I recall when I first began reading testimonies of the various ends of Lacanian analyses, and how it brought up a resistance, one that said: “Don’t tell me the ending!” And as we are accustomed now to rolling with resistance in this Lacanian field, I thought it would be useful to talk more about this resistant desire: “Don’t tell me the ending.” Is this just a passion for ignorance, another unconscious formation of “I don’t want to know about it”? A lot of theory has been generated about how analysis ends, how we know it has ended, and this theory has important consequences for our clinics. As we know, in the Lacanian field, our theory is our wager, whether we’re talking about a hypothesis of a structural diagnosis (hysteric/obsessional/psychotic/etc.) or the hypothesis about what constitutes a finished analysis. One could even call it our fantasy. And there is no other way to encounter the “reality” of our clinic except through the lens of our theoretical fantasy.

I want to spend this evening exploring one particular theoretical conception about the end of a Lacanian analysis, and that is that the concept of the traversal (or crossing) of the fundamental fantasy. 

First off, what is the fundamental fantasy?

Lacan first speaks of the fundamental fantasies in Seminar 1 on page 17 as those “which orient and direct the subject, and which conceal the unsettling aspects of reality. Fantasy itself is not something to be removed from the subject, since it is both vital and unavoidable. It is crucial, Freud noted, for psychical reality, and thus to come to grips with so many forms of suffering. While there is much that Lacan works with in terms of fantasy, especially in Seminars 4-6, we really don’t hear about this notion of fundamental fantasy again until Seminar 8. 

On page 104, Lacan speaks of the training analyst as one who has “come to know a little more about the dialectic in his unconscious,” that there remain not fantasies but “one fundamental fantasy,” something that has coalesced around the “scar of castration.” It is the “sliding of signifiers” which fantasy brings an end to: instead of an endless succession of “possible objects, a privileged object enhances this process and fixates or arrests the subject (169-170). The algebra of fantasy, $ <> a, preserves in notation an unsayable place, where “the subject as such dissolves, is eclipsed, and disappears (337). It is a place that can never be subjectivized. The object “in relation to the subject” takes on “the essential value that constitutes the fundamental fantasy.” Inasmuch as the subject identifies with the fundamental fantasy, “desire takes on consistency and can be designated” (170). However, the analyst must “enter into the fantasy at the level of $ for the passive subject,” i.e., in the transference, be this for the analysand, and also be the one who “sees little a, the object in fantasy” (269). In other words, the analyst occupies the place of “pure desirousness”: an abstraction “from any supposition of being desireable” (369). This place is referred to as the position of the one who contains agalma, “the fundamental object involved in the subject’s analysis, as linked and conditioned by the subject’s vacillating relationship that I characterize as constituting the fundamental fantasy, inaugurating the locus in which the subject can be fixated as desire” (Sem. 8, 193).

Later, in Seminar 9 on Identification, Lacan tell us that the fundamental fantasy is encountered in the void of the Other’s desire:

“In the normal, neurotic or perverse subject it is always a matter of identifying oneself in accordance with or in opposition to what one thinks is the desire of the Other. As long as this desire can be imagined, phantasized, the subject will find there the necessary reference points in order to define himself, either as the object of the desire of the Other or as an object refusing to be the desire of the Other. In either case he will be able to locate himself, to define himself.

But from the moment when the desire [of the Other] becomes something mysterious, undefinable, the subject discovers that it is precisely this desire of the Other which constitutes him as subject; what he will encounter faced with this void is the fundamental phantasy. To be the object of the desire of the Other is only bearable in so far as we can name this desire, can shape it in terms of our own desire. To become the object of a desire we can no longer name, is to become oneself an object without a name, having lost all possible identify: to become an object whose insignia no longer means anything since they have become undecipherable for the Other” (Sem 9 199-200).

So the fundamental fantasy is intimately tied to our identity, as well as our identifications, to the question of what does the Other want with me? Fantasy is a way of addressing lack. Since the big secret of psychoanalysis is that the Other is also barred (“there is no Other of the Other”), this means fantasy not only addressed the lack of the subject, but also the lack in the Other.

