Preamble
In my paper today, I am going to talk about the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis, free association, and how Lacan presents this rule in his Seminar, The Psychoanalytic Act.
I became interested in this topic when I came across the phrase, “to flounder around as he wishes”[1] in Lesson III of the Seminar. Lacan had been quoting some of Plato’s Dialogue, Meno, to talk about knowledge, and specifically the difference between knowledge and truth. Lacan selects the part in Meno where an exercise is carried out to demonstrate that, through a series of questions posed by Socrates and addressed to a slave, the slave can be led to a knowledge. The point that Socrates makes here in the Dialogue is that the knowledge is already there in the slave and that his questions just allow it to emerge. In other words, knowledge is simply rediscovered.
Lacan contrasts this exercise between Socrates and the slave with the encounter between psychoanalyst and psychoanalysand. In the latter situation, that of psychoanalysis, questions are not posed in this Socratic manner, the reason being that psychoanalysis is not interested in the rediscovery of knowledge, rather, its interest is in truth. If by contrast, the Socrates-slave encounter were a psychoanalytic encounter, says Lacan, the slave would be “told to flounder around as he wishes [moufter à son gré]. Which is not done, of course, at the level of the experience of the Meno”[2].
The focus of my paper today is on the instruction “to flounder around as he wishes” because this seems to be synonymous with the instruction of the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis, to free associate.
Introduction
In Lesson VII of this Seminar, The Psychoanalytic Act, Lacan explicitly refers to the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis and to free association. He says that the instruction implied in the fundamental rule is that the subject should absent himself – the subject, here, being the analysand, the one who speaks. He should absent himself so that free association, which can be expressed as the signifier in act, can operate. And he clarifies that the signifier in act is distinct from the act of the signifier.
Of course, free association is regarded as being the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis so, in fact, both of Lacan’s pronouncements – that the subject should absent himself and that the signifier in act should operate – are referring to two complementary aspects of the same phenomenon in psychoanalysis. Lacan explicitly situates each in relation to the other by saying that submitting to the fundamental rule, the rule that instructs that the subject absent himself, is the necessary condition for leaving “the signifier in act to its operation”[3], its operation being that of free association.
These two aspects, the signifier in act and the subject who absents himself, are the two main ideas around which I organise my presentation (even though it is a somewhat laboured division). And there are also a couple of related, key ideas: –
But I begin with Freud.
Freud’s fundamental rule: free association and evenly suspended attention
According to Freud, “the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis lays down that whatever comes into one’s head must be reported without criticising it”[4]. The term, fundamental rule, is synonymous with what came to be called the rule of free association. Can Freud’s description of the fundamental rule be reconciled with Lacan’s articulation of this rule in Lesson VII, i.e., the instruction that the subject should absent himself? I think it can. They are not opposed to each other.
In Chapter 2 of The Interpretation of Dreams[5], Freud describes free association as follows:
Some years after the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Freud refers to the part the psychoanalyst plays in the psychoanalytic encounter. He says that the “necessary counterpart to the demand made on the patient”[6] to free associate, is for one (the analyst) to practice “evenly-suspended attention in the face of all that one hears”[7]. This is the first of Freud’s recommendations in his paper, Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psychoanalysis. He goes on:
The free association of the patient/analysand and the evenly suspended attention of the doctor/analyst go hand in glove; one depends on the other. Could the analyst practice “evenly suspended attention” if the analysand were not practising free association? And vice versa? A psychoanalytic encounter implies both practices, both positions. (And doesn’t Lacan say, in Lesson IX, that “there is no psychoanalyst without a psychoanalysand”[9]?)
It seems that the term, “fundamental rule”, covers both the instruction to the analysand to free association and the instruction to the psychoanalyst to practise evenly-suspended attention, its necessary counterpart. Both the analysand and the analyst must “play by the rule”.
I suggest that, in the Seminar, The Psychoanalytic Act, Lacan both spells out and develops the rationale for, and the structure of, the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis.
Free association – the signifier in act
I return to Lesson VII of the Seminar during which Lacan explicitly uses the terms, “free association” and “fundamental rule” – though elsewhere he uses abbreviated terms like, “the rule” or “the analytic rule”.
