Underconstruction
The following
article was rejected
for publication by
the Buffalo Center
of Psychoanalysis as
being
"incomprehensible"
to the audience of
their journal Umbra (which we
were informed
addresses a type of
understanding
peculiar to students
of critique and
literature). Be
that as it may,
others less hampered
by such strictures
will find below, for
the first time in
the English
language, an
introduction to
Lacan's
generalization and
extension of the
psychoanalytic cure.
R.G.
Historical
Background
If Jacques Lacan had
been interrogating
the limits of
Freudian
psychoanalysis from
the beginning, it
was not until 1956
with D’une
question
préliminaire a' tout
traitement possible
de la psychose ( Of
A Preliminary
Question To Any
Possible Treatment
of Psychosis)
that he showed the
necessity of
reformulating the
problem in a
topological
presentation that
went beyond an
"abstract theory of
the faculties of the
subject" 1
.
Although Lacan
continued to purify
what he called the
"ideology of
psychoanalysis"
through a topology
of surfaces, it was
not until February
9th 1972, in his
seminar Ou Pire,
that he changes to a
theory of knots and
announces his
discovery of the
Borromean Rings.
What remains
invariant in this
transformation is
the insistence that
the use of such
topological
structures consists
not in illustrating
the theory of
psychoanalysis, but
of initiating a
practice of
psychoanalysis
itself:
For is not
structuralism what
permits us to pose
our experience as
the field where it
speaks? If yes, "the
distance to
experience" of
structure disappears
since it [the
structure] operates
not as a theoretical
model, but as the
original machine
which puts in scene
the subject. (Remarques
Sur La Rapport De
Daniel Lagache,
Lacan, 1958-60)
By the time of
R.S.I., Lacan
corresponds the
three closed chords
of the Borromean
Lock to the Real,
Symbolic, and
the Imaginary,
while noting this
tertiary grouping of
rings was only a
minimum and required
a fourth ring ∑
(in black) that was
only implicitly
indicated in Freud's
use of the term
psychic reality
2.
Further still, by
explicitly equating
this fourth ring
with the Nom-du-Pere
and the Oedipus
complex Lacan
isolates it as what
analysis comes to
operate on: "To be
knotted otherwise,
this is what is
essential to the
Oedipus Complex and
it is precisely on
what analysis
operates." (R.S.I.,
January 14th 1975)
∑
fig. 1
Four
Ring Borromean Lock
Previously, Lacan
had noted that the
ethics of
psychoanalysis would
depend on
introducing
something 'useful'
precisely at the
point not only of
the failures of his
Ecole, but
analysis itself (Preliminary to the
Seminar of R.S.I.,
November 9th 1974).
By doing so, Lacan
began not only to
render account of
the ideals of
psychoanalysis (its
possibilities and
psychotherapies) and
its closures
(its applications
and techniques in
the Heideggerian
sense), but to open
up a place for the
treatment of the aporias of its
cure.
Statement of the
Problem: From Aporia
to Structure
In the contemporary
scene of Lacanian
psychoanalysis, we
are faced with a
double obstacle of a
too contextual
understanding of
psychoanalysis and a
completely
de-contextualized
understanding of its
relation to
topology.
On one hand, we have
the infinite
psychoanalytic
histories describing
the nature of its
aporias - the
incomplete nature of
Freud's analysis of
neurosis, the
impossibility of
analyzing psychosis
and perversion,
negative therapeutic
reaction, etc.- and
the repetitive
epistemological
investigations into
the nature of its
impostures,
immaturity, and
pseudo-scientificity.
Our introduction
here is less
ambitious in its
scope, yet has the
advantage of
allowing us to
situate what is
crucial: the
structural and
operatory modes that
a discontinuity of
such natural themes
refer to. For this
reason our entry is
only superficially
historical or
epistemological, for
if it were, our
analysis would
remain at the level
of a succession of
themes natural to
psychoanalysis. Our
introduction is
different in so far
as it focuses on
the manner in which
not only Lacan's
topology, but a
theory of
psychoanalysis
resists such
historical and
epistemological
accounts. It is
this resistance that
is necessary to
listen to and
translate in the
presentation of a
theory and practice
of analysis.
On the otherhand, we
have become use to
those who bravely
state that a
Borromean falls
apart — or unlocks —
when anyone of its
three components is
taken away or cut,
while never
explaining why any
of this should be
significant to the
aims and goals of
the analytic cure in
the first place.
For if it were not
only with a bit less
haste, surely they
could find the time
to report why Lacan
never tired of
explaining the real
problem was to be
found in how the
fourth ring of the
Sinthome –
Psychic Reality,
Oedipus Complex,
or Name of the
Father — comes
to bear in this
problem of
unlocking.