And it is this realization of the split subject “as desire’s object a, as what he was to the Other in his erection as a living being, as wanted or unwanted when he came into the world, that he is called to be reborn in order to know if he wants what he desires. This is the kind of truth Freud brought to light with the invention of analysis. It is a field in which the subject has, above all, to do a lot personally to pay the steep ransom for this desire.” (Remarks on Daniel Lagache’s Presentation, Ecrits, 571-72). The object a, as function of desire’s exponent in the Other, in the field of the Other, “is what allows it to take on its elective value at the true terminus of analysis, by figuring, in the fundamental fantasy, that before which the subject sees himself being abolished when he realizes himself as desire” (571).

It is not until we get to seminar 11 that we hear about traversing the fundamental fantasy on p. 273. 

“It is beyond the function of the a that the curve closes back upon itself, at a point where nothing is ever said as to the outcome of the analysis, that is, after the mapping of the subject in relation to the a, the experience of the fundamental phantasy becomes the drive. What, then, does he who has passed through the experience of this opaque relation to the origin, to the drive, become? How can a subject who has traversed the radical phantasy experience the drive? This is the beyond of the analysis, and has never been approached. Up to now, it has been approachable only at the level of the analyst, in as much as it would be required of him to have specifically traversed the cycle of the analytic experience in its totality.”

Now, it’s here that I want to raise a problem, which has to do with a commonly heard aphorism in Lacanian circles. It is of the order of “don’t give ground on your desire!” which Lacan never even said. It is the notion that Lacan said that the end of analysis = the traversal/crossing of the fundamental fantasy.

Clearly so far we can say that for Lacan there is a connection between the fundamental fantasy and the end of analysis. But the traversal is something that unfortunately brings with it a connotation of completeness, a crossing of one plane to another. This famous quote from Seminar 11 clearly has its focus on the question of how the subject lives the drive. If traversal is simply the mapping of the subject in relation to the a, if we are talking about the logic of the subject’s case as something to be mapped, then perhaps this is what is produced – a mapping of location of the subject with respect to this fantasy. And if the fantasy serves as a support, a screen in relationship to the drive to sustain desire, it’s an important question of how one might live beyond the fantasy in relation to the drive. But what seems to have been misconstrued is traversal as something far more permanent, complete, once and for all. And as Lacanians, I think it’s important to hold with suspicion anything that might be of the order of the complete.

It’s important to note that we do not hear anything about the traversal of the fundamental fantasy again after Seminar 11. This is why I liken it to the aphorism “don’t give ground on your desire” which is attributed to Seminar 7. We don’t hear anything remotely like this elsewhere by Lacan.

Let me be clear in saying I don’t believe in an absolute end of analysis, anymore than I believe in the end times. There’s a strange religiosity that seems to creep in with talk of the end, and with this desire to verify scientifically what analyses have truly ended and which ones have not. This shouldn’t be so surprising, since Lacan himself designates fantasy as being of an axiomatic and revelatory quality. So while we may agree with Lacan in terms of the end of analysis having something to do with mapping out the subject in relation to their fundamental fantasy, but this is not the same as crossing over into the Promised Land, or experiencing the blessed resurrection after years and years of analytic crucifixion.

I don’t have time to get into this in detail, but there are historical reasons for why a theory of the end of analysis as a crossing/traversal might fill in the gap of this desire for verification. This is all historically spelled out nicely by Ricardo Goldenberg, who turned me on to Jean Allouch and his book “An Erotology of Passage.” He shows historically and through much documentation that the rumor of Lacan producing a theory of the end of analysis as the traversal of the fundamental fantasy was actually an invention by Jacques Alain Miller after Lacan’s death, begun at the Caracas Congress in 1980 and published in Delenda, then immediately picked up by the likes of Safouan, Pommier, Calligaris, and others.

But at the end of his life, Lacan’s primary concern with the end of analysis had to do with the subject supposed to know, that analysis ends when the SSS is deposed, liquidated, the end of transference. There is no mention of the traversal of the fundamental fantasy then, nor was there any mention of it in 1967 when he proposed his School. 

