The Subject's Fascination at the Point of his/her Captivation in the Jouissance of the Other

CARVALHO Maria José

A thread to be woven. A thread that weaves produced by the context. A single, unique rare thread, the end of which has its time to appear and that keeps going, fed by the context.
The end of the thread arises for the speaking subjects in a given moment, which is the same as the one of the traumatic entry of the signifier for each subject. Such a traumatic entry has its uniqueness, according to the context of the subject, to his/her own history.
I shall retake Serguei Constantinovich Pankejeff's uniqueness, according to what I managed to apprehend from Freud's work, after Lacan's rereading, at the points I are about to focus on.
At a very early age (from the age of six months to one and a half year old), Serguei witnesses his parents' copula a tergo. What this child has seen before such a 'primary scene' cannot be translated into words. The observer- static, looking at the scene, focusing the genitalia- is taken by sensations. And, soon afterwards, both the scene and the sensations are frozen.
The child, affected by what he has seen, captivated into this scene, carries a primitive mark, which due to the repression, becomes the traumatic nucleus that insists or searches for an a posteriori signification.
The scene of his parents' intercourse accounted for a double identification: not only an identification with the father but with the mother as well.
His parents' positioning during the scene will keep on determining his jouissance as to the sexual desire for all his life long.
When Serguei searches Freud's help in 1910, one of the questions for Freud was to clarify the nature of the trauma. The clinical evidence points to an ambiguity in the trauma once the phantasmatical aspect is much more important than the event itself, although the reconstruction of the history in its uniqueness is essential as it will make it possible to define what matters to the subject.
At the age of four, Serguei had a dream with wolves and, from this moment on, starts to ressignify the scene he had witnessed (from the age of six months to one and a half year old). This dream is so important that he calls this analysis: 'The Man of the Wolves'.
What does this dream show?
The window opens, briskly, making up a picture. A tree appears with five wolves scattered on its branches. Since an early age, he saw wolves depicted in pictures, especially when his sister wanted to frighten him. Something familiar/non-familiar (heimlich/unheimlich) makes him feel anguish, anguish of castration.
It is in the eye field that his first encounter with the phallic presence, i.e., what is called the 'primary scene'. The Phallus is present, visible under the form of the functioning of the penis. On evoking the reality in the phantasmagorical way of the primary scene what shocks is always some ambiguity in what concerns this phallic presence.
The perched wolves stare at the subject, on this reflection that the image bears of a catatonia. Catatonia that is not another but the one of the subject, of the charmed child fascinated by what he sees, paralyzed by such a fascination, intertwined with his own excitement, with his own jouissance. In this jouissance, which goes beyond every possible observation, from the part of the subject, the subject is nothing but erection, on this shot that makes him a phallus, he becomes rigid, arborizated.
Face such a scene, the subject makes himself a wolf looking and makes himself five wolves looking. At this night the thing that is suddenly opened to him is the return of what he essentially is in the fundamental phantom.
The very scene that it is all about is veiled. From what one cannot see emerges more than this V, on the moth's wing, from his mother's open legs or the Roman V from the time on the clock. Five o' clock on a hot summer day, time when the meeting between the subject and the traumatic in the language as sexual reality from the unconscious seems to have taken place.
The V may be considered as a number, as frequency, making the signifiers equivalent and organizing the time as frequency. However, if the signifiers are equivalent, there is no significant separation, there is no time intervention between S1 and S2 and, without time intervention, there is no emergence of the subject from the unconscious. There is no fall of the object and, if there is no fall of the object, there is no possibility of nomination. Time becomes infinite since there is no beginning that nominates. There is time without a beginning, a frequency: a difficulty that this subject has faced during his analysis, in terms of his constitution by the signifier, once he has not changed his position concerning the jouissance, he has kept the position of symbolically abolishing the castration.
From the scene what matters is that what he sees in his phantom is actually $, as a cohort of a: the a is the wolves. It is not only that the subject is fascinated by the look of these wolves on the tree; it is that the fascinated look is the very subject. The numbers in question - six, seven wolves, five in the drawing the subject that makes himself a wolf, looking, and five wolves, looking - point to the object a, which, while marks the unconscious inaugural temporality, is numerical, cannot be reached through metaphor and metonymy.
In the seminar 'The Identification' Jacques Lacan states that 'The function of this object is related to the relation by which the subject constitutes him/herself, in relation to the place of the Other, with a capital 'O', which is the place where the reality of the signifier is put in order. And, at the point where all significance lacks, where it abolishes itself, at this nodal point, referred to as the desire of the Other, it is at this point called phallic, in the sense that it means abolishment of all significance as such,
that the object a, object of castration, comes to take its place'.
This dream is central in the analysis of 'The Man of the Wolves' and it took place before his fourth birthday. It gets all its value because it is repeated several times in his childhood. The 'primary scene' is reconstructed by means of significant inter crossings that appear during the analysis.
To conclude our argument it is worth quoting Isabel Martins Considera in 'What it is about in an Analysis': 'The subject of the unconscious only constitutes him/herself when he/she splits him/herself in relation to what originates him/her, once the very thing that determines his/her desire escapes from him/her. Its determination in the field of language, in the field of the Other escapes him/her, how much he/she is affected as a speaking subject escapes him/her. This is why it needs to be constituted in an analysis'.

From Práxis Lacaniana/Formação em Escola. Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, (Brazil)