In his return to Freud, the early Lacan focussed on the symbolic and the imaginary. The same goes for the agency of the body. Starting from the role of the body image in the constitution of the ego, Lacan subsequently elaborates its symbolic dimension.²  Since he reflects mainly on conversion symptoms and the phallic jouissance which is "hors-corps" [outside the symbolic body] in this period of his teaching, his references to the real dimension of the body are few and far between. From seminar XI (1964) onwards, though, the real – and more specifically the real of the drives – is given more attention. It is at this point that the concept of the real dimension of the body intervenes. With the real of the body, the accent lies on the cut and alienated relation between the subject and its body. At first, this polarisation of the subject and its body serves Lacan’s aim of situating the exact place of jouissance. Furthermore, the concept of the real of body has to do with the crucial question of aetiology, since the real of the drives is the cornerstone of psychopathological symptoms. As such, Lacan’s notion of the real of the body picks up again and develops the crucial concept of fixation, which Freud left unfinished.³

1. The Ex-timacy of the Body

In the last phase of his theory, Lacan does not stop emphasizing that the real of the body, e.g. the somatic source of the drive, is something fundamentally alien to us subjects of the symbolic. The subject would rather have an ex-timate than an intimate relation to its body.⁴  Actually, it occurs to Lacan that ancient, vague ideas about the existence of something like an unconscious emerged from this ex-timate relation. Indeed, both the unconscious and the body are intimate parts of us that are nevertheless totally alien and unknown. Who knows what's happening in his or her own body? Who knows what's happening in his or her own unconscious?⁵

If these statements sound slightly philosophical or even surrealistic, they nevertheless remain concrete and clinical. No need to turn to psychoanalytical theory, in fact, for plain observation already corroborates them. Little children do indeed touch and look at their genitals, for instance, as if they were some kind of attribute stuck to the rest of their body. They seem to approach their genitals as an outside observer, creating the impression that their genitals aren't an integral part of their person. In this respect, we could also evoke the filmed observations of Jenny Aubry which show that, when placed in front of a mirror, little children hide their private parts with their hands.⁶  By doing this, they seem to point out that their genitals have a different status from the rest of the body – an Other status that Lacan will write with a capital O in order to stress its otherness. Covering up the genitals conveys the idea that they don't fit in, and even ruin, the feeling of coherent oneness that the reflection in the mirror grants.

The Otherness or strangeness of the body appears very clearly in Freud’s case study of Little Hans too. Because of the jouissance it generates, his so-called “widdler” is so strange to him that he attributes penises to everything except human beings. He searches for the “widdler” of trains, stools, tables, dogs, horses…Only later on does he wonder whether human beings, like his parents, have one too. Lacan makes a very revealing pun about this. Since the real of the drives are experienced as something alien by the subject, he says that infantile sexuality is not in fact auto-erotic, but hetero-erotic [heteros: alien, strange, other). And indeed, little children don't know what on earth to do with the jouissance that arises from their bodies. Maybe the well-known situation of children attracting their parent’s attention to their genitals has to do with this. They try to provoke a discourse. These “exhibitions” can of course be interpreted in several ways, but one thing is certain: they do make parents talk. And the things parents say about it - that “it’s dirty”, like Hans’ mother said, or “it’s ok”, in any case function as a kind of instruction manual. Whatever its tenor, a discourse will always give the child an idea of what one does or is supposed to do with jouissance.

Incidentally, it looks like the ancient Egyptian theory of hysteria contained a certain intuition that rejoins psychoanalytic insights. The first theory on hysteria appeared as recently as 4000 years ago on a papyrus found in Kahun.⁷  It explained that hysteria was caused by the migration of the uterus, which was considered to be an independent, autonomous organism within the body. Since the treatment of hysteria aimed at pinning down this versatile organ in its right place, the standard therapy the physician-priests prescribed in those days consisted, logically, in marriage. Adopted by Plato, Hippocrates, Galenus, Paracelsus and so on, this theory was authoritative for centuries. However, like most grotesque theories, it contains some kernels of truth. Firstly, hysteria is considered an eminently sexual problem. Secondly, with its conception of a versatile and heterogeneous organ in relation to the rest of the body, this theory in fact implies the idea of a split within the human being, anticipating Freud’s discovery of the unconscious as a kind of intimate stranger within ourselves, part of us and yet unknown. In a mythical, imaginary way, this ancient Egyptian theory says that the subject is not the master in its own house (Freud) or that one has no idea what is happening in one’s own body (Lacan).

2. The jouissance of the body: “After all, the subject does not have much to do with jouissance”.⁸

This leads us to a second Lacanian axiom, namely that the subject and its body don't go very well together. The relation of the subject to its body isn't only opaque. It is menacing as well, for the subject experiences the jouissance that arises from its body as an intrusion or a "sexual shock," to quote an expression from Freud. Lacan's concepts of the 'subject' and the 'body' build on this as they try to structure clinical material in a new way. They focus our attention on the fact that it is not the subject who is enjoying: on the contrary, it is the body. As we shall now see in Freud's published case studies, the subject even has to defend itself against the jouissance coming from its own body.