A few remarks about why this minimal proposal for the end of analysis has merits: first off, it allows analysis to continue according to its interminable status. Whether or not a subject becomes a professional analyst or not, they authorize themselves, in an ethic of absolute difference, to be the analyst of their own case. The unconscious doesn’t stop, nor does one fully map it out. Sure, one may map enough out in an analysis to know what how to do with one’s fundamental fantasy, just as much as one’s symptom. But the idea that this would be complete is ludicrous to me. After all, since Freud tells us that the transference is resistance, the liquidation of transference is the liquidation of resistance via this cover provided by the Subject Supposed to Know.

As regards fundamental fantasy, I wonder if it would be possible to question Lacan as to why he reduced it to the one, primordial fantasy. This is reminiscent of the sort of Oedipal reductions that Lacan chastised Freud for. Many times Lacan will leverage a presumed collective “analytic experience” to the audience saying that “we all know this to be true from experience.” Maybe Lacan did, but he’s dead. Do we have this experience? This is a question I pose to you – what role does a theory of the fundamental fantasy play in your clinic? Since we now know that hypotheses come before phenomenon, and influences what we hear, is there something being lost in this use of the one fundamental fantasy? Why not fundamental fantasies?

And instead of traversal/crossing, with its connotation of permanence, could we not follow Freud’s path, which followed up Analysis Terminable and Interminable with Constructions in Analysis? What about constructions of fantasies? A new fantasy made up of the S1, the unary trait?

Finally let me also just say parenthetically that we need to be careful about pronouncing as analysts who we think is done and who isn’t. If anything, the analyst should give a reason as to why they think an analysand has not yet finished, which may very well have to do with not having mapped out enough a particular fantasy that leaves them continually alienated and suffering.

We should be careful about caring too much about the end of analysis. If I end my analysis because the transference is liquidated and I authorize myself to analyze my own case, but later find that I desire to start analysis anew because something else comes up years later, then there should be no shame in this. But if I’m too invested in an ideal ending that I think I had, then restarting could destroy the fantasy of my ending. Well, it’s never over anyway, so who cares if you speak to an analyst or not? 

And I want to say this especially after having been so moved hearing a fellow analyst recently give an excellent series of talks last fall, where he shared how his analysis ended. The key is not to get caught up in the how, the phenomena, which is very easy to do, to look for a formula for how it’s going to end. In the story, he calls his analyst, but his analyst is clearly caught up in something home-related, maybe a kid needing to be fed. So his analyst says to him: “can you hold on for a minute?” And without thinking, he responds saying “no, I won’t hold on.” And after thank you’s and goodbyes, this analysis ends.

Even if we could read this story of the end as having a logic whereby his fundamental fantasy entailed holding on for the Other, and being this sort of desired object, it’s simply not the case that this dramatic story is what brings about the end due to this particular saying. A logical ending, one that ends via the logic of its own movement, is not one that needs to be delivered dramatically, least of all to the analyst. It might not be said to an analyst at all. It might be said elsewhere. But when it’s over, it’s over. If Lacan teaches us anything, it’s that nothing is more generative and creative than the act of dissolution, especially when it doesn’t leave a formulaic solution in its wake. What should not keep us in analysis is waiting for the ideal ending. If it be so, that’s a fantasy worth mapping out.

by Chris Nelson

This tongue-in-cheek remark raises the question of the equivocal nature of this word “free” in Freud’s fundamental rule of “free association.” For already by following a rule to “say whatever comes to mind,” and by paying money to do so, analysis does not happen without the analysand offering something of themselves. Yet the analysand is simultaneously offered a freedom from the usual ways of speaking in an ego-to-ego relation, as well as a freedom to hear and act on unconscious desire. Once the subject begins to speak, further limits on freedom become evident, as they find it difficult to say whatever comes to mind, and (later) discover that speech itself is limited.

This is because free-association, as means of analysis, reveals itself paradoxically to be an act of impossibility and one that logically must come to an end. Its impossibility and its end are both located in speech as signifying function, generating a horror of knowledge that meaning cannot ultimately be deciphered and that no object can ultimately satisfy desire. 

