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UNCONSCIOUS AND TRANSMISSION
CHARMOILLE Jean
"What is the Unconscious? The thing has not yet
been understood. "
J. Lacan. La méprise du sujet supposé savoir.
Institut Français de Naples, December 14, 1967
If we wish to attempt to convey the singularity of the unconscious discovered
by Freud, we must not forget the contradiction in structure spotted in
Freud and addressed by Lacan. This contradiction is found between the
desire for which the analyst is responsible, named x by Lacan, and the
resistance, which does not cease to relieve the analyst of such desire.
That is where our starting point lies, in this cleavage inherent to all
human beings, and therefore also to the analyst. The analyst's readings
of Freud and Lacan, as well as his practice and the institutional procedures
to which he is committed, may lead him to oscillate between a good inner
which contains the real signifiés and a bad outer, where he rejects
the false signifiés, rather than to become an expert of the Freudian
Unconscious. But what does the latter mean?
From the witticism described by Freud, Lacan suggests a dialectic of the
unconscious inside the transference occurring on the level of a link beyond
thought, established between the Other and the subject, according to a
new temporality which transmutes the duality of the speaking ego and the
other. It is through this opening that we tackle the ideas put forward
by Lacan regarding the Freudian unconscious; this is where we intend to
develop the limits of Freud's statements as the master's signifié,
as well as the unlimited field of signification which does not belong
to anyone, but to itself.
A word to the expert is enough…
By thinking that the Real is in the field of the visible, the listener,
governed by the intellectual guide which is the ego, has no choice but
remain alienated in the above mentioned oscillation. The listener, convinced
that he can put the Real back in its place just like anything else, separates
it from the signifiant responsible for it, whenever he is surprised: that
is what Freud calls repression. What the listener is incapable of knowing,
though, is that the Real can not take its place, for it is impossible
to grant it a place. The knowledge he lacks is that it is himself that
the Real displaces.
The expert has not forgotten it (1). He has discovered it in the transference
process, when the displacement governed by the metonymy suddenly came
to a halt. Affected by the Real of the object or the signifiant, he has
known since then that its virulence is a promise to happen, as it comes
back to be symbolized. In the position of the analysed one, he has not
forgotten (1) that the point where the Other - written as an A crossed
diagonally - does not respond anymore, a victim of the void of loneliness,
he is not left without a response, since he can at that moment, as a subject,
produce an asemantic signifiant apart from the signifié. That is,
in case a transmitter, of paradoxal temporality, hands him the key to
the paternal metaphor which provides him access to this new world, that
of the signification.
Before having encountered the castration of the Other, he did not know
that he was limited by his ego, who imprisoned him within the frontiers
of the principle of pleasure and displeasure. It was unthinkable to him
that this fugitive, which is the signification, could dwell within himself
and that he could also occupy a place in itself. How can these ideas put
forward by Lacan possibly match those postulated by the Freudian unconscious?
(1) It is an act of the very impossibility to forget, which concerns
the original repression, not the forgetfulness of anything in particular.
The Freudian unconscious, a radically Other knowledge
By stating a cleavage "by an act of will"(1) at the origin
of the symptoms, Freud declares himself an expert divided between an inner,
the acceptable one, and an outer, the rejected one: it is "the instant
of seeing", the first moment of a subject who dares to move forward
by himself, beyond the domain of Breuer's hypnoid states of consciousness.
However, he remains within the imaginary limits of the field of consciousness,
always divided in two.
Following that comes "the time to understand". It is the moment
when the expert is on his way to repression which, by the fact of being
intentional, later reveals itself as a product of indirect means controlled
by the ego. The symptoms are his own creation. The repressed, the unconscious
in form of memory, corresponds to souvenirs, representations and their
affects, which abreaction can cause to disappear first through hypnosis,
then afterwards by means of concentration and guided associations. However,
there remains an enigmatic "strange body"(2), as it can not
be eliminated… Freud could not anticipate this enclave but he does
not hesitate. It will become the "pathogenic core"(3), strictly
unconscious in the sense of being inaccessible, consisting of representations
or courses of thoughts and surrounded by an amount of mnesic material.