As he tells his father, Hans would very much like to tease horses. He fantasizes about whipping and shouting at a horse from the stables. But as a subject, Hans does not recognise himself in this sadistic jouissance. More than that, he even has to defend himself against it. As he says: "When a cart stands there, I'm afraid I shall tease the horses (…)".⁹  We can notice an identical gap between jouissance on the one hand and his subjective position on the other hand with respect to the scotophilic drives. When Hans says "I have to look at horses, and then I'm frightened", he complains that he lacks any form of control over "his" jouissance, which just goes its own way.¹⁰

As for the Rat-man, he remembers having been under the empire of a burning and tormenting curiosity to see the female body in his childhood years. The adjectives 'burning' and 'tormenting' speak for themselves. He also remembers having suffered from erections and having complained about it to his mother. The polarisation between subject and jouissance manifests itself even more strikingly with respect to his anal-sadistic jouissance. As we know, the latter has to do with the great obsessive fear that a horrible punishment used in the East would strike his father and the woman he's in love with. The Rat-man is so horrified by the torture he evokes that he isn't even capable of saying what it is. Once told, with Freud's help, the Rat-man assures him that these thoughts are entirely foreign and repugnant to him and have passed through his mind with the most extraordinary rapidity. But Freud notices that in his description of the torture, his face took on a very strange composite expression. "I [Freud] could only interpret it as one of horror at pleasure of his own of which he himself was unaware." In other words, the Rat-man is terrorised by the sadistic jouissance that lives inside of him.¹¹

The Wolf-man’s whole personality is destabilised by the anal drive.¹²  He had gone from being a very good-natured, tractable, and quiet child to a discontented, irritable, violent child who took offence at every possible occasion, flying into a rage and screaming wildly. Eventually, Dora's oral jouissance is so pressing and compelling that she can't possibly break away from it. Actually, her father had to intervene in order to separate her from her oral drive. "She remembered very well that in her childhood she had been a thumb-sucker. Her father, too, recollected breaking her of the habit after it had persisted into her fourth or fifth year."¹³
These cases clearly point out that it is not the subject who enjoys, but the body: Lacan referred to this as a “jouissance du corps”. The subject, on the other hand is merely a “burned hole in the midst of the jungle of the drives”.¹⁴  With respect to the real of jouissance, the definition of the subject is nothing but a "natural defence”. For the subject of the symbolic, "sexuality is always traumatic as such" since it is real.¹⁵
 

Psychoses and the mirror sign

Lacan's conceptualisation of the traumatic real of the body also sheds light on the dynamics of psychosis. Let us take the 'mirror sign' as an example. The classic psychiatric manuals mention the curious phenomenon that psychotics are sometimes very interested in their reflection in the mirror. They systematically look into the mirror, sometimes for hours. The French psychiatrist Abély was thoroughly interested in this behaviour and gave it a name – the mirror sign ('le signe du miroir'). He also noticed that this conduct increases, or appears for the first time, a short time before the delusion breaks out. In other words, the mirror sign seems to announce the breaking out of the psychosis.¹⁶  Now, the mirror sign shouldn’t be confused with depersonalisation. In fact they are opposites, for in depersonalisation the subject panics because he or she doesn't recognise him or herself in the mirror, whereas in the mirror sign the subject does recognise him or herself and, furthermore, is reassured by the image. In a depersonalisation, the reflection provokes severe anxiety. Abély finds out that psychotics turn to the mirror because they feel a perturbation in their body. By looking into the mirror they want to verify that they are still the same. To quote Abély: The mirror sign is a more or less apprehensive/anxious response to a change the psychotic felt inside of him."¹⁷  If we read the observations concerning the mirror sign through Lacan's conceptualisation of the real of the body, we could advance the hypothesis that the mirror sign indicates an eruption of jouissance. It may be the case that the subject is destabilised by an intrusion of jouissance in the body. Afterwards, the subjects in question are incapable of explaining what happened except that something took place in their bodies. At the moment itself they are perplexed and speechless. Lacan teaches us to recognise the real nature of the drive in this stupor or absence of signifiers.

