From left to right: Heidegger, Kostas Axelos, Lacan, Jean Beaufret, Elfriede (Heidegger's wife) and Sylvia (Lacan's wife). The photo was taken in the courtyard of Lacan's country house in Guitrancourt in August 1955, a few days before Heidegger gave the lecture Was ist das – die Philosophie? in the colloquium Qu'est-ce que la philosophie ? Autour de Martin Heidegger which took place at Cerisy-la-Salle from 27 August to 4 September.
On Apophatic Ontology — from the Topology of the Ab-grund des Seyns (Heidegger)
and that of the Hole of No Sexual Relationship (Lacan)
Summary:
I call Heidegger’s Denken des
Seyns (the thinking of Being) “apophatic ontology”, which
Heidegger himself develops as the topology of Being (Topologie des Seyns).
In this article, I will show how Lacan uses it to found psychoanalysis purely,
i.e. in a way that is both non-empirical and non-metaphysical, and how the topological
thinking of Being can be schematized in Lacanian topology of the hole.
Table of Contents
§ 1. Topology of the
apophatico-ontological hole
§ 2. History of Being (Die Geschichte des Seyns)
§ 3. An example of clinical
experience of Aufgehen of the apophatico-ontological hole
§ 4. Christian temporality
§ 5. Apophatico-ontological
topology and the four discourses
§ 6. The eschatological
transformation from the discourse of the university to the discourse of the
analyst
§ 7. Beyond the Aufgehen
of the hole: sublimation
§ 8. Phallus and the hole of
no sexual relationship
Last year, I made these two hypotheses: firstly,
psychoanalysis is one of the ways of restoring our relationship with God;
secondly, Lacan’s entire teaching can be seen as commentaries on this phrase of Hegel: “Das Selbstbewußtsein erreicht seine
Befriedigung nur in einem anderen Selbstbewußtsein” (self-consciousness
achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness). I’ll try to explain
myself to you [1].
§ 1. Topology of the apophatico-ontological hole
The expression “apophatic ontology” was inspired to me by
Heidegger, who crosses out the word Sein with a cross (Durchkreuzung) [2]
(cf. fig. 1).
Fig. 1
Among the texts published during his lifetime, this
crossed-out Sein can only be found in Zur Seinsfrage (1955). But
now the crossed-out Seyn [3]
(cf. fig. 2) can be found everywhere in his postwar Black Notebooks.
Fig. 2
For example, he begins his Anmerkungen IV by saying
this (GA 97, p.327):
Das Denken beginnt indessen, das Denken desSeynszu seyn.Thinking begins when it is the thinking ofBeing.
That means this: I think if and only if I think of Being,
not of a being (Seiendes) or of the unbarred Being, i.e. metaphysical Being
(Sein).
But what is Seyn? Since Heidegger’s answer to
this question is not very clear, I’ll redefine it myself as follows: Seyn
is the mathème [4] of the result of the work he calls in Sein und Zeit “the
destruction of the ontological tradition”, that is, the destruction of metaphysical
ontology as Aristotle defines it as “ἐπιστήμη τις ἣ θεωρεῖ τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν” (a
science that contemplates being as being). According to Heidegger [5],
the ontological tradition begins with the positing (Setzung) of the
Platonic ἰδέα as τὸ ὄντως ὄν
(what really is) and ends with the Nietzschean announcement of the coming of
the Übermensch who embodies the will to power (Wille zur Macht).
So, what do we find when we destroy this tradition? The hole of Seyn
which the metaphysical Sein obturates from Plato to Nietzsche. I’ll call
it the apophatico-ontological hole (sit venia verbo).
However,
Heidegger doesn’t say Loch (hole) but Abgrund (abyss). Sometimes
he writes Ab-grund to suggest that this is the fundamental abyss or
abyssal foundation. It’s Lacan who uses the term “hole”, because psychoanalysis
deals with a variety of holes: those of mouth, of anus, of gaze, of silence and
above all of phallic lack, i.e. of castration, which Lacan redefines as the
hole of no sexual relationship, in other words, the hole of the impossible
phallus (which doesn’t cease not to be written).
In
short, Seyn is the Heideggerian mathème of the
apophatico-ontological hole.
Now,
based on the topology of this Ab-grund des Seyns, we can
schematize what Heidegger calls Kehre von “Sein und Zeit” zu
“Zeit und Sein” as follows (cf. fig. 3).
Fig. 3
In his Sein
und Zeit, in order to question the meaning of Being, Heidegger starts from
our Dasein as far as we are in this world as a living being, to arrive
at the realm of Being as such by traversing the problematic zone of ontological
difference (the difference between being [Seiendes] and Being [Sein],
which in Sein und Zeit is called transcendental horizon). But it is
precisely the question of what this ontological difference would be that leads
him to the Kehre, which consists in this topological reversal: now, from
the Beiträge zur Philosophie (vom Ereignis) on, it is the hole of Seyn
that is situated in the central locality (Ortschaft) of topology.
Ontological difference then resolves itself in this very hole. And the movement
of the Denken des Seyns consists in revolving around the
apophatico-ontological hole. In other words, the topology of Seyns
is the focus of Heidegger’s thinking.
But of
all Heidegger’s readers at that time, who realized, when Zur Seinsfrage was
published in 1955, the importance of this central topology of the Ab-grund
des Seyns in Heidegger’s thinking, if not Lacan? I say so because I
assume that Lacan invented his mathème of the barred subject $ from das
Sein and presented it to his audience for the first time in his
Seminar V (1957-1958) Les formations de l’inconscient (The Formations of the
Unconscious). I must tell you that this is only my conjecture, since I have
no proof or witness to back up this hypothesis. But given that in the
ontological tradition Being (οὐσία), subject (ὑποκείμενον) and substance (ὑπόστασις) are quasi-synonymous, it’s
very likely that the Heidegger’s Sein gave Lacan the inspiration
for the mathème of the barred subject $.
Fig. 4
And
where does Lacan place this mathème in his graph of desire (cf. fig. 4)
presented at the same time as $ in his Seminar V? In the bottom
right-hand corner, which is the starting point of the dialectical process. What
this rather complicated schema formalizes is essentially the movement of the
hole of the subject $ which is desire – as Hegel defines Selbstbewußtsein
as Begierde or, to put it better, Urbegierde (original
desire) – and which, from there, will finally arrive not at a satisfaction that
would occur when the hole is filled by the phallus Φ, but at another hole – or the
Other hole – which is S(Ⱥ), the signifier of lack in the Other.
I’d
like to suggest in advance that this movement of the hole of the subject $
arriving at the locus of the Other hole S(Ⱥ) is a schematization of Hegel’s phrase
“Das Selbstbewußtsein erreicht seine Befriedigung nur in einem
anderen Selbstbewußtsein”, which Befriedigung (satisfaction) is the
jouissance of sublimation of desire that occurs at the end of analysis.
But why do we need to return to sublimation, which Lacan no
longer mentions in his teaching of the 1970s? Because there is no sexual
relationship, in other words, the phallus Φ that can obturate the apophatico-ontological hole is impossible
(what doesn’t cease not to be written). Although Lacan no longer uses the word sublimation
in his last teaching, he continues to speak of love, which is defined as “sublimation
of desire” in his Seminar X (1962-1963) L’angoisse (Angst) and
which appears in a distorted form in the title of his Seminar XXIV (1976-1977) L’insu
que sait de l’une-bévue s’aile à mourre, which means: L’insuccès de
l’Unbewußt (c’est-à-dire l’inconscient) c’est l’amour (the unsuccess
of the unconscious is love). I would point out that this is the only one of
Lacan’s Seminars to have the word love in its title. But what does this “unsuccess
of the unconscious” mean? It’s exactly the Other hole S(Ⱥ), which Lacan also calls the “hole of no sexual relationship”
in his Seminar XXII (1974-1975) R.S.I., because of which what Freud
calls Genitalorganisation, the supposed final stage of maturation of the
sexual instinct is doomed to unsuccess (failure). Then, only sublimation can
put an end to the movement of Urbegierde $. I’ll come back to this
later.
In any
case, the fundamental position of $ in his teaching suggests that Lacan
was well aware as early as in 1955 of the importance of the central topology of
the Ab-grund des Seins in Heidegger’s thinking. And as we shall
see, Lacan uses the topology of the hole of the subject $, in other
words, the topology of the apophatico-ontological hole, to found psychoanalysis
purely, that is, in a way that is both non-empirical and non-metaphysical.
Yes, we
can say that Lacan’s entire teaching consists in efforts to found psychoanalysis
purely. Now, if someone asks you “Who is Lacan?”, you can answer succinctly: if
Freud is founder of psychoanalysis, Lacan is its refounder. And we can see this
from these three quotations, which I present you antichronologically: firstly,
in his Seminar XXV (1977-1978) Le moment de conclure (Moment to
conclude) he says that “there is no sexual relationship: that’s the
foundation of psychoanalysis”; then, he begins his Seminar XI (1964) The
Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis by saying exactly that “I will talk
to you of the foundations of psychoanalysis”; and finally, I will quote
this passage from his Rapport de Rome (1953): “It (psychoanalysis) will
only provide scientific foundations for its theory and technique
by adequately formalizing these essential dimensions of its experience,
which are, along with the historical theory of symbol: the intersubjective
logic and the temporality of subject. Bringing psychoanalytic experience back
to speech and language, as to these foundations, interests its technique [6]”. Thus, what is concerned in
Lacan’s teaching is the pure foundation of psychoanalysis. I recommend you to
reread him from this point of view.
