The Psychoanalytic Act and the Position of the Unconscious

 

Colette Soler

 

In "Radiophonie", when asked about "the notion of the unconscious", Lacan replies: the unconscious is not a notion; "the unconscious is". Let us add that, if it is, it is so for all speaking beings. A peculiar mode of being, however, given that the text from 1964, "Position of the Unconscious", imputes the responsibility for this being to the psychoanalyst : as if an intermediary were required for its presence to transform the subject, or rather, to make the subject's division manifest.

The psychoanalyst – or rather, his act – is therefore responsible for the presence of the unconscious, a fact that includes him within the very concept of the unconscious. This is the thesis that our 5th European Convention aims to unfold and examine.

 

Everything in this presence of the unconscious presupposes the structure of language and speech.

Of language, as its equivoques ensure precisely the incognito presence within speech of signifiers unknown to the subject, whose *extimate* dimension only the decipherer will enable him to grasp; and of speech, which always takes on consistence only in the Other – the listener who decides what will be said, or the "partner who has a chance of answering"1 to the saying.

Therefore, through the act of the analyst the division of the subject is revealed and verified in the Freudian procedure. It is a "fault", says Lacan.

It separates the subject from a part of himself – but which one?

 

This division is indeed solidary – beyond the structure of language – with the "effect of language", which is something else: it is the subtraction operated by any signifier, its name being the "lost object" in Freud and "objet petit a" in Lacan, or: "that which is missing"2.

In the relation between an analysand and their psychoanalyst, the place occupied by the latter on the horizon of the subject supposed to knowledge is precisely that which the transference imputes to him to be. This object, in the act "that does not think", is the one that is "active," just like in any genuine act. It operates throughout the analysis to make present the structural gap of the subject (represented by the chain of the subject’s associated words, their S1s—a gap which, conversely, the substantified object plugs within fantasy. What remains, then, on the other side of the fault, where the transference comes to an end, is the unreachable part of the unconscious "knowledge without a subject", S2, absolute Other – which does not "determine" the subject but ensures the coalescence of language and jouissance, a phenomenon clearly discernible, according to Lacan3 as early as the symptom of phobia.

 

 

1 « Introduction to the German edition of a first volume of Écrits ».

2 « Preface to the English edition of Séminaire XI ».

3 « Compte rendu sur L’acte psychanalytique ».

The Analytic Act, or Beyond the Desire of the Analyst

 

What does the confrontation of The Psychoanalytic Act, the Seminar of 1967-68, with “Position of the Unconscious,” the Écrit of 1964, teach us?

A first answer is given by Colette Soler in her presentation of the theme of this 5th European Convention, when she points out that the unconscious is not a notion: “the unconscious is” (“Radiophonie,” 1973). It simply ex-sists and is experienced in act. This differs from what we read in “Position of the Unconscious,” where Lacan devotes several paragraphs to unfolding what the unconscious is and what it is not, a predication of the being of the unconscious. It is therefore a move from being to ex-sistence, which conditions the development of the notion of the analytic act, set out across Seminars XIV and XV and their respective Reviews.

What are the implications and consequences of this move?

Among the implications, what stands out is the necessary recourse to logic and topology, in order to formulate a new status for the object a, a status of logical consistency. This status exceeds its conception as object-cause of desire and, on the other hand, detaches it from its episodic substances, still in force in “Position of the Unconscious.”

Among the consequences, we highlight a weighty one, also pointed out by Colette Soler1. It is the shift, in the direction of the analytic treatment, from the desire of the analyst to the analytic act. The analytic act enables Lacan to emerge from the impasse of the desire of the analyst. It is an impasse because, like all desire, it cannot be said. The analytic act, by contrast, is measured by its effective consequences: there is a before and an after, and the act changes the subject. This experience requires a particular position of the analyst in the treatment: “The psychoanalyst makes himself object a. Makes himself: understand this as, makes himself be produced; object a, with the object a2.” From this perspective, the end of analysis and the experience of the pass acquire a new interest, and the relationship between the traversal of the fantasy and the analytic act demands examination.

Moreover, as regards psychoanalytic clinical practice, it would be worthwhile to review the different manifestations of the act in the treatment, acting out and passage to the act, and to study how they differ from the analytic act. This difference is not always easy to establish, particularly in the case of the analytic act of exit from analysis and the passage to the act. Lacan even extends the scope of the repetition proper to the act to sublimation, the “typical product [fruit] of the analytic situation3”, thereby introducing yet another perspective for study.

We thus open here a few avenues of reflection on which, along with others that will undoubtedly emerge, we would like to hear contributions at our meeting from July 2 to 4, 2027 in Paris. We warmly encourage you to take part.

 

 

Ana Martínez

Barcelona, October 2026

1 C. Soler, Acto analítico (Analytic Act), lecture given at the School Seminar of the EPFCL-FFCLE, 03/01/2024, video posted at www.ffcle.es

2 J. Lacan, “L’acte psychanalytique”, Compte rendu du séminaire 1967-1968, Autres écrits, Paris, Seuil, 2001, p. 379 : “Le psychanalyste se fait de l’objet a. Se fait : à entendre se fait produire ; de l’objet a : avec de l’objet a”.

3 J. Lacan, Le Séminaire, Livre XIV, La Logique du fantasme, Paris, Seuil & Le Champ freudien, 2023, p. 201.