Good evening!

I am going to attempt what would be today an introduction to psychoanalysis, by

Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis *, dated 1915, was written during the war, for reasons that
are important to us, the concern to recall to the attention of a public that, to tell the truth, in 1915 in
Vienna, had other things to worry about and whose first preoccupation was certainly not
psychoanalysis, a situation whose inconveniences Freud experienced in his daily activity.

He therefore tries to remind himself to the attention of a large public with a work that preserves the
dignity and the essence of what psychoanalysis can bring to the field of therapy as well as culture.
It is an eminently touching work today. Touching because Freud's concern is to bring the
manifestations of the unconscious into the field of the obvious.

We are immediately aware of the antinomy that can exist, the heterotopia that can exist between
what we call the field of evidence, that is to say, reality, and the status of the unconscious insofar as
it is precisely what escapes reality. Freud, in order to make himself heard, has therefore the concern
to find the specific manifestations capable of making the existence of the unconscious seem
irreducible, in order to avoid the criticism that was readily made of him, that his unconscious was a
matter for psychopaths, that it was undoubtedly a formation that existed in the field of
psychopathies but certainly not in so-called normal life. Freud's book, which I cordially invite you
to read, has three major divisions, three major chapters: firstly, the missing acts, secondly, dreams
as evidence of the presence of the unconscious in the ordinary citizen, and then, lastly, the general
theory of neuroses.

In other words, we switch from these manifestations, present in everyone, to what it is of a not so
much of the psychic life as of the neuroses.
In The Science of Dreams , Freud quotes one of his own dreams: he sees himself on an anatomy
table as a corpse, a corpse that has been opened and dissected and that, by showing the inside of its
organism, would finally be able to demonstrate to the public that what he is saying is authentic, is
true. It is clear, but I am not going to develop it now, that this type of concern will lead to a certain
number of problems in Freud's approach, both for him and for the reader.
Lacan's method will be different. In no case will Lacan seek in his addresses, in his texts, anything
that is of the order of the evidence- quite the contrary!
He is satisfied with trying to be heard, to make one tip over to the side, I won't even say of the
signified, I'll say to the side of what the Stoics called the Aeia6v, that is to say, precisely to what
there is to be heard in an articulation, being satisfied each time with putting the accent on what in a
formulation is given to be heard while remaining evidently ungraspable.

Part of the difficulty attributed to Lacan's study is obviously linked to this displacement, to this
mutation which in his eyes is essential. He implements a methodology that seems essential to him
to give an understanding of the unconscious in the place where it stands. His only recourse to what
is in the register of the obvious is the writing of some mathemes, in the form of what would prove
to be inescapable, writing of some mathemes to which he grants a status, a weight of truth quite
particular, and of which much later we will be brought to speak.

I will perhaps not go any further in this introduction into the fact that if Freud in this work, as on
the occasion of the previous ones, The Science of Dreams, Psychopathology of Everyday Life.” Der
Witz und seine Beziehung zum Unbewußten“, is addressed each time to a large public that he tries
to interest, if not to seduce, we can briefly recall that Lacan for many years was content with an
address reserved for psychoanalysts. There is not the slightest writing on his part that appeals to the
public.
A change occurred when, with the analytical field showing him the reticence that we know, he tried
to address, at the École normale supérieure, those whom their philosophical and logicist training
seemed to predispose to hear his words. And even, as we saw this summer with the seminar on the
Crucial Problems, he will clearly try to test the effects of a psychoanalysis by what would simply
be a teaching.

There is in these Crucial Problems a challenge in the permanent attack that he exerts in this text on
the manifestations of the transference that he tries, in a way, to clean up, to expunge from this field,
an attempt to invite, to lead his audience to ratify the effects of a psychoanalysis by making the
economy of a treatment.

The result, as we know, may not have perfectly met his expectations... and it will be again after
having been kicked out of the field of representations for a second time, kicked out of the École
normale supérieure, that he will engage in a public address to the Faculty of Law, an address that
was made to the whole crowd and that gave to his audience a rather sympathetic aspect, which
undoubtedly resembled that of the Courts of Miracles in the past, a perfectly heterogeneous
gathering.
Obviously, this surprising diversity of backgrounds, origins, skills, interests, curiosities, etc., made
for a rather interesting audience and, in any case, he succeeded perfectly in holding it, which was not
obvious.
To make a final remark on this point, I will tell you that this volume addressed to the public, Écrits,
this volume has met with a publishing success that seems obviously to have focused more on the
name of the author than on the texts of what he came to teach.

