Pierre Malengreau, Note on the Construction of the Case

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NLS Messager 38 - 2010/2011 <strong>Note</strong> on the Construction of the Case <strong>Pierre</strong> <strong>Malengreau</strong> Is there a mode of clinical presentation, Eric Laurent has recently asked1, that favours the isolation of a psychoanalytic problem as such? The question is double-edged: it relates to both the clinical material presented and the use we make of it, to different ends, that of teaching or transmission, of monstration or demonstrating. Thus, it is worthwhile unfolding this question in so far as a certain clinical use, based on the case, may on occasion go against the very clinic it came from. Which use do we make of our cases in our presentations, in our teaching? Is there a way proper to psychoanalysis of speaking about its cases? The psychoanalytic clinic requires an approach to the case that does not deny its aim from the outset. It supposes an approach to the case that includes an orientation of the experience towards the real.2 The experience of the real in analysis is the experience of an encounter with an evasive real. Two dimensions of the real are joined in this definition, one concerns the real as encounter, as irruption, and the other concerns the real as outside-sense (hors-sens). An approach to the case that is in agreement with this orientation towards the real therefore supposes the inclusion of contingency in its construction. “The psychoanalytic clinic must interrogate analysts, so that they account for what is hazardous in their practice”3. Lacan invites us to take seriously the fact that there is an element of chance in the psychoanalytic experience, which is part of the experience itself, and it is by treating this part “in the right manner”4 that we get the chance to transmit what is specific to it. What place do we give to the real of the clinic in the way we report our cases? A remark made by J.-A. Miller enables us to unfold this question. Evoking certain phenomena of libidinal irruption, he insists on the necessity of situating them in their symbolic process. “Otherwise”, he says, “we will find ourselves in a clinic whose neck I would like to wring, to borrow Eric Laurent's immortal expression, a clinic of merely saying 'Oh well, he is invaded by jouissance', 'Why do these spots appear on the patient's body?’, 'This is a phenomenon of jouissance.' This is not what we do. I say that wemust try, in all cases, to reconstruct that through which we have access to the alienation phase, in order to give the right place to the phenomena concerning separation.”5 This remark denotes and opposes two approaches to the case, and consequently two conceptions of the clinic. The first takes delights in a clinic that can be called objective. The objective clinic relies on what can be observed, be it from an innocent point of view or an informed one. It makes use of the master signifier for purposes of identification. The notion of jouissance to which reference was made here is denatured in this case as anobservation tool. No longer being in touch with the real of the experience it loses its conceptual pertinence. The Lacanian psychoanalyst should not settle the case on this use of the concepts. The other clinic, we may call demonstrative, leans on a mode of case construction that takes into account that not all can be said, or that the operation of alienation, as constructed as it may be, can nevercover what operates on the side of separation. This clinic, founded on the Freudian temporality of the après-coup, needs instruments that do not belong to observation, but to logic. The articulation between the intuitive notion of the series and sequence theory, which J.-A. Miller put forward in “Homologue of Malaga”6 can guide us here. The analytic experience is first of all an experience of serialisation of the signifiers that matter to the subject. It is about a subject apprehending the different traits, memories and identifications that marked his history. We start from there. We start step by step with puttinginto a series of what is important to the analysand. The construction of a case passes first through this tracking. However, this is not specifically psychoanalytic. Describing the symbolic order in which a subject is captured is not what is proper to a practice oriented towards the real7. The tracking and serialisation of the identifications, the regressive signifiers, may well take us back to what Lacan called “the ordinary lure of understanding”8. Isn't it therefore necessary that in our constructions a lack of a signifier in the signifyingchain that determines the 2
NLS Messager 38 - 2010/2011 subject shall appear, and that this lack is not accidental? This lack must be nevertheless specified if we want to deciphermore closely the real that is at stake in our praxis. This is where the sequence theory can be useful to design a case construction that is appropriate to psychoanalysis. J. -A. Miller distinguishes two kinds of sequences. The first, so called normal, is “the one we derive from an all”. It is a sequence without surprise. It presents itself in a completely determined manner. Thecase constructions that come out of it, often convincing in their form, leave behind a sense of déjà vu reinforced by the absence of a clinical edge. J.-A. Miller points out another kind of sequence, a sequence that relies on the connection between the logic of the treatment and the feminine position. This sequence differs from the preceding one in that it leans on this very particular lack with regard to the universal, which Lacan designates with the term of the not-all. “The properly Lacanian not-all should not be confused with the not-all of incompletion, with which it has nothing to do, to which it is opposed”. The not-all of incompletion is what can be understood in the form of an element lacking to the set. The Lacanian not-all is utterly different. “It is the undecidable not-all”. The example proposed by J.-A. Miller of a candy-eater evokes the example of the card game that fuels the most arguments between children, a game we call “war”. Each time the two players lay a card on the table, they form a sequence determined by a rule by which the highest card wins. Suppose that we introduce an additional rule that would add a card, such as a joker, with whatever value, so that the player who has it in his hand could use it as he sees fit, or even not use it at all, if that's what he likes. This changes the whole game. This new fact introduces an unpredictable element into the sequence, an unknown. This gives the game of war the structure of an encounter, of tuché, which implicates the desire of the player. We have here another kind of sequence, a sequence that includes the unknown, a hole in the sequence itself. The case construction proper to psychoanalysis may here find a logical foundation. It would mean in this case, to construct a sequence that would reveal, in the sequence itself, not a missing term but the undecidable part that it includes. Concretely, this consists in revealing the incidence of the nonprogrammed in the sequence. The only sequence that would suit the construction of the case, for psychoanalysis, is therefore a sequence that would include the hazardous part of the experience. Certain testimonies of the Pass go in this direction. They could serve as examples for our constructions. One might of course object to the view that once a sequence has been constructed, it becomes in turn a description of the case. That would mean to underestimate the scope of Lacan's invitation to take seriously what the analytic experience owes to the real of the encounter. The inclusion of the “as if by chance”9 in the case construction is not only of value for the constructed sequence. It is also of value for the use we make of it. The demonstrative clinic by this fact turns out to be inseparable from the School. Objective clinic and demonstrative clinic are here opposed. The first expects from the partner love and recognition. The second includes interlocution. It invites conversation and it offers for debate the sequential material that makes it possible. The demonstrative clinic gives itself “a partner who has the chance to respond”10. It thus inscribes itself in the transference to work. Translated by Noa Farchi 1 Laurent, E., Poétique pulsionnelle, La Lettre Mensuelle , 198, p. 2. 2 Lacan, J., The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Transl. : Sheridan, A., p. 53. 3 Lacan, J., Ouverture de la section clinique, Ornicar ? , 9, p. 14. 4 Lacan, J., Le sinthome, Seuil, 1999. p. 15. 3
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Pierre Malengreau, Note on the Construction of the Case

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