his
knowledge. In other words, she wants a master she can reign over. She
reigns, and he does not govern.
9 The reference is to Marie Bonaparte.

10 Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw .iml the Cooked (New York: Octagon Books,
1969).
This is where Freud set out from. "She" is the hysteric, but this is not
necessarily specific to one sex. As soon as you raise the question, "What
does So-and-so want?" you enter the function of desire, and you produce
the master signifier.
Freud produced a number of master significrs, which he covered with
the name of Freud. A name can also be used to plug something up. J am
astounded that it is possible to associate the idea that at this level there can
be some murder or other with this plug of a name of the father, whatever it
may be. And how can one believe that analysts are what they are by virtue
151 of a devotion to Freud's name? They are unable co untangie themselves
from Freud's master signifiers, tbaCs all. It's not so much to Freud that they
adhere as to a number of signifiers-the unconscious, seducti{m, crauma-
tism, fantasy, the ego, the id, and whatever else you like- c.bere's no ques-
tion of their leaving that order. They have no father to kill at this level. One
is n ot the father of signifiers, at the very most one is " because of." No prob-
lem at this level.
The real mainspring is che following· --jouissance separates the master sig-
nifier, insofar as one would like to attribute it to the father, from knowledge
qua trurh. Ifwe take rhe schema of the analyst's discourse, the obstacle raist:<l
by jouissance is found there where I have drawn the triangle, namely, between
what can be produced as master signifier, whatever form it may takeJ and the
field that knowledge has at its disposal insofar as it poses as truth.
a -~ g
S: A s.
And there you have what enables how it uµly is with castration to be
articulated-it is that even for the child, whatever one might chink, the
father is he who knows nothing about truth.
I will recommence ac chis PQint n ext time.
18 March 1910
Supplement
The followin1: ses.~ion: Radioph.onie
l do not know whac you have been doing over the time that has kepr us
apart. You have in any case benefited from it in some way. For my part, I
l '52 indicate to the person who so kindly wanted to indicate tO me that rhey
--
From myth to structure 13 I
were an astudied of the Sorbonne, that I got the Sellin I spoke to you about
from Copenhagen, that is, this little book of 1922 which subsequently
underwent a degree of rejection, and which is this book around which
Freud makes his assurance that Moses was tudied revolve.Ji
I am not aware that many psychoanalysts, apart from Jones and perhaps
one or two others, have taken any interest in it. 12 This Sellin, in his text,
does deserve to be examined, however, sinoe Freud considered that he car-
ried weight, and it is suitable, narurally, to follow him and put this consid-
eration to the test. It seems to me that chis is in line with what I am
advancing lh.is year concerning the other side of psychoanalysis. But as I
have only had this book for roughly five days, written in a very robust [wn'e)
German, you will understand that despice che assistance that a number of
greater and lesser rabbis-actually, greater, there are no lesser rabbis-have
been kind enough to give me, I am not yet ready co give you an account of
it today, at least not one that would satisfy me.
Moreover, it so happens that I have been requested- not for the first
time, this is an extended request-to reply on Belgian radio, and this by a
man, M. Georgin,, who, frankly, has evoked my esteem by providing me
with a long text which gives at least this proof that he, contrary to many
others, has read my Ecrits. Good Lord, he got what he could out of it, but
it was not nothing, all things considered. Truthfully, then, l was rather flat-
tered. To be sure, this doesn't make me any the more inclined toward this
practice that consistS in ha ving oneself recorded on the radi~it always
wastes a lot of time. However, since it appears that he bas taken care to
ensure tha[ fr cakes as linle time as possible, I might perhaps agree to le.
The one who will perhaps not agree to ic~ on the ocher band, is he, given
that, in order co answer these q uestions which I will give you three exam-
ples of, I did not think I couJd do any better than reply in writing and not
yield co the inspiration of the momem, to chis groundbreaking work that
I perform here every time I stand before you, which is n ourished by
plenty of notes, and which works b<:causc you see that I am prey to this
groundbreaking. This is even the one thing, perhap s, that justifies your
presence here.
The circumscaoces are different when it comes to speaking for some
tens, even hundreds, of thousands of listeners, for whom the abrupt tc::;t of L53
presenting oneself without the support of the pcr!>on can produce other
effects.
11 Ernst Sellin, Mnse u11.d seine Bedeuiung fiir die israelitisch-ji.idische Religions-
g~scluduc [1Woses and his Mca11ing for Jsraelir-e and Jewish Hisror;y of Religion] (Ldpzig:
A. Dcichert, 1922).
12 See Ernest Jones, "The Birth and Deatll of Mo~e-;," h iu:rntIJ.ional Journal
nf ~;'Cho-A11atysis 3 9 ( 1958): 1-4.
132
,,. ___ The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
...,_. ·-·- - - -
In any case I will refuse to give anything but these texts that have already
been written out. I am, then, placing a lot of trust in this condition since,
as you will see, the questions put to me necessarily lie in the interval
between what a constructed articulation produces and what I shall call a
common consciousness expects. A common consciousness also means a
series of common formulas. The Ancients, the Greeks, bad already called
this language, in their own language, the !wine. This can be immediately
translated into French-the wumee. 13 It squawks.
I don't despise the koine. lt is just that I believe that the koine isn't undis-
posed to certain effecrs of precipitation being produced within it, to pre-
cisely the most abrupt discourse thac there is being introduced.
There you are. This is why today I am going to share my replies to three
of these questions \vith you. It is nor merely to compensate myself for the
effort, for it will be a far greater effort, believe m e, to read these teJi."'!S to you
than to proceed as I usually do.
Without any further delay, I will give you the fuse of these questions,
which is this: "In your Ecrits you state that Freud anticipated, without being
aware of it, the researches of Saussure as well as those of the Prague Circle.
Can you CA-plain what you mt!alll?"
That is what I will do, !hen, not by improvising butJ as Twarned you, by
replying as follows.
[The text of these chree replies was published as "Radiophonie" in the jour-
nal Scilicec, nos. 2/3, pp. 55-99 (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1970). See nlso
Autres ecrir.s (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2001), 403--47.]
8April 1970
13 Coufner, " to squeak," "squeal," "squawk."

IX 155
Yahweh's ferocious ignorance

l'RP.tID Ai.."O SlllJJN
l'ALSB lNTERPl<ETi\TION
MAKI!'>G l'l!IU'UMI:
MO ~P.S 'i!AIN
I will not say I am introducing Profcs!;or Andre Caquot, Director of Stud-

ies in the Fifth Section of Sciences of Religion of the Hames Etudes, where
as you know I am Charge de Conferences.
I will not say 1 am introducing rum because he needs no introduction. I
present myself as having been, thanks to his grace and kindness, completely
dependent oc him over che time cbac bas passed :1ince two days prior to our
last meeting, that is, from the moment I decided I wanted to know a thing
or two about Sellin's book.
I have said enough. about thic; book for you to be aware of its importance.
For the sake of those who by chance have come here for the first time l will
repeat that this book turned up at ju-;t the right moment, or again, as I put
it, like a gift from the gods, for Freud who was then able co maintain che
theme of the death of Moses according to which be was murdered. Moses
is said tO have been killed.
Thanks to Monsieur Caquot I have learned about the siruation of this
book with respect to exegesis, namely its being located within the efflores-
cence of what can be called textual technique, as it was instituted, particu-
larly beginning in the nineteenth century, in German universities. I was able 156
to situate Sellin in relation to those who came before him and those who
came after him, Edouard Meyer and Gressman, as well as many others.
It was not without difficulty, as T indicated last time, that I managed to
get hold of this book, since it was completely unfindable in Europe.
Through the efforts of the French-Israelite Alliance, I was finally able to
obtain it from Copenhagen. I brought it to Monsieur Caquot's attention,
133
who was one of the r are people not only to have had wind of it, but to have
already had it in his hands some time before I went to him with my request.
And we examined this text, panicularly concerning the point at which it
enabled Freud to situate what he had his heart set on, and not necessarily
for the same reasons as Sellin.
This obliged us to mm to this field in which my ignorance is profound.
You cannot know all that I am ignorant of-fortunately, because if you
knew everything I was ignorant of, you would know everything. In the
ordeaJ of the attempt I made at purring order into what I myself bad man-
aged to karo from Monsieur Caquot, I suddenly realized that there is a big
difference between knowledge, knowing what one is talking abou~ what
one believes one is capable of talking about, and then what I will presendy
give a name to, using a cerm that wilJ serve to explain what we are going to
do here.
There will therefore be a break for a second time in the manner in which
I address you. Last time you were subjected to a difficult trial, to the point
where some of you advanced the hypothesis that it was done in order to air
out c.he room a bit ·-with a mediocre result, seeing bow many of you are
here. This time T believe that on the contrary you will have reason to stay.
And ff, subsequently, I were to offer you again what I am able to do today
I.banks to Monsieur Caquot, I would do it differently. Let's say that all things
considered I felt myself drawing away from the thought of handling again
today what we haw been obliged to handle, namely the Hc!brcw letters.
In the text I read out to you last time I inserted a definition from Midrash.
It was about a relationship to cbe wrim:n cbac: is subject to certain laws that
arc of enormous interest to us. In dfcc:t, as I was saying co you, it is a ques-
tion of placing oneself in the interval of a certain relationship between the
written and a spoken presentation chat draws on it and makes reference to it.
157 Analysis in its entirecy, I mean analytic technique, can, in a certain man-
ner, elucidate this reference, t<> be considered as a "game" -in inverted
commas- of interpretation. This term has been used indiscriruinatdy t:vt:r
since people have been talking abour confli<."ts of interpretation, for
instance- · as if you could have any conflict between interpretations. I Ac the
very most interpretations complement one another, indeed, they play with
thfa reference. What matters here is what I was saying last time, tbcfalsum,
with che ambiguity that the fall of the false) I m ean the contrary of the true,
can establish for itself around this word.2 On occasion:; this false of inter-
pretation may even have its impact of displacing a discourse. This is actu-
1 The allw.ion is to Paul Ricocur's book, rne Conflict of lnterpreta.Licns: Essays

i11 Hermeneutics (Evanston, ID.: Northwestern University Press, 1974).
2 " Falsum," a range of punii>hable wro~udoing including perjury, bearing
false witness, forgery, falsifying docurnencs, etc.
Yahweh's ferocious ignorance 135
ally what we will sec. I could not wish for better than thjs for conveying to
you what thls is about.
For me, in this field, this can in no way correspond to a form of knowl-
edge, but rather it corresponds to what I have called putting [som eone] on
the scent [mise-a.u-parfam]. I am going to continue the operation in your
presence, that is, continue trying to put myself on the scent, in the form,
which has nothing fictive aoout it, of quesaons that necessarily remain
unexhausted, and which are those that I have been putting to Monsieur
Caquot over the last few days. I will, in this respect, like you, be in a rela-
tionship of putting myself on the scent concerning a certain form of knowl-
edge, that of biblical exegesis.
Need I tell you that Monsieur Caquot is in this F ifth Section under the
heading of Comparative Semitic Religions?Through the experience I have
had of it I have come to believe that in this domain nobody can more ade-
quately, in the sense in which I found it myself, get you to feel what the
approach of a Sellin is abou1, when from the texts of Hosea, you will see by
what procedures, he extracts a thing that he himself really wants to bring
out. He has his reasons for this, and these reasons matter to us. What Mon-
sieur Caqu01 cunvt::yed to me on this is equally valuable.
I mentioned ignorance just before. To be a father, I mean not only a real
father but a father of the real, there are thin,gs that one must ferociously
ignore. One would, in a certain way, have to ignore everything that is not
what last time I tried to sec into my text as being of the level of structure,
this level having to be defined as the order of the effects of Language. This
is where one falls, if 1 can put it this way, upon truth- the "upon" could
equally wen be replaced by " from." One falls UpClO truth, that is to say, a
remarkable thing, if we envisage this reference to be absolute, it could be 158
said that anyone whu adhered co ic-but, of course, it is impossible to
adhere to it- would not know what he is saying.
In no way is this saying anything that might in any way serve to specify
the analyst. Thi.~ would be to place h.im~r, m ore precisely, you are ready
to tell m e that this would be to place him-on che same rung as everybody
else. Who knows, in effect, what he is saying?This would be a mistake. It is
not because everybody speaks that everybody says something. It could be a
quescion of an entirely different reference, of knowing what discourse one
is inserted into, at the limit of this position that is in som e sense fictitious.
Here is someone who satisfies that position, and whom I am going to
name without hesitation, because he seems to me to be essential to the
interest that we analysts should bring to Hebraic history. It is, perhaps,
inconceivable that psychoanalysis could have been boro anywhere else than
in this tradition . Freud was born into it, and hie insists on this fac{, as I have
stressed , that for making adV'.tnces in the field he h as discovered he onJy
...
truly has confiden~t: in rhc::sc:: Jc::ws who have known h ow to read for quite a
long time and who live-rhis is the Talmud~n the reference to a text. He
whom I am going to name, who~ or which, actualizes this radical position
of ferocious ignorance, has a nam e-it's Yahweh himself.
In interpellating this chosen people, it is characteristic of Yahweh, when
he announces himself, that h e is ferociously ignorant of everything that
exists of certain religious practices thal were:: rift: at the time, and chat are
founded on a certain type of knowledge-sexual knowledge.
When we talk about H osea in a moment, we will sec the extent ro which
this is the basis on which he inveighs. He has in his sights a relacionship that
blends supernatural agencies in with nature itself which, in a way, is itself
dependent on them. What right do we have to say that this has no basis?
That the manner of m oving the Baal who, iu rc::Lum, fc::rtilizc::d che earth,
didn't correspond to something that may well have worked? Why not? Sim-
ply because there was Yahweh and because a certain discourse was inaugu-
rated that this year I am trying to isolate as the other side of analytic
discourse, namely the master's discourse·-for precisely this reason we no
longer know anything about it.
ls this the position the analyst has to have? Surely not. The analy~t
would I go so far as to say that I have been able to experience it on
159 myself?-thc analyst does not have this ferocious passion that surprises us
so much where Yahweh is concerned. Yahweh is located at the most para-
doxical point with respect to another perspective that might, for example,
be that of Buddhism, where it is recommended that one purify oneself of
the three fundamentul passions, Jove, hatred, and ignorance. "What is the
most striking thing about this unique religious manifestation is that Yahweh
lacks none of them. Love> hatred, and ignorance- there, in any case, are
passions that arc not absent from his discourse.
What characterizes the analyst's position-I won't go and write it up on
the blackboard today with the help of my little schema, where the analyst's
position is indicated by the object a on the top left-hand side-· and this is
the only sense that one can give to analytic neutrality, is no.t to partake of
these passions. This constantly places him in an uncertain zone where he is
vaguely in quest of being put on the path, of being put on the scent, of
knowledge, which he has, however, repudiated.
Today we arc concerned with one approach to Yahweh's dialogue with
his people, with what Sellin might have had in mind, and also with what
can be revealed to us by the encounter that happens to take place with what
grabs Freud's attention- which is properly speaking along these lines, but
he stops, he fails, and makes the thematics of the father a sore of mythical
knot, a short circuit, or, to be precise, a failure. This is what I am now going
to spell out for you.
As I have said Lu yuu, the Oedipus complt:x is Freud's dream. Like any
dream it needs to be interpreted. We have to see where this displacement
effect is produced, an effect which is to be understood as one that can be
produced by that which is out of phase fdecalage] in a writing.
The real father, if one can try to recons1itute it from Freud's elaboration,
is properly articulated with what only concerns the imaginary father,
namely the prohibition of jouis.~ance. On the other hand, whal mak.~8 him
essential is noted, namely, the castration that I was alluding to just before
when I said that there was an order of ferocious ignorance there, I mean in
the place of the real father. This is what I hope to be able to demonstrate
to you all the more easily once, today, concerning Monsieur Sellin, we have
clarified a few things.
This is why I will allow myself to put a few questions to Monsieur
Caquot first of all. He is well aware, since I have expressed it to him in a
thousand different ways, of the heart of our problem on this point-how, I 60
why did Freud need Moses?
It is obvious that it is essential for the audience to have a bit of an idea
of what Moses means. Sellin's text in fact begins by raising this question,
"What was Moses?," summarizing the various positions of those who pre-
ceded him, and those who are there working alongside him.
There is no question that these positions can only be clarified in relation
to knowing how long Yahweh had been around.
Was Yahweh already the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? Is there a tra-
dition there that we can be certain about? Or is it possible that this tradi-
tion was retroactively rccomtituted by the founder of the religion, who is
supposedly Moses insofar as, at the foot of the Horeb, or more precisely on
the Horeb itself, he is supposed to have received, take note, already written
out, the Tablets of the Law? These are obviously quite different.
Sellin's book revolves, properly speaking, around this-Mme und seine
Bedeutung /Ur die israeliu'sch-judische Religionsgeschichte.
Why was it necessary for Sellin to present Moses to us as killed? It's a
question I do not even want to begin to answer, so as to leave the field com-
pletely open to Monsieur Caquot. It is certain that this is closely linked to
the fact that Moses is regarded as a prophet. Why does he have co be killed
in his capacity as a prophet? More precisely, Sellin thinks he has undergone
a martyr's death in his capacity as a prophet.
Th1s is already something Monsieur C:aqnot will he so kind ~s to eluci-
date for us.
LA1onsieur Caquot'.~ presemac£on follows. See Appendix, p. 209.]
·138 The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
Something astounds me in SeUin's thought. Naturally, we are unable to

penecrate Sellin's thought, but if we assume that what is written has the
meaning he deciphers in it when he reconstitutes a text with a certain
sense, there's no guarantee anywhere that this text, if one can call it a text,
or this vocalization could be understood by anyone. In saying, for instance,
that Numbers chapter 25 bides the even t of Mos~ ' murder, one is right in
the midst of ambiguity.
161 In the register of Sellin's thought, which I do not believe brings the cat-
egories of the unconscious into play, the fact of hiding the event of Sbittirn
by such an absurd s tory is altogether unsustainable.
This is obviousJy where ir gets interesting-the extraordinary latc:ncy
that such a way of proceeding comprises.
One can understand, up to a point, how Freud derives reinforccmem
here for tbe idea that it i.-; a question of a memory, supposed in his register,
that stands ouc despite all the intentions, despite a strong resistance. It
remains very odd nevertheless that it is supported by writings, and that it
is with the aid of writings that it can be redecipbcred.
Jvnes attests that Freud would have had, apparendy, according to Sellin
himself, communicated co him that he was not so confident as all that.;
Moreover, as you indicated just before, h e takes the ques tion up again in
the second edfrion.
Monsieur Caquot: bi rlze second edit:Um Sellin left the exegesis of 1922 for chap-
cen 5 and 9. However, 011 ihe orher hand, he gave up promoting his h)'[XJthesis of
Moses' death in his works 011 rhe famous dead servant of I.he Dl!titero-lsaiah. 4 He
perhaps rcrai11ed the idea of Moses' deaih, but he abandoned the idea of using it
to interprer tlte chapier on the servant. I wonder whether Freud didn'ifall victim
to Selli11 's academic pre$tige.
The question I wonder abour is wh ether Freud read very closely.
Monsieur Caquot: I think he did. The book is clear and ri~orous. It's false, bttt clear.
That's true. But Freud doesn't build anything on this con struction. He sim-
ply indicates that a certain Sellin has recently expressed as defensible the
3 Sec Erne1-t Jones, Si/;nmnd Freud: l,tfe and lfbrks 3:400-1 (London: H o-
garth Press, 1957).
4 Caquot seems to be referring to Sellin, Das HaLre/ des deuterojesaja11ischcn
Bw:hes (Leipzig, 1908).
hypothesis that Moses had been killed. The note is very brief, and gives a
reference to the work that we have a photocopy of, nothing more.5 I
pointed out just before that Jones mentions that, in a work of 1935, which
is later than we have been able to verify ourselves, Sellin maintained his
position.6
If, really, I have not up till now already overabused the effort that I have
led you t o make, for which I thank you, it would be interesting, for what 1
will subsequently have to say, if you could give us some idea of how Hosea 162
has a meaning which has nothing to do with these minutiae.
The important point is the use of the 'iclt we were talking about the other
day. The novelty of H osea, if l have underslOod correctly, is in sum chis
appeaJ ofa very special kind . I hope that evcryon e will get out a little Bible
to obtain some idea of the tone of Hosea. It has a cype of invective ferocity,
really terrifying, which is that of Yahweh speaking to his people in a lengthy
discourse. When I spoke of H osea before obtaining Sellin's book, Is~ "1
have read nothing in Hosea that is close to resembling what Sellin finds,"
but on the other hand I poinced ouc in passing the importance of invective,
of the imputation of a rite of sacred prostitution that extends from start to
finish, and, in opposition, advances of some kind whereby Yahweh declares
himself to be the spouse. It is possible lO say that this is the beginning of
the long tradition--in itself quite mysterious, and ic does nor seem to me to
be obvious that we can really locate its meaning· ·-which makes Christ the
spouse of the Church and the C burcb the spouse of Christ. l t begins here,
there is no trace of it prior to H osea.
The term u sed for spouse, 'ich, is the very one which, in cbe second chap-
ter of Genesis, is used to name Adam's partner. The first time that anyone
speaks, that is to say, in verse 27 of the first chapter in which God creates
them man and woman, is, if! read it properlyi zakhar and nekevah. The sec-
ond time-since things are always repeated twice in the Bible-'zeh is the
name for being, objecc, the rib~ in the form 'icha. As if by chance, one only
needs to add a little a to it.
If you could testify to its usage co designate the term where it concerns
something even more divested of sexuality.
5 Freud actually makes several references tl) Sellin, and in one place quotes
him at length. See Moses and Monoihei.~m, SE 23:5 1- 2.
Ii J(mes, Sigmund Freud: Life and Wi>rks 3:400. The book is Ge.<chichu des
israe!iti.~ch-judischen lfllkes (Leip:.dg: Quelle & Meyer, 1935); sec pp. 76-8. Jones says
he was told by Jewish scholars of che day chat Sellin subseque11tly ';withdrew his
suggestion and apologized for having made it." However, Jones goes on to say that
he could never find any suppllrt for this in any ()f Sellin's lacer writings. He claims
that in a work published some thirteen years lacer Sellin maintains he has found
"further confirmation" for his thesis "io the writings 9f other prophets" Gones,
3:400).
.....
140 The Other Side of Psychoanal~is
Monsieur Caquot: 111e conjugal uses are only a minor pari of the acceptations of
the word 'ich, which designates man in general It is no more surprising than
when one says "my man"for "my husband." In French moo bomme, "noi man,"
is more familiar.
The following verse says, "I would like to be called your spouse." It is to be
compared co the cerm Baal, which can have the same meaning on occa-
sions, namely lord and master, in the sense of spouse.
J 63 M onsieur Caquot: The termi1wlogy is extremely fluid. In H osea the acceptat.ions

are resiricred in such a way as UJ play upon " Yahweh" in opjX)sition w "BaaL"
An extremely sharp djfference is accentuated here, a difference that in short

remains quite opaque, despite centuries of commentaries. It's quite curiou s.
J\fonsieur COJJuot: This is the first time that this conjugal metaphor makes its
appearance in the Bible. It is what makes possible, much later, tire aUegorizacion
o/The Song of Songs. h 's Hosea rhaz makes chis allegory possible. I wondered
whether there were not a kind of demythification~ of transference (]mo rhe Israel
collect£vity of tire goddess who is the wife of Baal in the Semiric religions. There
are at zimes several traits by which Israel is described as a g~s. But thal has
11ever been said.
That's very important. Ultimately something of what I was beginning co

announce before hinges on that. You hadn't indicated that co m e at all.
Monsieur Caquot: One has th.e impression ihm the prophetic religi1m replaces the
goddess with hraeJ. This would be me case with H osea-it replaces lrer with the
people.
Given the hour, I think wt= can lt:avt= it Lbt:n:.
JS April 1970
THE OTHER SIDE OF
CONTEMPORARY LIFE
x 167
Interview on the steps of the Pantheon

