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“THE FUNCTION AND THE FIELD OF SPEECH AND

LANGUAGE IN PSYCHOANALYSIS": A
COMMENTARY ON LACAN’S ‘DISCOURS DE
ROME’
PAUL VERHAEGHE
When I was asked to present a commentary on Lacan’s “The function and field of speech
and language in psychoanalysis,” I was not only honored, but also quite happy, because
this is one of the most beautifully written of Lacan’s texts. There are quotes that stick in
your memory almost from the first time that you have read them – I cannot judge if this
goes for the English translation as well, but the original French has a rare poetic and
rhetorical quality, and it was a pleasure to reread it.

I have three aims with this talk. First of all, I think it is necessary to introduce you
briefly to the historical circumstances of this paper. Secondly, I want to address what is
fundamentally new in Lacan’s discourse, compared to the psychoanalytic theory and
practice of that time. And thirdly, I want to explain how Lacan himself changed his ideas,
some ten years later.

First of all the historical circumstances. These are so important that I assume that most
of you will know about them and that I can be brief. At the beginning of 1953, Lacan is
the president of the SPP, the Société Psychanalytique de Paris. In June, he is asked to
resign, because of the unorthodoxy of his praxis. Basically, this had to do with the fact
that he did not follow the standard rules with regard to the fixed duration of a session.
In itself, this was not an isolated fact, it was well-known that he challenged the training
program in many other respects as well and that he did not agree with the direction in
which psychoanalysis was moving. As a reaction to this imposed resignation, Daniel
Lagache, the vice-president of the same organization, refused to take the president’s
seat and resigned as well. He started a new institute, the SFP, the Société française de
psychanalyse and more than twenty members of the previous organization followed –
Lacan is one of them. To my surprise, I have found an entry in Louise Bourgeois’ diary,
where she noted “Today is the birthday of the French Psychoanalytical society” together
with all the names and addresses. She must have had very close connections with the
Parisian analytic scene to receive this information that early.

In September of the same year, the congress of psychoanalysts coming from romance
speaking countries was already planned in Rome. The official French delegation was
still the SPP; as a reaction, the new institute held a kind of shadow conference alongside
the official one. It is during that conference that Lacan presented his ‘Discours de Rome.’
That is, he presented an abbreviated version of it, the much larger text itself was
distributed in hard copy.
In this discourse, Lacan explains his views on psychoanalysis, at least on three
important points: theoretically, clinically and the implications for the formation of
analysts. Basically, he criticizes the turn towards ego psychology and object relation
theory, and puts forward what will be coined afterwards as his ‘return to Freud.’ Two
months later, he will give the opening lesson of his first public seminar at the Saint Anne
hospital, where he will explain why and how Freud’s technique is superior compared to
the post-freudian one.

Before entering that subject, it is worthwhile to remember that at that time, Lacan did
not want to resign from the IPA. He hoped that it would be possible to move the
international psychoanalytic movement into another direction compared to the
neurobiological-medical one (let alone in the direction of ego psychology). This explains
two of his initiatives at the time, both of which seem odd to us today. First of all, he
presented the text of his discourse to one of the leaders of the French communist party.
And secondly, he asked his brother, who was a catholic bishop, to arrange a meeting
with the pope.

Both of these initiatives have to be understood within his intellectual adventure. The
French Parisian communists of that time were Marxists, trained by Kojève in Hegelian
dialectics. Kojève was one of the leading French intellectuals during the thirties. As a
prominent Marxist, he taught Hegel at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes (from 1933 to 1939)
to the intellectual elite of Paris. Via Kojève, Lacan understood the link between Hegel
and his reading of Freud: the focus is on desire and on the dialectics between the master
and the slave in the struggle for recognition. Of course, Lacan had seen more than
enough of that in the psychoanalytic institutions. Besides that, it opened the possibility
to think the  psychoanalytic practice in dialectical terms, instead of focusing on instincts
that had to be mastered by the Ego. In the same vein, Lacan considered Roman Catholic
theology to be much more interesting than neurobiology, because the church fathers
had been studying desire for centuries. With these initiatives, Lacan hoped to move
psychoanalysis beyond its medical boundaries and to introduce it in the larger
intellectual movement of Europe.

Both of the initiatives failed, and Lacan had to continue his path alone. The SPP and the
SFP went their own way, and in 1959 the SFP asked the IPA for affiliation. It took them
two years to answer, and in 1961, the SFP was granted the status of Study Group.
Basically, this meant that their training procedures would be carefully watched. The
next year, it became clear that the IPA would only consider a full affiliation on condition
that both Lacan and Françoise Dolto were excluded. This became an official statement in
1963 and was accepted by a majority of the SFP in November. As a result, Lacan was
expelled from the IPA and had to start his own school. The rest is history.

In the following year, 1964, Lacan will give his seminar for the first time free from any
institutional restraints whatsoever. The program that he will put forward in seminar
eleven starts with the question about the status of the unconscious; lesson after lesson,
he will inaugurate a truly innovative theory, with many corrections on what he had
presented in his Rome Discourse. Two years later, the Ecrits are published, with the
famous discourse in it. As you may have noticed from the footnotes, a number or
paragraphs have been rewritten, compared to the original version. On top of that, the
text is preceded in the Ecrits by a newly written introduction, with the title “Du Sujet
Enfin en Question”, “On the Subject Who is Finally in Question.” The ‘finally’ is very
telling – it means that Lacan himself was convinced that the notion of the subject was
not elaborated enough in his Rome Discourse. I will come back to that in the third part
of my talk.

So much for the historical circumstances of the paper. Let us address now what is new
in it. I will follow the partition that Lacan made himself, meaning that there is a preface
and an introduction, followed by three chapters.

Ironically enough, the preface starts with a quote from Sacha Nacht, a leading French
analyst of that time, who puts forward the idea of neurobiology as the pre-eminent
discipline.

In particular, it should not be forgotten that the division into embryology,

anatomy, physiology, psychology, sociology, and clinical work does not exist in
nature and that there is only one discipline: a neurobiology to which observation
obliges us to add the epithet human when it concerns us. (237)

(Quotation chosen as an inscription for a psychoanalytic institute in 1952. Sacha

Nacht)

Lacan’s paper is one long argument against this kind of reasoning. The irony is that it is
not too difficult to find contemporary quotes which express the very same idea –
meaning that the main thesis of “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in
Psychoanalysis” is still very actual. The central theme in this preface is Lacan’s vigorous
attack on the functioning of psychoanalytic institutions in general and the way they
organize – or fail to organize – the formation of young analysts. He holds a plea for
psychoanalyzing psychoanalysis itself (Ecrits, p.241), instead of turning away from it.

