THE LETTER 61 Spring 2016, pages 1-22
CHAPTER 4
THE STUFF OF THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE AND ITS CUT
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DISCOURSE AND THE PSYCHOANALYTIC DISCOURSE: THE SAME STUFF
The philosopher can say the truth. He can speak about everything on condition
of taking into account that he is speaking about it (Kojève). It’s his trade.
He knows that it is doable, on condition of clearly knowing that the truth will
remain a half-said. Not only will all never be said, the said will be never
complete. But much more, even if he takes his own speech into account,
the philosopher will always remain at the dit-mensions of the said, the truth
does not get away from the said and does not touch saying; even if it [truth]
takes it into account, saying remains outside. The said is constitutive of the
approach of the philosopher. To be sure, the philosopher confronts chaos, the
radical real, absence, the question of the void. He does so by fitting the saids
together into a coherent discourse creating concepts and organised on a plane
of immanence which acts as locus for these concepts (Deleuze, Qu’est-ce que
la philosophie?). The chaos only appears under the species of dit-mensions.
At this level, the psychoanalytic discourse is perfectly well inscribed into
the discourse of the philosopher, it organises chaos under the species of ditmensions
named imaginary, symbolic and real.
Provided that the one and the other do not go beyond the domain of the said
always half-said, or more precisely that they do not imagine themselves to be
able to go further than the always partial and partialising experience of ditmensions.
The truth of saids nevertheless inevitably pushes to transgress its
own limits because it is always universalising.
The concept, the concept of concepts, the universal of universals push towards
imagining the totality, at one single time (semel in Latin) and to organising,
always logically, appearances. Speaking always aims at a certain
generality and this universalising aim is the sole (semelle) of the progress of
the saids. Psychoanalysis like philosophy practices dit-mensions and each
one of them pushes towards being organised: the imaginary, …