Paradox, from the Greek « para », is commonly translated as “against”, and “doxa” as the true opinion. In his seminar of May 10, 1977, Lacan wonders if it would be possible to represent the paradox.[1]

In order to go a little further on this point, let’s recall the paradox of the liar, which, in the sixth century BCE, raises the question in Epiminedes the Cretan’s phrase: “All Cretans are liars”. How could Epiminedes, in so far as he was Cretan, say that about Cretans? Was he lying then, being Cretan himself? And if he lies, does he not then tell the truth? It is undecidable in terms of logic.

The paradox deals with what is undecidable. Lacan confirms this in his seminar “The Knowledge of the Psychoanalyst” when, on the side of woman, he introduces non-existence on one slope, and the not-all on the other.[2] Between the undecidable on the side of woman, and the contradiction that castration imprints on existence on the side of man, Lacan puts into circulation lack, fault, desire and the object a. As a consequence, he defines castration as “leaving something to be desired” and then affirms that it is because of the fact that it circulates and leaves something to be desired that we are in relation with the object a.

Now, the paradoxes of desire appear from this point: “The One dialogues all alone since it receives its own message in an inverted form”.[3] Because the One dialogues all alone, the object a—which appears because of the circulation between the undecidable and the contradiction—is not only the object which causes desire, but is also the object of jouissance—a jouissance that is desexualized in the Freudian sense of the term in that it does not refer to the phallus.

Lacan noted this already when he constructed the fantasy in obsessional neurosis differently from that in hysteria: if in the former, the object is always metaphorized in reference to the phallus that veils it, in the latter, it is metonymized … . In the first case, the subject knows of the lack inscribed in the Other and does not want to see it in order not to be confronted with the undecidable; whereas in the second, “to try to abolish the difficulty that I designate under the name of the parasitism of the signifier in the subject”, the obsessional, if he aims at the degradation of the Other, does so in order “to restore primacy to desire”.[4] In both cases, it is the possibility by way of what Freud called transference neurosis that can support the wager of being able do without the Other, in opening ways for the appearance of the paradoxes of desire. But in both cases it is also clear that these paradoxes can only be unveiled at the moment when we recognize that what is parasitized [paratisé] by the signifier is, in reality, a Borromean knot[5] which articulates RSI and involves the undecidable in which desire and jouissance are linked.

Translation from Portuguese into French: Elisabete Thamer

Translation from French into English: Susan Schwartz

Reinventions of a destiny

How can psychoanalysts sustain their desire, the desire of the analyst, with its paradoxes? The question is crucial and the “chance that analysis will continue to be at a premium on the market”,[1] depends on it, as do the conditions for its very survival.

Freud was the first to have approached the question, as his writing and correspondence attest. And at the moment when he comforts us with a singular optimism in relation to the fate of his invention, he credits the psychoanalyst with a “certain degree of readiness to accept a situation of solitary opposition”.[2] Now, how to understand this “certain degree of readiness” if there is “nothing in man’s structure that predisposes him to psychoanalysis?”[3] With Lacan, we advance. He aimed to awaken the analytic movement to the breakdown and deviations of a training that assured the analyst of “a routine with no problems [which] makes [him] comfortable”[4] and his persistent critique has brought the resistances to psychoanalysis to the resistance to the psychoanalyst himself.

For a long time I believed that his completely new institutional event was a response to the Freudian fate. But if it is a matter of a “solitary opposition”, this is not only an opposition, another way of making the Other exist, but of putting into action the “desire of the analyst”, precious gain at the end of analysis. It implies, rather, a self-authorisation without the “assurance of the Other”,[5] and not in the field guaranteed by the knowledge of the Other either, but in the field of the act. Thus a “certain degree of readiness” for the analytic act.

