Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

Seminar 10: Wednesday 19 April 1977I have a little bit of trouble today, I have a sore back, so that standing up does nothelp me. But when I am sitting down I am still sore. Because one does not knowwhat is intentional is certainly not a reason for speculating about what issupposed to be so.The Ego, because that is what it is called – it is called that in Freud’s secondtopography – the Ego is supposed to have intentions, this from the fact that thereis attributed to it what it chatters about, what is called its saying. In effect, it says;it says and it says imperatively. It is at least like that that it begins to expressitself.The imperative, is what I supported, let us say, with a signifier with the index 2, S 2 ;this signifier index 2 by which I defined the subject, I said that a signifier is whatrepresents the subject for another signifier. In the case of the imperative, it is theone who listens who, by this fact, becomes subject. That does not mean that theone who utters it does not become, for his part also a subject incidentally. Yes. Iwould like (je voudrais) to draw your attention to something, there is nothing inpsychoanalysis except these I would like’s. I am obviously a psychoanalyst whohas a little too much experience, but it is true that the psychoanalyst, at the pointthat I have got to, depends on the reading that he makes of his analyser, of whathis analyser says to him in so many words. Can you hear me, because after all Iam not sure that this megaphone is functioning? Is it functioning...in the...Huh?Yes? Good. What his analyser believes he is saying to him, means that everythingthat the analyst listens to cannot be taken, as people say, literally (au pied de laletter). Here I must make a parenthesis, I said the tendency that this letter, whosefoot (pied) indicates the attachment to the earth, which is a metaphor, a lamemetaphor, which goes well with the foot, the tendency that this letter has ofrejoining the Real, is his business; the Real in my notation being what it isimpossible to rejoin. What his analyser, believes he is saying to the analyst inquestion, has nothing to do – and that, Freud noticed – has nothing to do with thetruth. Nevertheless we must indeed think that to believe, is already something109