§ 2. History of Being (Die Geschichte des Seyns)
So, I
will reformulate in terms of apophatico-ontological hole what Heidegger calls Geschichte
des Seyns (History of Being) in three stages as follows:
0)
First of all, the archeological moment [7] : In the beginning (ἐν ἀρχῇ) [8] was open the apophatico-ontological hole. We would happily
assume a perfect initial state where nothing is missing like that of Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden, but that’s just a mythology. Instead, we should read
the first two verses of the first chapter of Genesis:
In the beginning, God created heaven and earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness over the surface of the abyss (תְּהוֹם), and the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters.
We can
see there a witness to the archaeological opening of the apophatico-ontological
hole from which the creation ex nihilo occurs. The Greek translation of
the Hebrew word תְּהוֹם
(tehom) in the Septuagint is exactly ἄβυσσος from which comes the word abyss,
and the German translation of it may well be Abgrund, although Luther
translated it as Tiefe (depth). Heidegger looked in fragments of the
Presocratics for witnesses of the archaeological Seyn that
preceded the metaphysical Sein, whereas we have one in the Bible, which
is much more familiar to us than the Presocratics.
1) And
then, when the apophatico-ontological hole is obturated by the Platonic ἰδέα as τὸ ὄντως ὄν,
in other words, when the metaphysical Sein replaces the archaeological Seyn,
the metaphysical phase begins. The metaphysical obturation is maintained by
transcendental figures that succeed the Platonic ἰδέα (e.g., τὸ ὂν ᾗ ὂν, οὐσία, ἐνέργεια, substantia, actualitas and the
Scholastic God as causa sui) until the Classical Age. In this phase, one does
not and cannot doubt their transcendence (in other words, their apriority).
2) But
when, around the middle of the eighteenth century, the metaphysical obturation
of the apophatico-ontological hole is annulled under the domination of modern
science and capitalism, the eschatological phase begins, which continues to
this day and will continue in this increasingly intolerable eschatological
tension, until the eschatological moment that Heidegger calls Ereignis.
Why
does the domination of science and capitalism induce the cancellation of
metaphysical obturation? Because it’s now clear that those transcendental
figures that obturated the apophatico-ontological hole are not τὸ ὄντως ὄν: for science, what really
exists is what they can analyze by scientific means, including what they can’t
analyze for the moment because of technological conditions, but which they’ll
be able to analyze if a certain technological development allows it; and for
capitalism, what really exists is what they can exploit for the increase of
capital, including what they can’t exploit for the moment because of
technological conditions, but which they’ll be able to exploit if a certain
technological development allows it. But those metaphysical figures cannot be
scientifically analyzed or capitalistically exploited, so they don’t exist.
Thus,
from the second half of the 18th century onwards, the metaphysical obturation
of the apophatico-ontological hole can no longer be maintained as an obvious,
unquestionable presupposition. So, the hole will open up emerging and emerge
opening up (aufgehen). And this Aufgehen is signaled by several
forms of angst, which are, as psychoanalytic experience shows us, angst before
nothingness (including meaninglessness and uncertainty), angst before death and
angst before sin, as a function of the hole that opens as hole of nothingness,
hole of death and hole of sin.
This
angst then provokes various forms of resistance and defense, as psychoanalytic
experience shows. But in the history of philosophy, what happens at that point,
in the second half of the 18th century? The posit (Setzung) by Kant of the
pure reason, which will obturate once again the apophatico-ontological hole to guarantee
the certainty and truth of scientific knowledge. And Kant doesn’t just naively suppose
this transcendental figure, but he posits it by critically examining its
necessity. This kind of defense through the metaphysical re-obturation of the
hole continues right through to Husserl’s das transzendentale Ich.
However,
it is in Nietzsche, the thinker who proclaims the death of the eternal God and
the coming of the Übermensch embodying the will to power, that Heidegger
sees the completion (Vollendung) of metaphysics, which means this [9] :
In the thought of the will to power, Nietzsche thinks in advance what is the metaphysical foundation of the completion of the Neuzeit [10]. In the thought of the will to power, the metaphysical thinking itself is completed in advance. Nietzsche, the thinker of the will to power, is the last metaphysician of the West. The epoch whose completion unfolds in his thought, the Neuzeit, is an Endzeit [11]. That is to say: an epoch where, at a certain moment and in a certain way, the historical decision arises as to whether this Endzeit is the closure of Western History, or the counterplay to another beginning. To follow Nietzsche’s steps of thought as far as the will to power means to come face to face with this historical decision.
When the traditional ideal figures have lost their
effectiveness to obturate the apophatico-ontological hole, the supreme values
are devalued (Entwertung der obersten Werte). And that is nihilism [12].
If people merely deplore this loss in a pessimistic way, they are in the
passive nihilism that would bring about the end of Western History. On the
other hand, if they dare to place a new value in the place of the lost ones, they
are in the active nihilism that would make counterplay (Gegenspiel, i.e.
resistance and defense) to the other beginning, i.e. to the eschatological
moment of the History of Being. The will to power is precisely the will
to posit a new value so that all existing values are overturned (Umwertung
der aller Werte), which basically means overturn of Platonism (Umdrehung
des Platonismus) so that now, in the place of the
mythological ἰδέα, Real Life is posited, which will
become ever more powerful than itself (Machtsteigerung: increase in
power).
Thus, the will to power is overturn of Platonism in the
sense that Becoming is substituted for Being (Dem Werden den Charakter des
Seins aufzuprägen: imprinting on Becoming the character of Being). Now, what
obturates the apophatico-ontological hole is no longer something eternal and immutable
as the Platonic ἰδέα, but the
will to power, which will and must become ever more powerful than itself. And
the embodiment of the will to power which Nietzsche presents to us, through the
mouth of Zarathustra, is the Übermensch who
is to come soon.
But it’s obvious that a person as an individual cannot be
Übermensch, since anyone who tries to be so will necessarily fall into
exhaustion. And the idea that one day a new “race” of Übermensch will
emerge is obviously nothing more than a fantasy, or even a delusion if one is
convinced of it like Nietzsche.
Maybe we could imagine that Nietzsche might have found, had
he read Das Kapital, a concrete example of Übermensch in the
capitalist as the personification of capital who relentlessly pursues the
increase of capital under what Marx calls “absolute instinct for enrichment” (der
absolute Bereicherungstrieb). But we must say now this: it is undeniable
that capitalism will lead to the depletion of natural resources and the
environmental degradation of the Earth, and thus to the doom of the entire humankind.
Nietzsche’s concept of Übermensch as the embodiment
of the will to power is already paranoiac enough, without any correlation to
the encephalopathy that brought about suddenly his Umnachtung. Since
then, we’ve observed that those ideologies which, after the will to power, were
posited or are posited to obturate the apophatico-ontological hole, for example
communism, various forms of nationalism, racism and sexism (including
masculinism and patriarchalism), are becoming more and more paranoiac. And from
this month on, these four most powerful countries among the great powers – that is, the USA,
Russia, China and India –
are all governed by paranoiac men. What a horror!
This global and generalized paranoia is the result of
defensive reactions against the angst before the Aufgehen of the
apophatico-ontological hole. The more imminent the Aufgehen is, the more
paranoiac the situation will be. This increasingly intolerable world will last
until the eschatological moment of Ereignis.
§ 3. An example of clinical experience of Aufgehen of the apophatico-ontological hole
Aufgehen (opening and emerging) of the
apophatico-ontological hole provokes the angst which Heidegger calls Grundbefindlichkeit
or Grundstimmung. It is fundamental for us insofar as we are in the
eschatological phase where the hole will always open and emerge in front of us.
Psychoanalytic experience shows us that, in general, the angst takes one or
more of those three forms: angst before nothingness, angst before death and angst
before sin.
To see how the Aufgehen of the apophatico-ontological
hole manifests itself in experience, let’s re-examine this prime example of
dream interpretation, i.e. the dream of Irma’s injection which Freud had on the
night of 23/24 July 1895.
A large hall – numerous guests, whom we were receiving. – Among them was Irma. I at once took her on one side, as though to answer her letter and to reproach her for not having accepted my “solution” yet. I said to her: “If you still get pains, it’s really only your fault.” She replied: “If you only knew what pains I’ve got now in my throat and stomach and abdomen – it’s choking me” – I was alarmed and looked at her. She looked pale and puffy. I thought to myself that after all I must be missing some organic trouble. I took her to the window and looked down her throat, and she showed signs of recalcitrance, like women with artificial dentures. I thought to myself that there was really no need for her to do that. – She then opened her mouth properly [ Der Mund geht dann auch gut auf ], and on the right I found a big white patch; at another place I saw extensive whitish grey scabs upon some remarkable curry structures which were evidently modelled on the turbinal bones of the nose. – I at once called in Dr. M., and he repeated the examination and confirmed it… Dr. M. looked quite different from usual: he was very pale, he walked with a limp and his chin was clean-shaven… My friend Otto was now standing beside her as well, and my friend Leopold was percussing her through her bodice and saying: “She has a dull area low down on the left.” He also indicated that a portion of the skin on the left shoulder was infiltrated. (I noticed this, just as he did, in spite of her dress.)… M. said: “There’s no doubt it’s an infection, but no matter; dysentery will supervene and the toxin will he eliminated.”… We were directly aware, too, of the origin of the infection. Not long before, when she was feeling unwell, my friend Otto had given her an injection of a preparation of propyl, propylene… propionic acid… trimethylamine (and I saw before me its formula printed in heavy type)… Injections of that sort ought not to be made so thoughtlessly… And probably the syringe had not been clean.
