Nouvelle École de Psychanalyse — New Lacanian School
http://www.amp-nls.org
THREE LECTURES BY J.A. MILLER IN SAINT PETERSBURG
THREE LECTURES
BY J.A. MILLER IN SAINT PETERSBURG
OR
«THE TASTE FOR PSYCHOANALYSIS»
Jacques-Alain
Miller gave a series of three lectures with the title ‘Three Introductory
Lessons in Psychoanalysis’ on the 28th, 29th and 30th of May in Saint Petersburg,
organised by the NLS and the Freudian Field.
Young Russian colleagues of the Freudian Field-Russia secured a wide circulation
of this event, as did the partner institutions of each lecture: The French
Institute of Saint Petersburg, the Department of Aesthetics and Philosophy of
Culture and the Smolny Institute of Political Science.
Despite this, nothing could have ensured an audience whom the signifier
‘psychoanalysis’ could arouse, in a Russia that is certainly open to all
currents of ideas and theories, but where the structures of transmission of
psychoanalysis are unstable and not yet fixed. Well, the Russian public
responded to the invitation three times, in absolutely packed auditoriums, the
beautiful hall of the Pushkin Museum, and then in the lecture rooms of the
universities of philosophy and philology.
INTENSITY. This is the word that comes to mind for the extreme attention of this
public who discovered an unheard of way of speaking, not only about
psychoanalysis, as a theme amongst others, but to speak psychoanalysis itself.
Because the intensity was first of all one of enunciation. If the psychoanalysts
of the WAP know how psychoanalysis is incarnated in each speech by J.A. Miller
and in his weekly course, they may no longer know the effect of the intense
surprise it produces for someone who hears it for the first time, which was the
case for 97% of this public. I will only quote the comments of a young
psychiatrist ‘interested’ in psychoanalysis, of whom I asked her opinion on
these three lectures: «J.A. Miller is able to surprise with each sentence, it
gives you new ideas, as if psychoanalysis was just being invented.»
INVENTIONS.
- First Lecture: ‘From Freud to Lacan: What is the Unconscious?’
Psychoanalysis is first of all a practice before being a theory. It is the
practice of Freud who discovered something he called ‘the unconscious’ and
invented this practice that is psychoanalysis. Moreover, he produced not just
one, but several theories. As for Lacan, he did not invent analytic practice,
but he invented a theory of the unconscious that ‘fits’ this practice better. A
theory that rests on the fact that the unconscious is analogous to an analytic
session: where the unconscious ciphers and the analyst deciphers.
Starting from this introduction, J.A.Miller led his audience to the bottom of
the cauldron of the analytic session, he made us experience at first hand the
signifying matter, he brought to light the events of discourse, the images, the
thoughts and the actions in which a life is decided. We thus saw appear this new
person in history: a psychoanalyst, with whom you share your most secret affairs
(dossiers). While on the horizon a different matter emerges: a person
with a strange desire who invites you to say what you don’t know, what is not
written in your file (dossier). There is a liking for psychoanalysis: J.A.
Miller not only states it as such, he transmits it in his lectures. His
conclusion being a logical consequence, it is never stated as such: ‘one can
invite the public to try psychoanalysis’. If someone wants to make use of an
analyst, why refuse it to him? The encounter with an analyst can have
extraordinary effects very quickly. When it goes on, that is another story…
- Second Lecture: «From the Man to the Woman: What is Jouissance?»
When one removes everything that weighs on your words, all the weight of
conformism, one notices that in analysis you speak of love and of desire; that’s
a fact.
Starting from this fact, J.A. Miller will show how sex, for men and for
women, is left to invention, to the extent that a complete programme that says
what one should do as a man or as a woman, does not exist. If the sexual
relationship is for everyone to be invented, one notices a difference though:
masculine sexual identity appears more sure than that of women. On this fact, a
universal discourse of defamation of women has been built. In view of this,
psychoanalysis opposes a totally different discourse, which isolates the
relation to the body and designates with the name of ‘jouissance’ what affects
the body.
As after the first lecture, numerous questions showed how big the surprise was
not to hear of the major precepts of ‘Lacanian’ concepts: one was looking for
the S1 and S2, for objects a and transference. They are all there though, all in
their place, and with their effects, palpable even in those who ask the question…
-Third Lecture: «From the Individual to Society: What is Power?»
The audience was introduced to these mathemes and on this day it was above all
the professors who asked the questions. A certain worry perhaps … Because power
is questioned from a perspective affirmed from the beginning: Psychoanalysis
teaches us the essence of power. The presence of a psychical ‘uniform’, of
subjects who bear the mark of the master in the name of love. They must
sacrifice their jouissance for him. These master signifiers, as Lacan called
them, are as much effective as they are absurd, insane.
This singular person, the psychoanalyst, specifies his features: he should
be a saint; he wants the patient to liberate himself from his master signifiers,
without him being marked by those of the analyst; he pursues an askesis, a
‘spiritual exercise’, which fits our civilisation, close enough to a science to
be credible, without giving up on the ethics that consists in not using the
power that transference love gives him.
With regard to current ‘thinkers’ of political theory, called upon on several
occasions in the questions, J.A.Miller gave an indication: «I have the
impression that they do not pay dearly enough to give credence to their
political theories; people who do an analysis pay more dearly».
Saint Petersburg is called a ‘European City’. Certainly, however all those who
participated in theses three lectures are Russian, Russians from Saint
Petersburg, from Moscow, Novosibirsk, everywhere where the Freudian Field,
around Judith Miller, has pursued its initiative for several years now. For most
of the listeners, apart from our colleagues who are already oriented towards the
schools of the WAP, psychoanalysis was up to now a ‘European thing’, interesting
as such, but as one of these numerous theories that are on the market and for
which one will not hesitate to construct a more adapted ‘Russian version’
eventually …
But today, they discovered that psychoanalysis was each time an invention, in
the language of the subject, into which it brought a subversive force capable of
making all fixed identities vacillate.
J.A. Miller’s visit to Saint Petersburg has thus demonstrated with an opening
act to all the numerous readers of Lacan in Russia, the problem of the training
of psychoanalysts in Russia. For this we thank him.
Daniel Roy, delegate of the NLS, President of the Group of the Freudian Field
– Russia
(Translated by Natalie Wulfing for NLS Messager)