Let us not forget that this year I resolved that this seminar would be a real seminar.
This is all the more essential because we have among us not a few people capable of contributing, including someone whom I can call our friend. That is Pierre Kaufmann, who is an assistant at the Sorbonne. He has been following what goes on at this seminar for a long time now, and has been attentive to its work in the most useful of ways. Perhaps some of you follow his philosophical chronicle that appears in Combat on Thursdays. He has several times discussed my teaching, on the occasion of the Royaumont Conference, for example, or quite recently when he was good enough to give an account of work that was useful to an author such as Henri Lefebvre – he had complained of a deficiency of some kind in my teaching on the basis of the mere sight of a part of it or of an article.
In any case, four weeks ago I referred to a little article by Bernfeld. It was the “Bemerkungen über Sublimierung,” which appeared in Imago in 1922. Mr. Kaufmann was good enough to show an interest in it, and our discussion progressed to the point where he brought me something which appeared to me to be both suggestive and promising enough for me to encourage him to develop it as far as time and interest permitted. He will thus present the thoughts that were inspired by Bernfeld’s article and the further developments it inspired in him.
Please note especially that on a number of occasions in this presentation very interesting allusions will be made – I can only call them allusions, when I think of all that Mr. Kaufmann has added relative to the sources of the matter he was dealing with in the field of psychology at the moment when he became interested in it. In France, as in the English-speaking countries, we are quite ignorant of a whole, extremely rich German tradition, which shows that Freud, in fact, was the object of readings that were careful and extensive, or, in a word, immense.
On many points, we have a lot to learn about things that even Mr. Kaufmann hasn’t yet formulated completely or published. You will get some idea of that today.
I now give him the floor and thank him in advance for what he has prepared for us. [Mr. Kaufmann’s talk followed.]
What emerges from your talk is the frequent obscurity of Bernfeld’s theory or at least of the application of it he attempts to give to the case under consideration. The result is quite ambiguous and gives rise to a problem. It is, in short, Bernfeld’s thesis that one can only talk of sublimation when there is a transfer of energy from the object libido to the Ichziele.
The Ichziele are preexistent, and there is sublimation when libidinal energy is reinvigorated, updated, as the child enters the phase of puberty. A part of the energy is transferred from the aims of pleasure to the aims of the Ichgerechte, which are in conformity with the ego. And although the Freudian distinction between Verdrängung and Sublimierung is maintained, it is nevertheless only at the moment when Verdrängung appears that Sublimierung is perceptible. For example, it is only when the love of the child for the person Melitta is felt as a process of repression that that which is not completely obscured by the force of the latter is able to pass to the level of sublimation. Thus for him there is a kind of synchrony between the two processes. Let’s say that Bernfeld is only able to grasp sublimation when he has the immediate correlative of repression.
Mr. Kaufmann: … Although he says that there is some ambiguity in the Three Essays, he nevertheless adds that it is clear that sublimation is distinguished from reaction formation by the non-repressed character of the libido.
Dr. Lacan: In reality, the greatest ambiguity reigns in the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality on the subject of the relations between spiritual reaction and Sublimierung. The problem begins with the text on pages 78 and 79 of the Gesammelte Werke. At that time this articulation of the problem caused a great many difficulties for the commentators. People wondered, depending on the different passages, whether Freud turns Sublimierung into a particular form of reaction formation or whether, on the contrary, reaction formation isn’t to be located within a form in which Sublimierung would have a broader significance.
The only important thing to remember is the little sentence to be found at the bottom of note 79, which concludes the whole paragraph on reaction formation and sublimation. It makes a distinction that hasn’t been further developed, as Bernfeld quite properly notes: “There may be sublimations by means of other, simpler mechanisms.”
To summarize, the way of analyzing the economy of energy sources in the poetic activity of the young boy called Robert leaves an obvious residue that Bernfeld himself points to on page 339 as follows: “Aus dem Rest der Melitta geltenden Objektlibido entwickeln sich Stimmungen.” – Melitta is the girl he loves. And then on page 340, Bernfeld writes: “Die Energie, mit der die tertiare Bearbeitung vollzogen wird, ist nun unbezweifelbar unverdrängte Objektlibido.” There’s where the problem lies if we make the phenomenon of sublimation dependent on the distinction between Libidoziel, Ichziele, Lustziele. And Sterba, too, in an article that appeared the previous year comes up against the same problem. If everything depends on the redirection of the energy from one sphere to another, or a certain set of aims which undergoes a profound disturbance at the time of puberty, then when Bernfeld identifies that crucial point which seems so important to him in the poetic production of the boy, he is led expressly to refer the poetic vocation to the Ichziele. And he resolves the question by saying that to become a poet is an aim of the ego, which was manifested very early in the boy in question. These precocious activities are, in Bernfeld’s eyes, only to be distinguished by the fact that they reflect what he has learned at school in a diffuse and non-personalized way, as a result of which all the productions of the time are marked with the sign “of little value.” They only seem to become interesting from the moment when the person concerned feels himself to be dramatically engaged in his activities.
