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THE PALGRAVE LACAN SERIES
SERIES EDITORS: CALUM NEILL · DEREK HOOK
The Reign of Speech

On Applied Lacanian
Psychoanalysis
D ries G. M. Dulsster
The Palgrave Lacan Series
Series Editors
Calum Neill
Edinburgh Napier University
Edinburgh, UK
Derek Hook
Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, USA
Jacques Lacan is one of the most important and influential thinkers of the
20th century. The reach of this influence continues to grow as we settle
into the 21st century, the resonance of Lacan’s thought arguably only
beginning now to be properly felt, both in terms of its application to
clinical matters and in its application to a range of human activities and
interests. The Palgrave Lacan Series is a book series for the best new
writing in the Lacanian field, giving voice to the leading writers of a new
generation of Lacanian thought. The series will comprise original mono-
graphs and thematic, multi-authored collections. The books in the series
will explore aspects of Lacan’s theory from new perspectives and with
original insights. There will be books focused on particular areas of or
issues in clinical work. There will be books focused on applying Lacanian
theory to areas and issues beyond the clinic, to matters of society, politics,
the arts and culture. Each book, whatever its particular concern, will work
to expand our understanding of Lacan’s theory and its value in the 21st
century.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15116
Dries G. M. Dulsster
The Reign of Speech

On Applied Lacanian Psychoanalysis
Dries G. M. Dulsster
Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting
Ghent University
Ghent, Belgium
The Palgrave Lacan Series

ISBN 978-3-030-85595-6 ISBN 978-3-030-85596-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85596-3
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022

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Psychoanalysis is the reign of speech, there’s no other cure.
—Jacques Lacan, 1974
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the “work-of-many.” As
such, some thanks are in order. First of all, I would like to thank Stijn
Vanheule for taking me on as one of his PhD students. His guidance while
I was writing my dissertation and then transforming it into this book has
proven to be of incredible value. I cannot thank him enough. He provided
me not just with the opportunity to study the theoretical and clinical
aspects of Lacanian psychoanalysis but also, and more importantly for me,
a chance to teach. Taking the floor, elaborating on Lacanian psychoanaly-
sis, having to try to explain myself to students and being questioned by
them, has been extremely formative. There isn’t another way I would have
preferred to spend the last few years. It has truly been an honor.
Additionally, I would like to express my appreciation and gratitude to
Lieven Jonckheere, Lieve Billiet, and Mattias Desmet—the members of
my doctoral guidance committee—for offering advice throughout the
process of writing my dissertation. Thanks are also in order for all those
who provided me with useful feedback on various parts and drafts of this
book. Thanks to my former, current, and future coworkers at the
Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting at Ghent University
for all the interesting conversations, those we have had and those to come.
A special thanks to Goedele Hermans, Tom Lintacker, Erik Mertens, and
Kimberly Van Nieuwenhove, who offered to be first readers of my final
manuscript, for their constructive feedback.
My deepest gratitude to my analyst and supervisors for the only kind of
formation that really matters, and thanks to all those who trust me when
they enter my clinical practice. Your influence is present in every word
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
written in this book. I would also like to express my appreciation for the
Kring voor Psychoanalyse van de New Lacanian School and its members,
who, through the teachings of Jacques-Alain Miller, offer an orientation in
the Lacanian field. It has never stopped being inspiring. Special thanks to
Joost Demuynck, who, when I had just graduated as a clinical psycholo-
gist, accepted my invitation to start a reading group and took up the posi-
tion of a plus-one. He never stopped making clear that young clinicians
interested in psychoanalysis are worth being heard and that they have
something to say. His engagement and commitment inspired me to keep
on working on Lacanian psychoanalysis on more than one occasion.
I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to all those who were
willing to discuss their therapeutic process with me, and I would also like
to thank their respective analysts. Furthermore, I would also like to thank
those who discussed their process of supervision with me. Without these
people, this book would have been impossible. I cannot thank you
all enough.
A heartfelt thanks to those few I consider to be my friends. You know
who you are.
Thanks to Fauve, for the Apartment Story.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Works Cited 7
2 The Reign of Speech 9

A Practice of Speech 10
A Lacanian Cup of Coffee 12
The Ego and the Subject 16
Addressed Speech 21
An Open Ending 23
The Unruliness of the Practice of Psychoanalysis 27
Works Cited 38
3 The Beginning of the Treatment 41

The Secondaries? 42
The Matheme of Transference 46
The Therapeutic and the Epistemic Questions 50
The Subject-Supposed-to-Know and the Function of the Analyst 55
Subjective Rectification 58
The Silent Question of the Drive 62
Works Cited 65
4 A Run Through the Discourses 69

The Formal Structure of the Discourses 70
The Four Discourses 74
ix
x Contents
A Run Through the Discourses 82

Works Cited 96
5 Lacanian Superaudition 99
Supervision in “the Function and Field of Speech and Language
in Psychoanalysis” 100
Supervision in the Sinthome 105
Supervision and Analysis 121
Works Cited 125
6 Epilogue: An Ode to Surprise129

Crack in the Imaginary Continuity 130
Surprise and the Analytic Discourse 133
The Instance of Surprise: The Moment of Awakening 135
Works Cited 137
Index139
About the Author
Dries G. M. Dulsster, PhD is a clinical psychologist and works in the

Department of Psychoanalysis at Ghent University, Belgium. He also
works as a psychoanalytic psychologist in a private practice. He is the
Editor-in-Chief of Psychoanalytic Perspectives.
xi
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 L-schema of Lacan (1978 [1954–1955], p. 284) 14

Fig. 2.2 The ego and the subject 18
Fig. 2.3 The ego, the subject of the unconscious, and the psychoanalyst 22
Fig. 3.1 The matheme of transference. (Lacan, 2001b [1967],
Proposition, p. 19) 46
Fig. 4.1 From matheme of transference to the discourse of the master 70
Fig. 4.2 The four positions in the discourses 71
Fig. 4.3 The discourse of the master. (Lacan, 1991 [1969–1970], p. 12) 74
Fig. 4.4 The discourse of the hysteric. (Lacan, 1991 [1969–1970], p. 13) 76
Fig. 4.5 The discourse of the university. (Lacan, 1991 [1969–1970], p. 31) 77
Fig. 4.6 The discourse of the analyst. (Lacan, 1991 [1969–1970], p. 31) 79
Fig. 4.7 From the master’s discourse to the hysteric’s discourse 83
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
While working in a mental health-care center, I was consulted by

Katherine.1 She wanted to break up with her partner because he was treat-
ing her badly, but she felt emotionally dependent and not strong enough
to leave him. This was not the first time she had found herself in an abusive
relationship. Her first husband was a notorious alcoholic, and her second
partner regularly cheated on her. When she discussed her father in the next
session, she told me he was also a notorious alcoholic who regularly
cheated on her mother and that her mother was emotionally dependent
on her father, unable to leave him, and never took a stand. Not believing
what I had just heard, I enthusiastically pointed out that the sequence in
which Katherine had described her father was exactly the same as her own
relationships: she had been with an alcoholic, then a cheater, and now she
was emotionally dependent on her partner, just like her mother was. She
responded that this was an interesting remark.
In our next session, Katherine told me that my comment had kept her
awake at night all week. She could not stop thinking about it. I asked her
what exactly had struck her about it. “Well,” she replied, “the fact that you
repeated ‘Katie’ when I talked about myself has been keeping me up all
week.” The Oedipal interpretation was completely irrelevant to her. My
unintentional remark, however, just repeating “Katie,” had had a
remarkable effect. For her, it referred to “little Katherine.” The entire
1
For reasons of confidentiality, pseudonyms are used for patients throughout this book.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
D. G. M. Dulsster, The Reign of Speech, The Palgrave Lacan Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85596-3_1
2 D. G. M. DULSSTER
therapeutic process revolved around this diminutive and the fact that she
saw herself as little, as someone who made herself small and let herself be
abused by others. It struck me how an unintentional intervention could
have had such an effect, and this flipped my therapeutic practice upside
down. It made me wonder about the psychoanalytic process and the way
I intervened or positioned myself as a psychotherapist. As “there is cause
only in something that does not work” (Lacan (1973 [1964], p. 25), I
decided to work on this and started to investigate the concrete processes
through which patients, consulting a Lacanian psychoanalyst, can be
relieved of their symptoms and the role of the psychoanalyst in this process.
When one wants to study the Lacanian psychoanalytic process, one
quickly stumbles on the testimonies of the pass, introduced by Lacan in his
text “Proposition of 9 October 1967 on the Psychoanalyst of the School”
(Lacan, 2001b [1967]). The pass is a procedure in which analysts, having
(presumably) finished their analysis, testify about their own trajectory as
analysants.2 A committee of peers then discusses the testimony of an ana-
lyst and decides whether to grant an analyst the title of Analyst of the
School. The aim of this procedure is to account in a transparent way for
what an analytical cure can bring about. As Lacan writes, “the Analyst of
the School is characterized as being among those who are able to testify to
the crucial problems, at the vital point they have come to, for analysis,
especially in so far as they themselves are working on them or at least
working towards resolving them” (Lacan, 2001b [1967], p. 2). The pass
was Lacan’s way of introducing an instrument for the evaluation and inter-
rogation of the results of a psychoanalysis (Billiet et al., 2007). These tes-
timonies undoubtedly provide a unique insight into what is at stake in a
Lacanian psychoanalysis, and I agree with Dumézil (in Didier-Weill, 2001)
that they offer an extraordinary observatory, from which to survey the
2
The procedure of the pass starts with the decision of an analyst, who has come to the
conclusion that their analysis has ended. The first step in the procedure is to contact the
Secretariat of the Pass. This is a body within a Lacanian school that receives the question and
represents the Other to whom this question is addressed. The analyst speaks with two other
analysts who are appointed by the Secretariat of the Pass. These are the passeurs. These pas-
seurs are analysts who are expected to be at roughly the same stage in their analysis and thus
may be receptive to what the analyst is saying. The analyst tells their story to each passeur
separately, after which both passeurs are expected to convey the testimony to the committee,
or cartel, of the pass. This committee, whose composition varies, works on a case that it did
not hear directly itself, and it must judge whether there is indeed a subjective metamorphosis.
If the testimony is declared admissible, the candidate will then be appointed Analyst of the
School, or Analyste de l’Ecole (AE).
1 INTRODUCTION 3
field of Lacanian psychoanalysis. However, it is important to note that the

pass is relevant for pure psychoanalysis, which is distinct from applied
psychoanalysis.
Lacan introduces the distinction between pure and applied psychoanal-
ysis in his “Founding Act” (Lacan, 2001a). Pure psychoanalysis has to do
with “the section, or praxis and doctrine of psychoanalysis properly speak-
ing, which is and is nothing but—this will be established in its time and
place—training analysis.” For Lacan, training analysis consists of three
subsections: the doctrine of pure psychoanalysis, the internal critique of its
praxis as training, and the supervision of analysts in training. Lacan stressed
that pure psychoanalysis is not in itself a therapeutic technique. It is con-
cerned with the shift from being an analysant to becoming a psychoana-
lyst. Pure psychoanalysis is supposed to lead to the pass of the subject. It
offers a way out of analysis.
Applied psychoanalysis, on the other hand, covers the therapeutics and
clinical medicine of psychoanalysis and consists of the doctrine of treat-
ment and its variations, casuistry, and the psychiatric information and
medical explorations. Applied psychoanalysis is not concerned with the
shift from analysant to psychoanalyst and the way out of psychoanalysis.
Rather it has to do with patients presenting complaints and asking for a
way out of their symptoms.
Lacanian psychoanalysis applied to therapeutics now inspires clinicians
across the globe and is practiced by psychologists, doctors, therapists, and
psychiatrists. These practitioners orient their clinical practice from a
Lacanian perspective. Given its wide application in the world of therapeu-
tics, applied psychoanalysis is an important stakeholder in the future of
psychoanalysis. M. H. Brousse (2003) even states that the extension of
psychoanalysis to therapeutics is a condition for psychoanalysis’s survival.
Considering the importance of the therapeutic aspects of Lacanian psy-
choanalysis, it is striking that few books and studies have systematically
explored this process. Lacanian analysts have outlined what changed for
them during their analysis in their testimonies of the pass (Bonnaud, 2012;
de Halleux, 2013; Lysy, 2010), and there are some autobiographical
accounts of patients testifying to personal experiences of Lacanian psycho-
analysis (e.g., Haddad, 2002; Rey, 1989). However, there are hardly any
testimonies or studies of the Lacanian process as experienced by patients
consulting a Lacanian psychoanalyst with the aim of being relieved of their
symptoms. To get a better idea of what is at stake when one applies Lacan
4 D. G. M. DULSSTER
psychoanalysis to the therapeutic, it seems important to hear what these

