Seminar XXIV Final Sessions 1 - Lacan in Ireland

Seminar 11: Wednesday 10 May 1977I am racking my brains, which is already annoying, because I am seriously rackingthem; but the most annoying thing, is that I don’t know what I am racking mybrains about. There is someone named Gödel, who lives in America and who hasenunciated the name undecidable. What is solid in this enunciation, is that hedemonstrates that there are things that are undecidable. And he demonstrates iton what terrain? On what I would qualify like that, as the most mental of all thementals, I mean in what is the most mental, the mental par excellence, the highpoint of the mental, namely, what can be counted: what can be counted isarithmetic. I mean that it is arithmetic that develops the countable. It is aquestion of knowing whether there are One’s which are un-enumerable; this is atleast what Cantor put forward. But this remains all the same doubtful; given thatwe know nothing except the finite, and that the finite is always enumerable.Does this mean that the mental is weak? It is simply the weakness of what I callthe Imaginary. The Unconscious was identified by Freud – we do not know why –the Unconscious was identified by Freud to the mental. This at least is whatresults from the fact that the mental is woven of words, between which, - it isexplicitly, it seems to me, the definition that Freud gives of it – between whichbévues are always possible. Hence my enunciation, that in terms of the Real thereis only the impossible. This indeed is where I come to grief: is the Realimpossible to think about? If it does not cease, - but here there is a nuance –, I donot enunciate that, it does not cease not to say itself, if only because the Real, Iname it as such, but I say, that it does not cease not to be written.Everything that is mental, when all is said and done, is what I write by the name of‘sinthome’, s.i.n.t.h.o.m.e., namely, sign.What does sign mean? This is what I am racking my brains about. Can one saythat negation is a sign? I formerly tried to pose what is involved in the agency ofthe letter. Is one saying everything by saying that the sign of negation, which iswritten like that, [Frege’s sign for negation] should not be written? What does it117