Much later still, I will evoke with you what Lacan may have hoped for from the publication of his
Ecrits at a time when there was such a dissociation between what we might call the symbolic,
that he introduced in the heart of his teaching, validity, the acuity, the relevance of the signifier as
a symbol of pure loss – a dissociation, then, between the acuity he gave to the power of the
symbolic, and the real that refused itself perfectly, completely, to his teaching.

This complete lack of knotting between what was the symbolic character, specific to his teaching,
and the real which was evading him in a rather radical way and was certainly sending him back to
a position where the symbolic and the real were untied, the imaginary moreover in his
conceptualization holding only a place, only a function that was eminently criticized, it is
conceivable that he could have hesitated about the tenable, possible consistency of what he was
advancing. In any case, the success of the Writings came to respond in its own way - I will say
later in what way, in my opinion - to what was for him, without any doubt, a crisis of his
teaching, the verified, patent manifestation as much in the analytic milieu as in the milieu of the
young students of Ecole Normale, the patent failure of what he was teaching, and the last
recourse he was thus making to the public.

I will try to organize this introduction, after we have seen Freud's together, by putting at the center
of it what seems to me to be today the organizing preliminary of any introduction to
psychoanalysis: the effects of the symbolic.

You will see how, and I hope that this way will seem to you more easily acceptable, more
verifiable than the long and difficult path that Lacan had to follow.

When you open this Introduction to psychoanalysis, you begin with "The missing acts". Missing
acts, in which Freud includes slips of the tongue, omissions of names, as well as missing acts in the
strict sense. But "Missing Acts" is a very nice title and I'll tell you why, and when you study the
examples Freud gives of these slips of the tongue, you see immediately that their collection by
itself has an undeniable teaching and questioning effect for the reader.
If you take the first three, you have one that concerns a typographical error in a Viennese daily
newspaper - as the translation says, "a social-democratic sheet", which is probably not by chance - a
typographical error, a lapsus calami that concerns the Crown Prince, Kronprinz, and that the
newspaper printed by calling him Kornprintz, or even Konrprintz. When the newspaper obviously
published a correction to apologize to this highness, it wrote, naturally: "What we meant was not
Konrprintz, but Knorprintz."
So that's the first, banal, amusing example of a slip of the tongue.

The second concerns a mistake made by an actor who, playing La pucelle d'Orléans in the saddle -
on the stage! had to pronounce a rather pathetic sentence by announcing to the king that "the
Constable sends back his sword, Schwert" and had to slip slightly to say that "the comfortable one
sends his horse, Pferd". And it is clear that this slip of the tongue has surely met with the public the
success that one can imagine...

As well as the third one quoted here: an employee wants to invite his colleagues to drink to the
prosperity of the boss, and instead of saying "I invite you to anstossen, to drink to the prosperity of
our boss" will say "I invite you to aufzustossen, to burp (instead of anstossen) to the prosperity of
our boss”
These are the first three, and they have the merit of immediately situating us that it is a question
each time of undoing the solemn character proper to what is authority, of deflating it at the very
moment when it would be a question of paying homage to it, homage to His Highness, a pathetic
phrase of La pucelle d'Orléans, "the constable sends back his sword", or "I invite you to drink to the
health of our chief", here is the unfortunate slight displacement, or slight parasiting by one or two
letters which intervenes, radically subverts the statement - and immediately gives to understand that
the truth is situated of course! on the side of that enunciation.
So three first lapsus concerning what we could call lèse-majesté. (play on words, “her majesty”
being written “ insult-majesty”)

Two following ones are going to concern the sex, the declared, manifested, proven sex when it
should have, undoubtedly, remained silent, for example a sentence said in German Wenn sie
gestatten, Fràulein, môchte ich sie gerne begleit digen with a condensation between begleiten which
means "to accompany":
"If you don't mind, Miss, I'd like to begleiten, to take you home", that's what this good young man
wanted to say, and here he makes a condensation of two words to introduce, in begleiten,
beleidigen, "to offend", and here it is: "If you wanted, Miss, I'd like to offend you".
So he has this word-value, this condensation, begleit-digen where I suppose that everyone could
find his property. Another case of the irruption of a sexual wish, and that on the occasion of the
remarks of a noble professor who speaks about the genital apparatus of the woman and who instead
of saying "in spite of the many researches, the many attempts, Versuche", modifies slightly this
word to say the sentence thus becomes, as far as the female genitalia is concerned "in spite of the
numerous temptations" instead of having remained on the ground of the medical presentation that
he was making.