Of course, the relation of the psychotic to his or her body doesn't only shed light on the phenomenon of the mirror sign. In the last stage of his theory, Lacan emphasizes that the experiences of the body are central in the dynamics of psychosis. He draws our attention to some autobiographic events Joyce relates in his "Portrait of young artist", where a kind of « abandonment of the body » [abandon du corps] is clearly visible. For instance, when Joyce narrates the beating of the protagonist by the Prefect, he writes: “De les imaginer endolories [ses mains] et enflées soudain, il les plaignait comme si elles n’étaient pas à lui, mais à quelqu’un d’autre dont il aurait eu pitié.»¹⁸  As a matter of fact, the peculiar relation between psychotics and their body has not been unnoticed before Lacan for phenomena similar to this "abandonment of the body" are common in psychosis. Think of Schreber's transformation into a woman, R. Roussel's body shining, Pessoa's ecstasy’s…¹⁹  Only, these phenomena were never structured, never explained in a convincing way, before Lacan.

With his conceptualisation of the real of the body, Lacan stresses the fact that psychosis is essentially a disorder in the field of jouissance. This does certainly not mean that his previous conceptualisations of psychosis, in terms of a regression to the mirror stage and a foreclosure of the Name of the Father, are suddenly erroneous. On the contrary. They remain very pertinent concepts, especially when they are re-arranged around the topic of the jouissance. In connection with this, we think the most reliable diagnostic procedure for the detection of psychosis is to search for disturbances in the field of the jouissance. Indeed, clinical experiences have taught us that we can’t rely on the symbolic or the imaginary, since the unconscious productions of psychotics are a-typical. We find the same productions in the unconscious of neuroses. As for speech disturbances, they do not always appear in psychoses. And the foreclosure of the father is not a visible operational phenomenon. One can only observe its effects, and these effects are not typical for psychosis either. Father figures or the absence thereof are found in hysterical fantasies as well as psychotic delusions. A major criterion, however, by means of which neuroses and perversions can be differentiated from psychosis is that in the latter jouissance is not limited by the phallus. On the contrary, it is erratic and spread out all over the body. Moreover, the body is experienced as severely heterogeneous to the psychotic. At least, that’s how we can interpret the fact that their body is always penetrated/intruded by an Other (God, The CIA, radiation…) or that they do not acknowledge as their own the feelings of jouissance that arise from their body. They always come from an Other.

At this point we must insert a short note. We saw that the subject is involved in a defence process against its drives or its body. This defence is structural for neuroses, perversion and psychosis, and happens in the pre-Oedipal phase. In the Oedipal phase, though, the real jouissance or the body are integrated in the symbolic order. From then on, the subject's relation to jouissance is mediated by the symbolic-imaginary construction Lacan calls the primary fantasy (which is constructed with Oedipal signifiers). Once symbolised, the subject can now either enjoy its drives (now that they're symbolised, they aren't traumatic any more) or repress them. In the latter case, the defence against the body has become a symbolic process, since it is put into (symbolically structured) conversion symptoms. However, when the father-function or the Oedipal complex is foreclosed, the primary fantasy that mediates between the subject and his body can never be built. Consequently, the psychotic's body remains real. It is the real nature of the body that also explains the radical absence of conversion symptoms in psychosis. When organs or functions are disturbed within psychosis, this disturbance is real. There is nothing to decipher. In these cases, Lacan spoke of psychosomatic phenomena. Typical psychotic malfunctions, like paroxysmal fears, 'passages à l'acte', insomnia, and catatonia can also be ranged under the category of the real. They seem to refer to the subject’s defence against the jouissance welling up from his or her body. In these cases too, psychotics are not capable of saying what is happening to them, except that they feel some kind of a tension inside that frightens them, keeps them awake or prostrated, or pressing them to “do something.”²⁰

3. The twofold structure of the symptom

We will now concentrate on the body in relation to neurosis. Lacan’s concept of the body aims at saving the major concept of fixation from oblivion. Ever since the discovery of the unconscious, psychopathological symptoms have been explained on the basis of defence, in which repression plays a prominent role. However, after Freud it was more or less forgotten that repression in itself is a second moment within the causation of pathogenesis. “If what is spoken of as ‘repression’ is examined more closely, we shall find reason to split the process up into three phases which are easily distinguishable from one another conceptually. The first phase consists in fixation, which is the precursor and necessary condition of every repression. The phase of the repression proper – the phase to which psychoanalysis is accustomed to give the most attention – in fact is already a second phase of repression. The third phase is the return of the repressed.”²¹  In other words, we mustn’t forget Freud's axiom that symptoms are not only a compromise formation between two contradictory tendencies, but also a locus of jouissance.²²  Indeed, right from the beginning of his practise Freud noticed a twofold structure within symptoms: the drive and its psychic representations. In Lacanian terms, one has the real of the drive and the signifiers attached to it. This is very clearly present in Freud’s first published case study, on Dora. Actually, Freud must have published this case of all cases in order to stress the importance of the real, drive-related element within the structure of psychopathological symptoms. It did not have any obvious appeal to scientific interest, because what it teaches us about repression doesn’t add anything new to what Freud said in his earlier papers on the psychoneuroses of defence (Freud 1894, 1896).

