Patricia McCarthy - Sursum Corda
 
The experience of analysis is transformative. ‘It realizes a performance, a transformation from top to bottom of structure; and this transformation implies not only the cutting of the stuff, but moreover the creation of the stuff including its effacing. It is done, it is indisputable.’ (Fierens). As Freud proposes to his patient: in a successful analysis there is much to be gained ‘in transforming your hysterical misery into ordinary unhappiness’. One might well respond: does that leave us with much of a choice? Lacan enigmatically reminds us that we can choose between two kinds of ‘worse’ … ou pire. Let us not delude ourselves, the ‘…or worse’ alternative is much, much worse. Cormac Gallagher, we remember, likens hysteria and its misery to a cancer in our relationships. In Encore, playing on the homophony between il/elle hait (he/she hates) and il/elle est (he/she is), Lacan tells us that the more we are in being, the more we hate. Having a distance from being is the work of analysis and the rest will follow. This includes engaging with the work of the psychoanalytic group. Therefore, let us lift up our hearts…
 
Keywords: perplexity; Aristotle; being; sectioning of the predicate; the said/the saying; dit-mension; a new incest