Editorial

PAPERS N 5
List of members of
the Action Committee
of the School One Scilicet
Paola Bolgiani
Gustavo Dessal
Mercedes Iglesias
Ram Mandil
Laure Naveau
(Coordinator)

Silvia Salman
Florencia Fernandez
Coria Shanahan

Responsible for the

edition:
Marta Davidovich

Silvia Salman
The texts you will read in this new issue
of PAPERS take on the invitation made
by J.-A. Miller at the end of the last
WAP Congress. The invitation to
redefine the desire of the analyst as a
desire to reach the real, to reduce the
Other to its real and to liberate it of
meaning1.
This requires an analyst who is willing
to be formed in order to distinguish
what concerns the One and to approach
that real2. Thus, Lacan suggests that it is
ones own experience that the desire of
the analyst emerges as a product of the
analysis.
What kind of desire is it? How should it
operate? What ethics does it imply?
What is transformed, what remains,
what gets disturbed or is forced, are
some of the ways in which the authors
interrogate but also respond each one
in her own way- to this invitation.
Through her title Towards a New
Psychoanalyst, Damasia Amadeo de
Freda proposes a certain kind of
psychoanalyst, one who is oriented by
the signs of the real rather than by
signification. This leads to a new
knotting between the psychoanalyst and
his ethics, which is well worth
exploring in the text.
Meanwhile Hebe Tizio highlights two
operations
arising
from
this
reconfiguration of the desire of the
analyst: reduction and liberation. These
1

Miller, J.-A., The Real in the 21st Century, in

Hurly-Burly, Issue 9, May 2013, p. 206.
2
Lacan, J.: El Seminario, Libro XIX o peor,
Buenos Aires: Paids, 2012, p 182.

are ways to bring the analysand closer

to his or her real, to build a rim that
operates as a limit to discourse and
circumscribes the presence of a core of
real impossible to be transformed.
Finally, Susana Dicker takes the
perspective of the sinthome to situate
the plus of life that restores the
position of the analyst in his act. The
desire of the analyst thus leads to a
decided desire to go towards the
singularity of each ones knotting of
Real, Imaginary and Symbolic.
Undoubtedly these three texts will be a
great contribution for those who are
already working on the presentations for
the Clinical Day that will take place on
Wednesday 16th April. Wishing you a
good reading!
December 2013

The first thing we note -which drew our

attention and gave rise to the first
question- is that the formula proposed
there as the theme for the Congress, did
not correspond in the end with the
Congress title.
The formula A great disorder in the
Real in the 21st Century does not match
the title A Real for the 21st Century.
Regarding the initial formula, you can
see that the part "a great disorder" was
taken out, the definite article the
accompanying the term Real became
an indefinite a, and the word for
was added as an index (this is our
hypothesis) of the goal that aims to live
up to the epoch that is ours. Despite
these changes, the final title maintains
the concept of real as central theme.
To try to answer this first question
provoked by the Congress title choice,
we shall advance into the Conference.

Translated by Florencia F.C. Shanahan

Towards a New
Psychoanalyst

Miller begins by saying that this century

is characterized by a great disorder in
the real; thats when he introduces his
formula. Then he situates the cause of
this disorder in the combination
between scientific discourse and
capitalist discourse.

Damasia Amadeo de
Freda

Subsequently,
he
lists
the
transformations of the notion of the
real throughout history, which gradually
led to the great contemporary disorder.

In his presentation of the theme for the

next WAP Congress Paris 2014,
Jacques-Alain Miller invites us to
rethink the psychoanalytic clinic and the
place of the psychoanalyst in the 21st
century.

At the same time, he links each of these

transformations to the successive
definitions of the real offered by Lacan
at different moments of his teaching.

This conference raised many questions

in us which we will try to highlight and
to which we will try to give some
answers.

So another question arises: why does

Miller establish a correspondence
between the transformations of the real
in civilization and the transformations
that take place in Lacan's teaching with
regards to this concept? This question
2

imposes itself, given that we start from

the basis that there is no temporal
correspondence between these two
orders of transformations.

kind of knowledge that would be an

elucubration about a real stripped of
any supposed kknowledge, stripped of
any want to say.