So, Freud can break Dora’s conversion symptoms down into two parts: a symbolic one, i.e., the repressed signifiers or psychical representations of the drive; and a real one, related to the drive itself; in this case the oral one. Freud finds this hybrid composition of the symptom in all his later case studies. The obsessions of the Rat-man go back to the oral and anal drive; Little Hans’s phobia is built upon (and against) the oral, anal, scotophilic and genital drives; with the exception of the genital drive, the same holds for the Wolf-man’s phobia, obsessional neurosis and conversion symptoms.

Let us now take a closer look at this twofold structure within Dora’s conversion symptoms, her dyspnoea and tussis nervosa. First the symbolic-psychic side. Freud discovers that both symptoms are built around the master signifier 'catarrh'.²³  Following the trajectory of this signifier, Freud discovers that the catarrh refers to a complaint her mother made against her father. This signifier is emotionally charged, for it summarizes Dora’s familial or shall we say Oedipal constellation. Indeed, Dora’s mother’s abdominal pains and discharge (catarrh) were caused by her husband’s venereal disease. Hence, Dora’s mother’s catarrh says something about Dora’s father being a man who leads a loose life, a man who gets nothing out of his own wife.²⁴  The Oedipal constellation implied in the signifier catarrh shall repeat itself throughout Dora's entire life. As we know from F. Deutch who met her x years after her treatment with Freud, her marriage turned out to be an immense fiasco. Dora always considered men to be weak, egotistical, and adulterous. She always suspected her husband of being unfaithful.²⁵  That's not all though. The signifier 'catarrh' refers to another Oedipal element as well, namely Dora's father, who also suffered from a bronchial catarrh. Within this context the catarrh allows Dora to identify with her father: "'I'm my father's daughter. I have a catarrh, just like he has. He has made me ill as he made Mother ill. It is from him that I have got my evil passions, which are punished by illness'”.²⁶  Last but not least, the dyspnoea also refers to the "rapport sexuel". As a child, Dora, whose bedroom was next door to her parent’s, overheard her father in his wife's room at night and heard him (for he was always short of breath) breathing hard while they had intercourse. Apparently, for Dora the dyspnoea also stands for the drive at stake in the “rapport sexuel”. So here we find the symbolic-psychic side of the symptoms. The father’s infidelity, the mother’s status, and the enigma of the "rapport sexuel": this is all part of Dora’s symbolic-Oedipal constellation.

Now, from the beginning to the end of his publications Freud continually points out that the symbolic-psychic dimension of symptoms rests upon a drive. Actually, symbolically  structured phobias and conversion symptoms are what Lacan calls the “formal envelope” of a symptom, i.e., what gives symbolic form to the real of jouissance. In Freud’s words, the real of the drive is like “the grain of sand around which an oyster forms it pearls.”²⁷  And Freud’s final word on this topic in “Analysis Terminable and Interminable” is that the therapeutic results of analysis depend upon the drive-related element. Therapeutic shortcomings in analysis are well known: some symptoms resist analysis, or come back after the analytic treatment in spite of the fact that their unconscious meaning was revealed. Other typical occurrences of a post-analytical residual phenomenon are the so-called character–neuroses, or ‘hysterias without symptoms’ as Lacan calls them. In these cases, symptoms have disappeared, but the subject is still dominated by and/or involved in a defence against jouissance. Freud's Wolf-man illustrates such a case well. One of the merits of this case is that it was a cure that went to its end (which cannot be said of Dora) and that there was a kind of follow up to it.²⁸  The Wolf-man was seen by Ruth Mack Brunswick six years after his analysis with Freud in order to liquidate some residual phenomena. Now, Mack Brunswick noted a change in his character that was analogous to one that occurred in his early childhood.  “In this contemporary change of character, one finds the same regression to the anal sadistic and masochistic phase.”²⁹  Translated into Lacanian terminology, we can understand this regression as the subject’s defence against the real of his anal jouissance. At least, this is what we can deduce form Mack Brunswick’s next remark: “I invite the reader here to refresh his memory by rereading Freud’s case study. All the infantile material is already there, nothing new was revealed during the analysis he did with me.”³⁰  This remark endorses the idea that the character change is caused by the Real of the drive, and has nothing to do with any symbolic material that might not have been analysed during his analysis with Freud. Indeed, the affirmation that her further analysis of the Wolf-man revealed no new material leads to the conclusion that the two analyses with Freud had exhausted all the symbolic aspects of the symptom. The repressions had obviously been overcome, but the relation of the subject to his drive never changed. Moreover, it is clear that the analysis with Brunswick, and all the others that followed, did not succeed in this respect; in 1963, at the age of 77, the Wolf-man says he’s still deranged by agressivity. It even occurs to him that his agressivity has intensified over the years.³¹