I am emphasizing factors that present the author in the most favorable of lights. But in a more or less fleeting way, how many children are there who during the latency period don’t engage in poetic activity periodically? Freud was in a good position to observe it in one of his children. There is a problem there that is different from that of cultural transmission or imitation. The problem of sublimation has to be posed early, but we don’t for that reason have to limit ourselves to individual development. The reason why there are poets, why a poetic vocation may suggest itself early to a young human being, cannot simply be solved as with Bernfeld by considering genetic development and the new characteristics that appear at the moment when sexuality becomes an issue in an obvious way.
To fail to recognize that sexuality is there from the beginning in the young child, and is an even greater factor during the phase that precedes the latency period, is to fly in the face of the whole Freudian enterprise and discovery. If so much insistence has been placed on the pregenital sources of sublimation, it is for that reason. The problem of sublimation is raised long before the moment when the division between the aims of the libido and the aims of the ego are clear, apparent, and accessible on the level of consciousness.
If I may be permitted to emphasize here something that I have taught you, I would say that the term I use in the effort to articulate sublimation in relation to what we have to deal with, das Ding, or what I call the Thing, refers to a decisive place around which the definition of sublimation must be articulated – even before I was born, and, obviously, therefore, before the Ichziele, the aims of the I appear.
The same remark applies to the comparison you have made between the use I make of the image of the Thing and what Simmel does with it.
There is in Simmel something of interest to me, since he has the notion not only of distanciation but also of an object that cannot be attained. But it is nevertheless an object. On the other hand, what cannot be attained in the Thing is precisely the Thing – i.e., it’s not an object. And the difference is a radical one that has to do with the appearance between his time and mine of the difference that is the Freudian unconscious.
Simmel comes close to something that you have interpreted as an apprehension of anality, but he is unable to grasp it fully precisely because of that fundamental difference.
Mr. Kaufmann: … As far as Bernfeld is concerned, the problem is merely made more confusing if the notion of value is introduced into the analysis of sublimation. He says, for example, that on the level of analysis one shouldn’t distinguish between the work of an artist and a stamp collection ….
Dr. Lacan: Not only between a collection of works of art and a stamp collection, but between an art collection, and, in a given child or patient, a collection of dirty bits of paper. He resists introducing criteria that are alien to the criteria of psychic development.
The last part of the article has to do with an effort to articulate sublimation on to his curious experiment with groups of young people.
The verification of the size of the penis is in his eyes the essential significant element of that period when children engage in reciprocal exhibitionism. According to him there is here a conflict between the ego and the object libido. On the one hand, the ego exhibits itself narcissistically as the most handsome, strongest and biggest. Another part is opposed to the ego because it goes in the direction of genital excitation.
In the history of the association involved, that is for him the decisive side of the internal or esoteric ceremony of the group. It is from that point on that according to him one can talk of sublimation in their group activity.
The problematic character of all his needs to be emphasized, especially if one adds that, among those who consider themselves to be the strongest and boldest, this exhibitionism is accompanied by collective masturbation.
Mr. Kaufmann: … In short, Bernfeld was out of luck. He treated sublimation in connection with the ideal ego just before Freud was in a position to inform him of the nature of this ideal ego, and, in particular, of the need to take into consideration the relation to the other.
Dr. Lacan: You are an optimist. Those who have written on the subject afterwards also don’t seem to have profited from the introduction of the ideal ego. Just read them, including in the end the “Observations on Sublimation” and the article “Neutralisation and Sublimation,” which appeared in Analysis Studies; you won’t find there the least attempt to articulate sublimation on to the ideal ego. And that’s as far as we’ve got, that’s the point we are starting from here.
I would like to thank you for your presentation today. So as to highlight what we have learned, I hope you will allow me to quote the sentence that expresses the essence of Bernfeldian theory: “Those components of the whole that are instinctive emotion and that are held together under the pressure of repression may be sublimated. Thus the particular qualities of these components enable the ego function to be supported through the reinforcement of ego instincts that are currently threatened.”