From the apophatico-ontological point of view, it is quite
clear that Irma’s wide-opened mouth represents the Aufgehen of the hole
(in fact, in the phrase “Der Mund geht dann auch gut
auf” [ Then her mouth well opens up ] Freud uses the verb aufgehen),
and that it opens up as a hole of sin, because there are those reproachful
words “it’s really only your fault” (es ist wirklich nur deine Schuld)
and the doubt of a diagnostic error. And indeed, as we know, Masson’s
biographical study [13]
of Freud’s letters to his friend Wilhelm Fliess reveals what really took place
in the background of this dream: Fliess’s grave error in performing a nasal
operation around 21 February 1895 (i.e. five months before Irma’s dream) on one
of Freud’s analysands, Emma Eckstein, who nearly died early in the following
month from the massive bleeding resulting from the said medical error. So, it
wasn’t Freud himself who was at fault, but the Berlin ENT surgeon. However,
since it was he who persuaded his patient to have the operation performed by
Fliess, he first blames himself. But then, in order to deny his friend’s
responsibility, he ends up repressing his own guilt and blaming the victim, as
represented in the dream by the words: “It’s really only your fault”. Yet what
is repressed does indeed return in the form of Aufgehen of the hole of
sin.
This Aufgehen could cause him a great angst, but it
doesn’t. Why? Because the hole is again obturated in two stages: first, his
three friends, Dr. M (Joseph Breuer), Otto and Leopold, are mobilized to put on
a ridiculous scene around Irma. At the end, however, what appears as a deus ex
machina is the chemical formula of trimethylamine, boldly printed (fettgedruckt).
But the formula in question is not the one we think of today (cf. fig. 5), but
the one Lacan presents to us in the session of 9 March 1955 of his Seminar II
(cf. fig. 6). Probably this may have been how chemical formulas were presented
in printed matter in the past.
Trimethylamine is found in the living body as one of the
intermediate metabolites of choline. Fliess believed that it should have a
place in the biochemistry of sexual activity, and undoubtedly that motivated
the appearance of the formula in Freud’s dream. However, already in his Seminar
II, Lacan says that this formula is made up of “sacred signs”, since the
Trinitarian structure is multiplied in it. And Gérard Haddad [14]
fully explains what it symbolizes. Presented in this way (cf. fig. 7), the
formula of trimethylamine is similar to the Hebrew letter ש (shin), which is the initial of the word שֵׁם (shem: name). And this word with the definite
article הַשֵּׁם (HaShem: the Name) is in
Judaism one of substitute names of God יהוה (YHWH),
which name, His proper name, is declared ineffable by the Torah. In addition,
the letterש is also the initial of the word שַׁדַּי (Shaddai: Παντοκράτωρ,
Almighty) which is another substitute name of YHWH.
Fig. 7
Then we can have this topological
interpretation: the formula of trimethylamine represents through its similarity
to the letterש the Name of God, i.e., in Lacanian
terminology, the Name-of-the-Father or the master
signifier S1, which obturates again the hole of sin opening up
before Freud in the form of Irma’s gaping mouth. Indeed, obturation of the
apophatico-ontological hole is the function of the Name-of-the-Father, as Lacan
suggests in his article D’une question préliminaire à tout traitement
possible de la psychose where he says: “The hole [is] bored in the field of
signifier because of the forclusion of the Name-of-the-Father [15]”. If the forclusion of the Name-of-the-Father bores
the hole, its restoration obturates it again. And it is thanks to this
re-obturation of the hole by the Name that Irma’s dream does not cause to Freud
a great angst, nor does trigger for him a psychosis.
But this re-obturation of the hole by the Name is only a
defense against the angstfull Aufgehen of the hole, whereas this Aufgehen
is necessary in the eschatological phase of the History of Being in
order that the eschatological moment of Ereignis can occur. We must not
resist it, but be obedient to it, so that Ereignis appropriates (sich
aneignen) our Dasein and we ourselves become Ereignis according
to the necessity of the History of Being.
In this way, the History of Being and the process of
psychoanalytic experience coincide, and they do so on the model of the
dialectical process of the Phenomenology of Spirit, since Heidegger and
Lacan both refer to Hegel to think of the dialectical movement and change of the
Being and the subject $.
§ 4. Christian temporality
As we know, Hegel
was a Lutheran. Every three years or so (1821, 1824, 1827 and 1831), he gave
his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Berlin. In
1824, he said: “The object of religion as well as of philosophy is the eternal
truth in its objectivity, God and nothing but God, and the explication of God”,
and in 1827, he said: “In philosophy, which is theology, what matters is solely
and only to present the reason [Vernunft] of religion.” So, for him,
philosophy and theology are one and the same thing, that is, when he thinks, he
thinks of God. Of Heidegger and Lacan, who both belong to the Catholic
tradition, we can also say the same thing: when they think, they think of God.
This is quite obvious with Lacan, since, for example, the Name-of-the-Father is
one of the key words of his teaching, and in a passage [16] of his Télévision he puts in equivalence the “being a saint” and
the “being a psychoanalyst”, a passage which, as far as I know, has never been
sufficiently commented on in its relation to the four discourses. Furthermore,
we can now see that, when he says that “the
unconscious is the discourse of the Other” and that “desire of man is desire of
the Other”, and when he puts the Other in a relationship with the subject in
his schemas L and R (cf. figs. 8 and 9), this Other is none other than God,
since that is clearly indicated by the same position of the Other and the
Name-of-the-Father in the schema R. And if he is particularly interested in the
case of President Schreber, it’s because there the delusion explicitly concerns
the sexual relationship with God.
As for Heidegger, we can quote this passage
for example [17]:
The God [ der Gott ] comes into philosophy through the Austrag [18], which we can first consider as the prior locus [Vorort] of the essence of the difference between Being [Sein] and being [Seiendes]. This difference makes the fundamental cleft [Grundriß] in the structure of the essence of metaphysics. The Austrag yields and gives Being as pro-ducing foundation [ her-vor-bringender Grund ], which foundation itself requires, from what is founded by it, the foundation suitable for it, i.e. causation by the most fundamental thing, which is the cause as causa sui. And this is the reasonable name for the God in philosophy. We cannot pray to this God, nor make an offering to Him. Before causa sui, we cannot fall on our knees in fear, nor can we play music or dance before this God.
So, we must
distinguish between these two Gods, the “God of philosophy” and the “divine God”,
or to put it another way, distinguish between the true God and the scholastic “God”
which is in fact nothing more than an idol. And this is exactly what Blaise
Pascal did in his mystical experience of the “Night of Fire” when he says that he
believes in “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not [ the God ] of
philosophers and scholars.” That is, the metaphysical God must be rejected, or,
in Lacanian terminology, foreclosed, because he is an idol standing in the way
of access to the real God who never ceases not to be written.
Anyway, as to those
three great thinkers in the modern history, Hegel, Heidegger and Lacan, we can
say that when they think, they think of God. Then, what does this bring us when
we read them? Christian temporality, or, because I suppose that Judaism and
Islam also share it, it would be better to call it monotheistic temporality.
And what does it consist in? In this: it comprises not only the time in
ordinary or Aristotelian sense, i.e. the time of History or that of physics,
but also the archaeological moment of creation ex nihilo and the
eschatological moment of the consummatio saeculi (consummation of the world),
both of which cannot be situated on the axis of time. As we shall see below, what
Heidegger calls ekstatisch (ecstatic) is this character: “not situatable
on the axis of time”.
Such Christian
temporality is suggested in the Bible by this expression in the Book of
Revelation: ὁ θεός, ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος, which means:
God, the One who exists in the time of History, who was at the archaeological
moment of creation ex nihilo, and who is to come at the eschatological
moment of the Day of the Lord.
This Christian
temporality is formulated in Hegelian dialectics in those three stages: first,
archaeological immediacy [Unmittelbarkeit], then actual alienation, and
finally eschatological reflection into the Being itself [ Reflexion in sich
selbst ], which produces absolutely mediated Being [ das absolut
vermittelte Sein ].