So here we have a second series of lapsus which no longer directly concern lèse-majesté as you can
see, lèse-authorité (same play on words but concerning authority), but which concern the irruption
of a sexual vow.
You see, I specify, despite their apparent homogeneity, they are different and imply a type of
analysis that is not necessarily similar. The other type of slip of the tongue concerns there the
incorrectness committed not any more towards the authority, not by the expression of a sexual
wish, but an improper thought towards the neighbor.

It is not necessary to detail them to you, but for example the speaker who instead of saying "I am
not authorized to appreciate the merits of my predecessor", "authorized", geeignet, uses the verb
geneigt, "I am not willing to appreciate the merits of my predecessor", which again is a pretty clear
statement.

But it is based here, I'm not explaining this to you on the board because you can find it in your
books, not on the introduction of additional letters or phonemes, but on the fall. The difference
between geeignet and geneigt is the fall and the anagrammatic character of the verb that replaces
the previous one. Another example that is quite nice, harmless and suitable for the public to be
interested in, not to be shocked by, is the lady who tells her relatives what the doctor said to her
husband with whom she went on a visit:
"The doctor told my husband, 'no need to diet, he can eat whatever I want'."

Again, everyone of course hears it as they see fit. The professor of anatomy who says "those who
know the anatomy of the nasal fossae can be counted on one finger of one hand", I believe that
there too all is well, and then obviously very many slips of the tongue, missing acts, etc. that
surround the marriage.
So if one is faithful to the manifestations which are evoked here, I abbreviate, I dispense with the
other lapsus which do not bring anything more than those which I have just evoked, if one is thus
faithful to the material here brought, what does one see?
 Today I think that, precisely thanks to Lacan's teaching, this is transparent to us, you don't need to
have followed his teaching to recognize it. What do we see?
We see that there is, in addition to the grammatical subject, the subject called by the linguists
shifter, there is on the occasion of any expression, banal, the obvious, irrefutable, written
manifestation-it is of the order of the written word- of a subject who there seems happy to express
himself and who, more important still, makes the truth entirely tip over to his side. If doubt is
proper to any enunciation, on the other hand, the manifestation here recorded, written, does not
lend itself to any doubt, the certainty is finally acquired of what we can call the formulation of
compromise - the term is in Freud's, it is important - which is on this occasion realized.

Compromise since there is the possibility of saying two different things at the same time, two
possibly contradictory things, and then obviously of saying it without having said it, of having given
it to be heard without having said it. If we look in the text for the place of the subject of this
manifestation, this place is nowhere else than in the few letters more or less that have been
introduced on this occasion, or that have come to modify their primitive, original arrangement. In
other words, someone has said something that is certainly of the order of truth, the trace of which is
eclipsed as soon as it has been articulated, and the only manifest remainder of which is constituted
by this physical material, by these letters that have thus come to enrich, if I may say so, the banality
of the utterance, the conventional character of the utterance that was thus promised, expected.

You also notice, of course, that this manifestation requires within the word the possibility of a space,
the possibility of an opening, and that the whole point of what is there formulated is, I repeat, simply
the poverty of the material thus involved. A question will arise very quickly, concerning the
interpretation that Freud will give to these expressions. He will say that they express a "tendency";
the word he uses at the time is Tendenz, a repressed tendency, unterdriïckt.

He therefore assumes that the intention of lèse-majesté pre-existed his articulation and simply took
advantage of the circumstance to make itself heard, that the sexual wish was there slumbering and
again took advantage of the situation to make itself heard, that these two traits constituted characters
proper to the speaker and that the slip of the tongue was therefore the circumstance authorizing the
expression. On this subject, two remarks seem possible. The first one will consist in to be surprised
by the fact that, finally, these unconscious and thus supposedly eminently individual thoughts are,
after all, very much collective! As well the lèse-majesté as the expression of sexual desires or the
aggressiveness towards the neighbor, one would not know how to say that they are specifically
individual traits... We must therefore ask ourselves, in what way is this unconscious, the one from
which we expect the expression of an absolute singularity, at this point, I will use an expression of
Jung's but to divert it from its meaning, "collective" or generalized? And besides, if it has a
humorous effect, if it is immediately understood, it is of course that the one who hears it is
immediately in the picture!

