Ethic 115 The Ethics of Psychoanalysis Jacques Lacan IX On creation ex nihilo : THE WONDERS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS THAT WHICH IN THE

THE REAL SUFFERS FROM THE SIGNIFIER THE FABLE OF THE POT AND THE VASE INTRODUCTION TO CATHARISM THE DRIVE, AN ONTOLOGICAL NOTION I will take up my discussion of the function I attribute to the Thing in the definition of sublimation with an amusing anecdote. After leaving you the other day, I was conscious-stricken as I often am when I feel that I haven't exhausted the bibliography on a subject I am treating, and I looked up that very afternoon two articles by Melanie Klein that are referred to by Glover. They have been collected in Contributions to Psychoanalysis The first of the articles, "Infant Analysis," of 1923, contains some very

important things on sublimation and on the secondary phenomenon of inhibition - that is to say, on how, in Klein's conception, functions in the child that are sufficiently libidinalized through sublimation are subsequently subjected to an effect of inhibition. 1923 I am not going to spend time on this, for it is to the very conception of sublimation that I want to draw your attention; all the misunderstandings that follow derive from the lack of insight into this problem. It was the second, 1929 article, entitled "Infantile Anxiety Situations Reflected in a Work of Art and in the Creative Impulse," that I regretted not having looked at. It is short, but as sometimes happens, it gave me the satisfaction of fitting my purposes like a glove. 1 The first part is a discussion of the musical composition of Ravel based on a scenario by Colette, L'Enfant et Us Sortileges. I read it with pleasure, which was by no means guaranteed, since it speaks of the work in German and English translations. L'Enfant et Us Sortileges. Melanie Klein is amazed that the work of art follows so closely a child's fantasms concerning the mother's body, those concerning primitive aggression and the counteraggression it feels. In short, it is a quite long and agreeable statement of those features in the imagination of the creator of the work, and especially of the composer, that are in remarkable accordance with the primordial and central field of the psychic structure as indicated by the Kleinian fantasms derived from child analysis. And it is striking to perceive their convergence with the structural forms revealed in the work of art - not that all of this is fully satisfying for us, of course.

 The second part of the article is more remarkable; it is this part that is amusing. Here it is a question of a reference to the article of an analyst called Karin Mikailis, who under the title "Empty Space" narrates a case history which has a certain piquancy. According to the four pages that summarize it, a striking limit case is involved. But it isn't described in such a way that one can offer a certain diagnosis or know if it should be described as melancholic depression or not. The case concerns a patient whose life is briefly sketched out and who is called Ruth Kjar. She was never a painter, but at the center of the lived experience of her crises of depression this woman always complained of what she called an empty space inside her, a space she could never fill. I won't bother you with the episodes of her fife. In any case, helped by her psychoanalyst, she gets married, and once she is married things go well at first. Yet after a short period of time, we find a recurrence of the attacks of melancholia. And here we come to the wonder of the case. We find ourselves, in effect, in the domain of those wonders of psychoanalysis that works of this kind bring out, although not without a certain naive satisfaction.

 For a reason that isn't made clear, the walls of the young couple's house are covered with the paintings of the brother-in-law, who is a painter, including one room in particular. Then at a given moment, the brother-in-law, who is talented, although we have no means of verifying this, sells one of his paintings, which he takes down from wall and carries away. It leaves an empty space on the wall. It turns out that this empty space plays a polarizing and precipitating role in the attacks of melancholic depression that start up again at this point in the life of the patient. She recovers from them in the following way. One fine day she decides to "daub a little" on the wall, so as to fill up that damned empty space that has come to have for her such a crystallizing power, and whose function we would like to know more about in her case, with a better clinical description. So as to fill up that empty space in imitation of her brother-inlaw, she tries to paint a painting that is as similar to the others as possible. She goes to an artists' supply shop to look for colors that are the same as those of her brother-in-law's palette, and she begins to work with an enthusiasm that to me seems characteristic of the beginning of a phase tending toward depression. And out of this there emerges a work of art.

 The amusing part of the story is that when the thing is shown to the brother-inlaw and the patient's heart is beating with anxiety as she waits for the connoisseur's verdict, he almost flies into a rage. "You will never make me believe that it is you who painted that," he tells her. "It's the work of an artist, not just an experienced artist, but a mature one. The devil take your story. Who could it possibly be?" They are unable to convince him, and he continues to swear that if his sister-in-law painted that, then he can conduct a Beethoven symphony at the Royal Chapel, even though he doesn't know a note of music. 32hsiung@pchome.com.tw http://springhero.wordpress.com