My short
intervention cannot
hope here to resolve
this two sided
figure of
understanding too
much too quickly.
Rather it suffices
that we isolate the
problem and decipher
the reasons for such
complacency, while
laying out a few
landmarks so that
the reader may begin
to orient themselves
differently.
One should begin,
for instance, with
the December 16th
1975 seminar of
Lacan's Sinthome
in which he had
already formulated a
topological movement
that would not only
undo a knot, but
also unlock the four
ring Borromean lock
by allowing the
fourth ring to slip
off 3.
In so doing, Lacan
isolates a
separation from the
Sinthome that
was only avoided by
the traditional
attempts to describe
the aporias of the
psychoanalytic cure
negatively and not
as a positive moment
of dé-nouement. For
surely the Gordian
problem is to show
that to un-tie a
knot – or Sinthome
- is
not to non-tie or
cut a knot, but more
positively to tie
one by adding its per-verse .
Without these
precautions, the
psychoanalytic in-curable
looses its structure
and effectivity,
while trivializing
into the morbid
consciousness of the
non-curable.
What is difficult
for some to admit,
in the way I have
just spoken, is that
a psychoanalytic
theory would be able
to disengage itself
from the themes that
have become so
natural and
intuitive to its
practice. It would
be wrong, however,
to allow oneself to
be intimidated by
such a separation,
as it can serve here
as a guide since it
bears witness to a
moment of
psychoanalytic
history that has
become
incomprehensible to
scholars and
psychoanalysts
alike. Far from
being an obstacle,
it is an indication
of how one can learn
from a
psychoanalytic
theory to read its
history: a moment
when the Lacanian
introduction of
topology, before
being develloped in
and of itself, was
conceived as a
certain 'instrument'
that not only
resolved certain
problems of analytic
theory, but created
others. For
instance, Lacan's
theory of the mirror stage,
still embroiled in
the mechanics of
representation, was
at the origin
destined to
rigorously elaborate
what Freud had only
discursively
isolated as a
problem of perversion. In
neutralizing the
aporias that such a
case presentation
signals to the
analyst, Lacan
introduced the term
perversion in
structural terms: as
a type of inversion
associated to the relation
of an
object with its
symmetric image
4.
It was precisely at
this moment that it
became possible for
Lacan to ask: at
what point would
have Freud needed
his fable of
primordial masochism
and the infant, if
he had had an
adequate topology ?
Inversely, it also
becomes necessary to
ask: at what point
does such a
structural account
itself pose an
obstacle to an
understanding that
had previously been
natural to the
practice of
psychoanalytic
theory (neurosis,
the talking cure,
woody allen, etc.) ?
Or again, as if it
were a question of
recuperation: in
what respect does
such a structural
account, in all its
detours and
generality, still
permit the carrying
out of the 'initial'
practice of
psychoanalysis ? Are
the words 'ego',
'super-ego', 'id'
etc. a literary way
for old
psychoanalysts to be
able to continue to
think their relation
to a theory and
practice of
psychoanalysis ?
If today it has
become common place
to narrate the
aporias of
psychoanalysis -
those historical
moments that show
themselves in the
construction and
deconstruction of
its natural themes
of expression - it
is only in the
isolation of a pure
material of
psychoanalysis - its
knot or
structure - that
such aporias can be
shown to not only generalize its
theory, but extend its field
and practice.
Topological
Presentation of the
Incurable: The
Pere-versely
Oriented
It is not
in the rupture of
Symbolic, Imaginary,
and the Real that
defines
perversion, it is
that they are
already distinct and
that it is necessary
to
pose a
fourth which is the
Sinthome in occasion
[...] that
perversion is
nothing other than
the
version ver
le pere,
and that, in sum,
the father
is a
symptom or Sinthome,
if you want.
J.Lacan, Le
Sinthome, 1975-76
The remarks of our
last section, as
brief as they may
have been, begin to
justify the diagrams
below as they
present a
psychoanalytic place
not as a description
of what occurs on
the analytic couch,
but as an
inscription of what
occurs in the
structure of an
analytic practice.