The context, in Lesson VII, is this: Lacan is speaking about the act and the doing – the gap between the act and the doing; the difference between the two. And he goes on to say that there is “this doing”[10] which is psychoanalysis. It is “a doing of pure speech”[11], he says, and he remarks that, of course, everybody can see that about ‘psychoanalysis and pure speech’ as he has been talking about it since the Rome Discourse of 1953[12]. But, he says, what we do not see is that precisely “because it is a doing of pure speech, …it gets close to being an act as compared to common doing”[13].
He then goes on to say that, in psychoanalytic technique, free-association could be referred to as the signifier in act:
“… in this thing that looks like nothing, that is quite simply, just like that, this famous free association, one could moreover express it by the signifier in act”[14].
And, in relation to the fundamental rule, he goes on to say,
“…what is truly the meaning of the fundamental rule is precisely that, up to a point that is as advanced as possible, these are the instructions: that the subject should absent himself”[15] – the subject, in this instance, being the analysand.
Lacan elaborates further, saying that “the task, the doing of the subject is to leave this signifier to its operation”[16] – this signifier being the “signifier in act”. That is to say, that the conditions required for the signifier in act to function is that the subject should be absent. Elsewhere in this Seminar, Lacan refers to the ‘absent subject’ as the ‘abdicated subject’.
Since the beginning of the Seminar, Lacan has been distinguishing between the doing (le faire) and the act (l’acte). Here, in Lesson VII, he says that what is required in the doing of the subject is that he absent himself so as to leave the signifier in act to its operation (à son jeu). That is to say, that he abdicate as subject so that the signifier in act can operate, thereby supplanting the subject as agent:
“…it is a common dimension of the act not to include, in its agency, the presence of the subject”[17].
In the process of focusing on the distinction between ‘the act’ and ‘the doing’, Lacan recalls Freud’s Bungled Act (parapraxis) in which what seems to be the act is not the act. The ostensible act is really only the action which is merely “a shelter behind which there is dissimulated what is properly called acts”[18]. And the agent of these properly called acts is not the subject but, rather, the signifier.
The act, which is sheltered behind the action, pertains to the unconscious intentionality involved, whereas the action which is done, in other words, “the doing”, is more in line with conscious intentionality, though, of course, not without the unconscious interference, thereby giving rise to the bungled act [l’acte manqué].
Throughout the Seminar, Lacan frequently repeats that “…the act is a matter of the signifier”[19]. That is to say that the act pertains to signification and the chain of signifiers. It pertains to unconscious signifiers – signifiers without signifieds, signifiers which are subject only to the two axes of the laws of signification, metaphor and metonymy.
Returning to Lesson VII where Lacan talks about the “doing of pure speech” which is psychoanalysis, the question arises: if this doing of pure speech (only) gets close to being an act, what is it that is required to allow a crossing over into it becoming an act? It seems that this crossing over is dependent on the subject being absent, absenting himself, so as to leave this signifier, the signifier in act, to its operation. And when this happens, the agent is no longer the subject but, instead, the agent is this signifier, the signifier in act. And that is when there is truly free association.
In this Seminar, Lacan uses other expressions, besides ‘signifier in act’, to capture the core of this famous free association. For example, he speaks about going with the drift of language. He says that the analysand, the one who is defined by this discourse which is “established by the rule”, is the one who commits to “the drift of language”[20]. And Lacan spells this out, saying that the one who is committed to the drift of language “is the one … on whom … are tested the effects of the word”[21] [les effets de la parole].
Lacan refers to the “effects of the word” in the context of a psychoanalysis as the “discourse-effect”. However, he also points out that the subject, “as subject … is already constituted as effect of the word”[22]. This is referred to as the “subject-effect”. It is the effect of the inaugural splitting of the subject[23].
The subject absents himself – subject-effect and discourse-effect
The subject, in the analytic encounter, is asked to abdicate as subject. It is the instruction of the fundamental rule, according to Lacan. The subject is asked to abdicate so as to test himself against the effects of language, these effects being the discourse-effect. However, the subject, every subject, as subject, is already the effect of language. Every subject is the split subject. There is the inaugural splitting of the subject. This is the division-effect, and this is referred to as the subject-effect.
