History, Gap, Truth

By Duane Rousselle

1

In 1966, Lacan said that “the unconscious is history,” while Freud often repeated that “the unconscious is timeless.” At another point, Lacan described the “strange temporality” of the “gap,” within which Freud invented the unconscious.[1] A compass: the unconscious as “a chapter of history marked by a blank [...] the censored chapter.”[2] Here, the unconscious as “gap” meets the unconscious as history inasmuch as the gap facilitates censorship. An example: the navel, for Freud, adds nothing to knowledge but opens up into interpretation “that cannot have any definite ending.”[3] It follows, claimed Miller, that analysis must be interminable, since the gap is utilized for “retroaction of S2 upon S1” within the clinical work of the analysand.[4]

2

The patient attempts to weave a historical narrative, but stumbles. First, there is an operation upon the symptom: a potency of jouissance lodged in the symptom might be liquidated through interventions aimed at surfacing memory through speech. Anna O’s hydrophobia was cured by Freud while she was under hypnosis after a memory of a dog drinking from a glass surfaced. There is a thinking here which concerns the therapeutics of the signifier upon the jouissance of the symptom. Freud discovered a residue of the symptom not subjected to this therapeutic operation: the missing memory emerges through the patient’s behavior under clinical transference. This inflection of history led toward Freud’s bold text, “Constructions in Analysis.” The construction from the analyst concerns what must have happened in what cannot be remembered within the patient’s life-story.

3.

In many ways, Lacan departs from Freud on the question of the “case history:” there are no published case histories offered to psychoanalysis. Transcriptions of case presentations at Saint Anne, but the concepts of psychoanalysis are not utilized, nor is there a construction of a case. Lacan’s doctoral dissertation comes close, but it was offered to the university and not to psychoanalysis. As for Freud, his case presentations are offered to psychoanalysis, a model that recedes during the last period of his work. Cases are offered to practitioners, not to patients. These make use of the semblants of psychoanalysis, indicating the orientation of the analyst in the clinical work. In the 1890s, already, Freud had admitted that these constructions read like short stories. The case is either read or heard, which indicates the field of the Other. That Other is psychoanalysis, but often through other analysts. We can say that the construction of a case is not without implicating the analyst within a social bond.

4.

This variation sees Lacan and Freud operating at a distance from the clinic, on the other side. The symptom is no longer the pivot of clinical work: the work addresses what becomes of psychoanalysis in the world. The tilt toward interpretation, then construction, meets, here, a tilt toward invention. Miller refers to this as “the politics of psychoanalysis in the world.” How does one teach what cannot be taught? Can non-medical practitioners function as analysts? How can one defend psychoanalysis from the institution? And a decidedly defensive attitude which finds the analyst at odds with other analysts, in an untenable historical position: the analyst’s solitary relation to the “hole” of history. The analyst constructs a story of its own place within the history of psychoanalysis, an invention that one can endure within the space of a gap.

Freud’s key text is “The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement,” and one comes away with an idea that he had constructed an elaborate, compelling, historical fiction, of his invention, and its defense: he, the lonely militant in the cause with an insatiable desire for psychoanalytic conquest, subjecting each one to the cutting edge of his discovery: companion or detractor? Freud’s effort was to set the historical record straight on psychoanalysis, and not without an aspect of hysteria in the manner in which this was exposed. I read it as a gamble: can one bear to put oneself in such an untenable historical position? Freud opens with an admission: in the early days he felt entirely alone, prone to confusion, and stood to lose his confidence. Then his defense, against great losses, including Jung: psychoanalysis will withstand this loss, and gain many new adherents.

5.

History is transmitted through the device of the pass as a testimonial of one’s own analysis. Is it a construction? Is it a case presentation? The solitude of the analyst again at the fore. Miller said: “the analysts—the Freudians, the Lacanians—are thus put in the position, which history will always verify more, of parasites, parasites of solitude.” One is either setting up analytic coordinates or else passing through them, not without a degree of hysteria. An inflection of history that is invitational: “everyone is invited to join Freud and Lacan in their solitude.” History and the institution are brought back to psychoanalysis. A movement away from the interminable inflection of historical interpretation, toward an end which effectuates a passage.

History, as hysteria: what, Lacan thought, could impel anyone to “hystoricize” oneself? In the pass, Lacan returned history to “scattered and ill-assorted individuals,” not without the Other in the School. The notion of invention is propelled by the insistence on the self-authorization of each analyst. Miller put it like this: “the field of self-authorization extends everywhere there is invention, quite simply. Wherever we invent, wherever we make something new, we authorize ourselves. It’s as simple as that.” A challenge faced by each in confronting Lacan’s invention of the pass: it is a question of the re-invention of psychoanalysis. Is this where Lacan went without Freud?

[1] Jacques Lacan. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis.

[2] Jacques Lacan. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language,” in Ecrits. W. W. Norton & Co.

[3] Sigmund Freud. The Interpretation of Dreams.

[4] Jacques-Alain Miller. “Another Lacan,” The Symptom.