As for Heidegger, in his summer-semester lecture in 1927 entitled
The Fundamental Problems of Phenomenology, that is, several months after
the publication of his magnum opus, he defines temporality [Zeitlichkeit]
more clearly than in his Being and Time, saying: “As ecstatic unity of
future, past and present [ ekstatische Einheit von Zukunft, Gewesenheit und
Gegenwart ], the temporality has a horizon determined by ecstasy. The temporality
is, as the original unity of future, past and present [ die ursprüngliche
Einheit von Zukunft, Gewesenheit und Gegenwart ], in itself
ecstatic-horizontal [19]”. It
seems to me that this Heideggerian expression of “die Einheit von Zukunft,
Gewesenheit und Gegenwart” comes directly from this Biblical expression of “ὁ ὢν
καὶ
ὁ
ἦν
καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος”
where John of Patmos uses this quasi-neologism of “ὁ ἦν” (the
“He was”), just as Heidegger doesn’t simply say Vergangenheit but this
quasi-neologism of Gewesenheit. Since Heidegger expressly states that “ ‘being’ in Being and Time is nothing other than ‘time’
insofar as the word ‘time’ is used as the prior
name of the truth of Being [20]” and
he also says that those three questions – the question of the meaning of Being
(Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein), the question of the truth of Being (Frage
nach der Wahrheit des Seins) and the question of the locus or locality of Being
(Frage nach dem Ort oder der Ortschaft des Seins), in other words the
topology of Being (Topologie des Seins, which Heidegger writes in his
post-war Black Notebooks Topologie des Seyns [ topology of Being
]) – are successively placed on the same path of thinking [21], the
path that leads to the abyss of Being, i.e. to the
apophatico-ontological hole. Now we can see how the notion of temporality in Being
and Time leads to the hole of Being: it is because it consists in
the “ὁ ὢν καὶ
ὁ ἦν καὶ
ὁ ἐρχόμενος” which comprises not only the present Being
(Anwesenheit) but also the non-Being of the archaeological moment of
creation ex nihilo and the non-Being of the eschatological moment of consummatio
saeculi, that the question of temporality leads Heidegger to the hole of Being,
which is the condition of the possibility of Being as presence.
§ 5. Apophatico-ontological topology and the four discourses
Then, where can we
find Lacan’s clearest formulation of this Christian temporality? I think it’s
in the four discourses (cf. fig. 10), above all in the process of transformation
that begins with the discourse of the master and leads, via the discourse of
the university, to the discourse of the analyst.
Fig. 10
The schematization of the four discourses is the most achieved and the most beautiful and therefore the most powerful of the Lacanian schemas which I call mathematico-topological, since in those schemas – the optical schema with two mirrors, the schemas L and R, the graph of desire and the four discourses – several mathèmes are arranged in topologically defined loci.
The four discourses
can be related to the topology of the projective plane, alias cross-cap (cf.
figs. 11, 12 and 13), which Lacan introduces in his teaching at the moment of his
Seminar IX (1961-1962) L’Identification, in order to think better of the
topology of the apophatico-ontological hole and to schematize it better.
Fig. 11
Figures 12 and 13
When
we identify the edge of the hole bored on a sphere (this bored sphere is
homeomorphic to a disc) and the edge of a Möbius strip (cf. fig. 11), we obtain
a closed surface called projective plane (cf. figs. 12 and 13), which is called
so because of its connection with projective geometry, but I won’t go into that
here. As can be seen in the figures 12 and 13 (which Lacan sometimes calls asphères),
the projective plane as a closed surface cannot be adequately represented in
Euclidean space of dimension 3, but we can only see the surface of the bored
sphere (blue) and a part of the identification edge (green), while the Möbius
surface (red) is situated out of the space of dimension 3. In mathematical
terminology, we say that the embedding of the projective plane in
Euclidean space of dimension 3 is impossible, and that the cross-cap or
the asphères (see figs. 12 and 13) are one of the possible ways of immersion
of the projective plane in Euclidean space of dimension 3. In any case, the
reverse operation, i.e. cutting the projective plane in a suitable way,
produces a bored sphere and a Möbius strip.
As we can see, the
topology of the projective plane is neither easy to represent nor to handle.
So, in Seminar XI (1964) The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis,
Lacan introduces the schema of two circles, which resembles Venn diagram (cf.
fig. 14) but has nothing to do with set theory.
Fig. 14
As this juxtaposition of the
figures 11 and 14 shows, the two-circle schema is a clearer and more manageable
schematization of the topology of the projective plane, where the
apophatico-ontological hole (white) lies in the center with its edge (green),
the surface of the bored sphere (blue) on the right and the Möbius surface
(red) on the left.
So, what is the
correspondence between the topology of the projective plane and the four
discourses? Let’s take as an example the correspondence between the schema of
alienation and the discourse of the university (cf. fig. 15).
Fig. 15
As I said
already, the alienation and the discourse of the university are our everyday
mode of existence. However, I have to tell you that this schema of alienation
is not exactly the ones Lacan presented in his Seminars XI (session of 27 May
1964) and XIII (session of 15 December 1965), but a reconstruction based on the
original schemas and some attempts by Jacques-Alain Miller who at certain moments
in his course of lectures L’Orientation lacanienne tried to situate the
mathèmes of the four discourses in the two-circle schema.
Firstly, in the
schema of alienation, the central hole representing the apophatico-ontological
hole is obturated by the master signifier S1 (yellow). In the
discourse of the university, the S1 is in the place of truth, which
truth is the metaphysical truth traceable back to the Platonic ἰδέα. So, the place of truth is the place of what
obturates the hole. As you’ll notice, in my figures, the color of the hole is
white when it’s open, whereas, when it’s obturated, the color of what obturates
it is yellow.
Next, we must pay
attention to the edge of the hole (green), as Lacan often tells us to do so. In
the schema of alienation, the edge of the hole joins the surface of the bored sphere
(blue) and that of the Möbius strip (red). And what makes up the edge is the object a.
When Lacan sometimes says that the object a is a hole, he means, it
seems to me, that the object a makes edge of the hole. In the discourse
of the university, the object a is in the place of the other. So, the
place of the other is the place of what makes edge of the hole.
Thirdly, the surface
of bored sphere (blue) is, as can be seen in the figures 12 and 13, almost all
that exists of the projective plane in Euclidean space of dimension 3. As Lacan
puts it in Seminar XXII (1974-1975) R.S.I., it gives to the projective
plane the consistency of being (Seiendes). What makes up this
surface is the S2, which is situated in the discourse of the
university in the place of the agent. So, the place of the agent is the place
of the consistency of being.
Finally, as can also
be seen in the figures 12 and 13, the surface of Möbius strip (red) is out of
the Euclidean space of dimension 3, i.e., as Lacan puts it in his Séminaire R.S.I.,
it ex-sists to that space. What makes up the Möbius strip is the subject
$, which is situated in the discourse of the university in the place of
production. So, the place of production is the place of ex-sistence. By the way,
if we reread Lacan’s remark in the first paragraph of the Seminar on The Purloined
Letter that the subject of the unconscious is to be situated in the place
of ex-sistence [22], it’s now clear to us that he’s thinking of
the structure he’ll call alienation and the discourse of the university, which
structure is our everyday mode of existence.
Now, using the two-circle
schema, we can schematize the four discourses (cf. fig. 10) as follows (cf.
fig. 16).
Fig. 16
In the beginning, i.e. at the archaeological moment of the History of
Being, there was the discourse of the master, where the
apophatico-ontological hole was open as the hole of the subject $
itself. Then, the discourse of the university arrives when the metaphysical
phase begins with the obturation of the hole with the master signifier S1,
which signifier is thus the mathème of all those metaphysical figures from
Plato’s ἰδέα to Nietzsche’s will to
power. But when the eschatological phase begins, where the metaphysical
obturation of the hole loses its efficacy, the hole will open up and emerge (aufgehen)
in order that the analyst’s discourse will occur. As you can see in the figure
16, in the analyst’s discourse, the two circles separate from each other so
that the subject $ appears, making the edge of the hole. This is what
Lacan calls separation in his Seminar XI and in the article written in
the course of that seminar, Position de l’inconscient. But as soon as
the separation occurs, the hole is closed up again, so that there’s a constant
to-and-fro between alienation (the discourse of the university) and separation
(the discourse of the analyst). This is what Lacan calls temporal pulsation,
also in Seminar XI and in the Position de l’inconscient. But then the
moment arrives when not only the analyst’s discourse is established, but the
jouissance of sublimation occurs as well. This will be the eschatological
moment of Ereignis, which is the moment of the end of analysis (I’ll
come back to this later). As for the discourse of the hysteric, what
characterizes it is the obturation of the hole by the object a as far as
hysterics abstain from making jouissance of it in order to keep their desire $
unsatisfied [23].
I’d like to add several
remarks here, since these schematizations shed light on a number of points in
Lacan’s teaching, particularly in that of the 1970s. Firstly, the topology concerned
in psychoanalysis is tetradic (cf. fig. 17), not triadic, as suggested by the
four places of the four discourses and the introduction of the Borromean knot
with four rings [24] (cf. fig. 18) in Seminar XXII (1974-1975)
R.S.I.
Fig. 17
Fig. 18
Of course, the triad of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real is
fundamental, but we need to distinguish between two definitions of the real:
the real as what does not cease not to be written, i.e. the impossible (red),
and the real as what does not cease to be written, i.e. the necessary (green).