The first sentence of the introduction explains the reason for this turning away: it has to
do with anxiety – this is one of those beautiful sentences which stick in the mind of the
reader: “Tel est l’effroi qui s’empare de l’homme…. ” “Such is the fright that seizes man
when he discovers the true face of his power that he turns away from it in the very act –
which is his act – of laying it bare. This is the case of psychoanalysis” (Ecrits, p.242). The
message is clear from the start: we should not turn away from psychoanalysis, in spite
of our anxieties.  And we need to address the function of speech and the field of
language, instead of focusing on instinct theories and the like. Both of them have been
forgotten, together with Freud’s original theory and original technique. In the following
years, Lacan will study Freud’s work, in German, and inaugurate what is known as the
lacanian return to Freud.

This brings us to the first section of the paper (247 – 265). The title by itself is already
worthwhile to consider: “Empty Speech and Full Speech in the Psychoanalytic Realization
of the Subject.” It puts forward an opposition between two forms of speech, empty
speech versus full speech, and it situates this opposition in a process that is
characterized by an imperative – something has to take place – namely, the
psychoanalytic realization of the subject. This is totally new, both the idea of the subject
and the idea that this subject has to be realized via the process of analysis. Don’t forget
that Lacan started his career with a focus on paranoia and personality, and had moved
from there to the theory on the mirror stage and the imaginary, where the I (le je) took
the central stage (Vanheule, S., 2011). There was no question of a subject. At the end of
this first section, Lacan puts himself in the position of the audience, by asking the
obvious thing: “Mais qu-est-ce donc…”  “But what, then, is this subject that you keep
drumming into our ears?” (Ecrits, p. 264).

Obviously, this realization is the goal of analytic praxis and in Lacan’s later work, this
becomes even an ethical imperative for the analyst. Remarkably enough, in his later
work, the ideas of full and empty speech will disappear from the lacanian vocabulary.
This asks for an explanation.

In his introduction, Lacan had already stressed the fact that psychoanalysis operates
through speech. The subject is realized via the process of free association, with the
analyst in the position of the listener. At first sight, you would expect a progressive and
continuous realization of this subject, a kind of discovery journey in the “Who am I?”
realm, with lots of memory lanes, etc. Apparently, this is not Lacan’s idea, quite the
contrary. The more this realization takes place, the more certainties disappear. “Doesn’t
the subject become involved here in an ever greater dispossession of himself as a being,
…?” (“Le sujet ne s’y engage-t-il pas…,” (Ecrits, p. 249); notice that in the original, the
text reads: “Le discours…”). Even more importantly, these certainties disappear in
relation to the other. When Lacan describes what Freud already coined as the analytical
work, he clearly accentuates the intersubjective nature of this process: “For in the work
he does to reconstruct it for another, he encounters anew the fundamental alienation
that made him construct it like another, and that has always destined it to be taken away
from him by another” (‘Car dans ce travail qu’il fait…,’) (Ecrits, p.249).

Free association does not result in the discovery of who someone ‘really’ is, quite the
contrary. This brings us to the difference between full speech, parole pleine, and empty
speech, parole vide. The first one is sometimes rendered asparole vraie, true speech,
which gives us the idea that empty speech might be false speech. As you may remember,
about a decade later, in the sixties and early seventies, expressions like the true self and
the false self, the authentic personality and the like will become very fashionable within
the field of psychotherapy. Does this mean that Lacan was ahead of his time? Not at all,
quite the contrary. Such a reading is totally wrong, because full speech has nothing to do
with the notions of the true or the false self. True speech does not present the analysand
as he truly is, just as empty speech does not necessarily present us with a false picture
of the analysand, meaning of his ego. (I am tempted to delete the phrase ‘meaning if his
ego.’  It does not make sense, maybe you could clarify). Empty speech corresponds to a
certain reality about the self-image and the way it is perceived by other people. The
emptiness has to do with an all too full imaginary, someone who has completely
identified with a number of signifiers. This is the certainty that has to be undermined by
the analytic work. Being fully identified with oneself leads to an empty speech and does
not leave much opening; this opening is necessary, because otherwise, change is
impossible.

If we turn now to the idea of full speech, we are a bit at a loss to what it means.
Apparently, it does not mean that the analysand finds again the full recollection of his
past as it is supposed to have determined him – that would imply, “I was this only in
order to become what I can be” (“Je n’ai été ceci que pour devenir ce que je puis être”
(Ecrits, p.251). If the process of analysis amounts to that conclusion, it endorses an
already existing alienation, that is usually accompanied by a negative certainty in the
patient: there is no alternative. The art of the analyst, says Lacan, aims at the suspension
of such certainties (notice that he talks about the certainties of the subject – this should
read: the certainties of the ego) (Ecrits, p. 251).

Nevertheless, when we look at the elaborations of this full speech, we have to conclude
that these elaborations come down to the reconstruction of the patient’s history,
especially the hidden and the censured part of his history. Lacan provides us with a
beautiful enumeration of the places where the truth is inscribed: the monuments of the
body, the archival memories, the family legends etcetera (259). This conclusion
becomes all the stronger when we read that verbalization of these inscribed truths
relates the past to the present as necessities to come. So, how does this differ from the
idea that the subject is determined by his past?

In my reading, this is one of the major difficulties of this paper – Lacan is leaving a
certain conception of the Unconscious, he is introducing something new, but he is still in
between. In the very same quote, the difference between the old deterministic view and
his new conception resides in one word: “Let’s be categorical: in psychoanalytic
anamnesis, what is at stake is not reality, but truth, because the effect of full speech is to
reorder past contingencies by conferring on them the sense of necessities to come,  (…”)
(Ecrits, p. 256). We do not have to recover the real facts, no, we are addressing the truth.
If we want to define what this truth stands for, based on the Discourse de Rome, we are
at a loss – it will take Lacan a number of years to grasp the implications of his own
analytic experience. In the Rome Discourse, we can only feel the direction this will lead
to.

True speech is characterized by a commitment with a perspective on the future, based

on the past. And the core element in this commitment is desire in relation to the Other,
meaning that the core of true speech might be characterized as empty. It is precisely this
emptiness in true speech that opens the possibility for change.

There are at least two new ideas in this approach: emptiness and the Other. In this
paper, the focus is on the second one, meaning the dialectics of desire in relation to the
unconscious. Whilst Lacan refreshes our knowledge about the freudian unconscious, e.g.
in the following quote: “The unconscious is the chapter of my history that is marked by
a blank or occupied by a lie (…)” (Ecrits, p. 259) – he introduces his audience to
something new. The subject “goes far beyond what is experienced ‘subjectively’ by the
individual” and “the unconscious of the subject is the discourse of the other” (Ecrits, p.
265). Even more, this discourse goes much further than a relation between two people,
and if we don’t understand this, then neither our theory nor our technique will do.

This brings us to the second section, Symbol and language as structure and limit of the
psychoanalytic field.