To be more precise, Lacan begins to

develop his ideas about the real from
the second half of the 20th century
onwards, so that when proposes his first
aphorism for the real, he does so being
himself already situated in a time that
corresponds to one of its latest
transformation in civilization.

We thus verify that, on the one hand,

there is currently a great disorder in the
real and, on the other hand,
psychoanalysis arrives at the same idea
with regards to its own real, since it
considers it to be, structurally, a
disordered and unsystematic remainder.

Therefore, we can conclude that such

correspondence,
such
parallelism
established by Miller in his conference,
does not imply simultaneity. There has
to be a different logic at play.
This first differentiation allows us to put
on different levels the real of nature, the
real for science and the real of
psychoanalysis. This is what we shall
deal with here.
.
In the conference we are reminded of
the fact that Lacan came to believe that
his real (since it was his own invention)
was his symptom, and that it was this
symptom as such that allowed for the
conceptual framework to hold together
and for his teaching to be coherent. We
consider this proposition to be of great
interest, because it allows us to think
about the function of the sinthome at
that time, but this would require another
study that we will not develop now.

Perhaps the sense of the conference is to

show us that there is a knotting between
the disorder in the real proper to our
times and the disorder of the real proper
to psychoanalysis.
From this perspective, the idea of
disturbing the defense would be to
knock down something like a double
fortress: the one built to defend oneself
from the real proper to the subject, but
also the one built against the disorder in
the real of our times.
This perspective not only clearly
separates psychoanalysis from any form
of therapeutics, but also involves a
redefinition of the psychoanalyst and
his act.

The latest aphorism for the real that we

are given is that, for psychoanalysis,
there is no knowledge in the real. It is
also emphasized how science (whose
aspiration was to write this knowledge
in the real in order to anticipate it) finds
today its limits, thus contributing to the
contemporary disorder.

Miller speaks about a psychoanalyst

whose desire aims at reducing the Other
to its real and liberating it of meaning.
The problem is (and this has not yet
been elucidated) that the Other is
already discredited with regards to
meaning, and this is due to the same
reasons that led to the disorder in our
times.
The Freudian psychoanalyst, he who
could interpret by occupying the place
of the subject supposed to know, has
lost its splendor and its effectiveness as
a consequence of this disorder.

For psychoanalysis (and especially

nowadays) the unconscious produces a

Faced with this fact, and if we want

psychoanalysis to live up to the
3

subjectivity of its time, the question we

are forced to ask is: what psychoanalyst
for the 21st century?

because what is at stake in this

transformation is the destiny of
psychoanalysis itself.

This question imposes itself because we

see a new psychoanalyst emerge, a
psychoanalyst who is much more
oriented by the signs of the real than by
the signs of signification.

We think that A real for the 21st

century (as Miller proposes it and on
which we will focus at the next WAP
Congress) will be the product of a
knotting between the new psychoanalyst
and the ethics of psychoanalysis.

The fall of the order of signification

inevitably drags the subject supposed to
know along with it. Now, the effects of
such fall are felt in a new transferential
tonality to which the contemporary
clinic testifies, and which leads us to
suppose that the very idea of
transference will soon be modified.

Translated by Renata Cuchiarelli

If love is no longer addressed to

knowledge,
since
knowledge
is
discredited and disjointed, it may be
that transference will perhaps take up
the form of a love addressed to the real.
If we are to take this idea to the
extreme, we are inevitably led to
consider that there will then be a new
conceptualization of the beginning and
end of analysis.
Finally, if what is at stake is to begin to
define today the psychoanalyst of the
near future, it will become necessary to
interrogate his mode of operation and
especially his main instrument, namely,
interpretation. In fact, on many
occasions did Jacques Lacan and
Jacques-Alain Miller reformulate this
notion, taking into account the advances
of psychoanalysis as well as the changes
in the RSI registers on which it
operates.
To conclude, we will say that
psychoanalysis must take into account
the subjectivity and the historical
moment in which its action is inscribed.
It is an ethical problem that goes far
beyond the modifications we have
outlined above. The problem is ethical