Free-association is not merely a technique, but a paradoxical concept that is at the heart of psychoanalysis. For already by being laid down as a fundamental rule of the treatment and the quintessential demand of the analyst, the analysand is limited in their freedom. One could even call the fundamental rule the a priori interpretation of the analyst: an enigmatic one, because of its capacity to leave the question “what is my analyst’s desire of me?” undetermined. “He wants me to speak, but what does he want me to say?” The desire of the analyst, beyond this demand for speech, is an emptiness that will be the motor-force of associations to come.

What is repeated in the analytic setting is what constitutes the subject’s origin: the Other’s demand that they speak, that they say what they want, that they make a demand of their own. This summons to being through speech is what subjectifies the analysand. The demand that the subject speak is not free, however. Language is not free – it is the very debt that inhabits us. This is why the analysand pays for their sessions, and why analysis is never free of charge, for the payment registers the debt of life. As Nestor Braunstein puts it: 

In fact, the clinic shows the devastating effects on those for whom existence is free, the ones who do not stumble with a demanding Other in a system of mutual equivalency, who receive before asking, outside a system of exchange, when the anticipated satisfaction of the demand crushes the very possibility of desire.^[2]

The one demand made by the analyst (that the analysand say whatever comes to mind) leaves them free to speak in a way that they are unlikely to have experienced elsewhere. Nowhere else can a speaking being find such solace away from the many demands of ego-to-ego relations that put the subject in the place of an object. Here, under transference, they can say whatever they want, and in fact they often say more than they want – through displacement or metaphor.

Already, by making this demand, the analyst has turned the tables on the analysand’s demand for a gift of knowledge. The analysand thus has the opportunity to abstain from the place of object, and this includes the place of cogito, the supposedly free-thinking self-reflective ego. Free-association quickly dismantles any notion that the subject is the master of their speech. Rather, it is the signifier that is the master of the subject. This creates not only conflict within the analysands themselves, but also often with the analyst and the treatment. This conflict, manifest in what Freud calls ”resistance,” is enhanced over time when the analysand begins to encounter how they repeat in both speech and act. As Freud says in “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through,”^[3] the patient repeats associations, perhaps complaining about the same things over and over, or recounting stories where they are in the same position again and again. Furthermore, they will repeat instead of remembering, perhaps acting out in the transference both within and outside the consulting room.

Earlier on in the interview with Wolff, Lacan is asked about the role of the analyst. He responds that the role is “I didn’t make you say it.” What is this “it” that the analyst does not say? It is what Lacan calls, in “The Direction of the Treatment and the Principles of Its Power,” a “free word.” He puts it this way: 

The subject invited to speak in analysis does not show in what he says, to tell the truth, a great deal of freedom. It is not that he is chained by the rigor of his associations: they undoubtedly oppress him, but it is rather that they lead to a free word, a full word that would be painful for him. Nothing is more frightening than to say something that could be true. Because it could become completely true, if it were, and God knows what happens when something, because it is true, can no longer enter into doubt.^[4]  

It is through analysis that the subject manages to speak this “free word” beyond the knowledge of the Other, occupying an irreversibly new position of satisfaction and desire. Analysis invites an encounter, not just between analysand and analyst, but with this “free word.” It is precisely in service of this “free word” that the analyst must refuse the position of the speaking subject. This is not to say that the analyst does not speak, but in analytic discourse this freedom of the analyst is bound to the ethics of whatever will promote a free word being spoken. What this word is no one can know ahead of time, but it is important that it be a word that stands apart, singularly. 

In his response to Andre Albert’s presentation in 1975 at the École freudienne de Paris “On Pleasure and the Fundamental Rule,” Lacan outlines what is at the heart of free-association: “What is targeted in setting out the fundamental rule is the thing about which any subject is the least inclined to speak, namely – let’s say, because I want to articulate things well here – his symptom, his particularity.”^[5] By coming to speak his symptom, the analysand is able to say the free word that is singular.