Al't'l!C"l'S
(As the Law Faculty in rue Saint-Jacques was closed, an exchange with a
small number of participaocs took place on the steps of the Pantheon. Sev-
eral questions, inaudible on cbe recording, are missing.]
I would like an explanation for the disagreeable process that has brought u.<1
bere. In the circumstances I will await your questions.
X: lOn Hegel's dialectic. J
I have become aware lately that 1 have already spoken quite precisely about
the functions of master and slave, extracted from Hegel's discourse, and
much more than I am doing now.
I on ly ever give things that come to me in advance, and I bad therefore
already assumed this was the case. But this is not the same as going back
and checking the text of my seminar, which is always taken down in stenog-
raphy, as you know.
In November 1962, when I commenced my seminar on anxiety at
Sainte-Anne and, I think, &om the second session on, I clarified, in an
extremely precise manner, something which is, in short, identical with what
I am now developing concerning the master's discourse. 1 I indicated how
the positions of the master and the slave, formulated in rhe Phenomenology
£!{the Spirit, differ. This is Kojeve's starting point, and he always evaded
what was there prior to their coming to be-but chis is not what I empha ~
size.
Wha: I find myself developing at the moment, under the heading "master's 168
discourse," was already motivating che way in which I approached anxiety.
1 See Le Seminair11, 1.ivr11 X, L'Anxoissc, 1962- 196.1 (Paris: Editions du Seuil,

2004).
14'3
144 The Other Si.de of Psychoanalysis
Someone whose intentions I don't need to describe is doing an entire
report, to be published in two days time, so as to denounce in a note the
fact that I put affect in the background, that I ignore it. It's a mistake to
think I neglect aftects-as if already everyone's behavior was not enough to
affect me. My entire seminar that year was, on the contrary, structured
around anxiety, insofar as it is the central affect, the one around which
everything is organized. Since I was able to introduce anxiety as the funda-
mental affect, it was a good thing all the same that already, for a good
length of time, I had not been neglecting affects.
I have simply given its full importance, in the determinism of di.e vernein-
ung [negation], to what Freud has explicitly stated, that it's not affect that is
repressed. Freud has recourse to this famous Repriisentanz which I translate
as represemaru de la representation, and which others, and moreover not with-
out some basis, persist in calling represemant-represemauf, which absolutely
does not mean the same thing. 2 In one case the representative is not a rep-
resentation, in the other case the representative is just one representation
among others. These translations are radically different from one another.
My translation implies that affect, through tlle fact of displacement, is effec-
tivdy displa1.:t:d, uni<lt:mifit:<l, brukt:n off from its roots-it eludes us.
This is what is essential in repression. It's not that the affect is sup-
pressed, it's that it is displaced and unrecognizable.
X: l On the relations between existenti'ati:~m and sn·uciuralism. l
Yes, it's as if existential d10ught was the only guarantee of a recourse to affccl:s.
X: W'hat do you th£nl~ of the relations ihat exist between you and Kierkegaard
concerning anxiety?
No one can yet imagine the extent to which people attribute thoughts to
me. I only have to mention someone and I am said to be condescending.
169 It's the very model of academic vertigo. Why in fact wouldn't I speak about
Kierkegaard? It's clear that if I place all this emphasis on anxiety in the
economy, for it's a question of economy, it's obviously not in order to neg-
lect the fact that at a certain moment there was someone who represents
2 Lacan ha~ in mind Freud's term "Vorstellungsrepri.iscmanz/' which Strachey

renders as "ideational representative" in SE. l..acan's translation, reprcsentam de ta
representation.• comes out as the "representation's representative," while the alterna-
tive rendering, represcntant-repn!setttauf, would give, in English, the equally awkward
"representative representative." See Jean Laplanche and Serge Leclaire, "The
Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Study," Yale French Studies 48 (1972): 118-75; and
also Michel Tort, "Apropos du concept freudien de 'Representant'(Reprasentam:),''
Cahiers pour l'ana(vse 5 (1966):41-67.
Interview on the steps of the Pantheon 145
the emergence, the coming into being, not of anxiety but of the concept of
anxiety, as Kierkegaard himself explicitly calls one of his works. It's not for
nothing that historically this concept emerged at a certain moment. This is
what I was counting on expounding for you this morning.
I am not alone in making this comparison with Kierkegaard. Yesterday I
received a book by Manuel de Dieguez. 3 Well, the things he says about me!
As I had to prepare my stuff for you and because it is all done at the very last
minute-what I have to tell you is never ready until the final hour, everything
I write down and recount to you is generally noted down between five and
eleven in the morning-I haven't had the time to locate myself in all this great
to-do I am inserted into, in relation not only to Kierkegaard, but to Ocl<llam
and Gorgias too. It's all there, as are huge chunks of what I recount. It's fairly
extraordinary, because without quoting me half of the book is called "Lacan
and"-I'll give you three guesses-"ttanscendencal psychoanalysis." Read it.
To me it seems to be pretty overwhelming. I hadn't thought of myself as all
that transcendental> but then, you can never be very certain. Someone once
said to me, concerning books that were published about him, "Ah! We do
have ideas, my friend, we do have ideas!" Let's move on.
X: Do you thfok, then, that the ideas you get from the practice of psychoanalysis
give you something that cannot be found oucside it?
It's precisely because I do think that that I have gone to all this effort for
the past eighteen or nineteen years. Othenvisc I can't sec why I would do
it. And I i.:au 'l st:t: whal wuukl lt:aJ Lu my uamt:\ bt:ing aJJe;:d. prt:i.:ii.;dy w
a list of philosophers, which doesn't seem to me to be entirely judicious.
X: Can you go back to what you started saying about Hegel?
I certainly won't be giving this morning's seminar here. This is not why I 170
am here. I am using the occasion to learn a bit about what some of you
might have to say to me, which docsn 't easily occur when we are in a lec-
ture theater.
X: xou spoke about the Other as the treasure trove of signijiers, and )'OU said that
there was no confronting it. Might it include incoherent things? The signifier is not
necessarily coherent.
Are you sure that I have said what you are imputing to me? Where did I say
that there was no confronting the Other? I do not think I have said that at
3 The book in question is Science et nescience (Paris: Galli ma rd, I 970).

all. I would be surprised. Ifl did say it, it was out of clumsiness, but I would
be just as surprised to have committed such a blunder.
X: [Inaudible.)
I will try to give you the essential part at my next semmar, if it rakes place.
X : L/naudwle.]
I am attacking philosophy? That's greatly exaggerated.
X: That's an impression..
Yes, that is an impression. I was asked just a minute ago whether I believed
chat things I recount may not be problematic. I said that I did. M y sole
motivation foT advancing them is because of a precise e11.-perience, the psy-
choanalytic experience. If it weren't for thac I would consider that I had nei-
ther the right nor above all the desire to extend th~ pbilosophkal discourse
very much beyond I.he poi.ill at whid1 it wa.s most propedy effaced.
X· That transforms it.
That doesn't transform ir. It's a different discourse. This is what I am try-
ing to show you by reminding those who have no idea about analytic cxpc-
171 rience, to the entire extent that I believe it to be so, that this is, all the same,
irs currency. This is where I start from. Otherwise this discourse would not
have an aspect that is philosophically so problematic, which was pointed
out just before by the per.ma over there, who spoke first, when he translated
it into sophistical terms. I don't think this is right. The person I was talking
about before places me as a kind of point of emphasis, locates me at che cen-
ter of some kind of mixture, of fracturing, opening up of philosophical dis-
course. It's not badly done, it's done in an extremely sympathetic manner,
but my initial response--perhaps I will change my views on it- I said to
myself," And yet, to place me in that heritage is quite some Enrstellimg, quite
some displacement, away from the import of what I am capable of saying."
X: W'hai you s~y is always decmtered £n relation w sense, you. shttn .~msa.
This is perhaps precisely why my discourse is an analytic discourse. It's the

structure of analytic discourse to be like chat. Let's say that 1 adhere to it as
much as I can, without daring to say chat I strictly identify myself wich it, if
I am successful.
lnrervit!w on the steps of the Pantheon 147
Yesterday 1 read quite ao amazing article in a review that, for personal

reasons, I had never opened, which is called I.:lnconscient. In the latest issue
to be published a certain Cornelius Castoriadis, no Jess, has this question
about my discourse, supposcdJy witb reference to science.4 What does he
say? He says what I find myself repeating, namely that this discourse has an
extremely precise reference to science. What he denounces as the essential
difficulty of this discourse, namely- I will spell it out for you-this dis-
placement that never ceases, is the very condition of analytic t:liscourse, and
it's in thi~ respect that one can say that it is, I won't say totally the discourse
of science, but cont:litioncd by it, in that the discourse of science leaves no
place for man.
I was counting on emphasizing chis for you this morning. I won't spoil
what I am going to say about it oexr week..
X: Cor>.cerning anxiety, I thought il was the cpposite of jouis-sance.
What I insist upon when I address the affects is the affect that is different I 72
from all the others, that of anx.iecy, in that it's said to have no objecr. Look
at e::ve::rylhing that has ever been wrinen abouc cu1iUe::ty , it's always ill.is that
i-s insisted upon-fear has a reference to an object, whereas anxiety is said
to have no object. I say on the contrary that anxiety is not without an
object. I have already stared this, 1 did so a long time ago, and it's quite
obvious that I will still have to explain it to you again.
At the time I t:lid not designate this object as surplus jouissance, which
proves that there was something co construct before I could name it as
such . It's very precisely the ... I am unable to say the name, because, pre-
cisely, it's not a name. It's surplus joui.vsance, but it's not nameable, even if
it's approximately nameable, uanslatable, in this way. This is why it has
been translated by the term "surplus value." This object without which
anxiety is not can still be addressed in some other way. It's precisely this
that over rhe course of the years I have given more and more form to. I have
in particular given many chatterboxes the opportunity to rush hastily into
print on the subject <.>f what I may have had to say with the term "object a."
X: lJnaudible.]
In the articulation that I describe as the university discourse the a is in the

place of what? In the place, let's say, of the exploited in the university dis-
4 "Epilegomcna to a Theory of the Soul Which Has Been Presented as a Sci-

ence.," pp. 3-45 in Crossroads in the Labyrimh (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1984).
course, who are easy to recognize-they are students. In focu sing one's
reflection on this place in the notation many things can be explained in
these singular phenomena that, for the moment, are happening around the
world. To be sure, one has to differentiale between the emergence of its rad-
icality- this is what is happening-and the way in wruch the university's
function has become clogged up, blocked, maintained-this can last for a
very long time. The university has an extremely precise function, in etlect,
one that at every momenc is related to the state we are in with respect to
the master's discourse-namely, its elucidation. As a matter of fact, this dis-
course bas been a masked discourse: for a very long time. Through ics inter-
nal necessity it will become less and less masked.
Wbac use bas the university been? This can be read according to each
epoch. By virtue of the increasingly extreme denudation of the master's dis-
173 course, the university discourse finds itself displaying-all the same, don' t
think it's shaken or finished-that for the moment ir's l!ncountering a heap
of difficulties. These difficulties can be approached at the level of the close
relationship that exists between the student\ position of always being, in
the university dfacourse, in a more <>r less masked manner, identified with
this object a, which is charged with produ<..ing what? 111~ barred S thaL
comes next on the lower right-hand side.
That is che problem. A subject has emerged, from out of this product. Sub-
ject of what? A divided subject in any case. Thac it should be less and less tol-
erable for this reduction to be limited to producing reachcrs is brought
completely into the light of day in the present epoch, and this requires a srudy
that is all the more improvised for being in the process of becoming a fact.
What is being produced, and this is called the crisis of the university, can be
inscribed in this formula. It requires it, because it's founded at an altogether
radical level. It's not possible to limit oneself to treating it in the way it's being
treated. It's uniquely on the basis of the roraring relationship, which is revo-
lutionary, as I say in a slightly difierent sense from the usual one, between the
universicy po&ition and the three other discourse positions that wbac is cur-
rently happening in che university cam be illuminated.
X: [On rcwluticnaries and the prokcariar. J
The proletarian? When did I mention rhe proletarian? At the level of the
master's discourse his place is altogether clear.
In its origins the master's discourse has to do with everything that ini-
tially happened as bcing the proletarian, who was initially the slave. \Ve fall
back here on the Hegelian term. The slave, as I have stressed, was knowl-
edge at the outset. The evolution of the master's discourse is here. Philos-
ophy has played the role of constituting a master's knowledge, extracted
Interview on the seeps of the Pantheon 149
[.wustraii] from the slave's knowledge. Science as it has currently come to
light properly consists in this transmutation of the function, if o ne can put
it like that~ne is always more or less led at some moment to grasp at an
archaic theme, and, as you know, I incite you to be prudent.
Be that as it may, there is certainly a difficulty in knowledge, which
resides in the opposition between know-how and what is episteme in the strict
sense. The episteme was constituted out of an interrogation, a purification of 174
knowledge. The philosophical discourse shows the philosopher making ref-
erence to it ac every turn. It's n ot for nothing that he questioned the slave,
and that he demonstrates that the latter knows-that he knows what he
doesn't know, moreover. One shows that he knows only because one asks the
right questions. This is the path by which me displacement was brought
about that makes it the case that our scientific discourse is currently on the
side of the master. It's precisely chis that cannot be mastered.
X: W7wre do you place the proletarian, then?
H e can only be in the place that he has to be in, on the top right-hand side.
In the place of the big Other, don' t you think? Very pn::d:.t:ly, there knowl-
edge no longer has any weight. The proletarian is not simply exploited, he
has been stripped of his functio n of knowledge. The so-cal.led liberation of
the slave has had, as always, ocher corollaries. It's not merely prog.ressive.
It's progressive only at the price of a deprivation.
J won't risk going into this, I would only go into it cautiously, but if there is
someching wbu~e tone strikes me in the thematics called Maoist, it's the refer-
ence to the knowledge of manual labor. I do not claim to have an adquate view
on thi<;, but I will make one observation that struck me. The renewed empha-
sis on the knowledge of the exploited seems to me to be very profoundly moti-
vated srrucrurally. The question is knowing whether this is not something that
is entirely dreamed up. In a world in which there has emerged, in a way that
actually dQCS exist, tht1t is a presence: in the world, oot the thought of science,
but science objectified in some way, I mean these thing"S entirely forged by sci-
ence, simply these little things, gadgets and things, which at the moment
occupy the same space as us- in a world in which this emergence has taken
place, can know~how at the level of manual labor carry enough weight to be a
subversive factor? This is how, for me, the questi(m arises.
What do you do with all I tell you? You record it on a linle machine, and
afterward, you give parties which you hand o m invitations ro--that's a
Lacan tape for you.
13 MaJ' 1970
-
175
XI
Furrows in the alethosphere
THl!REJS ONT.V ONE hffnr:T
TI Iii OllJt:e:r A ANIJ THE COOITO

SCIFl'CT AND PERCEl'TlON
I Ht: M\l1.lll'U C.<I101' OF LATHOUST-..~
A lot of water has passed under che bridge since o ur last meeting, I am
speaking of the one in April, and not thcmosc recent one, which took place
elsewhere, and only with some of you.
The exchange of remarks on the steps of the Pantheon was not of a bad
level, since it enabled me to go over a number of points that deserved to be
made precise, in respo nse co questions that were not ac all mept. That is
what 1 think with the lapse of a week. Bur my first reaction immediately
afterward when I was with someone who was accompanying me was, how-
ever, of a cen:ain inadequacy.
Even rhe best of chose who spoke, and who were not unjustified in their
questions, seemed co m e, except at the stan, to be lagging behind a bit. This
seems to m e to have been ret1ected in the fact that, at least in chis friendly
interpellation that was still not a questioning, they situated m e within a
number of references.
ThL-SC references are n ot all to be rejected, certainly. 1 r ecall that the first
was to Gorgias, of whom I am supposed to be conducting some sor t of rep-
etition . Why n ot? But what was inappropriate is that in the mouth of tbe
person who evoked chis characcer whose dft:<.-tivem:ss wt:, in vur days, can-
not evaluate very well it was about someone from the history of thought.
This is the distancing that seems disturbing to me-thii; term eoables a sort
of sampling of views from a distance concerning this person and that per-
son whom one has bracketed together under "function of thought."
176 Tt seems to me chat there is nothing less homogeneous here- if! can put
it like that-· nothing thac would enable one to define a species. It is not
legitimate to give some people, in whatever capacity one might imagine
them, the function of a ~pecics representing thought. Thought is not a cat-
egory. l would almost say it ii; an affect. Although, this is not to say that it
is at its most fundamental under the aspect of affect.
There is only one affect-- ch.is constitutes a certain position, a new one
150
Furrows in the alcthosphere 151
co be introduced into the world, which, I am saying, is to be reterred to
what I am giving you a schema of, transcribed onto the blackboard, when
I speak of the psychoanalytic discourse.
As a matter of fact, transcribing it onto the blackboard is distinct from
talking aoout it. I remember that nc Vincennes, when I appeared there for
the first time which hasn't been repeated since, but which will be repeated,
it occurred ro someone to call ouc co me that there were real things chat
were truly preoccupying the assembly. Namely, that there was a brawl going
on at a place at some distance from where we were gathered, ihat this was
w hat we should be thinking about, that the blackboard bad nothing to do
with this real. That's where the error is.
1 would say that, if there is any chance of grasping something called the
real, it is nowhere other than on che blackboard. And ev~n, what~·er <.:om-
mentary I am able co give it, which. will take the form of speech, 1elates only
to what is written on the blackboard.
That's a fact. And it js demonstrated by this fact, by chis artifice chat is
science, whose emergence one would be completely wrong to inscribe as
arising solely out of a philosophical concoction. Metaphysical~ rather than
physical, science, perhaps. D oes our scientific physics deserve to be called
rnetaphysical?This is what would need to be spelled out.
Spelling it out seems possible to me, namely on the basis of the psycho-
analytic discourse. In effect, from the perspective of this discourse, there is
only one affect, which is, namely, the produce of the speaking being's cap-
cure in a discourse, where chis discourse determines its status as object.
This is where the Cartesian cogito dcriv<.-s its exemplary value from, pro-
vided that one examine it and revise it, as I will do once again, today, to
start with.
1 177
I mentioned that affect by which the speaking being ()fa discourse finds itself
determined as an object. It has to be said that this object is not nameable. If
I try to call it surplus jouissancc, this is only a device of nomenclature.
What object is it that results from this effect of a certain discourse? We
know nothing about this object, except that it is the cause of desire, that is
co say that strictly speaking it manifests itself as want-to-be. There is there-
fore no being that is thereby determined.
Certainly, what the effect of a given discourse bears upon may well be a
being that one may call man, for example, or else a living being to which
one can add that it is sexed and mortal, and one will fearlessly advance
.. ___,, --- ·---·- · · - - - - - -
toward thinking that what the discourse of psychoanalysis bears upon is
be re, under the pretext that sex and death are constantly at issue here. But
from our perspective, if it is true that we start at the level of what reveals
itself initially, and as the prime fact, to be strucwrcd like a langt4age, we are
not yet at this point. lt is not a question of beings [etant] in the effect of lan-
guage. It is only a question of a speaking Being [ecre]. At the outset we are
n ot at the level of beings, but at the level of Being.
We must, however, beware of the m irage here of thinking that Being is
thereby settled, and beware of the error, which lies in wait for us, of assim-
ilating this co everything that has been worked out as the dialectic of an ini-
tial position of being and nothingness.
The initial affe<:t of this effect, let's now put this in inverted commas, of
"Being" only appears ai che level of what makes icsclf the cause of desire,
that is to say, at the level of what we situate, of this initial effe<:t of the set-
ting [apparcil), of the analyst-the analyst as the place that 1 am trying to
grasp with these little letters on the blackboard. This is where the anaJyst
positions himself. H e positions himself as the cause of desire. This is an
eminently unprecedented position~ if not a paradoxical one, one that is val-
idau:d by a practice.
The imponance of this practice can be measured by taking \Vhat has
been designared as the master's discourse as a reference point. h is not a
qllcstion here of a distant relationship> or of an overnew, but of a funda-
menr.al relationship-the analytic practice is, properly speaking, initiated by
this m aster's discourse.
178 There is something that becom es present by virtue of the fact that all
determination of the subje(:t, and therefore of thought, depends on dis-
course. In this discourse, in eftect, there arises the m om em at which the
m aster becomes differentiated. It would be quite false to think that th.is
occurs at the level of a risk. This risk is, despite everything, quite mythical.
It's the trace of a myth that still remains in Hegelian phenomenology. Isn 't
this master nothing other rhan the one who is the strongest? This is cer-
tainly not what Hegel records. The struggle for pure prestige at the risk of
death still belongs to the realm of the imaginary. What does the master do?
This is what the artic ulation I am giving you of discourse shows. H e plays
upon what I have called, in different terms, the crystal of lang\lage.
Why not use in this respect what can be designated in French by the
homonym m '&re, m 'atre a moi-meme? It's from this that the m 'ecre signifier
emerges, whose second term I leave to you to write as you will.1
1 m'ctrc,, a construction of Lacan's, is homophonic with maftre, " master."