Such material is organized in three layers that will be rediscovered along
the psychoanalytic work. In Metapsychologie, of 1915, this core will correspond
to the original repressed, whereas the material accessible to consciousness
through the suspension of secondary repression is a matter of the secondary
repressed, at the origin of symptoms.
The unconscious is therefore considered by Freud as anOther type of Knowledge,
a radically different one, on account of the ego knowing strictly nothing
from the beginning. It is distinguished by compromise formations in the
preconscious. La science des rêves, written in 1900, defines its
topic place in which the unconscious signifying chain obeys the two laws
of language: condensation and displacement. Language is a condition to
the Freudian unconscious.
However, Freud is not done with this "stranger". In 1920, in
the 3rd chapter of his "Au-delà du principe de plaisir ",
he traces back his writings under the constraint of repetition, specific
of the unconscious material which, like the resistances, is against the
unconscious becoming conscious. If on the one hand Freud always finds
himself operating under a binary logic, according to which the ego calls
the tune, on the other, he heaves himself up elsewhere. This can be accounted
for the fact that "there still remains enough residue to justify
the hypothesis of the repetition compulsion which strikes us as being
more original, more elementary, more instinctual than the principle of
pleasure it discards"(4). One must wait for the end of his proposal
so that he does not pass off the responsibility any further onto the duality
which leads him to say that the analysis aim is to render the unconscious
conscious: at this "moment to conclude", he takes upon himself
the rest which, by force of repetition, does not cease to insist. After
this new development of "l'au-delà du principe de plaisir",
we are back to square one.
(1) S. Freud, " Les psychonévroses de défense "
in Névrose, psychose et perversion, P.U.F, 1973 p. 2.
(2) S. Freud, " Communication préliminaire " in Etudes
sur l'hystérie, P.U.F, 1973 p. 4.
(3) S. Freud, " Psychothérapie de l'hystérie "
" in Etudes sur l'hystérie, P.U.F, 1973 pp .233-234.
(4) S. Freud, " Au-delà du principe de plaisir " in Essais
de psychanalyse, Payot, 1981
pp. 63-64.
The call of "a prolific ignorance"
In 1892, Freud writes Communication Préliminaire with Breuer,
in which he explains the "psychic mechanism of hysterical phenomena".
At the same time, he questions himself on the cause of the symptoms presented
by Lucy R, an English housekeeper in her thirties. Freud is not satisfied
with the idea of an imaginary conflict of affect between the desire to
stay and look after the children whose mother, in her deathbed, entrusted
to her care and the desire to see her own mother. He is led to associate
her attachment to the children and the resentment felt towards the other
members of the house. At the origin of the symptoms he finds a certain
representation, which is "intentionally repressed by the conscious
and excluded from the associative elaboration"(1).
There is but one signifié to Freud: "I am rather suspicious
that you are in love with your boss, the director, and are probably not
aware of it…" Lucy R replies immediately: "Yes, I believe
I am". Feeling upset, he is quick as a flash: "But if you know
you love the director, why have you not told me so?"
What happens to Freud that makes him suddenly leave his imaginary reserve?
Is it a reaction of sheer prestige in which his ego, in a moment of weakening,
asks for a settlement of accounts? This immediacy means rather that it
is necessary to quickly cover the lack of knowledge of the Other, A, the
unknown person he meets and whom he is incapable of recognizing through
his thinking, as one is led to suppose from the note in which he exposes
himself, afflicted by a "blindness of the non-blind".
What Freud cannot contemplate and Lacan suggests (2), is that the first
one is situated in the imaginary limits of the knowledge of everything
about the truth, "knowledge of imaginary ascendancy… anti-knowledge,
that is, the anti-unconscious… whose consistency is opposed to change".
The ego, the master of this ready-to-think, believes he can have access
to the truth. What is unthinkable to him, though, is that it is the truth
that has access to the speaker. He is completely deaf to the call to find,
within what is already known the enigmatic point from which arises a desire
caused by the Real and, consequently, directed by this master of exception
towards what is not yet known. Being incapable of taking on this fugitive,
which his audacity nevertheless perceives as not being a matter for the
visible, he takes refuge in an accusing discourse that finds a historical
echo, since Lucy R. has endorsed the heavy responsibility she inherited
from her ancestors, exactly as every other speaking being.