The previous section addressed speech and left us with the question about the subject.
This second section addresses language, and will leave us with other questions. A better
title would have been: “Signifier and Language as Structure…” etc. The way in which
Lacan uses ‘symbol’ in this paper has created a number of misunderstandings, especially
as the idea of symbol evokes a more or less stable relationship with a more or less
traditional signification – e.g. the symbol ‘heart’ for love. For Lacan it is exactly the
opposite, the relationship between a signifier and a signified is arbitrary, as was put
forward in the structural linguistics by de Saussure. Because this relationship is
arbitrary, we, the speaking beings, might make our own choice and name things as it
suits us – but this is not allowed, because language has made the choice, long before our
time – hence the field of language. Speech is our individual endeavor in this
transindividual field, as is obvious in the following: “The unconscious is that part of
concrete discourse qua transindividual” (Ecrits, p. 258). In view of the arbitrary
relationship, signification is based on the convention of a group – the Other – whilst an
actual signification is produced within the chain of signifiers via the laws inherent in
language. Free association is not free at all, but demonstrates how the selection and
combination of the signifiers follow the same rules, meaning that they are synonymous
with the unconscious processes.

In this section Lacan illustrates these ideas on the basis of three major works of Freud.
The first one is of course The Interpretation of Dreams, with the dream work and the
unconscious thought processes interpreted as linguistic processes. This is a return to
Freud via linguistics – interesting and important, but still: it is a return. In the same
paragraph, we find something new as well: instead of following Freud about the dream
being a wish fulfillment, Lacan uses the dream to demonstrate that man’s desire finds its
meaning and sense in the desire of the other. (Ecrits, p. 268) And immediately he
corrects the misunderstanding that this might provoke: this does not mean that man
desires something or someone that belongs to the other, it has nothing to do with a
primal jealousy or envy. No, man desires to be recognized by the other via the other’s
desire for him. This is Lacan combining Hegel and Freud.

The next one is The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, where Lacan finds ample evidence
that a symptom is structured as a language (Ecrits, p. 269). I will come back to this
sentence in my final part, because we have to connect it to the well-known saying “The
unconscious is structured as a language” – as we will see, at the time of seminar eleven,
based on his new conception about the unconscious, he will consider symptoms as the
always failing productions of the unconscious. Anyhow, in this section of the Rome
Discourse, there is something remarkable. Instead of focusing on the many linguistic
illustrations in Freud’s book which operate directly on the signifier, he stresses Freud’s
example of the apparent chance combination of numbers and the determination that
lies hidden in them. This has to do with Lacan’s hope of turning psychoanalysis into a
science, albeit it a new kind of science. The same example returns in The Purloined
Letter, especially in the appendix. It is by no means a coincidence that this paper is put
in front of the Ecrits, against the chronological order of the other papers – it expresses
the same hope. A number of pages in the Rome Discourse testify to it, especially in the
last part of this section.

This is an important theme as well, in the Rome Discourse, but there is not enough time
to go into it. One of the Ph.D. students in my department, David Schrans, is working on
this part, and in his opinion the second chapter of the Rome Discourse can be read as a
sort of pamphlet for Lacan’s own project for a scientific psychoanalysis. Not only does
he demonstrate his adherence to a structuralist conception of language, he explicitly
states his hope of placing psychoanalysis at the heart of the conjectural sciences. These
sciences start from a basic assumption, an axiom if you will – in the case of
psychoanalysis this would be: “the unconscious is structured as language” -  and the
project is to proceed by rigorously constructing the relations between the different
elements they encounter in their field in the hope of finding the laws that operate
between them. This results in a mode of comprehension that has repercussions on the
way in which interventions are made. As such, Lacan’s agenda is not only of an
epistemological nature, but also an ethical one. David Schrans is currently working on
an English-language article that elaborates on these points (Schrans, D.).

Finally, the third of Freud’s works where Lacan demonstrates the function and the field
of language and speech is the one about the Witz. Again, Lacan points us to something
that is usually missed: the fact that a true Witz makes no sense. This foreshadows an
essential shift in the analytic praxis: we do not have to recover hidden, censured
meanings – as we may gather from certain passages in his discourse de Rome. At the
end of the day, symptoms are meaningless, they make no sense, and we have to focus on
the dialectical structure beyond these supposed meanings. Later, at the time of seminar
XI, he will tell us that a psychoanalytic interpretation aims at non-sense, the absence of
meaning; and in different places in his work, he will say that a psychoanalysis without
laughter is a failed one.  I will come back in the final part of my talk to this important
idea when I address the question of the subject as a truly lacanian notion.

This application of linguistics to the praxis of psychoanalysis might be nothing more

than that: an application that elucidates a number of hitherto mysterious processes. But
Lacan goes a lot further, based on yet another important reference, namely Lévi-Strauss
and, behind Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss (Essai sur le don). Language means exchange,
and exchange means law, in the most fundamental meaning of the word. What is given,
is less important than the exchange itself, because the fact of giving and receiving
determines a recognition. Again, this is new: it introduces psychoanalysis in the field of
intersubjectivity, not because there are two people involved, but because every one of
us functions within a symbolically determined system of exchanges that determines
every possible relationship, and this even before someone opens his or her mouth.
Many years later, this will be one of the core ideas in the theory of the four discourses.
This determination operates via what Lacan in 1953 still calls symbols, but again,
‘signifier’ would have been much more appropriate. A decade later, at the time of
seminar XI, he will abandon the idea of intersubjectivity and replace it by the structural
relationship between the subject and the big Other as determinative for the becoming of
the subject.

In hindsight, this is already present in the Rome Discourse. He instructs his audience
that the symbol creates the thing – even the thing that man is:  “Man thus speaks, but it
is because the symbol has made him a man” (Ecrits, p. 276). Language imposes a
symbolically determined system of exchange in a structure of kinship, in which every
individual speaker is assigned his or her position. This never ending exchange has to do
with a fundamental debt – later on in the Rome Discourse, we’ll learn that the symbol is
the murder of the thing. The superseding law is identified with the symbolic father or
the name of the father.

But the trouble is that human desire requires recognition and this introduces a number
of interferences. From this point onwards, says Lacan, we can see that the problem
resides in the relation between speech and language in the subject (279). He describes
three paradoxes in this relation. The first one concerns psychosis, where the dialectical
exchange is missing; the second one concerns neurosis, where the linguistic
mechanisms coincide with the unconscious processes; and the third concerns the
scientific objectifications of discourse that lead to a petrifying alienation.

