Logic of Phantasy 74

Jacques Lacan
雅克 拉康

Lacan Seminar 14:

The Logic of Fantasy 17
幻见的逻辑
Seminar 17: Wednesday, April 19, 1967

I took care to have it confirmed to me by the author himself whom I am quoting, that he has no

experience of psychoanalysis.

当我引述时，我特别费心请作者本人作确认，他並没有精神分析学的经验。

Such are the points that I want to mark here, with their date, because after all, with time, they may

change, the points which take on an examplary value and deserved to be retained even if only to require

of me that I take them fully into account, I mean in detail.

这几点，这我想要用日期给予标示，畢竟随着时间过去，它们可能会改变，並形成典范的价值，应该给予

保持下来，即是只是要求我充分地考虑，我指的是详细考虑。

With this, it remains for me to enter into the articulation of this structure, whose very simple line, which is

on the board, gives the basis and foundation and which you already are not without having had, from my

mouth, some clarifications about the way it is going to be of use.

以这样的考虑，我依旧要从事这个结构的表达。它在黑板上的简单线条，提供一些澄清的基础，关於它的

用途，你们从我的嘴中已经听过。

Nevertheless, I repeat, the small o, here, it what already, in connection with the object thus designated,

I was able to make you sense as being in a way what one could call the "setting" (monture), the setting

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of the subject. A metaphor which implies that the subject is the jewel and the setting - what supports it,

what sustains it, what sustains it - the frame. Already, I recall, nevertheless, that we have defined and

imaged the little o-object as what falls in the structure, at the level of the most fundamental act of the

existence of the subject, since it is the act from which the subject, as such, is engendered, namely,

repetition. The fact of the signifier, signifying what it repeats, is what engenders the subject and

something falls from it.

可是，我重复一下，在这里的这个小客体，因此而被指定的客体，我能够让你们感觉到，它在某方面形成

我们所谓的「背景」，生命主体的背景。这是一个比喻暗示着，主体是珠宝，要有背景支持它，维持它，维

持它的架构。可是，我回想到，我们曾经将这个小客体定义及想像为结构掉落的东西，在主体的实存的最

根本的行动的层次。从这个行动，主体才被产生，因此这个行动还会重复发生。这个意符的事实，标示它所

重复的东西，产生主体及其掉落的某件东西。

(6) Remember how the cut of the double loop, in this tiny mental object that is called the projective

plane, cts these two elements which are, respectively, the Moebius strip which, for us, figures as a

support of the subject, and the ring which necessarily remains of it, which cannot be eliminated from the

topology of the projective plane.

（第六）请记住这个双重圈套的切割，在这个被称为「投射平面」的小小的金属客体。例如，这两个因素，

个别被称为「莫比斯环带」，对於我们而言，它的形状就是支持主体。它的其余部分的环，它无法从投射的

拓朴地形，被减除掉。

Here, this little o-object is supported by a numerical reference in order to image what is

incommensurable about it - incommensurable to what is involved in its functioning as subject, when this

functioning operates at the level of the unconscious, and which is nothing other than sex, quite simply.

在此，这个小客体由一个数目的指标支持，为了要想像有关它无法测量的部分。作为主体，它所牵涉到它

的功用，是无法测量的，当这个功用在无意识的层次运作，那道道地地就是性，简单的很。

Naturally, this golden number is only a support chosen here because it has the following privilege -

which makes us retain it, but simply as symbolic function - has this privilege, that I already indicated to

you as I could, for want of being able to give you - this would certainly take us too far - the most modern

and the strictest mathematical theory of it, of being, as I might say, the incommensurable which

circumscribes least quickly the intervals in which it can be localised. In other words, the one which, in

order to arrive at a certain limit of approximation, demands, of all the forms - they are multiple and I think

almost infinite - of the incommensurable, to be the one which demands most operations.