What would have become of him if he had had the chance of not being spoken
to immediately by the non-fool, that one who knows already, the accuser
he will later call superego? He could have been sensitive to the silent
message of Lucy R's remarks: "Since I have already thought about
it, what is the use of us continuing with it?". Hoping that Lucy
would not interrupt her treatment after the reappearance of the symptoms,
he had to listen to the call of "an ignorance", proposed as
"prolific" by Lacan on May 12, 1955, "as it may reveal
the insistance of the desire" ?
Freud will later find this lack in the knowledge of the Other, A, in La
Science des Rêves at the point where the dreamer's associations
are interrupted, in this umbilical situation named "unerkannt".
He was not aware that he had already perceived it, at this same date in
1892, though he was incapable of thinking about it with traumatism at
the origin of the hysterical symptoms.
(1) S. Freud, " Communication préliminaire " in Etudes
sur l'hystérie, P.U.F, 1973, p. 91.
(2) J. Lacan, " L'insu que sait de l'une-bévue s'aile à
mourre ", Séminaire du 15.02.1977.
The experience of discourse
Defined as a situation in which the speaking being was not able to "release"
an amount of affect for "abreacting"(1), the traumatism has
an objective aspect. To illustrate this, Freud describes an aggression
in which an offended subject was incapable of reacting. It is what the
authors describe as mortification (Krânkung) to be put away in the
subjective side.
This cleavage is liable to objectivity for being a matter pertaining to
the field of the visible. Given that, can it not be received as an authentic
subjectivation? This implies that the expert is not only an ego divided
between an inner and an outer, since he can become a subject "divided
according to a continuity which turns him into a receiver from the Other
(A), having to transmute itself into a transmitter to the Other (A)",
according to Alain Didier-Weill's formulation (2), in which he comments
on the inversion proposed by Lacan: "the transmitter receives from
the receiver his own message in an inverted way". What happens if,
along with him, we receive this Freudian primordial information of traumatism
as a discourse experience and not as an energetic reality, measurable
where the affect remains "blocked"?
The traumatism represents the first time, owing to the fact that the speaker
is constrained by the insistence of the Real, the moment of fading, considered
a mortification in the sense of the mortification of the ego. The relation
between the transference and the unconscious is present there, to the
extent that this first time presides over the time to come, that in which
the voice as a drive, "the closest experience to the unconscious"(3),
pushes to the life of the subject of the unconscious, which appears in
a third time as a continuity of himself, the urge for life and the urge
for death, thus transcending the Freudian dualism. This temporality was
transmitted by Freud from his witticism. Why did he not incorporate it
in his theory of transference?
This strange transmitter of the unconscious
I have tried to convey that the dialectic of the unconscious intervenes
in response to the realization of the lack of knowledge in the Other,
A. If this first time provides an opening, it is because the not-yet-symbolized,
in other words the Real which insists, appeals to the signifiant of the
signifiants, the signifiant of the Name-of-the-Father, called by Lacan
from the Freudian text and stating that there is a signifiant S, behind
the lack of signifiant in the Other, A. This signifiant, which is a stranger
- as it is not one of the repressed signifiés, but which at the
same time is not entirely a stranger, as it is transmitted by the language
of the ancestors - evokes this "stranger", which Freud encounters
at the origin of the unconscious, as well as this stranger-transmitter,
S(A), to whom every idea put forward is due.
(1) S. Freud, " Communication préliminaire " in Etudes
sur l'hystérie, P.U.F, 1973, pp. 1-13.
(2)A. Didier-Weill, " Pour un lieu d'insistance ", novembre
1997.
(3)J. Lacan, Séminaire XI, Paris, Seuil, 1973, p. 96.
Jean CHARMOILLE
69 rue de Belfort
F. 25200 Montbéliard
E-MAIL : jean.charmoille@worldonline.fr
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