The Real and the

Desire of the Analyst

Hebe Tizio
To approach the topic of the Real in
psychoanalysis is not an easy task. It is
a
necessary
category,
but
it
paradoxically
produces
its
own
misrecognition, which poses the
question of how to operate with it.
In his Seminar XI, Lacan had
formulated a question: What must
there be in the analysts desire for it to
operate in a correct way?3
In the Seminar The moment to
conclude, Lacan stated that it was
excessive to say that the analyst would
know how to operate: What would be
necessary is that he [the analyst] knows
how to operate conveniently, namely,
that he can be aware of the slope of his

Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan,

Book 11, The four fundamental concepts of
psychoanalysis, W.W. Norton & co., London,
1998, p 9.

analysands
words,
undoubtedly ignores.4

which

he

To go along this slope we find support

in Millers proposition that the desire of
the analyst is the desire to reach the
real, to reduce the Other to his real, and
to liberate it of meaning.5
Here we have a specification, the real of
psychoanalysis is singular, and what is
at stake in an analysis is an operation of
reduction and liberation. The reduction
to his Real implies certain liberation
of meaning. It is a freeing from the
meaning that functions as a screen, but
not from the dimension of meaning
inherent to the knotting.
The operation is possible because there
is a desire to reach the Real, and for that
a forcing is necessary. This implies that
the analysts desire is an authorization
to operate a forcing beyond the demand
in order to disturb the defence, and in
that sense, to go against the Real. Going
against the Real in order to circumscribe
it is to exhaust the fictional rim and
allows for a new knowing how to do
with it. Bringing the analysand closer to
his Real generates a pragmatics, a
functioning to be practised.
The analyst is the product of an analysis
that leads him to being authorised by
himself, namely, by this real without
law which lies at the heart of the
symptom and gleams in the act. The act
pierces the analyst, and its chance lies in
him consenting to operate with what he
ignores, going through the horror that it
brings about.
Psychoanalysis has to do with poetic
violence, the one practised on what is
4

Lacan, J., Seminar 24, The moment to

conclude, 15-11-1977. Unpublished.
5
Miller, J-A., A Real for the 21st Century,
Presentation of the Theme of the IX th Congress
of the WAP, in Hurly-Burly 9, May 2013, p 202.
4
Verse 312 from Aeneid: If I cannot deflect the
will of Heaven, I shall move Hell.

crystallized in language. The Freudian

epigraph to The Interpretation of
Dreams, Flectere si nequeo superos.
Acheronta movebo4, put in Junos
mouth, places such violence at the dawn
of psychoanalysis. To move Hell is to
advance in the Real as far as to build a
rim, an edge that is the limit of
discourse; the limit of semblant, in
order to approach it. This is also a
subjective safeguard, because it
recognizes it as an incurable.
In the 21st Century, the analyst must be
a partner able to respond. We can say
that this possibility of responding is
linked to the times and progress of
discourse.
Lacan used to say that for that the
analyst should find support in desire
which, despite the litany of
culpability, is more comfortable than
putting into play in analysis a quantum
of anxiety that can cause this operation.
But we must update here anxiety as fear
of the body, as Lacan points out in The
Third, for the body of the analyst is at
stake.
The analyst offers himself as an
instrument of which the patient can
make use. The effect brought about by
the attempt to reach the bits of real, is
to fall as waste, which means that the
desire of the analyst hosts the
impossible. For this pathway you must
know how to command as a remainder,
which is the treatable form of what
takes the place of the Real, and from
there to authorize oneself to disturb the
defence. This is what the matheme of
the analytic discourse shows; but we
must remember that it has its roots in a
form of treatment of the Real.
Therefore, it is what sustains discourse
and to which discourse tries to give an
order.
Beyond the semblant of object, the
analyst-sinthome embodies a Real
5