4. The real of the body and aetiology

Let us now take a closer look at fixation as such. Freud always emphasised the fact that whereas repression is a psychological act, related to the subject, fixation is not. Moreover, repression involves no relation to sexuality as such. Only the psychical representatives, or signifiers, connected to the drives can be repressed. The drives as such can never be repressed. As a matter of fact the sexual drives were never conscious, nor can they ever be made conscious.³²

Thus, if repression is a psychological process triggered by the subject, we're left wondering which agency is responsible for the fixation of the drives. How come some drives are fixated and others are not? How come the Rat-man’s anal drive was fixated and not his oral drive? How come it was Dora’s oral drive and not her anal one? As we said, it is not the subject that decides about the fixation of the drives. Who or what does, then? Whereas repression is an active act, executed by the subject, fixation appears as a passive lagging behind, according to Freud.³³  He clarifies this ‘lagging behind’ by comparing it with an anthropological story: “When, as often happened at early periods of human history, a whole people left their place of domicile and sought a new one, we may be certain that the whole of them did not arrive at the new location. Apart from other losses, it must regularly have happened that small groups or bands of the migrants halted on the way and settled at these stopping places while the main body went further.” Still, this doesn’t explain why small groups decided to stay behind. Lacan’s answer to that is that they did so because there was a jouissance involved in these stopping places. And the jouissance in question isn't the subject's – we saw that Freud was categorical about this -, but the body’s.

In fact, this Lacanian thesis has Freudian precursors, although these only become visible and intelligible after Lacan shed light on them and developed them further. Freud already discovered that the body is an entity that sexualises non sexual-processes. Freud is very clear about this:"(…) there are present in the organism contrivances which bring it about that in the case of a great number of internal processes sexual excitation arises as a concomitant effect, as soon as the intensity of those processes passes beyond certain quantitative limits. What we have called the component instincts of sexuality are either derived directly from these internal sources or are composed of elements both from those sources and from the erotogenic zones. It may well be that nothing of considerable importance can occur in the organism without contributing some component to the excitation of the sexual instinct.”³⁴  Dora's cough, for instance, was at first an organically determined irritation of the throat. However, the oral drive got mixed in to this irritation and charged it with jouissance. Consequently, the organic cough isn't just an organic event anymore, but a sexual one. In the same manner, the body sexualises intestinal catarrhs, worms (like in the case of the Rat-man), or constipations (as in the case of the Little Hans).³⁵

Lacan takes this activity of the body a decisive step further. According to him it is the very same agency of the real of the body that also decides which specific master signifiers will condition a neurosis. In psychoanalytic practise we are accustomed to take into account the signifiers that constitute the symptoms or the neurosis in general. But this doesn’t resolve the questions about the aetiology of pathogenesis. For this to occur, one must also be able to explain why it was those precise master signifiers and not other ones that determined the architecture of the neurosis. In other words, psychoanalysis must be able to give an answer to the question why the signifier ‘rat’, for instance, is so predominant in the Rat-man’s neurosis; why it was that signifier and not another that conditioned his neurosis. Why is it the signifier ‘horse’ that gives form to Hans’s anxiety? Why did he have a horse-phobia and not another one? True, these signifiers of the Other are the symbolic constellation in which the subject is born and with which he has to constitute himself. However, any clinician knows such signifiers are just a fraction of a subject’s symbolic constellation. A case study only tells us about the signifiers that conditioned the neurosis, and leaves aside those that did not contribute to it. We think its safe to say that Dora’s father cannot be reduced to just one signifier, “catarrh”. The others were left aside since they didn’t play any role in Dora’s neurosis. A better example is provided by the Rat-man, whose father predicted that he will become “either a great man or a great criminal”.³⁶  We know from Freud’s case study that the signifier ‘criminal’ turned out to be an important pillar in his neuroses. Hence the question that imposes itself is why it was the signifier ‘criminal’ that was held onto instead of “great man”?

In any case, behavioural or systemic explanations are not satisfying. If a signifier was linked to a subject by means of reinforcement or because of the role it played within a system, why does this signifier continue to exert its compelling power on the subject even when these reinforcements or so-called "entropic" powers are not present anymore? How come an individual in adult life repeats his unhappy past instead of leaving it behind?
Freud discovered that specific signifiers are selected because they hook up with the drives that are fixated for those subjects. The signifiers “criminal” and “rat“ for instance link up with the Rat-man’s oral and anal-sadistic jouissance.³⁷  As for Little Hans, the signifier ‘horse’ was “selected” because it fit in with his jouissance: “the anxiety originally had no reference at all to horses but was transposed on to them secondarily and had now become fixed upon those elements of the horse complex which showed themselves well adapted for certain transferences.³⁸  The transferences at stake here are Hans’s oral, anal and genital jouissance. The horses that fall down and make a row with their feet refer to Hans’s anal jouissance: when Hans had to be put on the chamber pot and refused to leave off playing, he used to stamp and make a row with his feet in a rage, kick about, and sometimes throw himself onto the ground.³⁹  The signifier ‘black’ (black horses) refers to excrements and the biting refers to his oral and genital drives.⁴⁰  For the rest, this is why the symptom has a double composition. The cough and the constipations are both real and symbolic. Dora's cough is a (Oedipal) signifier or conversion symptom as well as a locus of real jouissance. Hans' phobia is a signifier that keeps him away from his real anal-sadistic jouissance, and so on.