It obviously concerns him in the same way. How can we explain that such intimate, private
manifestations, in fact, testify to a public, general belonging, and immediately find the right
audience, the right fine ear? One can say, of course, that these are traits proper to the culture under
consideration: in our culture, power, sex, narcissism, the respect due to others would be treated in a
way, valid for all, and at the same time one cannot be surprised if these manifestations are also... one
wants to say, "anonymous". Who is talking? Especially since the subject has the power to cancel or
decry what has been said by blaming it on an error, or a stumble of the tongue, or whatever. He can
perfectly well, as Freud points out, refuse to recognize his good. It is therefore perfectly possible, in
connection with some of these lapsus, to question the fact that repression is in fact a feature of the
culture under consideration, and this is perhaps also what Lacan wants to say, that the unconscious
is social, in other words that it is participation in the group that leads to sharing the same
prohibitions and that the unconscious of one is very likely to resemble the unconscious of the other.

A slip of the tongue that Freud quotes and that I have not given you because it is only of interest
now: a speaker in Parliament, the president of the assembly opens the debates by saying "I declare
the session closed", well, Freud points out, everyone hears that he really wants this debate to be over
already. We can therefore legitimately suppose that there is in him this more or less explicit, and
why not ? ; explicit, wish, but which has found this type of expression on this occasion.

We can wonder a little more by asking ourselves if, independently of what would be the deliberative
power of the subject, of the choice he could make, any assertion, since it necessarily implies a
rejection, a refusal, any assertion comes to refer to the outside; I am using this term for the moment.
For example, "thou shalt not kill", a commandment which, in any case, clearly refers to the outside.
What is it? This is the old question already raised by St. Paul about the role of the law, is it not the
law that makes the sin ? Is it not the law which, at the same time, by its own movement, generates,
puts in place what will appear in a subject X as being precisely the wish to contradict or flout it ?

In other words, would we simply be dealing with what we would call a human nature with complex,
ambiguous, contradictory feelings? Or is it not the proper device of assertions, of commandments, to
generate in the subject, in a subject, what will emerge in him as a vow, which he perhaps did not
think of at all as a vow, this prohibition, to transgress it?
To present it to you in this way this evening, will allow us already, from this first evening of
introduction to Introduction, to note that the repressions are not at all homogeneous. For the one
that I have just mentioned to you is, in a clear way, proper to obsessional dispositions, the
obsessional who discovers himself inhabited by a certain number of feelings that are strictly
negative, moral imperatives that he inflicts on himself, that he would like to follow.

The hysterical repression, for example, will not be of the same type and, later, we will see in what
way it operates. And when I say "not of the same type", we can already now evoke, without going
any further tonight, different topological dispositions. We have for the moment the possibility to
think that the repression is not a topologically similar process in the case of the obsessive neurosis,
in the case of hysteria, in the case of phobia, and even of course in the case of perversions.
We can also note for ourselves that by manifesting itself in this way, the unconscious operates an
interpretation. Is this strange? An interpretation because the device proper to the assertion allows it,
in a way, to hear what, from the said assertion, has been rejected and which, from being rejected, is
going to constitute its truth, that is the paradox, the unbearable paradox. Truth which, it is still
strange, will try to be recognized. Because if you reread now, as I hope you will, this Introduction
to psychoanalysis, an absolutely adorable work, a friendly work as there are not many of them, you
see that the unconscious comes to take back under the negativized form the assertion that, in a way,
this unconscious, has constituted it. This is one of the characteristics of the obsessive disposition,
when it finds itself in a dead end, in the difficulty of knowing if what it must ratify, if what it must
retain, if what it must celebrate is on the side of the commandment that has put in place the truth of
the assertion that denies it, and that at the same time passes to a higher degree while being odious
and unbearable.... or if the assertion that it, as all the assertions and whatever the imperative side
that you could give him, remains subjected to the doubt.