patients have to say.
Since the procedure of the pass seems to be a very fruitful method in
pure psychoanalysis, I hypothesized that something similar could be done
concerning applied psychoanalysis—specifically, studying testimonies of
ex-analysants who consulted an analyst. Indeed, as Jacques-Alain Miller
has asked (Miller, 2002), who better to talk about the effects of the treat-
ment than the patient themself? And so I gathered testimonies of analy-
sants who began analysis with a therapeutic question, rather than as a part
of the process of becoming a psychoanalyst, and the people I spoke with
did not necessarily continue their analysis to completion.
The six main protagonists appearing in this book who will be guiding
us through the therapeutic process of a Lacanian analysis are Lucy, Emmy,
Elisabeth, Anna, Hans, and Daniel.
Lucy, 22 years old, just finished studying to be a high-school teacher
and consulted an analyst because of issues at work and the feeling of not
being assertive enough, thinking she had a form of autism. She went to see
the analyst for nine months, once or twice a week.3 Several things changed
for her during this process: she found a new job and moved away from her
parents, which allowed her to relate differently to them.
Emmy, a 32-year-old creative arts therapist consulted her psychoanalyst
first of all for supervision. After a couple of sessions, she was prompted to
ask a more therapeutic question and began consulting the analyst once per
week. She was confronted with her relationship to her patients and her
own children, which provoked distressing memories. She started to doubt
her career choices and how she behaved as a mother. She was struggling in
several domains both at work and as a mother to her own children. She
ended the therapy after nine months, and during this time, she was able to
take a new position in her professional life and a new position toward her
mother, who had had a very destructive impact on her.
Elisabeth, a 40-year-old researcher, had started her therapy because of
anxiety, burnout, and feelings of depression. At the end of the therapy,
those feelings were gone. She also related differently to her mother and
3
Although some will argue that because of the frequency or duration of the treatment this
cannot be called psychoanalytic, I wholeheartedly disagree. We could discuss the semantics
of psychoanalytic treatment, psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic therapy and so on but not on the
basis of duration and frequency. It is the psychoanalytic act that makes a session psychoana-
lytic. I discuss this in more detail in Chap. 4.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
chose a new professional career. She consulted the analyst for two years,
with a frequency of two sessions per week.
Anna, 40 years old, works in marketing. She talked about a therapy of
16 years, which actually consisted of 3 years of intense therapy and then
several short periods of therapy throughout the following years. She con-
sulted the analyst because of chronic alcohol abuse. Throughout the
course of the therapy, her drinking stopped, but for her what seemed to be
more important was being able to move beyond the drama she had expe-
rienced in relation to her parents. This allowed her to move more freely
in life.
Hans, a 44-year-old IT specialist, completed 10 years of therapy, with a
frequency of two sessions per week. His reason for consulting the psycho-
analyst was the breakdown of a relationship. During the therapy, it became
clear that he had a problematic relationship with a female friend and suf-
fered from procrastination. Eventually his position toward his friend
changed, and he could finally act on what he had been postponing.
Finally, Daniel, a 56-year-old teacher, entered therapy because of
chronic stress that resulted in physical symptoms. He ended the therapy
after seeing the analyst for two years, with a frequency of one session per
week. During the analysis he changed his attitude towards his parents and
his own affective experiences, realizing that his symptoms were linked to
affective distress.
Talking with these ex-analysants about their therapeutic journey, each
of them gave a detailed personal account of the reasons why they started
therapy, what they thought had changed because of the therapy, and how
they made sense of this change. I also asked about the end of the therapy
and how they experienced the interaction with their analyst. Very briefly
summarized, they told me they came to the therapy at a moment of crisis
and that they had found someone who paid close attention to their speech.
Because of this, they experienced a surprising reframing and also began to
consider their speech, and this helped them to see themselves in a new
light. More specifically, it helped them reflect on what they really wanted.
In some previously published papers, I used these interviews to ques-
tion the Lacanian therapeutic process (Dulsster et al., 2019; Dulsster
et al., 2021). In this book, I will use these interviews as a thread to elabo-
rate more on this process through a theoretical perspective and discuss
some aspects not presented in the published papers. What these interviews
demonstrate most of all, I contend, is that the psychoanalytic experience is
the reign of speech and that this cannot be underestimated. All of the
6 D. G. M. DULSSTER
ex-analysants I spoke with indicated the importance of speech, speaking

out loud to their analyst, listening to their own speech, and acting on what
they conveyed in their speech.4
In Chap. 2, in order to delve into the process of a Lacanian-oriented
psychotherapy, I start by discussing experiences of these ex-analysants and
their respective analysts. I elaborate on their testimonies using Lacan’s
seminal text “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in
Psychoanalysis” (2002 [1953]) (hereafter referred to as “Function and
Field”). This provides some basic notion of crucial Lacanian concepts and
some insight into how patients, knowing nothing of Lacanian psycho-
analysis, experienced this process.
Having discussed these interviews, I then further formalize the analytic
process and provide a more in-depth, structural understanding of what
they presented. In Chap. 3, I examine the beginning of the treatment and
how one enters the Lacanian psychoanalytic process. After having dis-
cussed the matheme of transference, which Lacan uses to understand the
dynamics of the preliminary sessions, I further develop Lacan’s discourse
theory as elaborated in Seminar XVII (1991 [1969–1970]). This theory
helps me further elaborate on the key aspects of a Lacanian-oriented psy-
chotherapy in Chap. 4.
In Chap. 5, I provide a thorough discussion of Lacanian-oriented
supervision, also known as Lacanian superaudition. Indeed, starting from
studying the therapeutic process, a shift occurred in my research. The
move from Lacanian psychotherapy to studying the Lacanian supervisory
process was an interesting surprise. Lucy, Emmy, Elisabeth, Anna, Hans,
and Daniel had all agreed that I could interview their psychoanalysts about
their therapeutic process (I will also use some of their remarks throughout
the chapters). During these interviews it became clear that supervision, or
a place to discuss and elaborate on the case at hand was, in one way or
another, important to all of them. Trying to understand the process of
change in a Lacanian-oriented psychotherapy, it appeared the person of
the analyst and their clinical training was important. Their analysis and
supervision made it possible for them to provide a place that offered a
chance for change. Being involved in the training of psychology students
interested in orienting their work from a Lacanian perspective, guiding
4
Some might have noticed I did not specify any diagnosis concerning the ex-analysants I
interviewed. Although this could be debated, I must state that most of the theory discussed
in this book concerns the matter of the structure of neurosis.
1 INTRODUCTION 7
them in their internships, my interest in studying the process of supervi-

sion was sparked.
Indeed, supervision is crucial to most forms of talking therapy as it
offers a platform to support the therapist or psychoanalyst and to help
them critically reflect on their clinical practice. Consequently, the supervi-
sion process can be seen as the primary experiential vehicle in the educa-
tion of psychoanalysts (Wallerstein, 1997). The practice of supervision
originates from Freud’s private dialogues with his students and is a place
for the analyst to learn about the close interplay of theoretical concepts
and clinical observations. As Zachrisson (2011) notes, it concerns the
translation of conceptual understanding into psychoanalytic action.
Delving into Lacanian supervision, it seemed however that an in-depth
discussion (and research) on Lacanian supervision is scarce. As I already
stated, Lacanian psychoanalysis is inspiring more and more clinical psycho-
therapists across the globe, and as more and more clinicians seek supervi-
sion it is important to gain better insight into the process of supervision
on a day-to-day basis. Again, I conducted several interviews with analysts
who have chosen supervisors orienting themselves from a Lacanian per-
spective, asking them what was at stake for them in this process (Dulsster
et al., 2021). I use these interviews to discuss some principal ideas about
supervision from Lacan’s work. First, I look at supervision as discussed in
“Function and Field,” which focuses on making the analyst more sensitive
to the symbolic component of the unconscious. Second, building on
Lacan’s later teachings, I discern three different stages: the “stage of the
rhino,” “stage of the pun,” and the “stage of the object” and discuss
Lacan’s distinction between these stages by means of vignettes of analysts
who were supervised by Lacan.
In Chap. 6, I conclude with a discussion, an “ode” so to speak, of one
crucial signifier that is present throughout this book: the matter of surprise.
It is my hope that this book can offer some guidance to clinicians inter-
ested in Lacanian psychoanalysis, that it can offer an orientation in their
clinical work and give them a deeper understanding of what is at stake in a
Lacanian-oriented psychotherapy.
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het Werkseminarie ‘Lacans School en Passe’. Inwit, 2(3), 268–269.
Bonnaud, H. (2012). Tearing away the real. Hurly-Burly, 8, 93–96.
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Brousse, M. H. (2003). Trois Point D’ancrage (pp. 30–35). Pertinences de la

Psychanalyse Appliquée, Seuil.
de Halleux, B. (2013). Twingo. Hurly-Burly, 9, 159–163.
Didier-Weill, A. (2001). Quartier Lacan. Editions Denoël.
Dulsster, D., Vanheule, S., Cauwe, J., Ingouf, J., Hennissen, V., & Miller, A. R. (2021).
Lacanian discourse theory and the process of change in Lacanian-oriented talk-
ing therapies. Psychoanalytic Psychology. Advance online publication. https://
doi.org/10.1037/pap0000335
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talking therapy considered closely: A qualitative study. Psychoanalytic Psychology,
36(1), 19–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/pap0000187
Dulsster, D., Vanheule, S., Hermans, G., & Hennissen, V. (2021). Supervision
from a Lacanian perspective considered closely: A qualitative study. British
Journal of Psychotherapy, 00(0), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjp.12626
Haddad, G. (2002). Le Jour où Lacan m’a Adopté. Editions Grasset & Fasquelle.
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Fondamentaux de la Psychanalyse. : Seuil.
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Psychoanalyse. Seuil.
Lacan, J. (2001a) [1964]. Acte de Foundation. Autres Ecrits. Seuil.
Lacan, J. (2001b) [1967]. Proposition du 9 octobre 1967 sur le Psychanalyste de
l’Ecole. Autres Ecrits. Seuil. Translation by Russell Grigg and downloaded from
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of_9_October.pdf
Lysy, A. (2010). Gotta go for it! Hurly-Burly, 10, 15–24.
Miller, J.-A. (2002). Qui sont vos Psychanalystes? Seuil.
Rey, P. (1989). Une Saison chez Lacan. Editions Robert Laffont.
Wallerstein, R. S. (1997). Foreword. In B. Martindale, B. Mörner,
M. E. C. Rodrigues, & J.-P. Vidit (Eds.), Supervision and its vicissitudes
(pp. 1–18). Karnac books.
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The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 92, 943–961. https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1745-8315.2011.00417.x
CHAPTER 2
The Reign of Speech
Really putting it over there with the analyst and thinking about this and
really hearing myself speak… it was most of all because of that, that I
thought, this is really going too far. You keep on pushing your boundaries
in life and after a while you stop thinking about that. After a while you’re in
a role in your life that you keep on repeating, because that’s the role that’s
yours. But, when suddenly there’s someone standing next to you that makes
you think about those things—without saying too much, because it’s not
that he said a lot—because of the things I was saying out loud, again and
again and again that I thought, this isn’t normal. I really made that ‘click’
because of hearing myself talk and thinking afterwards, yeah, this isn’t right.
I had that insight and realized I should stop doing that. There was no other
way, that feeling was strong at a certain point.
What Emmy is saying here concerning her psychoanalytic therapy is

extremely instructive. She reveals that for her it was a process where the
analyst is standing next to you, making you say things out loud, making
you listen to yourself speak, repetitively. It is a process where you get a grip
on the role in your life that at the time seems to be yours and how you
keep on repeating this role. It is a process where the analyst makes you
speak about those things without saying too much. She adds it is a process
where you hear yourself talk, which gives you insights and these insights,
at a certain point, make you act. What Emmy stresses is that it is a process
and practice of speech.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Switzerland AG 2022
D. G. M. Dulsster, The Reign of Speech, The Palgrave Lacan Series,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85596-3_2
10 D. G. M. DULSSTER
A Practice of Speech
Without a doubt, Lacan would have wholeheartedly agreed with Emmy.
For Lacan (1974), it would not make sense to say that speech and lan-
guage aren’t central in a practice that involves just talking to someone,
listening to someone, occasionally responding, and intervening. One
thing all therapists (no matter their theoretical framework) must consider
is that their work is a practice of speech. This is already beautifully indi-
cated by Freud (1961 [1915–1917], p. 17) in his introductory lessons on
psychoanalysis when he writes,
Words were originally magic and to this day words have retained much of
their ancient magical power. By words one person can make another bliss-
fully happy or drive him into despair, by words the teacher conveys his
knowledge to his pupils, by words the orator carries his audience with him
and determines their judgements and decisions. Words provoke affects and
are in general the means of mutual influence among men. Thus, we shall not
depreciate the use of words in psychotherapy.
For a Lacanian psychoanalyst, who by definition is a Freudian, this idea

will be at the core of their praxis. The theory and praxis of Lacanian psy-
choanalysis starts from the simple, but radical notion that people are
speaking beings. As such, to discuss the psychoanalytic process, we have to
address the function and field of speech and language in psychoanalysis.
Right before the start of his public teachings in 1953, Lacan wrote an
orienting text with exactly that title. In this text, he articulates his early
ideas about the praxis of psychoanalysis, which he will use to start his pub-
lic teachings.
The first key idea present in “Function and Field” concerns exactly the
matter of speech. As Lacan writes, “whether it wishes to be an agent of
healing, training or sounding the depths, psychoanalysis has but one
medium: the patient’s speech” (Lacan, 2002b [1953], p. 206). This
notion is present at the beginning of Lacan’s teachings and remains for 20
years despite all the theoretical shifts in his teachings. As he writes in 1974,
“the neurotic is a patient who treats himself with speech, above all with his
own speech. He has to speak, tell, explain himself. Freud defines this as
follows: ‘It is the assumption on the part of the subject of his own history,
insofar as it is constituted by speech addressed to another’” (Lacan, 1974).
The Lacanian adagio would without a doubt be: “Psychoanalysis is the
reign of speech, there is no other cure” (Lacan, 1974). Indeed, in an ana-
lytic therapy, analysants are encouraged by their analyst to articulate
2 THE REIGN OF SPEECH 11
everything that comes to mind. Lucy said, “the thing was, she always said:
speak, speak.” Absolutely, when a patient enters the practice of a
psychoanalyst,1 the psychoanalyst won’t be giving advice on how someone
can better manage their life. They also won’t tell a patient how to handle
their emotions and give homework assignments or say that something is
wrong with the patient’s brain and prescribe medication (De Kesel, 2017).
A Lacanian psychoanalyst will offer someone the opportunity to speak. A
small, crucial detail is that patients consulting with a Lacanian psychoana-
lyst are invited to talk not so much about their problems as about whatever
comes to mind. The analyst will introduce the rule of free association and
see where it goes from there. The rule of free association is the basis of the
entire enterprise (Miller, 1993–1994). The invitation to free association is
not a wish to say anything, much less a duty to say something, but an invi-
tation to say everything that crosses one’s mind. The Lacanian (and
Freudian) wager is that from this speech there will emerge an act of speech
that will have subjective effects, creating a before and an after (Dupont,
2020 [2019]). In the interviews I conducted, the analysants repeatedly
came back to this, stressing the importance of their analyst providing the
space for them to speak freely about whatever came to mind without cen-
sorship or fear of being judged. Lucy added, “She always said, ‘speak,
speak,’ because often, I didn’t know what I had to say and then when she
said, ‘just speak, think out loud’… I felt there was an openness to say
everything… because a lot of the time I thought that it wasn’t ok what I
was thinking.” Elisabeth, who at a certain time before the analysis experi-
enced some psychotic-like events, indicated, “In analysis, there is no one
saying, oh my God, you’re saying that you want your mother dead, or you
say that the light has such a strange effect on you, no, I had the feeling that
everything could be said.” Articulating their thoughts had an important
effect on them. The ex-analysants indicated that through her presence, the
analyst creates an echo chamber and when the patient’s speech calls out,
the analyst makes sure the echo does not come back empty. Lucy said for
her things changed because she “talked a lot about all that stuff. I had to
say a lot out loud, and I had to say it to someone. Yeah, a person can think
1
Although I know some do not like the term “patient,” I prefer it as it is etymologically
linked to patientia, meaning suffering, persistence, endurance, or patience. They are indeed
suffering of persistent elements in their life which they have to endure and need to have some
patience to go to work with this. Entering the practice of the psychoanalyst as a patient, it
will be the task of the analyst to transform this patient to an analysant. This will be discussed
in more detail in Chap. 3.
a lot, but that is something that just keeps on going, but from the moment
you say something, that does… a lot.”
A Lacanian Cup of Coffee