Moreover, the latter definition is already suggested by the definition of the
real as what always returns to the same place, a definition elaborated in his
Seminars II and III. Thus, the classic Lacanian triad of the symbolic (what is
situated in the place of the hole, in other words, in the place of what obturates
the hole), the imaginary (what is situated in the place of consistency) and the
real (what is situated in the place of ex-sistence, in other words, in the
place of the impossible) must be completed by the fourth element, which is the
real as what is situated at the edge of the hole, in other words, in the place
of the necessary, and which Lacan chooses in his Seminar XXIII (1975-1976) on
James Joyce to call sinthome, which is the spelling of the word symptom
around the year 1500, and a homophone of saint homme (holy man), of
which Lacan himself reminds us that he spoke of the saint in Télévision insofar
as “being a saint” and “being a psychoanalyst” are equivalent to each other.
I’ll come back to this later too.
Secondly, the
correspondences between the mathèmes used in the graph of desire (cf. fig. 4)
and those used in the four discourses (cf. fig. 15). Firstly, the mathème of
the subject $ is always the same: the mathème of the
apophatico-ontological hole and that of the Urbegierde (original
desire). By contrast, the mathème A (the capital A) requires a great deal of
comment. The capital A in the schemas L and R (figures 8 and 9) is the mathème
of the symbolic Other, which corresponds to the mathème S1 in the
discourse of the university. But in Seminar V (1957-1958), where Lacan first
presents the graph of desire and during which he writes D’une question
préliminaire à tout traitement possible de la psychose, he distinguishes
two Others, and this distinction is taken up again in the Subversion du
sujet: 1) the Other as the locus of signifier, in other words, the set of
signifiers, but which includes the hole of lack, corresponds to the mathème S2
; 2) the Other-of-the-Other, i.e. the Name-of-the-Father,
which is the signifier missing in the Other, corresponds to the mathème S1.
Then, the Other as locus of signifier is reduced, since it has the hole of
lack, to the maternal body which contains the hole of castration, i.e. reduced to
the consistency of the imaginary, while the symbolic Other is the
Other-of-the-Other which is lacking in the Other as locus of signifier. This
Other-of-the-Other appears in the graph of desire as the hole of the missing
signifier Ⱥ. The mathème
S(Ⱥ), defined as the signifier of
the lack in the Other [25],
corresponds to the edge of the apophatico-ontological hole, i.e. the place of
the other (the place at the top right) in the four discourses. The mathème of
the instinct ($ ◊ D), where D is defined as the instinctual
demand (Triebanspruch), is also a mathème of the apophatico-ontological
hole, insofar as it opens up, bordered by the object a, when the
obturation of the hole by the master signifier S1 becomes
ineffective. The mathème of fantasy ($ ◊ a),
presented as an imaginary formation, is the mathème of what dissimulates the
hole, but even so, we can find a certain representation of the hole there too.
Thirdly, the structural
transformation from the master’s discourse to the university discourse
schematizes what Freud calls Urverdrängung (primal repression) (cf. fig.
19), which consists in this: at the beginning of
the metaphysical phase of the History of Being, the master signifier S1,
by obturating the hole, represses the subject $ as Urbegierde into
the place of ex-sistence. And not only does it repress it, but it substitutes
itself for it. That is what alienation consists in.
Fig. 19
Fourthly, the same
structural transformation (cf. fig. 19) formalizes the Freudian myth of the
murder of the Urvater (primitive father or patriarch) and, in so doing, discloses
the truth of this myth. The discourse of the master corresponds to the
primordial state of the primitive horde where, in the absence of the taboo of incest,
the Urvater S1 in the place of the agent, as the absolute and
greedy master, sexually possesses all the women in his horde, i.e. he alone makes
jouissance of all the women, i.e. The Woman (La Femme). And then, murder
brings about this transformation where sons S2 usurp the place of
the agent by dethroning the dead father S1 into the place of truth,
and at the same time, they identify with him by eating his flesh. But at this
point, they come under the domination of the dead father, as the ego under the
domination of the superego. The Urbegierde (original desire) $ is
repressed (Urverdrängung), and sons cannot make jouissance of The Woman,
but they can only make jouissance of the plus-de-jouir of pregenital
objects a. Such is the discourse of the university. However, if we
formalize it in this way, we realize that the Urvater’s perfect and
complete jouissance is only a myth, since in the discourse of the master the
hole is not filled at all. We must remember that at the archaeological moment
of creation ex nihilo, Eden does not yet exist, but the Spirit of God
alone hovers over the abyssal hole. The myth of the Urvater mythologizes,
in reverse form, the impossibility of sexual jouissance of The Woman.
Fifthly, since I’ve
alluded to the ego and the superego, I’d like to present Freud’s Second Topic,
situating the instances in the schema of alienation and the discourse of the
university (cf. fig. 20): the S2 is the ego (das Ich), the S1
the superego (das Über-Ich), the $ the id (das Es) and
the petit a the libidinal object (Libidoobjekt).
Fig. 20
§ 6. The eschatological transformation from the discourse of the university to the discourse of the analyst
Now let’s go into
the details of the eschatological transformation from the university discourse
to the analyst’s discourse (cf. fig. 21), since this is what must happen in
psychoanalysis in order that it can reach the end.
Fig. 21
The discourse of the
university is our daily mode of existence. Hegel calls it Entfremdung
(alienation) and Heidegger Verfallenheit (falling). In this structure, the master signifier S1,
by obturating the apophatico-ontological hole, represses the subject $
and substitutes itself for it (Urverdrängung). So, the subject $
is pushed out of its own place (the place of truth) into the place of
production, which is that of ex-sistence, that of what never ceases not to be
written (the impossible) and that of Verborgenheit (hiddenness). The ego
S2 identifying with the master signifier S1 as superego,
becomes das Man. But now, in the eschatological phase of the History of Being,
the obturation of the hole can no longer be stably maintained as in the
metaphysical phase, so that the hole will always open and emerge (aufgehen)
despite the resistance and defense we form against the angstfull Aufgehen
of the hole. And when the hole does indeed open and emerge, it’s not by the
regressive direction from the university discourse to the master’s discourse,
but by the progressive direction from the university discourse to the analyst’s
discourse, that the hole emerges bordered by the subject $. So to speak,
the hole of the subject $ at the archeological moment of the master’s
discourse was an sich, whereas after the dialectical experience of
analysis, the hole of the subject $ at the eschatological moment of the
analyst’s discourse is an und für sich.
In the
eschatological transformation, the master signifier S1 is foreclosed
from the place of what obturates the hole (the place of truth) into the place
of the impossible (the place of production). If the deified S1 in
the place of truth is merely the symbolic God and the metaphysical idol, i.e.,
the God Pascal calls God of philosophers and scholars, the S1 foreclosed
and harbored (geborgen) in the place of the impossible (what never
ceases not to be written) is the real and living God in his mystery. This is
the God Pascal calls God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
And this forclusion
of the S1 induces the Aufgehen of the hole of the subject $
which rises (ἀνάστασις, resurrection)
from the place of the impossible (the place of Verborgenheit, hiddenness)
to reveal itself in the place of the necessary (the edge of the hole, the place
of Unverborgenheit, unhiddenness). If we go into more detail, the
subject $ in the place of the production of the university discourse is what
never ceases not to be written (the impossible). But through the eschatological
transformation of the university discourse into the analyst’s discourse, this
subject $ ceases not to be written (the contingent) to become what never
ceases to be written (the necessary) in the analyst’s discourse.
The eschatological Aufgehen
of the hole of the subject $ is nothing other than what
phenomenology is about as Heidegger defines it as ἀποφαίνεσθαι τὰ φαινόμενα (das was sich zeigt, so wie es sich von ihm selbst her zeigt, von
ihm selbst her sehn lassen; to let that which shows itself be seen from
itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself). And this
eschatological Aufgehen of the hole of the subject $ is nothing
other than the eschatological apocalypse (revelation) in Christianity.
Thus, in the
analyst’s discourse which is the topology of separation (cf. fig. 21), at the
moment of the Aufgehen of the hole of the subject $ , the
spherical surface composed of the S2 (the ego) and the small a (the
other) separates from the Möbiusian surface of the S1 (the real
God), the edge of which is made of the subject $. As we can see in the schema
of the analyst’s discourse, we now have the structure where the subject $
in the place of the necessary (what never ceases to be written) is the representative
of the S1 (the Real God) in the place of the impossible (what never
ceases not to be written): $/S1.
In other words, the subject $ is now freed from the imaginary
relationship between the ego (S2) and the other (a) to enter
a true relationship with God, to be God’s representative and to do God’s will. In
the Pater noster prayer, we say “fiat voluntas tua sicut in caelo et in terra”,
but this “fiat” is only realized when we ourselves do God’s will. And someone
who does God’s will is a saint, the saint Lacan speaks of in Télévision insofar
as “being a saint” and “being a psychoanalyst” are equivalent to each other in
their formalization of $/S1. In this respect, we can also
recall what Lacan says in the session of 25 May 1955 of his Seminar II
(1954-1955) Le moi dans la théorie de Freud et dans la technique de la
psychanalyse, where he remarks: “It is precisely in this that the formation
of analyst consists: the ego of analyst as such must be absent. (...) That is what
we must always obtain from the subject in analysis.” The subject $ who is
freed from his ego S2 is indeed what rises in the analyst’s
discourse. Speaking in Heideggerian terms, we could say that, at this point,
the Seyn appropriates (aneignen, ereignen) our Dasein
so that the eschatological Ereignis can occur (sich ereignen),
which consists in the Aufgehen of the hole of Seyn (the
subject $) and in the harboring (bergen) of the real God S1.