当然，这个黄金数目只是在此选择的一个支持，因为它拥有以下的特权，使我们保留它，但是仅是当一个

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符号的功用。它拥有的这个特权，我已经儘可能指示给你们，（这样做确实会离题太远），有关它，有关

这个无法测量的最现代，最严格的数学的理论，对於能够找到的位置，给予最少量的间隔。换句话说，为

了到达某一个所有形式的近似值的极限，它要求这些形式加倍演算，将这个无法测量的东西，演算到无限，

这样它才能成为要求大部分运作的演算。

I recall to you at this point what in involved. Namely, that if the small o is here referred back to the 1,

allowing its difference from the 1, (1-o), to be marked by o-squared - this depending on its own property

as small o, which is that it should be such that 1+o = 1/o, from which it is easy to deduce that 1-o=o-

squared. Do a little multiplication and you will see it immediately. The o-squared subsequently will be

referred back to this o which is here in the -1 (here for example) and will generate an o-cubed, the

which o-cubed, will be referred back to o-squared, in order for there to emerge, at the level of

difference, an o-to the fourth power which will be referred back thus , so that there can appear here an

o-to the fifth power.

在这一点，我提醒你们一下，会牵涉到什麽。换句话说，假如这个小客体回归到这个一，让它的差異从这

个一，用零的平方标示，这就要依靠它自己作为小客体的属性，它的结果才会是：一加零相等於零分之一。

从这里，我们就很容易推論出：一减零相等於是零的平方。你们跟它稍微乘上倍数，你们将立刻看得出来。

这个零的平方，随后会回归到这个「负一」里面的零，（我只是举个例子），然后产生一个零的三次方。这

个零的三次方，会回归到零的平方，为了在差異的层次上，出现一个零的第四次方，因此会回归到这里，

这样就会出现一个零的第五次方，

You see that, on either side, there are displayed, one after the other, all the even powers of o on the one

side and the odd powers on the other. Beings being such that by continuing them to infinity, since there

will never be a stop or a term for these operations, their limit will nevertheless be o, for the sum of the

even powers, o-squared - namely, the first difference - for the sum of the odd powers.

你们看出，不管在哪一边，陆续地会展示，在一边是零的偶数方，在另一边是零的奇数方。人的生命实存

也是如此，将他们延续到无限，这些运算会永远没完没了，可是，他们的极限将是零，因为零的偶数平方

的总数，换句话说，最初的差異，就是奇数次方的总数。

It is here then that there will come to be inscribed, at the end of the operation, what in the first operation,

was here marked as the difference. Here, at the o, the o-squared. is going to come at the end to be

added, realising in its sum, here, the 1, constituted by the complementing of o by this o-squared.

因此就在这里，远算的结果，在第一次远算中被标示为差異的部分，会被铭记下来。在这里，在这个零，

这个零的平方，在它总数的结果，最後将被添加到这个一上面，由这个零的平方的互补所组成。

Which here is constituted by the addition of all the remainders, being equal to the first O, from which we

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started. I think that the suggestive character of this operation does not escape you, all the more so

because for a good while - for a least a month or a month and a half - I have been pointing out to you

how it could support, give an image, for the operation of what is (7) realised on the path of the sexual

drive, under the name of sublimation.

由所有的馀数的添加组成的结果，相等於这个最初的零，那是我们生命开始的地方。我认为，这个演算具

有暗示的特性，你们看得出来。因为好一阵子来，至少一个半月，我一直跟你们指出来，它如何能够支持，

具体显现，在性的欲望驱力的途径，以「昇華」的名义，所体现出来的远作。

I will not come back to it today, because I must advance. Simply, by indicating it in this way, to give you

the aim of what we are going to have to do in making use of this support. As you will see and already

have suspected, it will not be enough for us. Everything indicates to us - even in the very "sublime"

success, it has to be said, of what it presents to us - makes us sense that if things were thus, if

sublimation were able to make us reach this perfect One, itself placed at the horizon of sex, it seems to

me that given the time that people have been talking about this One, it should be known. There must

remain, between these two series - those of the even powers and the odd powers of the magical small

o - something like a gap, an interval. In any case, everything in experience indicates it.

