There Are Four Discourses

Author(s): Jacques Lacan

Source: Culture/Clinic, Vol. 1 (2013), pp. 3-4
Published by: University of Minnesota Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/cultclin.1.2013.0003
Accessed: 21-09-2017 23:35 UTC

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 “WE’RE ALL MAD HERE”

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Jacques Lacan

There Are Four Discourses

/
cc   Transfer to Saint Denis? Lacan Is for Vincennes!
6

There are four discourses. Each one thinks it is the truth. The
only exception is the analytic discourse. We would be better off if it did
dominate, people will conclude, but in point of fact this discourse ex-
cludes domination; in other words it teaches nothing. There is nothing
universal about it, which is precisely why it cannot be taught.
How does one go about teaching what cannot be taught? This is
something Freud ventured into. He thought that all is but a dream and
that everyone (if one can say such a thing), that everyone is mad, that is,
­delusional.
This is indeed what the very first step in the direction of teaching
demonstrates.
But it does still need to be demonstrated: for this any old object will
do, it always presents itself poorly. That is, it needs to be rectified.
Mathematics is for that: rectifying the object. It is a fact that math-
ematics rectifies and that what it rectifies is the object itself.
Hence my reduction of psychoanalysis to set theory.
Might the antipathy between the university and analytic discourses be
overcome at Vincennes? Certainly not. It is being put to work there; at least
it has been for the four years I have been observing. It is apparent there
that, by coming up against its own impossibility, teaching is refreshed.
Let me set out what these four years have produced in the Department
of Psychoanalysis:

● A journal, Ornicar?, that debates what is being published every-

where in the name of psychoanalysis
● A postgraduate program in the so-called Freudian Field, in which it

behooves psychoanalysis to rectify what is offered it as cognate

3
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 A Clinical Section, which, at the Henri-Rousselle Hospital, is fulfill-
●

ing its role of instructing young psychiatrists

A positive report. The experiment will therefore continue. At Vincennes,

so long as it has the freedom to do so. If ever it gets restricted, then out of
the university!

Jacques Lacan
This 22-10-78

As a matter of fact, I hope Edgar Faure will do what it takes for Vincennes,
that is, Paris VIII, his creation, to remain.
J.L. c/c

6  Note
This essay was originally published in Ornicar? 17/18 (1979): 278. It has been
translated from the French by Adrian Price with Russell Grigg.

4  Jacques Lacan
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