Today I’d like to take a slightly different angle of approach in tackling the question of The Psychoanalytic Act, as developed by Lacan in his seminar of the same name, so as to draw some conclusions about how we, in psychoanalytic circles, behave and live as groups.

When we focus on this concept of the Act, we still systematically attribute far too much emphasis and value to that shift, that crossover from the position of the analysand to that of the analyst, because it was in effect already the subject of vivid debate during Lacan’s time. There is no denying it is a crucial issue, but what I want to emphasise today is that there are other issues even more central than the notion of how analysts are formed, sculpted and how they make that switch from one side of the consulting room to the other.

Indeed, in today’s world there is an even more burning issue, which is that all of us have come across multiple examples of analysands who spend 20 or 30 years on the couch, and yet who never go through that eagerly awaited metamorphosis. When they reach the end of their treatment, they find themselves in exactly the same state of mind as when they began. Namely, that same marble block of narcissism still perfectly intact, without even the tiniest part chipped away. Still deaf and blind to the signifier. Still that same sterile mindset preventing them from opening up to any new form of invention. This is something we also see in our very own associations, our very own schools. And when it comes to our own fellow colleagues in psychoanalytic circles, these people are condemned to religiously repeat the legacy they have inherited from their own masters, without the freedom to invent new ways of speaking, not even the slightest new utterance. What happens here, when the possibility to invent finds itself standing in front of a sterile brick wall, is that you see a major prevalence of the Imaginary realm rising to the fore. And one of the notorious effects of such a scenario is that well-known appetite for stirring up war amongst colleagues.

So why is it that even though these individuals know how to communicate, and sometimes in a particularly clear and articulate way, with some even naturally gifted with a certain seductive ability to fascinate, they nonetheless still fail to appropriate the function of speech and all the unique and effects it produces which they have never yet experienced. How come they stay locked out of the logic of speech, which still always remains a closed gate to them, forever a foreign and unknown concept? Why is it that psychoanalysis fails to trigger in them that turning point, that ‘act’ whereby they become subjects divided by the signifier, in other words converted into the realm of desire? How come they remain so stubbornly attached to the demand and all of the impasses that go with it? And all the while the narcissistic being and his drive mechanisms run riot beneath.

It is deeply dispiriting to note that even those same psychoanalysts to which I alluded earlier are not spared such a disastrous outcome. Obviously, I’m not saying that this applies to all psychoanalysts. According to Lacan, psychoanalysis is brought to completion with the complex process of extraction when a causal object is divided from an Other (with a Capital O), which merely constitutes home. This, coupled with the process of de-fetishisation brought about by speech which sculpts and shapes this object until it is stripped of all objects, and finally with the decline of an imaginary narcissismwhich gives way to its symbolic twin, namely what Freud called‘esteem’. So why are so many called up and yet so few elected?

Therefore the ‘act’ we speak about in The Psychoanalytic Act can only exist if, as a prerequisite, there is that first founding act ofpsychoanalytical treatment being brought to completion. In other words, as a precondition the analysand must become a being in speech, a speaking being. But the difficulty in speaking easily about this delicate subject is that the analysand’s desire, when it manages to enter the realm of the analyst’s desire, is at that point structured like an act, and it isn’t explicitly analysed, but rather imposes itself as a sort of self-evident fact. The act may appear to be performed only in the order of action, but in fact it lies above all in setting in motion part of the signifier. Under the guise of an act, it is a moment expressed in speech, yet it is an act that exists as something heard, and this is through a fragment of an utterance by the signifier. As Lacan laid out in his seminar Real, Symbolic, Imaginary, the act can only exist through speech.

An act is always characterised as having a before and an after, and the two are radically different from each other. This gap, this difference between the two is neither visible nor spectacular nor anything obvious that jumps out at you. Rather, it can only be identified after the event in what is heard and what lies in intimacy. Only those who have successfully undergone psychoanalysis themselves are capable of hearing when another person has crossed that passage and completed his or her own psychoanalysis. No form of knowledge exists per se enabling you to know, because it is a truth you detect unknowingly. In other words, it is radically unconscious. The ‘post act’ phase that follows as a result is characterised by a mutation, whereby the subject makes a permanent and irreversible crossover from one side to the other. When desire emerges, it correlates with the birth of the subject. The act creates the subject, and in topological terms the subject is associated with the cut of the cross-cap, which is where the unary trait is brought into play. Here the subject is the line of the interior eight which is associated with the edge of a Moebius strip when it is cut at its centre. That cut is indeed the subject’s only founding act. Obviously, however, the subject cannot be held accountable for the founding act that creates him at the very moment of metamorphosis. By definition, Verleugnung is inevitably at play here: negation, denial. Negation of the act at the very moment it takes place. It’s only other people, people other than the subject himself, who are first able to hear the switch. The subject is represented by his own division, and as such is suppressed in the very act that metamorphoses him. The act distances the subject from his own fate, namely his drives, his ego and the Imaginary realm. It withdraws him from his tendency towards homoerotic jouissance, in other words, jouissance anchored in the mirror stage, namely a jouissance that only knows how to fan aggression, competition and hatred. Instead, what emerges ‘post act’ is a fully sexuated being, anchored in the Real and the lack of relation between the sexes. However, to reach that point is rare. Very rare.

So, what exactly does that mean for us today? It means we can no longer continue living as we did before. It has become utterly impossible. Psychology is no longer possible. It’s over for ideologies too. No more politics in psychoanalytic institutions. You can no longer sue, wage wars, fight battles or build empires of influence. It’s over. What you can do however, in silence, discreetly, peacefully, calmly, in its rightful place and in its own time frame, is conduct psychoanalysis in the shadow of the very act that founded us. It may seem like a drop in the ocean, but it is an ocean in itself. Vast. Immensely so.

Thank you for your attention.

Gerard Amiel