Having the grammatical form of a quasi pronominal construction, it can be taken
roughly to suggest being as an activity, thus, ''l am being."
Furrows in the alethnsphere 153
This unique signifier operates by means of its relation with what is

already there, already articulated, in such a ~-ay that we can only conceive
of it against the presence of a signifier that is already there, that, I would
say, has always been there. In effect, if this unique signifier, the signifier
"the master," write it as you wish, is articulated to some part of a practice
that it orders, then this practice is already shot through, woven through,
with what, to be sure, does not yet emerge from it, namely, the signifying
articulation. The latter is at the heart of all knowledge, even if it could only
have been approached through know-bow.
We find the trace of the initial presence of this knowledge where it is
already some distance off, by virtue of having been fiddled with for a long
rime in what is called the philosophical tradition-a judgment about the
grip that the signifier of the master has on this knowledge.
Let's not forget that when Descartes asserts bis "I am thinking therefore
I am," it's by virtue of having for some time sustained his " I am chinking"
by calling into question, purring in doubt, this knowledge that I am saying
is "fiddled witht which is the knowledge already elaborated at Length
through the master's intervention.
What can we say about coocemporary science thac will givt: u:. a ~ft:1-
ence point? I will mention three scages here because, poor teacher that I
am, I am not sure that you are cottoning ooro my senrences. lbree stagcs-
science--behind, phlJosopby- and beyond, something of which. we have a
notion if only through biblical anathemas.
This year I have given a large place to the texr Hosea, with reference to 179
wha1 Frt.'Ud extrd~-CS from it, according to Sellin. The greatest ben efit of it
is perhaps not, though it does exist on this level, calling the Oedipus com-
plex into question, which l have called this "residue of myth," in psychoan-
alytic theory. Surely, if there were somr!thing necessary here co make
present some ocean of myt11ical knowledge regulating the life of men-and
how do we know whether it was harmonious or not?-the best reference
could weU be what Yahweh condemns, with what I called hls ferocious igno-
rance, with the term "prostitution."
This is enough of a foothold [bias], to my mind, and surely a better one
than the common reference to che fruits of ethnography. Ethnography con-
ceals all kinds of confusion within icself, through adhering to what it gath-
ers as if it were natural. And how is it gathered? It is gathered in writing,
that is to say, detailed, extracted, dlAtorted forever from the supposed ter-
rain on which one is supposedly uncovering it.
This is certainly not to say that mythical knowledge could inform us at
greater length, or inform us bercer, about the essence of the sexual relation.
If psychoanalysis makes sex and, as a dependency, death present for us-
evcn though here nothing is cercain, except a general apprehension of a link
1:54 The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
between sexual difference aod death, it's by demonstrating, in a way that I
wouldn't call lively but merely articulated, thar cooccrning the capture of
this being-whatever it may be, which is to say that it is not even a being-
in discourse the articuJation in which the sexual relation is expressed only
ever appears in a complex manner. This complex manner is one that can-
not even be said to be mediated, even though there are meclii-media, if you
prefer-Qne of which is this real effect that I am calling surplus pleasure,
which is the linle a.
What does e.'tperience indicate to us~ in point of face? That it is only
when this little a is substituted for woman that man desires her. That,
inversely, what a woman has to deal wirh, insofar as we are able co speak
about this, is this jouwance that is her own and is represented somewhere
by a man's omnipotence, which is precisely wbere man, when he speaks,
when he speaks as master, discovers that he is a failure ren defaut].
This is where one bas to start from in analytic experience-what could
180 be called man, that is to say the male as speaking being, disappears, van-
ishes through the very effect of the master's discourse-spell it as you will-
through being inscribed sokly in castration, which, by this very fact, is
properly tu be defined as being deprived uf woman- of woman im;ufar a8
she would be realized in a suitably congruent signifier.
Being deprived of woman-this, expressed in terms of the failure
[defautJ of discourse, is what castration means. Ir is iodccd because this is
not thinkable that the speaking order institutes this desire, constituted as
impossible, as an intermediary and that makes cbe mother, insofar as she is
prohibited, the privileged feminine object.
Th.is is the wrapping established by the fundamental fact that in a myth-
ical union between man and woman there is no possible place that could
be defined as sexual.
This is, indeed, where what we grasp in the psychoanalytic discourse-
tbc unifying One, the wbole One-is not what is involved in identification.
The pivotal identification, the m:a;or identification, is the unary craic. lt is
Being, marked one.
Prior to the promotion of any being, by virtue of a singular one_,of what
bears the mark from this momem forward, the effect of language arises, as
does the tint affect. This is what the formulas I wrote on the blackboard are
saying.
I I am one
= ?
1+1 I am thinking = rherefore I am one
Somewhere chis something chat the cogito only marks is isolated, also
with the unary trait, that one can suppose the "I am thinking" has in order
- Furrow'3 in the alecho'3phere 155
to say, "Therefore, I am." H ere the effect of division is already marked by
an "I am" which elides the "I am marked by the one"- for Descartes is, to
be sure, inscribed in a schola~1.ic tradition, which he wriggles out of acro-
bacica!Jy, which is not at all to be disdained as a means of escape.
M oreover, it is as a function of this initial position of che "I am,, that the
"I am thinking" can be even so much as written. You will recall how I have
been writing it for a long time now-"I am th.inking, 'Therefore 1 am: "
This "Therefore I am" is a thought.
Jc supports itself infinitely better by carrying its characteristic of knowl-
edge, which does not go beyond the "I am marked by the one," by the sin-
gular, by the unique, by what?-by chis effect which is, "I am tltinking."
But here again, there is an error in the puocruatioo, which a long time 181
ago 1 expressed thus-the "ergo,» which is n othing other than the "ego" in
play, should be put alongside the "cogito."The " f am thinking, therefore, 'I
am'" gives the formula ics real significance. The cause, the "ergo," is
thought. The point of departure to take is the effect of whac is involved in
the simplest order, from which the language effect comes into play at the
level of the emergence of che unary trait.
To be sure, the unary trait is never alone. Therefore, l.llt: fa~l Lhal it
repeats itself-that it repeats itself in never being the same-is properly
speaking the order itself, the order in question because language is present
and already there, already efficacious.
Our first rule is oe,•er co seek c:he origins of language, if onJy because they
are demonstrated well enough through their effects.
The further back we pus h their effects, the more chese origins emerge.
The effects of language are retroactive, precisely in that it is as language
develops that it manifesrs whac it is qua want-to-be.
Mo reover, I will indicate-in passing, for today we have to move on-that
we can write it like this, and thac we can bring into play here, in its strictest
form, something that right from the origins of a rigorous use of the symbolic
appeared in the Greek tradition, namely at the level of mathematics.
Euclid is the fundamental reference here, and the definfrion he gives us
of proportion is primary, it had never been given before him, 1 mean before
what remains as having been written in bis name--of course, who knows
from where he might have borrowed chis strict definition? The one that
gives the only true foundation of geometrical demonstration can be found,
if I remember correctly, in book five.
The term "demonstration" is ambiguous here. By constantly highlight-
ing the intuitive elements that are here in the figure, he makes it possible
for you to miss the fact that, very formally, the requirement in Euclid is one
of symbolic demonstration, of an order that is grouped into equalities and
inequalities, which alone enable proportion to be assured in a way that is
nor an approximation but is properly demonstrable, in this term "logos," in
the sense of proportion.
182 I{ is curious and indicative lhat we had to wait for the Fibonacci series
to sec what is given in the apprehension of this proportion which is called
the proportional mean. I will write it our here-you will be aware chat I
made use of it when I discussed From an Ocher to the other. 2
1
l+l
l+I
l+J
A romanticism still continues to call this the golden number and goes
astray in finding it on the surface of everything that bas been possible to
paint or draw over the ages, as if it were not certain that this is onJy about
being able to visualize iL One only has to open a work of aesthetics that
makes a case for chis reference in order to realize that, while it may be pos-
sible co superimpose it, it is certainly not because the painter b.ad drawn the
diagonals in advance, but because there is in effect a kind of intuitive har-
mony, which means thar ir is always this that sings most sweetly.
Except char there is also i:omething else, which it will not be easy fur you to
grasp. By taking each of these terms and srarting to calculate from the borrom
up, you will quickly see that you are dealing first with 112, then with 2/3, next
with 3/5. You will thus find the numbers the sequence of which constitutes the
Fibonacci series, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, ... , each being the swn of the two preceding
numbers, as I pomred our co you ar che time. This relation of two terms we can
write for instance as ucn+ 1) = u(n-I) + un. The result of the division Un+ 1 I Un
will be equal, if the series is continued long enough, to the effectively ideal pro-
pQrtion that is called the proportional mean, or again, the golden number.
If we now take this proportion as an image of what affect is.. insofar as
there is repetition of this "I am one" on the next line, this retroactively
results in what causes it- the affect.
We can momentarily write this affect as "equal to a," and we can sec that
we rediscover the same a at the level of the effect.
2 J.c Semiuai're, Li~ire XVI, D'unAutre al'autre, 19681969 (Paris: Editions du

Seuil, 2006).
Furrows in the alethosphere 157
1
= a
a+l
This a, the effect of repeating the 1, is at the level of what is designated 183
here by a bar. The bar is precisely only this, chat there is something w gee
past in order for the 1 to affect. la short, it is this bar that is equal to a. And
there's nothing astorusbing in the fact that we can legitimately \.\Tite the
affect below the bar, as that which js the effect chat is here thought, over-
curned, when the cause is made to emerge. It is in the initial effect that the
cause, as thought cause, emerges.
This is what is motivating me to find a more certain articulation of what
the effect of discourse is in this initial tentative use of mathematics. It's at
the level of the cause, insofar as ic emerges as chought, che reflection of the
dfecc, chat w~ anain the initial order of what the want-to-be is. Initially
Being only affirms itself with the mark of !.he 1, and everytlllng that follows
is a dream-notably, the mark of the 1 insofar as it supposedly encom-
passes, could supposedly combine, anything at all. h can combine nothing
at all, unless it is, precisely, the confrontation, the addition of the thought
of the cause with the initial repetition of the 1.
This repetition already costs and institutes, at the level of the a, the debt
of language. Something bas to be paid to the one who introduces its sign.
This year l have designated this something, using a nomenclacure that tries
co give it its historical weight-strictly speaking it was not this year, but let's
say that for you it was chis year-with the term M ehrlust.
What does this infinite articulation reproduce? As !.he linle a is the same
here as it is there, it is self-evident that repetition of the formula cannot be
the in.finice repetition of the "I am chinking" within the "I am thinking,"
which is the mistake the phenomenologists never fail to make, but only the
foUowing: "I am thinking," were it to be done, is only able to be replaced
by "I am, 'I am thinking, therefore I am.' " I am he who is thinking, "There-
fore I am," and so on indefinitely. You will observe chat the small a always
gets farther and farther away in a series that reproduces exactly the same
order of ls, such as they arc here deployed on the right, with the sole dif-
ference that the final term will be a small a.
1 a
a+l
a+I
Notice that it's a remarkable thing, this small a. It is sufficient chat it sub- t R4
sist, however far down you take it, for equality to be the same as in the for-
mula I first wrote up, namely that the multiple and repeated proportion
equals, in total, rhe resulr of che small a.
In what way is this series marked ofl? In sum, it does nothing other, if I
am not mistaken, than mark the order of the converging series which has
the largest intervals while remaining constant. Namely, still the object a.
In a certain sense, this is only a local articulation. It certainly does n ot pre-

tend to S<llve, with a fixed and guaranteed proportion, the question of the
effectiveness of the m ost primary manifestation of number, namely the
unary trait. I only did it to remind you what science is such as we have it
now, if I can put it like chis, on our hands-I m ean, present in our world in
a manner that goes well beyond anything that an effect of knowledge [con-
naissance] may lead us to speculate about.
Io effect, it is, all the same, necessary not to forget that it is characteris-
tic of our science not co h ave inuodui.:ro a bcner and more exteIL<Jivc
knowledge of the world but to have brought into existence, in the world,
things that did not in any way exist at the level of our perception.
Attempts have been made to organize science according to some myth-
ical genesis that begins with perception, under the pretext that such and
such a philosophical medirarion had supposedly come to a standstill for a
long time over th e question of knowing what guarantees that perception is
not illusory. This is not where science emerged from . Science emerged from
what was embryonic in cbe Euclidean demonstrations. Nevertheless, these
still remain very suspect because they still contain that attachment to the
figure, the self-evidence of which serves as a pretc:i.."t. The entire evolution
of Greek mathematics proves to u s that whar rises to the highesr point is
the manipulation of numbers as such.
Consider the method of exhaustion which, already in Archimedes, pre-
figures whac leads to what is <..-sscntial, to what for us is, as it happens, struc-
ture, namely the calculus, the infinitesimal calculus. There is no need to
wait until Leibniz, who, moreover, at his first attempt shows himsdf to have
185 been a little awkward. It had already been started by Cavalieri, simply by
reproducing Archimedes' exploit on the parabola, in the seventeenth cen-
tury, but well before Leibniz.
What is the result of this? No doubt you can say of science that nihil jucrit
in intellecru quad non prius juic in sen.su, what does that prove? The s1msus bas
nothing t o do, as people nevertheless know, wich perception. The seruus is
-- Furrows in the alethosphere 159
only there in the manner of what can be counted, and the actual counting
rapidly dissolves. Taking what is our se11sus at the level of the ear or eye, for
example, leads to counting vibrations. And it was owing to this play of num-
bers that we in fact set about producing vibrations that had nothing to do
either with our senses or with our perception.
As I was saying the other day on the steps of the Pantheon, the world
that is assumed to have always been ours is now populated, in the very place
where we are, without: your having the slightest suspicion of it, by a consid-
erable and intersecting number of what are called waves. This is ·not to be
neglected as the manifestation, presence, existence, of science, and to
describe what is ar<.lund our Earth would require that one not be satisfied
with speaking of atmosphere, of stratosphere, of whatever you would like to
spherize, however distanc the particles we can apprehend. It would be nec-
essary to take account also ofwhac in our day goes well beyond, and which
is the effect of what? Of a knowledge tbac has progressed less through its
own filtering, through its own critique as we say, chan through an audacious
leap from an artifice, no doubt that ofDescartcs~thers will choose diffe r-
ent ones-the artifice of giving the guarantee of truth hack to God. If truth
chere lx, thai he cake respom;ibility for ir. We take il at face value.
Solely by mean.'> of the play of a truth that is not abstract but purely log-
ical, solely by the play of a strict combinatory that is subject only to the
requirement that rules, under the name of axioms, must always be given-
this is where a science is constructed, one that no longer has anything to do
with the presuppositions that the idea of knowledge [cormaissance] has
alwa)'l) implied-namely, the mute polarization, the imagined ideal unifica-
tion of that which is knowledge [connaissance], where one can always find ,
whatever the name unc dresses chem up in, "cndosunia," for instance, the
reflection, the image, which is moreover always ambiguous, of two princi- 186
pies, the male principle and the female principle.
The space in which the creations of science are deployed can only be
qualified henceforth as the in-substance, as the a.-tJ:ing, l'achose with an apos-
trophc--a facr that entirely changes the meaning of our materialism.
Jc is the oldesc figure of the master's infatuation- write "master" as you
will- for man to imagine that he shapes woman. I think you all have expe-
rienced enough t<> have encoumered this comical story at one stage of your
life or another. Form, substance, content, call it what you will -this is the
myth scientific rhought must cir.rach itself from.
I figure that I am allowed to plow on fairly crudely in order co express my
thought well. I am failing to act as ifI had had a thought, whereas, precisely,
this is not the issue, but, as everyone knows, it's thought that communicates
itself, by means of misunderstanding, ofcourse. Well, let's communicate and
say what this conversion consists in, the converoion by which science is
shown to be distinct from any theory of knowledge [connaissance].
This doesn't make sense, in fact, because it is precisely in the light of the
apparatus of science, to the extent that we can grasp it, that it is possible co
found the nature of the errors, the obstacles [/es butees], the confusions that
in effect didn't fail to be present in what was being articulated as knowl-
edge [connaissance), with this undercurrent that there were cwo principles
to cleave apart-..-one that forms and one that is formed. This is what sci-
ence makes quite clear for us, and this is confirmed by the fact that we find
an echo of it in analytic experience.
To express myself in these large-scale, approximate terms, take the male
principle for example-what effect does the incidence of discourse have on
it? It is that, as a speaking beiing, he is summoned to give an explanation of
his "essence"- irony, invent.'<i commas. It is very precisely and solely
because of the affect that this discourse effect subjects him to-that is, inso-
far as he receives this femini:ziog effect of the small a-·that he recognizes
what makes him, that he recognizes the cause of his desire.
Conversely, at the level of the so-called natural principle, where it is not
for nothing that it has alwa}''S been symbolized, in the bad sense of the
word, by a female reference, it is, on the contrary, from our of the insub-
187 stance, as I was saying fust before, that this void appears. Void of what? Let's
say that the something in question, if we want, very much from a distance,
from a very long way away, to give it the horizo n of woman, is in what is in
question as w1.formed joui.ssance., precisely withour any form, that we can
find the place, in the "operccivc" in which science comes to be con-
structed.3 What I perceive, which is claimed to be original, muse, in effect,
be replaced by an operceive.
Insofar as science only refers co an articulation that only takes form in
the signifying order, it is constructed out of something where there was
nothing beforehand
This is what it i.~ important to grasp if we wish to understa:nci something
that has to do with-wbat?-with the forgetting of chis very effect. Being
wbat we are, all of us, to the extent that the field increases by virrue of the
fact that science perhaps functions as the master's discourse, we do not
know how far- for the reason that we have never known at any point- -each
one of us is initially determined as object small a.
1 was speaking before of these spheres with which the extension of sci-
ence-which, curiously, ic; found to be very effective at determining what a
being is-encircles the earth, a series of zones chat science describes as
3 The word is a construction by Lacan compruing ~opcrare," as in "opera-

tional,"' and "perceive."
furrows in rhe alcthosphere l6l
being what it finds. Why not also take accounc of the place in which these
fabrications of science are located, if they arc nothing more than the effect
of formalized truth? What are we going to call this place?
Here again I am overly emphasizing what I want to say, and 1 am n ot
necessarily very proud of what I am putting forward on chis occasion, bllt
I chink that it is useful) you will see why, co raise this question which is not
a question of nomenclature.
It is a question about a p lace that is well and truly occupied- by what?
I was speaking jusc before about waves. This is what is at issue. H ert:zian
waves or other waves---no phenomenology of perception bas ever given us
the slightest idea of cllem and it would certainly never have led us co them.
We cenainly won't be calling chis place the noosphere, which we our-
sdves supposedly populate." If indeed there is anything that as it happens
is in the background, twcncy-five rows back, of evcryching that may be of
interest to us, it is this. But in using aietheia in a way which, I agree, has
nothing emotionally philosophical about it you could, unless you find
something better, call it the alethosphere.
Don't get too excited. The alethosphere gets recorded. If you have a little 188
microphum: here, you an: plugged into cbe alcthosphere. Wbat is really S<>me-
thing is that if you are in a lictle vehicle that is ttansporting you coward Mars
you can still plug into the alethospbere. And, even, this surprising effect of
structure which meant that two or three people have gone wandering
around on the moon, you must think that, concerning their exploit, it was
t:l!rtainly not for no reason that they always srayed within che alethospbere.
These astronauts, as they are ealJed, who hod some minor problems ac
the last minute, would probably not have overcome them so well- I am not
even talking about their relations with their little machine, for they would
pcrhaps have overcome that on their own- if they had not been accompa-
nied I.he entire time by this little a thac is the human voice. By virtue of chis
they could allow themselves co say nothing but bullshit fcom1erics], such as
for example that everything was going welJ when everyching was going
poorly. But that's beside the po int. The point is mat they stayed within the
aletbosphere.
It takes time to observe au the things that populate it, and this is going
to oblige us to introduce another word.
The alethosphere-it sounds good. That's because we suppose that what
r have been calling formalized truth already has, sufficiently, the status of
truth at the level at which it operates, at which it operceivcs. But at the level
of the operated-on, of what moves around, the troth is not at all unveiled.
4 Neologism byTeilhard de Chardin from the Greek.noo.r, " mind."

The proof of this is that the human voice, with its effect of grabbing you by
the perinewn, as it were, does not unveil its truth at all.
We shall name that with the help of the aorist of the same verb that, as
a famous philosopher pointed out, aletheia came from. Only philosophers
would ever notice su ch things, and perhaps the odd linguist. I'm going to
call that the "lathouses."
The world is increasingly populated by lathouses. Since you seem to find
that amusing, I am going to show you how it is spelled.
You will notice that I could have called that "lathousies." That would
have gone better with ousia, this p articiple with all its ambiguity. 5 Ousia is
not the Other, it's not a being, it's between the two. It is not altogether
Being either, but, ultimately, it's pretty close.
As far as the feminine unsubstancc is concerned, I would go as far as
"parousia." And these tiny objects little a that you will encounter when you
I 89 leave, there on the footpath at the corner of every street, behind every win-
dow, in this abundance of these objects designed to be the cause of your
desire, insofar as it is now science that governs it- think of them as lathouses.
I notice a bit late, since it's not long since I invented it, t~at it rhymes
with ventowe. 6 There is ven~ "wind," inside, lots of wind, the wind of the
human voice. It is quite comical to find that ac the end of our gathering.
If man had less often played the spokesman of God in order to believe
that he forms a union with a woman., this word "lathouse'' would have per-
haps been found a long time ago.
Be that as it may, this little emergence is designed to make you ill at ease
in your relations with the lachouse.
It is quite certain that everyone has to deal with two or three of chis
species. The lathouse has absolutely no reason to limit its multiplication.
\Vhat is important is to know what happens when one really enters into
relationship with the lathouse as such .
The ideal psychoanalyst would be one who commits this absolutely rad-
ical act, and the least that one can say is that seeing it done causes anxiety.
One dayi at a time when it was a question of my being traded, I tried,
because it was part of the ritual, to advance a few little things on this sub-
ject. In effect, while I was being traded, people were very keen to pretend
to be interested in what I might have to say about the training of analysts,
and I put forward, in a spirit of absolute indiffi::rcnce, since everyone was
only interested in what was happening in me corridors, that thi:>:re was no
reason why a psychoanalysis should cause anxiety. It is certain that if the
3 Ousia in Plato is usually rcndcn::d into English as "essence" or "being,'' and