without law, and lends it his body to

sustain the act. The analysts body is
what allows for the Real to be present,
in so far as it [the real] is thus able to
enter the scene in a veiled form.
The function of the analysts body in the
treatment provides not only a frame for
saying [le dire], but also embodies the
object that veils the Real. The body as
screen is the necessary semblant to get
to the littoral, to the edge where the
elaboration of knowledge reaches its
limit.
The in-body [en-corps] analyst
introduces the object a while at the
same time veils the lawless Real that
sustains the setting. The homophony
that Lacan makes resonate between encorps and encore marks the temporal
dimension of what must be sustained
throughout an analysis and is without
doubt an ethical question.
The question of the analysts desire as
not being a pure desire takes on a
different dimension insofar as the body
is introduced. The end of analysis may
produce an analyst inhabited by a desire
to reach the Real, who may offer a void
to lodge the analysands sayings; who
serves as an instrument, and who assists
in-body the analytical path. But from
the moment the body is implicated,
there is jouissance, and the Real that
animates it: hence the knowing how to
do with anxiety in the analytic position.
That is sustained by keeping the
analysand-position, to prevent the
identification to the symptom from
becoming inert. That is to say, the
analyst may sustain the desire to reach
the Real if he continues to work as
analysand: that is the price to be paid.
Translated by Betina Ganim

Being a heretic in the

right way1 On the
Analysts Desire in
Lacans Latest Teaching

Susana Dicker
In his closing conference of the VIIIth
Congress of the WAP, which is at the
same time an invitation to work towards
the Congress 2014 in Paris, J.-A. Miller
introduces its theme, telling us that what
is at stake is aggiornamento[] to
the bringing up to date of our analytic
practise, its context, its conditions, its
novel co-ordinates in the 21st Century,
with the growth of what Freud called
the discontents, and what Lacan
deciphered as the dead-ends, of
civilization.
In the last part of his teaching, Lacan
invites
us to a practice
of
psychoanalysis whose main axis implies
a radical change in the concept of the
symptom, which goes hand in hand with
other reformulations that somehow
institute a before and after within this
practice. And although we must not
forget that the latest does not erase the
earliest, the conception of the analytic
experience and of what the position of
an analyst would be in it, are marked by
the power of the changes thereby
introduced. These changes are sustained
in findings and inventions resulting
from his own pathway, but they are also
related to a world amply restructured
by two historical factors, two
discourses: the discourse of science and
the discourse of capitalism.2
The symptom, body event

The unconscious is a sedimentation of

language. And, at the opposite end of
our practice, there is the real. This is a
limit idea, the idea of what excludes any
kind of sense3. This quote actualises
Lacans movement throughout his
teaching,
from
an
unconscious
structured like a language (sheltering a
truth and a meaning to be revealed) to
an unconscious that is the effect of the
mark of lalangue, of libidinal signifiers
on the body of the speaking-being. In
his later teaching Lacan will distinguish
this body as being the locus of
jouissance, it is a body that one has and
which enjoys. This is what makes him
say in Encore: we do not know what it
means to be alive, except for the
following fact, that a body is something
that enjoys itself4. A jouissance which
is no longer articulated to the law of
desire, but is the effect of a traumatism,
a contingency and which, as a result,
involves a satisfaction that is out-ofmeaning.
If Llanguage [lalangue] affects us
first of all by everything it brings with it
by way of effects that are affects 5, it is
by producing a letter, a mark on the
body, that it operates. This will also
allow Lacan to say -three seminars
later- that the sinthome is the
consistency of those marks: a pure body
event, a remainder of the operation of
lalangue, incurable as it is what will not
change, fixity of a jouissance that is
opaque to meaning.
An invitation for a redefinition of the
analysts desire
In his conference J.-A. Miller opens up
the question of redefining the desire of
the analyst as not a pure desire, as
Lacan says, not a pure infinity of
metonymy but appears to as the desire
to reach the real, to reduce the Other to
its real and to liberate it of meaning6
This goes hand in hand with another

