The conversation began informally and was not being recorded.

However, the material that emerged was so fascinating and relevant to the interview, that I began recording prior to posing my first question. Matthew Oyer: Continue with what you were saying about the Seminar. Paola Mieli: What you just said about the difference between listening and transcribing what one listens to, made me think of an interesting experience I had in the past. As you know, all Lacans Seminars were recorded; they were recorded by different people and then transcribed by different people. Each transcription slightly differed from the others: it wasnt clear which one was the correct one. Editors should have established a final edition of each Seminar on the ground of comparisons between different transcriptions. The first Seminar that was published after Lacans death because Lacan was alive when some of the Seminars were published, such as The Four Fundamental Concepts or Encore, and he had a chance to review them the first Seminar that was published after his death was the Seminar on Psychosis, Seminar II. When it came out I was asked to give a talk on its published edition. Of course, I had to listen to various recordings of the Seminar and go through various transcriptions of the recordings: I was stunned discovering that the published edition had occasionally established punctuations in places that were arbitrary, often closing open sentences, completing them. What resulted from it was a significant difference in meaning. I dont remember the details now, it was long ago, but some interpretations of the contents were definitely questionable. It was an experience that stayed with me. Lacan said that in his teaching he took the position of the analysand. Of course, we can hear this in many different ways. For instance, as an indication of the fact that the position of the analyst is not the position of the Master, not even while teaching. But if one should listen to his teaching, to his saying, as to an analysands speech, this implies also listening to the punctuation of the speech, to its pace, to the said and to the non-said, to the exclamations, the lack of answers, the lack of completions of a sentence. Notoriously, a very problematic published version of one of Lacan's Seminar is The Transference. This was particularly noticeable at the time of its publication, since we already had a very good unpublished version of the seminar, fruit of a remarkable work done by a group of analysts, which compared different recordings and transcriptions, and checked on all of Lacans references which is also something that needs to be done. Sometimes Lacans references are not as precise, and then when you research them, you realize there are a lot of things to learn there. MO: Yeah, over the summer I read Elisabeth Roudinescos biography, and she is very unhappy with the official editions of the Seminars. But its that same closed quality that shes getting at, that the meanings are all pinned down instead of left more open. PM: Yes. MO: Well, Ill try to do a better job for our interview.

PM: Do you know what I find very interesting in relation to it? The fact that this issue brings up the difference between the saying, the act of speech, and the said, the split between enunciation and statement. And it is within this split that we operate as analysts. MO: And I always think thats very rich at Aprs Coup meetings because there are so many languages being spoken, and translation, and re-translation, and its very noticeable the steps away you get pretty quickly from the original utterances. PM: Yeah, its one of the things that we had welcomed. Its a very difficult task, the one of translating. I am an immigrant; I live in a country where I speak a language that is not my mother tongue. Im constantly confronted with the resistance of language in the act of translating. When you speak a second language, you finally manage to speak it at the moment in which you dont think about it anymore, your thoughts already formulate themselves without you being aware of it. Its a very interesting experience, and it takes a while for it to take place. In general, the act of speech implies an act of translating, the fact of giving a version of what you have in your mind or in your feelings, which requires overcoming an obstacle, it requires an invention of some sort. When Aprs Coup was founded it became immediately clear that one of the problems we had in the United States vis--vis the dissemination of the work of Lacan was the difficult translation of his work, what is always true, but particularly so in the case of English. English is radically different from the Latin languages, it implies a different kind of structure and form. Some of the translations of Lacan's works are really bad; they contain serious mistakes. MO: Are you more satisfied with Bruce Finks recent translations? PM: Yes, Bruces translation of the Ecrits is much, much better. I didnt read it completely, but I use it for my teaching, and there is no comparison. He did an extraordinary job. I have to confess though that I suffer a bit when I read Lacan in English. I always read him in French, and, in English, it feels weird. It takes time for me to elaborate Lacan in English. MO: I want to shift gears a little because I want to give you a chance to talk about the conference coming up. I know its October 28th through 30th, and its titled Act and Transmission: On Formation in Psychoanalysis. What should City College students know about the conference? PM: First of all, invite them to come. We decided to establish a very low fee for the entire conference, $20, in order for everybody to be able to attend. The topic of the conference is Act, Transmission and Formation in Psychoanalysis. Since its inception, Aprs Coup has promoted the denomination "formation" for the education of the analyst. We form an analyst; or, better, an analyst gets formed. The word formation substitutes for the word 'training', commonly used, but also used indistinctively for all sorts of practices including sports, dentistry, dancing, and so on. Training implies the idea of an apprenticeship, a practical apprenticeship at the end of which one knows how to do