Furthermore, Freud noticed the same drive-related mechanism operating in the sexual theories children elaborate. It is not owing to any arbitrary mental or chance impressions that these theories arise, but to the necessities of the child’s psychosexual constitution. They appear to be the mere expression of the constellation of their drives. In other words, in children who produce the cloaca-theory, we shall find a fixation of the anal drive; and behind those who produce the oral-theory, an oral one.⁴¹

Lacan develops these Freudian indications and integrates them into his theory of speech, as well. Since signifiers aren't univocal we are compelled to make constant choices when talking, reading and listening. And everyone knows these choices are tendentious. As the dictum says, we only hear what we want to hear. Let us take Lacan’s 'Les Noms du Père' as an example. These signifiers can be understood as 'Les noms du père' (the names of the father), but also as 'Les nons du père' (the no's of the father) and 'les non-dupes errent' (the non-dupes err). Lacan's thesis advances that the signification the subject will hear/select is dictated by his jouissance.⁴²  This is also why he states that the primary fantasy plays the role of the signification of truth, which, amongst other things,  means that one only perceives the pieces of reality that fit into one’s primary fantasy.⁴³  In other words, perception, interpretation, memorisation, etc., are processes that are highly selective and biased by jouissance. From all this, Lacan concludes that the agency that does the thinking, the computing and the judging is not the ego or the subject, but jouissance.⁴⁴

5. The treatment of the real kernel: the traversal of the fundamental fantasy

Let us now put together our findings. Freud discovered that symptoms are the return of repressed signifiers. However, this is only a part of his discovery. As important, if not more so, is that these signifiers are related to drives. In other words, there is always a jouissance implied in the signifiers that were repressed. In fact, jouissance is the cornerstone of neurosis; it constitutes the "first ground of the subjective orientation”.⁴⁵  Consequently it is the real of the drives that is central in what Lacan designates as Freud's testament, “Analysis terminable and interminable”. When drawing up the balance sheet of the two determining forces of psychopathological symptoms with respect to aetiology and the chances of durable therapeutic effects, Freud, after fifty years of clinical practise, puts repression in perspective and emphasises the importance of the drive-related factor.

What does this entail for analytic treatment? It entails that analysis will have to lay bare the jouissance related to each signifier. According to Lacan, this has to do with the primary fantasy. Lacan’s merit is to have searched for an answer to the problem of how to deal with the drive-related component of symptoms. His situating of the place fantasy occupies within the dynamic of neurosis as well as what he calls its traversal is an answer to the Freudian impasse of the interminable analysis and its residues. Unlike Freud, Lacan gives fantasy a major role. According to Freud the primary fantasy “subsists to a great extent apart from the rest of the content of the neurosis and finds no proper place in its structure” ⁴⁶  Apparently, Freud considers the primary fantasy to be something marginal in relation to neurosis. As a matter of fact, the sole Freudian paper on fantasy, namely “A child is being beaten”, does not even mention its role within neurosis or symptoms in general. Freud only considers fantasy from the perspective of the genesis of the perversions of sadism and masochism.

In the light of Lacan’s conceptualisation of fantasy, it is astonishing that Freud gave it so little importance in the aetiology of symptoms. No less striking is the fact that there is no trace of the agency of primary fantasy to be found in any of his published cases. Except for a slight detail in the case of the Wolf-man, maybe, where Freud notes that the Wolf-man enjoys coïtus when it is performed a tergo. Lacan, on the other hand, attaches far more importance to primary fantasy with respect to symptoms. According to him, the totality of a neurosis in fact converges in the primary fantasy, since it is the agency that plays the central role in libidinal economy. As he describes it in the last ten years of his teaching, primary fantasy is the agency that regulates and conducts everything that has to do with jouissance. And as we saw, symptoms do not only come down to signifiers but to a mode of jouissance as well. The partial drives we find at the root of the signifiers of the symptom are the same ones the subject engages in his object-relations.

As for the so-called traversal of the fundamental fantasy, it must be distinguished from the construction of the fundamental fantasy to which analysis traditionally boils down. Let’s consider construction first. It is obvious that the primary fantasy does not appear ready-made in the analytic cure. Even if it mediates each and every one of the subject’s sexual activities, it still has to be constructed since the subject is never fully conscious of the whole content of its fantasy. Moreover there are generally multiple variants of the basic scenario. Usually the basic scenario has gone through alterations and elaborations. A wealth of situations and actors were invented, day-dreams grew up over the elementary core…  Within this context, construction comes down to the reduction of the variations, alterations and elaborations to their elementary organism or matrix. As a rule the elementary matrix is a phrase, like “A child is being beaten”, for instance. The links to the Oedipal constellation become evident in the construction, since the signifiers it was built with were Oedipal ones.

