By Jacques Lacan in Norton Paperback ECRITS: A SELECTION FEMININE SEXUALITY ‘THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS ‘OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS. "THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES L/ Froud's Papers on Technique, ‘THE SEMINAR OF JACQUES LACAN “The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Psychoanalysis, 1954-1955 JACQUES LACAN THE FOUR FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS DN & COMPANY New York « London = 4n& Company, ne 00 ih Avene, New Yar NY 1 1W_W. Norton & Company Li, 10 Coptic Suet, Lendon ISBN O-393-00079-b 10 CONTENTS Preface to the English-Language Edition 's Note 1 Excommunication THE UNCONSCIOUS AND REPETITION 2 The Freudian Unconscious and Ours 7 3 Of the Subject of Certainty 29 — 4 Ofthe Network of Signifies 2 5 Tuché and Automaton 53 OF THE GAZE AS Objet Petit © The Split between the Eye and the Gaze 67 7 Anamorphosis 9 8 The Line and Light or 9 What is a Picture? 105 THE TRANSFERENCE AND THE DRIVE 10 Presence of the Analyst 133 11 Analysis and Truth or the Closure of the Unconscious 146 12 Sexuality in the Defies of the Signifier 149 1 The Deconstruction of the Drive 161 "4 The Partial Drive and its Circuit 7% 15 From Love to the Libido 187 THE FIELD OF THE OTHER 'D BACK TO THE TRANSFERENCE 16 The Subject and the Other: Alienation *7 The Subject and the Other: Aphanisis v6 THE SPLIT BETWEEN THE EYE AND THE GAZE The split of the subject~ The facticity of the trauma - Maurice Merleau-Ponty » The philosophical tradition « Mimicry » The all-seer Inthe dream, it shows To continue. Wiederkolung—let me remind you once again of the etymo- logical reference that I gave you, falen (to haul), of its con- notation of something tiring, exhausting. To haul, to draw. To draw what? Perhaps, playing on the ambiguity of the word in French, to draw lots (tier au sort). This Ziwang, this compulsion, would then direct us towards the obligatory card—if there is only one card in the pack, I can’t draw another. ‘The character of a set, in the mathematical sense ofthe term, possessed by the play of signifiers, and which opposes it for example to the indefiniteness of the whole number, enables us to coneeive a schema in which the function of the obligatory card is immediately applicable. If the subject is the subject of the signifier—determined by it—one may imagine the syn- chronic network as it appears in the diachrony of preferential effects, This is not a question, you understand, of unpredictable statistical effects—it is the very structure of the network that the returns. Through the elucidation of what we call figure that Aristotle's afomaton assumes for . by aulomatime that we sometimes translate finto French the Zuang of the Wiederholungszwang, the com- ulsion to repeat. Lares, I shall give you the facts that suggest that at certain Moments of that infantile monologue, imprudently. termed 67OF THE GAZE egocentric, there are strictly syntactical games to be observed. ‘These games belong to the field that we call pre-conscious, but make, one might say, the bed of the unconscious reserve—to be understood in the sense of an Indian reserve —within the social network, consciow acts, in a latent way, that governs this sy more and more condensed. Condensed beginning of peychical resistance, calls a ‘To say that this more than an appt the resistance of the subject and that first resistance of discourse, when the discourse proceeds towards the condensation around the nucleus. For the expression resistance of the subject too much implies the existence of a supposed ego and it is not ce wwhether—at the approach of this nucleus—it is somed that we can justifiably call an ego. he nucleus must be designated as belonging to the real — the real in so far as the iden it is grounded on what Freud indicates Which assures us that we are in perception by means of the sense of reality that authenticates it What does this mean, if not ‘concerned, this is called awa seven of The Interpretation of Dreams that I approached the whole {question of repetition, it was because the choice of this dream 7 so enclosed, so doubly and triply enclosed as itis, since itis not analysed--is vory revealing here, occurring as it does at the moment when Freud is dealing with the process of the ‘dream in its last resort. Isthereality that determinesthe awaken ing the slight noise against which the empire of the dream and of desire is maintained? Is it not