In such a movement
we are no longer
asking the trivial
topological question
of whether an
analysand should sit
or lie down on a
couch, or where the
analyst should be in
the session, rather
we are interrogating
the act and topos of
psychoanalysis
itself, without
trivializing this
encounter to the
professional status
of the
doctor/patient
relation. Here then,
reformulating our
questions at the place of the
Subject and the
Other, we must ask:
What is the
interaction of two
Borromeans: analyst
and analysand, are
they one or two ?
fig. 2
The Analytic
Situation
In fig. 2 the
structure of the
subject is presented
with two Borromeans
(Bos) that have been
brought together and
embedded in the
plane. The rings of
the Bo are colored
red, green, and blue
with the lock on the
left having a fourth
black ring ∑
interwoven amoung
the three. We have
joined the Bos by
putting them in
correspondence by
bands - double
strands - joining
rings of the same
color. This putting
into correspondence
by bands assures
that the rings
remain closed curves
after joining (a
closed curve joined
to a closed curve by
a band remains a
closed curve). Such
a correspondence
between two Bos was
first proposed in
the literature by
Sourry and Lacan as
a way to 'un-do' a
lock, not by
cutting, but by
adding another
perversely oriented
lock. This act of
dénouement being
nothing other than,
psychoanalytically
speaking, what
occurs in the
interpretation of
the Sinthome.
fig.
3
Dénouement of the
Sinthome
Here, then, in fig.3
we have shown only
the end result of
the process of
interpretation: a
veritable dénouement
where the various
arcs of the rings of
the Bos in the plane
are deformed so that
the Sinthome
falls away (the
dimensions of the
problem permitting
no cutting,
re-drawing, tearing,
etc. of the figure).
To conclude, I hope
the reader will find
the time and
enjoyment to
construct this
clinical problem for
themselves by
actually
transforming figure
[2] into figure [3],
thereby filling in
the missing
diagrams. For it is
by addressing this
separation from the
Sinthome that
contemporary
Lacanian theory
passes from a
practice in
intension to a
practice in extension:that
is to say, operates
an involution from
the place of a
psychoanalytic
practice to a practice of a
psychoanalytic
place.
Robert Groome
Santa Monica,
Winter 2006
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnotes
1/ Appearing
initially in la
Psychanalyse, then
republished in his
Ecrits, "Of A
Preliminary
Question..."
p.531-583, Lacan
only adds the
topological
presentation of the
Möbius band and the
corresponding
footnote in 1966.
This much said, the
importance of "Of
a Preliminary..."
becomes apparent,
not only in so far
as this article is
the only Ecrits
(Writings)
with a workable
topological
presentation, but
when the article is
juxtaposed with his
earlier articles and
still illustrative
use of graphs in
such articles as the
Subversion of the
Subject and the
Dialectic of Desire,
p.793-827 Ecrits,
(1960).
2/ The over and
under weaving is
indicated in the
following way: over
= solid line, under
= broken line.
3/ The
Borromean is neither
properly speaking a
knot nor a chain,
but a lock. Or at
least, the necessity
for this triadic
classification of
spatial connection
was first put
forward in P.G.
Tait's On Knots
(1876) Later,
with the work of
Milnor - Link
Groups (1954) -
this triadic
classification would
trivialize into a
binary relation
between knots and
homotopy chains.
4/ There are
two delicate
questions here that
have been presented
in the seminars and
will be presented in
future articles:
firstly, the case
where the image is
an inversion
of its object, must
be distinguished
from the case where
it is a perversion. The
use of this language
goes back at least
as far as Listing's
Vorstudien zur
Topologie (1847)
and is today
standard in the
traditional
textbooks of optics.
Secondly, the
question of at what
point the relation of the
image to the object
must be
problematized as a
certain nonrelation - as
not a 1-1
correspondance - is
most often brought
out by
distinguishing two
different theories
in which the figure
is posed: the image
as a mathematical
entity and the image
as a psychological
entity (the figure
'seen'). The former
being a 1-1
correspondance, the
latter not, thus,
introducing
considerations of
what became known
after Locke as
'secondary
qualities': color,
error, luminosity,
orientation, etc.
This difference goes
back at least as far
as Kepler's
distinction between
'pictures' and
'images of things';
the former being
what allows the
formation of a
science of optics,
the latter being
what would open up
to, at first, a
theory of
psycho-physiological
vision: from Bouguer's Essai
d'optique sur la
graduation de la
lumiere (1729)
to Weber's (1831)
and Fechner's study
of differential
perception and the
formulation of a
constant: the
logarithm of the
psycho-physical
relation. If modern
research has
critiqued their
results by showing
that this constant
is only the case in
what concerns a
statistical average
of a zone of
excitation
conforming to the law of Gauss,
there is still an
open question on the
structural problem
of continuity
presupposed, but not
explicity brought
out in the natural
themes of
psycho-physiology.
See Poncaire's
topological critique
of the Weber/Fechner
conjectures.
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