Additionally, Emmy’s quote at the beginning of this chapter is very
instructive, as she highlights that the analytic process does not only con-
cern the matter of speaking. One has to “hear oneself speak.” For Emmy,
hearing herself speak created insights that eventually helped her to change
things. She makes clear that what is important is not only articulating
inner thoughts but also listening to one’s own speech in a way one had not
before. The analysants stated they started paying close, detailed attention
to the content of their own utterings, peculiar details, and incoherent
ideas. This made them see things in another way. Saying things out loud
had surprising effects on the analysants and this disrupted them. These
remarks resemble a second key notion in “Function and Field”—namely,
for a Lacanian psychoanalyst, the focus is not on communication and
information but on speech and evocation. As Lacan writes, “The function
of language in speech is not to inform but to evoke” (Lacan, 2002b
[1953], p. 247).
With this remark Lacan makes an important intervention in the func-
tion and field of speech and language. He pinpoints that when a person
speaks to another there is something else at work. Speaking creates a new
dimension, a third point, where assumptions are made and agreement is
sought in what we try to convey to one another (Nobus, 2000). Lacan
calls this the dimension of the symbolic or the big Other. This symbolic
dimension of speech should be distinguished from everyday “imaginary”
speech, where we have the idea that we know what the other (and we
ourselves) are saying. The distinction between these two dimensions will
be essential to grasp the analytic experience (Lacan, 1975 [1953–1954]).
A nice illustration of this third dimension can be found in a little red
book by Paulien Cornelisse titled Language, You Can Say, Is Really My
Thing (2009). In this book, which marvelously discusses the peculiarities
of (Dutch) language, Cornelisse (2009, pp. 8–9) describes how she started
to get the idea that language causes more confusion than it offers clarity:
The more I take notice, the more I’m convinced people always say some-
thing else than what they really mean. Even a simple sentence like “Do you
want some coffee?” can mean a dozen different things: do you want coffee?
Nice, me too, so if you can just make some; Do you want coffee? I’m just
asking so I can go make some and don’t have to continue this boring con-
versation about your problems at work; Do you want coffee? If you say no
that would ruin the mood and, in a while, I’m going to break up with you.
Cornelisse highlights the fact that it is nearly impossible to think about a

fully neutral statement. A third dimension is always present.
As this idea is crucial, I would like to present another anecdote that
illustrates how no statement can ever by neutral: A young student is read-
ing a book on a train sitting opposite an elderly, refined gentleman who is
staring out the window. At one point the student asks the older man what
time it is. However, the older man completely ignores him and continues
to stare out the window. When the student, sometime later, makes another
attempt, he again gets no response. Arriving at the station, the student
approaches the older man in an irritated way and reproaches him, asking
why he had not given any response. “Ah,” says the old man,
I think that must be mighty clear. I know those dirty tricks. You ask me what
time it is and then I answer and then the ice is broken, and I ask you what
you are reading, because I also like to read myself and then we have a pleas-
ant chat and by the time we get off the train we are so into discussing these
matters that I then invite you to my house for dinner. I then introduce you
to my wife and my children, after which you start talking with my daughter
and then you start dating my daughter and my daughter goes along with it,
because, after all, her father has already given approval by inviting you to our
home. But I must say this, young chap, if you think I’ll have my daughter
dating someone who can’t even afford a watch, well, you’re gravely mistaken.
What Cornelisse and the old, refined gentleman both seem very aware
of is the fact that speaking to each other is not just about two or more
individuals talking to each other, stating things, asking for coffee or the
time, but that something else is almost always stake. It is this dimension
which will be provoked by the psychoanalyst, making analysants wonder:
“Am I actually saying what I think I’m saying? What else am I conveying
through these words that I’m saying to the other.” This dimension of the
symbolic introduces a place of the unconscious where truth and desire
insists in our daily lives and our speech, truths, and desires we often do not
want to acknowledge. As such, analysants start to listen “beyond commu-
nication” and start to hear themselves saying things they did not hear
before. This also indicates the unconscious must not be considered as a
hidden knowledge that is already there, but as something that is produced
in the analytic encounter (Cauwe & Vanheule, 2018).
(Es) S a ‘ other
n
atio
rel
ary un
in co
ag ns
im ci
ou
s
(ego) a A Other
Fig. 2.1 L-schema of Lacan (1978 [1954–1955], p. 284). (Es) S = The subject
of the unconscious, (Ego) a = The ego as an imaginary object, (a)’ other = The
other, in the position of imaginary object, Other = The big Other as symbolic
Lacan illustrates the distinction between these two dimensions of

speech in his L-schema (Fig. 2.1). On the level of the imaginary relation,
we think we understand each other. The ego assumes the other just wants
coffee. However, on the level of the unconscious, all the other possible
interpretations of the phrase “do you want coffee?” are at work, making
the subject of the unconscious appear.
When we just assume the other asks for a cup of coffee, we are com-
municating on the imaginary level, from ego to ego (a to a’). For Lacan,
this is empty speech. It is the kind of speech that isn’t spoken to be heard
and gives the impression that we only need half a word to understand the
other. This impression implies the fundamental misunderstanding that we
know what we and the other are saying (Nobus, 2000). Speaking in the
field of the ego has what Lacan calls a mediating function, while speaking
in the field of the Other has a revealing function. The mediating function
of speech is the part of speech in which we have the idea we can make a
link with the other, in which we have the idea that the other, the alter ego,
can understand us. Mediation unites one with the other. This form of
speech is present when we try to seduce, when we want to convey feelings,
knowledge, experiences, and share something. A question for Lacan is
what the function of the interlocutor is in this mediation. How can the
interlocutor get a sense of understanding if he does not share the experi-
ences one is conveying? Lacan’s answer is that the other projects and
understands through identification. Projection, identification, and under-
standing are thus the tasks of the other in the field of speech as mediation
(Lacan, 1975 [1953–1954]). So-called successful communication always
depends on identification. However, through identification, what gets lost

in transmission, what gets lost in translation, is one’s singularity. The illu-
sion of communicating successfully eliminates the possibility of your own
singularity and prevents your singularity from appearing. By communicat-
ing, we establish an imaginary identification with the other. However,
although ego and alter ego understand one another well, there is always a
fundamental difference between the two.
Lacanian psychoanalysis acknowledges that such communication is nec-
essary in everyday life. Life would be impossible without it, and this imagi-
nary dimension has a very important role in mental life as it allows people
to (try to) understand each other. Indeed, Lacan suggests that, to a large
extent, our mental functioning is governed by the ego, and the principal
role of the ego consists of establishing a coherent self-image (how we see
ourselves, think about ourselves). However important this self-image is, a
Lacanian psychoanalyst will be wary of this coherence. As Lacan writes,
“analytic experience… teaches us… to take as our point of departure the
function of misrecognition that characterizes the ego in all the defensive
structures so forcefully articulated by Anna Freud” (Lacan, 2002a [1949],
p. 80). Indeed, although our self-experience is concerned with the task of
building a coherent self-image, the image constructed by the ego is always
deceptive.
So, the patient will begin to speak as they always do, but in that way the
patient actually suspends their singularity, because they want to be under-
stood. The task of the analyst is to teach the analysant respect for their
own singularity, which can be found through slips of the tongue, dream-
ing, misunderstandings (focusing on the elements of not understanding).
The ego’s default partner is the alter ego, the mirror—that is, the other as
someone who can understand you, who can possibly love you. However,
it is a disaster if the analyst understands you and an even greater disaster if
the analyst loves you. None of the analysants stated that they felt that the
analyst understood them, instead they felt heard, and someone especially
feels heard when the other makes it clear that they do not understand you,
because it is only by not understanding that a person indicates that they
are listening. In everyday life, when we act as if we are listening to some-
one, we mainly act as if we understand them. As such, one of Lacan’s
(1975 [1953–1954] p. 87) early remarks concerning clinical practice is:
“one of the things we need to beware of the most is understanding too
much, understanding more than what is in the subject’s speech.
Interpreting and imagining oneself to understand are not the same thing
at all. It is exactly the opposite.” The analyst will let the patient speak, but
the analyst’s focus will not be on communication and information but on
speaking and evocation. Looking at the L-schema, the analyst will position
themself in the place of the Other, the place of this third dimension, which
provokes the subject (S) of the unconscious.
The Ego and the Subject

Focusing on the dimension of the symbolic, a Lacanian psychoanalyst
takes into account the dimension of the subject, which is hidden behind
the ego. This distinction between the ego and the subject of the uncon-
scious, closely related to the imaginary and symbolic dimension of speech,
is a third key notion present in “Function and Field.” In Lacan’s L-schema
we see the ego (a) communicating with another (a’), the ego asking the
other for a cup of coffee. This relation, however, is crossed by the dimen-
sion of the unconscious. What we see in this schema is a dual, imaginary
relationship between a (the ego as an imaginary object) and a’ (the other,
in the position of imaginary object) and the addition of the symbolic
dimension of the unconscious with the big Other (A). The axis of the
imaginary relation concerns “the symmetrical world of egos and of the
homogeneous others” (Lacan, 1978 [1954–1955], p. 244). One ego
communicating to another ego (see Fig. 2.1: a and à), thinking they are
the same. If we only focus on the imaginary dimension, we neglect the fact
that the unconscious makes up a dimension of otherness that continually
disrupts smooth continuity within our self-experience (Vanheule, 2016).
It is the dimension of the subject that creates all the misunderstandings in
speech. There’s no way around it. A Lacanian analyst will focus on those
aspects of our own functioning we misrecognize because they do not fit
our ego, provoking the appearance of the subject. A novel that illustrates
this in a marvelous way is An Ordinary Life, by Karel Č apek (1936
[1934]).
The objective of the protagonist is to present “the apology of the lot of
an ordinary man.” He tells the story of his childhood and middle school,
he describes how he met his wife, and he discusses his career as a station
master. Indeed, it seems a continuous, happy, and ordinary life. He pres-
ents his life as something we could define as “the apology of the lot of an
ego.” However, as he continues his elaborations, the dimension of the
subject begins to appear. Unwittingly, he illustrates that the ego is a story
that never happened. Beyond the ordinary life presented by the ego, many
different aspects of the self are present that the ego is all too willing to
ignore. He wasn’t just an ordinary man—he was also a hypochondriac,
someone who wanted to be a poet but was also “a man with elbows” who
wanted to climb up the social ladder, and was a hero at times. It makes him
acknowledge that “The life of man is a mass of various possible aspects out
of which only one is realized, or only a few, while the others only manifest
themselves incompletely for a time, or never at all” (p. 206). The protago-
nist of the book realizes his identity is ambiguous and consists of many
different aspects of the self. He starts to notice that there is no core of
personality but that he is a lack of being: “There was no self, it was only
chaos without guidance or a name. I know it is only an image” (p. 209).
To cover up this lack, the protagonist had used different identifications:
“Surely it was empty in itself, and in order to exist in some way it had to
borrow one of those figures and its life” (ibid, p. 206)! The key quote of
the book is without a doubt: “Admit that a man is something like a crowd
of people. In that crowd he wanders, perhaps, say, an ordinary man, a
hypochondriac, a hero, that one with the elbows, and god knows what
else; it is a muddled swarm, but it has a common path” (pp. 206–207).
What the protagonist illustrates is that the ego presents a unity behind
which a crowd of subjectivities are present, between which tension and
conflicts arise. As a consequence, he has to reconsider why he made certain
choices in life, what determined his career and his hypochondria. He has
to rethink his relationship with his wife, father, and mother. The ego had
misrecognized some aspects of the self, ignored the anecdotes which
caused him shame and sorrow, those aspects of his miserable self he was so
willing to ignore, aspects he tried to ignore by writing “the apology of the
ordinary man.” It is only through his elaborations, retelling his story, that
other parts of his self begin to appear. Aspects of his self which he “stuck
in between the lines to hide it from himself” (p. 126). It also seems that
every story was hiding another. Interestingly enough the dialogue with
himself continues until only one story remains, or rather a piece of a story,
an episode that does not fit into any of the other coherent histories he
elaborated on, a small anecdote emerging out of nowhere, something he’s
very reluctant to talk about:
Wait, here and there you’ve left something out. –I haven’t’! You have. Shall
I remind you of this and that? –No, it’s not necessary. They’re casual things
that don’t mean anything. They simply don’t fit into the whole and they
have no continuity. That’s the word: continuity. A man’s life must have
some continuity after all and so many odd things must be thrown aside,
mustn’t they (p. 173)?
As the first part of the book concerns “the apology of the lot of the
ego,” the second part is about “the apology of the lot of the subject,” and
as such we could say we see a process of analysis appear. He “broke his life
into pieces by looking at it” (p. 173) and acknowledges that beyond the
ego there is the masses of the subject and that the ego wants to keep a
continuity and wants to ignore those aspects of our selves we don’t want
to know anything about. Indeed, many odd things are often thrown aside
and emerge only in analysis, things that have to be found “between the
lines of speech.” As such, a remark many analysts have heard time and time
again is, “I had no idea I was going to talk about this... I haven’t told this
to anyone before.”
I will not discuss the final anecdote of Č apek’s protagonist, but it is
clear that it concerns something that disrupts the smooth continuity of all
the stories he has constructed about himself, something he absolutely does
not want to know anything about (Fig. 2.2).
Now, what is illustrated by Č apek in this novel can be summarized as:
Where the ego presents a coherent self-image, the divided subject on
the other hand concerns the “I don’t know who I am, I don’t know what
I’m thinking. I don’t know what I am saying, I don’t know what I want,
I don’t know what I desire, I don’t know why I am like that” (Miller,
2008–2009). The ego is a system of identifications, a signifier (hypochon-
driac, a poet, a husband, etc.) who represents a subject. The ego is the
instance which allows you to say, “I know who I am.” It is the sum total
of all those identifications assimilated by the subject. It is the sum of the
crowd, of the muddled swarm. The ego is actually the entirety of how
someone appears, the totality of the appearance of someone who we call a
subject.
This immediately puts forward a purpose of analytic experience—
namely, to go beyond that ego-alienation and allow something of the sub-
ject to appear. The first aim of psychoanalysis is to get the patient to see
that they are actually situated in the position of a divided subject. The idea
is to strip away the imaginary identifications (Brousse, 1996) and lead
someone to think, “I thought that I was such and such, but I’m not. What
am I in the end, but a want-to-be?” From a Lacanian perspective this is
key. Instead of reducing the therapeutic setting to the focus on the ego,
Fig. 2.2 The ego and Ego (an ordinary life)