“You know that free association, we could come back to the question, is precisely not possible. Nevertheless the fact is that this method is free association.”^[6]

Why is free-association not possible? Why invite the analysand into such an impossibility? The impossibility lies on two accounts: first, the limit of the signifier, second, the limit of the analytic discourse.

When the subject speaks in analysis, the first limit they encounter is a fundamental rule of the signifier itself, which is that it always represents the subject for another signifier. The very nature of the signifier itself is such that its non-identity with itself makes analysis possible in the first place.^[7] There is no movement or metonymy without the gap between signifiers, the emptiness where the subject is.  This is why certain signifiers will repeat in treatment, linking and determining the subject. This is the bet of psychoanalysis, that these signifiers will manifest themselves on the surface of speech (rather than the depths of meaning or intention) through repetition. Whether a word, phrase, or phoneme, this signifier will repeat in a way that can be heard (possibly even by the analysand!).

The act of interpretation marks another limit of free-association: that of the analytic discourse. In this discourse the subject speaks without knowing it, and the analyst listens with this savoir that he has acquired in his own analysis. The analyst operates precisely through not knowing, but there is something that the psychoanalyst does know – and his desire as a psychoanalyst is based on this knowledge: he knows that the analysand knows without knowing that he knows. 

The rule of free association, Lacan states, “enables us to track what happens in the unconscious,”^[8]for through it, the analysand’s discourse suspends the law of non-contradiction and “opens up the subject to this fertile mistake through which genuine speech joins up once again with the discourse of error.”^[9]

Furthermore, free association is a discourse which, unbeknownst to the analysand, is directed toward their unconscious fantasy, as Moustapha Safouan indicated: “Contrary to appearances, the discourse made up of free associations does not go in any direction; it progresses, on the contrary, towards the revelation of the pathogenic nucleus, in other words towards the revelation of fantasy.”^[10]

It is precisely through encountering and working with this fantasy that one can find a savoir within it, a freedom within one’s singular determination. For one is never free from discourse.

Bibliography

Braunstein, Nestor. Jouissance: A Lacanian Concept. Trans. Silvia Rosman. Albany, NY: 2020.

Freud, Sigmund, “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through,” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press, 1958.

Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. Trans. Bruce Fink (New York, NY: WW Norton, 2007), 596.

— “Interview de Lacan par Françoise Wolff au lendemain de la conférence de Louvain.” Trans by Anthony Chadwick. 10/14/1972. https://freud2lacan.b-cdn.net/Lacan_on_Belgian_Radio-final.pdf

— “On Pleasure and the Fundamental Rule.” Trans. Adrian Price. The Lacanian Review 11, no. 2, 2021.

— Seminar 1: Freud’s Papers on Technique. Trans. John Forrester. New York, NY: WW Norton, 1991.

— Seminar 5: Formations of the Unconscious. Trans. Russell Grigg. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017.

— Seminar 12: Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis, 1/27/1965. Translated by Cormac Gallagher. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wpcontent/uploads/2010/06/12-Crucial-problems-for-psychoanalysis.pdf

— Seminar 13: The Object of Psychoanalysis, 12/22/65. Translated by Cormac Gallagher. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/13-The-Object-of-Psychoanalysis1.pdf

Safouan, Moustapha. Le Transfert et le desir de l’analyst, trans by Deepl.com. Paris, France: Seuil, 1988.

Endnotes

^[1] Lacan, Jacques, “Interview de Lacan par Françoise Wolff au lendemain de la conférence de Louvain,” trans by Anthony Chadwick. 10/14/1972. https://freud2lacan.b-cdn.net/Lacan_on_Belgian_Radio-final.pdf

^[2] Braunstein, Nestor, Jouissance: A Lacanian Concept, trans. Silvia Rosman (Albany, NY: 2020), 64.

^[3] Freud, Sigmund, “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through,” The Standard

Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1958), 147-56.

^[4] Lacan, Jacques, Ecrits, trans. Bruce Fink (New York, NY: WW Norton, 2007), 596.

^[5] Lacan, Jacques,“On Pleasure and the Fundamental Rule.” The Lacanian Review 11, no. 2 (2021): 19-20.    

