ICLO-NLS, SCRĺOBH 1.

Feb 2017

Anxiety Constituent and much as it is by ceasing to believe in his symptom

that the subject has the chance to make use of it.
Constituted
For example, by speaking about it, which can at
Jacques-Alain Miller times, when he speaks about it well, in a
captivating manner, result in his nomination as
AE.

In this witticism (“do without it, provided it is put The chapter to be commenced therefore is that of
to use”) lies a paradox which is not without the usage of symptoms. They say “healing”, to
calling to mind the one Kant examined in 1793 in which is added in a recent best seller, it’s hard to
the common expression “that might be correct in hear, “healing without psychoanalysis”- when all
theory, but it is useless in practice”. Should we they can see in the symptom is a dysfunction to
hear, “do without the Name-of-the-Father in be fixed, whereas an analysis, on the contrary,
theory, but make use of it in practice”? There is allows the subject to make use of what remains
something of this in Lacan's witticism. There is incurable in his symptom.
some reference to the inertia opposed by practice
to the ingenuity of theoretical constructs. We Anxiety, by which I mean the anxiety which
know only too well in psychoanalysis how vain messes up and causes mess-ups, must be done
such theoretical constructs can appear with without, but provided that it is made use of. By
regard to the practico-inert of the psychoanalytic making use of the object it produces as an
experience. instrument made to pass over what was keeping
us from doing what we needed to do. The anxiety
Underlying the witticism, and that which it points
which must be done without is - as François
to, is a gap between theory and practice - one
Leguil showed us in the first presentation - the
which we try to narrow by regularly devoting our
development of anxiety, its Entwicklung, its half-
Study-Days to accounts of clinical cases.
baked muddle by which the subject is held captive
Nevertheless, it seems to me that we in
psychoanalysis cannot put up with the “theory- and which inhibits the act. That anxiety is
practice” gap. The practice of theory, as my old certainty refused, anticipation and refusal of the
master Althusser used to say, has no place among certainty which the act would produce.
us. The sole theory that interests us, is the theory
of practice. In the case of the Name-of-the-Father,
doing without it-putting it to use means precisely,
as at least I am suggesting here, to do without
believing in it, while using it like an instrument.

The gap between belief and usage does not

encompass but rather displaces that between
theory and practice. The gap between belief and
usage, to tell the truth, is essential to
structuralism, to every structuralist approach.
This gap is the very origin of what Lévi-Strauss
called “bricolage”, which meant reusing, recycling
as we say, the products of the now abandoned
beliefs of another age. And the gap between belief
and usage is essential to analytic practice in as

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 ICLO-NLS, SCRĺOBH 1. Feb 2017

fill the treatises of psychopathology one would

want to shove down the throats of the candidates
for the title of psychotherapist. It's the
labyrinthine, unbounded anxiety around whose
hellish circle, which holds him back from passing
to the act, the subject condemns himself to
wander. It's this anxiety, it seems to me, that
Lacan suggested symbolizing by the aleph, the
first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and which was
the very letter Cantor chose to designate infinity,
of which he showed mathematicians the proper
use in their discourse. It's an anxiety which is
They say, or rather we say, “relieving
repetition, intended to go on ad infinitum.
anxiety”[désangoisser], and probably rightly so,
Constituent anxiety is productive anxiety, it hides
because anxiety, as Lacan used to say, is a half-
from consciousness. It produces the object a, in its
baked [foireuse] thing, a thing which messes up
essential paradox, that is to say it produces it as a
[fait foirer] for the subject, what has to be done,
lost object. That is why it can only be designated
messes up his plans, the things he has to do. But it
as the object of anxiety through negation: “it is
is not a matter, in this “relieving anxiety”, of any
not without object”. What needs to be seen is that
cure, of any removal of anxiety, and I would more
there isn't first an object and then its loss, but that
precisely say, it doesn't mean any return to zero
the object a is constituted in its very loss.
of anxiety. Relief of the subject's anxiety, if I may
say so, opens onto the transformations of anxiety If one allows a useful partition, one might say that
and it seems to me that this is what the pieces of the seminar on anxiety, Seminar X, tries to situate
work from these Study-Days that I was able to constituent anxiety. Anxiety is the privileged road
hear have shown. The relief of anxiety opens onto to access the object a as nothing [rien]. Let's say
the transformations of anxiety, the transference that constituted anxiety corresponds to the
of the certainty capture of this nothing-object in the fantasy. To
which the subject, therefore, finds himself
The anxiety to be put to use, on the other hand, is
suspended, paralyzed, in an infinite fading, where
the one which is a sign of the real. Anxiety which
he has the painful experience of his own division.
gives a sign of the real is not to be reduced to
This is what has been described as the
zero, that is say brought back to homeostasis, and
phenomenon of anxiety, which I distinguish from
for the simple, excellent reason that it is
what Lacan allows us to reconstitute of a
impossible, that anxiety is the name of the
structure. The nothing-object is here in the
moment when, amidst the nothingness [néant] of
phenomenon of anxiety the cause of a mortal
all the objects of the world, the plus of is
desire turned towards the subject. It's the same
produced, the surplus object which breaks all the
nothing-object which can become the cause of the
laws of objectivity, and which we call small a.
act, an act which always holds a moment of
We distinguish two statuses of anxiety, which I suicide, a moment of death of the subject. The
could call, for the purposes of simplification, nothing-object, around which the phenomenon
constituted anxiety and constituent anxiety. of anxiety gravitates, at least in this construction,
Constituted anxiety is the one whose descriptions dictates the mourning to be done of all objects,
the mourning in which the place from where the

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Miller, Jacques-Alain (2017). “Anxiety Constituent and Constituted.” Translated by Kieran O’Meara. Scríobh, 1: 1-3.

subject can assume the analytic act is carved out Report on ICLO-NLS Open Seminar
(...)
“Anxiety in Human Life – A
Lacanian Reading” with Alan
Extract of Jacques-Alain Miller’s presentation, at the Rowan
Autumn Study-Days of the ECF, of the 2006 WAP
Congress: Le nom-du-père, s'en passer, s'en servir [The Friday 27 January 2017
Name-of- the-Father, doing without it, putting it to
use]. The first ICLO-NLS Open Seminar for the year
2017 was opened to the above title presented by
Translated from the French by Kieran O’Meara Alan Rowan. An abstract of the seminar theme
previously made available online, accentuated
how the philosophical tradition has reflected for
many ages upon the “particular mystery of the
human being… whereby anxiety both defines us
and takes the form of a most intimate partner”.
The enigma of a life lived with anxiety integral to
it, which privileges the signifier anxiety as
embedded in contemporary discourse, spoke to
many as demonstrated by this well attended
event.

Rowan began by stating the central place of

anxiety as the defining affect of human beings
and as the most widespread so-called mental
health problem of today. Drawing data from
various epidemiological studies, he spoke of vast
anxiety-driven market consumption. This scale is
further evidenced in the DSM whereby
generalised anxiety and/or panic disorders make
up two thirds of it, alerting us also to the
established anxiety component of all mental
health disorders today.

Treatment of anxiety by the medical and

psychological fields primarily aims at treating the
symptom - a symptom understood as universal,
presenting and affecting the same for each. The
subject remains elided. Bio-psychiatry operates
on the fundamentally biological model of
assumed chemical unbalance whereby treatment
is implemented through suppression of anxiety
via medication - benzodiazepines/antidepressants
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