certain things, knows how to practice something. In the Freudian-Lacanian tradition, we consider the field of psychoanalysis as different from any other field, including any other mental health domain. The education in psychoanalysis differs, since it requires the subjective experience of ones own analysis. There is a knowledge of which we are unaware of, but produces effect in our everyday lives. In our analysis we become progressively aware of the presence of the unconscious, of the difference existing between our rational thinking and a certain subjective truth, which expresses itself through desires, feelings, through the formations of the unconscious, like dreams, symptoms, incidents, parapraxis. Now, the reality of the subjective division the division between knowledge and truth, between the unconscious and rational thinking is a reality that can be approached only through the experience of our personal analysis. Personal analysis, the condition sine qua non for our formation as analysts, is something that is not comparable to any other form of training or apprenticeship. We cannot compare it to the medical training, since the medical training, if anything, is focused on putting aside ones own feelings or controlling them. In our practice, if there are feelings, the first thing we want to do is to understand where they are coming from, to analyze them, and to see what kind of effects or meanings they have in our subjective life. The formation of an analyst implies the progressive encounter with limitations in the field of knowledge. It implies an enormous amount of learning, the deepest and most rigorous process of learning; but, at the same time, it implies learning how to suspend knowledge at the moment in which we practice. Freud invited us to approach every new case as if it was the first case we have had in our life. To listen projecting our theories on to what is said, it is not listening. The position of the analyst implies a ceaseless relation to knowing, including learning how to shed knowledge and allow for a listening that is always fresh, a position at once rigorous and evolving. And this is not something that can be done only through an apprenticeship or academic studies. Unfortunately, there is no way to shortcut the length of becoming an analyst. A common problem everywhere, not just in the United States, is that people approach becoming an analyst as if it were a means through which to start a business like any other. They think that, after however many years of training and education, you get your diploma and that is it. Unfortunately, it doesnt work like this: you may get your diploma, but the moment you are confronted with the reality of your practice, things dont work that way. Diplomas do not prevent a person from being a very bad analyst. What is necessary is a proper formation, a subjective formation. I like the word formation which in English is used mostly for military formation, mineral formation but has a broader meaning: it comes from the Latin formre, which means to give shape to something, to create something, implying that what is shaped is something that didnt exist before. It emphasizes a novelty, a change of position, which is precisely what Freud had in mind in relation to the goal of the cure. Analytic cure implies a change in the subjective libidinal economy, what allows for the unlocking of repetitions and for the resolution of specific symptomatologies. A structural change. Formation in analysis is permanent. We never stop forming and learning, especially from our own practice. Why are we addressing the issue of formation now? In the American analytic field, there are people who are questioning the traditional institutional training and its effects. For

instance, different people within the American Psychoanalytic Association are expressing dissatisfaction with the results of this training. It could be useful to rethink together the trajectory for becoming an analyst. This particular colloquium is, in fact, the second public event of an ongoing international working group, which is part of Convergencia. Convergencia, Freudian Movement for Lacanian Analysis, is the first international association of Lacanian associations, which was founded in 1996. It gathers I dont know exactly how many but at least 40-45 psychoanalytic associations in the world. And it has a very particular connotation; it is an unusual international. I was part of the working group that conceptualized the bylaws of Convergencia and I'm proud of it; I think they are the best bylaws for an international group that were ever put together. Why? Because its an international organization that is based on the transference of work among associations. Its not hierarchical; its not a pyramid. No association is dictating guidelines for the entire body. Convergencia is organized in such a way as the associations that are members there are some founding associations and other associations that then asked to become a part of it remain members on the ground of their exchange of work. Its completely based on work production. Our colloquium is the fruit of a working group of nine associations of Convergencia: an Italian association, three French associations, three Argentinean associations, one Brazilian, and one American. The working group started 2 years ago on a very specific topic: "What can we expect from an analysis?". We had a first public event on this topic last year in Paris and it was very interesting. Our conference on October 28-30th is not organized around papers presentations. A paper is a paper; once its written, it can be read and appreciated privately. In general, psychoanalysts are not good actors. Its incredibly boring to listen to people reading their papers. We asked people to present their papers in advance, and we post all papers on our website. They are there available to anybody who wants to read them and prepare for the conference. At the conference, instead, people will speak in roundtables, in a very matter of fact way about the topics they worked on. We'll have discussants for these round tables and a whole hour dedicated to questions from the floor. Its going to be a somewhat informal gathering, and, hopefully, everybody will be able to participate in it. I hope its going to be an opportunity for the students in New York to come and meet analysts that are coming from all over the world; it could be a way for exchange and getting in contact. MO: Great, it sounds wonderful. Im going to skip ahead a little. One thing I wanted to ask about was the name Aprs Coup itself, the French translation of Nachtrglichkeit, Freuds term, which many people have commented Strachey mistranslated as deferred action. And Ive heard a variety of translations they think would be more fitting: retranscription, retranslation, rearrangement. But I think its a really fascinating concept in the history of psychoanalytic thought, and I wondered what specifically about the term appealed to you as a name for the organization.