More than half a century later, that is, in our contemporary time, the third paradox has
become omnipresent. “For this is the most profound alienation of the subject (…) when
the subject begins to talk to us about himself” (Ecrits, p. 281). Modern man identifies
with what a supposedly scientific society bestows upon him, telling him who he is, how
he has to eat, to drink, to sleep, to think, to make love etcetera. Even telling him from
what kind of disorder he suffers. As you may have experienced yourselves, during the
first clinical interview, most of our patients present us with their own diagnostic label
found on the internet. To give you an idea of the magnitude this has taken today: a
contemporary American receives 3000 ads per day, which is a continuous
indoctrination. In Lacan’s words: “Here it is a wall of language that blocks speech,…”
(Ecrits, p. 282). The consequence of this wall was immortalized even earlier by T.S. Eliot
(The Hollow Men):

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Notice the fact that even Eliot starts from an original emptiness – I will come back to
that immediately. The effect of these supposedly scientific objectifications is comparable
to the first paradox in the relation between speech and language. Lacan recognizes this
first paradox in psychosis, but there is one important exception compared to
contemporary alienation: in psychosis, we are addressing something authentic. Here,
this is no longer the case, the enormous objectification bestowed upon us makes it very
hard to address the subject that is floating on top of it.

In the meantime, this has taken a dimension that goes way beyond the purely
quantitative aspect – 3000 advertisments a day is a lot, but there is even a more
fundamental problem. As Lacan explained earlier, with his reference to Rabelais, the
symbolic order functions based on a debt, on something that is structurally lacking.
Much later in his work, he will coin this as the symbolic castration – the original loss, at
birth, of eternal life that is endorsed by the introduction of the subject in the symbolic
order, where we lose the immediacy of the thing. This loss leads to a never ending
exchange between the subject and the Other, (Ce qui ne cesse pas de ne pas s’écrire, That
which never stops not being written) and to typically human creativity.

Today, this has disappeared, the message coming from contemporary discourse brings a
massive denial of symbolic castration. The message is clear: there is no structural lack
whatsoever, no symbolic debt either, there is a perfect answer to everything. Find the
right product, have the cash ready, and your problem is solved. Enjoy! In matters of
counseling and psychotherapy, this has created the illusion that there is a scientifically
proven evidence-based answer for every problem, once the patient has been assessed
correctly and thoroughly. If the treatment turns out badly, something must be wrong
with the patient, because the system is correct as it is scientifically proven.

This illustrates a shift in the field of science that will allow Lacan many years later (In
“Science and truth,” “La science et la vérité”) to compare contemporary science to
paranoia. Just like paranoia, science ‘does not want to know’ and rejects or forecloses
the truth in its status as basic cause – the truth meaning symbolic castration and the
ensuing basic uncertainty.

This might sound a bit esoteric, but the consequences are huge and real, and in the
meantime, they are becoming obvious. Today, everything has to be under control,
everything has to be predictable, there is no room for contingencies and uncertainties.
Whilst the patriarchy of the former times accepted mistakes based on original sin, our
contemporary Big Brother is merciless: if something goes wrong, then someone has to
be blamed, because the system itself is perfect. Last year we had a very alarming
example of such a paranoid reading of science: six Italian scientists have been sentenced
to six years in prison over statements they made prior to a 2009 earthquake that killed
300 people in the town of L’Aquila. Their predictions were not adequate, hence they
have to be punished.

In 1953, Lacan warned against this kind of scientifically endorsed alienation, adding
that we, as analysts, should surely not contribute to it. At the same time he was quite
confident that we were heading for a new science, where the opposition between exact
and conjectural sciences would be erased. In his own words: “This new order simply
signifies a return to a notion of true science (“Ce nouvel ordre ne signifie rien d’autre
qu’un …; ” (Ecrits, p. 284).

It is almost painful to read those pages today, because it has turned out exactly the
opposite. The question about truth has disappeared under tons of supposedly scientific
quantifications and the liberal arts are on the brink of disappearing from the scientific
curriculum – what Lacan calls ‘le renversement positiviste’, the positivist reversal is
more present than ever before.

The second section of the Rome Discourse ends with a strong argument in favor of
reconsidering time – instead of measuring time in terms of clocks based on gravity, we
should understand time as an intersubjective element that structures our thinking and
our actions. If we succeed in formalizing those essential dimensions, Lacan says, this
will provide us with a scientific foundation, both for the theory and the praxis of
analysis.

This is clear from the title of the third section, ”The Resonances of Interpretation and the
Time of the Subject in Psychoanalytic Technique.” One word sounds a bit strange: the
resonances. As we will see, this is a key idea. In this last part of his discourse, Lacan
returns to analytic praxis: how to arrange our work in such a way that the analysand
achieves full speech?  Copying Freud’s style is not a good idea, we have to follow the
principles that governed his interventions. As is obvious from Freud’s case-studies,
these have to do with the dialectics of self-consciousness (“la dialectique de la
conscience de soi”), and even more particularly with the decentering of this
consciousness of the self (Ecrits, p. 292). This echoes what Lacan had already said in the
first part: “For in the work he does to reconstruct it for another, he encounters anew the
fundamental alienation that made him construct it like another, and that has always
destined it to be taken away from him by another” (Ecrits, p.249). The resulting
paradigm has everything to do with the structurally determined division of the subject,
there is no such a thing as a complete individual.

At that point, Lacan refers to what he calls “the primary language” of desire, deciphered
by Freud and systemized by Ernest Jones. In the light of Lacan’s later theory, this part of
the Rome Discourse has to be seriously amended. Symbols may have a more or less
privileged relationship to certain signifieds, the fact remains that they are signifiers.
Moreover, the enumeration by Ernest Jones of the primary significations comes down to
what Lacan will summarize later under the heading of S de A barrée – life and death,
sexuality and the body are precisely those parts of the real for which there is no apt
representation. The myriads of ‘symbols’ referring to them testify to this structural lack
in the symbolic order.

Further in the text of the Rome Discourse, Lacan anticipates his later theory. unlike
Jones and the post-freudians, he does not interpret these symbols, he evokes their
power by operating on their resonances, that is: on their ambiguity or equivocality. This
is all the more important because speech may transform the subject via the relationship
with the one who speaks (Ecrits, p. 296). This has nothing to do with sign language or
with communication, as in the case of the honey bees, quite the contrary. The
intervention of the analyst has to be invocative rather than informative. The reason why
is found in something that is so obvious that it is often enough neglected: the analytic
praxis is a dialectical enterprise, the analysand is looking for himself by sending a
message to the analyst. The risk with informative and explanatory interpretations is
that the analyst gives an answer, that is, that the analyst instead of recognizing the
subject, objectifies the patient. A classic example in this respect is what happened
between Freud and Dora. As an eighteen-year-old intelligent adolescent in Victorian
Vienna, she was desperately looking for her female identity and her sexual desire via a
newly formed oedipal triangle with the K-couple. Although Freud enters the dialectical
exchange, he fails to recognize Dora’s desire by giving her all too soon what he
considers to be the right answers (Ecrits, p. 305).

A hundred years later, in contemporary psychiatry and psychotherapy, this kind of

mistake has become the rule. Today, patients are told why they are patients, what the
denomination of their disorders is and how they should live with it. The expression
“psycho-education” is used without any irony whatsoever. As I said earlier, this risk was
already mentioned by Lacan in the second section of the Rome Discourse, where he
criticized alienating scientific objectifications. The result of such interventions is that
the subject identifies with such language and in the process loses itself because he or
she is turned into an object (299-300).