rather something else? Is not that which is expressed in the depths of the anxiety o ‘dream—namely, the most intimate aspects of the relation between the father and the son, which emerges, not so much in that death as in the fact that it is beyond, in the sense of destiny? Between what ceca aif by chan aslepthe candle that overtrnt and he fire, the meaningless event, the accident, the Wied the cement of aigeces ta Fahy cat ote beta what ne we dealin od che inanimate obj a ’ child or an animal—is cont The enclosed aspect of the relatio i eee GE in oe transference does not cor Polis a xt problem, when we approach the funct the transference, will be zo eae lead us to the heart of rej | That is why mr ts dlaletial eet, as precisely through this that the real toa sry great degre the acomp come to lst, because only By following this way wi beat to conceive from what meee Sed nw ‘or, after all, why is the primal sce: 1630 t is we scene a0 traumatic? Why is always to0 carly oF too Tate? Why does the subjet take 69OF THE GAZE either too much pleasure in it—at least, this is how at first we conceived the traumati hhy is the fact here dust jon of the pse ‘yehic, T would say—from the word tuck ‘our horizon that seems factitious in the sexuality, In analytic experience, it is from the fact that the primal scene is sexual empathy thatsustains t lysable, but a Factitious fact. A fai that which appears in the scene so fierce experience of the Wolf Man—the strangeness of race of the penis. {cout where the split in the subject ing, persists—between the return jon of the world that has at ised, what a terrible thing, what has what an idiot he was to fall asleep 5 tracked down in dis. is as through a nightmare, but which, L who am living through own that I am not dreaming to me—threading T jump on to the side itself as a crossroads, between us and re of the way of the subject no far as it s a search for truth is this way to be forged in 7 THE BYE AND THE Gaze our ae of advent, Uy ale level ofthe ale frsped atthe out: of perce sued amentaly ide Ima way asthe and Seenuated lace a Tes not mere chance— pei ihot mere hance—belonging 0 the oder ofthe pure whic thi very week I have sectved a copy of hese Published, posthumous work of my friend Maurice Merlenn. Ponty, Le Visible et Vinvisible. “a ere is expresed, embodied, what made i aoe what made the alternation dialogue and T remember so caly the Cg de ort york Le Fite a moment of arrival ofthe phi that begin with Dlato vith de me may say that, determined by an end given, 8 beauty that that Maurice Merleat- Phénoménologie de la perce capitulation of the feel besa be jon cover? La anil brings us back, then, which is governed, not onl ee tion: Maurice Merleau-PontyOF THE GAZE the limits of this very phenomenology. You ways throu of visual phenomenology, is the essential point — ‘Which places us under the eye of the seer. Bu tr, fo hate only the metaphor oom refer to call the set's ‘shoot’ (peus#) —som Pre hat we have to cireumserbe, by means ofthe for u existence of a gaze—I see only from but in my existence I am looked at from all sides. doubt this seing, to which Tam subjected in an ‘emust lead us to the aims of this work, 10 that the bases of which are no doubt to be we institution of form. ves me an opportunity to Fe » Thave my ontology —why not? — . But, ce fe in my discourse—which, althoug of Freud, is nevertheless centred ess ve particularity of the experience it describes-—makes Claim to cover the entire field of experience. ven this betwee the-tvo that opens up for us the apprehension of the unas scious sof concern tous only in as much ais designated for through the instructions Freud left us, as that of wl Sere has to take possesion. Twill only add that Gs aspect of Freudianism, which is ofte seems to be indispensable, for re ‘not the only one, to embody psychical reality without substantifying it. | nthe field offered us by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, more oF zed indec 1e threads of our experience, the ized indeed by the th perience, the see that the ‘which he will lead you are not only of the order ‘that we encounter in t the gaze is presented to us only in the form of a strange con: tingency, symbolic of what we find on the horizon, as the thrust n THE EVE AND THE GAZE of our experience, namely, the lack that constitutes castration anxiety. ‘The eye and the gaze—this is for us the split in which the drive is manifested at the level ofthe scopic field. 