这一点，我今天先讲到这里，因为我必须赶进度。我只是简单地以这种方式指出它，让你们明白，我使用

这个支持是为了什麽目的。你们将会看出，可能也已经怀疑到，我们处理得还不够充分。我们所得到的每一

样指示，即使是我们必须说是「昇華」的成功，都使我们感觉到，假如事情是这样，假如昇華能够使我们到

达这个完美的「太一」，它本身被置放在性的视野那里，我觉得，人们既然花费那麽多的时间一直谈论它，

那它应该被公诸於世。在这个魔术般的小客体，偶数次方跟奇数次方的，这两个系列之间，一定存在着某

件像是鸿沟的东西，作为间隔。无论如何，精神分析经验里，处处都指明这个间隔。

Nevertheless, it is not a bad thing to see that with the most favourable support for such traditional

articulations, we already see, still, the necessity for a complexity from which, in any case, we ought to

start.

可是，这个间隔並不见得不好，它让我们能够看出，即使我们传统的表达方式，获得最有力的支持，我们

已经看出，依旧还有一些复杂的东西，我们应该开始探索下去。

Let us not forget that if the first 1, the 1 on which I have projected the succession of operations, is there,

it is only there to image the problem with which, precisely, as such, the subject has to be confronted, if

this subject is the subject that is articulated in the unconscious. It is, namely, sex. The 1 in the middle of

the three elements of my little pocket ruler - this 1 in the middle, is the locus of sexuality.

让我们不要忘记，假如这个第一个「一」，我投射在连续的运作的这个「一」存在这里，它只是要把这个问题

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突显出来，生命主体所必须面对的问题，假如这个主体是无意识所表达的主体。换句话说，作为性的生命

主体。这个「一」，处於我的米达尺上面有三个尺度的中间，在中间的这个「一」，就是性的轨迹。

Let us stay there! We are at the door!

让我们停留在那里！我们已经在门口了！

雄伯译

32hsiung@pchome.com.tw

(886) 038334621

Sexuality, huh, is a type, a moire, a puddle, a "black tide" as has been said for some time. If you put

your finger in it and you put it to the tip of your nose, you will smell what is involved. When people say

"sexuality", that refers to sex. For it to be part of sex, it would be necessary to articulate things a little bit

more firmly. I do not know, here, what point of a bifurcation I ought to engage myself on, because it is an

extremely litigious point. Must I give you here, immediately, the idea of what the subjectification of sex

might be - if it worked!

Obviously you can dream about it! Indeed that is all you do, because this is what constitutes the text of

your dreams! But this is not what is at stake. What could that be, if it were so? If it were so and if you

give a sense to what I am in the process of developing before you: a signifier. On this occasion what is

called - and you are going to see immediately how embarrassed you are going to be! - for if I say "male"

or "fomale", all the same, huh, that is very animal, so it is! So then, I do not mind, "masculine" or

"feminine". There, it proves right away that Freud, the first one who advanced along this path of the

unconscious, speaks quite clearly about this. There is not the slightest way, I am saying ... (not that I am

saying to you who are here before me "what proportion of you is masculine and (8) what proportion

feminine?" This is not what is at stake. It is not a matter either of biology, nor of the organ of Wolf and

Muller) ... it is impossible to give a sense, I mean an analytic sense, to the terms masculine and

feminine.

If a signifier, nevertheless, is what represents a subject for another signifier, this ought to be here the

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elective

terrain. For you see how good things would be, how pure, if we could puot some subjectification - I

mean a pure

and valid one - under the term male..We would have what we need. Namely, that a subject manifesting

itself as

male, would be represented as such, I mean as subject, with respect to what? To a signifier designating

the term

female, and there would be no need for the latter to determine the slightest subject! The reciprocal

being also

true!

I underline that if we question sex as regards its possible subjectification, we are nod giving proof here

of any

manifestly exorbitant requirement for intersubjectivity. It may be that this would hold up like that. It would

not only

be suitable, but what, quite clearly - if you question what I called earlier class consciousness, the class

off all

those who believe that man and woman exist - could not be anything other than that and as that,n it

would be very

nice if it were so. I mean that the source of what is comically called - I must say, that here, the comic is

irresistible

- "sexual relation", if I could make ... (in a gathering like this, which is becoming familiar to me, a

gathering in

which I can make understood, in just the right way, that there is no sexual act, which means, there is no

act at a

certain level and this indeed is the reason why we have to search out how it is constituted) ... if I could

bring it

about that the term "sexual relation" should sake on in each one of your heads exactly the farcical

connotation

that this locution deserves, I would have gained something!