The discourse-effect, which is also the effect of language, is similar to, though it is not the same as, the subject-effect. One aspect of the difference relates to the matter of ‘choice’. The subject and would-be analysand in the discourse “… is asked to abdicate as subject” in order to commit himself “to the drift of language”[24] There is, therefore, some degree of choice involved.
“[T]he status of a subject defined by this discourse”[25] is not only that of the divided subject, like every subject, but that of a divided subject who chooses to speak from that division, chooses to abdicate as subject by committing himself to the drift of language, that is, chooses to be an absent subject so as to leave the signifier in act to its operation; chooses to abdicate as subject in order to be tested (again) by the effects of language. By submitting to the psychoanalytic discourse, to the fundamental rule of analysis, the analysand, at some level, chooses to submit to the effect of language, the effect of the word.
By pursuing this discourse, the analysand “is going to attempt…to connect up with [the] already established effects”[26] of language. And to do this, the analysand commits to the drift of language and the “immediate experience its pure effect”[27] in order to make this connection.
There is a choice, up to a point. “The psychoanalysand constitutes himself…by a certain choice… called abdication, the choice of testing oneself against the effects of language”[30]. This choice takes place at the level of a doing. There is a subject who chooses. The choice is one of abdication, of absenting himself as subject following the instruction of the fundamental rule. But it is at this point that the choice ends since the purpose of the choice is to “leave the signifier in act to its operation” and thereby the doing crosses over into the act.
In the act, there is no choice. There is no choice because …
“…the act is a matter of the signifier … A matter of the signifier through which the return of the effect takes place, described as the subject-effect which is produced by the word, in language of course, a return of this subject-effect in so far as it is radically divided”[31].
The operation of the signifier in act is dependent on the subject absenting himself. There is a ‘necessary alienation’ involved in the signifier in act which is a return of the inaugural alienation and division of the subject. It is …
“…a return … to the inaugural point, which in truth he never left, the statutory one, that of the forced choice, the alienating choice […] what makes him divided as subject”[32].
In the context of the analytic discourse, there is the “necessary alienation, the one in which it is impossible to choose between the ‘either I do not think’ and the ‘or I am not’…”[33]. And “…in the famous quadrangle … the psychoanalytic act takes place on this axis”[34] going from the either I do not think, to the or I am not.
[1] Lacan, J. Seminar, The Psychoanalytic Act (1967-1968), 29 November 1967, p.12. Unpublished translation by Cormac Gallagher. Also available on lacaninireland.com.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 24 January 1968, p.11.
[4] S.E. XII, « The Dynamics of Transference », 1912, p.107
[5] S.E. IV, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1901, pp. 101-103
[6] S.E. XII, « Recommendations to Physicians Practising Psychoanalysis », 1912, p.112
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 7 February 1968, p.9.
[10] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 24 January 1968, p.11
[11] Ibid.
[12] Lacan, J. “The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis” in Ecrits – the First Complete Edition in English. Translated by Bruce Fink. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Original 1953.
[13] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 24 January 1968, p.11
[14] Ibid. [Note: this quotation is an amalgam of Cormac Gallagher’s translation and this author’s translation from the ALI French version, p.119]
[15] Ibid.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 29 November 1967, p.14.
[18] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 29 November 1967, p.5
[19] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 20 March 1968, p.3.
[20] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 7 February 1968, p.6.
[21] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 7 February 1968, p.2.
[22] Ibid.
[23] In Lacan’s “Position of the Unconscious” he writes: “…the subject is “the effect of language” […] “Through this effect, he is not the cause of himself; he bears within himself the worm of the cause that splits him. For his cause is the signifier, without which there would be no subject in the real.” […] “…he is born of this early split”. In Ecrits – the First Complete Edition in English. Translated by Bruce Fink. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Original 1960/64, p.709.
[24] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 7 February 1968, p.6.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 20 March 1968, p.3.
[30] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 7 February 1968, p.6.
[31] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 20 March 1968, p.3.
[32] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 20 March 1968, p.2.
[33] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 7 February 1968, p.8.
[34] Lacan, J. (1967-1968), op. cit., 20 March 1968, p.2.