in Aristotle as "substance."
6 A vmmuse is a sucker (of an octopus), a suction cap (on the tip of a toy
arrow), or a .:upping gla~s (for the bleeding of a patient).
Furrows in the alethosphere 163
lathouse exists, anxiety-since that is what we are dealing with-is not
without an object. That is what I started with. A better approach to lath-
ouse must calm us a little bit.
The question is to put oneself in a position where there is someone
whom you have taken charge of with respect to his anxiety, who wishes to
come and hold the same position that you occupy, or that you do not
occupy, or that you barely occupy, who wishes w come to know how you
occupy it, and how you do not occupy it, and why you occupy it, and why
you do not occupy it.
'This will be the object of our next seminar, whose title I can already give 190
you-it will be on the relations, still supported by our little schemas,
between impotence and impossibility.
It is clear that it is completely impossible to hold the position of the lath-
ouse. However, that's not all that is impossible, there are many other things
as well, provided one gives this word "impossible" a strict meaning-that is
to say, provided one determines them only at the level of our formalized
truth-namely, that in every formalized field of truth there arc truths that
one can never demonstrate.
It's at the level of the impossible, as you know, that I define what is real.
If it is real that there are analysts, it's precisely because this is impossible.
·This forms part of the position of the lathouse.
What's annoying is that, in order to be in the position of the lathouse, it
is really necessary to have established that it is impossible. It is for this rea-
son that one loves to emphasize impotence so much more, which also exists,
but which is, as 1 will show you, in another place than strict impossibility.
I know chat there are some people here who are distressed from rime to
time by seeing me, as one says-how does one say?-abusc, interpellate,
vociferate against analysts. These are young people who are not analysts.
They do not realize that I am doing something nice, that these are little
signs of acknowledgment that I am giving them.
I do not want to put them through coo difficult a trial. And when l allude
to their impotence, which is therefore my own, it means that at that level
we are all brothers and sisters, and that one has to extricate oneself as best
one can.
I hope this will calm them down before I talk to them about the impos-
sibility of the analyst's position.
20 M~y 1970
-
191
XII
The impotence of truth
l'IU:UO ~ 0 ·aH..t l'UUK Ul!S<;UU&l> I ~
C" .. Pl'TllUSM J\NDTiiE UNIV£Jl5HY
HEGa' s PRl\CTICAl. JOltFS
IMPCln!Nl:t. A.."ID IMPOSS!Bll.JTY
WHAT <:.\K /\ .\flSCARRTAGE DO?
We are at that time of the year when final examinations happen. I am goiog
to try to lighten things up a bit.
Fortunately, it's drawing to a close, fa se tire, as we say. I would even be
inclined to leave ic at that, if I didn't have to give you, all the same, two lit-
tle complements that are intended to bring out the cssl!Dtial of what I hope
co have got across this year- --cwo little points for the future, which may give
you a glimpse, by drawing you a bit closer ro it, of the way in which there
are perhaps n otions that are fairly new, and that have, in every case, this
mark that I am always emphasizing, which chose who find themselves work-
ing with me at a more practical level can confirm, of operating on a level
with an experience.
It is not impossible that this will be of use elsewhere, at the level of some-
thing that is taking place now, without, for the moment, our knowing quite
what. Naturally, when things happen, one never quite.: knows a: the time
they are happening what they arc.:, especially when one covers them over
with the news. But ultimately something is happening in the university.
Jn various places people are surprised. What's eating them, these stu-
dents, the lirtle dears, our favorites, the darlings of civilization? What's up
with them? Those who are saying this are playing the fool, this is what they
are paid ro do.
I t should nevertheless be possible that something of what I am elaborat-
ing about the relationship between the analyst'> discourse and tbc master's
discourse should show people a way to enable them, in some way, to
explain themselves to one another and to understand on e anocher.
J92 What is happening at the moment is that everyone is competing with
everyon e dse in an anempt to minimize the seriousness of failed, sup-
pressed little demonstrarions, increasingly confining them to a street, a
corner. To explain ic, to make it understood at the very moment at which
I say I could do it, I would like you to undcrstand this, which is that to the
164
-- The impotence of truth 165
extent to which I managed to do this, to the extent to which I succeeded
in getting you to understand something, you could be certain that to that
extent I would have made you make a big mistake. For it is ultimately lim-
ited to this.
Today I would like to spell out, as simply as I can, the relationship
between what is happening and the things r have been daring {O manipu-
lace for a while, which, by virtue of this fact, gives a kind of guarantee that
this discourse hangs together. I have dared manipulate them in a way which
is, ultimately, completely wild.
l have not hesitated to speak about the real, and not for some time, since
it is even where I took the first step in this teaching. Then, years later, this
little formula emerged, the impossible is the real. Heavens knows that no
one abused it at first. Then I happened to trot out some reference to truth,
which is more common. There are ne~rtheless some very important obser-
vations ro make, and I chink I am under an obligation to make a number of
them today, before leaving all that within the reach of innocents to use
without rhyme or reason, which is really par for the course, sometimes, in
my entourage.
I made a trip to Vincennes last week- this succinctly tcllc; the tale th.at I had
replied to an invitation from that place. Besides, I announced this to you
here last time, to set you off on the righr path for a reference 1 began with,
one that is far from innocent- this is even the reason why one must read
Freud.
In effect, in "Analysis Terminable and Interminable" we can read the
lines concerning what an analyst is.
Ir is observed there that one would be very mistaken lo n::4uin: l1f ana-
lysts a large dose of mental normality and correctness, they would become
too rare, and then, it must not be forgotten that the analytic relation,
"unendlich ist nicht zu vergesser., dass die analytische Bez1'.ehung aufWahrheit-
sliebe," is founded on the love of trurh, and "d. h. au/ die Anerkennung der 19.'3
Realitat gegriindec isr," that is to say, on the recognition of realities.
"Reulitat" i"S a wm-d you will recognize since it is copied from our Latin.
Ir is in competition, in the way Freud uses it, with the word "Wirklichkeit"
which also can sometimes signify what the translators, without looking any
further, translate quite consistently, in both cases, as "reality."
I have on this issue a little recollection of the truly frothing rage that
overcame a couple, or more particularly one of them-1 really do have to
call him by his name, it is not an accident, it's a certain Laplanche, who has
had a certain role in the avatars of my relations with analysis- at the
thought that another- whom I am also going to name, since I named the
former, a certain [Pierre] Kaufmann-had put forward the idea that it was
necessary to distinguish between this W irklichkeit and this R ealitat. The fact
that he had been beaten by the other to make this remark, which was, in
fact, altogether primary, had unleashed a kind of passion in the former of
these two characters.
The pseudocontempt displayed by this fussing about is, acrually, some-
thing qwce interesting.
The senten ce finishes thus, "gegrfmdei isi und jeden Schein und Trug auss-
chJi&sst," excludes from this analytic relationship all false appearances, alJ
deception. I A sentence like chat is very rich. And immediately, in the fol-
lowing lines, it appears-despite the friendly little greeting that Freud gives
the analyst on the way-that in sum there is no Analysieren. We are quite
close here to truly having, we have all the appearances of, this functfon that
is the analytic act. "Das Analysi.eren" does not mean anything other than
this term that I employed as the title of one of my seminars.2 The analytic
act would be che third impossjble profession, in inverted commas,
" 'tmmiiglichen' Berufe.n
Freud quotes himself here, making reference to the fact that he bas
already mcntion\!d- Where did Ile say it? My research is incomplete, per-
haps it is in the letters to Fliess-the three professions in question, which
in this previous passage be bad called Regieren, Erziehen, Kuriere11, and in
which he is obviously following common usage. Analysis is new, and Freud
inserts it into this series by substitution. The three professions, if indeed
194 they really a1e professions, are therefore Regieren, Erziehen, Analysiertm, chat
is, governing, educating, and analyzing.J
Y<m can't miss the overlap between these three terms and what thiii year
I am identifying as forming the radical of the four discourses.
The discourses in question are nothing other than the signifying articu-
lation, the apparatus whose presence, whose existing status alone domi-
nates and governs anything that at any given moment is capable of
emerging as speech. They are discourses without speech, which subse-
quently comes and lodges itself within them. Thus I can say to myself, con-
cerning this intoxicating phenomenon called speaking out, that certain
I SE 23:248. The English translation reads, "And finally we must not forget
that the analytic rclatiom>hip is based on a love of truth-that is, on a recognition of
reality- and that it precludes any kind uf sham or det.:eit."
2 l e Stiminain:., Livre XV, L'Acte psycha11alytique, 1967-1968 (unpublished).
3 Not Freud but Strachey indicates that a similar passage occurs in Freud's
"Preface to Aichhorn's ~yward Y.nah," SE 19:27.3.
-
The impotence of truth 167
reference points in the discourse in which this is inserted would perhaps be

of such a nature that, occasi,lnally, one does not start to speak without
knowing what one is doing.
Given a certain style of speech, in use in the month of May, the idea
cannot fail to occur to me that one of the representatives of the little a, at
a level that was not instituted in historical but rather in prehistoric times
is, surely, the domestic animal. One can no longer employ the same let-
ters in this case, but ic is quite clear that a particular knowledge was
required to domesticate what corresponds to our S-a dog, for instance,
is its barking.
One cannot fail to form the idea that if an animal that barks is indeed
what barking is tllen S 1 takes on a meaning that there would be nothing
abnormal in discovering ac the level at wbich we are sicuaring ic, at the level
of language. Everyone knows that tbe domestic animal is macly implicated
in language by primitive knowledge, and chat it does not have one. It is,
obviously, only open co it co pick over what ic has been given that comes
closest to the signifier S 1- that is, carrion.
You will know this if you have had a good dog, whether a guard dog or
some other kind, one you have had as a good friend . ~Jlley are inc-apable of
resisting carrion, they adore it. Look at the Bachory, a charming woman, a
Hungarian, who every now and then liked to carve up her servants, which,
of course, is the least of things one can offer oneself in a certain position. If
she ever placed the said morsels a bic too close co the ground, her dogs
would return them to her immediately.
This is a somewhat neglected aspect of the dog. If you didn't keep stuff-
ing him full, at lunch or dinner, by giving lrim things he only lik~ because L95
they come from your plate, this is what he would mainly bring you.
You have to pay very close attention to the fact that at a bigher level-
that of an object little a, and that of another sp<.-ciL-s, which we will try to
define later and which will bring us back to what I have already said-
:speec.:h can very easily play rht= role of carrion. In any case, it is no more
appetizing.
This has contributed a great deal to the fact that it has been poorly
understood what the importance of language has been. The deployment of
speech, which has no other symbolic value, has been confused with what
discourse is. As a result it is never just in any old way or at just any old time
that speech functions as carrion.
The aim of these remarks is to get you to wonder over, and at least to
ponder this question concerning the master's discourse. How can this dis-
course, which is so wonderfully well understood, have maintained its
name-as is proven by the fact that workers work, whether they are
exploited or not?
Work has never been given such credit ever since humanity has existed.
It is even out of the question that one not work.
This is surely an accomplishment of what I am calling the master's
discourse.
For this 10 be the case it needed to go beyond certain limits. In a word,
it comes down to something whose mutation I have tried to point out for
you. I hope you remember it, and in case you can't- which is quite possi-
ble-I am going to go back over it straight away. I am speaking of this cap-
ital mutation, also, which gives the master's discourse its capitalist style.
Why, good heaven s, is chis taking place, and why is it not taking place
by chance?
You would be wrong co think that there are knowledgeable politicians
somewhere wbo are calculating exactly how everything has to be done. You
would be equally wrong to think chat there are n on e-tbece are some. It is
not dear that they are always in a place where one can engage in suitable
action. Bue, ultimately, it is perhaps not this that is so important. Tha t they
exist, even if in another place, suffices for whac is of the order of the dis-
placement of dii;course t o be transmitted nevcnheJess.
196 Lee's now ask how this society called capitalist society can afford to allow
itself a relaxation of the university discourse.
This discourse is nevertheless merely one of these transformations thar
I have been expounding all aJong. It's cbe quarter turn in relation to the
master's discourse. H ence a q uestion which it is worth making the effon to
e nvisage-if we embrace this reJaxatioa which, it has to be said, has been
offered, aren't we falling into a crap? The idea is not new.
As it happens, I have wrinen a short article on university reform, which
I had been invited to write for a newspaper, the only one to have a reputa-
tion for balance and honesty, by the name of Le Mondc. They had msisted
that I write this little page concerning the reorganization of psychiatry, con-
cerning r eform. Now, it is quite striking that despite this insistence this lit-
tle article, which I will publish some day, did not get through.
In it I speak of "a reform in its hole." Precisely, it was obviously a m at-
ter of using this whirlwind of a hole to take a number of measures con cern-
ing the university. And good heavens, by correctl)· referring co the cermi:1 of
certain fundamental discourses one might have certain scruples, let's say,
about acting, one might look twice before jumping in to profit from the
lines that have opened up. It is quite some respousibility lll transport car-
rion down these corridors.
That is what o ur remarks today, which are not usually, not commonly
said, must be linked up with.
s, -- a
-s, - -s.
s, $ s a
a ... ...! agent work

s. s. truth production
This is like an apparatus. You should, at least, get the idea that it couJd
be used as a lever, as a pair of pliers, that it can be screwed down, assem-
bled in one way or another.
There are several terms. It's no accident if I have given only these little 197
letters here. It's because I do not want co put things up that might give the
appearance of signifying. I do not at all want to signify them, but to author-
ize them. Writing them is already to authorize chem a bit more.
I have already discussed what constitutes the places in which these non-
signifying things are inscribed, and I have already spelt out what it is that is
the agent.
This term carries a connotation as if it were a sort of enigma of the
French language-the agenc is cot at all necessarily someone who does but
someone who is caused to act.
As a consequence, and as you may already sw;pect, it is not at all clear
that the master functions. This, in all probability, defines the place of the
mascer. This is the best thing one can ask oneself concerning him, and nat-
urally people didn't wait for me to do it. A certain Hegel had a go at it,
though you have to take a closer look.
It is very irritating to think that there are perhaps noc five people here
who have fully read The Pherwmeno/,ozy of Spirir since I have been talking
about it. I won't ask them to raise their hand.
le pisses me off that I have until now only come across two people who
have read it completely, since I too, I have to confess, have noc peered into
every corner. I have in mind my master, Alexandre Kojcve_, who has
demonstrated this a thousand times over, and one other person, of a kind
that you won't believe. The latter has truly read The Phenomenology of
Spirit in an ittuminating manner, to the extent that everything that might
be in Kojeve's nnlt:s, which I bad and which I passed onto him, was truly
superfluous.
What is unheard of is that, even though at one stage I wore myself out
making people aware of the fact that The Critique of Practical Reason is man-
ifestly a book of eroticism that is extraordinarily more amusing than what
Eric Losfeld has published, it has had no kind of effect, and that, if I say to
17 0 The Other Side of Psychoanalysis
you that The Phenomenowgy of Spirit is hysterically funny, well then, this
won't fare any better.4 And yet, that is what it is.
It is truly the most extraordinary thing there is. Ir is also a cold, I won't
say black, humor. There is one thing you can be absolutely convinced of,
which i!I that h e knows perfectly well what he is doing. What he is doing is
sleight of hand and he takes the whole world in. And this, on the basis of
the fact that what he says is crue.
198 There is obviously oo better way to pin down the master signifier S1 ,
which is up there on the board, than by identifying it with death. And so,
what is involved? It involves showing in a dialectic, as Hegel puts it, what it
is that is the zenith, the highest point, the thought of this term's funaion.
What, in sum, is the point of entry of this brute, the master, into the phe-
nomenology of m ind, as Hegel puts it? The truth of what he articulates is
absohuely seductive and sensational. We can actually read it there, opposite
us, provided we allow ourselves to be taken in by it, since I assen, pn.-cisely,
chat it cannot be read off dir~ctly. The truth ofwhac be articulates is th.is-
the relationship co this real insofar as it is, properly speaking, impossible.
It's not at all dear why there should be a master who emerges from the
struggle to <leach of pure prestige. And this is despite che fac t t:bat Hegel
himself says that it would result in this strange outcome at the stare.
To cap it off, H egel finds a way-it is true, in a conception of history that
touches on what emerges from it, namely the succession of phases of dom-
inance, of composition of the play of the mind [esprit], which runs the
length of this thread that is noc nothing, which up until his day was called
philosophical thought- H egel finds a way to show thac what results from
this is thac in the end it is the slave who, through bis work, produces the
master's truth, by pushing him down underneath . By virtue of this forced
labor, as you can sec from the outset, the slave ends up, at che end of his-
tory, at this point called absolute knowkdgc.
Nothing is said about what happens next, because in truth, in the
H egelian proposition , there were not four tenns, but initially the master
and then the slave. I call this slave S 2 , but you can also identify him here by
way of the term jouissance, which, first, be did not want to renounce and
which, secondly, he did indeed want to, since he substitutes work for it,
which is not at all its equivalent.
Owing to what? Owing to the series of dialectical mutations, to the: bal-
let, che minuet that is establisht:d on the basis of this initial moment and
that traverses the entire developmt:nt of culture from start co finish, thread
by chread, hist0ry finally compensates us with this knowledge tbac is not
described as completed- there are good reasons for chjs- but as absolute,
" Eric Losfcld was a French publisher of comic books.

The impotence of truth 1 71
as indisputable. And the master subsequently appears only as the instru- 199
ment, the magnificent Cuckold of history.
It is sublime that this quite remarkable dialectical deduction was under-
taken, and that it should have succeeded, if one can say chis. All the way
through- take as an example what Hegel is able to say about culture- the
most pertinent remarks concerning the play of events and exercises of wit
abound. I repeat, there is nothing more amusing.
The cunning of reason is, he tells us, what directed the entire game.
This is a very fine term which has a lot of value for us, analysts, and we
can follow it at the level of our ABC, whether reasonable or not, for we are
dealing with something very cunning in speech where the unconscious is
concerned. H owever, the high point of this cunning is not whcr~ one thinks
it is. It is che cunning of reason, no doubt, but one has ro recognize che cun-
ning of the reasoner, and cake one's hat off to him.
Had it been possible that at the beginning of the last century, at the
time of the banlc of Jena, chis excr.iordioary dirty crick called The Phe-
11ome11ology of Spirit should have subjugated anyone, the trick would have
succeeded.
It is in effect quite evident that not for a single instaor can one bold that
we are in any way approaching the ascendancy of the slave. This unbeliev-
able way of giving him the credit-giving bis work the credit-for any kind
of progress, as we say, of knowledge is, truly, extraordinarily futile.
Bur what I am calling the cunning of the reasoner is there to make us aware
of an essential dimension, which one has to be careful about. If we desig-
nate the agent's place- ·whoever it is, this place is not always that of the
master signifier, since all the other signifiers are going co pass through there
in tum-the question is as follows. What makes this agent act? How is ic
possible to produce this extraordinary circuit around which what deserves,
strictly speaking, to be designated by the term "revolution" revolves?
Here, at a certain level, we rediscover Hegel's e.'Cpression, "putting work
back into the world."
Which is truth? It is 10<.-ated there, with a question mark. What inaugu-
rates this agenr, what brings him into play? For, in the end, it bas not been
there forever, it has been there ever since historical time.
A good thing to appreciate concerning such a brilliant case, so da7.:r.ling 200
that precisely for chat reason it doesn't occur co one, one is unable to see it,
is this. Hegel is the sublime representucive of the discourse of knowledge
rsavofr] and of university knowledge.
We others in France only ever have as philosophers people who travel the
highways and byways, little members of provincial societies, such as Maine
de Birao, or else characters like Descart~s, who wander all over Europe. You
nevertheless have to know how co read him, too, and listen to his tone-he
- - - - - - - - - - -··--· · ··· --··
speaks of what he can expect from his birth. One sees what sort of a fellow
he was. This doesn't mean be was an idiot, far from it-
Here in F rance, you won't find th.e philosophers in the universities. We
can claim this as an advantage_ But in Germany they are in me university.
And people are capable, at a certain level of university starus, of thinking
that these poor fellows, these dear little chaps, the ones who at that time
were only just entering the industrial era, the great era of hard labor, of
exploitation unto death, will be captivated by the revelation of this truth
that they are the ones who make history, and that the master is only there
to get the show on the road_
This is a valuable remar~ and it is my intention to emphasize it force-
fully, because of Freud's phrase that the analyric relationship must be
founded on the love of truth.
H e really was a charming character, this Freud. He really was all fire, all
flame _He also had his weaknesses. His relationship with his wife, for exam-
ple, is something unimaginable. To have tolerated such a rrollop his entire
existence is quite something_
Anyway, take note of the following-if there is something that rruth must
inspire you with, if you want to uphold Anal;•sierer._. it is certainly not love_
For truth, as it happens, makes this signifier ''death'' appear. And even,
there is every appearance that if there is one thing that gives a completely
different sense to what Hegel proposed, ir is what Freud had nevertheless
discovered at that time, which he characterized as best be could, as the
death instinct, namely the radical character of repetition , thic; repetition
that insisrs, and which characterizes the psychical reality, if there is such a
thing, of this being inscribed in language_
201 It's perhaps the case that truth has no other face. Thar's no reason to go
mad over it.
This isn't exact either. Truth has more than one face. But that's the
point, what could be the first line of conduct to mainrnin as far as analysts
are concerned is to be a little suspicious of it, and not m become all of a
sudden mad about a truth, about the first pretty face enc•Juntered at the
first turn in the road.
This is precisely where we encounter this remark of Freud's in which we
find "reality" accompanied by this Analysieren. It is indeed the sort of
remark to make us say that, in effect, there is perhaps, just like that, a com-
pletely naive real- this is how people generally speak-that passes itself off
as the truth. Truth is experienced, this docs not at an mean that it thereby
knows [connaii] any more about the real, especially if one speaks about
knowing, and if one bears in mind the features of the real that 1 point out.
If the real is defined as the impossible the real is placed at the stage at
which the register of a symbolic articulation was fmmd to be defined as the
"· - - -·- · - - -
impossible to demonstrate to be true. This may help us take the measure of
our love for truth-and it may also enable us to put our finger on why gov-
erning, educating, analyzing also, and why not, causing desire, so as to
complete the series with a defmition of what the hysteric's discourse might
be, are operations that, strictly speaking, are impossible.
These operations exist, they are robust, very much so, in so far as they
raise for us tht: question of what their truth is- that is to say, how they are
produced-these mad things which are defined in the real as only b eing able
to be articulated, when one nears them, as imposSible. It is clear that their
full articulation as impossible is precisely what gives us the risk, the barely
glimpsed opportunity, that their real, ifl can put it like this, breaks out.
If we are obliged to swan around ar such length in the corridors, the
labyrinths of truth, it's because there is precisely something that prevents
us from concluding. And why be astonished by this when it concerns those
discourses that for us arc brand new? It is n ot as if one has not yet had a
good three-quarters of a century to envisage things from this angle, but
then, being seated in an armchair is perhaps not the best position from
which to come to grips with the impossible.
Be that as it may, we are forever wandering about in the dimension of 202
the love of rruth, and everything indicates th.at this dimension ma.kes the
impossibility of that which maintains itself as real slide between our fingers,
at the level, quite precisely, of the master's discourse, as H egel has said.
This fact necessitates the reference to what analytic discourse, fortunately,
enables us t o glimpse and articulate exacuy. And this is why it is important
that I articulate it.
l am persuaded mat mere are five or six people here who will be very well
able to displace what 1 am saying in such a way that it will have a chance of
reemerging.
I won't say that this is Archimedes' lever. l will not tell you that this
makes the slightest claim to a renewal of the world system, or of thinking
about history. I am only indicating how it is that analysis places us on a
footing to accept, through chance encounters, a number of things that may
appear to be illuminating.
Myself, for example, I might easily have never encountered Kojcvc. If I
had never encountered him, it is highly likely that, like all French people
educated over a certain period, I would never have suspected that there was
anything in The Phenomenology of Spirit.
.....
174 The:: Other Side of Psychoanalysis
It would not be a bad thing if analysis enabled you to realize what the
impossibility is due to, that is to say, what it is that stands in the way of
grasping, of seizing the only thing that could perhap s ultimately introduce
a mutation, namely, the naked real, without truth.
But there's the rub. Between us and the real, there is truth. Truth, as I
once told you one day in a flight of lyricism, is the dear little sister of jouis-
sance. I hope that this has come back to mind, at least for some of you, at
the moment when I am stressing the contrast between the first line and the
second in each of the four formulas that I have given you.
The first line comprises a relation, indicated h ere by an arrow, which is
always defined as impossible. In the master's discourse, for instance, it is
effectively impossible that there be a master who makes the entire world
203 function. Getting people to work is even more tiring, if one really has to do
it, than working oneself. The master never does it. H e gives a sign, the mas-
ter signifier, and everybody jumps. That's where you have to start, which is,
in effect, completely impossible. It's tangible every day.
With impossibility written on the first line, it is now a matter of seeing,
as is already indicated by the place given to the term "truth," whether it
might be ar che level of the second line that one would have the last word.
However, at the level of the second line there is no suggestion of an
arrow. And not only is there n o communication, but there is something that
acts as a block.
What is it chat is blocking? It is what results from the work. And what a
certain Marx's discovery accomplished was to give full weight to a term that
wa:; already known prior to him and that designates what work occupies
itself with- it's called production.
Whatever the signs, whatever the master signifiers that come to be
inscribed in the place of the agent, under no circumstances will production
have a relationship to truth. One can do all one wants, one can say all one
wants, one can try to conjoin this production with needs, which are the
needs one fasltiuns-Lherc is nothing doing. Between the existence of a
master and a production's relation \\'1th truth, there is no way of getting it
co work.
Each impossibility, whatever it may be, between the terms that we put in
play here is always linked to this- if it leaves us in suspense over its truth,
it is because something is protecting it, which we shall call impotence.
Take, for instance, in the university dis~uurse, ilie initial term, the one
that is articulated here under the term S 2 and is in this position of unheard-
of pretension of having a thinking being, a subject, as its production. As
subject, in its production, there is no question of it being able to see itself
for a single instant as the master of knowledge.
This can be detected here, tangibly, but it extends much further back,
......
back to the level of the master's discourse which, thanks to Hegel, J allow
myself to presuppose since, as you will see, we no longer know it now
except in a considerably modified form.
This surplus jouissance that I have articulated this year is a construction,
even a reconstruction, and I am putting it at the start as a support. It is a 204
truer support. Let's be careful, this is indeed what is dangerous about it, but
all the same it does have the strength to be articulated in this way, as one
can sec by reading people like Aristotle, principally, who have not read
Hegel. ·
When we read Aristotle we have the suspicion that the master's relation
to the slave really presented him with a problem. He was looking for the
slave's truth, and it is really magnificent to see the way in which he tries to
extricate himself in the three or four passages in which he deals with it-he
only goes in a single direction, that of an essential difference from which the
slave's good would emerge.
He is not an academic. He is not a clever little fellow like Hcgd. He
senses that when he utters this or that.. it gets away from him, it slides all
over the place. He is neither very sure nor very passionate. He does nor
impose his own opinion. But then, he feels chat this is where there might
well be something that motivates the relationship betvveen master and slave.
Ah! If they were not the same sex, if they were man and woman, this would
be truly sublime, and he hints that there would be some hope. Unfortu-
nately, that's not how it is, they are not of different sexes, and he shrugs his
shoulders. We can see clearly what is going on, it's what, in the name of sur-
plus jouissance, the master receives from t:he slave's work.
It would seem that this has to be self-evident. And what is unheard of is
that nobody seems to notice that there is, precisely, a lesson t<.1 be learned
from the fact that it is not self-evident. The problems of ethics here, sud-
denly, start to abound-the Nicomachean Ethics, rhe Eudemian Ethics, and
several other works of moral reflection.
It's irresolvable. Nubudy know~ whal tu do with this sui:plus juuissu:m:t:.
In order to successfully place a sovereign good at the heart of the world,
you need to be as embarrassed as a fish with an apple. And yet the surplus
jouissance that the slave brings us lies within arm's reach.
What is demonstrated, attested to, by all the thought of Antiquity that
Hegel makes us revisit with his wonderful sleight of hand and other acts,
including the politicized masochism of the Stoics, is that to calmly set one-
self up as che master's subject cannot be done qua surplus jou£ssance.
Let's now take the hysteric's discourse as it is articulated-place rhe $
on the top left-hand corner, the S 1 on the right, the S2 underneath, the
small a in the place of truth. It cannot be the case, either, that the hysteric's 205
division, symptomatic tearing apart, is motivated as the production of
......
17 6 The Other Side of Psychoanalysfa
knowledge [savoirJ. Her truth is that she has to be the object a in order to
be desired. The object a is a bit thin, at the end of the day, although, of
course, men go crazy about it and they are unable even to suspect that they
could get by with anything else-another sign of the impotence that covers
the most subtle of all impossibilities.
Let's move on to the level of the analyst's discourse. Naturally, nobody
has made the observation that it is fairly curious that what he produces is
nothing other than the master's discourse, since it's S 1 which comes to
occupy the place of production. And, as I was saying last time when I was
leaving Vincennes, perhaps it's from the analyst's discourse that there can
emerge another style of master signifier.
In truth, whether it is another style or not, it is not in two days' time that
we will learn what it is, and at least for the moment we are completely
impotent when it comes to referring it to what is at play in the analyst's
position, namely, this seduction of truth that he presents in the fact that he
would know a bit about what, in principle, he represents.
Am I adequately stressing the features of the impossibility of his situa-
tion?-insofar as the analyst puts himself in the position of representing>
through being the agent, the cause of desire?
This, then, is the relationship between these terms that are four in number.
The one I have not named is the unnamable one, because the entire struc-
ture is founded upon its prohibition-that is to say,jouissance.
This is where the little perspecrive, the little window, the way of looking
that analysis has contributed introduces us to what may be a fertile step, not
of thought, but of act. And it is in this that it appears to be revolutionary.
It is not situated arvuml Lht:: subjt::ct. Whatever fercilicy the hysteric's
questioning has displayed, questioning which, as I have said, is the first to
introduce the subject inrn history, and although the entry of the subject
206 as agent of discourse has had very surprising results, the foremost of
which is that of science, it is not here, for all that, that the key to all the
mainsprings is to be found. The key lies in raising the question of what
jouissancc is.
It could be said thatjouissance is limited by natural processes. But, actu-
ally, we have no idea whether they are natural processes. We simply know
that we have ended up considering co be natural the mollycoddling that a
society that is more or less orderly maintains us in, except that everyone is
.....
dying to know what would happen if things went really bad. Hence this
sadomasochistic dread that characterizes our nice sexual ambiance.
That is completely futile, even secondary. What is important is that,
whether natural or not, it is well and truly as bound to the very origin of
the signifier's coming into play that it is possible to speak of jouissance.
Nobody will ever know anything about what the oyster or the beaver enjoys,
because, in the absence of the signifier, there is no distance between jouis-
sance and the body. The oyster and the beaver are at the same level as the
plant, which, after all, perhaps may have jouissance at this level.
Jouissance is very precisely correlated with the initial form of the entry
into play of what I am calling the mark, the unary trait, which is a mark
toward death, if you want to give it its meaning. Observe chat nothing takes
on any meaning except when death comes into play.
Ir is on che basis of the split, the separation, between jouissance and the
henceforth mortified body, it is from the moment that there is a play of
inscriptions, a mark of the unary trait, that the question arises. There is no
need to wait until the subject has shown itself to have been well hidden, at
the level of the master's truth. The subject's division is without doubt
nothing other than the radical ambiguity chat attaches itself to the very
term, "truth."
It is insofar as language, everything that institutes the order of dis-
course, leaves things in a gap that, in sum, we can be confident that in fol-
lowing our thread we are always doing nothing other than following a
contour. But it does bring us something extra, and it is the minimum that
it would be really necessary for us to know for a reply to the question wich
which I began, namely, what is currently going on at the level of the univer-
sity discourse.
We have to begin by seeing why it is that the master's discourse is so
solidly established, to the point where few of you, it seems, judge how sta- 207
ble it is. This stems from something Marx demonstrated-without, I have
to say, emphasizing it:-corn:erning prudu1;tion an<l whid1 ht: \.:alh; surplus
value, not surplus fout'ssance.
Something changed in the master's discourse at a certain point in his-
tory. We are not going to break our backs finding out if it was because of
Luther, or Calvin, or some unknown traffic of ships around Genoa, or in
the Mediterranean Sea, or anywhere else, for the important point is that on
a certain day surplus jom:;sance became calculable, could be counted, total-
i:ted. This is where what is called the accumulation of capital begins.
Don't you feel, in relation to what I said before on the impotence of con-
joining surplus value with the master's truch, that ground is being won
here? I am not saying that it is the most recent step that is the decisive one,
....
but the impotence of this conjunction is all of a sudden emptied. Surplus
value combines with capital- not a problem, they are homogeneous, we are
in the field of values. M oreover, we are all up to our necks in it, in these
blessed times in which we live.
What is striking, and what no one seems to see, is that from that moment
on, by virtue of the fact that the clouds of impotence have been aired, the
master signifier only appears even more unassailable, precisely in its impos-
sibilicy. Where is it? How can it be named? How can it be located?-other
than through its murderous effects, of course. Denounce imperialism? But
how can this litde mechanism be stopped?
Where do things stand now with the university discourse? Nowhere else
can there be any possibility thac things should move a bit. How can they
move.? l reserve che right to point this out to you Later since, as you can see,
I am going slowly. But I can already tell you that at the level of the univer-
sity discourse the object a comes to occupy a place that is in play each time
it moves, che place of more or less tolerable exploitation.
The object a is what makes it possible to introduce a little bit of air into
the function of surplus jouissance. You arc all an object a, insofar as you are
Jin~ up tb~rc--so many miscarriages of whaf has been, for those who
engendered you, the cause of desire. And this is where you have to gee your
bearings from-psychoanalysis reaches you this.
Please don't bore me stupid celling me that I would do well co point ouc
to those who are agitating here and there chat there is a world of difference
between rhe miscarriage of the high bourgeoisie and chat of the proletariat.
208 After all, the miscarriage of rhc high bourgeoisie, as miscarriage, is not
obliged constantly co carry its incubator around with it.
The fact remains that the claim to situate oneself at a point that would
all of a sudden be particularly illuminated~ illuminable, and that would
manage to make these relations move, must not, all the same, be elevaced
10 the point to which things were pushed by a person- a little recollection
chat I give to you- who uccompanied me for two o r three months of what
it is customary to call the folly of youth. This delighcfuJ person said to me,
"I am of pure prciletarian race."
We arc never finally done with segregation. l can tcll you that it will only
ever C()ntinue to increase. Nothing can function without it-what is hap-
pening here, as the a, the a in living form, miscarriage that it is, displays the
fact that it is an effect of language.
Be chat as it may, there is in every case a level at which things do not
work out. It's the level of those who have produced the effects of language,
since no child is born without having to deal with this traffic by the inter-
mectiary of his beloved so-called progenitors, who were themselves caught
up in the entire problem of discourse, wjth the previous generation behind
...
them also. And this is the level at which it wouJd really be necessary co bave
made enquiries.
If it's one's wish that something turn-of course, ultimately, no one can
ever turn, as I have emphasized enough-it is certainly not by being pro-
gressive, it is simply because it c~n't prevent itself from turning. If it doesn' t
turn, it will grind away, there where things raise questions, that is, at the
level of putting something inco place that can be written as a.
Has that ever existed? Yes, no doubt, and it is the Ancients who, in the
end, give us its strongest proof and, subsequently, over the course of ages,
the formal, classical things that in some way were copied from them.
For us, at the level at which lhiogs are happening for the moment, what
can this p<>int of auscuJcation, everything that in the body remains aJive,
remains as knowledge, this nursling, why not, this look, this cry, this
squawking, it barks- what can this hope for? What can it do?
J will try to tell you next time what that which I call ..the strike of cul-
ture" signifies. 5
J0 Jun£ 1970
5 Gret<e de la culture. "Strike," as in "Go on strike."