If the sexual relation existed, this is what it would mean: that the subject of each sex could touch

something in the

other, at the level of the signifier. I mean that thing would involve in the other, neither the conscious nor

even the

unconscious! Simply agreement. This relation of signifier to signifier, when it is fuend, is undoubtedly

what makes

us marvel in a certain number of striking little points ... tropisms in the animal. We are far from what is

involved in

man, and perhaps, moreover, in the animal, where things only happen through the intermediary of

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certain

phaneres reference points, which, certainly, must lead to some failures!

In any case, the virtue of what I have thus articulated is not completely disappointing. I mean that these

signifiers,

designed so that one presents and represents to the other, in the pure state, the opposite sex, already

exist at the

cellular level! They are called sexual chromosomes!

It would be surprising if we were able one day, with some chance of certainty, to establish that the origin

of

language - namely, what happens before it engenders the (9) subject - had some relation with these

operations of

matter which give us the aspects that we find in the union of sexual cells. We are not at that point and

we have

other things to do! Simply, let us not be surprised at the distance we are at from this level, in which there

would be

manifested, in short, something which is not at all designed not to seduce us, at this level where there

could be

designated something which might be called "the transcendence of matter". Believe me, I am not the

one who

invented that, it already appeared in some other people. Simply if I do not designate this extreme point -

while

expressly underlining that it is completely unresolved that the bridge has not been made - it is simply to

mark for

you that on the contrary, in the order of what is called more or less properly thinking, people have,

throughout the

course of the centuries - I mean those that we know about at least - never done anything other than talk

as if this

point had been resolved! For centuries, knowledge, under a more or less masked form, a more or less

imaged, a

more or less contraband one, never did anything other than parody what would be involved if the sexual

act

existed to the point which allows us to define what is involved, as the Hindus say, between Purusha and

Parakrita, between animus and anima, and all the rest of the music!

What is required of us, is to do more serious work. Work that is required simply by the following. The

fact is that

between this interplay of primordial meanings, as they might be inscribable in terms. I underline,

implying some

subject, well then, we are separated from it by the whole thickness of something that you can call, as

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you wish,

the flesh or the body, on condition of including in it the specific things contributed by our condition as

mammals,

namely, a quite specific and in no way necessary condition, as the abundance of a whole kingdom

proves to us (I

am speaking about the animal kingdom). Nothing implies the form that the subjectification of the sexual

function

takes on for us, nothing implies that what comes into play here, symbolically, is necessarily linked to it. It

is

enough to reflect on what this might be in an insect and, moreover, besides, the images which may

depend on it -

let us not deprive ourselves of using them - to make there appear, in phantasy, one of other singular trait

of our

relations to sex.

So then, I took one of the two paths offered to me earlier. I am not sure that I was right. Now I have to

take up the

other again; the other and in order to designate for you why the One comes here on the right of the o, at

this point

that I designated as representing here locally, by a signifier, the fact of sex.

There is here a surprising convergence between what is really at stake - namely, what I am in the

process of

telling you - and what I would call on the other hand the major point of psychoanalytic abjection.

I ought to say that you owe it uniquely to Jacques-Alain Miller, who made a reasoned index of my Ecrits,

that it

does not have the alphabetical index at which I would have, (10) I ought to say, however little, exulted in

imagining it beginning with the word abjection. It never happened. It is not a reason why this word

should not take

its place.

The One that I am putting here - through a purely mathematical reference, I mean that it images simply

the fact

that in order to talk about the incommensurable I have to have a unit of measure and there is no unit of

measure

that is better symbolised that by the One - the subject in the form of its support the small o is measured,

is

measured by sex (se mesure au sexe) - you should understand that as if one were to say that he is

measured by

the bushel or by the pint. That is what the One is: the sex unit, nothing more!