At that point of the text, Lacan starts elaborating his view on time and temporality, with
respect to the subject and to the analytic praxis. There is a really beautiful quote to give
here: “What is realized in my history is neither the past definite as what was, since it is
no more, nor even the perfect as what has been in what I am, but the future anterior as
what I will have been, given what I am in the process of becoming” (“Ce qui se réalise
dans mon histoire”) (Ecrits, p.300).
It is not an easy sentence, and the trouble in understanding it has everything to do with
the gist of it, namely uncertainty. The subject constitutes itself in his speech to the
Other; the realization of the subject is always a question of becoming. The role of the
other is important, and it is here that Lacan talks about the responsibility of the analyst.
The analyst may teach the patient to get hold of himself as an object, be it an imaginary
one – see alienation – and hence operate in the service of resistance. Or the analyst may
disalienate, unalienate the subject, which is the necessary condition for change (Ecrits,
p. 304).  This is the ‘advent’ of true speech and the realization by the subject of his
history in its relation to the future (Ecrits, p. 302).

These two alternative possibilities are sharply delineated by Lacan. Either analytic
practice is reduced to a fantasmatic relationship between the analyst and the patient
analogous to a kind of dry lovemaking – he refers to the practice of ‘bundling’ – based on
a shared illusion (Ecrits, p. 308). This illusion makes us believe that the analyst has to
look beyond the wall of language for the reality of his patient — a patient who believes
that the analyst knows the truth about him beforehand. Or, in contrast to this illusion,
we find Lacan’s conception: analytic practice is a dialectical relation where the analyst
refrains from intervening, and thus guides the associations of the subject in the
direction of the realization of his truth.

This refraining from intervention brings Lacan to what is at first sight a paradox: one of
the analyst’s refusals to respond has a huge impact on the reality of the analytic session,
namely when the analyst intervenes with regard to the actual duration of a session. This
introduces a tricky subject, the relationship between time and analysis – probably one
of the most difficult things to think about.

By way of introduction, Lacan reminds us of what is obvious. It is impossible to predict

the total duration of an analysis. Even more so: Freud’s intervention in this respect with
the Wolf man proves that it is a very bad idea to put a fixed term on the duration,
because this confirms the illusion of the analysand that the analyst knows everything
about him beforehand. The same reasoning can be applied for the termination of each
individual session, because suspending a session will always be experienced by the
analysand as a punctuation of his discourse. Instead of deploring this, we should use it,
says Lacan, because it gives us a possibility for intervention that is neglected when we
are sticking to a standard time. For example, obsessional patients discover soon enough
the advantages of a standard time limit, as it suits their typical defense system. Using a
variable duration makes this impossible.

This makes sense, especially in view of the obsessional stance towards death. What is
unclear from Lacan’s reasoning is why this variable duration became soon enough
synonymous with short sessions. As is well-known, this was a bridge too far for the IPA
and one of the main reasons for Lacan’s expulsion.

Anyhow, duration and termination are intimately linked to the final closure, meaning
death, as was already announced by the introductory quote coming from the
classic Satyricon. The last part of the Rome Discourse treats this subject, first of all in
relation to the obsessional who awaits the death of the other, but soon enough on a
much larger scale. At the beginning of his discourse, Lacan had criticized the reduction
of psychoanalysis to an instinct theory, let alone to neurobiology. Instead of that, he
promotes the function and field of language and speech. In the final pages, he criticizes
the all too easy reading of the death instinct that combines it with a kind of primordial
masochism. Instead of that, he will put forward an essential relationship between death
and the symbolic order, meaning between death and the subject.

That there is an essential relationship between being human and death was already
known from philosophy. Linking it to the symbolic order and the becoming of the
subject as such is new. Together with the section on time, this is yet another difficult
part of the Rome Discourse.

For his final theory, Lacan refers to Freud on the life and death drive, Eros and
Thanatos, i.e. the pre-Socratic Philia and Neikos. The subject that is about to be longs for
an original mythical union, as present in Eros – that is why the child in Freuds ‘Beyond
the pleasure principle” repeats its Fort-Da game endlessly, in an effort to regain what is
lost. This loss does not concern the mother, nor the mother’s breast, as every young
mother experiences, when she tries to sooth her child – whatever she gives, it will never
be enough. What the child wants to reinstall is the original union from before the
separation, the union that stood for eternal life as well. The human child accompanies
his repetition by symbols, in an effort to gain mastery. This is already clear in Freud’s
example of the Fort and Da repetitive game.

For Lacan, the net result of this repetition and especially of the use of signifiers, is
exactly the opposite. The use of signifiers endorses the original loss of the object. This is
already present in the structural linguistics of de Saussure, although in a much more
prosaic way. The signifier has only a loose, arbitrary relationship with the signified, and
has nothing to do with the actual referent. In lacanian terms, the separation with the
thing is irrevocably installed by the use of the signifier. More particularly, the separation
between mother and child, between subject and Other, is irrevocably installed once they
speak.

For Lacan, this separation from the Real – mind you, in the Rome Discourse, he does not
yet use the Real in that sense – by the introduction of the symbol implies the death of
the thing. At the same time, this means that the desire of the subject is eternalized: the
subject will never be able to join the object, because the symbol has made that
impossible. That is the irony: the means to reinstall the union of Eros, are at the same
time the cause of the separation by Thanatos. At that point in the text, we find a well
known quote: “Thus the symbol first manifests itself as the killing of the thing, and this
death results in the endless perpetuation of the subject’s desire” (‘Ainsi le symbole se
manifeste d’abord comme meurtre de la chose et cette mort constitue dans le sujet
l’éternisation de son désir’) (Ecrits, p.319).

In the final pages of the Rome Discourse, Lacan hints at the effects of what he will later
call the advent or the becoming of the subject. A naïve romantic reading might put the
accent on the desire for the ever lost object, while lamenting the human condition. A
freudian reading takes both basic drives into account, one driving us towards union, the
other towards separation. A lacanian reading stresses the transmission – the transfer –
of this conflict in the dialectical exchanges between subject and Other and its effects
(Ecrits, p. 319). What seems to be the desire of the subject, comes down to an
identification with the desire of the other. In an attempt to affirm oneself, the subject
may react with the possibility of its own death: “He asserts himself with respect to
others as a death wish” (“c’est comme désir de mort en effet qu’il s’affirme pour les
autres”) (Ecrits, p.320). This idea will receive a central importance at the time of
seminar XI when Lacan elaborates his theory on the becoming of the subject. The
central question of the subject-to-be to the Other is: “Veut-t-il me perdre?,” can he afford
to lose me?

