In his article “Affairs of the Family in the Unconscious,” Jacques-Alain Miller states that “the place of the family remains linked to the language that one speaks, which is to say that to speak, to speak in language, is already to testify to the linkwith the family. It is for this reason that it is preferable to do an analysis in one’s mother tongue. It is possible to do ananalysis in another language but then something is lost, even though something is also retrieved since it effectuates adefamilialisation” [1].
This signifier, which indicates both a movement of loss and recovery, may echo what is produced by the journey of an analysand in the treatment, when he distances himself from the place of the Other of language constituted by the family that has spoken him, only to realise how deeply he is involved in it. Indeed, isn’t analysis about detaching oneself from what is too familiar in order to move toward a new, singular knowledge?
The Symptom, a “Familiar Stranger”
According to the dictionary, defamiliarization is a literary concept that “consists of diverting objects, situations, or usual expressions from their original context in order to give them a strange and unexpected dimension. Thus, the reader is led to rediscover these aspects of daily life from a new and original perspective.” [2] This resonates with our matter, as in the treatment, the more the subject elaborates, the more he realises that what once seemed most familiar takes on an increasingly strange, even foreign, dimension.
If the ordinary status of the subject is to feel like a stranger to himself, it is “especially since, within himself, at the core of his being, he encounters a stranger who is nevertheless familiar to him, his symptom, that is what presents itself in the logical modality of “not ceasing to be written” [3]. The symptom is a familiar stranger where jouissance is condensed — a foreign jouissance in which the subject no longer recognises himself, and of which he complains.
“The Family Lalangue”
The family spoken of in analysis is also the place where a child gathers, within its language, something stemming from its encounter with the desire of the Other and what it carries, as unspeakable. Jacques-Alain Miller suggests naming this the “family lalangue” [4]. The way a child has been desired permeates its manner of speaking and resurfaces in its formations of the unconscious.
Lacan highlights that beyond family relationships, what truly matters are the primordial relations a subject establishes with knowledge, jouissance, and the object a. Consequently, what defines a child’s family is the place that close relatives hold, concerning these fundamental relations. It is thus a question of exploring the mode of presence under which each of the three terms has been offered to him. [5]
“Untying the Knots of Destiny”
“We believe we say what we want, but it’s what the others wanted, more particularly our family, qui nous parle. […] Weare spoken, and, because of this, from the happenstances that drive us, we form something textured. Indeed, there is a texture — we call it our destiny.” [6] This is what Lacan states in the Seminar The Sinthome.
The experience of analysis enables one to break free from the assignments coming from the Other while opening a path to deciphering destiny. The elaboration in sessions transforms suffering into a new knowledge by establishing a new relationship with truth and knowledge — up to a point where knowledge mutates by no longer being connected to truth but solely to the jouissance that insists. Thus, letting go of the meaning that speech thirsts for, in order to aim most properly at the trauma, through words that resonate with what they fail to say.
The Analyst’s Act
“It is common to observe that the more the analysand speaks about his family, the more insistently, even indulgently, he describes the dysfunctions he has encountered. [7] This could go on indefinitely, and this is where the analyst’s intervention is crucial, in the sense that it aims at allowing speech to undo what has been done by speech”, indicates Pierre Malengreau. [8]
If the point with a neurotic subject is to interfere with the way he uses the unconscious to defend himself from the incidence of the living in his life, it is different for psychotic and autistic subjects.
Indeed, psychoanalysis with psychotic subjects benefits from focusing on a conversation aimed at soothing the deregulated jouissance rather than relying on the deciphering of the unconscious. It is about protecting the subject from the threatening jouissance of the Other — not by seeking to unveil a hidden truth, but rather by taking into account the imaginary supports and encouraging his sinthomatic inventions. This can sometimes take the form of a refamilialisation(if you allow the neologism), for instance, by helping the subject minimize the effects of a feeling of persecution or a delirium in his life, particularly within the family.
With an autistic subject, the analyst rather makes himself the support for the double, allowing the subject to develop the potentialities of the autistic rim, for him to be able to gradually open up to a world in which he initially perceives himself as a foreigner. As Jean-Claude Maleval points out, this involves a connection [branchement] to the body of the partner and not to the body of language. The support of a partner, particularly a family member, is therefore essential.
Conclusion
For Lacan, the babble of [our] ancestors, the one we share in analysis, is what makes us spoken beings, through an obscure “legacy” which is less about meaning than about the impossibility of not being part of the “misunderstanding”. [9]
Thus, freeing oneself from what is too familiar to create a gap from the babble of [our] ancestors seems to open the way toward a certain “knowing how to deal with” familial signifiers and other striking words.
[1] Miller J.-A., ” Affairs of the Family in the Unconscious”, The Lacanian Review, issue 4, 2017, p. 75.
[2] Definition available online at: https://www.lalanguefrancaise.com/dictionnaire/définition/défamiliarisation
[3] Laurent É., “ L’étranger extime “, Mental, no 38, november 2018, p. 67.
[4] Miller J.-A.,“Lacan avec Joyce, Le Séminaire de la section Clinique de Barcelone”, La Cause freudienne, no 38, February 1998, p. 12.
[5] Lacan J, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XVI: From an Other to the other, text established by J.-A. Miller, trans B. Fink, Cambridge, Polity, 2023, pp. 288. In this text, the translation is: “There was no choice, for the choice was already made at the level of what was presented to the subject, but that can only be located and perceived as a function of the three terms I have just tried to bring out for you.”
[6] Lacan J., The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book XXIII, The Sinthome, text established by J.-A. Miller, trans A. Price, Cambridge, Polity 2016, pp. 142.
[7] Malengreau P., “Paroles de famille”, Quarto, no 88-89, March 2007, p. 29.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Cf Lacan J., “Dissolution”, Aux confins du Séminaire, text established by J.A. Miller, La Divina, Navarin Editeur, 2021, p. 75.
Translation Laurence Maman
Proofreading Alasdair Duncan