209
XIII
The power of the impossibles
A FlrT nr. SHAME IN nil! s ..ua;
nm MILK OF T IU! Tl l PCTS ONE 1'0 SU!l!P
, l11! u:;s-r::>R OFTHll RP.Al_
THE S IUDJ:NT, RROTHER Ot' 1 1 ffi l.U \tl'EN·l'llOlETAIUAT
A UTil..F. SHEL rat
le d oes have co be said that it is unusual to die of sham e.

Yet it is the one sign-I h ave been talking about this for a while, how a
signifier becomes a sign-the one sign whose genealogy one can be certain
of, name ly chat it is descended from a signifier. After all, any sign can fall
under che suspicion of being a pure sign, chat is to say, obscene [obscene] ,
Yinc;ennes (vinscene], dare I say, a good example co make you laugh.•
Dying of shame, then. H ere, cbe degeneration of the signifier is ccrtain-
certain co be produced by the signifier's failure, namely, being coward
death, insofar as it concerns the subject- and who else could it concern?
Being coward death, that is, the visiting card by wruch a signifier represents
a subject for another signifier- you are beginning to know this off by bearc,
I h ope.
This visiting card never arrives ar the right destination, the reason being
that for it to bear the address of death, the card has to be torn up. " It's a
shame lune home]," as they say, which should pr oduce a (h)omology fhon-
tologiej spelled properly ar last.
Jn the meantime, to die of shame is the only affect of death that
d eserves- deserves what?·-that deserves to die.
People have been quiet about this for n long time. Speaking about it, in
effect , is to open this redoubt, which is n ot the last, the o nly one that what
can be said honestly of the h onest partakes in, "honest," which stem s from
the honor-that is all shame and companion-of making no m ention l lf
210 shame. Precisely, of the fact that it is impossible for the honest to die of
shame. You know from me that this means the real.
"He doesn't deserve to die for that!" people say about anything and
I Vincennes was the site of the University of Paris VIII campus. TI1e univer-
sicy wus founded in 1969 and included the Department of Psychoan11lysis headed
at that time by Serge Leclaire:. Lacan is playing on "vain s~"Cnc."
180
The power of the impossibles 18 l
everything, thus bringing everything down to being futile. Said as it is said,
with that end in mind, it elides the fact that death can be deserved.
Now, it should not be a matter of eliding the impossible, as it happens,
but of being its agent. To say that death is deserved-the time at least to die
of shame that it's not 110, that it's deserved.
If it happens now, well then, it was the only way to deserve it.You were
lucky.Hit doesn>r happen, which, with respect to the preceding surprise, is
bad luck, then you're left with a life of shame by the bucke¢tl, by virtue of
the fact that it is nm: worth dying for.
ls it worth my spealcing about ic in this way?-when, as soon as one
speaks about it, the twenty scen es [vingt-scrnes] I mentioned above arc only
asking to be taken Ul> again in the form of buffoonery.
Vincennes, precisely.
They were, it seems, pleased with what I said there, pleased with me. It
wasn't reciproall. I was not very pleased with Vmcennes.
Despite there being one nice p er son who tried to fill up the first row, t o
make a Vincennes [faire Vincennes], there was clearly no one from Vincennes
there, or hardly anyone, only the ears of those most worthy of awarding me
a good mark. It was not quite what l had been expecting, especially as my
teaching, it seems, has been propagated there. There are times when I can
be aware of a certain slack.
But then, there was nonetheless jus t what was needed ro indicate to us
the point of agreement that there can be berween La Minute and Les Temps
modernes. I only mention it because, as you will see, this touches on today's
topic-how to behave in the face of culture?
Sometimes something mil1or is enough to throw a glimmer of light, a
recollection which nobody knows how I myself became aware of. Once you
recall the publication of a certain tape recording in Les Temps modernes, the
relationship with La Minute is scriking.2 Try this, it's fascinating, 1 have
done it. You cut out paragraphs from the two newspapers, you mix them up 21 l
together somewhere, and you draw them out. I assure you that, except for
the paper, it won't be so easy to work out which is which.
This is what must make it possible for us to take the question in another
way than on the basis of the objection I made just before to touching on
2 Les 1emps modernes caused a scandal when it published the transcript of an

analytic session secretly recorded by the analysand.
182
' -The
- Other Side of Psychoanalysis
.. .... ___..____________
things in a certain tone, with a certain word, out of fear that they might get
carried away by buffoonery. Begin, instead, with the following fact, that the
buffoonery is already present. Perhaps, by adding a bit of shame to the mix,
who knows, this might keep it in check.
In short, I am playing the game of"You hear me because I am talking to
you." Otherwise, there would, rather, be an objection to your hearing me,
since in many cases this prevents you from hearing what I am saying. And
it's a pity, for at least the younger ones among you have for a fair while now
also been capable of saying it without me. You lack for thar, precisely, a bit
of shame. 1t might come to you.
Obviously, you do not find it under the hooves of horses, of a hobby-
horse even Jess, but the furrows of the alcthospherc, as I said, that take care
of you, and even careful you [soyousem] all alive already, would perhaps
already be quite a sufficient load of shame.
Appreciate why it was that Pa.ocal and Kant :fidgeted about like two valets
in the process of acting like Vatel with respect to you. There has be.en a lack
of truth up above for three centuries. The service has arrived nevertheless,
reheating on demand, even as the musjcian has from time to time, as you
know. D on't make sucb a long face, you are being served, you can say that
there is no longer any shame.
These boxes about which, when I say that they are empty of chatter, you
wonder whar is bothering me-well then, quickly make provisioo in chem
for enough shame so that when the festivities begin, there is no lack of
seasoning.
You will say co me, "What's the use of shame? If that is what the other
side of psychoanalysis is, we don't want any." My reply co you is, " Yo u've
got enough to open a shop." If you are not yet aware of d1is, then d o a bit
of analysis, as they say. You will see this vapid air of yours run up against an
ouclandish shame of living.
That's what psychoanalysis discovers. Be a bit serious and you will
212 notice that this shame is justified by the fact that you do n<.>t dlc of shame,
that is, by your maintaining with all your force a discourse of the perverted
master- which is the university discourse. Rhegel yourselves! I say.
On Sunday I returned to this damned satire called The Phenomenology of
Spirit,, wondering whether Twasn't misleading you last time when I dragged
you through those reminiscences I was indulging myself in. Not at all. It's
staggering.
You will see this, for example, "Ignoble consciousness is the truth of
noble consdousness."3 And it's dispatched in a way that draws you up
·; See Hegel, l'he11ome11ology ofSpirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, l 977).•

316- 7.
- The power of the impossibles 183
~---·- .
short. The more unworthy you are---1 won't say obscene> that's been out of
the question for a long time-the better off you are. That really clarifies the
recent reforms of the university, for instance. Everything, credit points-to
have the makings of culture, of a hell of a general, in your rucksack, plus
some medals besides, just like an agricultural show, that will pin onto you
what people dare call mastery. Wonderful! You'll have it coming out of
your ears.
Being ashamed of not dying from this would perhaps introduce another
cone to it, that with which the real is concerned. I said the reaJ and not the
uuch for, as I already explained t o you last time, it's a temptation to suck
the milk of truth, but it's mxic. It will put you to sleep, and chat's all that is
expected of you .
I recommended to one charming person that he reread BaJtasar Gracian,
who, as you know, was a Jesuit Living at the turn of the sixteenth cen tury.
He wrote his great pieces at the start of the seventeenth century. All things
considered, this ii; where the view of the world that suits us was bom. Even
before science climbed to our zenith people sensed it coming. It's curious,
but that's how i1: is. I t's even co be recorded for any truly experimental
appreciation of history chat the Baroque, wb.ich suits us so well-·and mod-
em art, whether figurative or not, is the sarne--began before, or at just the
same time as, the initial steps of science.
In El CritiWn, which is a sort of fable io which the plot of R obinson Cru-
soe, for example, is already found to be indudcd--che majority of master-
pieces arc the crumbs of other unknown masterpieces-in the third pan,
on the dimension of old age-since be cakes this graph of ages-we find
somech.ing called " truth in labor" in the second chapter.
Truth is in labor in a town that is only inhabited by beings of the high- 213
est purity. This doesn't stop them from taking flight, and under the influ-
ence of a hell of a fear, when they are told that troth is like having a child.
I wonder why they asked me to explain this, when this discovery was
ma<lt:: for mt:-for, in cruth, it wasn't me that located it-uJtlt::ss they didn't
come to my last seminar, for this is precisely what I said then.
It's here that one has to hold firm, for if you want your remarks to be
subversive, you must take great care that they cion't get too bogged down
on the path to truth.
What I wanted to spell out last time in putting on the board these things
that I can't keep drawing every time is that the S 1, the master signifier
which holds the secret to knowledge in its university situation, is very
tempting to stick to. You remain caught up :in it.
184 The Other Side of P~ychoanalysis
\Vbat I am indicating, and perhaps k's this alone that a number of you
will be able to retain from this year, is that one should focus on the level of
production-of the production of the university system. A certain produc-
tion is expected of you. It is perhaps a matter of obtaining chis effect, of
substituting another for it.
On this maner, simply as a s1age, a relay, and because I presented chem as

an indicator of what I had declared to you last time, I will read you three
pages. I apologize ro those few people with whom I have already been
thro ugh this.
These three pages are a reply to this inquisitive Belgian who asked me
some quci;,1:ions that hold my interest sufficiently for me to wonder whether I
hadn't dictated them myself without knowing it. He deserves credit for chem.
214 H ere, then, is the sixth one, charmingly naive, "In what respecr are
knowledge and truth"-everyooc knows that I have tried to show that they
are stitched together, these two virrues- " incompatible?'"1
I say to him, "Speaking off the cuff, nothing is incompatible -with ttuth:
we piss on it, we spit on it. le is a thoroughfare or, to put it better, a place
for the evacuation of knowledge and all the rest. le is possible to cleave co
it permanently, even co be driven mad by it.
"It is worth noting that I put psychoanalysts on their guard, by connot-
ing chis locus They arc engaged co Through their knowledge as ' love.' J wo uld
say to chem straight away: one does not marry truth; there can be no con-
tract with her, and even less can there be any open liaison. She won' t stand
4 ''Raciophonie," Amm Ccrils (Paris: :Editions du Scuil, 200 l), 440.

The power of the impos~ibles 185
fo r any of that. Truth is firstly a seduction, intended to deceive you. If you

are not to be taken in, you muse be strong. This is nor the case with you.
"This is how I spoke to psychoanalysts, this ghost that I hail, even that I
haul, against the joy of rushing at the invariable hour and day ever since the
times when I upheld the wager for you that psychoanalyses understand me.
It is therefore not you that I am informing; you do not run the risk of being
bitten by truth; but-who knows?-sbould what I am fashioning ever come
alive, should the psychoanalyst ever take over from me, at the limits of the
hope that this is not encountered, it's them mat I am alerting; that one has
everything to learn from truth, this common place destines each one to get
lost in it. Ir will be enough that each knows something about it, and be
would do well to leave it at mat. It would be 1.-ven bener were be to do noth-
ing. There is no more treacherous an instrument.
'We know bow a-not the-psychoanalyst rypicaUy extracts himself; he
leaves the thread of rhis rruth ro the one who already has his worries with
it and who> in this capacity, really does become bis patient, as a result of
which he worries about it like a curse.
"Nevcrthdess, it is a fact that for some rime some people have been
making it their business co feel chemselvcs more con cerned abuut iL Th.is is
perhaps due to my influence. I have perhaps played some part in this cor-
rection. And this is precisely what makes it my duty to warn them not to go
too far, becau.~e if l have obtained ic, it's through not giving the appearance
of having laid a finger on ic. But this is precisely what is serious, besides, of
course, one pretends to be somewhat terrified by it. It is a refusal. But a
refusal doesn't exdude cullaboration.A refusal can itself be a collaboration."
For those who listen to me on the radio and who do not, as I was saying
hefore, have any impediment to hearing what 1 am saying, which is to
understand me, I will go on . Ir is for this reason that I am reading it to you,
since, if I can speak it at a particular level of the mass media, whJ not give
it a trial run here?
And then, these initial respon ses that have so bewildered you here, and 215
that, it seems, went across over rl1e radio much better than people think_,
have confirmed the principle that r have adopted, and thnt is in the line of
things that today I would like to pass on co you. This is one of the methods
by which it would be possible t<> take action upon culture.
When one is caught by chance at the level of a large public, of one of
thci;e masses thnt a type of medium pre11cnts you with, why not precisely
raise the level, in proportion to the assumed ineptitude- which is a pure
assumpcion-Qf this field? Why lower the tone? Who do you have to rope
in? lt is precisely the game of culture co engage you in this system, namely,
llnce the aim is reached, you can't tell head from rail.
Here, then, and even though it is still altogether possible to say it in thii;
room, I am saying what is remarkable, for not having been remarked upon,
in my formula of the subject supposed to know, as the mainspring of the
transference.
" l have not said that the psychoanalyst is moreover supposed to know
the truth about the supposed! knowledge out of which, according co me, the
psychoanalysand makes the rransference. Think about it, and you will
understand how adding chis complement to it would be fatal for the trans-
ference. Bur equally, do not think about it if understanding thi$ would, pre-
cisely, prevent its effect from remaining true.
"I suffer indignation over the fact that une person dresses up what I am
denouncing in the little knowledge from which the transference draws its
material. It's only up to bim to furnish that with something besides the
chair he says he is ready to sell if I am right. He leaves no way ouc of the
affair only because he doesn't restrict himself to his means. The psychoan-
alyst only insists upon not having a bone to pick in his being. 'The famous
non-knowledge for which people mock us is only dear to his heart because,
for him, he knows nothin,g. He repudiates the mode of unearthing a shadow
and then pretending it is carrit.m, repudiates being valued as a hunting dog.
His discipline l."teeps him in me fact that the real is not initially chere to be
known- this is the only dam that can hold idealism back.
"Knowledge gets added m the real; indeed, it is for this reason that it can
bring the false into being, and even into being there a bit. 5 I dasein with all
my force on this occasion, one needs help for this.
"To be truthful, it is only from where knowledge is false that it is con-
cerned wich the Lrulh. All knQwledge that is not false couldn't give a damn
about ic. In becoming known, only its form is a surprise, a surprise in dubi-
ous taste, moreover, when by the grace of Freud it speaks to us of language,
since it is nothing but ils product.
216 "This is where the political impact takes place. Ir concerns, b~ this
question in act: Ouc of what knowledge is the law made? Once one bas
uncovered this knowledge, it may happen that that changes. Knowledge
falls to the rank of symptom, seen from another perspective. And this is
where truth comes in.
"For truth one fights, which is, however, only produced through its rela-
tions with the real. But that it is produced is much less important than what
that produces. The effect of truth is only a collapse of knowledge. le is this
collapse that creates a production, soon to be taken up again.
"The real is neither better nor worse off as a result. In general it dusts
itself off until the next crisis. Its momentary benefit is that it has rcfound
5 ctre-la, "being there," is the French for Dasei11, picked up in the following
sencencc.
The power of the impossibles 187
it.'> gloss. This would even be the benefit that one might expect from any
revolution, this gloss that would shine for a long time in this always muri-.")'
locus of truth. But there's the rub. This shine never again throws light on
anything."
That is what I had casr into a corner the day after the last seminar-for
you, apparentJy, since there is no longer any question of adding it to my Lit-
tle racliological raft.
What has to be understood in this respect is the following- what is
frightening about truth is what it puts in in; place.
The locus of the Other, as I have always said, is made for truth to be
inscribed there, chat is, everything of that order, the false, even lies-which
only exist on the foundation of truth. This is in the free play speech {parole]
and language.
But what about truth in this quadrupedal structure, which presupposes
language and rakes a discoun;c to be structw'ed, that is, which conclitions
any speech able to be produced therein? What does the cruth in question,
the truth of this discourse, chat is what it conditions, put in its place? How
is ir that the master's cliscourse h olds firm? This is the other face of the
fum.."tion of truth, not the visible face, but the dimension io which it is
oecessitat«i by something hidden.
Our furrows in the alethosphere are traced out on the surface of the
longtime deserted heavens. But at issue is whac one day I called-using this
word which titillated some of you enough to the point of wondering what
had come over me- the lathouse.
It wasn't I who invented this dimension of truth which makes it the case
thac iris hidden . It is Verbor1:enheic6 that constitutes it. Jn shore, things ar~ 217
such that it makes one think. it has something in ics belly.
Very early on there were some clever people who observed that if !his
were to emerge, it would be dreadful. Probably winged as well, so as to
improve lhe landscape. Nowadays, it is equally possible char this is the
whole thing, that it would be terrible if it wen! to emerge. Tf you spend your
time waiting, then you are done for. In sum, one mustn't tease rhe lachou.se
too much. What does undertaking this always assure? What I am forever
explaining to you- it assures the impossible by virtue of the fact that this
relationship is effectively real. The more your quest is located on the side of
truth, the more you uphold the power of the impossibles which are those
thnt I respectively enumerated for you last time- governing, educating,
analyzing on occasion. For analysis, in any case, this is obvious.
The subject supposed to know scandalizes, when I am simply approach-
ing the truth.
6 "Concealment." The term is Heidegger's.