^[6] Lacan, Jacques, Seminar 12: Crucial Problems for Psychoanalysis, 1/27/1965. Translated by Cormac Gallagher. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wpcontent/uploads/2010/06/12-Crucial-problems-for-psychoanalysis.pdf

^[7] Lacan, Jacques, Seminar 13: The Object of Psychoanalysis, 12/22/65. Translated by Cormac Gallagher. http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/13-The-Object-of-Psychoanalysis1.pdf

^[8] Lacan, Jacques, Seminar 5: Formations of the Unconscious, trans. Russell Grigg (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017), 32.

^[9] Lacan, Jacques, Seminar 1: Freud’s Papers on Technique, trans. John Forrester (New York, NY: WW Norton, 1991), 282-83.

^[10] Safouan, Moustapha, Le Transfert et le desir de l’analyst, trans by Deepl.com (Paris, France: Seuil, 1988), 123.

The term “psychoanalysis” recalls certain images in the popular imagination, despite its rather unpopular situation in the United States today. Almost everyone has heard of Freud, either in a psychology class or through more colloquial turns of phrase like the “Freudian slip.” Many cartoons depict therapy or counseling with the patient lying on the couch with the analyst sitting behind them. But none of this really has anything to do with psychoanalysis. Indeed, there is very little attention given to the theory or practice of psychoanalysis, especially in the clinical field.

A cursory glance at the history of psychoanalysis will tell you that psychoanalysis can mean different things to different people. The existence of various psychoanalytic schools over the last century is quite reminiscent of the Protestant Reformation, with each school/theorist claiming loyalty to or distancing Freud. For our purposes, we will stick with Freud’s own thoughts on the subject of defining what psychoanalysis is.

Freud gives the following advice to psychoanalysts who are asked this question in the New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis in 1932. He wrote:

“If you are so imprudent as to betray the fact that you know something about the subject, they fall upon you with one accord, ask for information and explanations…. You may perhaps expect an introduction to psychoanalysis to give you instructions, too, on what arguments you should use to correct these obvious errors about analysis, what books you should recommend to give more accurate information, or even what examples you should bring up in the discussion from your reading or experience in order to alter the company’s attitude. I must beg you to do none of this. It would be useless. The best plan would be for you to conceal your superior knowledge altogether. If that is no longer possible, limit yourself to saying that, so far as you can make out, psychoanalysis is a special branch of knowledge, very hard to understand and to form an opinion on, which is concerned with very serious things, so that a few jokes will not bring one to close quarters with it – and that it would be better to find some other plaything for social entertainment” (SE XXII, 136-137).

Given this rather terse response from Freud, perhaps we should refrain from the question altogether. As a clinician, I admit I have found it best to say as little as possible about what psychoanalysis is, because knowing what it is ahead of time does no one much good in the practice of it. Yet there is one thing that I do say, and it governs the framework of the treatment: “Say whatever comes to mind.” This imperative, which sounds far more simple than it actually is, invites the patient to speak freely, to engage in what Freud called “free-association.” Why is this not simple? Because one begins to recognize that there is a censor acting upon one’s speech, cleaning it up, making sure no mistakes are made, and that no surprises happen. Of course, in life as in speech, surprises do happen, and hearing ourselves anew can elicit new ways of being in the world.

What does the psychoanalyst want from the patient? Speech. Anyone who has experienced psychoanalysis will testify that they began to hear connections in their histories that were not there before, things that repeated without their knowing it. In short order, psychoanalysis reveals that we were “spoken,” often through the words used by our parents and caretakers. And these words from the Other are not without psychic and bodily effects, as they inhabit our own self-representations.

Perhaps this is why psychoanalysis is a notoriously difficult undertaking in the United States (“land of the free and home of the brave”) is because it invites us to encounter just how determined by the Other we have been, and that we were not as free or brave as we imagined ourselves to be. Psychoanalysis, in other words, is not about boosting/strengthening the ego. It invites us to a new freedom and bravery in speaking that we have not known until now. It is a path to self-knowledge, but not without a questioning of the self that is doing the knowing. Thus, psychoanalysis is a wager on life that requires letting go of the self that already thinks it knows.