the subject
Subject (the masses)
the focus is first and foremost on the dimension of the symbolic Other and
the subject the unconscious. Beyond the dimension of the ego, there is the
hidden truth of the subject. This is the place of the unconscious $ where
the truth and the desire insist in our daily lives and the speech of the sub-
ject (Nobus, 2000). The dimension of the subject concerns our “subjec-
tive” truth but also makes up the truth of our symptoms.
The two dimensions of the ego and the subject also appeared for the
ex-analysants I interviewed. Daniel talked about himself and how he
“could take on the world, could have been prime minister of the country”
and “how he was a very rational person” until his body started to speak
through somatization, making clear that this wasn’t the case at all. His
symptoms showed him that it was impossible to hold up such an ideal,
while additionally, through speaking in analysis, it became clear that he
wasn’t rational at all. Opening up the dimension of the unconscious took
the analysants by surprise, giving them new perspectives on things. They
started to realize that within their being, in the depths of their inner life,
another unknown life is played out without their knowledge. Behind
everyone’s ego, there is a subject being ignored—the subject of the uncon-
scious (Monribot, 2007). Most of the time this concerns aspects of our-
selves we do not want to acknowledge (e.g., being a cheater, a miser, a
coward, wanting to have control, being scared). However, in an analytic
therapy, these things that first seem unbearable, things we wish to ignore,
will find a way out (Lacadée, 2019).
This can be linked to one of the most interesting aspects that appeared
during the interviews—namely, what I called a “surprising reframing”
(Dulsster et al., 2019). Once the therapy commenced, all ex-analysants
seemed to be confronted with other questions than the ones which made
them consult their psychoanalyst. These new questions became more rel-
evant than the urgent matter that had initially brought them to consult the
analyst and this created a shift in focus (to their own subjectivity). Lucy
said it was difficult to experience such a thing: “And this was hard because,
yes, there are certain things in your life… where you think beforehand that
they are alright, but at a certain moment I started to doubt a lot of things,
my relationship with my partner, my job, a lot of things.” One of the
themes that suddenly appeared was the death of her grandfathers: “I had
no idea that I would have talked about that so much. At a certain point, I
talked about that a lot.” Daniel explained this surprising reframing as a “a
rude awakening”: “I had to do something about it, because I could no
longer blame external factors, it’s just me, and this was a rude awakening...
a rude awakening of how I always blamed other things, but it’s just me,
myself, and I have to do something about it, but I’m no longer able... It
can’t happen again that I get to this point.” Such a “rude awakening”
made the ex-analysants move beyond the initial moment of crisis. Hans
said he started with the therapy because of a breakup. However, it became
clear for him that his ex-girlfriend wasn’t really a problem. In fact, the
problem was the dependency on another girlfriend.
A very important clinical implication of the fact that a Lacanian psycho-
analyst works with the subject and not with the ego is that the subject
cannot be approached by referring to ontological categories like “the
child,” “the schizo,” “the alcoholic,” or “the anorexic” (Brousse, 2003).
Consequently, an analyst does not need a certain expertise concerning
specific diagnostic categories (alcohol abuse, depression, anxiety, etc.).
Their expertise lies in listening to the speech of the patients and the dimen-
sion of the unconscious. Young clinicians often feel a certain reluctance in
working with certain clinical phenomena like anorexia, depression, or
panic attacks, and it may be helpful for them to know that even in such
cases one does not have to do much more than focus on the patient’s
speech, make them elaborate on the matters at hand, and see what
comes up.
A clinical example is that of an analysant who came to talk to me about
a severe eating disorder. Being extremely anorexic, she started to fear for
her own life. Having consulted a dietary expert and a cognitive behavioral
therapist and even being hospitalized several times, she came to talk to me
as a final attempt to put her self-destructive behavior to an end. Throughout
the therapy she gradually started to regain some weight, being able to
discuss certain aspects that made her quite emotional. However, it was
only after more than a year and a half that she suddenly stumbled on a
memory that had profoundly impacted her. During a sleepover at her aunt
and uncle’s, her uncle occasionally peeked at her when she was in the toilet
or in the bathroom. At a certain point, this made her decide to “never be
attractive for a man again.” This also explained her panic attacks when
now and then she was approached by men whose fetish seemed to be
extremely skinny, boyish women. This was a real breakthrough for her
which made her take on a new position in life by regaining weight but also
by starting to change her appearance. We can see this as a major therapeu-
tic step, but the real problem at hand suddenly had to be addressed—
namely, the difficult relationships she had with men and sexuality.
Consequently, other aspects of her subjectivity suddenly came to the fore.
Lacan suggests that it is only by paying close attention to speech itself,

and to the words from someone’s speech, that this realization of the sub-
ject can be brought about (Lacan, 2002b [1953]). Whereas the ego tends
to misrecognize the details of one’s own speech, the practice of Lacanian
psychoanalysis makes people examine their own words and accept that
what they say reveals important information as to who they are as a sub-
ject. Experiencing that, beyond the ego, the subject of the unconscious is
present is, however, not easy. Indeed, as Lacan notes, free association will
“lead to a free speech, a full speech that would be painful to him. Nothing
is to be feared more than saying something that might be true. For it
would become entirely true if it were said, and Lord knows what happens
when something can no longer be cast into doubt because it is true”
(Lacan, 2002c [1957], p. 515). As painful as it may be, when something
is pulled into the light, instead of throwing it aside, it can finally be
addressed.
Elisabeth said, “I just wished that my mother would die, because that
was, for me, the only solution at that time… Now I see this differently, but
at the time it seemed like the only way to escape the chaos in my head. I
thought I would finally have some rest. But learning to say such a thing,
yeah, that… was really confronting.” However difficult this could be, the
ex-analysants also experienced this as liberating. They said it was confront-
ing and challenging for them to discuss certain matters, because for them
the thoughts they articulated were often somewhat incompatible with
how they considered themselves. Something in the idea of how they con-
ceived themselves was disrupted.
Addressed Speech
Another important remark in Emmy’s quote was that: “Suddenly there’s
someone standing next to you that makes you think about those things.”
What Emmy pinpoints is a fourth key notion in “Function and Field”—
namely, that speech in psychoanalysis cannot be distinguished from
transference.
Lacan refers to Freud who defined transference as: “the assumption of
his own history by the subject, in the measure that he is constituted by the
speech directed to another” (Lacan, 1974). As such, we must stress that
these aspects only appeared through the interaction with the analyst. It is
the presence of the analyst, if they do their job, that makes the dimension
of the unconscious appear. The presence of the analyst themself is a
manifestation of the unconscious. There is no unconscious without an

analyst, the unconscious appears within the transference that gives that
unconscious its consistency and reach and thus makes it interpretable.
Indeed, the ex-analysants stated that because their analysts focused on
speech, they themselves began to listen to their own speech differently,
thus paying attention to peculiarities and contradictory material. All analy-
sants said that they felt they had met someone who listened differently to
what they said and didn’t reciprocate communication but made sure their
speech evoked other things. In a Lacanian talking cure, the principal role
of the psychoanalyst consists of validating elements and ideas in the analy-
sant’s speech that are unexpected, or troublesome from the perspective of
the analysant’s ego. The ego will address itself to the psychoanalyst and
the psychoanalyst will have to provoke the subject of the unconscious
(Fig. 2.3).
Indeed, the analyst’s attention made the ex-analysants reconsider what
they had been saying and revealed elements of subjective truth. By hearing
your own words through the Other, you reinterpret the words you your-
self were articulating. It is apparent that in a certain way the analysant
receives their own message back from the receiver “in an inverted form”
(Lacan, 2002b [1953], p. 246). Emmy stated that the analyst’s listening
“made her speech sound ten times louder.” By “putting it over there with
the analyst” and hearing herself speak, she started to reconsider the mes-
sage she was actually conveying in the sessions. Receiving their own mes-
sage in an inverted form allowed them to see themselves in a new light
(Dulsster et al., 2019). Since they listened most attentively to what they
said, they started listening to themselves in different ways which led them
to draw different conclusions than before. Elisabeth indicated that the
analysis offered her the chance to take responsibility for what she said,
which created the possibility for her to rewrite her story and choose a new
way of living her life. By wondering how the psychoanalyst might interpret
the words one is articulating, the analysant starts to consider their own
words in a different way, wondering exactly which message they are con-
veying (am I actually just asking for a cup of coffee?). Hearing one’s own
Ego ---------------------> Psychoanalyst

Subject of the Unconscious
Fig. 2.3 The ego, the subject of the unconscious, and the psychoanalyst
speech eventually reveals that the ego does not have total control over
what is being said, which actualizes the dimension of the subject. It allows
the patient to become subject of their own speech. The task of the analyst
is to induce this process, being careful to avoid being bamboozled by the
ego, so the subject of the unconscious can appear.
An Open Ending
Through the analytic experience, the patient will discover certain aspects of
their self they can no longer identify with, that they no longer want to be
duped by. As Emmy put it, “You keep on pushing your boundaries in life
and after a while you stop thinking about that, after a while you’re in a role
in your life that you keep on repeating, because that’s the role that’s yours.”
During an analysis, the patient has to learn to accept this truth that disturbs
the comfort of their imaginary identity (De Kesel, 2017). When patients
start to speak, “truth can be refound” (Lacan, 2002b [1953], p. 215), and
aspects of desire that were first denied can be recognized and accepted as
belonging to oneself. Essentially, an effect one can expect from an analytic
treatment is the fall of identifications. Psychoanalysis does not promise hap-
piness, but through speech it offers an opportunity to find a way out of what
seemed a subjective impasse (Chiriaco, 2012). Elisabeth talked about her
mother and how she used to wallow in grief, in her “melancholy,” and how
she noticed that she copied this pattern. Whenever she had a conflict with
others the melancholy took the upper hand. As she put it,
Most of the time I’m enthusiastic, but I noticed that I could let myself be
dragged along by these emotions... Now I’ve learned that I have choice. I
can say, ‘that’s not me!’ I have a choice in how to deal with all of those
things. When there’s conflict between two people, people say things you
don’t like, but that does not mean you have to play the fragile little bird.
For Elisabeth, no longer having to be the “little fragile bird” opened up

other possibilities for how to position herself vis-à-vis others.
Anna said,
Even though I didn’t see her [her mother] a lot… I was entirely engulfed by
it, the entire story that I have of her and by being able to talk about that out
loud and putting it next to each other, it made it possible to physically
have… less a feeling that it is all one part, one story. I have my own story,
my own life, my own future.
Through freely speaking to the analyst, the comfort of the ego is dis-
turbed and gives the analysant a chance to accept subjective truths that
have been neglected thus far, and, more important, it gives them a chance
to act. The analysants I spoke with indicated that they could see them-
selves in a new, more truthful light and that they found new ways of posi-
tioning themselves toward others. For example, Lucy stated that because
of the therapy she not only realized that she had to move and live alone,
but it also prompted her to start looking for a new job.
More often than not, when patients enter therapy, they do not know
that they have a choice in the positions they take in their life (e.g., being a
fragile little bird). Through analysis you learn to define “the role that is
yours,” and this has effects. As Miller (2002) notes, people who testify
about their analytic process taken to its end very often speak of a gain in
freedom with regard to the repetitions that limit them and a gain of life,
an incomparable relief. It is clear one does not have to wait for the end of
analysis for some of these effects to occur. However, there are no legiti-
mate ways to predict what a patient’s time for understanding will be or
when their analysis will be completed.
This leads to a fifth and final idea I would like to discuss here, which is
present in “Function and Field”—namely, that “time plays a role in ana-
lytic technique in several ways” (Lacan, 2002b[1953], p. 257). We will
return to the matter of technique later. The thing I would like to stress
when thinking about applied psychoanalysis is that Freud (1955 [1920])
suggested that the unconscious is a timeless dimension; thus, the time of
an analysis is experienced as indefinite as well. Although it seems the cur-
rent times demand that therapy be fast, a psychoanalytic treatment
demands time, it respects the subjective time of the patient and does not
try to short-circuit this by imposing time limits and such.
The end of a psychoanalysis in pure psychoanalysis considers the transi-
tion from analysant to psychoanalyst. Applied psychoanalysis has a whole
different endgame, if one can even call it that. The transition from analy-
sant to psychoanalyst will hardly ever be a question for patients entering
the office of a psychoanalyst. Usually, one just wants to be freed of one’s
symptoms. Only a very small number of analysants will push through to
the point of transition from analysant to analyst, and Lacan certainly did
not advocate that people follow this path. Indeed, why in God’s name
would one want to become an analyst? For Lacan (1976a) an analysis is
enough when the patient thinks they are happy (they do not need to be
glücklich). Most of the time, an analysis stops before it reaches its logical
end. It is definitely not necessary for an analysis to be long in order for it
to have some psychoanalytic effects (Mahjoub, 2019). As indicated by
Miller (1993–1994), some end analysis because they are tired of it, some
because of despair. Some leave because there is no therapeutic success and
they are fed up with it. Some leave because it was therapeutically very suc-
cessful, and they no longer feel the need to continue. Generally, patients
just want to orient their lives in a better way, to find a way to manage or
get rid of their symptoms, and they stop analysis when they are happy with
the results they obtained.
For Lacan, psychoanalysis does not even aim specifically at therapeutic
results. As he put it, “A cure (guérison) only came in a way as a bonus... it
is quite certain that our justification as well as our duty is to ameliorate the
position of the subject. But I claim that nothing is more uncertain in the
field that we are in than the concept of a cure” (Lacan, 2014 [1962–1963],
p. 56). It is not that psychoanalysts are uninterested in alleviating symp-
toms, but this is not their principal aim. The aim of psychoanalysis does
not concern the symptoms as developed in ego behaviors or attitudes. For
psychoanalysts, the specificity of healing in the analytic field consists of
giving meaning to symptoms and giving place to desires masked by those
symptoms (Lacan, 2001 [1964]). The analyst strives to work on the analy-
sant’s identifications which has an effect on how somebody positions
themself in life (Lacan, 2014 [1962–63]). A Lacanian psychoanalyst
knows that its the side effects that save us.
And indeed, none of the analysants I interviewed indicated having fin-
ished their analytic therapy. Although all of them believed their therapy
was enriching and provoked change, none of them considered it to be
complete. All of them think they may return to their analyst in the future,
which was something they thought the analyst would always welcome. For
the time being, all decided to stop the process and seemed satisfied with
their therapeutic gains. Although different reasons were given for stop-
ping therapy (e.g., money, time, dependency), it is interesting to note that
all of the analysants I spoke to thought they could continue working on
certain themes. However, for now, they preferred not to. For this reason,
the “ex” in “ex-analysants” may actually be inaccurate.
Lucy said her therapy was enriching, but she became afraid of what else
might appear and what she was going to do with that. At the time, every-
thing seemed to be alright, as she had moved out of her parental home
and gotten a new job.
I think it still would be an enrichment, you can get a lot out of it, things you
don’t know, but I’m just afraid of what’s going to come out of it, is it going
to be relevant, what should I do with it then? Or what shouldn’t I do with
it? Things, questions that I don’t know what will come up, maybe because
it will be too emotionally stressful that I’d rather ignore it.
For Daniel this was more specific, pinpointing one theme he preferred not
to elaborate on any further. He told how the analysis ended after two years
because he wanted to avoid talking about his wife. He said he “talked
about her, she always came up, but didn’t elaborate on it too much.” He
was scared of talking about her, stating:
I have a wonderful relationship with my wife, I think she’s a wonderful per-

son... but the thing is that in analysis, you don’t know where you will end
up... When you speak about those things, you don’t know what’s going to
happen and I did not want to end up at a point that... well... Maybe in a next
phase... I just had the feeling it was a theme... well... I wasn’t going to start
to elaborate on that... not now.
Daniel clearly illustrates Lacan’s remark from “Function and Field”