That’s the definition to which he holds and which includes the two extremes you refer to. That is, either the ego is strong, and those whose ego instincts are precociously powerful form an aristocracy, an elite – and it is futile for him to say parenthetically that no emphasis is placed on value, given that it is after all impossible to avoid such an emphasis. Or the ego instincts are threatened and have to call for the assistance furnished by the drives, to the extent, that is, that they can escape recuperation. That’s the position Bernfeld reaches.
It is, I assume, clear to you all that what I am concerned with this year is situated somewhere between a Freudian ethics and a Freudian aesthetics. Freudian aesthetics is involved because it reveals one of the phases of the function of the ethics. And it really is surprising that it hasn’t been given greater prominence, given that in another form the subject has preoccupied psychoanalysis – Jones, for example, is always talking about the moral complacency which is in a way that which ethics makes use of in order to render the Thing inaccessible to us, when it already was inaccessible from the beginning.
I am trying to show you how Freudian aesthetics, in the broadest meaning of the term – which means the analysis of the whole economy of signifiers – reveals that the Thing is inaccessible. That needs to be placed right at the start of the problem, so as to be able to articulate its consequences, and especially the question of idealization. In any case, you saw last time, in connection with the sublimation involved in the moral code of courtly love, the beginnings of the emergence of an ideal type.
By way of conclusion, I would like to introduce a word whose full meaning will be apparent later on. Insofar as we distinguish in the sphere of ethics between two levels that are already there in classical thinkers – and that is discussed in a passage of De Officiis to which I shall refer you later – the question is whether the summum bonum should be articulated according to honestas, that is the style of the honnête homme – and which must, therefore, be articulated as a certain form of organization, a certain life style that is located in relation to the initial sublimation – or according to utilitas, a concept that is at the basis of the utilitarianism, with which I began by posing the problem of ethics this year, and whose true essence I propose to show.
March 2, 1960
I have for you today something curious and amusing. But I believe that we analysts are perhaps alone in being in a position to situate things properly.
Last time when Mr. Kaufmann had finished talking about Bernfeld’s article, I stated that the problem we face is that of establishing the link between sublimation and identification. Before we leave the subject of sublimation as I have outlined it for you around the notion of the Thing – and it may still seem enigmatic and veiled for very good reasons – I would like to present you with a text, as it were as a note, on the subject of what might be called the paradoxes of sublimation.
Sublimation is not, in fact, what the foolish crowd thinks; and it does not on all occasions necessarily follow the path of the sublime. The change of object doesn’t necessarily make the sexual object disappear – far from it; the sexual object acknowledged as such may come to light in sublimation. The crudest of sexual games can be the object of a poem without for that reason losing its sublimating goal.
In short, I don’t think it a waste of time for me to read you a piece of evidence from the file of courtly love that even the specialists themselves literally don’t know what to do with; they can’t make head or tail of it.
There aren’t two poems like this in the literature of courtly love. It’s a hapax, a single occurrence. It appears in the work of one of the most subtle and polished of the troubadours, whose name is Arnaud Daniel, and who is famous for his extraordinarily rich formal inventiveness, most notably in the poetic form of the sestina, which I don’t have time to go into here; however, you should at least know the name.
Arnaud Daniel wrote a poem on the oddest of those relations of service that I told you about between the lover and his Lady; it is a whole poem that is distinguished by the fact that, much to the delight of a number of startled writers, it breaches the boundaries of pornography to the point of scatology.
The poem is concerned with a case that seems to be presented as a question to be resolved in terms of the moral casuistry of courtly love. The case involves a Lady, called Domna Ena in the poem, who orders her knight to put his mouth to her trumpet – an expression that is quite unambiguous in the text; and the order is designed to test the worthiness of his love, his loyalty and his commitment.
So as not to make you wait any longer then, I will read the poem – in French because I don’t think that any of you can understand that lost language which is the langue d’oc, a language that nevertheless has its style and its value. The poem is in stanzas of nine lines with a single rhyme, which changes with every stanza.
Though Lord Raimond, in agreement with Lord True Malec, defends Lady Ena and her orders, I would grow old and white before I would consent to a request that involves so great an improriety. For so as “to put his mouth to her trumpet,” he would need the kind of beak that could pick grain out of a pipe. And even then he might come out blind, as the smoke from those folds is so strong.
He would need a beak and a long, sharp one, for the trumpet is rough, ugly and hairy, and it is never dry, and the swamp within is deep. That’s why the pitch ferments upwards as it continually escapes, continually overflows. And it is not fitting that he who puts his mouth to that pipe be a favorite.