Well then, this One is not nothing. It is always a matter of knowing the degree to which it converges, as I

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said

earlier, with this One which reigns at the very mental foundation of psychoanalysts, to this day, in the

form of the

unitive virtue, which is supposed to be at the source of everything that they unfold in terms of a

discourse on

sexuality. The vanity of the formula that sex "unites" is not enough. It is also necessary that the

primordial image

of it should be given them by ... the fusion from which the enjoyer of his enjoyment (jouissade) is

supposed to

benefit: the little baby in its mother's womb (where no one up today has been able to bear witness that it

is in any

more comfortable position than is the mother herself in carrying it); and where there is supposed to be

exemplified

what you heard again here, last year, in the discourse of M Conrad Stein (whom, moreover, we have not

seen

since, to my regret), as necessary for psychoanalytic thinking, as representing this lost Paradise of the

fusion of

the ego and the non-ego, which, I repeat, in listening to them, the psychoanalysts, is supposed to be the

cornerstone (la pierre angulaire), without which nothing could even be thought about the economy of the

libido -

for this is what is at stake!

I think that there in here a veritable touchstone - I take the opportunity to signal it to whoever intends to

follow me.

The fact is that anyone who remains in any way attached to this schema of primary narcissism, my well

put in his

buttonhole all the Lacanian carnations he wants, the aforesaid person has nothing to do, from near or

far, with

what I am teaching.

I am not saying that this question of primary narcissism, is not something that poses a question in the

economy of

the theory and deserves one day to be emphasised.

I am beginning today precisely, by remarking that if jouissance-value takes its origin in the lack marked

by the

castration complex - in other words, the prohibition of auto-eroticism being brought to bear on a precise

organ,

which only plays there the role and the function of introducing this element of unit (unite) at the

inauguration of a

status of exchange, from which there depends everything that is going to be subsequently economy, in

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the

speaking being whom we are dealing with in sex - it is clear that the important thing is to see the

reversal which

results from it. Namely, that it is in so far as the phallus designates - from something raised to a value,

by this less

which the castration complex constitutes - this something which constitutes precisely the distance

between the

small o and the unit of sex.

(11) It is starting from there, as the whole experience teaches us, that the individual (l'etre) who is going

to come,

to be raised, to the function of partner - in this test to which the subject is put, of the sexual act - the

woman, to

image my discourse, is going to take on, for her part, her value as object of jouissance.

But, at the same time and by the same operation, look at what has happened. It is no longer a matter of

he enjoys

(il jouit); he enjoys something (il jouit de). Jouissance has passed from the subjective to the objective, to

the point

of sliding to the sense of possession, in the typical function, as we have to consider it as deducible from

the

incidence of the castration complex and - I already brought this forward the last time - it is constituted by

this

change of direction which makes of the sexual partner a phallic object. A point I am only highlighting

here, in the

direction of the "man" to the "woman" (both in inverted commas), in so far as it is here that the operation

is, as I

might say, most scandalous. For it can be articulated, of course, just as much in the other direction,

except that

the woman does not have to make the same sacrifice, since it is already attributed to her, at the

beginning.

In other words, I am underlining the position of what I would call the male fiction, which can be

expressed more or

less as follows: "one is what has" (on est ce qui a). There is no one happier than a chap who has never

seen

further than the end of his nose and who expresses a provocative formula like that: "to have or not" ...

"one is

what has". The one who has you know what ... And then: "one has what is". The two things hold up.

"What is", is

the object of desire: it is the woman.

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What I should call this simplistic fiction is being seriously revised. For some time people have noticed

that it is a

little bit more complicated. But, again, in a report named "Direction of the treatment and the principles of

its

power", I thought I had to re-articulate with care that people do not seem to have seen very clearly what

is

involved in what I would oppose to this male fiction, as being - to take up one of my words from the last

time - the

value homme-elle: "one is not what one has" (on n'est pas ce qu'on a ). This is not altogether the same

sentence,

pay attention, huh? "One is what has", but "one is not what one has". In other words, it is in so far as the

man has

the phallic organ that he is not it. Which implies that, on the other hand, one can and even one is what

one has -

what one does not have. Namely, it is precisely in so far as she does not have the phallus that the

woman can

take on its value.