(2002b [1953], p. 201) saying “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.” Indeed, each and every one of us
has to decide how much truth we can bear to lay bare.
Although for Lucy and Daniel certain themes could not be addressed at
the time, other aspects concerning the end appeared. As an example, for
Lucy, this seemed to be the matter of transference and the desire of the
analyst. The question for her was why her analyst did her job, why she
became a psychoanalyst, wondering if it was all about the money. She
really struggled with this. When her analyst invited her to come to therapy
twice a week, she was very suspicious of this, wondering if it was because
of the money. This monetary aspect was already present from the very first
session as Lucy admired the analyst for taking into account the salary of
her patients and adjusting the price for a session accordingly. The previous
therapist she consulted just asked a substantial amount and could only see
her again a month later, and this made her look for somebody else. I do
not think it surprises anybody that the financial aspect was something that
appeared in other aspects of her life—for example, in relation to her par-
ents and boyfriend.
The question of change and how this occurred at the end in each given
treatment would deserve a chapter of its own. What was striking in the case
of Lucy was the matter of (positive and negative) transference and her rela-
tion to the “desire of the analyst” (“Does she do it for the money or because
of me?”), a matter that was unresolved for her. The case of Emmy brings
the question of the functionality of the symptom to the fore, where the
treatment ended with the idea of using her symptom (anxiety) as an
indicator when things get “too much” and that she has to slow down in
life. Daniel illustrated how his analysis subverted his idea of what exactly
the idea of personality is and how this loses all coherence, while also indi-
cating that throughout his entire analysis, he avoided talking about one
certain theme (his wife). Hans showed how he was fixated in the gaze of his
analyst, only being able to take action in life after ending the analytic treat-
ment. Anna’s story tells us something of the oral drive and how, through
analysis, her drinking problem “bubbled out like a glass of sparkling water,”
leaving her with the fantasy of “drinking a latté macchiato in Silicon Valley.”
In applied psychoanalysis, we would consider the end of the treatment
as an “open-endedness.” It is in any case not up to the psychoanalyst to set
a time limit to an analysis. The unconscious is a timeless dimension; thus,
the time of an analysis is experienced as indefinite as well. We cannot pre-
dict how long a subject’s time for understanding will last, insofar as it
includes a psychological factor that escapes us by its very nature (Lacan,
2002b [1953]). One has to take time to say certain things. One has to
stutter and allow time for wondering, transference, surprise, repetition,
seeing, saying well, and understanding. A Lacanian psychoanalytic therapy
makes it possible to map out the identifications, to loosen their grip with
the aim of reaching the end of an analysis, one has to do a thousand and
one turns before it can finally come to a time to decide (Chiriaco, 2012).
The Unruliness of the Practice of Psychoanalysis

How does a psychoanalyst position themself in all of this? What exactly is
the task they are confronted with? How should an analyst direct the treat-
ment? Again, Lacan wrote a text with exactly this title, “The Direction of
the Treatment and the Principles of its Power” (2002c [1957]). In this
text, Lacan again argues that the analyst must take the unconscious, as
symbolic dimension, into account.
The role of the analyst is to facilitate the function of speech in the field
of language, focusing on its symbolic dimension. It concerns the unfold-
ing of speech, which the analyst has to sustain. Using a music metaphor,
Lacan suggests that the analyst’s attentive silence aims at revealing the
dimension of the subject. The analyst should let the patient play their
music (speak) and simply punctuate this musical score with a metric beat.
As Lacan states, “analysis consists in playing on all the many staves of the
score that speech constitutes in the registers of language” (Lacan, 2002b
[1953], p. 241).
Now, as the function of the analyst is to support speech, letting the

analysant play on all the many staves of the score, Lacan stipulates that the
first basic “intervention” from the analyst concerns their silence. Indeed,
“beyond each possible intervention silence on the part of the analyst pos-
sesses a force that pulls the patient along, makes him progress, and draws
him towards greater depths than those he had envisioned” (Reik, in Pluth
& Zeiher, 2019, p. 26). The quiet of the listener makes room for the
speech of others (Solnit, 2017, p. 18). Indeed, as Reik (in Pluth & Zeiher,
2019, p. 33) states, “Silence seems to play an important role in creating
the very conditions in which the analytic process can take place.” This was
most clearly illustrated by Daniel when he stated: “So... I enter and he sits
down and says: ‘Yes?’ (silence) that’s it, that was his opening phrase. ‘Yes’
(silence) and then there you are… you just want to fill in the silence and
start to speak.” Daniel makes clear that speech depends on the response of
the Other and is constituted in the awaiting of the response of the other.
It depends on the response of the analyst and precisely their silence. It is
in silence that it is produced as such (Alberti, 2020). Daniel wasn’t the
only analysant struck by this silence. They all experienced this silence as a
choice, an action, a way of keeping quiet, as a way of creating a space for
them to critically listen to what they actually said and reflect on motives
that could have been influencing their words and actions.
The silence of the analyst will be complemented by a detailed attentive-
ness. The later had also surprised the analysants. They said the silence
made them speak, but the attentiveness made them listen. Consequently,
listening well will provoke speaking well. Speech and listening imply each
other (De Kroon, 1994). Using silence will create the right conditions for
the psychoanalytic cure to take place (Pluth & Zeiher, 2019). As Lacan
indicates in “Variations of the Standard Treatment” (Lacan, 2002d
[1955], pp. 290–291), “For that is what he does for the subject’s speech,
even by simply welcoming it, as I showed earlier, with an attentive silence.
For this silence implies speech, as we see in the expression ‘to keep silent’
which, speaking of the analyst’s silence, means not only that he makes no
noise but that he keeps quiet instead of responding.” Indeed, the ex-
analysants described their analyst as someone who was silent, but they all
added that this silence gave them the room to speak, forced them to speak.
Moreover, it even seems that because of this overall silent attitude by the
analyst, analysants paid close attention to what the analyst asked, said, or
did. The analysants said that it was the silence that made them speak and
made them more attentive to their own words and to the remarks of the
analyst. This is also why Lacan (2002b [1953], p. 247) states that being a
silent listener is the heart, the function of analysis. This method, if we
summarize it, is elementary—you have to learn to be silent. Loose lips sink
ships, and the more one talks the less words mean. For the analyst, there
is always time to add a word, but never time to take one back (Dulsster
et al., 2019). One must make sure speech is rare so that it can carry, so that
it can hold, the patient’s attention (Miller, 2011). The psychoanalyst is on
the side of silence, and when they take up speech, it has to be between
enigma and citation (Dewambrechies-La Sagna, 2020). Lacan refused the
analyst the exercise of the power of speech, the power to suggest and influ-
ence the analysant. It is not easy to stay silent, to hold back the power
of speech.
The importance Lacan attended to silence is beautifully illustrated in
“Les impromptus de Lacan” (Allouch, 2009, p. 139). When a supervisee
complained: “But Monsieur (Lacan), this young man comes to me three
or four times per week, tells me his stories to no end, pays me and goes.
What is it that I have to give him in exchange?” Lacan answered: “Your
silence!” Indeed, it is often forgotten that a silent, attentive presence may
be one of the most radical things a psychoanalyst has to offer.
However, the fact remains that this silence is not maintained indefi-
nitely. One does not consult an analyst to just talk and be heard. It is not
just a matter of pouring one’s heart out. An analyst does have to say things.
The analyst has things to say to their analysant, to the one who, all the
same, hasn’t come along simply to be confronted by their analyst’s silence
(Lacan, 1976b [1975], p. 43). When the subject’s question assumes the
form of true speech, the analyst “will sanction it with his response” (Lacan,
2002b [1953], p. 255).
In “Direction of the Treatment” Lacan further elaborated on the posi-
tion of the analyst. Here, Lacan uses three core concepts to characterize
the psychoanalyst’s actions: tactics, strategy, and politics. Lacan borrowed
these concepts from Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), a Prussian general
and military theorist who stressed the moral and political aspects of war.
His main objective was to incorporate the unruliness of the practice of war
into theory. Clausewitz opposed those who reduced the strategy of war to
a dogmatic doctrine of geometrical lines and points, on which the opera-
tions should be based (Kloosterman, 2018 [1982]). Without a doubt,
Lacan must have found a real brother-in-arms in Clausewitz, who wrote
that the primary purpose of any theory is “to clarify concepts and ideas
that have become confused and entangled. Not until terms and concepts
have been defined can one hope to make any progress in examining the
question clearly and simply” (Clausewitz, 2007, pp. 79–80).
For Clausewitz, “tactics teaches the use of armed forces in the engage-
ment, strategy the use of engagements for the object of war” (Clausewitz,
2007, p. 74). Both tactics and strategy underlie politics, which “concerns
what a war is meant to achieve and what it can achieve” (Ibid, pp. 134–135).
To illustrate this, Clausewitz uses the example of a march: If a column is
ordered to take a route on the near side of a river or a range of hills, that
is a strategic measure—it implies that if an engagement should be fought
during the march, one prefers to offer it on the near rather than the far
side. The way the forces are used whenever an engagement might happen,
concerns the tactics.
Using his differentiation between the imaginary and symbolic dimen-
sion, Lacan uses these concepts to think about the unruliness of psycho-
analytic treatment and the actions of the psychoanalyst. For Lacan, the
politics will concern the end of the treatment (what an analysis is meant to
achieve), strategy will concern the matter of transference (walking on the
symbolic side of the road), and tactics the matter of interpretation (the
way words are used whenever an engagement happens). As the analyst will
engage the patient in analysis, “the enterprise of analysis will consist of
paying with words (interpretations), paying with his person (transference),
and paying for becoming enmeshed in an action that goes right to the core
of his being (what is at stake at the end of the treatment)” (Lacan, 2002c
[1957], pp. 490–491).
Tactics
Lacan (2002b [1953]) stresses that bringing the psychoanalytic experi-
ence back to its foundations of speech and language is of direct concern to
its technique. The principal role of the psychoanalyst consists of making
full speech possible, making sure the analysant can associate freely, so the
signifiers of the unconscious can appear. The action of the analyst will be
to validate signifiers and ideas in the analysant’s speech that are unex-
pected, or troublesome from the perspective of the analysant’s ego.
Therefore, the analyst will “pay with words,” meaning that they must for-
mulate interpretations, which is a matter of tactics, the use of forces in the
engagement in which an analyst “is always free in the timing and fre-
quency, as well as in the choice of his interventions” (Lacan, 2002c [1957],
p. 491). Looking at the contents of Fink’s Fundamentals of Psychoanalytic
Technique (2007), this engagement can happen by listening and hearing,

asking questions, punctuating, scanding (the variable-length session), or
interpreting and working with dreams, daydreams, and fantasies. It is a
matter of putting a word in the foreground, a sound, a phrase or fragment
that, once isolated, in turn becomes enigmatic (“Why did the analyst say
this? Why did they punctuate that?”), making sure the analysant continues
on their quest (Chiriaco, 2012). Through interpretation the analyst aims
to elicit new material (Fink, 2007). A Lacanian analyst will focus on the
appearance of the subject, which concerns those aspects of our own func-
tioning we misrecognize because they do not fit our ego (e.g., the decision
to never be attractive again). It concerns our “subjective” truth and as
such makes up the truth of our symptoms. These aspects we misrecognize
will appear through discontinuity of speech, by speech that is marked by
the unconscious (forgetting, slips of the tongue, etc.). Therefore, the ana-
lyst does not merely focus on the enunciated narrative, the content of
what is said, but on the act of enunciation as well, where discontinuities
that surprise the analysant come to the fore (Lacan, 1975 [1953–1954]).
One of the consequences is that the Lacanian psychoanalyst isn’t con-
cerned with the supposed reality of their patient, nor will they focus on
underlying psychological processes, like emotional reactions, behavioral
patterns, or insightful comprehension. Psychoanalysis is not a matter of
(imaginary) introspection, it is a (symbolic) intersubjective procedure in
which, in the field of language and by way of speaking, one tries to find the
truth about one’s “self” (De Kesel, 2017). These discontinuities in speech
point to where the ego fails and as such they mark the place of the uncon-
scious and therefore also of the subject. As Lacan notes, “The unconscious
is the chapter of my history that is marked by a blank or occupied by a lie:
it is the censored chapter. But the truth can be refound” (Lacan, 2002b
[1953], p. 215). Specifically, Lacan (2002b [1953], p. 215) suggests that
psychoanalytic praxis aims at articulating censored material by focusing on
symptoms (“monuments”), childhood memories (“archival documents”),
lexical choices (“semantic evolution”), and habits and cherished stories
(“traditions”). More specifically it focuses on the distortions that charac-
terize our speech about these elements. Through these elements, an
unconscious truth is articulated. Hence the claim concerning the analyst’s
action, “This is how he proceeds in the best of cases: he takes the descrip-
tion of an everyday event as a fable addressed as a word to the wise, a long
prosopopoeia as a direct interjection, and, contrariwise, a simple slip of the
tongue as a highly complex statement, and even the rest of a silence as the
whole lyrical development it stands in for” (Lacan, 2002b [1953], p. 209).
For me, a striking illustration of a “discontinuity that surprised the
analysant (and the analyst as well)” happened in a session with Carol. She
consulted me because of an impossible grief concerning her late husband,
feeling helpless without him. She could not have wished for a better man.
While speaking about how she finally got her driver’s license after his
death, she said “I was glad when my husband died... as I finally got around
getting that driver’s license.” The pause that appeared in that sentence was
a tad long, which had a startling, surprising effect on me. Having listened
to her for weeks about how intolerable it was that her husband had died,
I suddenly, through her (un)intentional pause, had heard her saying she
was glad he died. She noticed my surprise and thus noticed what she her-
self had said was odd. First in shock, saying I might have gotten the wrong
idea, she then for the first time conveyed how, as perfect as her husband
was, she had become completely dependent on him. She was not allowed
to do things on her own. He had made her completely helpless. This had
put her grief in a different perspective, offering her a chance to break free
from this. The mourning did not concern her husband as such, but the
position she was in and how she had missed a lot of things in life because
of how her husband had behaved and how she went along with this.
Such moments of surprise, of a disruption in continuity, do not only
disturb the comfort of the ego but also bring the analysant—if one wants—
to accept subjective truths that have been neglected so far and to act (e.g.,
breaking with a certain repetitive pattern in their life). The task of the
analyst is to be attentive to the symbolic dimension, which appears through
the cracks of the imaginary, through the cracks of the ego. Discontinuities
in speech point to where the ego tumbles, they mark the place of the
unconscious and therefore also of the subject.
Now, this would give the impression that we have to wait for such slips
of the tongue or dreams for the subject to appear. Having conducted my
interviews with the ex-analysants, this seems to me a radical misunder-
standing. When I was introduced into psychoanalysis, one of the examples
given to illustrate the dimension of the unconscious was the famous exam-
ple given by Freud (1961 [1898]) of forgetting the name Signorelli.
Freud, associating on this signifier, stumbles on his own anxiety, fear of
mistreating patients, and so on. Starting my clinical work, I often won-
dered when such moments would appear. Sometimes a week passed with-
out a patient making a slip of the tongue (or me hearing the slip of the
tongue). However, having interviewed these analysants, a key element