PM: You are right. We founded our association in 1987 and choose the name Aprs Coup, which translates Freuds Nachtrglichkeit; it is a term used by Freud to indicate the nature of the logical time in psychic causality. Freud's work on psychic causality is one of the major discoveries of the 20th century. It brings about the specificity of the functioning of the human mind and a new conception of memory, not understood until that point. Definitely, the translation of Nachtrglichkeit with deferred action is wrong and misleading. I dont know which one is worse, the misrecognition of the notion of Nachtrglichkeit or translating Trieb as instinct. Freuds conceptualization of the human libido is organized on the basis of the differentiation between instinct and drive. We have a paper in the Metapsychology specifically devoted to the definition of the drive and its distinction from instinct; and yet, in English, Trieb was translated with instinct. Its huge. Obviously, the bad translations of Freuds work into English had a huge impact on the understanding of psychoanalysis in the United States and in England. Im sorry about it, but its a reality. I dont know if its true or not, but I heard actually you should check it out that in the 60s, early 60s, in some institutes affiliated with the American Psychoanalytic Association, probably the New York Psychoanalytic, it was forbidden to read Freud in German because this could create too much confusion. Somebody told me this. I never verified it. Even if its not true, it is an anecdote that gives a sense of the implications of reading a text in the original language or not1. When I first moved to the United States, I was surprised by the misrecognition of Freud's conceptualization of time, crucial for the understanding of Freuds theory of the psychic apparatus and the constitution of symptoms. I originally proposed to call our organization Nachtrglichkeit, but people told me that it was impossible, impossible to learn how to pronounce the word. Then, why not call our association Aprs Coup, which is a common saying in the French language and the way Lacan translated Nachtrglichkeit. We created our association after a conference we organized at Columbia University in 1987, which was specifically devoted to the topic of time in psychoanalysis where I gave a paper on the notion of aprs coup, on Nachtrglichkeit, illustrating its function through a clinical presentation. The timing of the founding of our association was particular: it occurred in the aftermath of the dissolution of the cole freudienne in Paris and of the death of Lacan. The expression aprs coup which means aftermath contained different layers of meaning for us. Why is it that the expression deferred action does not reflect Nachtrglichkeit? Deferred action suggests the notion of a psychic determinism, of linearity between a stimulus and a response, between cause and effect, suggesting the idea of a delayed discharge. Now, the notion of Nachtrglichkeit is not linear; its logical. It points exactly in the opposite direction: not from a cause to the effect, but on the fact that something that occurs after invests with meanings a prior event, attributing to it a traumatic signification a kind of reverse loop. Freud's concept does not signal a delay in action or in reaction, but rather an event which, in the very act of positing itself, invests a past
1

I attempted to verify or disprove this anecdote via sources at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, but my question was not answered.