This is the reason why the Seyn needs our Dasein, as
Heidegger emphasizes so.
Thus, at the end of
analysis, by freeing ourselves from the imaginary relationship between the ego
and the other, we become God’s true representative to do His will on earth (as
it is done in heaven), which for the psychoanalyst consists in helping any
subject who asks for analysis to reach the end of his or her analysis, where
the subject will himself or herself become a representative of God. And it is
in this sense that we might well say that psychoanalysis is one of the ways of
restoring a relationship with God.
Indeed, we have a
personal witness of Gérard Haddad, who testifies in his book Le jour où
Lacan m’a adopté (2002) to this dramatic episode of the awakening of faith
in him, who had been an atheist Marxist before. One day, he had a violent
quarrel with his “tyrannical” and “capricious” father over bar mitzvah [26] celebration of his son, and the quarrel
ended with his declaration against his father of the severance of the filial
relationship. He immediately told this episode to Lacan, who congratulated him,
saying: “You are perfectly right”. But no sooner had he left the
psychoanalyst’s office than “something changed, and I found myself overcome by
a decision” to do God’s will, i.e. to celebrate his son’s bar mitzvah himself.
So, he asks himself: “What happened in the depths of my being in those few
seconds? Something like the symbolic murder of the imaginary father, and on his
still warm remains, the immediate emergence of the instance of the Law” that
transmits God’s will to him. The next day, when he talks to the psychoanalyst
about his decision, “to my great surprise, hearing what I said, Lacan showed a
kind of enthusiasm” by praising him: “It’s wonderful!” And “he shook my hand
for a long time to underline the importance of the moment.”
This episode
occurred not at the end of his analysis with Lacan, but halfway through.
Nevertheless, we can formulate what happened then as follows: through the
violent forclusion of the master signifier S1 (the Name-of-the-Father)
from the place of truth, there came a moment of eschatological transformation
from the university discourse to the analyst’s discourse, whereby the subject $
becomes a realizer of the will of God S1 harbored in the place of
the impossible. What this episode suggests to us is this: eschatological
transformation can happen at any moment, suddenly and unexpectedly, since the
eschatological moment is not situatable on the axis of time. Let me give you
two more historical examples: one is René Descartes and the other is Blaise
Pascal, whom I’ve already mentioned here several times. Although they were both
men of the seventeenth century, i.e. well before the eschatological phase of
the History of Being began, we can find in both of them evidence of the
experience of the eschatological moment.
Fig. 22
Descartes’ example
is his cogito ergo sum (cf. fig. 22). In the history of philosophy, the
Cartesian cogito is usually seen as a form of transcendental ego, in
other words, as metaphysical as can be. But Lacan suggests another
interpretation in his Seminar XI. In his methodical doubt, the cogito (I
think) is nothing other than the dubito (I doubt) that induces the forclusion
of all scholastic presuppositions which are the S1 in the university
discourse. Then, at the moment of the ergo (therefore) the structural
transformation occurs, so that the sum (I am) $ emerges with full
certainty in the place of the other in the analyst’s discourse, i.e. in the
place of the necessary and the edge of the hole. But, given that separation
(the analyst’s discourse) quickly reverts to alienation (the university
discourse) in the temporal pulsation, this appearance of the subject $
is only evanescent.
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Fig. 23
The second example
is Pascal’s mystical experience known as the Night of Fire (cf. fig.
23), of which he leaves us the testimony by telling us firstly “Fire” (hence
the Night of Fire), and then this: “[ I
believe in ] God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not [ in the God ] of
philosophers and scholars. Certainty, certainty, feeling, joy, peace...” This
is an intense experience of certainty, joy and peace, which comes from the
forclusion of the “God of philosophers and scholars” (who is in fact nothing
but a scholastic idol: the S1 in the place of truth in the university
discourse) and mystical communion with the real God (the S1 in the place
of production in the analyst’s discourse). If I’m speaking in anticipation,
this experience of certainty, joy and peace is that of the sublimatory
jouissance at the end of analysis.
I’ve just given you
a few examples of the experience of the eschatological moment, but in fact,
there are countless examples throughout History: first and foremost, Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, who died and rose on the third day, and then all the
prophets in the Old Testament and all the saints in the History of
Christianity. Of course, I can’t go into that here. But, in any case, we can
see that the eschatological moment can happen at any time and to anyone
according to God’s will, despite our resistance to the Aufgehen of the
hole of the subject $ which usually causes us intense angst: the angst
of nothingness, death and sin.
§ 7. Beyond the Aufgehen of the hole: sublimation
As I’ve already
alluded to, it’s not the angstfull Aufgehn of the hole as such that
constitutes the end of analysis, but the jouissance of sublimation.
As you know, Lacan
treats sublimation thematically in his Seminar VII (1959-1960) L’éthique de
la psychanalyse in relation to courtly love insofar as this form of love
excludes a priori the possibility of sexual jouissance. In his Seminar X
(1962-1963) L’angoisse he defines love with reference to sublimation,
saying that “love is sublimation of desire”, and at the same time he presents
us this thesis: “only love-sublimation allows jouissance to condescend to
desire”. And while he returns to the theme of sublimation from time to time
until Seminar XVI (1968-1969) D’un Autre à l’autre, he stops talking
about it after Seminar XVII (1969-1970) L’envers de la psychanalyse.
Does this mean that sublimation loses its weight in Lacan’s teaching in the
1970s? I don’t think so, since he continues to speak of courtly love, which for
him is the favorite example of sublimation. In this regard, we can recall
Lacan’s remark in the session of 20 February 1973 of his Seminar XX (1972-1973)
Encore: “L’amour courtois est la façon toute à fait raffinée de suppléer
à l’absence de rapport sexuel” (Courtly love is the most refined way of compensating for the absence of
sexual relationship). So, we can say that Lacan continues to think of
sublimation in the sense that only love-sublimation can compensate for the hole
of no sexual relationship. Then, we can put forward this hypothesis: How can sublimation
be topologically formalized as far as it is the compensation for the hole of the
no sexual relationship? This question is, if not the only one, at least one of
the major themes of Lacan’s last teaching.
Now, at the
beginning, I quoted this phrase: “Das Selbstbewußtsein erreicht seine
Befriedigung nur in einem anderen Selbstbewußtsein” (Self-consciousness
achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness), which Hegel
presents to us a little before the end of the introductory part (i.e., a little
before the beginning of the section on the dialectic of master and slave) of the
chapter on Selbstbewußtsein of his Phänomenologie des Geistes.
If Hegel defines Selbstbewußtsein as Begierde (desire), it’s
because he (Selbstbewußtsein) will resolve the division or difference with
himself (cf. fig. 24) and restore unity with himself.
Fig. 24
This desire is the driving
force of the dialectical movement that, for Hegel, should attain the absolute
knowledge, where the division between knowledge and truth is resolved. But if
he says in that phrase that the
Selbstbewußtsein as desire only achieves satisfaction in the Other Selbstbewußtsein
as Other desire, what does all this
mean, especially in the dimension of Hegelian philosophy which is nothing other
than theology according to Hegel himself? It would mean that the division of
the Selbstbewußtsein from
itself is nothing other than the division between man and God, and that this
final satisfaction would be the sublimatory jouissance of reconciliation,
communion and even mystical union between man and God, where one and the Other
know each other perfectly. Absolute knowledge would then be nothing other than
this perfect mutual knowledge of man and God, where we abide in Him and He in
us (cf. 1 Jn 4,13).
For Lacan, such is
the model of sublimation for thinking about it in psychoanalysis. There’s no
doubt that he first encountered this enigmatic Hegelian phrase in
Alexandre Kojève’s lectures on the Phenomenology of Spirit in the 1930s,
that is, at the start of the preparatory period of his teaching. And, as we
shall see below, Lacan continues to think about sublimation right up to the
very last moment of his teaching. From there, I’ll say this: all the teaching of
Lacan is commentaries on this Hegelian phrase: “Das Selbstbewußtsein
erreicht seine Befriedigung nur in einem anderen Selbstbewußtsein”, since
this final satisfaction is the jouissance of sublimation that conditions the
end of analysis.
So, just as the eschatological moment can arrive at any
time, sublimatory jouissance can also occur at any time. We saw an example of this in Pascal, who
expressed it, without using this key word, as the joy of salvation, which is
joyful because God will give us, beyond the nothingness of the consummatio
saeculi, the new Being (of course non-metaphysical) of the new creation,
beyond death in this world, eternal life in His kingdom, and beyond sin
condemned by the Law, the remission of sin by Him who is all merciful. Just
like this, there must be, beyond the angst of nothingness, death and sin, the
jouissance of sublimation in psychoanalysis too.
