There are Four Discourses

There are four discourses. Each one thinks it is the truth. The - Ir only exception is the analytic discourse. We would be better off if it did — dominate, people will conclude, but in point of fact this discourse ex-dudes domination; in other words it teaches nothing. There is nothing - universal about it, which is precisely why it cannot be taught.

How does one go about teaching what cannot be taught? This is - 01 something Freud ventured into. He thought that all is but a dream and that everyone (if one can say such a thing), that everyone is mad, that is, delusional.

This is indeed what the very first step in the direction of teaching demonstrates.

But it does still need to be demonstrated: for this any old object will do, it always presents itself poorly. That is, it needs to be rectified.

Mathematics is for that: rectifying the object. It is a fact that mathematics rectifies and that what it rectifies is the object itself.

Hence my reduction of psychoanalysis to set theory.

Might the antipathy between the university and analytic discourses be onercome at Vincennes? Certainly not. It is being put to work there; at least it has been for the four years I have been observing. It is apparent there - that, by coming up against its own impossibility, teaching is refreshed.

Let me set out what these four years have produced in the Department of Psychoanalysis:

• A journal, Ornicar?, that debates what is being published everywhere in the name of psychoanalysis.
• A postgraduate program in the so-called Freudian Field, in which it behooves psychoanalysis to rectify what is offered it as cognate.
• A Clinical Section, which, at the Henri-Rousselle Hospital, is ing its role of instructing young psychiatrists.

A positive report. The experiment will therefore continue. At Vincennes, so long as it has the freedom to do so. If ever it gets restricted, then o the university!

JACQUES LACAN
This 22-10-78