invitation: to bring psychoanalysis

beyond repression and the interpretation
of the repressed. If the Lacanian
unconscious of the last decade [of
Lacans teaching] is at the level of the
Real, what is at stake is to explore the
dimension of the defence against the
real without law and out-of-meaning,
and to dismantle it. But also to think of
a clinic which cannot exclude certain
concepts: the difference between
transferential unconscious and real
unconscious; the perspective of the
sinthome, which involves going to the
encounter of a singular knotting of Real,
Symbolic and Imaginary in each one.
That is, making use of the writing of the
Borromean knot, there where it is
possible to represent the Real stripped
of meaning.
E. Laurent goes back to a question
posed by J-A Miller: How far must we
take the perspective of the sinthome? 7.
He thus establishes a counterpoint
between the clinic of our times and the
psychoanalytic clinic that refers to the
sinthome. He reminds us that the former
goes towards a clinic separated from
lalangue, dreaming of a symptom
without unconscious, which conceives
itself as unsubscribed to any reference
to what can be said and which it
transforms into a numerable and
observable artefact. On the contrary,
Lacans proposal with the question of
the sinthome, allows for a complete
reordering of the analytic clinic, in a
perspective which is also unsubscribed
from the unconscious. The unsubscribed
in lalangue on the one hand, meets the
unsubscribed in the unconscious on the
other. And an strange intersection is
produced, which shows our question
about the transformation of the clinic
presented to us. This proposal includes
the plus of life that emerges in the
encounter with the analyst, and which is
forgotten behind what is said [....]it is
about restoring this dimension, about
7

presentifying it always, at least on the

side of the analyst8 It is the analyst
alive, embodying a presence that
testifies to the impact of lalangue on the
body. An analyst who can be called
analyst-sinthome, analyst-body, analysttrauma; an an analyst who is more on
the side of jouissance than of
knowledge, more on the side of the act
than of interpretation, more on the side
of the void than of the object a9.
The Lacanian troumatisme (made of
trauma and hole) may orient us in this
proposal to link the symptom as body
event and the analyst of the sinthome.
The troumatisme describes a double
status: the impact of lalangue or the
radical defect in lalangue (...) the void
of lalangue is the locus of the eruption
of jouissance () The trauma of
lalangue on the body (...) is rather the
fact that always, from the start, the
signifier that was required lacked.10
This is something that several
testimonies of the pass account for and
that S. Salman thus summarizes: ...The
void of the analyst does not function
without the body, and the body of the
analyst does not operate without the
void. Because the void has its locus in
the body () which is precisely what
makes the desire of the analyst not
pure.

analyst not without his sinthome and

makes of the desire of the analyst a
logical operator.

Translated by Betina Ganim

Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book

23, Le Sinthome, Unpublished.
2
Miller, J-A., A Real for the 21 st Century, in
Hurly-Burly, Issue 9, May 2013.
3
Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan,
Book 24, Unpublished.
4
Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book
20, Encore, W.W.Norton & co., London, 1999, p
23.
5
Ibid., p 139.
6
Miller, J.-A., op. cit.
7
Miller, J.-A., Sutilezas analticas, Paids, Bs
As, 2011, p 83.
8
Laurent,E., III Coloquio de la Orientacin
Lacaniana, Grama Ed. ,Bs.As.
9
Salman, S., El cuerpo en la experiencia del
anlisis, in Colofn 33. Cuerpos que hablan,
Boletn de FIBOL, Grama Ed., Bs. As.
10
Laurent, E., op. cit., p 41.
11
Miller, J-A., Seminario de la Orientacin
Lacaniana, El ser y el Uno, 30/3/2011.
12
Lacan, J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan,
Book 23, Le sinthome, Unpublished.

To conclude
Miller proposes three correlative
formulae that give a direction to
analytic listening: autoerotic jouissance
of the body, there is [something of the]
One, and there is no sexual relation.11
Lacan orients us: The right way is that
which, having recognised the nature of
the sinthome, does not spare himself
using it logically, namely to the point of
reaching its Real at the end of which it
is no longer thirsty12 This perspective
sustains itself in the position of the
8