Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le psychanalyste de l'École

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1967 (17 pp.)-PROPOSITION DU 9 OCTOBRE 1967 SUR LE PSYCHANALYSTE A L'ECOLE (PROPOSITION OF OCTOBER 9,1967 CONCERNING THE PSYCHOANALYST IN THE ECOLE)-1968 AND 1978 Lacan suggested changing the organization of his ecole by creating a new "gradus" that would sanction the recognition of the analyst's training. In the first part of our dossier (Chronology) we analyzed the discussions, dissen�sions, and agreements concerning this proposition and its implementation. Let us recall here that "the psychoanalyst only authorizes himself by himself [ne s'all/orise que de II/i-mhne}" in deciding to conduct therapy: such was the case for the A. P. (Practitioner Analyst). However, "this [did] not preclude the ccole from guaranteeing that an analyst [hadl undergone its curriculum": such was always the case for the A. M. E. (Member Analyst of the ecole) for whom a jury decided whether he had "proved himself." Now Lacan added a third-and superior-category, the A. E. (Analysts of the ecole) who could "testify to all cmcial and sharp problems as they appear in analysis, especially inasmuch as they have set for themselves the task of solving these problems and are hard at it." We were thus "at this delicate limit-point where theory [was ] linked to the establishment of the ecole by means of the training of the analyst. " What did Lacan want? He said that he wanted to "disperse this thick obscurity," this "darkness," that covers the passage from the position of psychoallalysalld (and this is the first time the term appeared) to that of psy�choallalyst. Every psychoanalyst has lived through those ungraspable mo�ments and experiences that Lacan called the passe. Lacan, on the other hand, wanted to grasp them and theorize them. For that purpose, he needed those who were experiencing them to testify. Who beller than he who was going through it to talk about the passe? Who beller than another analysand about to become an analyst to understand what he said about his analysis? Two passel/rs, witnesses and not judges, would testify in front of a jury (formed of Lacan and several A. E.s) to what they would hear. This jury would both act as "selector" and produce "a doctrinal work" for everybody's best bene�fit. So, was this a procedure meant to collectively improve the theory? What interested Lacan was the aim of the analysis, in its relationship to the desire to become an analyst. As we know, for him, "pure psychoanalysis" is "didactic" (57). However, he wanted to go further; he wanted to articulate what remained "unarticulated after half a century of constant experience." Beyond the desire to become an analyst, he wanted to articulate "the ending, the goal, and the object of psychoanalysis." In his Discours dl/ 6 decembre

The Works of Jacque. Llcan ZOI /967 d {' E.F.P., he maintaned the possibility that analyzeds who were not analysts by profession may have access to the passe, hence to the title of A. E. However, wasn't the theory already given by Lacan, even before the results of the proposed experience? Would it be a kind of verification in vitro of what he was teaching in his seminar, with the hope of a gain-in-knowledge [plus�de-savoirJ? Do not forget that La Logique du fantasme (65) ended with an analysis of desetre (a crucial term here) and that the year 1967-1968 was devoted to the psychoanalytic act (L' Acte psychanalytique 69). "In the beginning of psychoanalysis is transference," without any inter�subjectivity, because between the two partners the subject supposed to know acts as a third, as the "pivot from where everything that goes on in transfer�ence is articulated." Lacan specified what he meant by this pivot: it is the signifier introduced in the discourse instituted by it, a formation as though detached from the psychoanalysand, which has nothing to do with the ana�lyst's person. It is "a chain of letters that leads the not-known to frame knowl�edge," which concerns desire. The graph of desire still guided the analysis (36, 46) but an identity was asserted here between the algorithm (whose for- supposed . mula is . ) and the agalma of Plato's SymposIum (47), subject ... to know which presents the "pure angle of the subject as the free relation to the sig�nifier, a signifier from which both the desire of knowledge and the desire of the Other are isolated." Let us move to the "endgame": our purpose, Lacan said, is to establish, regarding the passage from the psychoanalysand to the psychoanalyst~ an "equation whose constant is the agalma" (and we have seen the difficulty of locating this term, a kind of compromise between the objet a and the phallus). Once "the desire that, in its functioning, upheld the psychoanalysand has been resolved, the analysand no longer wants to remove the possibility of such desire, that is, the remainder which, insofar as it determines his division, makes him fall from his fantasy and destitutes him as subject." Lacan inter�preted the "depressive" position often noticed as the end of the analysis in terms of desetre and "subjective destitution." "The subject sees his self�assurance sink, a self-assurance that came from the fantasy in which every�body's opening onto the real is constituted." He realizes that the grasp of desire is nothing other than that of a desetre. "In this dlserre what is unveiled is the nonessential nature of the subject supposed to know; hence, the psycho�analyst-to-be dedicates himself to the agalma of the essence of desire, eyen " if it means that he has to be reduced, himself and his name, to an ordinary signifier" since "the subject is the signifier of the pure signifying relation." Lacan stated, "May he [the analyst-to-be] know, as regards that which I did not know about the being of desire, how he is concerned, he who itas come' to the being of knowledge, and may he withdraw: sicut palea. as [Saint] 210 DOSS I ER Thomas said of his work at the end of his life, like muck." Does going through the fantasy. then. mean going toward the drive or toward a breathtak�ing confrontation with the signifier? Is the answer given by the following statement: "The being of desire thus meets the being of knowledge to be reborn from their knot in a strip formed by the only side on which only one lack is inscribed, that which upholds the agalma"? Topology returned: the agalma became the signifier of the bar that is put on the Other (A); the gap of ( - <1» opens in the Other; and the (a) falls from the Other. Those who could articulate this S (A) did not need any training course: they were worthy of being analysts of the Ecole Freudienne. "Our poor Ecole can be the starting place of a renovation of the analytic experience": this renovation could be achieved by uniting around Lacan's teaching-an "unrivaled teaching" since he was the only one to talk about psychoanalysis (or the only one to talk about it this way, the forked tongues said). The ecole would be synonymous with "trial": this would be the fi�nal word. It is interesting to read the two versions of this text which, once again, claimed to be a founding text: the first one was actually delivered on October 9 and made public only in 1978 in Analytica (supplement to the journal Or�nica,.?); the second one, more condensed and more cautious, was published in the first issue of Scilicet. a journal founded in 1968 by Lacan who wrote the introductory text.