inscription and gives to it a disruptive effect, the status of a revelation. One could even argue that it is a topological conception. It definitely allowed Freud to articulate a concept of psychic time which is totally original, completely new in the history of thinking, and still not fully understood by many, including many analysts. It makes Freuds discovery in the field of the subject as revolutionary as the discovery of quantum theory in physics and actually there are some similarities between the two. Freuds discoveries were part of l'sprit du temps, that saw a revolution in the system of thinking, in physic, mathematics, science, architecture, art, music and so on. MO: Great. Thanks. One thing I thought of asking about, one issue thats evercontroversial in the field of psychoanalysis is what role empirical research ought to play, and Lacanians, traditionally, have been among the most reluctant to engage in these forms of research. Bruce Fink, who we mentioned already, stated in an interview recently that he thinks psychoanalysis can survive only by refusing to engage in this type of research. But other contemporary Lacanians have sought to integrate Lacanian theory with specific research traditions, and Im thinking of Paul Verhaeghes synthesis with attachment theory and Francois Ansermets synthesis with cognitive neuroscience. And Im wondering what are your thoughts about these types of integration, and, more generally, about the relationship of psychoanalysis to empirical science. PM: Per se, any kind of empirical research can be of interest. I dont have anything against it. Freud was interested in research in neurosciences. What is problematic is not researching, it is the attitude of those who research. If the researcher has a certain theory in mind he wants to prove, then he may preempt the findings. Its like Cheney, our old Vice President, Mr. Cheney, when he was approaching the problem of terrorism proposing a program of preemptive war. Obviously Mr. Cheney had his own interests in approaching things this way. If the scientist who is doing empirical research has a preconception about the results of the research, its a big problem. To go back to what we were saying before, here we can appreciate the difference between psychoanalysis and so-called 'science'. Im saying so-called science' because I make a distinction between these discourses and science. Often empirical science researchers are not scientists, but people who embrace a preset discourse. If you deal with real scientists I have had the chance in my life to meet some they dont say what they are discovering, they are not anticipating; they only speak about their findings. They are often surprised by their findings. They dont preempt findings with belief. Theory often functions as a belief system; belief, for instance, that there are genetic grounds for certain illnesses or certain pathologies. The word belief is very significant; it is not by chance that it is the same word used in religion. The belief in matter can be a form of idealism. I have a formation as a philosopher, so I know a little bit about it. The fact that an approach is considered empirical doesnt mean that it is not idealistic or dogmatic. There are very famous physicists who have denounced this. In psychoanalysis theories are the consequence of the practice and there is a constant awareness on the limits of theory. Findings are always particular, according to the singularity of each human being. Empirical researchers too often deny or foreclose the very characteristic of the speaking being: the fact that he/she is a speaking being , divided by the effect of language, by the

presence of the unconscious. If empirical sciences do not recognize the effects of the unconscious, if they foreclose the subject of language, there is no meeting point with psychoanalysis. They are opposite discourses. MO: I wanted to ask maybe our last question, again trying to bring a Lacanian viewpoint into dialogue with something were exposed to more in our program. My sense is were most extensively exposed to a Kernbergian conception of structural diagnosis and treatment ideology. And comparing and contrasting that view with a Lacanian one is too large a task for us to do here, but one really obvious difference that jumps out immediately is Kernbergs conception of borderline personality organization, whereas its absent in Lacanian diagnosis. So, what are your thoughts about the importance of the borderline group in most American and British psychoanalytic nosologies versus a Lacanian diagnostic system? PM: The individuation of the borderline category is very interesting. I appreciate a lot some of Kernbergs study and some of the British elaboration on the borderline problem. It seems to me that the borderline personality category emerged as a sort of necessity from within a specific culture, the Anglo-Saxon culture, which is different from the Freudian Continental one. It was important to come up with this definition because it allowed clinicians to pay attention to certain traits that were otherwise dismissed, or that couldn't fit to the diagnostic criteria at their disposal. The Freudian-Lacanian tradition in continental Europe has a different approach to diagnosis; traditionally, it recognizes three psychic structures from which it provides diagnostic definitions psychosis, neurosis, and perversion. These structures allow for the individuation of subjective positions, including positions that are very close to what is defined as borderline in the U.S. Borderline often indicates a fuzzy, blurry zone, where its not clear to which of the three structures a particular subjective position belongs. In a sense, borderline allows for an uncertainty in the diagnosis, which is understandable. Yet, I have to say that, in my clinical experience, I always find that the moment arrives when it is helpful to identify the structure a case belongs to psychotic, neurotic, perverse since not doing so may generate problems. Certain decisions derive from this, practical decisions regarding, for instance, the frequency of the sessions, the timing of the sessions, the way you intervene, what you want to say, not to say, etc. The dialogue with American psychoanalysis around the "blurred zone" among structures is very interesting, since such a zone is encountered in our practice. Yet, I often find that what is defined as borderline is not borderline, but it could be categorized according to our traditional structures. Occasionally, the definition of borderline becomes an obstacle for the appropriate treatment. I see it often in supervision. MO: So, let me see if I understand, your feeling is that its valuable at times to not jump into a diagnosis but that the diagnosis of borderline doesnt bring any new information that wouldnt be there in the Lacanian diagnosis? PM: Each case is a different case. My experience shows me that the diagnosis of borderline often masks non-recognition of the structural diagnosis. I saw cases diagnosed as borderline and they were classical hysterical cases. Now, you know that the category

of hysteria progressively disappears from the DSM and people believe that hysteria doesn't exist anymore, which is a funny thing to believe. It's out of fashion. Yet, I see so many hysterical patients. I saw people who were diagnosed as borderline who were I dont like the expression 'perverts' because it has a moral connotation who belonged to the structure of perversion, or to that of psychosis. The borderline diagnosis may reflect the uncertainty of the diagnostician more then that of the case itself. Things are not black and white. In our domain every case raises questions. MO: Well, I think thats all the time we have. Thank you very much.