seems not only to be the formations of the unconscious but the elements
that surprised the analysants. Indeed, the fact that a patient is surprised
supposes that there is some knowledge beyond what they presume to
know. As an event, surprise shows that there is a knowledge which wasn’t
known yet and that the subject can exclaim this knowledge (Miller,
1993–1994). What surprise disrupts is the imaginary continuity. Obviously,
this can appear through a slip of the tongue or dreams, but it can also
appear just by hearing something in a different way, elaborating on a cer-
tain item for the first time, speaking out certain thoughts for the first time,
or elaborating on a matter that seemed completely irrelevant and being
surprised by this.
Daniel stated, “It’s because I started to talk about things, well, maybe
that’s just not the way I think it is... And then you start to talk about other
stuff, and you start to notice things you never realized about yourself.”
Another example would be how Lucy indicated she could not have imag-
ined talking about her grandfather so much or Hans talking about another
girlfriend and his dependence on her. A lot of the time these themes appear
through dreams or slips of the tongue, but again, this is not necessarily the
case. What happens in analysis is the recounting of events, verbalizing
them, and forcing them into the world. This will present us with the birth
of truth in speech, which is not so much the fact that the subject remem-
bers but the fact that through speech the subject reconstructs the past,
reorders past contingencies, reveals their truths (Lacan, 1975
[1953–1954]). In a Lacanian psychotherapy, by paying attention to sym-
bolic articulation, aspects of desire that were initially denied can be recog-
nized and accepted as belonging to oneself. As Lacan notes, “What is at
stake in analysis is the advent in the subject of the scant reality that his
desire sustains in him... and our path is the intersubjective experience by
which this desire gains recognition” (Lacan, 2002b [1953], p. 231).
Lacan suggests that only by paying close attention to speech itself, and to
the signifiers or words from someone’s speech, can a so-called realization
of the subject be effectuated (Lacan, 2002b [1953], p. 206). The psycho-
analyst will focus on the formations of the unconscious, words with a
particular “value or weight,” which make clear that one is not fully con-
trolled by the ego, and that aspects of the subject that have hitherto been
denied (e.g., “In a certain way I was glad that my husband had died”) can
be acknowledged. Such acknowledgment takes shape by hearing one’s
own speech addressed to the analyst—that is, through the intersubjective
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tuon miesraukan puolesta, joka luultavasti on suuresti Jumalan avun
tarpeessa.»
»Tulin tänne, isä, viemään teidät kirkkoonne tahi tuonne kauhealle

paikalle, josta juuri tulen ja jonne heti lähden takaisin, mutta
puhumaan noille konnille en rupea. Heidän paljas hengityksensäkin
saastuttaa sekä minut että Csillagin. Te ja minä, isä, lähdemme
takaisin tuonne, missä vanha mies-raukka vaimoineen ja tyttärineen
katselee, miten hänen omaisuutensa tuhoutuu kokonaan, missä
säikähtyneet eläinraukat juoksevat avuttomina sinne tänne
joutuakseen lopulta surkean kuoleman uhreiksi tulessa, jonka nuo
helvetin tulevat asukkaat ovat sytyttäneet. Heven maakunnan ja
koko Unkarin tasankojen ylpeys on mennyttä kalua, kun
raukkamaiset ihmiset kostavat alhaisesti viattomille eläimillekin.
Tulkaa nyt, isä, niin lähdemme. Te voitte sitten palata, kun olette
lopettanut rukoilemisenne, mutta minä, ellen ole niin onnellinen, että
voin haudata itseni ja häpeäni noihin liekkeihin, jotka hävittävät tätä
rakastamaani maata, tätä ylpeyteni esinettä, kokoan huomenna
talouskapineeni ja lähden kuin mustalaiset hakemaan jotakin toista
paikkaa, jossa jälleen voin puhella kunniallisten miesten kanssa.
Päästäkää isä Ambrosius tulemaan! Hän odottaa ovellaan!»
Talonpojat eivät olleet milloinkaan kuulleet niin julmia sanoja, jotka

olivat niin terävät ja leikkaavat kuin kaksiteräiset sirpit ja niin hirveän
halveksivat ja nöyryyttävät, että he tunsivat pimeässäkin, miten
heidän poskensa kuumenivat häpeästä.
Mitä András tarkoitti, hän, joka kaikissa heidän suruissaan ja

vaivoissaan oli aina ollut heidän puolellaan, valmiina lohduttamaan,
selittämään ja lieventämään? Mikä olikaan nyt mielessä hänellä, joka
aina iloisesti hymyillen oli kaatanut jokaisen aidan, jollaisia hänen
rikkautensa ja vaikutusvaltansa olisivat muussa tapauksessa
rakentaneet hänen ja noiden nöyrien hänelle suurta palkkaa vastaan
työskentelevien ihmisten välille? Miksi ei hän nyt luvannut heidän
lausua hänen nimeäänkään eikä koskea hänen hevoseensakaan,
ikäänkuin heidän sanansa ja kosketuksensa olisivat olleet mitä
alentavimmat ja saastaisimmat? Mitä kauhistavaa he sitten
oikeastaan olivat tehneetkään? Oliko heidän kostonsa todellakin niin
alhainen, kuin hän sanoi? Oliko se vain rikos, eikä mikään oikeus?
Oli kyllä totta, ettei kreivin puolisolla eikä tyttärellä ollut mitään osaa
pirullisiin laitoksiin, eikä noilla eläinraukoillakaan — noilla kauniilla
unkarilaisilla hevosilla — Bideskuty’n tallien maine oli levinnyt
tasangolta tasangolle — joista useilla tammoilla oli varsatkin, eikä
härilläkään, jotka eivät voineet juosta ja jotka pelästyivät ja
säikähtivät niin pian…
Joukko hajautui vaitiollen tehdäkseen tietä isä Ambrosiukselle,

joka saavuttuaan Andráksen luo aikoi nousta hevosen selkään
hänen taakseen. Sillä aikaa tarkasteli kumminkin András tyynesti,
muuttamatta kuitenkaan halveksivaa käytöstään ja nähtävästi
välittämättä miehistä sen enempää kuin tien tomusta, miten hänen
ankarat sanansa vaikuttavat noihin, joita hän heidän hullusta
työstään huolimatta myötätuntoisesti rakasti. Koska hänellä ei ollut
varaa tuhlata aikaa taivuttelemiseen eikä todisteluihin, oli hän
turvautunut tähän keinoon, jolla hän luuli varmasti parhaiten
voivansa vaikuttaa noihin vastahakoisiin ja tyhmiin, mutta ei
kumminkaan kokonaan turmeltuneihin luonteihin. Kreivi Bideskuty’n
kodin kohtalo joutui hetkiseksi kysymyksenalaiseksi ja siinä ehkä
epäröitiin noin minuutti, mutta kun András todellakin hyppäsi
Csillagin selkään ja miehille selveni, ettei hän halunnut puhua heille
eikä katsella heihin päinkään, sanoi joku pelokkaasti:
»Aiotko todellakin poistua Kisfalusta ikuisiksi ajoiksi, András»?
»Kuka puhui»? sanoi hän katsahtaen välinpitämättömästi olkansa

yli. »Onko kukaan milloinkaan kuullut minun sanovan toista ja
tekevän toista? Tulkaa nyt, isä. Istutteko vakavasti. Kiertäkää
käsivartenne lujasti ympärilleni, sillä Csillag laukkaa nopeasti».
»Ei, András, et saa lähteä».
»Mihin me silloin joudumme?»
»Haluatko todellakin poistua luotamme»?
»Tahdotko, että kuolemme nälkään?» kuului kaikilta suunnilta, ja

todellakin hyvin levottomina ja peloissaan Andráksen uhkauksesta,
joka epäilemättä olisi aiheuttanut heille suuren onnettomuuden,
kokoutuivat miehet suosikkinsa ympärille kiihkeästi, uskaltamatta
vielä koskea tammaan, koska hän oli kieltänyt, mutta estäen
kumminkin sen viemästä Andrásta pois ikuisiksi ajoiksi.
»Luulimme sinun ymmärtävän huolemme. András», sanoi vanha

Vas Berczi vieläkin hieman äreästi, mutta kumminkin jo melko
nöyrästi. »Olet mennyt vihollisemme puolelle ja halveksit nyt meitä
köyhiä raukkoja».
András huokaisi tyytyväisyydestä. Tuo oli jo antautumisen alkua.

Hän oli saavuttanut tarkoituksensa, ja lopusta hän suoriutuisi
helposti.
»Olen aina ottanut osaa kaikkiin huoliinne, ystäväni, sillä surunne
ovat minunkin surujani», sanoi hän jo ystävällisemmin. »Mutta teidän
olisi pitänyt ymmärtää silloin, kun läksitte rikoksien teille, että tiemme
eroavat silloin auttamattomasti ikuisiksi ajoiksi. Hyvästi nyt ja
päästäkää Csillag menemään»!
»Tulet kai takaisin»? huusivat he, kun Csillag kohosi takajaloilleen

sen isännän painaessa polvellaan sen kylkiä.
»En milloinkaan, ellen saa jälleen puristaa kunniallisten miesten

käsiä»!
»Meidän, András, meidän»! huusivat he jälleen, kun tamma läksi

nopeasti laukkaamaan kylän valtatietä poispäin.
András kääntyi kerran vielä puhuttelemaan heitä.
»Tervehdin vasta vain niitä, jotka tulevat auttamaan minua

Bideskuty’n asuinrakennusten pelastamisessa».
»Minua, András, minua»! huusi nyt jokainen, ja kaikki, sekä nuoret

että vanhat, unhottaen huolensa, taikauskonsa ja pelkonsa, ja
ikävöiden vain tuota luvattua kädenpuristusta, läksivät innoissaan
juoksemaan tamman ja sen kaksinkertaisen kuorman jälkeen.
Mutta András oli pysähdyttänyt tammansa jo pienen kirkon luo,

jonka nelikulmainen torni kuvastui mustana loistavaa ja kauheata
taustaa vasten.
»Jumala teitä kaikkia siunatkoon, lapseni», sanoi isä Ambrosius,

»mutta meidän on odotettava ja otettava Herramme mukaamme».
»Nopeasti nyt, isä, sillä emme saa hukata hetkeäkään», sanoi
András kiirehtien, mutta otti kumminkin kunnioittavasti lakin
päästään, kuten muutkin. Kun isä Ambrosius oli aikansa kolistellut
avaimiaan, sai hän raskaan oven auki ja meni kirkkoon. Hän jätti sen
selkoselälleen, että tuo hänen erehtyväinen laumansa saisi nähdä
Jumalan huoneessa vallitsevan täydellisen rauhan villin ja
kostonhimoisen vihanpurkauksensa jälkeen. Kirkko oli melkein
pimeä, lukuunottamatta tuota epätasaista valoa, jota virtasi sinne
pienistä syvällä seinissä olevista goottilaisista ikkunoista. Mutta
vanha pappi tunsi tien hyvin karkeasti veistettyjen penkkien välitse
vaatimattoman alttarin portaille, joilta hän melkein puoli vuosisataa
oli rukoillut Jumalan siunausta yksinkertaiselle kuulijakunnalleen.
Polvistuen nopeasti avasi hän äkkiä pyhäkön kannen ja otti sieltä
kultaisen rasian, joka sisälsi Kaikkivaltiaan ruumista kuvaavat
öylätit».
»Kiiruhtakaa nyt Jumalan nimessä, isä»! kuului Andráksen ääni

ulkoa, ja kiedottuaan nopeasti pyhän rasian mekkonsa helmaan
kiipesi isä Ambrosius jälleen nuoren talonpojan taakse.
Miehet olivat seisoneet kunnioittavasti vaitiollen tämän lyhyen

