This is a problem that I find absolutely fascinating : How can one lose one’s identity ? Such cases, although rare, are nevertheless encountered clinically and are called « identity amnesia ». You know what the picture is like. Someone declares to no longer know one’s name. The subject does not know where he comes from, nor where he belongs, in other words, he has simply lost contact with his whole context ; however, if he has learnt how to mend a television set, he can still do it, or if he has learnt a foreign language, he still knows it ; all knowledge is still available to him.
It seems to me that these cases concern essentially the question of the function of the surname and we may hope that our patients will be able to enlighten us beyond the point already reached by linguists, logicians, philosophers and ethnologists in this matter.
One of the reasons the literature on this subject has remained somewhat frustrating is that these patients once they get their identity back (which usually happens spontaneously) tell us : « Thank you, you’ve been so very kind» and then off they go ; we are unable to follow them and in what I will be unfolding to you here, you will probably understand why. It is because by the time we might engage in a real dialogue (for what sort of dialogue can there be with someone without a name ?), at that particular time they just disappear.
As it happened two years ago in the hospital where we are both working, we met several cases and followed up a few of them. I would therefore like to draw up schematically two of these cases, and a third one rather special as it deals with an amnesia so far unmentioned in literature and which I will call « address amnesia » ; I shall explain this later. I am going to try and set these cases forth in such a way as to serve as an introduction to the function of the surname, as we view it.
The first case is that of a man who wakes up one day in Amsterdam. He speaks French, his clothes show that he comes from France, he has no identity papers. After some trouble, he arrives in France. He is a classical case and, as is often noted in literature, he is not anxious. This is something, you will also be able to notice, which puzzles the authors on the question : how can a man lose his identity and not be anxious ? So that people say : What indifference, they are hysterics. We haven’t finished with Charcot, yet ! Anyway the man was there a victim of circumstances, as if something had happened to him, in spite of himself. However, the difficulty lay in the fact that when he was questioned, he remained in a position of suspicious reserve towards his questioner, at a distance, as if he where trying to figure out the questioner’s moves so as to send him astray. But as the interviews became gradually easier, he spontaneously gave an inventory of his different cultural philosophical and psychological acquisitions, and then, one day, his amnesia disappeared : why ? how ? the fact remains unexplained, suddenly, he finds his name, his address again, everything he had previously lost, without even showing the slightest surprise.
What had become of him ? In his family, he had a jealous and violent father and very early he had come to disclaim his father who himself had come to disclaim him. This reached such a point that when he wanted to talk to his father, he would turn to his mother and say « What’s he talking about, that guy? ». So, that, during twelve years, from the age of puberty to the age of twenty-five, father and son had never spoken to each other. He then always had the feeling, whenever he talked to us, that he was in a position of not being able to communicate, of not being able to dialogue, of not being recognized. This complaintof non-recognition by others was omnipresent for him ; the feeling of being a stranger among his own family and of being without roots. One day, he meets a woman, and he does not really know why she gives birth to two children whom he recognizes. He finally ends up by marrying her because she insists, but he does it without much enthusiasm. The marriage goes wrong and they get divorced. The marriage which was not quite real to him becomes a divorce which is not quite real either. Then he rents a room in town which is furnished with objects belonging to the former tenant. He lives a little with his parents, a little with a friend and a little with his ex-wife who has kept a room for him. Concerning his love-life, we know that the only woman with whom he had any pleasure was a woman he had picked up in a night-club, in the dark, and whose name he did not know. Concerning his professional life, he had begun being a philosophy teacher, but speaking in public made him mumble with anxiety. He therefore stopped ; he then became a telephonist at the switchboard of his town, and then at the time he was in hospital he was a free-lance journalist writing unsigned articles for a local newspaper. As you see, quite a special type. The circumstances of the amnesia are really noteworthy. He had been to the cinema with his daughters and after, he had dreamt that one of his daughters was calling him, and in his dream, he did not answer.
At that point, he got rid of some of his personal effects, disappeared and found himself in Amsterdam. The man had practically always shown signs of deep-rooted anxiety while simultaneously having the feeling, as I have already mentioned, of having neither roots nor references, but he remembered that he had got into the habit, according to his own expression, of « splitting » (casser) as soon as there were problems. Thus, at every turn point or confrontation, he would go elsewhere. It must also be pointed out that his expression was generally, spontaneously quite impersonal, neutralized. Now let me tell you how this patient left our ward : I asked him when he intended to leave (it was a Monday) and he said : « I’m leaving on Wednesday » and on Tuesday he left, taking with him a young schizophrenic girl from the ward. You may have noted oscillation between anxiety and commitment on the one hand, and freedom from obligations on the other.
The second case I shall bring up is a little different. Parisian policemen spot a man prostituting himself in the red light quarters. They go after him and· the man runs away, then they catch him and ask him for his identity papers ; he does not have any. So, they ask him his name and he says « I’ve forgotten my name » and then, the policemen beat him up. Obviously the police are just as delicate everywhere. After a while, they become worried because in spite of being hit the man insists and he finally ends up at the hospital. It is in fact a case of an amnesia. As it often happens the patient’s first words are essential and we don’t pay enough attention to them ; it is like the opening in a chess game. He immediately declared to us that he did not want to be shut up, nor to be deprived of freedom and that he wanted to continue wandering in the capital, hoping that he would be recognized.
