A Lacanian Analysis, not without the Bodies
Bernard Seynhaeve
"Lacan aimed at something that would go beyond the notion of the unconscious and what is inscribed in this place is what he called the parlêtre, where the function of the unconscious completes itself of the body, by what is real about the body.
This indicates that interpretation mobilises something of the body. It is a mode of interpretation which requires that it be invested by the analyst and for example that the one and the other bring their bodies.”[1]
I am trying to move forward with [the] questions that have me preoccupied.[2]
You will have noticed that in my title I have written 'the bodies' in the plural, that is, the body of the analysand AND that of the analyst.
I would like to try to clarify why Lacanian psychoanalysis requires and demands the presence of bodies, that of the analysand and that of the analyst. This question is the subject of a passionate debate at the present time, at a time of pandemic when we have to respect what we call 'social distancing' and where we are nevertheless sometimes led to have to use Skype to preserve the link with our analysands. Nevertheless, I affirm that an analytical cure cannot be brought to its term without the presence of [the] bodies of the analysand and the analyst.
What I want to draw attention to in my presentation is that, alongside the physical presence of the analysand, the very last Lacan emphasises the presence of the analyst in the manoeuvre of interpretation. According to the very last teaching of Lacan, the analyst in effect, interprets with his body. It is this thesis of Lacan that I would like to develop.
Not long ago, a question which I did not expect arose in a group of the NLS. A colleague said: "You will see sir, that one day there will be AS who will have done their analysis by Skype". This question is eminently political and arises in our school, the NLS. Those who were in Tel Aviv at the time of our General Assembly in 2019 should remember the debate we had concerning the use of the internet (of Skype) in the cure.
Another question arises for me: what becomes of interpretation at the time of the parlêtre - and no longer at the time of the subject, i.e. interpretation at the time of Lacan’s very last teaching.
Interpretation at the time of the parlêtre
It is with this neologism, the parlêtre, that Lacan will define the unconscious in so far as he defines a knot between the body and the unconscious. From then on, interpretation must necessarily involve the bodies. How? Precisely by trying to make this knotting of body and language resonate. In this respect, what Lacan will then argue concerning the end of the analytical cure, is that interpretation aims to make resonate, or to disturb, the defence.
What is the defence? The defence is a 'psychical device' that Freud postulated from the beginning of his work: a 'primary defence', he specified, to block what he called "threats of unpleasure",[3] and which with Lacan we call 'the real of jouissance', that is to say the impact of language on the body. For the last Lacan, interpretation aims at disturbing the defence insofar as it aims, not at undoing this knot of lalangue and body - this would be a waste of time - but at making what protects the knot of body and language resonate, namely, what Lacan called the sinthome.
On the necessity of the presence of bodies
At the end of his life, Freud had come to the conclusion that psychoanalysis is never-ending because it comes up against the rock of castration in men and the penisneid in women. But with the very last Lacan, it becomes possible to finish analysis by trying to go beyond this rock of castration and beyond the penisneid. It is then no longer a question of orienting the cure on the fantasy, but on the symptom. How? By targeting the real of the jouissance of the speaking body, by trying to get as close as possible to the real of the jouissance that constitutes the knot of the parlêtre, the knot of language and the body, the knot of its sinthome, the knot of the body which enjoys of itself.
This then radically changes the method of interpretation. For Lacan, interpretation no longer aims at the meaning, for example, of the formations of the unconscious. Production of meaning only prolongs the cure, it makes it infinite. Interpretation aims at the jouissance of the parlêtre, the knot, the real, by disturbing the defence. Interpretation consists in making the defence resonate. It tries to touch the real of the body that enjoys of itself.
Hence the question I ask: does this mode of interpretation require the presence of bodies, those of the analyst and the analysand?
Let us begin by noting two clarifications brought by Jacques-Alain Miller.
The first is taken from his interview with the newspaper Libération in 1999:
"Technology elaborates new modes of presence. Real-time remote contact has become commonplace over the course of the century. Whether it is the telephone, now mobile, the Internet or video conferencing, it will continue, it will multiply, it will be omnipresent. But will virtual presence eventually have a fundamental impact on the analytical session? No. Seeing and talking to each other does not make an analytical session. In the session, two are there together, synchronised, but they are not there to see each other, as the use of the couch makes clear. The co-presence in flesh and blood is necessary, if only to bring out the sexual non-rapport. If the real is sabotaged, the paradox vanishes. All modes of virtual presence, even the most sophisticated, will thereupon stumble."[4]
The second is taken from Une fantaisie, his intervention, at the WAP Congress in Comandatuba in 2004.