toimituksen kuluessa, mutta kun Csillag jälleen läksi nopeasti
laukkaamaan, läksivät he huutaen juoksemaan sen jälkeen. Heitä oli
noin pari- kolmesataa tahi koko tuon pienen kylän työkykyinen väki,
joka oli nyt hyvin innokas sovittamaan menneisyytensä ja
korjaamaan rakastamansa tasangon maineen, jonka he olivat
konnantyöllään tahranneet; ja kun he vihdoin kuumissaan ja
hengästyneinä saapuivat Bideskuty’yn, muodostivat he ketjun ollen
valmiit tottelemaan häntä, jolle he halusivat näyttää, että he vielä
olivat hänen kunnioituksensa ja myötämielisyytensä arvoiset.
Bideskuty oli sillä aikaa seurannut Andráksen antamia ohjeita, sillä
nyt voitiin jo nähdä selvästi, että vanhaa päärakennusta uhkasi
pohjoisesta päin suuri vaara. Sillä suunnalla oli melko suuri
maissipelto, josta osa oli jo tulossa ja levitti tulipaloa nopeasti
ulkohuoneita ja talleja kohti. Tämän hävitetyn maan onneton
omistaja oli koonnut ympärilleen kaikki saatavissa olevat apuvoimat,
ja sillä aikaa kuin hänen haavellisiin vaatteihin pukeutuneet
miesvieraansa koettivat pelastaa tätä hänen omaisuutensa osaa, toi
hän paikalle kaikki kamaripalvelijansa ja vahvimmat palvelijattarensa
suojelemaan talon muita osia.
He koettivat kaataa maissia maahan niin paljon kuin suinkin

viikatteilla, sirpeillä ja lapioilla, mutta vaikka tuo pieni joukko
työskentelikin kovasti ja vauhdikkaasti, työskenteli kumminkin
vihollinen kovemmin tullen yhä lähemmäksi, ja puolen tunnin
kuluttua huomattiin selvästi, ettei leikattu alue ollut tarpeeksi leveä
estämään tehokkaasti liekkien etenemistä.
Bideskuty käveli edestakaisin peltojensa läheisyydessä

tarkastellen levottomasti taivaanrantaa, josta avun luultiin
lähestyvän. Hän ei halunnut ajatella enää pahaa eikä epäillä, sillä
hän tiesi nyt liiankin hyvin, että jos hänellä tämän peloittavan yön
jälkeen on katto päänsä yläpuolella ja vielä hieman muutakin
omaisuutta, oli se tuon miehen ansiota, jota hän iltapäivällä oli
loukannut ja lyönyt kasvoihin. Oli aivan varmaa, että tulipalo oli
ihmisten sytyttämä, ja jäljellä oli ainoastaan toivo, että tuo rikas
talonpoika voi taivuttaa rikolliset sovittamaan oman konnantyönsä,
ennenkuin se oli liian myöhäistä.
Naiset olivat kaikki peräytyneet puutarhan porttien sisäpuolelle. He

olivat liian levottomat mennäkseen sisälle, ja parittain tahi kolmisin
kävelivät he akasiakujannetta edestakaisin arvaillen, saapuisiko tuo
luvattu apu, ja katsellen isiään, veljiään ja miehiään, jotka vielä
työskentelivät uhattujen tallien katoilla.
Bideskuty kuuli jo kaukaa talonpoikien huudot, kun he seurasivat

juosten Csillagia, jolla András ja isä Ambrosius ratsastivat.
András pysähdytti hevosensa nopeasti Bideskuty’n viereen ja

laskeuduttuaan sen selästä huusi hän:
»Kreivi, isä Ambrosius ja minä olemme tuoneet tänne kolmesataa

innokasta apulaista, jotka Jumalan avulla voivat ehkä suojella
asuinrakennukset ja tallit tulelta. Nyt miehet», lisäsi hän viitaten
maissipelloille, »on teidän saatava tuo tulenarka aine syrjään.
Hakatkaa, leikatkaa, repikää, polkekaa ja näyttäkää minulle, kuka
parhaiten voi hävittää muutamia maakunnan parhaimpia
maissipeltoja. Ottakaa kaikki saatavissa olevat työvälineet
hukkaamatta aikaa, ja suokoon Jumala menestystä työllenne».
Isä Ambrosiuskin laskeutui maahan. Luottavaisesti otti hän

kauhtanansa alta pyhän astian ja kohotettuaan sen korkealle päänsä
yläpuolelle niin, että kaikki tulisivat osalliseksi jumalallisesta
siunauksesta, rukoili hän kunnioittavasti apua Jumalalta tämän
kauhean hävityksen lopettamiseksi.
Muutamissa minuuteissa hajautuivat kaikki vastailleet innokkaat

työmiehet pelloille, ja pian kuultiin kaukaa terävien viikatteiden
synnyttämää ääntä, kun ne leikkasivat maissin sitkeitä varsia.
Bideskuty näki paikoiltaan, miten miehet kumartuivat työhönsä,

niittivät ja leikkasivat levähtämättä hetkeäkään. He olivat aloittaneet
työnsä melkein tulen vierestä, vaarallisen läheltä, ajatteli Bideskuty.
Näytti siltä kuin he olisivat halunneet uhrata elämänsäkin
pelastaakseen nyt nuo maakappaleet hänelle, ja uhmata vaaraa
osoittaakseen selvästi, miten tottelevaisia ja katuvaisia he nyt olivat.
Ja varmasti pakotti syyllisyyden tuntokin heitä nyt taistelemaan
kovasti tuota säälimätöntä tulta vastaan, jonka heidän rikolliset
kätensä olivat sytyttäneet. Bideskuty katsoi melkein kateellisesti
tuohon vierellään seisovaan reippaaseen talonpoikaan, joka niin
helposti oli taivuttanut nuo niskoittelevat miehet tottelemaan
tahtoaan. Hän olisi halunnut ilmaista hänelle kiitollisuutensa
saamastaan odottamattomasta avusta, mutta vieläkin kytevä viha
tukahdutti jollakin tavoin sanat hänen kurkkuunsa. Tuo ylpeä ylimys
ei voinut taivuttaa itseään tällaistenkaan olosuhteiden vallitessa
osoittamaan, että hän jollakin tavoin oli velassa vieressään
seisovalle alhaissyntyiselle talonpojalle.
Pian huomattiin selvästi, että tulipalon alue alkoi melkein

huomaamatta supistua. Kuiva tasanko ja leveä korkea tie
muodostivat sekä etelässä että idässä sellaisen voittamattoman
esteen tulelle, ettei se enää voinut levitä niille suunnille. Pohjoisessa
olevat kaukaisemmat tallit, joiden katot oli kasteltu, muodostivat
myöskin tehokkaan esteen. Toivo alkoi jälleen kyteä Bideskuty’n
sydämessä, kun hän näki nuo leveät maissipeltojen poikki leikatut
urat, joiden reunoilla taloa kohti uhkaavasti levinneet liekit ensin
lepattivat ja sitten sammuivat. Miesten työskennellessä ei isä
Ambrosius lopettanut hetkeksikään rukouksiaan eikä Bideskuty
katselemistaan. Ylpeä kreivi oli sanomatta sanaakaan vastaan
luvannut Andráksen ohjata pelastustöitä.
Kiihtyneestä Bideskuty’sta tuntui, että tuo nuori talonpoika oli

yhtäaikaa joka paikassa. Toisen kerran oli hän tuolla miesten luona
ohjaamassa heidän työtään ja toisen kerran taasen puutarhan
porteilla lähettämässä lohduttavia tietoja puutarhassa oleville naisille.
Taistelu ihmisten ja luonnonvoiman välillä kesti viisi tuntia, ja tuuma
tuumalta pakotettiin luonnonvoima taipumaan. Nyt voitiin nähdä jo
kaikkialla mustia ja savuavia läikkiä, jotka olivat kuin autioita
tulimeressä uiskentelevia saaria. Kirkas hehku oli jo tummennut.
Pimeys, joka nyt tuntui monta kertaa synkemmältä verrattuna tuohon
muutamia tunteja sitten vallitsevaan kaameaan valaistukseen, oli jo
peittänyt suurimman osan taivaanrannasta. Kukistettu vihollinen
koetti pari kertaa valloittaa takaisin menettämäänsä aluetta ja
parissa paikassa syttyikin maissin sänki tuleen ja paloi hetkisen,
mutta leikkaamisen jälkeen voitiin nuo savuavat jäännökset pian
tehokkaasti sammuttaa. Kun liekit pienenivät, yhtyivät naamioitetut
talonpoikiin, ja pian muuttui tulen leviämistä estävä salpa yhä
kiinteämmäksi. Bideskuty ei suostunut lähtemään mihinkään niin
kauan kuin kipinäkin vielä voitiin huomata, vaan tarkasteli
lakkaamatta, miten hänen peloittava vihollisensa työnnettiin takaisin
ja tukahdutettiin. Hän ei tuntenut ollenkaan väsymystä katsellessaan
kaikkea tuota kuin unennäköä, eikä hän koettanutkaan lisäytyvässä
pimeässä saada selville tuon kauhistuttavan hävityksen suuruutta,
joka nyt levisi hänen eteensä siinä, missä vielä eilen komeat vehnä-
ja maissitähkät olivat lainehtineet iloisesti kesätuulessa.
Hän ei halunnut tietää pohjoisessa päin sijaitsevien viinitarhojensa

kohtaloa eikä saada selville, miten hänen monien kilometrien
pituisille turnipsi- ja kaurapelloilleen oli käynyt, sillä mahdotonta oli
vielä kenenkään tietää, miten paljon ne olivat kärsineet tulen
raivosta.
Tasangon takaiselle itäiselle taivaanrannalle alkoi ilmestyä heikkoa

punaa, joka tunkeutui lisäytyvän pimeyden läpi. Ilma oli täynnä
tukahduttavaa savua. Kaukana sammuttelivat talonpojat ja
naamioitetut, jotka nyt näyttivät vielä hullunkurisemmilta nokisine
kasvoineen ja käsineen ja repeytyneinä koristeineen, viimeisiä
kipinöitä maissipelloista, jotka olivat olleet maakunnan ylpeyden
esineet. Hän kiitti Jumalaa, ettei hän voinut nähdä häviötä, ja oli
tyytyväinen, että hän voi siirtää huomiseen runsaan satonsa
mitättömien jäännösten tarkastelun ja tyytyä vain tänään toteamaan,
että asuinrakennukset, tallit ja ehkä eläimetkin olivat pelastuneet.
Kaukaa voi hän jo kuulla, miten niitä nyt ajettiin takaisin talleihin,
mutta hän ei halunnut kysyä, montako niistä tuli ja savu olivat
tappaneet. Kaiken tuon sai hän kyllä tietää tarpeeksi pian — jo
huomenna. Tänään ei hän luullut kaipaavansa enää muuta kuin
lepoa. Hän totesi, että useimmat talonpojat olivat poislähdössä
palatakseen jälleen Arokszállakseen. Tuo taivaanrannalta näkyvä
ruusunpunainen juova alkoi levetä ja kirkastua, ja savunkin läpi voi
hän nähdä, miten tähdet himmenivät auringonnousun lähestyessä.
Isä Ambrosius sanoi hänelle monta lohduttavaa sanaa, ja jokainen
talonpoika nosti kunnioittavasti lakkiaan mennessään vararikkoon
joutuneen kreivin sivu.
»Gyuri, etkö tule jo sisään»? sanoi lihava kreivi Kantássy hiljaa ja

hyvin ystävällisesti. »Väsymys ja levottomuus ovat nähtävästi sinut
kokonaan uuvuttaneet. Tulen juuri linnasta taivutettuani naiset
menemään levolle».
Bideskuty katsoi epämääräisesti vanhaan ystäväänsä

ymmärtämättä täydellisesti hänen tarkoitustaan. Yön jännitys ja
vaivat olivat väsyttäneet hänen mieltänsäkin yhtä paljon kuin hänen
ruumistaankin.
»Nyt ei ole enää mitään vaaraa huomattavissa, mutta vartijoita on

asetettu eri paikkoihin hälyyttämään, jos tuli sattuisi uudestaan
riehahtamaan palamaan».
Bideskuty tuskin tiesi, kuka puhui. Joku nuorukainen se kumminkin

oli, joka näytti äärettömän hullunkuriselta raskaassa märässä
satiinihameessaan ja avokaulaisissa kureliiveissään, päärmätyissä
röyhelöissään, nauharuusuissaan ja nauhoissaan. Bideskuty nauroi
niin, että hän horjui ja melkein kaatui Kantássyn käsivarsille, jotka
tukivat häntä hellästi kuin juopunutta, joka ei pysy seisoallaan.
Lihava vanha kreivi koetti taluttaa ystävänsä pois.
»Tule nyt, Gyuri, täällä ei ole sinulla enää mitään tekemistä».
Mutta vaikka Bideskuty olikin hyvin väsynyt ja levollemenon aika

varmasti oli jo käsillä, tunsi hän kumminkin, että hänen oli vielä
tehtävä jotakin ennen taloon menoaan, mutta hän ei voinut muistaa,
mitä se oli. Hän kieltäytyi itsepäisesti liikkumasta mihinkään ja tuijotti
epämääräisesti hymyillen nuoriin vieraihinsa ja heidän märkiin
pukuihinsa, noiden iloisten naamiohuvien jäännöksiin, joille hän oli
nauranut niin sydämensä pohjasta eilen, josta tuntui kuluneen jo
kokonainen iankaikkisuus.
Muudan palvelijatar ilmestyi juosten puutarhan portista. Hän toi

kreivittäreltä sellaisen viestin, että kreivi tulisi heti sisään, sillä ei hän
eikä neiti Ilonka voineet nukkua, ennenkuin he olivat puhutelleet
häntä.
Bideskuty valmistautui lopultakin lähtemään.
»Kreivitär käski kreivin tuoda Keményn Andráksen Kisfalusta

mukanaan», lisäsi tyttö, »sillä kreivitär haluaa kiittää häntä muutamin
sanoin ajoissa saapuneesta avusta».
Silloin muisti Bideskuty’kin, mitä hänen oli tehtävä ennen taloon
palaamistaan. Joukossa oli ollut muudan mies, joka ei ollut
ainoastaan nähnyt vaivaa hänen puolestaan pelastaakseen hänen
kotinsa täydellisestä häviöstä, vaan hän oli myöskin taivuttanut
muutkin tehokkaaseen ja vapaaehtoiseen apuun, ja niin muuttanut
hänen perinpohjaisen häviönsä vain osittaiseksi. Tuo mies oli kyllä
alhaissyntyinen talonpoika, joka polveutui orjista ja sitäpaitsi
juutalaisesta äidistä syntyneestä saidasta koronkiskurista, ja joka
juuri äsken oli ollut niin hävytön, että Bideskuty’n oli ollut pakko
kurittaa häntä, mutta tuo riita oli nyt unhotettava, koska mies oli
koettanut sovittaa rikoksensa. Bideskuty tunsi olevansa hänelle
hyvin kiitollinen.
Hän kääntyi etsimään Andrásta ympäröivästä joukosta, mutta

talonpoikaa ei näkynyt. Hän kysyi Andrásta ja huusi häntä nimeltä,
mutta András oli jo lähtenyt kotiinsa.
TOINEN OSA
XVI
PÄÄSIÄISAAMU.
»Kyllä se nyt jo näyttää lakkaavan»!
»Ei vielä tänään, luullakseni»!
»Pisaraakaan ei ole pudonnut viimeisten minuuttien kuluessa».
»Katsohan tuota rakoa pilvissä»!
»Ei se levene, vaan sulkeutuu pian jälleen».
»Nyt sataa taasen».
»Uneksit, Laczi, sillä tuoltahan näkyy jo sinistä taivastakin».
»Mistä?»
»Tuolta Kisfalun yläpuolelta. Tänään ei enää sada, siitä saat olla

aivan varma».
Tämä viimeinen puhuja oli nähtävästi hyvin kokenut ilmojen

ennustaja, sillä hänen ympärilleen kokoutuneet nuoret miehet, jotka
tarkastelivat taivasta levottomasti, eivät uskaltaneet sanoa suoraan
vastaankaan. Ainoastaan muudan uskalsi pelokkaasti huomauttaa:
»Muistat kai, Berczi, että viime sunnuntaina sanoit sateen

loppuvan, ennenkuin isä Ambrosius sanoo 'Ite Missa est', mutta kun
tulimme kirkosta sitten kuin kätemme oli siunattu, satoi yhä ja on
satanut aina tähän hetkeen asti»?
»Niin, mutta nyt se on kumminkin loppunut, eikö olekin»? sanoi