3 In our relation to things, in so far as this relation is constituted. by the way of vison, and ordered in the figures of representa- tion, something sips, pases, and is always to some degre the gaze. You can be made aware of this in more than one way. Let re describe it, atits extreme point, by one of the enigmas that the reference to nature presents us with. Tt nothing less than the phenomenon known 23 mimicry. A lot has been said about this subject and a great deal that is absurd—for example, that the phenomenon of mi be explained in terms of adaptation, T do not thin ‘ease. I need only refer you, among others, to a sh many of you may already know, Roger Cailloi’ Méduse et compagnie in which the reference to adaptation isc re, the determining mutation of mimicry, in the insect, for example, may take place only at once and at the outset. the other hand, its supposed sel by the observation that one finds in the stomach of predators in particular, as many insects suppose i sects that are not. ‘mimiery iso know whether we must ate To some formative power of the very organism that manifestations, Fortis tobe le have to beable to conceive by what ire find itselin a position to cont, imitated body, but ie rlation to the environmen, fom ishas tobe ditinguked or, onthe contrary, to merge. In sory a8 Calls reminds use the subject of such mimetic mani tad 2BOF THE GAZE ‘or whether, on the con- irtue of their rela ig only by vi Tn other words, must we not ‘eye and that of the gaze? hosen as such—for 3 ot ce he seen af a giveno-besen- a Jd. We will then jousness may turn back upon mg Dang, ar ingen zn han An avoidance of the oneself—represents mer fanction of the gaze is at wor “This much we can map o} worked out for 01 from the position diy forms offered him by the dseam, tale. last time we ich appears the imagin- those of the connoted in psy gm—in which I have striven to re ives from its reference Smage—in the Satis : se tom it, which gies the subject a pretext es pcmatames-—and does its empire no “e of the philosophical tradition reps free Se he mode of con has been eluded ‘and Maurice «for such @ - erator can we mot ao grasp that wi function of the gaze? I mean, a namely, the THE EYE AND THE GAZE Merleau-Ponty points this out, that we are beings who are looked at, in the spectacle of the world. That which makes us consciousness institutes us by the same token as speculum mundi. Is there no satisfaction in being under that gaze of which, following Merleau-Ponty, I spoke just now, that gaze that circumscribes us, and wi the first instance makes us beings who are looked at, but without showing this? he spectacle of the world, in this sense, appears to us as, all-seeing. This is the phantasy to be found in the Platonic perspective of an absolute being to whom is transferred the ‘quality of being all-seeing. At the very level of the phenomenal experience of contemplation, this all-secing aspect is to be found in the satisfaction of a woman who knows that she is being looked at, on con fone knows that she knows. ‘The world is all-seeing, but not provoke our gaze. When it begins to provoke of strangeness begins too. not that, in the so-called waking of the gaze, and an elision of the fact so shows. In the field of the dream, It shows—but here, too, some form of ‘sliding away’ of the subject is apparent. Look up some description of a dream, any ‘one—not only the one I referred to last which, after all, what I am going to say may remain enigmatic, but any ts co-ordinates, and you will see that this to the fore, with the co-ordinated —namel rofoundly that of someone who does not see. The subject does leading, he follows. He may even on occasion detach himself, a dream, but in no ease will he be able to apprehend himself in the dream in the way ie Cartesian cogil, he apprehends himself as He may say to himself, 1Ps only a dream. But he does 6OF THE GAZE not apprehend himself as someone who says to himself— After a, Tam the consciousness ofthis dream. In a dream, he is a butterfly. What does this mean? It means that he sees the butterfly in his reality as gaze. What are fo many figures, so many shapes, so many colours, if not this, {gratuitous showing, in which is marked for us the primal nature of the essence of the gaze. Good heavens butterfly that {snot very different from the one that terrorized the Wolf Man. oFend Maurice Merleau-Ponty is well aware of the importance ofit and refers us to it in a footnote to