“Can he lose me? The phantasy of one’s death, of one’s disappearance, is the first
object that the subject has to bring into play in this dialectic, and he does indeed
bring it into play (…).” (Seminar 11, p.214)

This brings me to the final part of my talk. What are the important changes in Lacan’s
theory, with respect to the Rome Discourse? The focus of these changes are obvious
from the title of the introductory paper that heads the Rome Discourse in the Ecrits: “On
the subject who is finally in question.” The main part of these changes are elaborated
some ten years later, in seminar XI.

My thesis runs as follows: the Rome Discourse, in combination with the early seminars,
presents us with Lacan’s return to Freud. From seminar X onwards, we meet with a
different Lacan, one who presents a new theory of psychoanalysis. Its innovative
character resides in three typically lacanian concepts or notions. First of all, his theory
on the Unconscious. Secondly, the concept of the subject. Thirdly, the notion that there
is a structurally determined lack. Of course, the gist of these ideas can already be found
in the early Lacan as well, but in my reading, seminar XI is a turning point.

I started my talk with a short note on the historical circumstances. The battle between
Lacan and the IPA was concluded in the fall of 1963, when he was officially expelled
from the International Association. As a result, in the fall of 63, he stopped his seminar
after one session. It is certainly not a coincidence that the subject of the seminar that he
intended to give, was announced as “The Names of the Fathers.”  In January 1964, he
starts a new seminar that afterwards will be known as “The four fundamental concepts
of psychoanalysis.” At the same time, it is the start of a new psychoanalytic school that
in the years to come will develop into an international movement alongside the IPA,
obliging the latter to reconsider a number of things. In my opinion, without Lacan,
psychoanalysis as such would not have survived.

To go back to this new psychoanalysis, I can argue that the lacanian Lacan will address
Freud’s fundamental problems. Studying Freud ends with at least three major
questions. For the early Freud, trauma is very important – but it is hard to understand
how a trauma, coming from the Other, finds an inscription in the Unconscious. The same
difficulty concerns desire: all the trouble concerning our desires is due to the
prohibition by the Other – but lifting this prohibition does not present us with the
expected result; quite the contrary, and hence the idea of an analysis being
interminable. Finally, a psychoanalytic treatment amounts to the patient becoming
conscious of a number of things – but it is the transferential relationship towards the
analyst that makes this (im)possible. These three problems can be summarized in one
question: whose unconscious are we talking about?
Lacan’s return to Freud, as highlighted in the Rome Discourse, makes explicit what is
already present in Freud: the Unconscious is structured as a language. The unconscious
thought processes come down to linguistic mechanisms that are governed by inherent
rules, or even laws, as Lacan calls them. He stressed the fact that we should not be
seduced by the meaning of words, quite the contrary. It is the material aspect of the
signifier that appears prominently in this linguistic determination. It is precisely this
aspect that explains why free association is not free at all, and how symptoms are
determined. Let me give you an example, coming from a very brief clinical vignette,
presented by Freud in a letter to Fliess, dated the 29 th of December 1897.

The patient is a young man, whose main problem is what is called in German
“Unschlü ssigkeit” – in English translation: he is unable to make up his mind. The English
expression is really beautiful if you think about it. This is the first thing in the morning
that everyone of us has to do, we have to make up our mind, remembering who we are,
where we are, what is expected from us, and sometimes this “making up our mind” is
less self-evident. For this patient, it is a continuous problem. During a session, he tells
about a scene going back to the age of ten. He was pursuing a beetle, trying to catch it,
and at that moment, he experienced a panic attack. It is not the first time that this
memory pops up during his analysis, but this particular session, he adds that it must
have been a ladybird, and starts to laugh. It is the end of the session, and Freud reacts
more or less dismissive – there must be more to it, he says. The next session brings a
surprising analysis. Beetle in German is Käfer, a ladybird beetle is a Marienkäfer. The
patient was raised in the Viennese bourgeoisie, meaning that he had a French nanny and
that his parents from time to time spoke French. The memory about the beetle proves to
be a screen memory, because it evokes the French “Que faire”, which sounds exactly the
same as “Kä fer.” “Que faire” means “What do I have to do?,” and was the expression used
by his mother when she was dating the man who became later the father of the patient.
The patient has learnt about this expression when he overheard a conversation
between his grandmother, the mother of his mother, and his aunt. “Que faire?” – will I
marry this man or not? The determination via the signifier becomes even more obvious,
if we add “Marienkä fer” – se marier, in French, means to get married. “Kä fer”, in German
is also a slightly derogatory expression for a woman, and on top of all this, the first
name of the patient’s mother was Marie.

This is one of the many examples that we can find in Freud, illustrating Lacan’s thesis
about the unconscious being structured as a language. There is a determinative line
running from the obviously oedipal symptom ‘Unschlü ssigkeit’ to the mother’s doubts
whether she would marry this particular man, the father of the patient, or not.

As beautiful as this analysis may be, it leaves us with the impression of a determination
from which it is quite hard to escape. Indeed, if everything is determined, there is no
possibility for change. Lacan confronted us with this problem in his Rome Discourse as
well, together with an embryonic answer. The gist of it has to do with a completely new
formula:the unconscious is the discourse of the Other.

I still find it strange that this particular formula has not raised more attention, because
it is really shocking. Our unconscious, what we consider to be the most intimate part of
our subjectivity, is not ours; on the contrary, it comes from the other. This is a
revolutionary idea, but at the same time, it was there from the beginning. It is even
obvious in Freud’s small vignette. If we focus too much on the linguistic wordplay, we
run the risk of overseeing the most fundamental part in this symptom formation. That
is: the “Kä fer/Que faire” expression comes from the mother, just as the symptom is
coming from her as well: will I be able to make up my mind to marry this particular
person or not? Freud’s patient is troubled by the symptoms and the neurotic conflict of
his mother, that is the problem. In the light of Lacan’s new theory, the therapeutic
question is: how can we escape the Unconscious of the Other?

His answer brings a new elaboration on the Unconscious as such, in combination with
his two other innovations, meaning the theory of the subject and of the structural lack.

Seminar eleven starts with his attempt to redefine the unconscious. In this respect, the
title of the second chapter is very telling: “The Freudian Unconscious and Ours.” The
way in which he defines the unconscious is indeed new: the unconscious is not a topos,
a place; it is an always failing process that appears between cause and effect, precisely
at the point of failure. Something opens but is almost immediately closed. What happens
in the gap in between, is a failure, and that is precisely what Lacan calls the unconscious
operating on a causal level. The strange thing about causality is that a cause in itself is
not determined. Hence the status of the unconscious: for Lacan, it is something pre-
ontological. Hence the negative expressions he uses: the un-born, the unrealized. In
Lacan’s own words: “Because the Unconscious shows us the gap through which the
neurosis adheres to a real – a real that may well not be determined” (Sém. XI, p. 25). In
the same lesson, he stresses something that is very important for our analytic practice:
“It is always about the subject as indeterminate” “c’est toujours du sujet en tant
q’idéterminé qu’il s’agit” (Sém. XI, p.35). This is important because it opens a possibility
for change, in contrast to the deterministic viewpoint.