There will be plenty of other tests, finer ones that are worth far more, and if Lord Bernart withdrew from that one, he did not, by Christ, behave like a coward if he was taken with fear and fright. For if the stream of water had landed on him from above, it would have scalded his whole neck and cheek, and it is not fitting also that a lady embrace a man who has blown a stinking trumpet.
Bernart, I do not agree in this with the remarks of Raimon de Durfort, in saying that you were wrong; for even if you had blown away gladly, you would have encountered a crude obstacle, and the stench would soon have smitten you, that stinks worse than dung in a garden. You should praise God, against whomsoever seeks to dissuade you, that he helped you escape from that.
Yes, he escaped from a great peril with which his son also would have been reproached and all those from Comil. He would have done better to go into exile than to have blown in that funnel between spine and mount pubic, there where rust colored substances proceed. He could never have been certain that she would not piss all over his snout and eyebrows.
Lady, may Bernart never venture to blow that trumpet without a large bung to stop up the penile hole; then only could he blow without peril.
This quite extraordinary document opens a strange perspective on the deep ambiguity of the sublimating imagination. One should first note that all the poetic works of the trouvères and troubadours have not come down to us, and that we only find some of Arnaud Daniel’s poems in two or three manuscripts. Yet this poem, whose literary merit goes far beyond what a translation is able to reveal, not only was not lost but is to be found in some twenty manuscripts. We have other texts which show that two other trouvères, Trumalec and Raymond de Durfort, participated in this debate, arguing on the other side, but I won’t go into that.
We find ourselves here faced with a sudden reversal, a strange reaction. Heaven knows that Arnaud Daniel went a long way in the direction of lending the greatest subtlety to the pact between lovers. Doesn’t he push desire to the extreme point of offering himself in a sacrifice that involves his own annihilation? Well, he is the very same one who turns out to have written a poem, however reluctantly, on a subject that must have concerned him in some way for him to have taken so much trouble with it.
The idealized woman, the Lady, who is in the position of the Other and of the object, finds herself suddenly and brutally positing, in a place knowingly constructed out of the most refined of signifiers, the emptiness of a thing in all its crudity, a thing that reveals itself in its nudity to be the thing, her thing, the one that is to be found at her very heart in its cruel emptiness. That Thing, whose function certain of you perceived in the relation to sublimation, is in a way unveiled with a cruel and insistent power.
It is nevertheless difficult not to note echoes of this elsewhere, for the oddness involved is not without precedents. Remember, for example, the origin of the flute evoked in Longus’s pastoral romance. Pan pursues the nymph Syrinx, who runs away from him and disappears among the reeds. In his rage, he cuts down the reeds, and that, Longus tells us, is the origin of the flute with pipes of unequal length – Pan wanted, the subtle poet adds, to express in that way the fact that his love was without equal. Syrinx is transformed into the pipe of Pan’s flute. Now on the level of derision that is to be found in the strange poem that I brought to your attention here, we find the same structure, the same model of an emptiness at the core, around which is articulated that by means of which desire is in the end sublimated.
I wouldn’t tell all if I didn’t add to the file, in case it proves useful, that Dante places Arnaud Daniel in Canto XIV of his Purgatory in the company of sodomites. I haven’t been able to pursue the particular genesis of this poem beyond that.
I am now going to ask Madame Hubert to speak. She will be talking to you about a text that is frequently referred to in analytic literature, namely, Sperber’s article entitled “On the Influence of Sexual Factors on the Origin and Development of Language,” but it also touches on all kinds of problems relative to what we have to say about sublimation.
In his article on the theory of symbolism – an article on which I wrote a commentary in our journal but which, I have heard, is not particularly accessible to a reader – Jones expressly singles out the Sperber article. If, he says, Sperber’s theory is true, if we must consider certain forms of primitive work, agricultural work, in particular, the relations between man and the earth, as the equivalent of the sexual act, features whose traces are, as it were, retained in the meaning we give that primitive relation, then can this be explained by the process of symbolization? Jones says no. In other words, given the conception he has of the function of the symbol, he considers that what is involved is by no means a symbolic transposition, neither can it be registered as a sublimation effect. The sublimation effect is to be taken in its liberality, in its authenticity. The copulation between the ploughman and the earth is not a symbolization but the equivalent of a symbolic copulation.
It is worth taking the time to reflect on that, and in my article I draw certain consequences to which I will return. Sperber’s text appeared in the first issue of Imago, and it is perhaps even more difficult to find than the others. But so that it may receive its due, Mrs. Hubert has been good enough to concentrate on it, and she will tell us today what it contains.
March 9, 1960