M y little quadrupedal schemas-I am celling you this today to alert you to

it- arc not the Ouija boards of history. It is not necessarily the case that
things always happen this way, and that things rotate in the same direction .
This is only an appeal for you to locate yourselves in relation to what one
can caU raclical functions, in the mathematical sense of the term.
Concerning functions, the decisive seep was taken somewhere around
this epoch that I designated some time ago, around what there is in com-
mon between Galileo's initial step, tbe emergence of the integrals and dif-
ferentials in Leibniz, and then also the emergence of logarithms.
A function is this something that entered the real, that had never entered
it beforehand, and that does not correspond to discovering, e."perimeating,
seizing, detaching, disclosing, no, but to writing--writing two orders of
relations.
Let me illusrrace where logarithms arose. In one case the first relation is
addition. Addition is nevertheless intuitive. There are some things here,
218 some things chcre, you put chem 10gecher, and you get a new c0Uect1on.
Multiplying loaves is not the same as collecting loaves. It is a maner of
applying one of these relations to the other. You invent the logarithm. It
starts to run wild in the world, oa the basis of littJe rules that seem to be
insignificant. But do not think that the fact that they exist leaves you, any
of you who are bcre, ia the same stare as before chcy appeared. Their pres-
en ce is all tbat matters.
Well then, let me tell you that these more or less winged little terms-S 1,
S 2 , a, S-can be of use in a very large number of relations. One only needs
to become accustomed to how to manipulate rhem .
For example, starting with the unary trait, though one can rescrict one-
self to it, one can still try to investigate the functioning of the master signi-
fier. Well then , it is altogether usable, if you notice that, provided you make
it structurally well founded, there is no need ro add a thing to it, none of
this grand comedy of the struggle to death of pure prestige and its outcome.
Contrary to what people have conduded from their questioning of things
at the level of what is true by nature, there is no contingency in the slave's
position. There is che necessity that something be produced that functions
in knowledge as a master signifier.
One cannot prevent oneself from dreaming, to be sure, or from trying to
find out who was the first to d o it, and then, one discovers the beauty of
this hall that goes back and forth between the master and the slave. Bue per-
haps it was simply someone who was ashamed, who puc himself fotward
like that.
. .
Today I have brought you the dimension of shame. It is not a comfort-
able thing to put forward. It is not one of the easiest things to speak about.
This is perhaps what it really is, the h.ole fr(lm wbich the master signifier
arises. If it were, it might perhaps not be useless for measuring how close
ooe has to get co it if one wants to have anything to do with the subversion,
or even just the rotation, of the master's discourse.
Be that as it may, one thing is certain, you have this introduction of S 1,
tbe master signifier, within your grasp in the mere..-.t of discourses-it is
what defines its readability.
There is, in effect, language and speech and knowledge, and all that
seems to have worked in Neolithic titnes, but we have no trace that any
dimension called reading existed. Thete is not yet any need of any writings
(ecntj, nor of any impression- not that writings haven't been there for a
long time, bot, in some way, through a retroactive effect. What makes it tbe 219
case that when we read any text we c~n alwa~ ask ourselves what charac-
temes it as readable? We have to search for che joint in the direction of what
ir is that makes the master signifier.
I will point out to you that, as literary work.-;, everything that one has ever
read is off in cloud-cuckoo-land. Why does that hang togeth\:r?
In my latest blunder-I adore these- I happened ro read Balzac's L'En-
t:crs de la vie com.emporaine.7 It really is off in cloud-cuckoo-land. If you
haven'l read it, you can still have read everything you might like co read on
the history of the end of tbe eighteenth century and the beginning of tbe
nineteenth-the French Revolution, to call it by ilS name. You can even
have read Marx. You won't understand a thing, and mere will always be
something that escapes you, whicb is only there, in this story that will bore
YllU stiff, L'Errvers de la vie co11tempnraine.
Please have a look at it. I am sure noc many of you will have read it. It is
one of the least read of Balzac's. Read it, and do the following exercise.
Do exactly the same as the one which, about one hundred years ago, I
had tded to give to the people T was speaking to at Sainte-Anne concern-
ing the first scene of Act 1 of Athaliah. All they heard were the quilting
points. I am not saying that it was an excellent metaphor. In the end, it was
this S 1, the master signifier.
Heaven knows what they made of thls quilting poinc, they even took it
off to Les Temps modernes·-·all things considered, this is not La Minute. 8
It was a master signifier. f t was a way of asking them to notice how some-
thing that spread!> throughout language like wildfire is readable, that is to
say, how it hooks on, creates a d.ii>course.
7 Available as The Wrong Side <if Paris (New York: Modern Library, 2004).
8 Minute-La Frr.:mce, a righc-wing, aoci-Semitic weekly established in 1962.
I sLill maintain that there is no metalanguage. Anything that one might
think is of the order of a search for the meta in language is simply, always,
a question about reading.
Let us suppose-pure supposition-that l am asked for my advice on
something I have not been involved in except on the basis of my place in
this location- a place that is, it has to be said, quite an unusual onc--and
I would be asconisht:u if tuJay chat would make an open book of my place
with respect to the university. But then, if there are others who, from where
220 they are, and for reasons which arc not at all negligible but which appear
all the more clearly when one refers to my little letters, find themselves in
the position of wanting to subvert something in the order of the university,
where should they look?
They can look on the otbt:r silk, when: everything can be threaded onto a
little stick, where one can place them, the little pile that they are, along with
others who are, as is the nature of the progression of knowledge, dominated.
On that side it is intimated to them that one might find a way to live with
this. For ages this has been like a myth. I am not here to preach this to you.
Myself, I have spoken of the shame of living.
If they search on that :side, t hey may find that with my liLLk s<.:hemas
they can find a way of justifying that the student is not displaced in feel-
ing a brother, as they say, not of the proletariac but of the lumpen-
proletariat.
The proletariat are like the Roman plebs-these were very distinguished
people. The class struggle perhaps contains this little source of error at the
start) that it absolutely doesn't take place at the level of the true dialectic of
the master's discourse-it is located on the level of identification. Senarus
Popuiusque Romanus. They are on the same side. And the entire Empire
includes all the rest.
The question is why students feel that they belong with all the rest. They
don't at all seem to be able to see clearly how to resolve it.
I would like to point out to them that production is one essential point of
the system- the production of shame. This translates as-it's impudence.
This is why it would perhaps not be a very bad means not to go in that
direction.
In effect, and to designate something that is very easily recorded in these

little letters, what docs one produce? One produces something culrural.
The power of the imp1>ssibles 191
And when one thinks like the university, what one produces is a thesis.
This order of production is always related to the master signifier-not
simply because that discerns it for you, but q_uite simply because it forms a 221
part of the presuppositions according to wllich everything in this order is
related to the author's name.
It is very refined. There is a sort of preliminary step, which lies at the
threi;hold of the univcn;ity. You will have lhc right to speak rhere, subject to
the altogether strict convention that you will forever have your thesis
pinned onto you. This gives your name its Weight. Nevertheless, y(m are in
no way subsequently bound by what is in yo~r thesis. Normally, in any case,
you content yourself with that. But that doesn't mauer, you will always be
able to say whatever you want if you have already become a name. This is
what plays I.ht: rult: of a mascer signifier.
May I say it? I would not like to give too much importance to what I have
done. This is how the idea came to me of a thing which you haven't heard
much about for a while, Sciticet. Some people have nevertheless been struck
by the fact that I said it would be a place in which unsigned things should
be written.
You mustn't think that mine arc more Ut1signed. See what I have writ-
ten-a solo voice singing of a painful experience, the one I had with what
is called a school, to which I had contribut~d propositions so that some-
thing would be inscribed there, somcthi11g that has not failed to be
inscribed chere, moreover-some effect of catalepsy.
The fact that it is signed by me would <>nly be of interest if I were an
author. I am in no way an author. Nobody ev<.:n dreams of this when chey
read my Ecrils. For a very long time this had remained carefully confined
to an organ that had no other interest than t() be as close as possible to what
I am trying to define as calling knowledge into question. What sort of a dii;-
aster docs analytic knowledge produce? That is what was in question, what
has been in question for as long as it has not made chem all itching to
become authors. It is very curious that the non signed should appear par-
adoxical, whereas of course over the centuri~s all the honest men there have
been have always at least acted as if sometmc had torn their manuscript
from their hands, as if someone had played a dirty trick on them. No one
expected to be sent a note of congratulatioQ.s on publication.
In short, if it were possible for somethin~ to come out of seriously call-
ing into question knowledge that is lavishe<i about and propagated within
the established framework of the university, there is no reason why this
couldn't be done under a bit of shelter, a type of place, that would adopt
the same law for itself, that is to say, not to present something to make 222
someone important, but in order to say sc.mething structurally rigoroui;,
192 The Ocher Side of Psychoanal~is
whatever might become of it. ·1bis could have a greater impact than one
might initially expect from it.
A character called Diderot published Rameau's Nephew, lee it fall from
his pocket. 9 So meone else rook it to Schiller, who knew very well it was by
Diderot. Diderot never worried about it. In 1804 Schiller passed it o n to
Goethe, who immediately translated it and, up until 1891- 1 can tell you
chis, because here is the tome, which I brought from my own library- we
only bad a French retranslation of the German translation by Goethe, who,
moreover, had completely forgotten about it one year after it appeared, and
who perhaps never saw it, for they were in the midst of that Franco-
Prussian brawl, and the people didn't take well to this revolutionary intru-
sion. In short, this translation went unnoticed, Goethe himself was no
doubc unaware chat it had appeare<l, and yet this did not stop Hegel from
making it o ne of the main threads of this booklet so full of humor to which
I have been referring lately, T he Phenomenology of Spirit.
As you can see, there is not much reason for you to worry that what
comes uuc of you carries the label of what concerns you . This is such an
obstacle, lee me assure you, to the publication of anything decent -if only
because of chc fact thac cvco within what you mjght be narurally incerested
in you believe chat you are obliged, in the name of the laws of a thesis, to
refer it co rhe author--he is talented, it's unconvincing, h e hasn 't got any
ideas, what he says is not totally stupid. And if be bas contributed som e-
thing important that may noc concern him in any way, you are absolutely
obliged co think that this is a mind that thinks. And with I.bat, you've had it
for a lo ng time.
As for psychology, ic is srriking chat there is n o c even a shadow of it in
the order of things that are enlightening, like VErwers de la vie ccnu:mporaine
I was speaking to you about just before. It is a Little m ontage wbosc entire
value comes thro ugh its master signifiers, it is valuable because it is read-
able. No need of the slightest psychology.
T o spell it o ut for yo u, to clear my own name, what saves Bcrits from che
accident that befell it, namely that people immediately read it, is that it is a
" worst-scUer" n everchekss.
223 I am not going co prolong this discourse any further today in this heat.
This is the lase I am going to give this year.
There arc clearly many things missing, but it would not be pointless to
add the following- if, to speak as Hegel would, there are some slightly less
than ignoble reasons for your presence here in such numbers, which bas so
often been an inconvenience for me-this is obviously a question of tact as
9 Dern); Didcroc, Romeau's Nephew, in R ameau's N ephnJJ; arui, D 'A lembm's

Dr<!am (Harmond~worth : Penguin, J 976).
Goethe would say, I make of it, it would seem, not too much but just
enough-if this phenomenon takes place, which is frankly incomprehensi-
ble, given what it is that I put forward for the majority of you, it is because
r happen to make you ashamed, not too much, but just enough.
17 June 1970
APPENDIXES
227
A
Analytic on
nil' IMP1\SSI' 01' PSYCHOANAl.YTI\. srn J:CTI01'
CRlillff l'O!NTS
N<7T lllNG JS l!\'l'.RYTHL'IG
LOOK AT THF.M DOTNG IT
lThis session took place at Vincennes, an experimental university, on 3

December 1969. It was announced as the first of four under the title "Ana-
lyticon, four impromptus.")
I will be talking about my Egeria, who is one of those la dog walks across
the podium] .
She is the only person I know who knows what she is speaking- I am
not saying, "what she is saying."
It's not that she doesn't say anything-she doesn't say it in words. She
says something when she is anxious-which happens-she puts her head
on my knee. She knows that I am going to die, which a number of people
also know. She'i; called Jusrine, she's my dog, she is very beautiful, and you
would have heard her speak ...
The only thing sh e lacks by comparison with that person wandering
around is that she hasn' t been to university.
Here I am then, an invited guest, at the experimental center of the said uni-
versity, an experiment which seems rather exemplary to me.
Since it is a question of an experiment, you might wonder what your use
is. If you ask me, I will do a diagram for you-I will try to-because after
all the uniYersity is very strong, it has deep foundations.
I have kept for you the announcement of the title of one of the four dis- 228
course positions I have announced elsewhere-where I started my seminar.
"The master's discourse," as I said, since you are accustomed to hearing
about this. And it is not easy to give an example, as someone who is very
197
198 Appendixes
intelligent observed last night. I shall rry all the sam e. This is where I have
got to, having left the thing unfinished at my seminar. And, to be sure, there
is no question of continuing it here. "An impromptu," I said. You can see
that that thing with its lowered tail provided me with one a minute ago. I
shall continue in the same tone.
Secondly, hysteric's discourse. This one is very important because it is
what the psych oanalyst 's discourse takes shape with. Except that there
would need to be psychoanalysts. l ' m making this my business.
INTERVENTION: There aren't a1~1 psycJwanalysts at Vincennes, at any rate.
As you say, not at Vincennes.
INTERVENTION: Why is it tlua Vincennes studerus, at che condusfrm of tl1e

reaching they are supposed to hm1e received, can't become psyclu>arzalysts?
Thjs is precisely what I am going to explain, Mademoiselle. This is precisely

what is in question. Psychoanalysis is not something that can be transmit-
ted like other forms of knowledge.
The psychoanalyst has a position that sometimes manages co be chat of
a discourse. H e doesn't thereby transmit: a body of knowledge, not chat
there is oorhing for him to know, contrary to what is foolishly asserted. This
is what is called into question- the function in society of a certain form of
knowledge, the one that is conveyed to you. It exists.
There is an algebr-aic sequence chat essentially consticures a cnain whose
starting point is in this formula-
A signifier is defined as representing a subject fo r another signifier. This is

an altogether fundamental notation. It can b e take n as on e at any rate.
229 Through my offices, an attempt has been developed, which is the one I am
coming to now, having put the necessary time into putting it into shape.
This is an attempt to found what would be decently required to manipu-
la te a notfon by encouraging subjects to trust it and to work wich it. This is
what is called the psychoanaly:saml.
I initially wondered what could come of it for the psychoanalyst, and
where he, the analyst, was in all this. For on this point it is very tibvious that
the notions arc not clear, since F reud, who knew wha t he was saying, said
that it was an impossible function-and yet fulfilled every day. If you reread
his text closely you will see that it is not the function that is in question but
the being of the p sychoanalyst.
pz
Appendixes 199
How does it happen that ooe fine day a psychoanalysand commits him-
self co being a psychoanalyst?1bis is what I tried co articulate when I spoke
of the psychoanalytic act. I stopped my seminar before the end that year, it
was '68, like that, in order to ljhow my sympathy for what was astir and
which continues-moderately. The agitating makes me think of something
that was invented one day, if I recall correctly, by my good, late friend Mar-
cel Duchamp, "A bachelor prepares his own chocolate." Take care that the
agitator is not preparing his own chocolate.
To short, this psychoanalytic act was left for dead, as it were. And I have
not had the time to return to it, especially as examples of what that leads to
arc breaking out all around me.
An issue of a journal called Etudes frcudiemies has appeared. I I cannot
recommend reading it too highly, never having hesitated co suggest to you
bad readings which themselves are in the nature of best-seUers. If I recom-
mend it to you, it is because they are vuy, very good text.II. This is not like
that grotesque little teKt on the remarks about my style that came naturally
to find its place in the site vacated by the ai>inine [Paulhancrie].2 This is dif-
ferent. You will draw the greatest benefit from it.
Apart from an arricle by its editor, of whom I could never speak too
highly, you have statements that are indispucably and universally agitating
against psychoanalytic institutions. There is a charming, solid, and very lilt-
able Canadian who, good heavens, makes some highly pertinent remarks.
There is someone from the lnstitut psychanalytique de Paris, occupying a
very imponant position there on tbe education committee, who giveg a cri- 230
tiquc of the psychoanalytic institution as such, as being io stricr com:radic-
tion with everything that the very existence of the psychoanalyst calls
for- it's really marvelous. I cannot say that I would sign it myself, for I
already have signed it- the remarks are my own.
In any case, for me, this hcu; a sequel, namely a certain proposition that
draws conclusions from this impasse that is so masterly demonstrated. It
would have been possible to say, in a tiny little: nore somewhere, that in a
certain place there is an extremist who has tried to work this into a propo-
sition that radicaUy renews the meaning of the entire psychoana1ytic selec-
tion process. It is clear that this hasn' t been done.3
I am not really complaining about it, since according to the very people
concerned, this agitation is in a state of complete disarray, gratuitous. There
1 Etudes freudienne:s nos. 1-2 appeared in N ovember 1969, with articles by

Andre Lussier, Jean-Luc Donnct, and Robert Barande on the organization of psy-
choanalytic wcieties.
2 A pun on the name of th.c French writer Jean Paulhan.
3 See ;'Proposition of 9 October 1967 on the Pi;ycboanalysc of the School,"
·111aly~is 6 (1995).
200 Appendixes
is absolutely no question of this modifying anything at all concerning the

present fun ctioning of the Institute that the authors belong to.
INTERVENTION: I haven't understood a word yet. So, one could start by say-
i"ng what a psychoanalyst is. For me he is a kind of cop. The people who go into
psychoanalysis don't talk a11d are only concerned about themselves.
INTERVENTION:~ already have priests, but since that was no wnger work-
ing, we now have psychoanalysts.
INTERVENTION: Lacan, we have been waiting for over an hour now for what
you have been stating obliquely, a critique of psychoanalysis. That's why we are
silent, because this would also be your own self-c1·ii£cism.
But I am not criticizing psychoanalysis in the slightest. There is no question

of criticizing it. He's hard of hearing. I am not at all an agitator.
INTERVEN110'N: li1u said chat psychoanalysts were not trained at Vincennes,

and that this was a f?OOd thing. In fact a body of knowledge is dispensed, but you
ha'L•en 't said what it is. It, in any case, is apparently not a body of knowledge. And
so whai?
231 Be a bit patient. I will explain it to you. I am your guest, kt me remind

you. This is beautiful, it's big, it's generous, but I am your guest.
INTERVENTION: Lacan, is p!>:ychoanalysi~ revolutionary?
Now, there's a good question!
INTERVENTION: Is it a body of knowledf?e or isn't it a body of knowled1te?

l&u 're not the only paranoid around here.
I will :sptak about a certain aspect of things where I won't be today, namely
the Department of Psychoanalysis. There is the d ifficult question of credit
poims.4
·I unites de vakur, units or courses that are credited toward a degree.

