THE LETTER 63 Autumn 2016 pages 4 – 39

CHAPTER 6

The Structure of the Psychoanalytic Discourse, is Interpretation

Christian Fierens

BETWEEN MEANING AND ABSENCE, THE FLICKERING OF SENSE

The psychoanalytic discourse has no stuff, no consistency outside the established discourses. What is neither an hysterical discourse, a magisterial discourse nor an academic discourse is quite simply not a discourse. The discourse of science is inscribed in the hysterical discourse, the capitalist discourse is inscribed in the magisterial discourse, the psychological discourse is inscribed in the academic discourse, etc. Psychoanalytic discourse resists being preferentially inscribed in any one whatsoever of these three established discourses. And it nevertheless cannot ever escape from them on pain of losing all consistency.

How situate it?

We are always already engaged in the perspective of the universal proper to the concept. Whatever we say, because saying always involves the universal. Rightly or wrongly, without rhyme or reason, the universal packs, condenses, synthesises. From the small condensation of a letter (of the V of the Wolfman), from a singular minimalist sentence up to the great condensation of a philosophical system like the Hegelian Encyclopedia, the same unique mechanism produces and synthesises meanings. It is Freudian condensation generalised (make no mistake).

But on what do these established and stabilised meanings repose? On a reality in itself prior to discourse? ………