We can only imagine how surprised his audience must have been, when they were
listening to all this. The unconscious operating as a causal gap, that in itself is not
determined? That is pre-ontological? And what about the unconscious being structured
as a language, what about the unconscious as the discourse of the Other? The answer to
these questions lies in the differentiation made by Lacan between the unconscious as
such and the productions of the unconscious, meaning the symptoms. The productions
are determined, and this determination explains why we can work on them in our
praxis via the free association. In contrast, their cause is not determined, and that is why
there is an opening for change.

In order to explain the difference between causality and determination, between the
unconscious as such and the productions of the unconscious, Lacan refers to the
Aristotelian theory about tuchè and automaton. Tuchè stands for the non-determined
cause, automaton is the determined series that follows (Verhaeghe, P., 2002). The
combination between the two of them is put forward in a strong statement: “Now, at
this date and time, I am certainly in a position to introduce in the domain of causality
[i.e. tuchè, the Unconscious], the law of the signifier [i.e. automaton, the productions of
the Unconscious], in the place where this gap is produced” (Sém. XI, p.26).

In his further elaborations, Lacan will argue that the chain of signifiers contains an inner
determination, leading us to the point where the determination as such stops and
confronts us with a gap. In its turn, this gap causes a new start of the signifying chain;
leading again to a renewed confrontation with the gap. Both automaton and tuchè have
to do with what Lacan will coin as the subject, and this is the second innovation, after
his redefining of the unconscious.

Within lacanian circles, even today, the idea of the subject is more often than not used in
a way that goes against Lacan’s theory (Verhaeghe, P.,1998; Vanheule, S., & Verhaeghe,
P., 2009). Often enough, it is used as a more sophisticated denomination for subjectivity,
and in the worst of cases as a synonym for a person or even for the ego. So let us ask a
simple question: what is Lacan’s definition? His answer is rather peculiar, because in his
definition, he does not start from the subject, quite the contrary, the starting point is the
signifier: “The signifier is what represents the subject for another signifier” (“Le
signifiant, c’est ce qui représente le sujet auprès d’un autre signifiant”). This explains
the structurally determined division of the subject, from one signifier to another to yet
another, etcetera. A graphic representation of this process of subject formation might
look like this:

As you can see I have already added the object (a) at the bottom. In the first lessons of
seminar XI, Lacan explains to his audience how and why the chain of signifiers contains
a determination; this is the automaton. The cause of this chain and its determination has
to do with a structural lack, as expressed by the idea of the object (a).

If you think about it, this means that the lacanian subject is a production of the
unconscious. That is: it is a symptom, we could even consider it as the symptom par
excellence. At the same time, this means that the subject is always a failure, it is the half
finished product of a process that never manages to get through, to get fully realized –
so it will remain forever at this half finished stage. The signifying chain keeps running,
and the subject is continuously but never fully produced, whilst being divided in and by
this very movement.

This inner determination will make it possible to deconstruct this chain, and hence, to
deconstruct the subject via free association. But this determination is never a total one,
because the reason why the chain itself starts has to do with an original lack that can
never be answered. This is the tuchè. Later in his theory, Lacan will coin this as the Real,
and more particularly the Real at three important points: the Woman does not exist; the
Other of the Other does not exist; there is no such thing as the sexual relationship. In my
summary: all three of them come down to the drive, more particularly that traumatic
part of the drive that can never be represented — it is literally unimaginable,
unthinkable, undreamed-of. The last expression is truly psychoanalytical: we can’t even
represent this part of the Real in our dreams — it is the point where the dream wakes
the dreamer, usually in a state of anxiety.
So, the subject is the product of a dialectic process between cause and determination. A
few times I have used the expression ‘inner determination,’ and this is correct as long as
we stick to the chain as such. The clinical vignette with the Kä fer/Que faire is an
illustration of such an inner determination. The same example demonstrates that this
determination comes from the Other, for the simple reason that language comes from
the Other. At this point, we meet with the combination of two well-known lacanian
theses: “the Unconscious is structured as a language” and “the unconscious is the
discourse of the Other.” This last formula might as well be understood as: “The subject is
the discourse of the Other.” This explains why the subject is never fully realized, on the
contrary, it joins the pre-ontological status of the unconscious.

The production process might be rendered graphically as follows:

You could say that this is a screen shot of a process that never stops. An attempt to
represent the continuity of this process might give this:
Later on, in seminar 20, Lacan will refer to this process in a well known saying: “It is
that which never stops not being written” (Lacan, 1975, p. 55, 87, 132).

Let us return now to an important part in this reasoning about the subject, and that is
the relation to the Other and the possibility for change. As I said earlier on, based on
Lacan, in this respect a new question might be formulated as follows: how can we ever
escape the Unconscious of the Other and its determinative effect? In clinical terms: what
are the possibilities for change, based on a psychoanalytic treatment?

Until now, I have focused on the first process in what Lacan coins as  “the advent of the
subject,” “L’avènement du sujet” (and not: “the development of the subject”), that is the
alienation or identification with the signifiers of the Other, because we want to answer
the desire of the Other. The result of this process is the empty speech of the ego, as the
imaginary instance par excellence. By way of illustration, Lacan quoted T.S. Eliot in the
Rome Discourse: “We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men / Leaning together /
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!”.  These identifications are the building elements of
the subject, and present us with the automaton.

But there is a second process as well: the separation, based on the confrontation with
the lack in the Other and even beyond this Other. Separation is the opposite process, in
as much as it redirects the subject towards its supposed being, thus opening a
possibility of escape from all-determining alienation. It presents us even with a
possibility of choice, albeit a precarious one. The two processes of alienation and
separation are circular and dissymmetrical. The cause of this continuous movement is
the existence of a twofold lack. The process of alienation conducts the subject through
the signifying chain of the Other. Inevitably, it will stumble upon the lack of the Other,
indicated by the slash: ‘He is saying this to me, but what does he truly desire?’. Thus
confronted with the nameless desire of the Other, the subject will produce a very typical
answer: ‘Am I the one who can fulfill his desire?’. This means that the subject answers
the lack of the Other by presenting his or her own disappearance: ‘Can the Other afford
to lose me’?’.

At that point, dissymmetry enters into the dialectics: the lack of the Other, within the
signifying chain, is answered by a presentation of the lack at the anterior level, i.e. death
as a real loss. Hence, the non-reciprocity and dissymmetry, by which the process topples
over into the direction of alienation again.