Appendixes 20 l
JNTERVENTION: The question of credit points is settled, and this is not the
place to throw it into the ring. There was all this schemi·ng on the part of the aca-
demics in the Department of Psychoanalysis, so as to drag them out over the year.
t% couldn't care less about credit points. It is psychoanalysis that is at stake. Do
you understand? Wil couldn't care less.
Personally, I do not get the sense that no one could care less about credit
points. On the contrary people care a lot about credit points. It's custom-
ary to. I have put the schema for the fourth discourse on the board, the one
I didn't name Jast time, and which is called the university discourse. Here
it is. And here, in the master position, as we say, is S 2, knowledge.
INTERVENTION: Who are you kidding here? The university discourse is in the
credit points. That up there is a myth and what you are asking is that we believe
in a myth. The people who invoke the rules of the game that you are imposing are
stymied by thai. So, don't have us think that the university discourse is up on the
boar-d. Because that is just not true.
The university discouri;e is on the board, and knowledge occupies, on the

board, the top left-hand corner, already designated in a previous discourse .
.for what is important in what is written up are the relations, where this
works and where it doesn't work. If you begin by putting in its place what 232
essentially constitutes the master's discourse, namely, that he commands,
that he intervenes in the system of knowledge, you can ask yourselves what
it means when the discourse of knowledge, through thi:s ninety-degree dis-
placement, does not need to be on the board because it is in the real. In this
displacement, when knowledge takes the helm, at this moment in which
you are located, it is here that the result, the fruit, the fallout of the rela-
tions between master and slave has been defined-namely, what in my alge-
bra is designated by a letter, the object a. Last year, when I made the effort
to announce something called D'un Autre a l'autrc, I said that the object a
was the place Marx revealed, uncovered, as surplus value.
You are the pmduct of the university, and you prove that you arc the sur-
plus value, even if only in this respect-which you not only consent to, but
which you also applaud-and I see no reason co object-which is that you
leave here, yourselves equivalent to more or fewer credit points. You come here
to gain credit points for yourselves. You leave here stamped, "credit points."
INTERVENTION: Moral-it would be better ro leave here stamped "Lacan."
I am not stamping anyone. Why do you presume that I want to stamp you?
What rot!
202 Appendixes
INTERVENTION: No, you won't stamp us, rest assured. if/hat I mean is that the
people hete are stamped with the fact that, wanting to maintain the discourse that
you maintain for them, they are unable to maintain it in a way that is compatible
with their presence here. Some pe&ple want to speak in the name of an agitation
that you desc.,ribe as vain. There are others who go "Tiddl.y tiddly bom born" in their
corner, and that is what forms public opinion. No one says this, pretending that it's
for you to say it. W'hat I would like is that you have the desire to keep quiet.
Ah, they're wonderful! They think that I would say it much better than they.
As for me, I am going back home-that's what they reproach me for.
233 INTERVENTION: Oh, Lacan, don't make fun of people, okay?
You contribute a discourse which makes such demands thar....
INTERVENTION: W'hat I pmpose is that people not be made fim of when they
ask a question, that you don't speak in a high voice as you've already done three
rimes now. Thu give a reply, and that's it. Nm1J, what was the question you asked?
And then ihere is something dse, since there are people here who think ihat psy-
choanalysis ts all about problems of arse, all we have lO do is have a love-in. Are
there any people here who would like to tran~form this into a wild love-in?
[He takes off his shirt. l
Listen, my friend, I've seen this before. I was at the Open Theatre last night,
there was a bloke who did that, but he had more cheek than you do, he took
everything off. Away you g<l, coine on. Shit!
INTERVENTION: Thu shouldn't poke fan at him all the same. W7iy does Lacan
confr.'ne himself to such a limited criticism of the comrade's practice~ To s~y of the
cumrade that he cannot urulres:s, while you bang un the table, is perhaps very
fanny, but it's also very simplistic.
But I am simplistic!
INTERVENTION: And that makes them laugh, which is interesting.
But I don't see why they should stop laughing all of a sudden.
INTERVENTION: '1%11, I would real(y like t't if they didn't laugh at that point.
That's sad.
Appendixes 203
INTERVENTION: Just as it is sad to see people leaving here as if to catch the
six-o'clock Metro.
So, where are we? It seems that people cannot speak about psychoanalysis 234
because they expect me to. Well then, they are right. I will do it much bet-
ter than they would.
INTERVENTION: Thac's noc quite right, since r.hey feel the need io speak among
themselves.
That's been proved.
INTERVENTION: There are a number of people, the same ones v.:ho are taking
notes and who are laughing, who, when Lacan takes the audience £n hand, say a
number of things to one another, wit.houc so much as rising from their seats, for
this is the order of a certain wpowgy. 'Well then, ii is these people that I would like
to hear.
INTERVENTION: Come on, let Lacan speak!
In the meantime you say nothing.
INTERVENTION: Lacan with us!
I am with you.
Time is gening on. Let me try, nevertheless, to give you some idea of
what my project is.
It is a matter of articulating a logic which, no matter how feeble it may
seem to be- my four link letters that are almost nothing except that you
have to know the rules according to which they function-is s till strong
enough to comprise what is the sign of this logical force, namely incom-
pleteness.
That makes them laugh. Except that it has a very important conse-
quence, especially for the revolutionaries, which is that nothing is every-
thing [rim n 'est toutJ.
Whatever way you come at things, whatever way you turn them, each of
these little four-legged schemas has the property of leaving irs own gap.
At the level of the master's discourse, the gap is precisely that of the
recuperation of surplus value.
At the level of the university discourse, it's a different gap. And that's the 235
one that torments you. Not that the knowledge that you arc given is not
structured and solid. On the contrary, you have only one thing to do, which
204 Appendixes
is to weave yourselves into it along with those who work, that is with those
who teach you, under the banner of the means of production and, conse-
quently, of surplus value.
As to the hysteric's discourse, it is what made the decisive shift possible
by giving its meaning to what was historically elaborated by Marx. That is,
that there are historical events that can only be judged in terms of symp-
toms. No one saw where that was heading, not till the day when one had
the bysteTic's discourse to bring about the shift to something else, which
wa'i the psychoanalyst's discoun;e.
At first, the psychoanalyst only had to listen to what the hysteric was say-
ing. "I want a man who mows how to make love."
Ah, yes, that's where man stops. He stops at the fact that be acrually is
someone who knows. As tu making love, we'll get back to you oo that later.
Nothing is everything and you can always make your little jokes, there is
one that is not funny, and it's casccation.
INTERVEN110N: While rhis little dass is purrfog aumg peacefully there are
150 romrades ar B eaux-Arts tvho are being arrested by rJre cops and who have
been at Beaujo11 since yesterday, because rhey are rzoi giving dasses 011 the object
a like this Mandan'11 here i11 our presence, and who no one could care less about.
They went to hold a sponumeous semi,iar at rl1e Ministry of Equipment on the
slums and on Lite politics of Monsieur Chalandon. So 1 think that r.he smooth run-
ning of rhis magisterial lcccure is a fairly~ tram/a.Lion of the cummr scaie of
decay in rhe university.
INTERVENTION: If people don't wane me to speak it's obvi<Jusly because no

011e knows how loud I can slwui. l.Acan, l would like to tell you a few rhin!(S.
f l strikes me ihat z1.>e have reached the point where it is obvious chat some form
of ag£tation is more or less a possibili~y in this audiwrium. It is clear that one can
utur a few shrill Wt)rds, make a few good jokes, but it is also clear, and perhaps in
236 an obvious way today, chai we will never manage io make a critique of the uni-
versiry tf we remain within it, in its classes and wt'ihin the rules that it established
befo1-e we inte1"Ul.!rted in it.
I think that what rhe comrade has just said concerning the Beaux-Arts stu-
dents who went outside the university to hold a spontaneous class cm the slums and
on the politics of Chalandon is a very important example. It makes it possible for
us to find an om/et for our wt1J to change sociery and, among other things, to
destroy rhe university. And I would like Lacan to give us his poinr of view on chis
...
Appendixes 205
in a moment. For the uTliversity will tlOt be destroyed by a majority of scudents
. .uho are on the inside, bur £t is m1tch more likely with an alliance over revolution-
ary positioris that we students must make wich the laborers, with the peasants and
•with die workm. I am well aware that this has no relan(mship wich what Lacan
u·as saying before, buc. ...
But nor at au, one does exist.
IN TERVENTION: Pt.>rhaps il does exist, bur it is not obvious. The. relationship

between the acticms that~ mUSl. have toward~ exurior and Lacan's discourse,
if that's what. it is, is obviously implicit. A nd it would he good if l.acan now said
wltar he thinks of the necessity co leaw the univeniry and stopped 1iit-picking ~
u;ords, challenging academics crver this or thac quocm:icn from Marx. B~use
'it>e 're fed up to here with ~ acadmuc Marx. m 've bee11 hearing drivel. on chis in
chis uniu.,'7)-ity for a year now.~ know it's shit. Going on about 1Jre academic
Man serves the bourgoois unit.iemcy. If the umverrity is to be overthrown, ic will
be from che 01aside, with ochm who a~ on the out.side.
I.l'iTERVEl'-TION: So why arc you 011 che iriside~
ll\1TERVENTJON: 1 am inside, comrade, beca14se I wane people U> leave, I have

to come in and tell them.
You see! It's all there, m y friend . T o get them 10 leave, you enter.
INTERVENTION: L acan, let me fi11i.sh. No, it's noc all there, because some stu-
dents still think that by listening to M onsieur Lacan's disanmc dzey will find ele-
ments in it that will enable chem to challengr: his discourse. I claim tliar this is co
let yourselves get caught in a trap.
Quite true. 237
INTERVENTION: Tf we think that ~Y listening to Lacan 's discourse, or Fou-

cault's, or someon.e else's we will obtain the mea11s to criticize the ideology that
they are makfr1g us swallow, we 're makinK a big mistake. I claim that we have to
look outside to find the means to overthrow the university.
But outside what? Because when you leave here you become aphasic? When
you leave here you continue to speak, consequently you continue to be
inside.
INTERVENTION: I don't know what aphasic is.

206 Appendixes
You don't know what aphasic is? That's extremely revolting. You don' t know
what an aphasic is? There is a minimum one has to know, nevertheless.
INTERVENTION: I am not at the university twenty-four hours a day.
Still, you don't know what an apba.c;ic is?
INTERVENTION: When some people leave ihe tttu·versicy ii is so a.s w carry out
thei'r own personal buggerizing around. Others leave w militate outside. That's
tohac le®ing the uniuersity means. Nm.:J, Lacan, briefly give its your own point
of view.
Create a critical university in sh ort? That is what is happening here? Is that

it? You don't know what a critical university is either. Nobody has ever spo-
ken to you .
Okay. I would like to make a small remark.. The configuration of work-
ers-peasants bas nevertheless led to a form of sociecy in which it is precisely
the university that occupies the driving seat. F o r what reigns in what is com-
monly called the Soviet Union of Socialist Republics is the univenny.
23R !NTERVENTION: Who gives a damnJ ~'re not talking about TfN1.SUmism but
Marxism-1.Alinism.
That's enough. You ask m e to speak, so I will speak. I am n ot saying things

that are up in cbc: stratosphen:, I am saying something precise.
ll\TTERVENTION: You are not saying arrything.
Haven't I just said how l construe the organization of the USSR?
INTERVENTION: Absolutely 11ot.
I didn' t say that knowledge was king? I didn't say that? Did I?
INTERVENTION: So?
So, that has o number of consequences. You, my friend, would nm be very

comfortable there.
INTERVENTION: WJu have been asked a question concen1ing a certain society

and y ou anmer by speaking about another society. W'hat you have to say is why
you think it it itieviiable.
Appendixes 207
I agree totally. The fact is that there are unsurpassable limits w a certain
logic, which I have called a weak logic, but still strong enough to leave you
a bit of incompleteness, whic:b you effl!ctively bear out perfectly.
INTERVENTION: I wonder why this amphitheater is packed full with 800 peo-
ple. It is true that you are a good clown, famous, and that you have come here r.o
speak. A ccmrade also spoke for ten mimaes co say that groups were wzabk to get
themselves out of the rmiwrsil;}i And everyone, recognizing that there is nothing
w be said, is speaking bur saying nothing. So, if there is nothing to say, nothi~ng to 239
u11dersumd, nothing to know, nothing f,(} do, wiry are so maPZy peopl.e lure? And
Lacan, why do you stay?
JNTERVE}..TTJON: we have srraycd into a bit of a false problem. AR because the

comrade said tluu he was comi11g to the 1miwn-ity in order to leav.t again with
other comrades.
INTERVENTION: People speak aboui a New Socie~. WiU psychoanalysis have

a ftuicmm in that socwty and what win ic be?
A society is not something chat can be defined jusr like that. What I am try-
ing co spell out, because psychoanalysis gives me the evidence for it, is what
dominates it, namely, the practice of language::. Aphasia means that there is
something that bas broken down in this respect. Just think that there are
people who happen co have things in their brain and who no longer have any
idea bow to manage with language. Thac makes chem sumcwhar crippled.
INTERVEJ\lTION: One could say that Lenin almost became aphasic.
lf you had a bit of patience, and if you really wanred our impromptus ro
continue, I would tell you chat, always, rhe revolutionary aspiration has only
a single possible outcomt!--of ending up as che master's discourse. This is
what experience has proved.
What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a master. You will get one.
INTERVEN TION: Wfi'w already goi one, we have Pompidou.
Du you bdit:ve 1.hal you have got a master in Pompidou? \Vh:n's all that
about?
I, too, would like to ask you somt: questions. For whom, here, does the
word "liberal" have a meaning?
INTERVENTION: Pompidou is a liberal, so is lacan.

208 App~ndixes
240 I am, like everybody is, liberal only to the extent that I am antiprogressive.
With the caveat that I am caught up in a movement that deserves to be
called progressive, since it is progressive to see the psycboanaJytic discourse
founded) insofar as th~ latter completes the circle thar could perhaps enable
you ro locate wbat it is exactly that you are rebelling against- which doesn't
Stop that thing from continuing incredibly well.
And the firsr to collaborace with this, right here at Vincennes, are you,
for you fulfi.U the role of helots of this regime.. You don ' t know what rbat
means either? The regime is purring you on display. It says, "Look at chem
enjoying!"
Good-bye for roday. Bye. It's over.
3 D ecember J969
B 241
Monsieur Caquot's presentation
In suggesting that M oses may have been puc to death by bis own people, S.
Freud appeals to the authority of Ernst Sellin. This biblical scholar, born in
1867, was one of the most productive representatives of the German
exegeticaJ school. In 1922, the date of publication of his book lvfose und
seine B ede.aw1g for dk israditisch-judische Religiongeschich~ [Moses and his
Meanitzgjor Israelite and Jewish History of Religion], he was Ordinary Profes-
sor of the Old Testament at the University of Berlin. As with many of bis
contemporaries, on e can detect, in his work as a historian and exegete, a
certain ideology and a methodological option that it is worth discussing if
we are to understand the explanations be gives of tbe Bible.
The ideology is that of liberal Protestantism which sees the high point of
biblical revelation in a form of moral preaching that is summed up in the
Ten Commandmeots and developed by the prophets of the eighth century
BC, the proto-lsaiah, H osea, Amos, M.icah. Less skeptical than some of his
friends, E . Sellin held Moses to be the founder of the religion oflsrael, the
author of the Ten Commandments and the initiator of che moral preaching
that the great prophets were m erely furtl1eriog. The prophets not only
adopted Moses' teaching, they also preserved, within their tradition, a
record of his life. This is why, according to E. Sellin, H osea makes, in a pas-
sage l \\ill refer you to, allusions co M oses' violent death, wh ich the "histor-
ical" literature of the Bible docs not mention {Dcut 34:5-6 mentions
Moses• death and burial; but it adds thar no one knows the location of his
tomb, and this somewhat mysterious indication has given birth to the leg-
end of .Moses' ascension co heaven). Sellin thinks t hat the tradition of
Moses' violent death was censored by historians from the cir:cle of priests.
The methodological option consists of not crusting the traditional
Hebrew text, called "the masorctic." One usually prefers the doyen oftrans-
Jations, the Greek version called the "Septuagint," in which manuscript tes-
timonies are most often earlier than the Hebrew text. But even without the
209
210 Appendixes
slightest support from the versions of Antiquity (Greek, Syriac, or Latin),

recourse is readily made to corrections in the received Hebrew text, with the
aim of giving it a sense that is judged to be more satisfactory. It is supposed
that over the course of time the received text, or the Hebrew underlying such
a version, has undergone "corruption s" in the oral or written transmission.
Exegesis thus understood has sometimes been an exercise in arbitrary virtu-
osity. E. Sellin's work on Hosea offers a number of examples of this.
le was probably while composing the first edition of his commencary o n
Hosea, also published in 1922 in the series entidcd Kommmrar :::um Alten
Testament, that Emst Sellin thought be had found allusion.~ to the murder
of Moses in the prophet's teXL The passages he picks out with the help of
lus hypothesis will be treated briefly as they were understood before or after
Sellin and as he mterpretcd them and what argumenrs he used.
1. H os. 5:2a. The bemisticb appears in an invective by the prophet
against the prit:sts and against the " house of Israel." It consists of three
words, not very clear, which would literally translate as "And the massacre,
the strayed deepened rit] ." The name translated by "srrayed" has been
underscood best, it would seem, by the Jewish tradition which uses " the
idolaters.. there. But in t:be first half of the nineteenth century,
F. W. Umbreic proposed that this word be replaced by the toponymous
"Shittim," which is the same but for the initial hushing~ aspirate consonant,
which is different, as is the vocalization of the fuse syllable. This correction
led to others: by substituting a simple t for the emphatic i in writing !he first
word, and by delaching the final h, to form the article belonging to the
roponym, one obtained a sentence judged to be more satisfactory as an
accusation: "They deepened the pit at Sbittim."
243 E. Sellin welcomes this conjecture enthusiastically, for the toponym
"Snittim" presents bim with a refe:rcnce point in the historical literature
that plays an esRt:ntial role in his reasoning in favor of the assassination of
Moses. This is the famous passage of Numbers 25 where the straying of the
Israelites into I.he sanctuary of Baal of Peor, which occurred while they
were staying at Shittim, is recounted. The Israelites were led into tempta-
tion by the Moabite women. GQd became irritated and sent down a plague.
The priest Phinehas put an end to it when he transfo:ed an braelite caught
in adulterous flagraotc delicto with a Moabite woman. A bit further on it is
said that the man's name was Zimri and the Moabite's was Cozbi.
Sellin would no doubt not have been led lo wH.h:rslamt the passage in
Numbers as he did if his interpretation of Hosea had not conveyed to him
his intuition about the assassination of Moses. What he says concerning the
episode of Shitrim and Baal of Peor indicates an excessive imagination. He
reconstitutes an entire scenario in which the Israelite put to death was no ne
other than Moses, who as we know had a Moabite wife (Exod. 2: 15- 22),
- Appendixes 211
and the violent death of the guide of Israel originally has the value of an
expiatory sacrifice that brought the plague to an end. Later, the sacerdotal
tradition supposedly recomposes the episode entirely to the glory of the
clergy (represented by Phinehas whose zeal is remunerated by the
" alliance" granted him by God) and effaces the name of M oses. He is,
according to Sellin, the primitive hero of the srory the authentic record of
whom the prophetic tradition has maintained; they have substituted the
name of the insignificant Zimri for his and replaced 1he name of the Mid-
ianice Zipporah by that of Cozbi, constructed on the basis of the root, sig-
nifying "to lie."
2. H os. 9:9. Again, a prophe1ic indicrment against "Ephraim." As in 5:2
this name "the house of Israel" alludes to the kingdom of the North, sepa-
rared from Judah in 922 and the constant object of H osea's polemic. 9:8
concerns a " prophet" for whom Ephraim secs a trap. Sellin supposes that it
was Moses. The hemistich Sb ending by " he [finds] an adversary in the
house of bis god" enables Sellin to rediscover the toponym Shinim with
which the H ebrew name for the advtrsary (masremah) has some resem-
blance. He restitutes, as the primitive tex't, "At Sbinim, in the house of his
god." At verse 9 one rediscovers words close to those of 5:2, and just as dif-
ficult co undersrand, for the translation would literally be «They have deep- 244
ened, they have corrupted as in the days of Gibeab." le is likely that the
word commonly translated as "deepen" bas a modal value and serves to
indicate chat the corruption "Ephraim" is accused of has been continuous
and i.-yscematic. The aUusioo co the "days of Gibeah " concerns a memorable
crime commicted in this place, according to the Book of Judges 19. Sellin
once again corrects the text to bring it into line with 5:2 as he reads it; by
changing the vowels of the verb " they have corrupted," he obtains the sub-
stantive "his grave" and translates " ... Shhtim, in the bouse of his god,
they have deeply dug his pit."
3. Hos. 12: 13-13: I. The end of chapter 12 (verse 14) is the sole passage
of Hosea in which "tht.: prophet" undeniably refers co Moses: ult was by t.he
imermedfary of a prophet thatYHWH brought Israel up from Egypt and it
was by a prophet that [lsraell was tended fgarde1." The cexc of Hosea 14 can
be paraphrased as follows, to bring out the value of the pronominal suffixes
that are often equivocaJ in Hebrew: "Ephraim (= 1srael] irritated [YHWH]
bitterly, but his blood [= the blood that Ephraim has spilled] will come
back up~m him [Ephraiml and the Lord will bring the opprobrium that he
has committed back upon him." 1 Israel is here accused of crimes of blood,
and her punishment by God is announced without any equivocation. The
I The Revised English Bible gives "Ephraim gave b itter provocation; he will be
left to suffer for the blood he has shed; his Lord will punish him for all his blas-
phemy." (Hos. 12: 14).
212 Appendixes
difficulty lies in 13:1, which could be literally translated as "While Ephraim

was speaking Lthere was] a tremor; it arose in Israel. But he became guilty
because of Baal, and he is dead." In all probability this is a satire on the
grandeur and decadence of the tribe which, according to Hosea, most
directly represents the schismatic royalty, since it is the Ephraimite Jer-
oboam who in 922 brought ab()ut the separation of Israel (in the restricted
sense, designating the kingdom of the North) from the kingdom of Judah.
Sellin's conjecture consists of substituting the name "my law" (whose
consonants would be trt) for the name "tremor" (whose consonants are rtt);
reading the substantive nasi ("prince") in place of the verb nasa ("to rise");
giving the verb "make oneself guilty" the acceptation "expiate" which he
believes possible because the name of the same root designates an expia-
tory sacrifice; and, finally, displacing the hemistich 12: 15b after the verse
13:1. This would give (12:1 4) "It was by a prophet [Mosesl thatYH\VH
245 brought I~racJ up from Egypt and it was by a prophet that [Israelj was
tended." (12: I Sa) "But Ephraim irritated [YHWH] bjnerly." (13: l) "While
Ephraim was speaking my law, he was prince in Israel. He fthe prophet]
expiated because of Baal (the sin of Baal of Peor] and he is dead." (12:15b)
" But hi~ bluu<l [the blood of the prophet] will come back upon him
[Ephraimj and the Lord will bring back upon him the opprobrium that he
has committed.'' Sellin finds here the clearest expression of the meaning he
wants to give to the alleged murder of the prophet: Moses was put to death
by his own pc<>ple as an expiatory victim following the collective sin of Baal
of Pcor. He justifies this strange hypothesis by a declaration by Moses in
Exod. 32;32 where the h~rn pk:a<l-:; fur a divim: pardon for the people for
their sin of the Golden Calf, even if it should be he who is to be effaced
from the book of God. But it is not possible to ignore the Christian roots
of Sellin's ideas, which in this way found in Moses the prototype of the
mysterious suffering characters of whom the prophetic literature speaks:
the "servant of YHWH" of Deutero-lsaiah (see in particular Isa.
52: l '.3-53: 12 and the "transfixing" of Zech. 12: 10).
Sellin was aware of the fragility of his hypotheses of 1922. In 1928, in an
article in the Zeitschrzfi fur die a!ttestamentliche Wissenschaft (46:261-3) enti-
tled "Hosea und das Martyrium des Mose," he returns to the study of Hos.
12:14-13:1, proposing some new corrections to the text of 13:1a: "While
Ephraim was uttering these rebellious words [reading rbt in place of ru], he
fnamely the prophet, that is, Moses] took (it] upon him~elf and he expi-
ated." It is in the second edition of his commentary on Hosea, published in
1929, that he shows himself to be the most skeptical with respect to his ini-
tial intuition. He still believes that Hosea contains the record of an expia-
tor y death of Moses, but h e no longer reads 13:1 as he h ad interpreted it
in 1928. In H os. 5:2 he rejects F. W. Umbreit's correction, even mntests the
Appendixes 213
relevance of the alleged reference to Shittim for evoking the affair of Baal
of Peor, and translates 5:2 as "Deeply have they dug the tomb of the
strayed." In 9:8- 9 h e no longer corrects mastemah as "Shittim," and while
he does retain his translation of 9:9a, " Deeply have they dug his pit," he no
longer thinks that the "prophet" that the possessive refers to is Moses. This
would be a personification of the prophetic function as Sellin conceives it;
the vehicle of the divine word is destined to be a martyr.
As K. Budde points out in 1932 ("Goethe zu Moses Tod,'' Zei.tschrift fi~r 246
d£e aittestamentliclw Wissenschaft 50:300-03), Goethe had imagined the vio-
lent death of M oses a century and a half before E. Sellin. In one of his
Noterz und Abhandlungen zu besseren Vfirstand11is des west-iistliches Diwans (in
the Hempel IV edition, p. 320 ff.), he supposes that Joshua and Caleb, tired
of Moses' indecision over crossing Jordan to get to the prnmised land,
assassinated the elderly guide in order to take control of Israel. This is a
more simple conjecture than Scllin's, but no less gratuitous, for che laconic
information of Deut. 34:5- 6 on Moses' unknown tomb can certainly stir
one's imaginati<.m, but it juscifies no hypothesis about Moses' death. One
might wonder whether S. Freud might not Gwe this idea of Moses' viole.nt
death to a distant recollection of his reading of Goethe and whether he
might not have wanted to give it a justification judged to be more scholarly
by evoking the sole auth<.lrity of E. Sellin.
l
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Index
o,=Ob1cct o \.ap1QJ1mt,c:apu:!llm:s,.Jl, I07, 168