Vas Berczi itsepäisesti. »Vai vieläkö tunnet kastuvasi, Laczi
poikaseni»? lisäsi hän hyvin ivallisesti.
Ja todellakin näytti siltä kuin ilmojen profeetta olisi puhunut

viisauden sanoja tänään. Epäilemättä leveni tuo pilvien rako ja siitä
näkyvä taivaankaistale oli kieltämättä hyvin kirkkaansininen. Joskus
tunkeutui raosta muudan pelokas ja vaalea auringonsäde valaisten
surullista maisemaa.
»Ensimmäiset auringonsäteet pariin viikkoon, lapsukaiseni», sanoi

vanha Berczi nostaen lakkiaan muka hyvin vakavasti. »Lakit päästä
ja tervehtikää vieraita»!
Nuoret talonpojat tottelivat nauraen, ja lyöden kantapäänsä yhteen

kumarsivat he vakavasti aurinkoon päin.
»Isten hozta!» sanoivat he kaikki kohteliaasti.
»Herramme aurinko, olet tervetullut»!
»Toivomme teidän korkeutenne viipyvän kauan luonamme»!
»Hei», lisäsi vanha Berczi huoaten, »teidän korkeutenne on tullut

katsomaan surullista näkyä».
»Onkohan maantiellä ollut milloinkaan niin paljon lokaa kuin nyt»?
sanoi muudan talonpoika pudistaen päätään.
»Rattailla ei voida ollenkaan kulkea ja eilen upposivat härkäni

polviaan myöten likaan. En saanut niitä kääntymään enkä
kulkemaan eteenkäänpäin. Luulin viime hetkemme koittaneen, sillä
tunsin vajoavani yhä syvempään, ja ajattelin, että härät menevät
suoraan lian läpi helvettiin vieden minut mukanaan, suomatta minulle
aikaa syntieni anteeksisaamiseen ja rukoilemiseen».
»En ymmärrä, miten Keményn András aikoo tulla kirkkoon

tänään».
»Hänellä on hyviä hevosia. Hän ratsastaa Csillagilla ja tuo Etelkan

mukanaan».
»Tiedän, ettei Etelka mitenkään jää pois

pääsiäisjumalanpalveluksesta.
Hän on hyvin hurskas».
»Eikä András salli hänen lähteä yksinään».
»Oletteko huomanneet, lapsukaiseni», sanoi tuo viisas vanha

profeetta, »ettei András ole ollut oikein oma itsensä viime aikoina»?
»Hän näyttää todellakin hyvin vakavalta», sanoi Laczi. »En muista

kuulleeni hänen nauravankaan pitkiin aikoihin».
»Luultavasti johtuu se siitä», sanoi eräs vanha talonpoika, »ettei

hän ole vielä antanut meille anteeksi tuota tulipaloa».
»András ei ole pitkävihainen»! sanoi muudan nuorukainen

kiihkeästi. »Hän ei ole puhunut tuosta tulipalosta sanaakaan sen
jälkeen kuin se tapahtui».
»Mutta sitä kai et voine kieltää», sanoi vanha Berczi, »että juuri
tuona tulipaloyönä muuttui András tuollaiseksi omituiseksi ja
vakavaksi»?
»Hän on ehkä huolissaan uudesta sadostaan. Lopetimme

kylvämisen
Kisfalussa juuri, kun tämä kirottu sade alkoi».
»Tulva ei kohoa mitenkään hänen pelloilleen».
»Tarnan rannoilla on Kisfalulla vain muutamia maissipeltoja.

Hänen vahinkonsa ovat vielä mitättömät».
»Mutta vesi nousee vielä».
»Pauhu oli hirmuinen viime yönä. Eilen kävin aivan kreivin talleilla
asti ja minusta näytti, että koko Bideskuty on veden vallassa».
»Kreivillä on todellakin vastuksia».
»Jumala rankaisee häntä, ymmärrät kai sen. Meidän ei olisi

tarvinnut sytyttää hänen vehnäänsä palamaan viime vuonna, sillä
Jumala näkyy itse huolehtivan, ettei jyvääkään jauheta tuossa
saatanan rakentamassa myllyssä».
Talonpojat seisoskelivat kylän kirkon edustalla parhaissa

sunnuntaipukimissaan odottaen äitejään, sisariaan, vaimojaan ja
morsiamiaan, joilla meni tänään paljon aikaa pukeutuessaan
komeihin pääsiäisvaatteihinsa. Aurinko oli nähtävästi ilmestynyt
näkyviin pysyäkseenkin poissa pilvien takaa, sillä se paistoi hyvin
kirkkaasti kylään, joka viimeisten viikkojen kuluessa oli näyttänyt
hyvin autiolta. Oli satanut lakkaamatta neljätoista vuorokautta, ja
raskaat vesipisarat olivat rikkoneet tasankojen äärettömän
hiljaisuuden ja muuttaneet koko maiseman likajärveksi. Kaukaa
pohjoisesta kuului Tarnan surullinen kohina, kun sen vihaiset
vesimäärät, joita tuo yhtämittainen sade oli lisännyt, syöksyivät
raivokkaasti eteenpäin tulvien matalien rantojen yli ja upottaen
mutaisiin syvyyksiinsä Bideskuty’n hedelmälliset pellot, joiden
aikainen kevätkylvö oli juuri saatu lopetetuksi.
»Tuolta tulevat Kisfalun miehet», sanoi Laczi viitaten tielle. »He

näyttävät olevan ravassa sekä yltä että alta».
»Tytöt ovat kumminkin pukeutuneet hyvin sievästi», sanoi eräs

nuorempi mies katsoen ihailevasti kirkasvärisiin hameihin
pukeutuneita kauniita tyttöjä, jotka juuri kääntyivät kylän valtatielle.
»Sárilla ja Katilla on kummallakin uudet punaiset kengät».
»András on lahjoittanut ne, tiedän sen. Hän ratsasti Gyöngyösiin

juuri ennen kylvämistä ja osti sieltä äidilleen uuden silkkipuvun ja
palvelijattarilleen uudet kengät».
»Se mies on tehty rahasta», huokaisi vanha Berczi kateellisesti.
»Hän käyttää sitä kumminkin hyviin tarkoituksiin», sanoi toinen.

»Hän maksoi koko talven äidilleni täyden palkan vehnän
poimimisesta, vaikka äitini on nyt aivan sokea eikä voi erottaa viljan
seassa kasvavien kukkien siemeniä oikeasta viljasta».
»On helppo harjoittaa hyväntekeväisyyttä», sanoi vanha Berczi

ytimekkäästi, »kun on rikas».
»Eipä niinkään helppoa», sanoi muudan nuorempi mies, »koska
kreivistäkin se on selvästi vaikeampaa kuin Andráksesta. Tiedän,
ettei hän viime talvena lahjoittanut juuri mitään».
»Kreivillä ei ollut mistä lahjoittaakaan. Muistat kai, että tulipalo

turmeli melkein koko hänen satonsa ja tappoi paljon hänen
elukoitaan».
»Tulipaloa ei olisi sytytetty, ellei hän olisi rakennuttanut tuota

pirullista myllyä, jonka tarkoitus oli riistää meiltä palkka käyttämällä
saatanaa apuna työssä», totesi Laczi kiihkeästi.
Kisfalusta tulijoiden oli sillä aikaa onnistunut kahlata likaisten

teitten poikki, ja he huusivat jo kaukaa tervehdykseksi kirkon portilla
seisoville ystävilleen. Tämän pienen tasangon kylän talonpojat
näyttivät hyvinvoivilta valkoisissa pellavapaidoissaan ja housuissaan,
jotka oli hienosti poimuteltu ja päärmätty, kauniisti koruompeleilla
kirjailluissa lyhyissä nahkatakeissaan ja leveissä vöissään, joissa oli
suuret auringonpaisteessa kimaltelevat messinkisoljet, ja suurissa
lampaannahkaviitoissaan, jotka riippuen heidän hartioiltaan lisäsivät
heidän tanakkojen vartaloillensa avokkaisuutta. He olivat vahvan
näköisiäkin leveine hartioineen ja pienine rintavine jalkoineen, jotka
oli pistetty kiiltäviin korkeakantaisiin saappaihin, joiden kannukset
kilisivät heidän kävellessään, ja puhuaksemme tytöistä, ei
varmaankaan mistään muusta Unkarin maakunnasta voitu löytää
heidän vertaisiaan, sellaisia kirkkaita silmiä, niin valkoisia käsivarsia
ja sellaisia pieniä jalkoja, eikä mistään muusta kylästä voitu löytää
tyttöjä, joilla olisi ollut niin monta värillistä hametta yllään kuin näillä.
Siellä olivat esimerkiksi Sári ja Kati, puhumattakaan useista muista,
joilla voi tänä pääsiäisaamuna olla yllään ainakin kolmekymmentä
hametta. Ne muuttivat heidän länteensä niin leveäksi ja heidän
vartalonsa niin hienoksi, että jokainen poika tunsi vastustamatonta
halua kiertää käsivartensa heidän ympärilleen. Heidän pienet
jalkansa olivat aivan ravassa, sillä Kisfalusta oli pitkä matka, mutta
käsissään kantoivat he ylpeästi uusia punaisia kenkiään, noita
tasankojen tyttöjen ilon ja onnen kapineita. Ei ainoakaan tyttö, jolla
on punaiset kengät, salli niiden tahrautua likaan, vaan kantaa ne
huolellisesti kirkkoon rukouskirjansa ja parhaimman nenäliinansa
kanssa, ja vetää ne vasta jalkoihinsa portilla voidakseen kävellä niillä
kirkkoon, muiden vähemmän onnellisten mustia kenkiä käyttävien
ystävättäriensä kateudeksi.
Jokaisen asunnon ovesta tuli nyt tielle kauniita tyttöjä, jotka olivat
pukeutuneet koko sunnuntaikoreuteensa. Leveät silitetyt pellavahihat
kiilsivät ja kansallisväriset, punaiset, valkoiset ja viheriät nauhat
liehuivat tuulessa. Kaunis huntu, joka oli sidottu niskaan suurella
nauharuusulla, täydensi kuningatarmaisen pienen pään kauneutta.
Tukka oli kammattu sileäksi ja letitetty kahdeksi paksuksi palmikoksi,
pusero oli edestä kauniisti koruompeluin kirjailtu ja hoikan vartalon
ympärille oli napitettu ahtaat liivit. Lukemattomat hameet heiluivat
iloisesti tyttöjen kävellessä omituisesti lanteitaan heiluttaen, suuret
kultaiset korvarenkaat, useat helminauhat ja liivien kirkkaat soljet
loistivat auringossa yhtä kirkkaasti kuin kauniit silmät ja lumivalkoiset
hampaat. Vanhemmilla naisilla oli hieman tummemmat puvut ja
pitemmät hunnut, kirkkaanväriset huivit peittivät heidän hartioitaan ja
kaikilla oli käsissään suurilla joko messinki- tahi hopeahakasilla
varustetut raskaat rukouskirjat.
Kirkon portilla vaihdetaan tervehdyksiä ja siunauksia naisten

istuutuessa porraskiville ja vetäessä kauniit kenkänsä likaisiin pieniin
jalkoihinsa.
Isä Ambrosius ei ole vielä saapunut. Pieni kello kaikuu kumminkin
jo, lähettäen kauaksi iloisia säveleitä ja kutsuen siten yksinkertaista
kansaa jumalanpalvelukseen tänä kauniina pääsiäisaamuna.
Muutamat naiset ovat jo menneet kirkkoon saadakseen hyvät
istumapaikat karkeasti kyhätyissä puupenkeissä, joista he voivat
nähdä kreivin perheineen istumassa tilavassa penkissään, sillä kreivi
tulee aina pääsiäisenä tähän pieneen kirkkoon kuulemaan messua,
ja tuo samalla karitsansa ja pääsiäismunansa isän siunattavaksi.
Ulkona lörpötellään yhtämittaa. Kirkkomiehiä saapuu kaikilta

suunnilta eikä tervehdysten vaihdosta tahdo tulla loppuakaan.
»Tuleekohan kreivi»? kysyy eräs vastasaapunut.
»Hän tuli kyllä tänne viime vuonna, mutta en tiedä, tuleeko hän
tänään», sanoi eräs nuori Bideskuty’n paimen. »Kun sivuutin
päärakennuksen, odottivat vaunut ja hevoset portaitten edustalla,
joten on varma, että kreivitär ja nuori neiti saapuvat».
»Jalo Ilonka on hyvin kaunis», sanoi muudan kaunis tyttö

vetäessään punaisia kenkiään jalkoihinsa.
»Ei puoleksikaan niin kaunis silmissäni kuin sinä, Panna», kuiskasi

eräs nuorukainen nopeasti hänen korvaansa.
»Auta minut ylös, Rezsö, äläkä puhu tyhmyyksiä. Olen varma, että
jalo
Ilonka on aivan alttarilla olevan pyhän neitsyen näköinen».
»Mutta sinä, Panna, et ole etkä saakaan olla kenenkään näköinen.

Ei ainoallakaan muulla tytöllä ole niin kirkkaita silmiä kuin sinulla»,

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