Of course, this elaboration in seminar XI sounds rather tragic, and in a certain way, it
echoes existentialistic philosophy with suicide as the preeminent example of freedom.
In his later work, Lacan will accentuate a more positive side. We need the opening in the
Other and the Symbolic, just as we need the certainty of death, because otherwise choice
would be unthinkable or irrelevant. We can take our distance from the other and his
desire and make a number of choices for ourselves. The necessary precondition is the
recognition of a structural lack, and that brings us to the third fundamental lacanian
innovation.

As you may know, one of the major critiques formulated by Lacan on object relations
theory is that it focused too much on the object in all its different pregenital shapes and
forms. As a result, the most important thing tends to be forgotten: the fact that there is
no original object, even the mother is not good enough to answer the primordial lack
that is installed from birth onwards. Lacan goes even further: it is at the very moment of
conception that we lose the most fundamental thing there is, namely eternal life. There
is nothing philosophical about that, because it is a biological fact caused by the meiosis,
the particular cell division that takes place during sexual reproduction. Reproduction
based on mitosis guarantees eternal live; based on meiosis, it guarantees death.
Something flees away at birth, says Lacan, – he talks about a lamella – and that
something is eternal life.

From that moment onwards, the organism – there is not yet a subject – strives to regain
what is lost. Think about Freud and the life and death drives, in this case the Eros drive.
Therefore the child turns to the (m)Other and both of them enter into a dialectical
exchange aiming at reinstalling the original union. Especially the child tries to answer
the lack of the mother, and that is the start of the formation of the subject. Because of
the structural character of the original loss, the identification with the signifiers of her
desire will never be enough. The only result is that the lack receives a kind of upgrade,
to put it in computer terms. It is now turned into a lack on the level of demand and
desire – what does the Other desire from me?  As a result, the ego starts dreaming about
a perfect answer. This is all the more the case once this dialectic exchange moves to the
level of the sexual relationship. There must be someone, out there, who has the phallus,
who has the perfect answer to my lack – and vice versa (This turns object a into a phallic
version, a/-phi).

The net result of this conviction is a never ending process of alienation and separation,
without ever finding the hoped for result. The accompanying anxieties correspond to
the two processes: castration anxiety, as the oedipal version of separation anxiety: I am
not enough, I do not have enough of the phallus to meet the desire of the other. On the
other hand, there is intrusion anxiety: the Other wants too much of me, I have to run
away. The common denominator in both anxieties is the idea that it is possible for the
lack to be answered, only not by me. This is what Lacan coins as the imaginary
castration, as a typically neurotic stance towards the lack of the Other.

Obviously, this is quite different from Freud’s ideas about castration. For Lacan, every
subject is ‘castrated’ (between brackets) from the start, meaning that everyone of us is
marked by an existential loss. The almost automatic answer is to translate this loss into
guilt and into reparation. The two privileged relations where this happens, is the one
between mother and child and later on, between romantic partners. The imaginary
character of this ‘castration’ has to do with the idea of completeness – castration and
loss are exceptions, completeness is normal. In contrast to that, Lacan posits the
symbolic castration and the not-whole (‘le pas tout’): the lack as such is structural and
functions as a basic causality for everything human.

In contrast to pessimistic existential philosophy, this idea is a reason for optimism. The
symbolic castration leaves an opening in the symbolic, in the Other, meaning that every
subject can escape from all-encompassing alienation and determination; this is the
point where we can make something ourselves, independently of the Other. I’ll come
back to this idea, but before that, I want to stay a bit longer with the idea of a
structurally determined lack.
Today, the importance of this idea is becoming more and more obvious, because it has
almost disappeared. In the West, we are living in a discourse that tells us that there
should be no lack whatsoever, that everything is available, that everything is predictable
and controllable. If something is lacking or if something goes wrong, this means that
someone is to blame. This is also the case in psychotherapy and health care. The risk of
such a discourse is total alienation, as was already mentioned by Lacan in Fonction et
Champ de la Parole et du Language. I consider our era as dominated by a perverse Big
Brother discourse, in contrast to the neurotic patriarchal discourse of yesterday. I call it
a perverse discourse, because castration is denied as such – but that is another story.

By way of conclusion, I would like to look at the clinical implications of the Rome
Discourse, albeit in combination with the theory of the advent of the subject. Let me
remind you of the title of the first chapter: “Empty Speech and Full Speech in the
Psychoanalytic Realization of the Subject”. The implication of this title is that the subject
has to be realized by the psychoanalytic treatment. The question is how we can
understand and even encourage this realization? Especially when confronted with a
structural lack? And what about the analysis becoming interminable?

In my reasoning, our clinical work contains two different parts, and in a certain way,
they echo the two processes in the formation of the subject. The first part of our job is
all about analysis. By and large, via free association, we meet with the automaton, the
determination in the signifiers that comes from the Other. This is the unconscious that
Lacan described rather poetically in his Rome Discourse (Ecrits, p. 259). It is obvious
that this is the neurotic part that we have to get rid of. The analytic work, as Freud calls
it, is a work of deconstruction. The clinical vignette about the Kä fer man illustrates the
way this works. The analytic goal then is not the discovery of hidden unconscious
meanings, no, the goal is to get rid of the determining effect of signifiers coming from
the Other. This is what I consider the therapeutic part of our job and in case of neurosis,
a psychoanalytic treatment is really helpful. If someone comes to see me and asks what
analysis could do for him of her, my answer is that he might gain more freedom of
choice, instead of the “Inhibitions, symptoms and anxiety” (“Hemmung, Symptom und
Angst”) he is living in.

The deconstruction part concerns the unconscious as the discourse of the Other. In this
respect, the realization of the subject is by and large a negative one, getting rid of
alienations. But what about the positive part of this realization? The part where the
subject might be able to make choices on its own? This is the tricky side, because more
often than not, it is the point where analysis becomes interminable. This interminability
testifies to the still remaining believe in the Other, resulting in further
identifications/alienations in the subject. The most imaginary alienation is, of course,
the identification with the analyst in the function of the final master. It is quite clear that
this is not Lacan’s idea of a happy ending.

I can refer here to a quote that I gave earlier: “For in the work he does to reconstruct it
for another, he encounters anew the fundamental alienation that made him construct it
like another, and that has always destined it to be taken away from him by
another”(Ecrits, p. 249).
From this point in Lacan’s theory onwards, a whole new reasoning will be developed,
with seminar XX as a kind of highlight. The recognition of the symbolic castration entails
at the same time the impossibility of a final answer for the subject within this symbolic
order. The only solution is that the subject creates a symptom of one’s own – written as
“le sinthome” – in a world that recognizes the not-whole, “le pas tout”. At the end of the
Seminar Encore, Lacan evokes this idea – the creation of a new signifier – in talking
about poetry (Verhaeghe, P. & Declercq, F., 2003).  This conclusion echoes the final
paragraph of seminar XI, where he defines the desire of the analyst as a desire for pure
difference. I cannot think of a better formulation to conclude my paper.

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