.-\braham. 117 ClUIUUt,Andr•, 133-l~. 117 , l)S
.-\cqua1or.mu:, "kl C.:arnot-Claumu principle, llO
: kia,1'11, 125 C:aunnadis, Comdius, I 41
A rti..,,,.<1rrr, I :?5 C:llllr.u i<on, 19, ~2. 12·1, I :?5. 123-29, 130, 15-1
A crir<ru, 12'5 Cavnlkri, R., I 53
.-\dam, 13? Clumua,36
1\g~nt. 125, 169 C:Ja.q ~1.t~e. 31
Akthcu, l b l-62 Cun:i.dvuvn•"¥'<, b9
;\J~,,bm:, 1112 C.:oosumtt socmy. 8 1
.\Jl-.knowmg, 31 32, H J Cnlin:IH, El, 83
AR<Jl.)"S"~, 166, 172 Cnt1-~~ of Prru:rual R==t., Tk {K3n1), 169
".'\n3l~Tamm-.bk and Intenmmhlc,• 165
Anal)'-s1, 38, #>, 52 53, l 09, 152 ~72
disoowi:c of, 21, 33, 35,43, 54, 69, 91. 1(!2, T>:uwtn, c-_, 112
U 6-47, 164, 171, 176 Dnth, 122-2l, 152, fi >-'11 , 172, 180-81
Analrtk experience. I}, 18, 33, 45 Death drive, 16, 18, 45
FNudoa, 172 O<-cnln11rurinn, 34
Anruyuc knowledge, 19 l l >cmunm111icm, I i 6
Anwysic n;-.;hniquc, 134 • Ue 005 an1i:cid«n~.· 12
1\ntii:c.me {char.), 67, 121 D escartes, Ren e, 23, 151. 153. I W, 171
Amuccy, 1-13, 1-17 l'X.-Airc, 11. 9'}
Archun~dC1<, I ~~. 17:1 fun.iiun <1f. 19
Ari~sutlc, 2 1, 23. 4~ of the Other, 38, 61
AruntuS tnl>es, 1Z7 28 D id erot, D crus, 192
:\~1udted, 105-6 Ol!Tt"rt·1111J1ls, I SS
,ftfudiuh, ll:19 ''f>rr•"<.tMm of t.he Treaonent and die Prin•-iplo. o f
,1,.p.a...'11:, 69 u,, l'v.....,,..~ (T .<>cln), 74
Discourse, .3, 14 15, 18, 44, Ho, 187
&al, Uc., M O un.Uyu·~. 2 1,
33, 35, 43, 54, 69, 91, I 02,
IlaJ23c, H ., l tl9 14{>-47, IM, 17'.l, 176
HarrCi;, Maurice. 19 of c<1nsci.•uSil<.~~. 69
l!ntho,>ry, E., 167. Frcud1a11, 70 i I, 73, 74- 75,, ill:!.• 9~
Bdng [fou) , 1-52, 151, 15i llrcud'~. on repetition, 15, 16
bcin$~ (J1aml, 152 hyputhctlcnl , 42
B<0r03y~, Minna, 68 hystcri.~ of the, '35
R,:ym1d the l'ltMure l'ri11ciplc (Freud), ·1~ , 50 ofb}-;teric6, 21, 23, 33, 34., '16.• 4'l-44, 67, 7·1,
"Hihlt:, l l ti, 11(1 9:l, 175- 76
lfa:hat, Marie frnni;oi~ Xavier, 18 vfl..acun, 63
Bi\>Rrnphk~.• }() muster\, 20, 21, 29, :ll, 35, 43, 4+, 54, 78- i9,
Binn, Maine de. 171 87, 92, 102-·3, IOI!, 110, 116, 121, 127, 143,
Boon~, .\laric-Ciairc, 118 19 1~1~ 1~1 ~1~1~1~1~1~
Bnllvum, M.., 82 177
Bmth«boocl, I M-l '5 phdosophic:al, 34
Bullshit, 7 1-72, 111, 161 of 11•y.:borui3lysis, 33, 3 7, 1 I , SS, 151, 152, 151
"1r~lutt of, 42
Cul\~n, J.• 177 wllic<.'1 and, 152
22 1
222 Index
Discow~ (comin11•tl) Grammatical structure, 59
of syntheais, 69 Greeks, 1J2
university, '<~. 54, 147 48, 174 Gres.'!nUn, 133
wilhoul SJ>Cl'Ch, 12· 13, 24 C'T1'0flP ~and 1/te A11oly1u f1f rJre El(O
D~e~cd, )2 (Freud), 88
"Domirwit," Q
Dora, H Half-sa~, 51, 103, 11 0
Dora (Freud), 94-99 Hsppiness, 73
Hebraii; history, 13~36
Ecnu {l.aein), l2, 19 1 Hcgvl, G . F. W., 20, 23, ' I, 79, 89, 107, 141, 145,
nr;u, 30, 73, I SS HS. 152, 169- 71, l73-74 , 1<n
J;lwud, P .• 57 H eidegger, M ., 18711
Empcdod~, 38 H enziao waves, I fi I
Energetics, 41!, 90 HOC'3Ct, 711
linigmll, 'l6-3 7 HORb, 137
F.ottopy, 48, 50-51 Hosea, 11$-16. IJ6, 139, 140, 151
t;pinal, 36 Husacri, E., 56
f!pit:OM, 22, 23, 149 H~l1.48
Eputtmologial drM:, I(){! 7 Hysteria of the dncounc, 35
Ed~,15} H}'Sl'Cria, H-.M , 130, 170
r-lid, 155, 1ss discounc ar, 21, 23. 33, 34, 36,·41- 14,67, 7 4,
8.ul.-'nua11 Ellri<s, 175 93. 175-76
Ey, llMrJ, 40 H;-staic's desire. 120
l'abnacmn, 1 i I. 62-6~, f>4, 80

Falstntt, 134 Imperialism, 92
17anto.~y, 49, 121 lnlU1tttld:, 50
1:-'atb.-r o( !be h<>rdc:, 112 14 Integrals, 188
Fatbu of 1hc l\ople, l }.7 ~.dJotm.al uf P.ycho-Anal)'su, 71 , n
l •al°l'K."T~dclllll, Ii i, I l l\, 119 20, 122, 121 ~of I>na"'1 (f.ttUd), 45, '!2, 95,
l'cll.inl, F., 111 122-24
Flhon=:i ~ 156 buc, 137
P1hct$, 47
l'bcss, W., I 6b J3COb, 137
"Foundmum of COACtt~ Psychology: 63-64 Jews Christ, U9
"Four lmprompn.s," 1 1 Jocasta (char.), 117
l-rau K., 74 Jones. F.mut, D I , 138
F~, G,56 ~34, 46,~'lt,65,67, 10, 11 , 11....;s,
F~"Ocb l<.c~uuoo, 18'1 SJ. 89. 92. 100. 115, 116, 12J, 126. 160.
l'reud, Sigmund, 25, 37, 45, 50, 52, 5ts, 63, 64-, 170, 174, 176 77
o5, M:I, 72, 76, 81. 9 1, 9'1-'19, 100 10 1, al)lciety and, 147
111 12, 11 7, I IR, 119, 122 2.\, 126, 127, Oomand,96
128, IJl , l '\2, 133 34, 136-37, 1 1~. 144, Freud oo, 72, 77, 120
1'11, 16 5 knowledge and, 18- 19, 1'5-\ 6
<ln MD~lytic rc:lau0<1$hi11 1 172 male, 71
un death drive, 16, 18 master'• diK'l.•une and , 124
dJSCOursc 1100111 repcaaou by, I ~. 16. 19 muter Sgnilier a.od, 130
di11<:uurn of, 70-71, 71, 74-75, 88, 93 of moth:r, ll3. 117
Hd>ntlc humry llnJ. 115 36 ofOchtt, M , SI
ODJUlfinan«. 72, 77, 120 prohibitiun of, 137
m a$tcr $iicnifien produud hy, 130 n:petitioo and, 4'!, 'I ll, 'SO
PT~ratics liked hy. 13 signifier 3S app<.U".lt U S uf, 49
on t.hrtt pl'nf=iun~, 166 slave's (IOkiriun and, 22
otl wittkivms, 57 ~IX>liatim of, 8 1
ire als'1 IP.'<'iJic workr a11d cnn~f(lll surplus, 19-20, ~ ~. fifl.• t!O, 'l8, 107· 8, 147,
Fr'1m a11 Otllar ;,1 rhc Otlt~~. 14, 156 151, 175, 171!
Function, maRt~r·~, 30 of wom<-n, I 54
Julwtt~ (S•de) 66
Golll ~u G •llilci, 188
Gwu~a, C. F., 104, 106 Kant, I., 16, 182
Georgln, M ., 131 "Kant with Siitlc" (Lac1m), 14
Gillespie, 71 Kaufmann, Pi~rre, 166
(.)aJ, 67 , 100, 159 Ki<.:rkegaard, Soren, 46, 144- 4 5
G<><:thc, J. W., 19 2- 93 Knowledge, I J-1'1, I ~. 47-48, Cl l , 92, 135, 119,
Gulden Calf, 57, 11 6 159-M, l llb
Gulden numbe::, I '!I) absolute, 1'5-16
Got11iu, 150 ambiguity of, 14
Graciia, &ltn.<V', 183 anceltr.il, 18
Index 223
armvlaced aspect of, 21- 22 Meyer, Eoouard, 133
cenmility of, .'!0-31 Middle Ages, 61
of everythlng, 31 M tdrash, 134
Uq,'t'I on, 171 MMCll, I l b, 117, IJ l , 133, !37, 1311
~nd puWanc.. 18-19, 3>-36 M osa and Mmwihmm {Fttud), I J I, 11 5
k;rlow-how, 2 1-22, 153 M om u11d Jeilte Berku11mg fiir di;; imuEriscJ1-jiidisclu
llll1-~1tt's, 22, 23, 32, 31, 90, 148 Relipmsgw:iticlru (Sdtin), 11 5, 137
mythical, 153 Muther'• "~'' 112
sima1cd on ba.\is of life, 18 Myth, 91, 109-11, 113, 121-22, 125, 190
sllivt'a, 22, 23, 24, 32, 34, 80, 149 sed als11 Otdlpus
lOU\IJ~'-, 33
Ctlllb and,
~ti, 109, 130, 184-85 N~rur.d principle, 160
umu-y rrai1 1nd, 46 Nazi •8Cf!L~, 127
uncl.'f14inty of knowing of, 30, 33, 3 '1, ~I> Nl'urods, 25
unconwcioU! and, 70 N<'fll /nnudiH.rory f..ttr117n on Aye}wtmaJy1u
Roic~,AI~ 143, lb9 rFr.::ud), 100
J(rocbcr, Alfred Le~ 11 I )';cwion, I., liO
N-adtMn ElJUc:s ( Aristodl') , 175
Laius (d!ar.), 120 Noospbtte, lbl
I .i M1>tt1U. 181. 189 "'Not·•,rho1x.• 'i8
l.aJ!l!UiJl:C, 1). 155. 178, 187
~ oonduion ofl.Ulcamcinus, 4 1 Ohi~,, "• 18, 20, 29, 35, 39, 12, u , 4!1, 54, 94..
.rngins of. 155 99, 104, 101 , 1011., no, 147, 148, 15-t,
lapl.nch.c , Jean, I 66 156-~8. 167, 169,17576, 178
ursus, 22 Olxw:b, 160
l..:utnt conrenr, llJ 0<.kham, 62, 145
l ..alho~. l b2, IX7 <Xdipus (dw-.). 11'>-37, 92, I OI, l JO, I 12,
uibni>, 158, 1as 111-1'1, 117, 120 21.123
u.'.det~, 168 <k.tqius. c:uniplex, 36, 74, 99, 112, l ll, 117, ! JS,
L'Enwnd.l.>.h4 ~(llab=), 189, 192 IJ7, 153
1.n r..,,,,. ,,.""1t:ntu, 181, 1s9 One, 154
1.:"';.smni.s, Cbudc, 110, 111, 120 Orgas.nu., V11"'1aJ, 7 I
ulOOo, 98 Otf.er, 13, 33, 66, 93, 121 , 119
Lift, Bidw'< Jo.iimticn of, 18 ronfronwion ol, 14H6
l:l~r. l 3'i, 147 <irfirc or, l'!, 6 1
"1.'lnronscico1, rtudc ~liqut,~ 39-40, C.2 JC"A.'SOJfCt of, J 4, 51
Log2ni:mn., 188 Otha, the. u
Losfcld, T!nc, 169 Other \lgllifit<, 3'
Los,, 93 Ou.ria. 411, I 6?
Luther, !\>\ L., 177
l>urapmm, SS
M, 30, 1 1 /Uris l'ltastDtt, ~;;
Manifet;i content, 11:3 PQl't)U~IO, 162
i\far'<. Ka.r t, 20, 22, 'I I , 37.• 44, 71, 79, 80-81, 82, Pu~o..wl, R., JOO, 106 1 182
'>2, 107, 174. 177, 189 l'enis, 72
Mastettp.ycllblo/(ie (Frnid), 50 l't.111mnJ, 99
."-l assis, H enri, 127 PIU1lhc t"l<cltAioo, 76
.\.lasitr, 21, 22, 24, 30, 38, J07, 143, 153, 170 J>hall1n, 73 74, 11 2
dJJ'couru nr, 20, 21, 29, 3 1, 35.1'.l, 44. '14, PflUIOtllt'flO/ogy of Spiril. 77ae {Hfgcl), 1S-J6, I 43,
78-79, 87, 92, 10 2-J, I08, I 10, I lo, l l'l, 109-11, 1n. 182-l1J. 1-n
127, 143, 1 4~. 1'12, 154, 160, 164, 168, 173, PhtlllROphy, :!O, 21 1 22, 24, 31, l-l6, l ~S.-49,
174, 176, 177 15)
sla\i.:'s rclatiuruhip with, 175 /'lt1111J, 76
truth of, 51 Plato, 2 1, 22
"'''man und, l 29 Plea~urc prindple, 18, 46, 77
Ma~iecs J<nd John>\ln, 7 J Politics (Ari~totle}, 2 1
Master signifi~r, 32, 89, 92 -93, 129, 130, 174, Politz.er, Ueorges, 63-64
Jf\3, 1811.• 191, 192 Prague Circle, 02
.\fastcr's infuruntian, 159 l'rcsocrolk~, ; 11
mnrJ1cmntit.:ti, I 55, 158 Prince, 40
:vt uxwell , 81 Prim:ipia Matl111naiict1 (Russell), 63
May~r, l:\O Prudu<.:tion, 169
Mthrltm, 50, 157 Prule1aria11, 32, 148, 119
Men. 1'1ycho1U1alysis, 17-1 R, 2..1, W, 32, 43, 45, 46-17,
a. creation of di'>l'.oursc, 5 5 ,2, 7J, 71'1, 112, 117, 92, 103, 110, 112, 127,
wo1ne11'~ rel3tlo~ with, 33-34, 154 116. 151-54, 178, 18:?. 185-86
M.,,., (l'l.:1to), 22 dk.:outM: of, 33, 37, 4 1, 88, l51, 152
M1:t:ilanguagc, 61, 190 C'ui.''~"<~, 'H
22 4 Index
Quin<,W.,60 S11r~rcg.:i, 13, I 00
Surplus enjoyment, 100
Ramuu's N.plm;.1(l.>idcrot), 192 Surpluspuwa 11u, 19-20, '3, 66, 80, 911, 107- R,
Rtalit!it, 165-66 147, 1'51, 17'i, 17 R
Rcpctitlnn , I 5, 16, 19, 45-46. 48, 50 . 77_, 15-0 SurplU$ pleasure, 154
R~pr11>1rnt.1UU, IH Surplus •itlue, 20, 44, 81, 147, 178
Repn:scnumon, 30 •sycban3JllOSC,~ 56
~olution, 87 Synth,-s;,, 69
Rlc-.irdu, 112
RJCoe11r, r1ul , J 7 Tablets of tbt ~..... 117
Rl\:lntnn, 104 T;l!mud, 13CI
Rome. 190 -fautology, 59, 60
Ru.ndl, B.• 61 "Theori:i,• 21
Togo, 91
S, 29, 34, 39, 5'i, 69, 87, 94, 99, 103, 104, 107, ~ and TaboD (Freud), 111, 113 , 115, I :n
IOll, I 13, I 10, MR, 11> 7, 169, 175, 188 Tr.ldatm l.oric..-1"ri/m(r~ l'i O
S I, IJ, I S, 21, 23, 20, 30, 39, 5 1, 54, 69, 80, 87, T r.msgresaion, 1Q 20, 23, 50
89, 9J, 94, 99, 104, 107, 108, 113, 130, 167, T~lll (Freud). s« llClir'fWWMn Pf Dramu
toe>, 170, 17S, 176, 11!3, 188 (F~ud)
S:?, 13, 2 1, 23, 2'1, 30, 31, 33, 35 36, 39, 51, 54, ''Tricbt 15 16
69, 87, 89, 93, 94, 99, 1().4, 101. 108., 130, Trimlllcluo (chsL) , 82
lM, 170, 174, 175, 188 Truth,)2, 55,61~2,9), 12 1, 1'4, 169, 113, 174
Sadr, M. , 66 68 analytic rdaoomhip and, 172
Samt-Foud (char.), 66 bullslut :is, 1 1 I
Satint.011, Ml, 82 God a nd, 159
Saus)"u.re, I:' de, 132 ~i~ m d, 36, 109, 130, 184 85
Scbnna Z, 14 in labor , 18J
Scluller. I 92 love of, '12
Scentt. 104 6. 149, 151, 153, 160 61, 162 of master, 5 1, 177
buth of. 23 slave's, J 75
Sqttptinn, I 11-1'1 mWl a. 175
Sdbu6.vussta11, 35, 89
Sellin, lirmt, 1 15, 131, 133--34, 136, 137, 138-39, Vrrtt:tll, 50
1~3 Unary tni.t., 46, IR. '10. 77. l~'l'l, 177
Sen.aqqn, 47 Unwi»Q11~ 30, 40, '11, 4~ -46, 70, 77, 9 1, !n,
Sense.5~57 114
.IOUV ..I 'ltl-'19 "Un cnnsciou.•, ~; A Pn'\:hNnalyuc Study,"
Sex, 75, 152, 153 54 "}Q~,62
Sexu al relauons, 33 UHgf4i.bm, 63
Stumm, llR UniVH'.•u y diocowse, t l, S 11 14 7-48, 17-t
81117', 1111 Uroorlrimxr, 90
Siiuillier, 13, IS, 19, 2 1, 29, 35, 45, 46, 4 7 48, 56, Uttcnnc:cs, 13
89,92, 128, 177, 180
u •Pl'-lflll~ orr1uraua, 40 Vatd, 11'.2
m i n er, x~ M11'Ster rignitia ~. l t!7
111'rcn, 152-53 vm :eim1J1$, 144
od~.31
0 1•1.-r \n fl',-J•Un: tf\)V~ of, J 45 W.tv<.':1, l'i9
Suptic:s,3 1 H ertzian, 16 1
Slovc,2\- 22 1 29, .:><>,J I, SI , 79, 89, 107, 14.3, IJ.Wlth u.f Nutivn> (Swllh), 82
14R, 149, 170 Wirklicflkeit, 165-66
m11n ..r'• rdatiunship with, 175 Wittgcn~tcin, Ludv..lir, 59-~"\
Snuth, A., 82 Witticisms, 57 58
S<111g <f Song:t, The, 140 Women:
S<iphoclcs. 11 ' · I I 4 and cycle o f discour~eR, S'
Sorl{U(, 127 desires of, I 29
Speech, disco urse witho ut, I 2-· J3 as hyst~ri~, 3 3
Spern:atozoon , 127 jo11iss<11ice of, 154
Sphinx,, I 17,, I 21)-2 J men's relations with, 33-34, 154
Stein, C11nrad, 11 ti, 122 Word. ·10-n
Stoics, 60, 6 1, 175 Work, 167- 68, 169
Swry of Half a Cllickm, The, 55
Strua aral Ar11hrrtf't1lt1gy (Uvi-Strauss), 110 Y-ah"'"Ch• 13 6, 139, 153
"Struceun: ,,rMyth s. The," 11 0 Yin nod Yang, 111
SttuiWtl !lb!!' 1-f.ymri~ (Freud ),, 95
Subject, 13, 92 7.rvolf Pmphtte", nic, 1 I ')
discour1c and, 152
- - - - - - -- - --··

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t.A. PUBUC LIBRARY ..'.

The Other Side of Psychoanalysis

TRANSLA'TED WITH NOTES BY

/50. f.o ( L/()q-5

Copyrighl <f: 199 1 by Edmons du Scull

All rights reserved

M trnufiiclunng b~ the Maple-Va il Book Manufacruring Group

I .ihrary of Congress C:ualoging-in-Pubhcution 0dtll

Lac:m, Jacques, 190 1- 198 1.

JSBN 978-0-393-.'!3040-3 phk/

I Production of the four discourses II

AXES OF THE ANALYTIC SUBVERSION

BEYOND THE OEDIPUS COMPLEX

THE OTHER SIDE OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE

lliE Sl.AVF R08Bl!.O OP ms ~O'lll.J:DGE

.. 'Tbe original French pagination is included in the margins to facilitate

lytic stupidity, instead of people striving to grasp how this category is to be

, 2 See /.e Seminaire, Livre V, Les formari'ons de l'inconscienc, 1957-1958 (Paris:

Let's pick up me thread again.

5 Maurice Bani:s (1862-1923), French writer and conservative political fig-

to what I am introducing now- there is no transgression here, but rather

What am I up to? I am beginning t o get yon to acknowledge, simply

There is as a matter of fact a question to be asked. Does the master who

Following sessivn: Agi.ration

The master and the hysteric

Tiffi HYSTFIU7ATJO~ OF N:SCl.1CRSS

l:.."10Mh, CllATION, IN1 l!.kl'kE"0010N

These four formulas arc useful to have her!! as a reference.

lf the masccr·s discourse can be seen as reduced to a single signilier, thiio

I " . , • tout sawir, d 'etre Sa'DOir, se sache romme tel."

2 le Scminairc, Livre XV, L'Acre p.~ychanalycique, 1967-1968 (unpublished).

4 See Paul Ricocur, F~ucl and Philosophy: An Essay on lnterpreiation (New

Knowledge, a means of jouissance

OOMINAN'l 'I> A."'--0 FACTS 0 1- S nn;cn.lU'.

IU!l'CTTTIOI' A.'«> ]OUJSSAAT'Ji

THI\ PBOOUC.:nON or J'.Nll!OPY

I have managed to state che psyclloanalyst's position in the following terms.

4 Sec Soren Kierkegaard , Repetition, in his Fear and 1remhlfr1g; Repericion

5 Henri Pieron, The Sensations: Their Fut1ctions, Processes, and Mechanisms

7 "Encropie" and "anthropie" sound the same in French.

J.I J anuary 1970

2 Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant (London: Jonathan Cape, 197 1).

6 Also ordure, "rubbish."

11 Lud~ig Wittgenstein, Tracuuus lAJgico-Philosoplricus (London: Routlt:dge &

Truth-we begin again from first principles-is certainly inseparable from

The Lacanian field

llil: HAi'l'L~ Ot' 1'Ht! r llAlLUS

WJ!IU.TH, l'ltO IU I '( 01' ·nm W'E...LTRV

We arc gcing to push on, and perhaps so as to avoid one misunderstanding,

N evertheless, it is clear thac there is no more burning question than what,

1 " Prcsencntion on Psy(;hical Causality," Ecrits: The First Complew Edition in

2 William Gillespie, "Concepts of Vaginal Orgasm," foternaxional Journal of

We are not going to speak about jouissance in that way.

3 The Danaides were daughcers of Danaus, a mythical king regarded by che

4 The allusion is to Ernst Kris, Rudulf ~'ellstcin, and Heisv. Hartmann.

into their relationship of configuration-which is not central but it is

8 Most likely Marcel Brillouin, French physicist and professor of mathemat-

S\.IBN<:1! 1 MYTH, TH.I! U Nl.,:ONS<.:IOU~

DORA ANO Hl"R l"ATHI'.ll