Construction is the classical and best-known aspect of psychoanalysis. Traversing, however, is a Lacanian concept, and refers to the analytic goal of locating the jouissance that is really at stake in the fundamental fantasy. Freud already discovered that this is in fact far from evident since the concrete scenario of the fantasy can’t be taken for granted. Think of the fantasy of “A child is being beaten”. Freud’s report on this fantasy as well as our daily clinical practice teaches us that the subject is incapable of saying anything at all about the kind of jouissance implied in his or her own primary fantasy. The subject is not able to determine if s/he is the one who is beaten (if his jouissance is masochistic), or, on the contrary, if s/he is the one who administers the beatings (if his jouissance is sadistic). In other words: even if the subject knows his or her own sexual preferences, they nevertheless remain strange and inexplicable. The subject enjoys his or her fantasy but doesn’t know and moreover doesn’t want to know what s/he enjoys in it. And as long s/he doesn’t know which jouissance s/he’s connected with, his or her relation to it cannot possibly be altered. As for the question which jouissance is at stake in the fantasy of “A child is being beaten”, Lacan distances himself from Freud. In his opinion, the sadistic and masochistic aspects of the scenario are deceptive. They‘d have more to do with love than with jouissance. To him it seems that the jouissance that is really at stake in this scenario is the gaze.⁴⁷

6. To Conclude

In the last phase of his teaching Lacan's major preoccupation is with the field of jouissance. In developing a notion of the real dimension of the body, Lacan stresses the cut between the subject and its body. At first, Lacan shows us that, in the end, the subject does not have very much to do with jouissance. The agency that is concerned with jouissance, on the other hand, is the body. This situating of jouissance sheds new light on the dynamics and the treatment of neurosis and psychosis. Taking up Freud's indications on this matter, Lacan points out that the real of the body is the agency that lies at the base of the fixation of the drives, which is the precursor to repression. Thinking the real of the body through to its logical conclusion, Lacan arrives at the conclusion that it is this same agency that chooses the signifiers a neurosis is built with. Since jouissance is considered to be the cornerstone of psychopathological processes, ultimately the concept of the real of the body ties together aetiology and treatment.
 
 