Indeed, we have an
example of that, and this time also from Gérard Haddad, who recounts this
episode in his book Le jour où Lacan m’a adopté :
At the end of a particularly abrupt session, I feel infinite angst. I’m about to put on my coat when I realize that leaving like this is impossible, unbearable. I decide, in an uncontrolled impulse, rather than leave his office, to return to the waiting room, standing as if threatening. Lacan has already taken the next patient. A few minutes later, he shows up in the other doorway, carrying on the mad rounds of his consultations. He notices me. “What do you want?” he asks with a concerned air. “To talk to you!” “Come in. What’s going on?” he asks me after we’re back in his office, still standing by the door. He seems angry, exasperated. Then I pronounce those words without reflexion: “I feel f*cked!” I say to him. “You don’t feel f*cked, you are f*cked”. And he immediately adds, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Paradoxical as it may seem, this “you are f*cked”, that is, once again, castrated, relieved me. I even caught myself smiling.
As you can see, this
instantaneous conversation where Lacan answers to Haddad’s “I feel
f*cked!” with a “You are f*cked” sounds like a piece of Witz.
And, in fact, it’s collected, in a distorted form, in the book Les
Impromptus de Lacan : 543 bons mots recueillis par Jean Allouch. And there
are people who deal with the relationship between Witz and sublimation,
but I don’t go into that. What I would like to point out here is this: Haddad,
being on the very edge of the apophatico-ontological hole, was in an angstfull
depression severe enough to make him feel “f*cked”. Then Lacan’s sharp,
merciless remark, pushing him further towards the hole, suddenly provokes a reversal
where suffering and angst are transformed into sublimatory jouissance, however
small it may be, since at that moment, Haddad doesn’t burst out laughing in
exultation, but only smiles. In any case, he says he’s relieved: relieved of
the weight of angst, having been pushed a little beyond the hole.
I will also give you
an example of my own experience: a dream I had a few years ago. When I’m
walking alone somewhere in a city, suddenly a baby covered with blood emerges
from the breast (or bosom) of my coat. Surprised, I try to push it back to hide
it where it was before its emergence, but I can’t. Full of angst, I wake up. At
this moment, I have a very strong guilty feeling, and I wonder if I killed the
baby, and I keep asking myself what this dream means. Then, a few weeks later,
just as suddenly, this interpretation comes into my mind: this baby covered with
blood, I gave birth to him, not killed him. The Japanese word I’m translating
here in English as “breast” or “bosom” or in French “sein” mainly means
the parts of clothing that cover the chest, and with that word we can say, for
example, “Abraham’s bosom” in Japanese. Although it doesn’t itself have the
meaning of uterus, by association with the French word sein, it
can mean for me that reproductive organ too, which I do not possess in my male
body. So, for me to give birth, the baby must come from the breast or bosom of
my clothes. Then I have this certainty: I have given birth to both myself and
the Infant Jesus, since he is my very Being. And if I must be born again, it’s
because Jesus tells us: “no one can see the Kingdom of God unless he is born
again” (Jn 3:03). So, within me, angst and guilty feeling are transformed into
sublimatory jouissance in the form of the joy of rebirth and salvation.
So, how does Lacan
formalize this sublimatory jouissance beyond the angstfull Aufgehen of the
hole? As I’ve already suggested, in the graph of desire (cf. fig. 25), the
dialectical movement of the desire $ which, passing through the locus of
signifier A and through the instinct ($ ◊ D), arrives at the Other desire S(Ⱥ), schematizes the way of
sublimation.
Fig. 25
How is this movement schematized in the four discourses?
Fig. 15
First, let’s look at the schema of alienation (fig. 15), where the locus of the
Other as locus of signifier is the blue-colored area, which corresponds to the
place of the agent where the S2 is situated. What is missing in the
locus of the Other is the Other-of-the-Other, i.e. the master signifier S1,
which is situated in the place of truth (yellow), i.e. in the place of what obturates
the apophatico-ontological hole. So, the lack in the Other is this very hole. Then, the S(Ⱥ), the signifier of lack in the Other,
designates the edge of the hole (green). In this schema of alienation, the edge
of the hole is the small a, which is situated in the place of the other
in the four discourses. So, the mathème S(Ⱥ)
designates the edge of the hole in the schema of two circles and the place of
the other in the four discourses.
Fig. 21
Then let’s look at
the transformation from the university discourse (alienation) to the analyst’s discourse
(separation) (cf. fig. 21), where the subject $, initially hidden in the
place of production (the place of the impossible: red), emerges, through this
structural transformation, in the place of the other (the place of the
necessary: green), which corresponds to the mathème S(Ⱥ).
Therefore, we can say that the movement of the subject $
that arrives at the locus of S(Ⱥ) in the graph of desire is schematized, in the
four discourses, by this movement of the subject $ which moves from the
place of production (red) into the place of the other (green) in the
transformation from the university discourse to the analyst’s discourse. This
subject $ (which is Urbegierde) having arrived at the place of
S(Ⱥ) (which is the Other desire) is the formalization of the Befriedigung
of the Selbstbewußtsein in communion with the Other Selbstbewußtsein.
And this subject $, which is the sublimated desire in the analyst’s
discourse, is what Lacan calls desire of analyst (désir de l’analyste).
So, we can say that the analyst functions, with his sublimated desire of analyst,
as the locus of S(Ⱥ) which receives the subject-desire $ of analysand so
that it can be sublimated too.
But, as we see in the schema of separation, the hole of the subject
$ (more precisely, the hole bordered by the subject $) emerges as
a simple open hole, which distresses us with the angst of nothingness, death
and sin. So how can we formalize sublimatory jouissance as compensation for the
hole of no sexual relationship?
I think that it is
to answer this question that Lacan puts all his efforts in his Seminar XXIV
(1976-1977) L’insu que sait de l’une-bévue s’aile à mourre and in his
following Seminar XXV (1977-1978) Le moment de conclure. We can read
these two consecutive Seminars as one, since it seems to me that Lacan only
finds what he’s looking for in Seminar XXIV towards the end of Seminar XXV.
Indeed, in the session of 15 March 1977, he deplores that he hasn’t found what
he’s looking for, saying that he’s going round in circles. By contrast, in the
last three sessions of Seminar XXV (those of 11 April, 18 April and 9 May
1978), he finds, as it seems to me, what he’s looking for, i.e. a topological
formalization of sublimatory jouissance as compensation for the hole of no sexual
relationship. In what form? In the form of trefoil knot, insofar as it is
obtained from the edge of the Möbius strip with three half-turn torsion.
Usually, when we
simply say Möbius strip, we mean the unilateral surface obtained by uniting the
two ends of a strip with one half-turn torsion (la bande de Möbius à la
torsion d’un demi-tour : BM1) (cf. fig. 26). If we cut out its edge, we
obtain what Lacan calls huit intérieur in his Seminar XI, and which in
knot theory is called trivial knot or unknot, that is, what doesn’t form
a knot in ordinary sense.
However, what Lacan
shows us in Seminar XXV is not the BM1, but the Möbius strip obtained with three
half-turn torsion (la bande de Möbius à la torsion de trois demi-tours :
BM3) (cf. fig. 27). If you cut out its edge, you get a trefoil knot.
But what is the
psychoanalytical significance of this character of the BM3? Lacan tells us
nothing about it. So, we need to return to the topology of the projective plane
(cf. fig. 11).
Fig. 11
Since BM3 is homeomorphic to BM1, we can obtain a projective
plane by identifying the edge of BM3 with the edge of the hole in the bored
sphere or the edge of disk (le plan projectif avec la BM3 : PP-BM3). And let us
suppose that Providence does this for us: from the outset, what serves as model
for apophatico-ontological topology is PP-BM3, not PP-BM1.
Fig. 28
Now let’s look at the
figure 28. The Möbius surface $/S1 that separates from the
spherical surface a/S2 at the moment of separation is a BM3,
not a BM1. So, the subject $ that forms the edge of Möbius surface is a trefoil
knot, not a simple edge of the hole. And with this trefoil knot, Lacan
formalizes the compensation for the hole of no sexual relationship.
In psychoanalytic
experience, we see that at the moment of the Aufgehen of the hole of the
subject $, the analysand is in quite intense angst; at this point, the
analyst has to support the analysand with his own hole $ or S(Ⱥ) and with adequate interpretations; then
comes the moment of sublimatory jouissance when it turns out that the subject $
that has emerged open forms not a simple hole, but a trefoil knot.
One of my patients
who is Catholic but knows nothing of theology, philosophy or psychoanalytical
theory, once told me, in a session at the moment of seven or eight years after
the beginning of her analysis, that she feels close by herself a presence of
something like death or nothingness, and that therefore she is afraid, but that
at the same time she is in peace and very happy. The moment of sublimatory
jouissance can be like that.
§ 8. Phallus and the hole of no sexual relationship
Since Lacan first presented
it in his Seminar XVI (1968-1969) D’un Autre à l’autre, the formula “there
is no sexual relationship” has been much talked about, but I don’t know if
anyone has put it in the context of Lacan’s critique of Freudian
phallocentrism, which is expressed throughout his texts, but conceptualized
above all in the Oedipus-castration complex and in his theory of libidinal
development.
