Messager 342 – 2011/2012
TOWARDS TEL AVIV 27
10th NLS Congress 16-17 June 2012
10 February 2012
TOWARDS TEL AVIV 27 – FAQ about the symptom – 1
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions. I propose this new rubric for our preparation of the Tel Aviv Congress following my trips to one NLS group after another since the beginning of September, where ‘Reading a Symptom’ gave the direction for work (in Geneva, Athens, Warsaw, Sofia, Moscow, London, Ghent, Tel Aviv)
Each time I undertook to present the theme; I approached it in different ways, from different angles, but always by speaking about JAM’s text ‘Reading a Symptom’. In my effort to make the axes of our research clear, I came up against some opaque points; in the course of theoretical and clinical discussions in the encounters with colleagues, questions emerged, remarks struck me, details stayed with me.
I would like to make something out of these stumbling blocks, these scraps and ‘remainders’. Not all remnants (as one says in relation to fabric leftovers) are suitable for keeping, but some of them seem to me to be worthy of being elevated to the order of a question that I will pose to you, and I propose that you do the same. The seminars, lectures and cartels, as well as individual work leave a trace – not only in the more constructed pieces of work, or in the always interesting reports that we read, but in these brief flashes, the short remarks, the questions that remain without answer.
Elements of a response can thus be proposed, references can be pointed out, precisions or contradictions can be brought up. It is not so much a matter of tying things up before the congress itself; it is rather about bringing together the ingredients that will ‘precipitate’ our reflections.
Anne Lysy
FAQ1
Body event and body phenomena
How to differentiate these two terms?
And then, how to articulate them?
We often use the term « body phenomena » in our clinical constructions, mostly in relation to psychosis, but also, more broadly, as if it covered all the phenomena affecting the body (hysteric conversions, psychosomatic symptoms,various pains, etc.). Moreover, this year, we had a tendancy to use body phenomena and body events (in the plural) without distinction, as if they were synonymous.
But it seems to me that they have a different status and that we should make a distinction between the body event (in the singular) and body phenomena. It involves revisiting our idea of the body; why, for example, could the obsessions, as ‘illness of thought’, not sometimes be classed as a body event?
Hence my question.
A few points of reference:
Lacan makes the symptom « a body event » in his last teaching, specifically in his text « Joyce the symptom », published in 1979 (Autres écrits, p. 569).
J.-A. Miller extracted this term to make it a key concept of this last teaching and to situate it in the perspective of Encore, where the signifier has effects of jouissance and not of mortification. Jouissance supposes the body, a living body, which is not an image, and no longer the same body as the one of the mirror stage; it is a body defined as « what enjoys itself »; not a ‘natural’ enjoyment but a jouissance from the impact of the signifier.
The body event is the meeting between the signifier and the body, for a subject, or rather for a parlêtre, it is the « percussion » of language on the body, the trauma of language. It is an event which is « at the very origin of the subject. It is, in a way, the original event and, at the same time, a permanent event, one that is ceaselessly reiterated » (1). The body event is the sinthome (in this new writing, distinguished from the symptom), i.e. »something which happened to the body because of language » (2). Reading a symptom « targets this initial shock », « aims at reducing the symptom to its original formula, i.e. the material encounter between a signifier and the body, the pure shock of language on the body » (3). It aims at the real of the symptom, beyond meaning, beyond the defiles of desire. The real is in the letter, in its materiality out of meaning. There is an affinity between the body event and the letter.
A body event has a relation to the contingency of the initial shock, the iteration of the same One of jouissance, the singularity of the sinthome.
As for the phenomena of the body, are they as such automatically a body event, in the strict sense of a condition of the subject, or rather of the ‘parlêtre’? Are they an « original and permanent » event that is constitutive for the subject? There are a wide variety of phenomena, sometimes in the same subject. What status do these phenomena have? When we describe a young woman, for example, who has spasms when under the gaze of the other; or another who is invaded by body phenomena in moments in which she loses her support in knowledge (stomach pains, spots on the skin, etc.): this is something that happens to the body, but will we call it body events?
In the « Conversation sur les embrouilles du corps » (Conversation on the entanglements of the body) in Bordeaux in January 1999 (4), with regard to body phenomena J.-A. Miller made a distinction between « intermittent (« eclipse« ) phenomena and permanent phenomena »: « body phenomena are qualified as ‘sinthomes’ when they become permanent and order the life of a subject. »
In his course of last year, J.-A. Miller situated the body event at the level of the Freudian fixation, « the fixation of the drive at the root of repression »; « there is a One of jouissance that always comes back to the same place » (5).
Another question arises out of this: how do we identify this ‘One’ of enjoyment, what is that « One » – a master signifier, a word that struck, a sound, a letter…?
To be followed.
Anne Lysy,
9 February 2012
(1) Miller, J.-A., « Reading a symptom ».
(2) Miller, J.-A., « Pièces détachées », lesson of 15 December 2004, Cause freudienne, 61, p. 152.
(3) Miller,J.-A., « Reading a symptom ».
(4) Miller, J.-A., in: « Conversation sur les embrouilles du corps », Ornicar? 50, 2003, p. 235.
(5) Miller, J.-A., course on March 30, 2011, unpublished.
Translated by Natalie Wulfing
L’inscription au congrès en ligne:
Online Congress registration:
http://www.amp-nls.org/en/template.php?sec=congres&file=congres/2012/Inscriptions.html