You can already see how this can be related to the other case I have just spoken about. The boy had woken up in Paris in a sad plight and for four days he had kept a diary : « Memories of an amnesic ». In other words, he knew he had to have a name, « Memories of an amnesic, to help other future amnesic ». Contrary to the other patient, he tried to be as pleasant as possible and to answer all our questions. He was more suggestible, apparently rather plastic. He started drawing and very quickly, his drawings, showed some sort of professional experience. His signature was unreadable and at the same time he tried to find himself in it. One day, as one of us pointed out to him that, after all, a signature, even if unreadable, was still a signature, he began to become a little perplexed. He started worrying, saying : « I have to find my family ; after all, I must have a family ». He had a ring on his third finger which looked like a wedding ring, but which was not one. It was a scrap iron ring. « Perhaps, I’ve got a wife and children ». When he was answered that it was quite a problem to know whether he had children, though he most certainly had parents, he was completely astonished and answered : « Well, I’d never thought that way before ». We know what the problem of negation is to Freud, so that very progressively he showed signs of anxiety, I shall not go into all the details, for lack of time, however, one day the Parisian police service for lost families, found his family. They came to see him at the hospital and he did not recognize them, but he accepted them. It is often the case. « So you have found my family, very well, if you say so. What do I know ? ». Before disappearing, he had left three letters. One was for his wife and children. Let me read it to you : « Too many worries, not enough money, a very uncertain future, a far too complicated and bad world, born under an unlucky star, permanent bad luck ».
A second letter was for his parents, those he had never thought about. « Life is unbearable, time will take care of wiping out all the problems I have caused, the pain I cause. My wife knows only superficially the situation we are in ».
The third letter was « for the administration ». In it he writes about the whereabouts of the different official papers and says : « We have no more money, there’s nothing coming in, nothing is paid, the house will probably be taken possession of in order to pay our debts, the car has been taken by the police because of insurance fraud … ».
In tears, his parents confirmed it all and said that it was a revelation to them as everything was apparently going along fine. He had started in a building enterprise, driving around in big cars which he changed quite often. He had no money problems.
What had happened to him ?
When his parents were students and did not have enough money themselves, they entrusted him to a maternal grandmother who had been a widow for a long time. Her husband had been a famous painter at the beginning of the century and she lived in his celebration and memory. She looked after the boy and the parents always had the impression that he was rather cold with them. They told us that when he was five, his grandmother fell ill, so the parents whose situation had improved took the boy back with them and they remembered that day very well. That very day, the boy said to his mother : « You are not my mother ». And as for his father, he threw him a blank look, and from then on, he became interested in drawing which later became his vocation. His parents remember very well too that the day he first started school, he fell and had a big bump. On the day of his communion, he slipped in a mud puddle ; the first time he went out with his fiancee, he was one hour late and she had already left ; the first day in the military service, while doing a battle run, he fell and broke his Achilles tendon, finally each time that in his life he had to assume something, he would have an accident. And whom did he marry ? A woman we met who was a little backward, a little deaf, with whom the exchange was limited ; so, he had spent his time rejecting the most reasonable and authorized advice around him; basically, he had spent his life, not only doing whatever he liked, but running up debts that his father paid. All in all he considered the others as his debtors.
It must be noted however, that in his case, he had shown signs of anxiety very early in his life, for when at school he was called on in front of his schoolmates, he broke out in sweat and could not talk. I would also like you to note the fact that after having several jobs, he gave them up because he considered that he did not want to have a boss, and he wanted to set up his own business and be his own boss. In other words, he always kept hoping that he would be one day independent and freed from the weight of circumstances.
I believe you have already noted the particular extent of his anxiety whenever a commitment was to be made, and in the same way as the two subjects I have mentioned, he disclaimed any paternal function, any law coming from the Other and which they themselves are not in a position to assume.
The short observation which I am going to present to you now deals with « address amnesia ». What does it mean ? It is about a man who takes the train from Marseille, and arrives in Paris to stay at his brother’s. But, when he arrives at the station, he has forgotten his brother’s address and he has a feeling of « unheimlichkeit ». He doesn’t quite get it, he knows it is Paris, but he is not quite sure, it is familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. He is overcome by a crisis of anxiety and that is how he ends up at the hospital.
He was without identity papers, without baggage and he had just come out of the hospital in Marseille, where he had recently been admitted for an attempted suicide. After having lived several years with a woman in Corsica whom he had left every so often and then gone back to, she had had enough and had thrown him out. In Marseille, he had found a job as a trade representative, and there as he had to talk to people, he became seized with anxiety and had lost his job, had attempted suicide and had been hospitalized. Therefore when he came to us, he could not find his way around Paris. During our first conversations, he was extremely reserved, unconcerned, everything he said was neutralized, impersonal and I would say, his remarks were as we would say in French without « address », the word having three different meanings : french home, direct speech and skill.