In this entry of our theme, Introduction to psychoanalysis, you have recognized in passing several
elements that might seem complex to you in Lacan when he is essentially engaged in an analysis
that one would like to call materialist of the expressions of the unconscious. That is to say, the role
of the LETTER in so far as it is the support of the manifestations of the unconscious, the way in
which its emergence eclipses the subject - just a moment ago, at the moment of the articulation, it
was going to be recognized, it is no longer there! - and introduces the dimension of truth on the
side of this expression. Here a brief digression that turns around what Lacan evokes when he says
that the subject of the unconscious is that of science. I admire the fact that today the reading of
these texts allows us from the outset to clarify formulas that would otherwise seem purely arbitrary
or strange to you. Indeed, in any case simple homology, you see there that the truth is not on the
side of the world of assertions which are those of the doubt, but well on the side of the one who
affirms to think, of the manifestation of a thought in any case, and that it is undoubtedly at the price
of a questioning of the set of assertions that the weight of the truth is found shifted to the side of
what expresses a thought.
So the inevitable question, naive but inescapable, is what happened before science? Or what
happened in countries where, after all, science did not operate, or in cultures where science did not
operate the same revolution as in the West? What was it like before? We have, of course! all the
testimonies in the texts of Antiquity, and in the medieval texts. Are there traces of a subject of the
unconscious?
As far as the literature of antiquity is concerned, it is clear that there is no trace of it, for a very
simple reason. As well the expression of sexual desires as the demonstrations towards the power
(apart from the purely real constraints that they could have, the political constraints, the fact of
having to deal with a dictatorship or a republic, for example), were but perfectly free, even
recommended! When you read those admirable texts that are Plato's dialogues, when the two
eminent philosophers meet, to begin their talk, the first thing they say to each other is: "Oh, say,
last night I saw you with little What's-his-name. Was it good? Did it go well, did it go well, was it
nice?" This is how the philosophical dialogue begins. This is missing in our contemporary
philosophical studies... Because from the moment when you engage in an intellectual construction
with the principle of dismissing the sexual, and first of all that of the interested parties, it is quite
clear that you are in sin, you are in logical fault. On the other hand, what happened after the
Antiquity? There is this great upheaval, the religion, the prohibitions proper to the religion and
which were taken differently seriously than today. So how did it work? Wasn't there repression?
There was of course repression, and how! But what was there repressed did not find any subject to
interpret it, as I said earlier when speaking about interpretation, and even less to look for the
speaker who would hear it. These manifestations were undoubtedly attributed to diabolic powers,
to what you will.
But in no case could this be put down to a subject except to engage, of course! witchcraft trials,
which one almost wants to say legitimate. And why is that? Because the index of the truth, its
fetish being in the field of the reality such as it was conceived, constructed, In this sense, Lacan
introduces his remark according to which it is to Descartes that we owe the setting up of the subject
of the unconscious"The displacement of this index of truth, I express it in this metaphorical or
imagined form, from the world of representations, from the field of reality to what is simply Òeje
of which it is said that it thinks, it is this operation that puts in place the subject of the
unconscious.”
And we have every reason to remember that at the same time this subject, in a certain number of
cultures that have not known this Cartesian revolution, this subject of the unconscious - we cannot
say it otherwise - does not exist, there is none.
The expressions of this shameful and unconstituted agglomerate, hidden, which in these cases is
organized, cannot be subjectively assumed. I am certainly not going to try to assess the
consequences of this situation tonight.
In these lapsus, in any case, and I conclude on this, the unconscious is characterized first of all by
the saying that no, you put the sign "no", the sign of negativation, there is there a saying that no
that gives itself to be heard, a saying that no that carries the weight of the truth, that says: it is not
that! and that, I say well, questions us on the topological device that gives it this strength, this
constancy, this irreducible character. Where does it come from, this saying that no?

You will find at the end of this text what I was saying about "The missing acts", which I was telling
you was a very beautiful title, because all these lapsus, they have indeed this property of not
making act. Finally, it is useless! You said it, you relieved yourself a little, your listener could
enjoy it, but in the end, it doesn't do any act. Whoever made that typographical error, he didn't
overthrow the royalty. The lady who said "my husband doesn't need a diet, he eats what I want", it
didn't change the marital situation, the one who said to the girl "do you mind if I offend you?",
there is every reason to think that he just walked her home... etc.
It doesn't make any act, and of that also we have to keep, for the moment, the memory by
wondering at the same time, what would make act? Would there be an act that would finally allow
this famous subject to... I would come here, and then why all this?/e would speak of unconscious to
unconscious, it would be so much simpler...
You will find at the end of this paragraph on the missing acts, so well chosen title, a sensational
passage that is usually completely forgotten when we study the case that appears in the
Psychopathology of Everyday Life on the forgetting of the proper name Signorelli.
Because as usual, Freud (who was not crazy...) cuts out pieces of the interpretations of his own
slips of the tongue so that it is not too obvious. There is an essential piece in these pages about
Signorelli, I won't tell you which one to leave you the pleasure to find it, and I suggest that next
time, in order to continue the very beginning of our work, you have, in the Psychopathology of
Everyday Life, reread "The Oblivion of Proper Names", and in particular the Signorelli affair,
which we will complete - I don't know if it has yet been done, I am convinced that Lacan did not
have this piece in mind when he spoke of it - with this piece which will give us the opportunity, I
believe, to make a first interesting connection in what I am evoking there with you.
Thank you for your attention and see you next time!