Such are the points that it is extremely necessary to articulate at the start of any induction into what the

unconscious says about sex, because this is properly what we have learnt to read in its discourse! Only,

where I

speak about castration complex - with, of course, all the litigiousness that it involves, for the least that

one can say

is that it may lend, however little, to an error about the person, especially on the male side, concerning

what

Genesis describes for us so well, namely, the woman conceived of as this something of which the body

of man

has been deprived. (This is called, in (12) this chapter that you know well, a "rib", for the sake of

modesty!) What

has to be seen, is that in any case, where I speak about the castration complex as original in the

economic

function of jouissance, the psychoanalyst gargles the term of "objectal libido". The important thing is to

see that if

there is something that deserves this name, it is precisely the carry-over of this negatived function which

is

grounded in the castration complex.

The jouissance-value prohibited at the precise point, at the organ-point constituted by the phallus, is

what is

brought forward as "objectal libido" contrary to what is said, namely, that the libido described as

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narcissistic is

supposed to be the reservoir from which there has to be extracted what will be objectal libido.

This may appear as a subtlety to you. Because after all, you will tell me, if, as regards narcissism, there

is the

libido which is brought to bear on one's own body, well hen - even though you specify things - it is a part

of this

libido that is at stake, you will tell me. In what I am presently stating, it is nothing of the kind! Very

precisely

because to tell you that one thing is extracted from another, it would be necessary to suppose that it is

purely and

simply separated from it by way of what is called a cut, but not simply by a cut, by something which

subsequently

plays the function of an edge.

Now this is precisely what is debatable and not simply what is debatable, but what is already settled.

The fact is

that there is no homomorphism, there is no structure such that the phallic scrap (as one might say) is

graspable in

the same way as a part of narcissistic investment. The fact is that it does not constitute this edge, which

is what

we must maintain between what allows narcissism to construct this false assimilation of the one to the

other which

is the doctrine in the traditional theories of love. The traditional theories of love, in effect, leave the

object of the

good within the limits of narcissism.

1967-04-26 Lacan Seminar 14: The

Logic of Fantasy 18
Seminar 18: Wednesday, April 26, 1967

While what was on the board was being cleaned off. I made this drawing for you. This drawing is

incomplete. But

let us not lose time. It is incomplete in the sense that it is not finished. The same length One that defines

the field

of small o ought to be reproduced here, but I began it too far out. I already sufficiently indicated to you

that these

two segments, namely, this one aid the one that is not finished, are, if you wish qualified as One and the

Other -

the Other in the sense that I ordinarily understand it, the locus of the Other, capital O -the locus where

12
there is

articulated the signifying chain and the truth that it supports.

These are the terms of the essential dyad in which the drama of the subjectification of sex has to be

forged.

Namely, what we have been in the process of speaking about for a month and a half Essential, for those

who

have their ears formed to Heideggerian terms - which, as you will see, are not my privileged references -

novertheless, for those, I mean, not an essential dyad in the sense of what is, but in the sense of what

-it has to

be said in German - of what west, as Heidegger expresses it, in a fashion, moreover, that is already

forced with

respect of the German tongue. Let us say, of what operates as sprache, the connotation left to

Heidegger, of the

term language.

What is at stake is nothing other than the economy of the unconscious, or indeed what is commonly

called

primary process.

Let us not forget that for these terms - those that I have just put forward like those of the dyad, of the

dyad from

which we start, of the One and the Other; the One as I specifically articulated it the last time and that I

am going,

moreover, to take up again, the Other, in the use that I have always made of it - let us not forget, I am

saying, that

we have to start from their effect. Their effect has this derisory aspect that it lends itself to the crude

metaphor that

it is the child itself. The subjectification of sex gives birth to nothing, except misfortune.

But what it has already produced, what is given to us in a univocal fashion in psychoanalytic experience,

is the

waste product from which we start as a necessary supporting point to reconstruct the whole logic of this

dyad.

This, in allowing (2) ourselves to be guided by what this object is the cause of - you know it, properly

speaking - is

the cause of, namely, the phantasy.