So “one act-orises” oneself? “[…] all [the psychoanalyst] does is to be in the place of the actor, in so far as one actor is enough just by himself to hold the stage”.[6] From this perspective, the paradoxes of the desire of the analyst would be nothing other than the “paradoxes of the analytic act”. This act “that we assume from the elective moment when the analysand passes to the analyst”,[7] “to which the psychoanalyst seems to oppose the most frenzied miscognition”[8] and of which “he has a horror”,[9] “act-horr” [acte-horr], that fixes him in the place of “the reject of the aforesaid (humanity)”.[10]

But if such a place is not desirable, how can the analyst desire it, continue to desire it? The decision to reinvent is necessary. It is in this way that I understand this “constraint”: “that each analyst is obliged—for he must be obliged—to reinvent psychoanalysis, from what he has succeeded in extracting from having been a psychoanalysand himself.”[11]

Would it be possible that the School of the pass might sustain the wager of a decision, always contingent, with its scope of enthusiasm?

Translation from Italian into French: Irene Pagliarulo

Translation from French into English: Susan Schwartz

The mark of the psychoanalyst

Of desires there are a great variety but desire to know what the unconscious could tell us about jouissance as castrated, absolutely not!

Lacan asserts in Encore that there is no such thing as a desire to know, this knowledge proper to the unconscious, and he adds, in his “Italian note”[1], that all of us, the entire humanity, we are horrified of this knowledge.

Where psychotherapeutic practices only reinforce this horror of knowledge, the analytic offer promotes a desire for unconscious knowledge about sexual reality and castration. This knowledge, already there but encoded, is to be deciphered by the interpretation.

Beyond the deciphering, the analysis also invites a desire for knowledge proper to the psychoanalyst, one that has to be invented since unlike unconscious knowledge “it is not cut and dried”. [2]

This is what sets the psychoanalyst apart from the rest of humanity, this would be his mark, he to whom the desire for this knowledge that is proper to him would have come.

The problematic of desire

Lacan insists that the problematic of desire is its “ex-centricity in relation to satisfaction”.[1] According to The Formations of the Unconscious, desire is ex-centric because it is always sliding, wanting at all costs an object that is never That.

The unconscious is an other place, foreign, which is manifested only through the blunder, the slit, as Lacan puts forward in his Seminar XI: a “larval zone”, “limbo”, “centre of the unknown”.[2] The erratic condition is unique to the human being immersed in language, grounded by signifying traits. This is his radical alterity. Lacan maintains that the subject is only a subject of discourse, wrenched from his immanence, condemned to live in a sort of mirage that does not only make him speak about all that he lives, but makes him live in the game between the two poles.[3]

The subject is established in one of his poles with signifiers, with his Wunsch and, in the other pole, where truth escapes, where it flees from the bottomless pit of a jouissance that continues. It is in this way that I understood “the game between two poles”. From this perspective, wouldn’t the paradox of desire be that of only being a semblant?

In Portuguese, we have a saying that is used in difficult moments: “if we stay there, the beast will take us, if we run, the beast will eat us”.[4] “To take” (pegar) does not signify “to beat” as in Spanish, but “to restrain”. The beast either catches us or eats us. Zeca Baleiro, the renowned Brazilian composer and singer who has a rather Lacanian style in the way in which he plays with words, is going to complete this saying by making a word game with the English tongue: “o bicho [oh beast] come. Come, back, again.” It is a version that is a little different from “your money or your life”, for the sexual meaning is more marked.[5] “To take someone” is an expression used for the sexual encounter, as it also means “to fuck”.

In connection with the verb “to take” (pegar), there is a hit by another Brazilian singer, Seu Jorge, whose song is currently played continually on the radio. The words tell the story of a man who is attracted to a friend of his wife. To complicate things, this woman is very beautiful, and feminine beauty touches his heart. Thus he lives a dilemma: “do I sin or don’t I sin?” He tells his story around this dilemma in the face of desire and questions himself on his position confronted with sin.[6] In singing, he plays with the equivoque between “to sin” (pecar) and “to take” (pegar). In the words of this song, the word “to sin” (pecar) is present from beginning to end but sometimes Seu Jorge sings “pego ou nãgo pego”, that is to say “do I take or don’t I take?” (Perhaps it is me hearing this equivoque that doesn’t exist? My Brazilian colleagues will be able to answer my question… or not?)

In the “sin” (pecado), harmatia in Greek, there is “lack”, as Lacan reminds us[7]—in the taking [pegada] (trait)[8], are we in the semblant of That?

Translation from Portuguese into French: Maria Vitoria Bittencourt

Translation from French into English: Susan Schwartz