"Is the unconscious corporal? [...] Is the effect of interpretation due to the use of words or their jaculation? [...] It is necessary to set the tone - moreover, those who have had the good fortune to be able to be able to report on the interpretations of Lacan always repeat them in the tone of Lacan. The poetics of interpretation is a materialism of interpretation. [...] It is therefore necessary to put the body into it in order to bring interpretation to the power of the symptom."[5]
What is a body?
Since it is a matter of identifying what constitutes the joint of body and language, let's ask ourselves the question: what is a body? What is a speaking body, the body of speaking beings, the parlêtre?
During the presentation of the theme of the 10th Congress of the WAP in 2014, J.-A. Miller indicated that "Lacan, at the end of his teaching, said that [...]:"The body is a mystery " He says it in Encore: "The real, I will say, is the mystery of the speaking body, the mystery of the unconscious."[6]
Let's try to clarify this mystery. Miller invites us to make a distinction between what we call a body and a bag of organs, that is, between the body and the flesh. "In the distinction between the body and the flesh, he says, the body shows itself capable of representing, as the surface of inscription, the place of the Other of the signifier. [...] What is mysterious, but undeniable, is what results from the hold of the symbolic on the body. [...] The mystery is [...] that of the union of word and body. As a result of this experience, we can say that it is in the register of the real". The speaking being therefore has a body and uses his body as an instrument to speak. Man is distinguished by being an animal that speaks, but in order to be able to speak he needs a body. To speak, man uses his body. And what is mysterious is this very knotting of language and body; it is that LOM[7] can use his body to speak. And this cannot be explained, it is a mystery, it is a hole in knowledge and it therefore belongs to the register of the real.
But on the other hand, the parlêtre enjoys [jouit] from the use of his body to speak. That's even why he speaks. Even before using his body to communicate, even before addressing the Other, before any demand addressed to the Other, man uses the knotting of the body and language for his jouissance. Lacan says that he enjoys [jouit] of himself. One can even say that this jouissance, the jouissance of the enjoying of oneself, is auto-erotic, autistic, as Lacan specifies.
Another precision: one must postulate a time prior to entering into communication. It is a time when the body is knotted to language. This time must be qualified as traumatic. The percussion of language and body makes a hole; as Lacan tells us, [it] makes a troumatism. It is truly a traumatic percussion of language with the body. The body is struck by language and this produces a trauma.
It is in a second moment that the Other as a structured instance will come into play. To "this body marked by events of jouissance, traumas of lalangue, will then come unconscious effects of meaning,” this is what, as Éric Laurent says, Lacan approaches as effects of knowledge [savoir] "[8]. "Jouissance is experienced, "it is felt [ça se sent]". And it is after this proof of jouissance that the effects of knowledge proper to the signifying effects on the body are produced. One must first have a body, the conditions for jouissance [...] to come to be inscribed in it."[9]
Translation: Alasdair Duncan
Revision: Raphael Montague & Joanne Conway
References
[1] Miller, J.-A., “L’expérience du réel dans la cure analytique”, [1998-1999], Teaching delivered within the framework of the Department of Psychoanalysis University Paris VIII, Lesson of the 27th of January 1999, Unpublished; See Also, “The Six Paradigms of Jouissance”, in Psychoanalytical Notebooks # 34, 2020; “Lacanian Biology and the Event of the Body, Parts I & II”, in The Symptom # 18, 2019, Available online here https://www.lacan.com/symptom/
[2] First part of a text published in N° 126 de la revue Quarto, “Le corps, cette guenille qui nous est si chère.”
[3] Freud, S, The complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud, Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895) S.E. Vol. I, London: The Hogarth Press, 1966, p. 370.
[4] Miller, J-A, “Le divan”, Interview in Libération on the 3rd of July 1999.
[5] Miller, J-A, “Une fantaisie”, in Mental 15, February 2005, p. 26. Cf. (with some variance) “A Fantasy", Comandatuba, 2004, Online here:http://2012.congresoamp.com/en/template.php?file=Textos/Conferencia-de-Jacques-Alain-Miller-en-Comandatuba.html
[6] Lacan, J, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XX, Encore, Transl. Fink, B, London: W.W. Norton & Co, 1998, p. 131.
[7] Lacan, J., “Joyce the Symptom”, in The Seminar of Jacques Lacan Book XXIII, The Sinthome, Transl. A.R. Price, Polity: UK & USA, 2016, p. 147.
[8] Laurent, E., L’envers de la biopolitique, Paris: Le champ freudien, Navarin 2016, p. 59, .16.
[9] Ibid