The man’s biography was nothing but a succession of places, moves travels and families. His parents had got rid of him very early ; the social administration had confined him to the care of numerous families whose names he could not remember, except the last one. He has never been able to hold onto a steady job and his main activity, when he had one, was doing interim work, in temporary job agencies. He defined himself, saying : « I am a temporary man », in other words, « I am a provisional man ». He wanted to be a provisional, temporary man so he said, to remain free.
What is quite strange is that the year before he arrived, he had lost his identity papers three times and had them made up again three times ; then, at the end, he had become discouraged. He therefore, no longer had any identity papers since he had not made them up again. However he had other papers. They were medical certificates of accidents he had had during his life. They were reported in a French administrative style, ending as such : « Remis en main propre, pour faire valoir ce que de droit ». « Given to the subject, to be used according to his rights ». It means that the subject can produce the paper in justice, so that he can get justice in return. He also left the ward taking a schizophrenic girl along with him. We must therefore note his deep-rooted refusal of all identification, whether his own or others the fact that he never had an address being « provisional » in order to be a free man, to be always passing through ; what he wanted was to be left alone, so he could be independent. He thus escaped from the place that identity would assign him to being in a genealogy and society that he refused so that he would not be localized and would escape as soon as he was caught. His remarks about freedom were precisely to claim the right to leave from one day to the next. He had no personal effects, no identity papers except those papers showing his rights.
On these cases, whether there is simulation or not I do not wish to go over the usual discussions for the reason that, as I have mentioned this morning, when we try to lie, the lie does manifest its own tendency to the truth. To give you an example, I once knew a real simulator ; the day when the police came to take his anthropometry, he disappeared : He was an Irish terrorist, wanted by the police, who for several years, had lived without an identity, or any fixed addresses, under false names. He had chosen this way, to hide from the police, saying that he had forgotten his identity, which was certainly not fortuitous (this is rare, and I must say I am astonished when I think of the number of people wanted by the police and so few thinking of the same). In « identity amnesia », we often mention hysteria too quickly. I have known some obsessed people suffering from « identity amnesia » : it is a well known fact with the obsessed, with the problem of scratching away traces, of removing them, as it may be blood, but it may just as well be the name. I have also seen certain cases of phobia among them. Identity amnesia is more a casuistic category. What is it concerned with ? It is concerned with what gives value. When does identity amnesia set off ? When a subject goes through a difficult period and what characterizes such cases is the very conditions in which they had lived before with personality alteration, impersonalization, previous anonymity and atopy, disclaiming everything that in the surname refers to the paternal function, as we must not confuse the surname and the paternal function that it supports. Ordinarily, we do not think too much about it, but sometimes, historical circumstances or psycho-analysis happen to make us realize that the surname and the paternal function are not to be superposed. But in our clinical experience we have examples of a possible split in the two aspects of having a surname.
For example, concerning psychotics, maybe you have had the experience with psychotic patients bearing a name, then who have been adopted, and whose name had then changed. The fact of taking away this little block of a surname, on which they can no longer lean, that is what we would call « the Name-of-the-Father » the paternal function would lead them to psychosis. They begin a delusion. On the contrary, and in opposition to what some people try to argue about identity amnesia, (they may wonder why these people are not mad, why they are not psychotic ?), in the cases of identity amnesia, these subjects who try to disclaim « the Name-of-the-Father », the paternal function, who consider that they have neither bonds nor debts to pay, and who consider themselves as « out-laws », do not succeed in so doing and what happens is that their surname falls underground, without there being something changed in the symbolical order in which they were inscribed.
Having insisted above that the function of « the Name-of-the Father » transmitted by the surname grants the subject the power or quality of being in touch, of being anchored (which also gives one a location with resulting responsibilities and losses), I should like now to emphasize another aspect of that name : its function of being what Lacan called « un point de capiton »1, namely, its function of participating in that signifier which arrests and fixes signifiance. Thus, when for some reason the surname is shaken, the very signifiance of the subject’s life may take an enigmatic turn, and this is probably the reason why some of my friends wonder whether identity amnesia is not to some extent psychotic. However, when one has had the experience of seeing one’s surname go under, one is dislodged from all social ties, loses responsibility for everything. He then usually finds himself in a hospital where other people take care of him.
Then, what were the subjects, I’ve juste talked to you about, basically asking for ? They were asking for a place with no conditions imposed, but such a place does not exist, as a place with no conditions is not a place. I would finally like to stress the fundamental facet of anxiety which the surname conveys as it is tied to the paternal function, an anxiety which cannot be abated because of the effects of Law on a subject. In other words, everything that has fallen from him, what he will never know about but which however « regards » him (with the two meanings of the word as it is used in French : to look, and to concern. This is the essential of what I wanted to talk about. Each of us has probably dreamed of going down and getting a packet of cigarettes and then … puff… away we would go … not everyone can do it. I will stop here, reminding you that we may dream about it, but we know that if we managed to succeed, it would probably not be the best thing…
