Charles Melman:
Phobia
Ephep Seminar
March 20th 2014
We are going to take up again, in a very precise way, the elements which for Lacan are the organisers of a phobia. We are going to do this by a demonstration, a series of assertions which are really unique to Lacan and which will among other things put into practice this chart which we have already seen, a chart which is comprised of the permutations of the real, the symbolic and the imaginary,
Is it not because of a permanent search for meaning to which Freud submitted himself that Lacan will substitute for this a pure combinatorial between symbolic father, real father, symbolic mother, imaginary father, a pure combinatorial which will make phenomena subjective, by an automatic permutation of these terms? To put this in a different way: Lacan, with this substitution, in going beyond the story, beyond the narrative, beyond its Romanesque character, given as an explanation of the putting into place of little Hans’ phobia, simply takes structure into account. It is obvious that from a methodological point of view, this is not only original but also, I would say gives us an idea of how Lacan will deal with the “knots” later. In any case, the thought that a symptom could be determined independently of the story and the will of the subject, by a pure combinatorial is of such originality, that it has to be underlined.