Logic - if it is true that I can pose as its initial thesis, as I do, that there is no metalanguage - this is what

logic

means: that one can extract from language, specifically, the loci and the points where, as one might say,

language speaks of itself. And this indeed is the way that it is expanding in our day. When I say

"expanding in our

13
day" it is because it is obvious. You have only to open a book of logic to see that it has no pretension to

be any

thing else - nothing ontic, in any case, scarcely ontological. On this point, all the same, betake yourself,

since I am

going to give you a two week break, to a reading of the Sophist - I mean Plato's dialogue - to know the

degree to

which this formula is correct I am saying, as regards logic, and that its start does not date, therefore,

from today or

yesterday.

You will understand that it is, in fact, from this dialogue, the Sophist, that Martin starts - I mean, Martin

Heidegger

- in his restoration of the question of being. And, after all, it would be a no less salubrious discipline for

you, to

read, since my lack of information has meant that, having only recently received it through a press

service, it is

only today that I can advise you to read the Introduction to metaphysics, in the excellent translation that

Gilbert

Kahn has made of it. I say "excellent", because in truth he did not try to do the impossible and, for all the

words

for which it is impossible to give an equivalent, except an equivocal one, he has calmly forged or

reforged French

words as he could, even if it entails a lexicon at the end to give us the exact German reference. But all

of this is

only a parenthesis.

This eatyread - which perhaps could be contested about Hiedegger's other texts, but I assure you that

this one is

extraordinarily easy, and it even has a very clear cutting note of facility - it is impossible to render more

transparent the way in which he intends that there should be re-posed at our historical turning point, the

question

of Being.

It is certainly not that I think that what is at stake hire is anything other than an exercise in reading, and I

have just

said that it is very salubrious. It cleans up many things, but it nonetheless goes astray by giving the

simple

instruction of a return to Parmenides and Heraclitus -however brilliantly he situates them - at the level

precisely of

this meta-discourse that I am speaking about as immanent to language. It is not a metalanguage. The

metadiscourse

14
immanent to language that I call logic, is of course something that deserves to be refreshed at such a

reading.

Certainly, I do not use - as you notice - in any way the etymological procedure, by which Heidegger

makes

admirably relive the formulae described as pre-Socratic. It is because, as a matter of fact, the direction

that I

intend to indicate differs, differs (3) from his, precisely in something which is irreversible, and which the

Sophist

indicates - it also is an extraordinarily easy read and which does not fail also to make its reference to

Parmenides

- precisely to mark how far and how alive it was against this defence that Parmenides expresses in

these two

verses:

"No, you will never bend by force non-beings to being; From this path of research set aside your

thinking."

It is precisely the route opened, opened by the Sophist that is imposed on us, properly speaking, on us

analysts,

in order for us simply to know what we are dealing with.

If I had succeeded in making a psychoanalyst literate, I would have won the game. Namely, that from

then on, the

person who is not a psychoanalyst would become, by that very fact, an illiterate. Let the numerous

literati who

people this room reassure themselves, they still have their little remainder!

The psychoanalyst must to come to conceive of the nature of what he is handling, as this dross (scorie)

Being,

this rejected stone which becomes the cornerstone aid which is properly what I am designating by the o-

object.

And that it is a product - I am saying, product - of the operation of language, in the sense in which the

term

product is required in our discourse by the raising, since Aristotle, of the dimension of ergon, exactly, of

work.

It is a matter of re-thinking logic starting from this small o. Since this small o - though I have named it, I

did not

invent it - is properly what has fallen into the hands of analysts, starting from the experience they have

gone

through in what is involved in the sexual thing. Everyone knows what I mean and, what is more, they

talk only of

that. Since analysis, this small o, is yourselves! I am saying, each one of you, in your essential kernel. It

15
puts you

back on your feet, as they say, it puts you back again bin your feet of desire, from the delusion about the

celestial

sphere, of the subject of knowledge.

This having been said, it explains, and it is the only valid explanation, why, as metaphorical reasons. For

the

small o is the metaphorical child of the One and the Other, in so far as it is born as a piece of refuse

from the

inaugural repetition, which, in order to be repetition, requires this relation of the One to the Other, a

repetition from

which there is born the subject.