Phallocentrism consists
in this supposition that there is the symbolic phallus or phallic signifier Φ that can obturate the apophatico-ontological
hole. This supposition gives the meaning of phallic lack ( − φ ),
i.e. castration (cf. fig. 29), to the hole that is properly the hole of
nothingness, death and sin, as the clinical experiences of psychoanalysis tell
us.
Fig. 29
Nevertheless, this phallic supposition is attested long before Platonic ἰδέα in the form of Dionysia, i.e. Dionysian
orgies, where the procession called τὰ φαλληφόρια or τὰ φαλλαγώγια takes place and where, as those names
indicate, people carry an enormous wooden phallus (cf. fig. 30) as a symbol of
fertility, vitality and sexual jouissance.
Fig. 30
This krater with the figure of a female φαλλοφόρος is estimated to have been produced around 470 B.C.
So, in the dimension of worship or
religion, there was a hole-obturating S1 in the form of
the phallus Φ that was already adored
long before the pre-Socratic period, and so it could be one of the oldest S1
or even the oldest S1 in History. And this phallocentrism continues
up to Freud, and beyond him, even to the present day.
To explain the
formula “there is no sexual relationship”, I’d first like to draw your
attention to Lacan’s expression in his Rapport de Rome: the “mythology
of instinctual maturation [27]”. It’s a criticism of Freudian theory of libidinal
development, which assumes that, in the beginning, there are partial pregenital
instincts; then, they are integrated under the primacy of phallus to form the
sexual instinct; then little boys are in the phallic phase; and at that
point, the Oedipus complex is at the height of its activities. But since their
genital organs are premature, the developmental process enters the latency
period until the onset of puberty, where libidinal development reaches the
final stage of maturation that Freud calls Genitalorganisation, and then
the sexual instinct can serve its own purpose, i.e. procreation. The objects of
Lacan’s critique are these two mutually equivalent concepts: the primacy of
phallus and the genital organization. The maturation of sexual instinct under
the primacy of phallus is mythological, since the assumption that the finality
of the sexual instinct consists in procreation is merely a metaphysical teleology.
The phallus that would bring about genital organization is impossible (what
never ceases not to be written): that is what the formula “there is no sexual relationship”
means. Lacan could say that Freud’s Genitalorganisation is impossible, but
he prefers sensationalism to impress his audience.
If you reread Freud’s
cases, you’ll notice what blunders he makes because of his belief in phallocentrism
and the Oedipus complex, the most striking of which is found in the case of
Dora. If she interrupts the analysis only after around eleven weeks, it’s
because Freud’s phallocentric assumption disgusts her. In the case of Little
Hans, we can laugh at flagrantly Oedipean interpretations of Hans’ father. You
can also see how phallocentrism prevents Freud from realizing the importance of
the Aufgehen of the apophatico-ontological hole. In Dora’s case, the
hole opens in the form of the fire that will devour her in her first dream, and
in the form of her father’s death in her second dream. In the case of Little
Hans and the Wolf Man, it opens in the form of mouth of horse or wolf.
Moreover, Freud overlooks the importance of the accident in which a large horse
pulling a heavy wagon falls down in front of Hans, who thinks the horse is
going to die. For us, it’s quite clear that it’s this sudden and traumatic encounter
with the hole of death, not the Oedipus complex, that triggers Hans’ phobia. In
the case of the Wolf Man, the hole will also open up, in his paranoiac episode,
in the form of multiple open pores on his nose. In the case of the Rat Man, it’s
first the hole of anus and the hole of the rat’s mouth that devours viscera
from the inside, and then the hole of Schuld (debt and guilt) towards poor
girls, which hole, impossible to fill, he endeavors nevertheless to obturate in
his obsessional actions. If Lacan supervised the young psychoanalyst Freud, he
would tell him: “Leave aside the Oedipus complex, and you’ll see better”. In
fact, Lacan says in his Seminar XVII (1969-1970) L’envers de la psychanalyse
that the Oedipus complex is “strictly unusable” in practice, and “of no use
for psychoanalysts”.
Finally, let’s see
how phallocentrism prevents Freud from thinking adequately of the problem of
the end of analysis in his article Die endliche und die unendliche Analyse (1937)
where he says in the last paragraph the following:
With Penisneid (the desire for penis in women) and männlicher Protest (the masculine protest, i.e. castration anxiety, or Penisangst, which is the term Freud uses as the male counterpart to the female Penisneid), we often have the impression of having traversed the entire psychological stratification down to the “gewachsener Fels” (immense bedrock), and thus having reached the end of its action.
This passage tells
us clearly that Freud thinks the psychoanalytic experience is doomed to end in the
impasse conditioned by the necessity of the phallus Φ that could obturate the apophatico-ontological
hole to prevent the emergence of angst. It is unthinkable for him to go beyond
the hole, enduring angst for some time in front of the open hole, to reach the authentic
end of analysis. That is the limit of Freud who was unable to rid himself of his
phallocentrism. It’s true that Lacan always proclaims he is Freudian, not
Lacanian, to declare that it is he, not the IPA, who is the veritable heir of
the founding father, but we cannot overlook the fact that his teaching comprises
important criticism against the Freudian theory, and that is because he must go
beyond the phallic impasse to think more adequately of the problems of end of
psychoanalysis and formation of psychoanalysts.
Notes:
[1] This text, written originally in French, was read in
the teleconference of the Slovenian Association of Lacanian Psychoanalysis on
18 January 2025. I express here my thanks to Ms Nina Krajnik, the president of
the said association, who invited me to talk there.
[2] Since in a document written with a word processor,
as this text is, you can’t cross out a word with a cross, I’m content to cross
out these words with a line: Sein, Seyn or Being.
[3] The spelling Seyn was used until the 19th
century. In texts published during his lifetime, Heidegger wrote Sein in
principle, but in those he didn’t intend to publish during his lifetime, he
wrote Seyn from 1931 onwards, to differentiate it from the Sein of
the ontological tradition.
[4] The term mathème, introduced in Lacan’s
teaching during his Seminar (1971-1972) ...ou pire, comes from μάθημα (that which is learned, science) and the suffix -ème
(element) just as the linguistic term phonème comes from φώνημα and -ème. What he calls mathème is those symbols such
as S1, S2, $ and a, which he places in his mathematico-topological
schemas such as the schema L, the graph of desire and the four discourses.
[5] Cf. Heidegger, M.: Nietzsche.
Gesamtausgabe (GA) 6.
[6] Lacan, J. (1953):
Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage en psychanalyse. Écrits,
p.289.
[7] The
term “archaeological” here means that the matter is concerning the beginning (ἀρχή) that
Heidegger calls anderer Anfang, i.e. the other beginning than that of
metaphysics or that of thought of ancient Greek in general. And as we shall
see, archaeology goes hand in hand with eschatology.
[8] It is with these two words “ἐν ἀρχῇ” that the Book
of Genesis in the Septuagint and the Gospel according to John begin.
[9] Heidegger, M.: Nietzsche.
GA 6.1, p.431.
[10] The German term Neuzeit encompasses the modern and
contemporary eras.
[11] The translation of the word Endzeit would be “final epoch”, i.e. “eschatological epoch”.
[12] Cf. Heidegger, M.: Nietzsche.
GA 6.2, pp.35-40.
[13] Masson, J.M. (1984): The Assault on Truth.
[14] Haddad, G. (1981): Lacan
et le judaïsme.
[15] Lacan, J. (1958) : D’une question préliminaire à tout possible traitement
de la psychose. Écrits, p.563.
[16] Lacan, J. (1974): Télévision.
Autres écrits, pp.519-520.
[17] Heidegger, M. (1957): Die
onto-theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik. GA 11, p.77.
[18] I interpret this neosemic term Austrag as a
Heideggerian name for the apophatico-ontological hole in the context of the
question of ontological difference.
[19] Heidegger, M. (1927): Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie. GA 24, p. 378.
[20] Heidegger, M. (1949): Einleitung
zu: »Was ist Metaphysik?« GA 9, p.376.
[21] Cf. Heidegger, M.: Seminar
in Le Thor 1969. GA 15, p.344.
[22] Lacan, J. (1956): Le séminaire sur « La Lettre volée ». Écrits,
p.11.
[23] Cf. the chapter IV
Die Traumentstellung of Die Traumdeutung of Freud, particularly
the case Freud calls witzige Patientin, and some discussions of Lacan
about her in La direction de la cure et les principes de son pouvoir, Écrits,
pp.625-627.
[24] Now in mathematics, when they talk of the knots that
Lacan calls generalized Borromean knots in his Seminar XXVI (1978-1979) La
topologie et le temps, they call them Brunnian knots (Brunnsche
Verschlingungen, Brunnian links) after Hermann Brunn (1862-1939),
German mathematician who described them in his article Über Verkettung (1892).
Borromean knot is the simplest Brunnian knot consisting of three elements.
[25] Lacan, J. (1960): Subversion
du sujet et dialectique du désir dans l’inconscient freudien. Écrits,
p.818.
[26] The bar-mitzvah is a ceremony for young Jewish
boys who reach the age of thirteen, representing the moment when a young man
becomes responsible for observing religious commandments and committing his
life as an adult member of the Jewish community. The female counterpart is the bat-mitzvah,
celebrated at the age of twelve.
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