his text. When Choang- tou wakes up, he may ask himself whether itis not the butterfly who dreams that he is Choang-tsu. Indeed, he is right, and Goubly so, frst because it proves he is not mad, he does not regard himself as absolutely identical with Choang-tsu and, , because he does not fully understand how right he is. (terfly that he apprehended ‘one of the roots of his identity—that he was, and is, in his that butterfly who paints himself with his own colours is because ofthis that, in the last resort, he is Choang- “This is proved by the fact that, when he is the butterfly, the dea does not occur to him to wonder whether, when he is Choang-tsu awake, he is not the butterfly that he is dreaming of being. This is because, when dreaming of being the butterfly, he will no doubt have to bear witness later that he represented hhimself as a butterfly. But this does not mean that he is cap- tivated by the butterfly —he isa captive butterfly, but captured by nothing, for, in the dream, he is a butterfly for nobody. It is when he is awake that he is Choang-tsu for others, and is caught in their butterfly net. ‘This is why the butterfly may—if the subject is not Choang- ‘su, but the Wolf Man—inspire in him the phobic terror of recognizing that the beating of little wings is not so very far from the beating of causation, ofthe primal stripe marking his being for the frst time with the grid of desire ‘Next time, I propose to introduce you to the essence of scopic satisfaction, The gaze may contain in itself the objet @ of the Lacanian algebra where the subject falls, and what specifies the seopic field and engenders the satisfaction proper to it is the fact that, for structural reasons, the fall of thesubjectalways 6 ‘THE EYE AND THE GAZE th peaemenon ofan, and nso fr tk isan oye reduce, ofits nue to «puns, evanescent yond ihe appearance, anime w dara a philosophical research, * ’ +; AUDOUARD: To what extent is it necessary, in anal sil as the persor is observing in ke tas of jeg i pe mn who is observing in the subject the process of Le daar ts enn aos psycho-analysis is a science. mover rhe aan re loos by leading the subject back to his signifying dependence. To go from perception to science is a perspective that seems i aide the abys of eatations We see this, for ex in the fact that the tucké does not enter, except Ppunctiform Way, into theogony and genesis. ° Reina Bian Mice er Pee CL vomemic is means that the level of reciprocity between the gaze and for the subject, more open than any other tork a ge a ie fe te epee ction Shr Peeks Petween goze and von wil en opie deve to the tof the drives, Ife know how , we shall see that Freud already places this di in Triebe und Triebschicksale "Instincts and ind shows that it is not homologous with the others. is this drive that most completely eludes the term 19 February 1964. 7 ANAMORPHOSIS Of the foundation of consciousness - The privilege of th gaze as objet a The optics of the blind - The phallus in the picture Vainement ton image arrive & ma rencontre Et ne m'entre ot je suis qui seulement la montre Toi te tournant vers moi tu ne saurais trouver Aut mur de mon regard que ton ombre révie Je suis ce malheureus comparable aus mirvirs Qui pracen réfdchir mais ne pewsent ps voit Comme eax mon eel est vide et comms eux habité De absence de ti gu fait sa ect ‘You may remember that, in one of my earlier lectures, 1 began by quoting the poem, Gontzechant, from Aragon’s Le Fou Bisa, I did not realize at the time that T would be developing the subject of the gaze to such an extent. I was diverted into doing 30 by the way in which I presented the concept of repetition in Freud, ‘We cannot deny that itis within the explanation of repetition that this digression on the scopic function is situated —no doubt by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s recently published work, Le Visible et Pincisible, Moxcover, it seemed to me that, if an encounter were to be found there, it was a happy one, one destined to stress, as T shall try to do today, how, in the per= spective of the unconscious, we can situate consciousness You know that some shadow, or, to use another term, some ‘resit’—in the sense one speaks of ‘resist’ in the dying of tmaterial—marks the fact of consciousness in Freud's very Aliscourse But, before taking things up again at the point we left them last time, I must first clear up a misunderstanding that appears + Fora translation of the poem, see page 17 9