References

1. Our translation of « Ce n’est pas à sa conscience que le sujet est condamné, c’est à son corps (…). » Jacques Lacan, Réponses à des étudiants en philosophie, Autres Écrits, (Paris, Seuil, 2001): 206.
 2. For an extensive treatment of the imaginary and symbolic aspects of the body, see Carmela Levy-Stokes, “The hysteric subject, the body and jouissance,” Analysis, 9, ACP Australia, 2000: 124-137.
 3. In the course of this paper the concept of the body refers to the real of the body except when explicitly stated otherwise.
4. Ex-timacy is a neologism created by Lacan. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire Livre VII, L’éthique de la psychanalyse, Texte établi par J.-A. Miller, (Paris : Seuil, 1986) 167.
5. Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire XXIII, Le Sinthome, Ornicar, no. 11,  1977: 6.
6. Jacques Lacan mentions these experiments in his seminar R.S.I., session 11/03/ 1975.
7. Papyrus Ebers, 1937
8. Our translation of "Un sujet, comme tel, n’a pas grand-chose à faire avec la jouissance." Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire Livre 20 :  Encore, Texte établi par J.-A. Miller (Paris : Seuil, 1975) 48.
9. Sigmund Freud, Analysis of a phobia in a Five-Year-Old boy,  SE 10: 79-81
10. Ibid.: 29. The italics are ours.
11. Sigmund Freud,  Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, SE 10: 160; 161; 166-167.
12. Freud’s elucidation of this character change is slightly incoherent and contradictory. He uses castration anxiety to explain the character change. But he has to stretch things in order to maintain castration anxiety as the cause of the alteration of the Wolf-man's character. Therefore we choose to interpret this change by means of Lacan’s concepts.
13. Sigmund Freud, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, SE 7: 51.
14. Our translation of « rond brûlé dans la brousse des pulsions”. J. Lacan, Remarque sur le rapport de Daniel Lagache, in Écrits (Paris : Seuil, 1966) 666.
15. Our translation of « (…) la sexualité est toujours traumatique en tant que telle. » Jacques Lacan, Conférences et entretiens dans des universités Nord-Américaines, Scilicet 6/7 (Paris, Seuil, 1975) 22
16. Paul Abély, Le signe du miroir dans les psychoses et plus spécialement dans la démence précoce, Annales médico-psychologiques, I : 36
17. Our translation of « le signe du miroir est une réponse plus ou moins inquiète que le malade éprouve à propos du changement survenu en lui » Ibid.
18. James Joyce, Portrait de l’artiste en jeune homme, Œuvres, I, Paris, Gallimard, 1982, p. 611.
19. Concerning the dynamics of psychosis in Lacan’s later works, we recommend C. Soler’s L'aventure littéraire ou la psychose inspirée (Paris : Editions  du Champ Lacanien, 2001).
20. In the best scenario, psychosis evolves into paranoia. Indeed, a delusion is an attempt to give meaning and sense to an erupting jouissance.
21. Sigmund Freud, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia, SE 12: 66-68. We underline.
22. In order to avoid misunderstandings, it should be stressed that jouissance has nothing to do with pleasure. The jouissance behind the symptom is a jouissance that makes the subject suffer.
23. Catarrh: inflammation of the mucous membranes, causing secretion.
24. Sigmund Freud, Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria, SE 7: 75-76; 82-83. Apart from this, we can now assert with a certain amount of plausibility that it is this message the disease implies which explains the striking positive correlation, observed by scientists at the time, between syphilitic fathers and hysterical children. Indeed, a syphilitic father implies that the mother doesn’t satisfy in one way or another. Hence, we think it's safe to say that a “psychic” rather than an organic heritage is the reason for this correlation.
 25. Felix Deutsch, 'A Footnote to Freud's Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria', in C.Bernheimer & C.Kahane (eds), In Dora's Case: Freud - Hysteria - Feminism, Columbia University Press, New York, 1985: 35-44.
 26. Ibid.: 82.
 27. Ibid. : 83
 28. Concerning Dora, the postscript published by Felix Deutsch fifty years after Dora's analysis with Freud reveals that the original symptoms – the dyspnoea, the tussis nervosa and the aphonia – returned in their original form. However, we cannot affirm with certainty that this is due to the drive-related element only. We cannot be sure that the limited analysis Freud undertook with her was enough to counterbalance the repression.
 29. Ruth Mack Brunswick, A Supplement to Freud's History of an Infantile Neurosis' , in M. Gardiner, The Wolf-man by the Wolf-man  (New York: Basic Books, 1971).
 30. Ibid., p. 270. The italics are ours.
 31. Ruth Mack Brunswick, 'A Supplement to Freud's History of an Infantile Neurosis', in M. Gardiner, The Wolf-man by the Wolf-man, Basic Books, New York, 1971
 32. Sigmund Freud, Repression SE 14: 141-159; Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, SE 66: 241-478.
33. Sigmund Freud, Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia SE 12: 67
34. S. Freud, Three Essays on Sexuality, SE 7: 204-205. We underline.
35. : "Intestinal catarrhs at the tenderest age make children 'nervy', as people say, and in cases of later neurotic illness they have a determining influence on the symptoms in which the neuroses is expressed, and they put at its disposal the whole range of intestinal disturbances." Ibid.: 186.
36. Sigmund Freud, Notes upon a Case of Obsessional Neurosis, SE 10:205
37. “But he himself (The Rat-man) had been just such a nasty, dirty little wretch, who was apt to bite people when he was in a rage.” Ibid.: 216.
38. Sigmund Freud, Analysis of a phobia in a Five-Year-Old boy,  SE 10: 51
39. Ibid. : 54.
40. Biting and the genital drive: the sensations of itching in the penis are usually described by them in the phrase ‘Es beisst mich’: literally ‘it bites me’.  Ibid. p. 30.
41. Sigmund Freud, On the Sexual Theories of Children, SE 9:209-226.
42. Since it contains homophonies based on nothing less than nineteen different languages, Joyce's ‘Finnegans Wake’ could serve as an accurate diagnostic instrument. Indeed, the significations a subject would select from it would certainly reveal his jouissance.
43. Our translation of "(…) le fantasme y a rôle de signification de vérité". Jacques Lacan, Seminar XV, La Logique du fantasme, unpublished, session 21 /06/1967.
44. Our translation of « Ce qui pense, calcule et juge, c'est la jouissance » Jacques Lacan, …ou pire in Autres Écrits (Paris : Seuil, 2001), 551.
45. Our translation of « première assise de l'orientation subjective". Jacques Lacan, Le Séminaire Livre VII, L’éthique de la psychanalyse (Paris : Seuil, 1986) p. 68
46. S. Freud, ‘A child is being beaten’: a contribution to the study of the origin of sexual perversions, SE 17:183.
47. J. Lacan, Le Séminaire XV, La logique du fantasme, o.c.

Copyright - The Author

Address for correspondence

Dr. Frédéric Declercq
Department of Psychoanalysis and Clinical Consulting
Ghent University
H. Dunantlaan 2
9000 Ghent
Belgium
Email: frederic.declercq@rug.ac.be
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~evdbussc/