The real reason for the reference to the child in psychoanalysis is not therefore in any case along the

grain of the

C.I., the promised prize of becoming a happy swine which seems to Mr Erik Eriksoni to be a sufficient

motive for

his cogitations and his labours. But, simply this problematic essence, the o-object whose exercises

stupefy us,

naturally, not just anywhere at all: in the phantasies, very amply put into effect, of the child! That it is at

their level

that one sees the operations and the paths best opened out: but it is at their level that one sees the

operations

and the paths best opened out: but it is necessary fort hat to receive confidences which are nod within

the reach

of the child psychologist.

In short, it is this that ensures that the word soul has, n the slightest sexual frolicking of the child - in his

perversion as they say - the single, the unique and the only worthy presence that should be accorded to

this word,

the word soul.

(4) So then, as I said the last time, the One is simply, in this logic, the coming into play of the operation

of

measurement, of the value to be given to this small o in this operation of language which is going to be,

in short -

what else is proposed to us? - the attempt to reintegrate this small o into what! Into this universe of

language, as

regards which I already posed at the start of this year, what! That it does not exist! That it does not exist,

why?

Precisely because of the existence of the little o-object, as effect.

Therefore, a contradictory and despairing operation, and happily the simple existence of arithmetic,

16
people have

perceived, recently it has to be said, that the universe of discourse does not exist.

So then, how do things present themselves at the start of this attempt? What does it mean to write -

since we

need this One and because we will be content with it to measure the little o-object - the following: One

plus o

equals One over small o?

You may well suspect that once my theory starts to become an object of serious questioning on the part

of

logicians, there will be a lot to be said on the introduction here of three signs which are drawn as plus,

equal, and

also the bar between the I and the small o.

These are tests as regards which it is necessary, provisionally - so that my course does not extend

indefinitely -

that you should have confidence that I have done them for myself, only allowing to appear here the

points at the

level at which they may be useful to you.

It must be remarked, nevertheless, that if - since this comes up all by itself and because really it is more

coiveinint, (we still have a long enough path to take) - I inscribe here, quite simply, the formula which is

found to

overlap what I called the greatest incommensurable or again the golden number, which designates very

properly

speaking the following: that of two magnitudes, the relationship o the bigger to the smaller, of the One to

the o on

this occasion, is the same as that of their sum to the greater, that if I operate in this way, it is not in order

to get

across - too quickly moreover - hypotheses which it would be a great pity for you to take as decisive, I

mean for

you to believe too much in thus paradigm, which simply is intended to make function, for a time, for you,

the small

o-object, as incommensurable to what is at stake: its reference to sex. It is under this heading that the

One - this

sex (and its enigma) - is charged with overlapping it.

But nothing indicates, moreover, in the formula one plus small o equals One over small o, that we can

immediately make enter into it the mathematical notion of proportion. As long as we have not expressly

written it,

which implies this writing as it is here, for someone who reads it at the level of its usual mathematics,

namely, that

17
it is One plus small o over One equals One over small o. As long as this 1 is not (5) inscribed, the

formula can be

considered as much less tight. It indicates nothing other than the fact that it is from the rapproghement

of the

done te this small o, that we intend to see there emerging something else. What? Why not, on this

occasion , that

the One represents the small o.

I scarcely ever use my symbolisations at random. And if those here can remember the symbolisations

that I gave

of the metaphor, they will recall that after all, when I write the sequence of signifiers, with the indication

that this

chain includes underneath a substituted signifier, and that it is from this substitution that it results that

the new

signifier substitutes for capital S - let us call it S' - because of what it contains of the signifier for which it

is

substituted, takes on the value of this something - that I already connoted as S' (1/s) - takes on the

value of the

origin of a new signified dimension which belongs to neither one nor the other of the two signifiers in

questions.

Does it not appear that something analogous, which would only be properly here the emergence of the

dimension

of measure or of proportion, as original meaning, is implied in this moment of interval which, after having

written 1

+ o = 1/o, completes it with the One which was absent from it even though immanent, and which,

because of

being distinguished in this second moment, takes on the figure of the function here of the signifier sex

as

repressed.

It is in the measure that the relation t the enigmatic One, taken here in its pure conjunction, One plus

small o, can,

in our symbolism, imply a function of the One as representing the enigma of sex qua repressed, and

that this

enig

18